Matching Tracksuits

society and culture

Foreign Missionaries

Wednesday 13 June 2007

It seems that Europe is now importing what it exported, namely Christianity. But this is often a different kind of Christianity:

The “Amens!” flew like popcorn in hot oil as 120 Christian worshipers clapped and danced and praised Jesus as if He’d just walked into the room. In a country where about 2 percent of the population attend church regularly and many churches draw barely enough worshipers to fill a single pew, the Sunday morning service at this old mission hall was one rocking celebration.

In the middle of all the keyboards, drums and hallelujahs, Stendor Johansen, a blond Danish sea captain built like a 180-pound ice cube, sang along and danced, as he said, like a Dane — without moving. (washingtonpost.com)

A more emotional religion than the methodical Lutheranism Denmark would have exported, to be sure.

Yet what’s most interesting about the article is not the fact that missionaries are going to Europe. That’s old news — I often saw Evangelical missionaries in Poland trying to convert Poles from Catholicism to Christianity. (Yes, I know — but that’s how they see it.) The interesting thing is where the missionaries are coming from.

The International Christian Community (ICC) is one of about 150 churches in Denmark that are run by foreigners, many from Africa, Asia and Latin America, part of a growing trend of preachers from developing nations coming to Western Europe to set up new churches or to try to reinvigorate old ones.

World Christianity today is in an odd stage of development. Evangelicalism, that distinctly American version of Christianity, has been on fire throughout the world. America has been sending out Evangelical missionaries, especially to countries that have large Catholic populations, and now, it seems, these missionaries are going to Europe — full circle.

I wonder if they’re bringing disease back with them, though…

Ty Pan Du Sie Tu Vous

Tuesday 12 June 2007

When learning Polish, for some reason I had the hardest time initially using the formal voice of address. English-only speakers might not know what I’m talking about, even though the formal/intimate distinction existed in English for hundreds of years.

In French, it’s a question of “Vous” and “tu.” “Vous” would be “you all” — second person plural — and is used in all formal occasions; “tu” is informal, and used with intimate friends or family. In German, it’s “sie” and “du”.

This is why Martin Burber’s wonderful book Ich und Du is translated I and Thou and not I and You.

In English, it used to be “you” and “thou,” with “thou” being the more intimate. Because most of us are exposed to “thou” exclusively through liturgical language, we get the sense that it’s incredibly formal. In fact, it’s the opposite.

Po Polsku

In Polish, there are two options. The first is the common use of “Pan” or “Pani” — literally, “lord/master” or “lady/mistress.”

The older, now-obsolete form is to use “Wy” — “you all.” It’s still used in the mountainous southern region, and K in fact speaks to her grandmothers this way. “Co robicie ostatnio?” “What have you been doing lately?”

Out of this came an amusing verb: dwoic. While this is related to the word “dwa” (two), it’s not, strictly speaking, “double” (which is “podwoic”). Instead, a better explanation would be “to use the second person plural.” In that case, one might ask another, “why are you [dwoic] me?” meaning, “Why are you using the formal voice with me?”

The second method, and the one used now, is to use “Pan” and “Pani.” To be polite, a shop attendant, for example, doesn’t ask, “Do you need help?” Literally, he asks, “Does the lady need help?”

The problem for me was not so much remembering the odd construction but learning when to make the switch from “Pan” or “Pani” to “you.” I called people “you” when I should have used “Pan/Pani” more times than I care to recall. And there really are no guidelines — it depends, somewhat, on the person.

Linguistics of Diplomacy

I got to thinking about all of this due to an article by Charles Bremner. It begins,

Here is one of those stories that are difficult to convey to people who speak only English. President Sarkozy’s government has annoyed the “progressive” sections of the teaching establishment with an order that school pupils must address their teachers with the formal vous rather than the familiar second person singular tu. Teachers are advised to use the respectful vous to Lyc�e teenagers in their classes.

