RED GENES BLUE GENES

Racial Profiling in Police Reports

George Orwell and Benjamin Whorf are just two of the thinkers who have suggested that our minds are limited and defined by language.  

We see the world through the words that we use to describe it.  

If that's the case, maybe it's time for the American police to stop describing people in terms of race.

I propose the following experiment:  let a few small towns in America experiment with a practice in which suspects will not be described by race.  Instead of saying, "two white males" or "two black males" were reported to have held up a 7-11, we'll say "two persons wearing red shirts with blue sneakers."

Would police efficiency be drastically reduced?  I don't think so.  I bet we could even prove it.

What we have now are stories like Gates'.  The 911 caller, Lucia Whalen, was repeatedly asked by the 911 operator to identify the race of the men who forced the door.  You could hear in the tone of her voice that she wasn't comfortable doing so.  Why are the police so insistent in pinning down the race? If someone just broke into the house, what difference does it make what race they are?  Why can't you just describe their clothing instead of their skin?

A friend of mine was physically harassed by two white men in New York.  He retreated into a building and called 911.  When the police showed up, they took his report as follows, "Ok, two black men were harassing you, right?"  

He said, "No, I said they were white men."

The cop answered, "Are you sure they weren't Hispanic?"

On another occasion I was stopped and questioned by police.  While one policeman examined my driver's license the other radioed to the base.  

"We are questioning a white man." said the cop on the radio.

"Wait a second!" said the other cop, who was examining my driver's license, as if he'd just discovered an important clue, "He's not white, he's a very light-skinned Hispanic!"

After that illuminating racial clarification, they allowed me to proceed on my way.  

Should Gates Sue? NY Times Ethicist Randy Cohen Weighs In

In the NY Times Magazine, "Ethicist" columnist Randy Cohen suggests that Prof. Henry Louis Gates would be warranted in filing a lawsuit.

He launched a huge discussion, which you can read here.

My own response is a reprise of my earlier post, which emphasizes the constitutional side.

The main point I am trying to make is that the racial issues and the constitutional issues should be kept separate.  Whether or not there was racial profiling or racial hypersensitivity is an important and fascinating issue, but it must kept separate from the legal issue.

The "teachable moment" here is that US citizens can become aware the police routinely ignore constitutional protections against illegal stops, searches and seizures -- and a citizen is right to be outraged at that.

My response to the Ethicist dialogue:

"Yes, Gates should sue, and he does have grounds, and the topic is definitely worth the suit.

The gist of the problem is that an American’s fourth amendment right to freedom from government intrusion in the home is, in practice, limited by a patchwork of Supreme Court decisions that make it hard for police officers and citizens to have a clear idea as to what is acceptable and what is not acceptable during police stops, searches and home and car intrusions.

The result is that the police continually “push the envelope” of acceptable constitutional practice, especially because they know that there is no legal recourse in misdemeanor cases.

That is to say, no one is going to go the expense of a trial on a constitutional issue when they can plead to a misdemeanor or a violation and a fine. So in small cases, the police become accustomed to treating constitutional protections with a certain sloppiness. Gross invasions of our privacy are justified by “standard police procedures” which are supposedly based on the need to protect officers. The police know that we are never going to take a misdemeanor issue to trial, so they are going to get away with it.

In the Supreme Court case of Payton v. New York, 445 US 573 (1980), Justice Stevens was quite eloquent on the firm line that the constitution draws at the entrance to our homes: 1) even when there is probable cause that 2) we have committed a felony and are within a premises, 3) officers may not enter without a warrant. That’s the law, period.

Yet the law is routinely ignored in practice because the police claim a “consensual search” (which just means they didn’t ask, they just barged in and then claimed consent later).
There’s not a lot of precise law on the issue of what happens when someone shows up at the door of their home and gives a plausible explanation of their legal residence, along with a plausible explanation of the supposed “break-in”, but refuses further compliance with police requests to enter the home or to produce identification. 

In America, if it hasn’t gone to the Supreme Court, it’s not law, so a lot of quite common situations are not covered by any clear federal law. The police exploit the legal vacuum.

