Does High Culture Humanize Us?

When we think of high culture, names come to mind. Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe, Cervantes. To appreciate and gain understanding of their works, we develop sensibilities and sensitivities. To do so, humanizes us. So goes the thinking. Does it humanize everybody? Not according to this account:

"To walk through Dresden’s museums, and past the young buskers fiddling Mozart on street corners, is to wonder whether this age-old question may have things backward. It presumes that we’re passive receivers acted on by the arts, which vouchsafe our salvation, moral and otherwise, so long as we remain in their presence. Arts promoters nowadays like to trumpet how culture helps business and tourism; how teaching painting and music in schools boosts test scores. They try to assign practical ends, dollar values and other hard numbers, never mind how dubious, to quantify what’s ultimately unquantifiable.

The lesson of Dresden, which this great city unfortunately seems doomed to repeat, is that culture is, to the contrary, impractical and fragile, helpless even." More

Darwin in Turkey

It was only a matter of time. Creationism and Intelligent Design have come to Islam via The United States.

"Sema Ergezen teaches biology to Turkish students interested in teaching science themselves, and she has long struggled with her students' ignorance of, and sometimes hostility to, the notion of evolution.

But she was taken aback when several of her Marmara University students recently accused her of being an atheist, or worse, for teaching anything but the doctrine that God created the Earth and everything on it.

"They said I was a liar if I called myself a Muslim because I also accepted evolution," she said.

What especially disturbed -- and amused -- the veteran professor was that the arguments for creationism presented by some of the students came directly from the country where she was educated in the biological sciences years before -- the United States. Translated and adapted for a Muslim society, the purported proofs that Darwinism and evolution were wrong came directly from American proponents of Christian creationism and its less overtly religious offshoot, intelligent design." More

What Happened to The Women Involved?:Feminism and Abu Ghraib

Lynndie England and Man Told to Masturbate

Feminism and Abu Ghraib Prison

Of the seven U.S. soldiers now charged with sickening forms of abuse in Abu Ghraib, three are women: Spc. Megan Ambuhl, Pfc. Lynndie England and Spc. Sabrina Harman.

What we have learned from Abu Ghraib, once and for all, is that a uterus is not a substitute for a conscience. This doesn't mean gender equality isn't worth fighting for for its own sake. It is. If we believe in democracy, then we believe in a woman's right to do and achieve whatever men can do and achieve, even the bad things. It's just that gender equality cannot, all alone, bring about a just and peaceful world.

Barbara Ehrenreich:

"The photos did something else to me, as a feminist: They broke my heart. I had no illusions about the U.S. mission in Iraq — whatever exactly it is — but it turns out that I did have some illusions about women.

Of the seven U.S. soldiers now charged with sickening forms of abuse in Abu Ghraib, three are women [already named above]..

It was Harman we saw smiling an impish little smile and giving the thumbs-up sign from behind a pile of hooded, naked Iraqi men — as if to say, “Hi Mom, here I am in Abu Ghraib!” It was England we saw with a naked Iraqi man on a leash. . . . ." Found at a 2004 Alternet site.

Barbara Ehrenreich reminds us of the experiments by Stanley Milgram. I am reminded of those by Philip Zimbardo, known as the Stanford Prison Experiments.

What Happened to Them? 

Lynndie England remains unremorseful and believes the prisoners ended up better off than she is. Prisoners' "lives are better. They got the better end of the deal.” She was sentenced to three years in prison and was  dishonorably discharged from the Army. From Newser 20 March 2012 on Lynndie England..

Sabrina Harman pointing to body of Manadel al-Jamadi,
Iraqi tortured to death at Abu Ghraib

Sabrina Harman wrote a letter home in which she said this: "The only reason I want to be there is to get the
pictures and prove that the US is not what they think. But I don't know if I can take it mentally. What if that was me in their shoes. These people will be our future terrorist. Kelly, its awful and you know how fucked I am in the head. Both sides of me think its wrong. I thought I could handle anything. I was wrong." She served six months in prison, received reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge.

Ambuhl observing England pull "Gus"
 from his cell by a leash.

Megan Ambuhl was convicted by court-martial on October 30, 2004, for dereliction of duty. In punishment, she was demoted to Private, discharged from the Army, and docked half a month's pay. In 2005 Ambuhl married Charles Graner, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, demotion to private, dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of pay and allowances. He was released after 6 and a half years. Lynndie England during her trial was pregnant with Charles Graner's child.

Ali Shallal al-Qaisi

Ali Shallal al-Qaisi. The hooded man standing on the box. He has undergone six surgeries because of the torture. Al-Qaisi said: "I'm spending sleepless nights thinking about the agony I went through... I even have recurring nightmares that I'm in my cell at Abu Ghraib, cell 49 as they called it, being tortured at the hands of the people of a great nation that carries the torch of freedom and human rights." He owned a football pitch and US soldiers commandeered the pitch, using it to dump "severed body parts and left-over waste from fighting." Qaisi contacted the foreign media and broke the story to them. And that did it. "My picture was published in a news article with my complaints. The Americans then raided my home and arrested me," he said. "I wasn't a military commander or a government official. I was just a resident of Baghdad, where I grew up, and just like any other Iraqi I was against the US invasion and I spoke out against it," Qaisi said.

Not a single commissioned officer was sentenced. Higher-echelon commissioned military personnel also got off Scot-free. In short although those at the bottom of the pay grades were punished none of those supervising them were.

Also see Mind Shadows Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment and Abu Ghraib, 19 May 2004.