While I could never imagine students in Poland referring to teachers in the second person, I could also never imagine teachers using the formal third person with teachers.

The piece goes on to discuss how world leaders refer to each other — tu/du or vous/sie?

Angela Merkel dropped German formality enough to call him “Lieber (Dear) Nicolas” but stuck to the formal “sie” not the familiar “du”. Sarkozy’s matey reply jarred on old-fashioned ears. “Ch�re Angela… J’ai confiance en toi.” (In older English I trust thee not you). Lib�ration joked that Franco-German harmony was still lacking. “They are going to have to start by agreeing whether they use tu or vous,” it said. (Charles Bremner piece)

While the article doesn’t mention George Bush, it seems safe to assume that, like Gordon Brown, his dependence on interpretors will solve the tu/Vous problem. But considering the little back rub he once gave Merkel, it’s fairly reasonable to assume that Bush would opt for “tu” over “Vous.”

Young Earth

Wednesday 30 May 2007

The Creation Museum recently opened in Kentucky.

DefCon provided an informative guide about the errors of young earth creationism. Entitled “Top 10 Reasons Why the Universe, the Sun, the Earth, and Life Are Not 6,000 Years Old,” it’s available at the DefCon web site.

We’re Holocaust deniers, each and every one

Thursday 3 May 2007

Holocaust denial is rampant in the Arab world. One doesn’t have to look too far to find it.

While looking for Holocaust images on Google, I found a discussion thread called “Myth of Holocaust Will Not Survive, French Historian” at IslamOnline.net.

French historian and professor of Sorbonne University Robert Faurisson said that the ‘myth of Holocaust’ fabricated by the Zionists would not survive.

Addressing the International Confernce on ‘World Vision on Holocaust’, Faurisson said that the gas chambers allegedly used by Hitler to massacre the Jews did never exist.

It didn’t take much to find it — I wasn’t even looking for it.

But who would have thought that we, American taxpayers, are actually supporting Arab/Islamic Holocaust denial?

Testifying under oath recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice misled Congress in her strong defense of Al-Hurra, the taxpayer financed Arab TV network. It was unwitting, though. She herself was misled.

During the March 21 House Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittee hearing, Rep. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) pressed Ms. Rice on the wisdom of providing a platform to Islamic terrorists, citing Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s Dec. 7 speech, which Al-Hurra aired live. The broadcast speech “went on for 30 minutes,” she responded, “followed by commentary, much of which was critical of Nasrallah.”

In fact, Mr. Nasrallah’s speech was carried in its entirety, roughly an hour and eight minutes. The commentary that followed–a 13-minute phone interview with Wael Abou Faour, a member of Lebanon’s governing coalition–was indeed critical of Mr. Nasrallah. He accused the Hezbollah leader of not being anti-U.S. and anti-Israel enough. While Mr. Nasrallah had claimed Lebanon’s governing coalition was aligned with the U.S. and had backed Israel during the war last summer, Mr. Abou Faour said that Hezbollah was actually closer to the U.S and added that any Lebanese faction that assisted “the Israeli enemy” should not be allowed to engage in political discussion because “the only place they should be [is] in prison.” […]

Under Mr. Register, Al-Hurra covered the Holocaust denial conference in Tehran last December. But in a stark break from Mr. Harb’s era, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the attendees at his conference were treated with unmistakable deference.

Al-Hurra’s Dec. 12 report on the gathering included David Duke’s praise for Mr. Ahmadinejad, and it took at face value the organizers’ demand for Israel “to provide proof and evidence that certifies the occurrence” of the Holocaust. An official running the event was afforded the opportunity to show the open-mindedness of Holocaust deniers: “If we actually conclude with our experts through this meeting that the Holocaust is a real incident we will at that time admit its presence.” (Transcript provided by a fluent Arabic-speaking U.S. government employee.)

So we’re paying for a station that provides a platform for anti-Semitic rantings. What about the reporters themselves? Surely they are more objective.