However, as Justice Steven points out in Payton, the sanctity of the home is one of the bedrock principles on which the nation was founded. The 4th Amendment itself can be traced to the American disgust over the Customs Act, which permitted invasions of the home which revulsed Americans and led directly to the Boston Tea Party.

If freedom in America means anything at all, it means explaining to the policeman at the door that unless he produces a warrant he better stay on his side of the door unless he gets our express permission. It may seem extreme to be so intransigent with a well-meaning policeman, and we are not in fact required to be so intransigent, but the Constitution makes it our option, not the policeman’s.

Crowley failed to heed Gates constitutional rights at least twice — first, when he asked Gates to leave his home, and second, when he entered Gates home without requesting permission — and Gates would be doing us all a favor if he made that clear in court.

I should finally note that I do not believe that any of Crowley’s actions were motivated by racism. Moreover, it does seem that Gates acted with a certain racial hypersensitivity. However, from a constitutional point of view (if not from a social one), that’s all irrelevant.
The problem in this case isn’t racism, but it’s something just as bad, the creeping intrusiveness and impunity of police power in our daily lives."

How to Assert Constitutional Rights Politely: What Gates Should have Said

In a NY Times Opinionator Blog Post, Eric Etheridge starts an interesting discussion on the question: How to talk to a cop?  Should Profr. Gates have zipped his lip, or was he within his rights to mouth off?

You can find the discussion here.

My own take is that while Gates' remarks were probably intemperate and unnecessarily injected the issue of race, that whole barrel of questions is separate from the question of whether one may forcefully assert one's constitutional rights.  

In my response to Etheridge, here is the pretty speech I give Gates, if we could rewind the tape of time and follow an ideal script:

GATES (speaking across the threshold of his front door):

“Yes, all right officer, I understand the situation. A neighbor has reported a break-in and you are doing your job by checking the situation.  I have now assured that you I am the legal resident of this home, that I forced the side door only because I have misplaced my keys.  I am Prof. Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University and my legal ownership of this residence is a matter of public record, which you may verify at your leisure.

Now, officer, as to your request for my ID, although I understand what you are trying to do, I need you to understand that as a scholar of racism and African-American history, and given the extremely unfair history of racial discrimination by police officers against black people in this country, I am extraordinarily sensitive that my constitutional rights be protected at all times.

As I am sure you are aware, the 4th amendment prohibits you from entering this house without a warrant even if you have probable cause that I have committed a felony. If you cannot enter, a fortiori you cannot demand my identification.  An American is not required to carry identification at home.

If you don’t believe that, you can discuss it with my attorney, Prof Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School, who will be here shortly.  If you wish, he can teach not only you about the 4th amendment, but perhaps we could also arrange for a seminar for the Cambridge Police Department, to make sure you fellows clearly understand what you can and cannot do.

What I am going to do now, very slowly and politely, is close this door on you and request that you leave my property.   Obviously, you are strong enough to force your way in here, but you must understand that if you do so you will be ignoring an explicit request that you respect my constitutional rights.

If you are really still worried that I am a burglar, which I sincerely doubt, you may post officers at my front and back entrances until you return with a warrant. However, you will find that a warrant extremely difficult to obtain, because the judge will ask you if you have made even the most minimal verification of my identify, and you will have to answer that you have not.

If you go on Google for 2 minutes you will see that I am a very famous professor and I am sure that your police network can verify my address without my further assistance.

I wish you good day, sir.”

Women are getting more beautiful - Times Online

Women are getting more beautiful - Times Online Shared via AddThis 

More evidence that while beauty is skin deep, ugly goes to the bone.

I'm glad to know that women are getting more beautiful, because I just thought I was getting older.

Anyway, just more evidence that life is genetic roulette with big stakes -- too big, in my opinion, but I'm a confessed utopian.

A Case of "Residing While Black"? A Legal Analysis of the Arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates

(July 26, 2009, New York, NY)  The controversial arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates outside his own home has been largely interpreted as either a racial or a psychological phenomenon.  Either: 1) it was a case of two grown men over-reacting childishly, and/or 2) one of those men, the police officer, was guilty of racism and racial profiling, and/or 3) one of those men, the professor, was guilty of racial hypersensitivity and over-reaction.

