Another Week Ends

1. Top of the heap this week would have to be “Bad Brains” on Slate, which takes as its subject the world’s deadliest addiction. It’s not alcohol or crystal meth or even gambling. The addiction with the highest death toll, according to Yale professor James Kimmel Jr., is revenge. He defines revenge as “an act designed to inflict harm on someone because they’ve inflicted harm on us” and suggests that the desire for revenge is the root motivation of nearly all forms of human violence. Thus, the superlative.

Of the top 20 human atrocities of all time, identified by researcher Matthew White in his book Atrocities: The 100 Deadliest Episodes in Human History, 19 were the result of compulsive revenge-seeking. They left an estimated 336 million people dead.

The link between violence and revenge isn’t breaking news. What’s fresh here is the science Kimmel cites about the brain — namely, that revenge-seeking functions, on a biochemical level, exactly like an addiction. It’s overpowering and consuming, more a craving than a preference (or decision), which necessitates radical intervention to curb.

Recent neuroscience discoveries reveal a chilling picture: Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Brain imaging studies show that grievances — real or imagined perceptions of injustice, disrespect, betrayal, shame, or victimization — activate the “pain network,” specifically the anterior insula. The brain doesn’t like pain and tries to rebalance itself with pleasure. Pleasure can come from many things, but humans have evolved to feel intense pleasure from hurting the people who hurt us, or their proxies.

Over the past two decades, more than 60 neuroscientists at universities around the world have conducted brain scan studies demonstrating that when you’ve been wronged and begin to think about retaliating, the brain’s pleasure and reward circuitry of addiction awakens. The nucleus accumbens, associated with craving, and the dorsal striatum, associated with habit formation, spool up just as they do when drug addicts experience stress or see a place they connect with getting high. Dopamine levels appear to surge and crash, producing the familiar sensation of craving. But unlike other addictions, to gratify revenge cravings, you’ve got to hurt the people who hurt you (or, again, their proxies). And when you do, you experience pleasure … for a while. But then, as with other addictions, the pain returns with a vengeance, leaving you feeling worse but wanting more.

No wonder, then, that action movies franchises built on revenge — John Wick, Mad Max, Taken — keep spawning sequels. A little revenge is never enough. Just ask Quentin Tarantino or Jason Statham. Fortunately, neuroscientists have stumbled on an Ozempic-level-effective treatment for revenge-aholism, albeit one that’s free and available without a prescription.

Neuroscientists have discovered a different, more potent and widely available remedy for revenge right inside our own brains: forgiveness. Researchers conducting fMRI brain studies have discovered that when you simply imagine forgiving a grievance — without even informing the transgressor — you deactivate your brain’s pain network (the anterior insula) — stopping rather than merely covering up the pain of the grievance. You also shut down the nucleus accumbens and dorsal striatum — the brain’s pleasure and reward circuitry — which stops intrusive revenge desires. Finally, you activate your prefrontal cortex, restoring executive function and self-control so you can make decisions that are in your own self-interest.

In other words, neuroscience shows us that forgiveness is a sort of wonder drug that stops pain, stops revenge craving, restores rational thinking, and helps set you free from the wrongs and traumas of the past … There’s now scientific evidence supporting the ancient forgiveness teachings of Jesus and the Buddha.

Of course, even the imagined kind of forgiveness isn’t as easy as the research suggests. For those of us who consider it borderline miraculous (and God-given) whatever form it takes, Kimmel introduces the helpful concept of “nonjustice” — a middle step between revenge and forgiveness that involves abstaining from seeking justice via revenge while still processing the pain of being wronged. Theologians might see a corollary with the difference between mercy (not getting what you deserve) and grace (getting what you don’t deserve). So if mercy is akin to “nonjustice,” I suppose the closest approximation of grace in this equation would be “anti-revenge.” Whatever the case, we could all do with a bit more of it.

How fortunate for us all, then, that a charming parable of anti-revenge is about to hit movie screens next week, the Tony Hale and Dusty Brown–produced Sketch. Get thee to a theater, my friends:

2. This next one hit me right between the eyes. Or crutches, as it were. I underwent knee surgery in mid-June and have been forbidden from putting any weight on my right leg for the past six weeks. What this boils down to is a whole lot of nothing: no producing or performing or earning, just waiting and receiving, fully reliant on the kindness of others. Needless to say, it’s been disorienting and uncomfortable but also very — sigh — spiritually instructive to be forced to swallow my own medicine re: grace and passivity. No doubt the reasons I’m so attracted to the doctrine of grace are the same reasons I find it so hard to relinquish locating my value in “doing.”

Cue Denis Kwan Hong-Wang boasting in the Guardian, “I am the world champion of ‘doing nothing.” Ha. Hong-Wang won a Space‑Out competition in Hong Kong, which is exactly what it sounds like: a contest of 80–100 people to see who can do the least over a period of 90 minutes. You have to sit there without any significant movement; you cannot sleep, make any noise, or check your phone. Judges come around every fifteen minutes to check heart rates. As my past couple months attest, this is MUCH harder than it sounds for those of us reared on performancism. Which is to say, major props to you, Denis. Martin Luther would salute you:

From an early age I worried if I was doing enough. Growing up in Hong Kong, a city where competition is keen, I wanted to do well. That brought a lot of anxiety...