The Al-Hurra reporter stationed in Tehran referred to those who believe Hitler killed six million Jews as “Holocaust supporters.” He took a swipe at the handful of conference attendees who didn’t deny the Holocaust, by noting that they “didn’t enforce their statements with scientific evidence.” In closing the piece, he referred to Israel as “the Jewish state on Palestinian lands.” (Wall Street Journal)

At least something, though, is providing a little bit of bi-partisanship on Capital Hill…

Chinese Math

Thursday 26 April 2007

America, in general, is lagging far behind a lot of the world regarding education, and this is particularly true with science and math.

Who’s ahead of us? It might be easier to ask who isn’t ahead of us.

Not surprisingly, the Chinese, in their quest for world domination (Mwa-ha-ha!), not only have cheap labor on their side; they also have a higher level of mathematics achievement, I’d venture.

The BBC recently put up two questions from two tests: one, a test intended for first-year university students in English schools; the other, a question from a Chinese pre-entrance exam.

Here’s the English problem:

English Math

That’s pretty simple. Even I, having used no geometry for close to twenty years now, can do that with no problems.

Here’s the Chinese problem:

Chinese Math

From BBC.co.uk

“Background Check? We don’t need no stinkin’ background check”

Friday 20 April 2007

Cho Seung-hui went through the mandatory background check before buying the guns he used in his rampage. No criminal record, no problem.

Yet…

  • He’d been admitted to a mental health care unit within the last eighteen months.
  • Teachers and students alike commented on his disturbing behavior.
  • Complaints had been made about his behavior.
  • A professor had raised concerns about the content of his writing.

But what kind of a background check could have discovered all this?

If if someone has recently received significant mental health care in the same state he’s trying to buy a gun, it’s conceivable that that information could be available. But since there’s no national database of such information, all one would have to do is cross the state line.

Do we want a national database to record that kind of information? I don’t think I do.

Do we want to have background checks that include interviews with former educators? Is that even feasible?

Just what kind of background check can stop someone like this from getting a gun? The only solutions I can think of involve national databases and inquiries into very personal information.

Irony

Friday 13 April 2007

A woman spends a fair amount of time at Ingles wiping off the handle of the shopping cart and anything near it, and then goes in and buys seemingly countless amounts of soda…

The Most Hated Family in America

Tuesday 3 April 2007

BBC has a documentary on the Phelps family, of Westboro Baptist Church, “God Hates Fags” notoriety. A fascinating look inside one of the most vilely curious groups in America. What’s most terrifying is how “normal” many of them are when they’re not talking about God hating us all and sending us to hell. Well, not all of us — they’re not going to hell of course…

It’s available on YouTube, but probably won’t be for long.

Watch it.

Souma yergon, sou nou yergon…

Thursday 8 March 2007

Throughout much of the world, March 8 is a day to celebrate “the economic, political and social achievements of women.” It’s International Women’s Day, and though it was (according to Wikipedia) first celebrated in America, it’s not widely known here. Perhaps the fact that the organization that initiated it was the Socialist Party of America. And most places that still celebrate it with any real vigor are (or were) communist or socialist. (In the minds of many Americans, those terms are equivocal, I know.)

Extra points for knowing the significance of the title without resorting to Google.

Poland is one such country. Though I lived there for seven years, Women’s Day never worked its way into my unconscious cultural calendar. I took the cues from those around me and never really made an effort to remember it myself.

In retrospect, that was a very bad idea. That realization occurs most forcefully when you marry a Polish woman and then come home March 8 empty handed…

Wiki wars

Sunday 4 March 2007

From Language Log, I recently learned about Conservapedia, which, as you might guess from the title, is a conservative Christian version of Wikipedia. (Language Log was interested in Conservapedia’s erroneous entries on linguistics.)

Conservapedia’s welcome message includes the following explanation: “Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American.”