While these perspectives are valid, the press has notably failed to explore the crucial perspective of constitutional law.

In the Gates incident a police officer asked a homeowner to leave his home in order to verify the homeowner’s identity.  Then, when proof of identity was not immediately forthcoming, the police officer pursued the homeowner into his home – without having requested permission to do so.  Therefore, there was a double transgression of the crucial legal barrier represented by the threshold to Prof. Gates’ front door.  This double state intrusion was not warranted by the facts of the situation. 

This is a key constitutional issue which goes to the very heart of the freedoms guaranteed by our Bill of Rights. By ancient tradition, our homes are inviolable “castles” of privacy and this principle has been enshrined in our fourth amendment. The fourth amendment prohibits all unreasonable government intrusions into our home. 

In 1980, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court over-turned a New York statute that allowed police to enter a home in order to effect a routine felony arrest (Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573).  Writing for the Court, Justice Stevens held:

The physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed… [A]n invasion of the sanctity of the home…is too substantial an invasion to allow without a warrant, in the absence of exigent circumstances, even when it is accomplished under statutory authority and when probable cause is present…[T]he Fourth Amendment has drawn a firm line at the entrance to the house. Absent exigent circumstances, that threshold may not reasonably be crossed without a warrant.

Normally, therefore, police officers are neither allowed to enter our homes nor to ask us to leave our homes’ protection. When a police officer crosses our threshold, or asks us to do the same, he or she must be able to articulate a clear and urgent reason for doing so. 

Obviously, a report of a burglary in progress is a perfectly good reason for the police to knock at the front door.  However, they must stop there.  When someone claiming to be a resident then answers the door, police procedure must take into account the strong possibility that a legal resident has been spotted breaking into his own home.  This is a common situation.  Every morning hundreds of Americans head off to work having forgotten their house keys.  After returning from work, such people are sometimes forced to re-enter their own homes in a suspicious fashion, breaking windows or forcing doors.  In a certain percentage of such cases, the “break-in” will be reported to police by neighbors.  This probably happens at least a dozen times a day across America.  How should police react?

The police should understand that while this situation is not unusual for the police force, it is probably a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence for the homeowner.  The home-owner may react with surprise, confusion or annoyance.  The police officer should anticipate those emotional reactions and be prepared to remain calm. When a break-in is reported at a house and a person presents themselves at the front door and claims to be a legal resident, the presumption must be overwhelmingly in that person’s favor.  It may well be that the person is a burglar who is coolly pretending to be a resident, but this possibility is not sufficient to over-ride our vital constitutional guarantee of freedom from government harassment in our own homes. 

Regrettably, police forces in America do not have any clear and legally-defensible policy with respect to the crucial decision to cross a homeowner’s threshold.  In the Gates’ incident, the police officer spotted the professor through a window and requested Prof. Gates to come outside.  Why? Although Prof. Gates had committed no crime, he was asked to leave the legal and psychological protections of his home by going outside.  Given that Prof. Gates was eventually arrested for “criminal behavior” which would not have been criminal had he remained indoors, it is clear that the legal safety of Gates’ home was crucial.

Sgt. Crowley, the arresting officer, said that his intent was to verify whether or not Prof. Gates was an intruder.  In order to achieve this, it was only necessary to ask, “Do you live here?”  The respondent does not have to leave his own premises in order to comply.  Why was it necessary to ask Gates to leave his home?  Perhaps it was because the officer wanted to make sure that Gates stayed in sight, so that he did not seek to escape or to procure a weapon?  That is not a good enough reason.  Unless Gates presented himself at the door with some sort of visible evidence that he was a burglar (i.e., burglar tools, weapons or trembling, bloody hands), the officer had no sufficient reason to ask Gates to leave his home. 