When they announced the competition was over, I wanted to sit for longer. I have a busy life — alongside my job, I am studying, and have two kids, aged 11 and nine — so having this space was a luxury, especially in this world where our minds are stimulated all day long. Often we can get through a day and our mind might not have settled for even a second … I understand that, for many people, sitting in silence for 90 minutes would be a nightmare, but I found it very enjoyable.

I think it’s vital to take time to come back to ourselves. In many parts of the world, people live day in, day out, never stopping — it’s as if stopping is a kind of laziness. Although the event was just for 90 minutes, it gave us a way to just be ourselves, and I hope it reminds people that productivity isn’t always the most important thing.

3. Writing in the New Yorker, Lauren Collins lays out “The Case for Lunch,” and her reasoning struck a chord. She begins by making a few observations about what makes the midday meal an especially grace-filled one:

However you rate lunch, it is probably the original meal — for much of history, procuring food and finding fuel to cook it with took so long that people were unable to eat until several hours after waking up … Unlike breakfast, lunch offers variety, but, in contrast to dinner, it tolerates repetition … With the day stretching out ahead of you, lunch can feel less transactional and slotted in than other meals. It’s a moment out of time — the August of the day. 

Sounds pleasant enough, but things get interesting when she speaks with Hugh Corcoran and Frances Amstrong-Jones, the couple who opened and operate Yellow Bittern, a high-endish London restaurant that’s made waves for loudly championing its lunch-only policy. Their rationale may be a tad (politically) high-minded for my blood, but the resonance with a certain recent polemic are not lost on me. Vive le déjeuner!

Corcoran’s message [is] clear enough: he [is] taking a stand against the vending machine, the crumb-covered keyboard, the putrefying banana, the leaden ciabatta, the tragic hummus wrap from Pret. “Is this the kind of society that we were trying to create? … We have to fight for lunch.”

Why lunch, I wanted to know, when dinner would offer a surer route to solvency and acclaim? Corcoran answered first, doubling down on his manifesto: “We live in a society that promotes this idea of constant production — you know, if you’re not in work working, then you should be doing something to be a good worker. To just cut all that and say, ‘Actually, I’m gonna drink a bottle of wine and eat a lot of food in the middle of the day,’ right?” […]

Dinner can almost feel like a domestic space: proposals, breakups. “Lunch is more convivial,” Corcoran said. “People hardly ever get in arguments,” Armstrong-Jones added.

The middle meal, in fact and in spirit, is a bridge, a connector. Psychologists and educators tell us that a distinguishing feature of our era is loneliness … Young people, alienated by the pandemic and social media, are turning to religion as a source of connection. God is great, but sometimes fellowship — a certain kind of existing in social space — can be as simple as a tuna sandwich.

4. In humor, not a hugely funny week for yours truly (see item 2). But “Nice! Woman Remembers to Live in the Moment Once Every Six Months” on Reductress was chuckle-worthy, as was “Date Ideas for Couples in Long-Term Relationships” on Shouts & Murmurs. It’s probably terrible to admit that the thing that made me laugh loudest this week was Jim Downey’s bit on Epstein (with Conan). This has me tentatively excited, too:

5. A pair of somewhat doom-laden items to relay. First there’s “Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good” by Mary Harrington in the New York Times, which surfaced a dynamic I’m seeing more and more, and not just among kids. Reading and concentration are poised to become status signifiers if they haven’t already. I suppose Christians have a mild inoculation against this malady, given our reverence for the Good Book and proclivity for Bible study and textual analysis. It’s easy to take for granted that religious communities value physical books and the concentration it takes to read them. Consider it another mark in the plus column of church attendance. Still, I worry about a world in which libraries are dying and reading itself gets coded as elite and what that might mean for “people of the book”:

The idea that technology is altering our capacity not just to concentrate but also to read and to reason is catching on. The conversation no one is ready for, though, is how this may be creating yet another form of inequality.

Literacy and poverty have long been correlated. Now poor kids spend more time on screens each day than rich ones — in one 2019 study, about two hours more per day for U.S. tweens and teens whose families made less than $35,000 per year, compared with peers whose household incomes exceeded $100,000. Research indicates that kids who are exposed to more than two hours a day of recreational screen time have worse working memory, processing speed, attention levels, language skills and executive function than kids who are not.

In a culture saturated with more accessible and engrossing forms of entertainment, long-form literacy may soon become the domain of elite subcultures.

As new generations reach adulthood having never lived in a world without smartphones, we can expect the culture to stratify ever more starkly. On the one hand, a relatively small group of people will retain, and intentionally develop, the capacity for concentration and long-form reasoning. On the other, a larger general population will be effectively post-literate — with all the consequences this implies for cognitive clarity.