Conservapedia’s entry on Wikipedia begins,

Because anyone can edit it, and because of its system of governance, it does not have standards similar to those of printed encyclopedias. As with any wiki, the balance of the content in Wikipedia inevitably represents what its contributors find interesting to write about, rather than what encyclopedias traditionally contain. Thus, gossip and hundreds of thousands of entries about pop songs or celebrities are pervasive on Wikipedia. (Conservapedia)

And what does Wikipedia, in turn, say about Conservapedia? Until recently, nothing. Wikipedia redirected “Conservapedia” to “Eagle Forum,” and the entry itself was in the “Articles for Deletion” bin. Most voting for deletion feel it’s not notable, it’s trivial, etc.

And then Language Log mentioned it, and over the weekend, it’s reappeared…

Uniform

Wednesday 21 February 2007

Apron It seems to be as ubiquitous in rural Poland as the headscarf. Walk into a Polish home and you’re likely to see the matriarch in an apron. Whether cooking or not; whether cleaning or not; the only thing that matters is whether or not you’re out of bed.

And if you’re going to visit family for an extended period of time, you take them with you.

My mother-in-law wears aprons all the time. As I write this, I can look over and see her working crossword puzzles, wearing the apron she was wearing when she emerged from her room at 6:30 this morning.

It makes me smile.

…recognizes Mr. bin Laden from Saudi Arabia for four minutes.

Thursday 15 February 2007

Listening to NPR coming home a couple of days ago, I heard the most curious thing. Regarding the House debate on Iraq, a Republican representative  then name escapes me, but it’s a virtual party-wide sentiment  said that in this debate “the terrorists are dividing us.”

Huh?

Did bin Laden get on the House floor and propose this debate? Have Hezbollah members been elected and hijacked the House agenda? No, what happened was exactly what those folks don’t want to happen: debate. It’s the ultimate indication of a truly free society.

“We’re sending a message to the terrorists that we’re weak!” war hawks cry. No — we’re sending a message that we’re strong, that unlike the Islamic world theocracy they would like to enact, our state can handle political disagreement.

“We’re sending the wrong message to our troops.” Well, I’m not a soldier on the front, and neither was the representative who made this statement. However, it needs to be stated that the nonbinding resolution deals with the President’s performance in regard to Iraq, not the soldiers’.

What’s most astounding about some Republican’s disgust at the notion of having a public debate about how things are going in Iraq is the simple fact that this is the first time it’s happened since the war began. This is not a continually occurring thing. “Oh no, here those Democrats go again! Didn’t we do this last session?” Instead, while in the majority, the Republicans tried to stifle all such debate.

Which is odd, because I thought that was one of the things that made our country a pretty good place to be.

Credentials

Tuesday 13 February 2007

An interesting story from the NYT yesterday:

There is nothing much unusual about the 197-page dissertation Marcus R. Ross submitted in December to complete his doctoral degree in geosciences here at theUniversity of Rhode Island.

His subject was the abundance and spread of mosasaurs, marine reptiles that, as he wrote, vanished at the end of the Cretaceous era about 65 million years ago.

But Dr. Ross is hardly a conventional paleontologist. He is a “young earth creationist” — he believes that the Bible is a literally true account of the creation of the universe, and that the earth is at most 10,000 years old.

There are lots of issues in the article, a couple of them worth touching on.

First, there’s the question of whether graduate schools should reject applicants who hold to creationism. “It’s not a matter of religion,” say the proponents, “But of science.”

In this case, Ross’ work is impeccable, from a scientific point of view. That he doesn’t actually believe what he discusses in his dissertation is a philosophical oddity, which Ross explains by saying he’s working in a different paradigm: Just as a Marxist could do the work in an economics department with a free-market bent, he explains, so he as a creationist could work in a department that teaches the scientifically standard position of evolution.