The officer could easily have requested some I.D. through the open front door, without asking Gates to step outside, and without volunteering to come in.  Prof. Gates could have reached into his wallet and showed his I.D. without ever having had to leave his home.  There is no reason that this kind of discussion cannot transpire across the threshold of a man’s front door. Of course, if you feel comfortable talking to police you are perfectly free to step outside your house or invite them in.  But our constitution guarantees that you don’t have to.  If you want the police to stay on their side of the threshold, you have a constitutional right to demand it, and police should scrupulously respect that legal boundary.  A policeman should never enter an American’s home without first requesting permission to do so unless there is a compelling reason that the officer can clearly articulate.

Americans are not required to carry I.D. in their own homes.  Suppose that the “break-in” at Gates’ house had been performed by Gates’ 17-year old nephew, house-sitting while the Professor lectured at Oxford.  The nephew would have had an absolute legal right to be in that house, but he would have lacked a valid I.D. with the right address.  So what?  In such a situation the officer might reasonably request access to the home to seek some common-sense verification of legitimate residence.  Let us say the young nephew volunteers:  “I can tell you what’s baking in the oven.  I can tell you what’s under that couch over there.  I can tell you the password to the computer in my uncle’s study.”  At some point the officer has to use common sense, based on articulable observations.  If the nephew displays a level of familiarity with the household that is only available to long-time residents, the police officer should excuse himself and leave.

In the Gates case, however, the police officer pursued Gates into his own home without a sufficiently good reason for doing so.  Crowley should have patiently remained at the front door while Gates located some proof of residence.  The risk that Gates might have been a burglar who would have used the opportunity to escape over the back fence is not sufficient justification to enter a person’s home (absent any visual evidence that Gates was in fact lying).

None of the above legal analysis has anything to do with the issue of whether or not Gates over-reacted, which seems to be the emerging media consensus.  That is certainly a valid line of inquiry, but it should be kept separate from our constitutional analysis.  A man may be a jerk, but our Constitution guarantees him an absolute right to be a jerk in his own home, and any state intrusion upon that right must be highly offensive to anyone who takes constitutional rights seriously.

The Gates incident exemplifies, sadly, the abysmal failure of the Bill of Rights to protect American freedoms.  Our American approach to freedoms is excessively legalistic and case-based, which makes it useless.  We have lots of beautiful, complicated Supreme Court cases that discourse eloquently – if obscurely and ambiguously – on the limits to police intrusion.  In reality, though, we get almost no protection from these case-created rights.  If the police violate one of your constitutional rights in a minor incident, their impunity is virtually guaranteed.  What are you going to do – take them to the Supreme Court over a misdemeanor when you can just pay a fine and forget about it?  Police all across America have learned, for example, that if you just search people without asking you can later defend that search as a “consensual search.”  Almost no one is ever going to make a federal case out of a constitutional breach resulting in a misdemeanor charge (no one except Skip Gates, perhaps).

The result is that neither American citizens nor the police have any clear idea as to what is a “legal search.”  It’s not our fault.  You would have to be a lifelong constitutional scholar just to begin to understand the Supreme Court cases dealing with legal searches of automobiles.  Since nobody understands the law, the police do whatever they want and in 999 out of 1000 cases they get away with it.  Then, they’re surprised if we get upset about any of this.  If we get become angry about a violation of our constitutional rights, and if we exhibit our civic unhappiness in public, we can be arrested for “disturbing the peace.”  So the law comes down to this: the police can do whatever they want; they can even ignore the Constitution – and you better not get mad about it.

Mr. President, it’s time for a change.  America needs a clear federal statute with respect to police stops, searches and home and car intrusions.  American citizens and their police need to be playing from the same rulebook.  We will never get a handle on the messy issue of racial profiling until both citizens and police can agree on exactly what’s in the rulebook.  Today, the opposite is true.

Unlike Barack Obama, I am no particular friend of Prof. Gates.  He may be a very cool dude most of the time, but in this incident he comes across as a pompous ass (I know what one looks like because I own a mirror).  Whether or not a celebrated scholar of African-American history has displayed racial hypersensitivity is indeed an interesting social question.  However, the fact that our constitutional rights are routinely violated with impunity is far more important, and that’s what we should be focusing upon.

Guillermo C. Jimenez is an author, attorney and educator living and working in New York City.  Comment below.