6. Has the parenting pendulum finally begun to swing? According to Ellen Gamerman’s article “Goodbye Gentle Parenting, Hello ‘F—Around and Find Out’” in the Wall Street Journal, the answer appears to be yes.

FAFO (often pronounced “faff-oh”) is based on the idea that parents can ask and warn, but if a child breaks the rules, mom and dad aren’t standing in the way of the repercussions. Won’t bring your raincoat? Walk home in the downpour. Didn’t feel like having lasagna for dinner? Survive until breakfast. Left your toy on the floor again? Go find it in the trash under the lasagna you didn’t eat.

Parenting that’s light on discipline has dominated the culture in recent decades. But critics blame the approach for some of Gen Z ’s problems in adulthood. They cite surveys that show young adults struggling with workplace relationships (was it because their parents never told them “no”?) and suffering from depression and anxiety (was it because their parents refereed all their problems?).

For parents who have spent years trying to meet their children’s emotional needs without slipping into overt permissiveness, FAFO can sound blessedly simple … FAFO parenting goes by lots of names: Tough love, authoritative parenting, or, as Dillon once put it, a method to “out-feral their feral.”

I’m of two minds about this trend. As a father of three boys, I’m on intimate terms with the orthodoxies of gentle parenting, the endless second-guessing and neurotic sublimation we engage in for the sake of our children’s emotional well-being. The pretzels we twist ourselves into to avoid unnecessary “trauma” can instill resentment of one’s children in even the most patient parent. A widespread reaction was a forgone conclusion. Furthermore, in recovery circles, people decry enabling as the process of denying another person the dignity of their own consequences via helicopter-like micromanaging. That stuff really is counterproductive, especially once one’s offspring are older.

Yet tough love is often a euphemism for no love at all, a different and no less damaging form of control, is it not?

Becky Kennedy, the psychologist known as “Dr. Becky” who doesn’t identify her methods as gentle parenting but is often associated with the label, sees aspects of FAFO working. All that mindful adulting has robbed parents of their freedom and left them tiptoeing around their children’s feelings. She argues a gentler style doesn’t advocate for those things, but it has been distorted in a culture that thrives on extremes. Still, [Dr Becky] opposes FAFO’s authoritative methods. “There’s just a very old idea that somehow feelings get kind of equated with raising snowflakes, like feelings are weak,” she said.

Bottom line is, kids need grace but so do parents, and none of us are God. Moreover, when it comes to God, I’m banking on the fact that when we do indeed f— around, what we “find out” looks less like painful consequences and more like free lunch. Just ask Jon Guerra:

7. Shifting gears before we close, Scott Keith issued a punchy refresher of “Why the Reformation Solas Still Matter” on 1517. I especially appreciated his riff on Sola Gratia, or Grace Alone, which sounds like the opposite of FAFO:

Grace is not a vibe. It’s not a mood God gets into when he’s feeling nice. Grace is the character of God revealed in Christ for sinners. Grace is not God giving you another chance. It’s God giving you Jesus. As Melanchthon put it, grace is the “gracious acceptance” of the sinner on account of Christ alone, not because of our repentance, or our sincerity, or our religious improvement plan.

Here’s what that means: your salvation is not fragile. It doesn’t hang on your spiritual performance or your emotional consistency. It rests solely on the mercy of God alone. On God’s unshakable, unbreakable decision to be gracious to you in Christ. Even your best repentance cannot add a single drop to God’s grace. And your worst sin cannot drain it dry.

8. Last, but not least — as far as stories of grace go, I haven’t recovered from the video released four weeks ago of the daddy-daughter dance at San Quentin Prison. No tough love anywhere in sight! Not even the over-the-top soundscapes can sully the beauty of what transpired. Praise God for anti-revenge of all kinds, but in particular this one today:

Strays:

• David French penned a column about “The Raw Power of Repentance” for the New York Times, taking the most recent season of The Bear as his case in point. A little “works-y” in places, but the ultimate conclusion is a sympathetic one.
• Have you watched the Billy Joel documentary on HBO, And So It Goes? A fascinating overview of America’s most complicated piano man, whose songs have — much to the surprise of the critical establishment — dated better than just about anyone’s. There’s a TON in there about the paralyzing effect of the law, the intractability of the father wound, the curse of addiction (and celebrity), and, thankfully, the abreactive potential of music. The factoid about his grandfather’s textile factory will have your jaw on the ground.
• I’ve had the pleasure of guesting on another slew of podcasts in support of The Big Relief this past month. The Biggest Table with Andrew Camp was a fun one where we got to talk about the grace of food quite a bit, and then I loved parsing the parenting dimension with Anna Harris and Cameron Cole on the Rooted Parent podcast. And then Brad Kafer invited me to spell out some of the finer theological points on the excellent Reclamation Podcast. Much obliged!
• In other TBR news, the Englewood Review of Books ran a glowing feature review, and the write-up on the Cut for Time Substack (by Chris Nye) is one of my favorites yet.