But the issue is larger than that, and feeds into the second concern I have:

While still a graduate student, [Ross] appeared on a DVD arguing that intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism, is a better explanation than evolution for the Cambrian explosion, a rapid diversification of animal life that occurred about 500 million years ago.

Online information about the DVD identifies Dr. Ross as “pursuing a Ph.D. in geosciences” at the University of Rhode Island. It is this use of a secular credential to support creationist views that worries many scientists.

Eugenie C. Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, a private group on the front line of the battle for the teaching of evolution, said fundamentalists who capitalized on secular credentials “to miseducate the public” were doing a disservice. (Link)

This would put a university geology department in the odd position of asking applicants about the motivation and eventual use of their degree, and the morally questionable position of using that to make decisions about admission.

But the larger issue for me is the phrase “to miseducate the public.” Here, creationists have an advantage, because they generally get their worldview confirmed on a weekly basis, in church. Educating the public about evolution, however, is a bit tricker, for not only is it culturally competing with creationism, but the amount of time it’s presented is significantly less than creationism. Unless an individual majors in science, his exposure to systematic education about evolution is limited only to a few years in school. Creationism, however, puts forward its case on a weekly basis.

Dispatch from the South

Friday 9 February 2007

A week into J’s visit (J being K’s mother) and she finally went out shopping. I took her on our weekly grocery rounds yesterday afternoon, wondering what she’d think of the wonders of American consumer choice, which plays itself out practically in a grocery store that has an entire row of paper towels.

This is not the first time J has been to America. She came for a visit almost ten years ago, but I think she stayed fairly exclusively in the safely Polish sections of Chicago.

When I returned to America after a couple of years in Poland, it was that choice over-kill that shocked me. I’d grown used to little corner stores where I stood on one side of the counter and the food and grocer were on the other, and I had to as for everything by name (which does wonders for language learning). She didn’t comment on the paper towels though.

I kept an eye on J, hoping to see what might catch her eye. It was finally in Ingles that she showed some real excitement. We passed an isle display of a particularly southern snack and her eyes light up and she began, “Oh, these are those, those, those,” searching for what in the heck you’d call fried pork rinds in Polish.

Thinking she couldn’t possibly realize what these things were, I said “the skin of” and she found her word. The best word for something as untranslatable as “pork rinds.”ïPork Rinds

“Pig chips!” she cried. “Oh, we loved these. We ate them all the time!”

She had me translate each flavor for her so she could pick the one she wanted: cheddar.

“Of all the things for her to get excited about,” I thought, putting a bag of fried pork skin into my shopping cart for the first time in my life.

No Stoned Canadians

Wednesday 31 January 2007

Migrants to Herouxville, Quebec learn that lapidation — among other things — is not tolerated:

Don’t stone women to death, burn them or circumcise them, immigrants wishing to live in the town of Herouxville in Quebec, Canada, have been told. […]

Its council published the new rules on the town’s website.

“We wish to inform these new arrivals that the way of life which they abandoned when they left their countries of origin cannot be recreated here,” the declaration reads. BBC NEWS

Members of the Muslim community are understandably upset:

However, the president of the Muslim Council of Montreal, Salam Elmenyawi, condemned the council, saying it had set back race relations decades.

He told Reuters news agency: “I was shocked and insulted to see these kinds of false stereotypes and ignorance about Islam and our religion.”

I write none of this to justify what the Herouxville council did. It was more than a little tasteless.

It might be a stereotype, but as Stephen Pinker and others have pointed out, within most stereotypes is a core of truth.

Truth is, there is stoning in the modern world:

  • Afghanistan
  • Iran
  • Nigeria
  • Saudi Arabia
  • Sudan
  • United Arab Emirates

In each instance, it is related to Islamic Sharia law. The truth is, contemporary stoning is a predominately (almost exclusively) Muslim practice. That is not to say that all Muslims support it; it is not to say that historically Muslims have been the only group to practice lapidation; it is not to say that only Muslims today stone. However, to say that associating lapidation and Islam requires “ignorance about Islam” is itself ignorant at best, misleading at worst.