World Peace is on the Way

Stephen Pinker reminds us that a certain important kind of irrationality is on the decrease -- violence. 

Despite recently publicized warfare and civil strife, statistics reveal a rather astonishing decline in violence throughout recorded history.  How have humans tamed their warlike drives?  Pinker is optimistic... 

Optimism on Peace -- by Stephen Pinker 

Evolutionary Psychology and the Rock Star

We Don’t Need Another Hero:  Michael Jackson and the

Evolutionary Psychology of Hero-Worship

by

Guillermo C. Jimenez

Michael Jackson’s death is a reminder of the vitality of America’s (and the world’s) cult of celebrity.  The intensity of the global public response moves one to ask: why is society so deeply affected by the death of a person who was known for bizarre behavior and questionable judgment?  Evolutionary psychology provides a helpful perspective.

When evolutionary psychologists observe that a behavior is widespread and common in a particular species, they first seek to find out whether such behavior is “adaptive,” meaning, beneficial from a reproductive point of view.  Hero-worship is interesting in this respect because we find versions of it in all societies.  Our earliest recorded literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh, was concerned primarily with the lives of two heroes.  From Odysseus to Elvis, great performers have evoked veneration.  Why?

Public performance can be understood as a form of genetic signaling.  This is one reason why young animals play.  When puppies frolic and run about playfully, they are sending very serious messages to future competitors and future mates about their genetic fitness.  A puppy that is especially big or fast in play is communicating with competitors (“you won’t want to mess with me when I grow up”) and future mates (“my genes are the best – you’ll have great kids with me”).

It makes sense, therefore, for youngsters to enjoy play (they do) and to be great “show-offs” (they are).  In fact, the whole purpose of play, from an evolutionary perspective, is precisely to “show off” our exceptional genetic fitness.  As we grow older and mature into sexually active adults, we don’t really stop playing.  Instead, our play becomes deadly serious (we begin to call it “work” or “art”), and many of us become even more extreme “show-offs”.    We’d better.  Our “performances” on the job or in social occasions are the most likely indicators of whether or not we will succeed in the reproductive marketplace.

Although there are many ways of displaying genetic fitness, humans appear especially attuned to verbal, musical or athletic performance.   Our top politicians, actors, musicians and sports stars receive overwhelming adulation.  Verbal and musical displays likely evolved as a form of competitive play meant to signal intelligence.  “Playing the dozens” and hip-hop dissing contests probably have roots in human behavior stretching back hundreds of thousands of years.  As humans evolved into more intelligent creatures, the pressure of sexual selection put a premium on displays correlated with intelligence. 

Thus, when musical superstars perform in public, they are inserting an ancient evolutionary key into a special lock in our brains.  When the key turns, we receive an exhilarating blast of dopamine, the brain’s own version of cocaine, the ultimate feel-good drug.

The fascinating thing about public performance is that it feels good to the performer as well as to the audience.  Again, from an evolutionary perspective, this is to be expected.  The performer’s brain is being rewarded because evolution has provided a great stimulus (a dopamine fix) for us to show off successfully whenever we can get away with it.  Doing so maximizes our chances of attracting a desirable mate.  Showing off feels good.  Showing off in public feels great.

The audience also finds its brains rewarded by evolution as well, but for different reasons.  Why do we enjoy watching exceptional performances?  There are three reasons.  First, spectacular performances are in a sense “instructive”.   Humans are the most imitative species on earth.  Much of our intelligence has to do with our ability to model and mimic adaptive behavior.  It makes sense for us to be especially attentive to superior performance of any kind – the more we enjoy it, the closer we will pay attention to it, and the more likely that we will learn something from it.  Second, if we feel that we are somehow socially or emotionally linked to the performer, we perceive an increased chance that we or our offspring will share in the genetic bounty represented by that performer (of course, this benefit is illusory today, but would have had an impact during the long evolution of humans in small groups).  Third, the more we ingratiate ourselves with the performer, as by displaying submissive and adoring behavior, the more likely we are to earn the performer’s esteem, and with it, a chance to mate with the performer and endow our offspring with the performer’s superior genes (again, this is mostly illusory today, though it is well known that rock stars sometimes pick out their evening companions from amongst the throngs of groupies crowding the stage).

It seems likely that humans have been programmed by evolution to turn either into rock-stars or groupies, or both.  Which path we take depends on our location within the competitive space of our generation’s gene-pool.  If we are the best singer or dancer of our generation, we will be tempted to perform: the rewards, both in terms of our brain’s dopamine production and in the attention of sexually-attractive mates, could be huge. 

Unfortunately, while it makes sense – from an evolutionary perspective -- for us to be attracted to musical genius, it does not necessarily make sense from an individual perspective.  Many people have learned this in the most concrete way, by marrying musicians (I did).  My eldest son inherited exceptional musical talent, so my genes are happy.  Fortunately for them, my genes were never concerned with my wife’s operatic temper (she’s a mezzo-soprano), that’s been purely my affair.  Evolution promises us adorable children; it doesn’t promise us a rose garden.

Michael Jackson’s fans have to some extent been tricked by evolution.  Watching the Gloved One’s uncanny gyrations and masterful crooning released entire oceans of their cerebral dopamine, but that did not change the fact that their hero was a very weird man.

Indeed, Michael Jackson’s life represents the very opposite of wisdom, the opposite of what one should admire or seek to emulate in a role-model.  Dopamine-rushes can be addictive, exactly like cocaine.  Young Michael’s success as a child prodigy may have destroyed his chances for happiness as an adult.  He was never able to improve upon the Peter Pan-like ecstasies he achieved as a child star, so he spent his life in a perpetual attempt to remain a child.  This is already very unhealthy at age 20 or age 30.  At 40 or 50, it is a sign of mental illness. 

Evolution has left our brains vulnerable to deceptive evolutionary keys.  Fortunately, it has also endowed us with an alarm system called “reason.”  We can learn to recognize our ancient evolutionary triggers for precisely what they are – stimuli to do things that may or may not be good for us.  Nothing can stop that dopamine from flowing once our fingers start snapping to “I’m Bad,” but our reason can stop us from taking the whole thing too seriously.  And it should.

We should not disparage the pleasures and delights of participation in spectacles.  Whether we find ourselves cheering in a sports stadium or at a jazz concert, our delight is deep and real.  We should indulge in this joy – it is one of the highlights of human experience.  However, we should look for role models in the people we know and trust around us, not in musical superstars, no matter how gifted.

For further reading…

Hero Worship - Good or Bad?
http://www.le.ac.uk/ua/pr/press/heroworship.html

An Evolutionary Psychology of Leader-Follower Relations
By Patrick McNamara, David Trumbull
http://tinyurl.com/n993nr

Evolutionary Psychology, Behavioral Genetics, and Leadership
http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/stephen_colarelli/EPBG&L.AOM.SMC.pdf

Obama and the Politics of Love

by

Guillermo C. Jimenez

Politics: It's a love thang…

If President Barack Obama were to christen his ship of state, it would perhaps be appropriate to name it The Love Boat.  When I listened to Obama's now-famous speech in Cairo in June, 2009, it occurred to me that Obama was the first world leader to wield his personal loveability as a tool of international statecraft.

Of course, other leaders past and present have been the objects of national and international affection -- Gandhi, Mandela, and Kennedy, to name but a few.  However, given the vast reach of the digital media today, and given further the USA's global hegemony, and given in addition Obama's multi-cultural and bi-racial appeal, it seems likely that Obama has become the most beloved leader in world history.

In Cairo, Obama not only personified a loveable America, he also portrayed America as a country capable of respect and love for others, most especially Muslims.  He did all this without ever addressing the obvious and inconvenient fact that lasting peace will not come to the Middle East until the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian West Bank is substantially reversed (meaning that most Israeli settlements will have to be relinquished).  However, given the large number of Israeli settlements currently flourishing in the West Bank, a reversal of that occupation is extremely unlikely anytime soon.  This may be why Obama's Cairo speech projected a promise of love, but avoided specific commitments.  Was Obama whispering sweet nothings in the world's ear?

The impact of the speech was widely debated at home and abroad, but when frustrated Iranians began to take to the streets in protests a few days later, one had to wonder if they were not in fact partly motivated by a need to have a leader they, too, could love.  Perhaps Obama's love machine had scored its first victory in Iran?  But then...missiles continue to rain down on Israeli territory.  Hate remained healthy.  

Which leads one now to ask: Are Obama's politics of love likely to work?  Is Obama the world's Mr. Right, or is he just another sweet-talking heart-breaker? 

This line of enquiry allows me to rehash one of the world's oldest questions: what is love?  And: what is the role of love in politics? And further: is it a good thing -- or a bad thing -- that we love our leaders?

So, let's talk about love…

The evolution of love

There has been a lot of scholarship and research on love in the past century, so we can look at love from a number of perspectives.  There are different elements of love (lust, attraction, intimacy, sharing, commitment) and different kinds of love (romantic love, parental love, brotherly love, hero worship, etc.).  In this essay, I want to focus especially on that particular kind of love that we shower on leaders and heroes, and which is sometimes referred to as hero-worship or celebrity-worship.

For those who may have forgotten, let me remind you that love feels good.  As James Brown put it eloquently, it feels "so good, so good."  This makes sound evolutionary sense.  Romantic love provides us with an overpowering stimulus to seek out and mate with individuals who are genetically well-suited to us (sorry to make it sound so clinical, since it can be quite fun in practice).  Feelings of parental love help ensure the survival of our genes and therefore our species.  Feelings of social love encourage us to seek out and associate ourselves with trustworthy, competent, helpful, knowledgeable people.  Throughout evolutionary history, love helped us survive.  It still helps us survive.  From an evolutionary perspective, we could say that humans are capable of love because love must have long served a powerful adaptive function.  In other words: Love works.

When we love a leader we are more likely to emulate that leader's positive qualities.  Americans, more than citizens of other countries, look to their President to serve as the nation's Example-in-Chief, a living incarnation of the republic's virtues (or more accurately, the virtues the nation aspires to).  Obama's imperturbable calm and long-range vision may be exactly the personal qualities that Americans will need to traverse a long and gloomy economic wilderness.

They say that breaking up is hard to do…

Despite the undeniable satisfactions of hero-love or hero-worship, there are obviously strong drawbacks when it goes too far.  Brain scan research has revealed that the brain patterns of people in the first throes of love are not that different from the brain patterns of people suffering mental illness.  More specifically, romantic love is blind - on this the modern scientists confirm the age-old verdict of the poets. 

While the brain's dopamine reward system is turned on by love (the same brain chemistry that drives drug addiction), the centers of the brain associated with critical judgment and negative emotions are switched off.  When we are infatuated, we no longer see the beloved one's faults and vices, and won't believe it if our friends and family point them out.  When the realization finally comes, it can be brutal.

As the child famously entreated the corrupt baseball player, "Say it ain't so, Joe!"  Like our lovers, we want our heroes to remain perfect and - since humans are never perfect - we are perpetually disappointed.  Sporting scandals and political scandals share a common aspect of adolescent disillusionment.

For this reason many of us, after a certain age, stop worshipping sports idols or musical celebrities.  We realize that their unique and amazing talents do not necessarily correlate with any other admirable moral qualities.

Where does that leave us with Obama?  Are the world's liberals acting like love-struck teen-agers, blind to his faults?  As is always the case in politics, there will be more than two sides to a complete answer.  For the time being, let me conclude with another venerable truism which has been confirmed by modern science.  Sometimes infatuation turns into lasting love, and sometimes it doesn't.  A young, handsome President at the beginning of his term is as irresistible as a dewy-eyed Romeo, but by the end of his term he may be as lonely and forlorn as old King Lear.  

Whether Obama's initial appeal earns him the lasting affections of the nation will depend, as in happy marriages, on the transformation of passion into trust.  Promises will have to be converted into actions if the relationship is to work.  As in all affairs of the heart, only time can tell.

References - Articles on the Science of Love

Being Human: Love: Neuroscience reveals all

Hero Worship - Good or Bad?

Loving with all your ... brain

Why Hero Worship is Good for You