What really caught my attention, though, was Elmenyawi’s juxtaposition of setting “back race relations” because of “ignorance about Islam and our religion.”

When did Islam become a race? We might call Muslims an ethnic group, but even that is extremely misleading. Did Elmenyawi misspeak? Was he misquoted?

For the Want of Punctuation, Calm Was Lost

Friday 26 January 2007

We’ll call him Doug. He’s one of the young men I work with — a young man who’s made a lot of progress in the last few weeks. An exchange with him a few weeks ago taught me — again — the importance of speaking judiciously, and it suggested something of this young man’s past.

We were writing up reports from a short experiment we’d done, and I thought I’d use the chance to teach the boys something about spreadsheet software. We were beginning to enter all the data into a spreadsheet, and I suggested to Doug that he add a title.

“What do I call it?” he asked, his voice a bit edgy.

With Doug, I’ve noticed that confusion leads quickly to frustration, and frustration can lead to crisis. When I hear the edge in his voice that suggests all is not well, I slow down, and I also mention to Doug that I’ve noticed he’s getting frustrated, and I encourage him to keep his cool “like I know you can.”

To answer his question, I suggested he think back to the topic we’d been learning about in the previous lesson (namely: friction). He couldn’t remember, and he was clearly not entering a “teachable moment.”

I continued trying to jar his memory, asking him some fairly basic questions that were similar to ones we’d worked on in class. One of them, I recall, was, “Well, Doug, what happens when you try to walk on ice?”

He looked at me as if I were a complete idiot. When he didn’t answer, I asked him to hazard a guess.

He exploded.

Man, you know what happens when you try to walk on ice! I know what happens when you try to walk on ice! Everybody knows what happens when you walk on ice! Why are you asking me that?! What are you talking about. I just want to get some help and you go off asking me stupid questions!

His voice had gone from being merely edgy to being positively aggressive. Everything in his body language screamed, “You’re an idiot!”

Since instruction in social skills trumps academics, I stepped out of my role as science teacher and explained what had just happened.

When you say those things in that tone, with that facial expression, your words are telling me one thing, but your body is saying something else. It’s saying to me, “You’re stupid.”

It’s just a small step from, “It’s saying to me, ‘You’re stupid.'” to “You’re saying to me [that] you’re stupid.”

Doug heard the latter; I intended the former.

Instant crisis.

“Man, don’t you fucking call me stupid!” — and several variations of that same sentiment before I could calm him down.

At first, I was completely taken aback. I had foreseen the misunderstanding and thought I’d chosen my words with sufficient care. My gut instinct was something I’m a little ashamed to admit now: “You just hear what you want to hear! You’re just looking for an excuse to act out!”

Writing about it in my journal that night, I realized my error. You can’t verbally indicate those quotation marks (or inverted commas, if you prefer) with perfect clarity. When I wrote the sentence, I saw how easily it could have been misconstrued.

Better would have been, “It’s like you’re telling me that I’m stupid.”

All that aside, I can’t help but wonder if there was much more going on. Most of the kids I work with come from environments that are so far from the norm — let alone the ideal — that it’s shocking. For all I know, almost every time Doug has heard the word “stupid” coming from an adult’s mouth, it was directed at him.

Once I calmed Doug down and explained what I really meant, I realized I did have a teachable moment then.

See, Doug, when you thought I called you stupid, you really didn’t like it, right? And you really didn’t want to be in my presence, let alone have me help you. When you let your body language accidentally tell people that they’re stupid, they don’t like it, and they’ll be less inclined to help you. Understand?

Doug screwed up his mouth while he thought about it, then mumbled “Yeah.” And though I might be imagining things, I could have sworn that for the rest of the lesson, Doug was doing his best to stay aware of his body language.

As often happens in jobs like mine, its those little moments that make all the less-than-ideal on-job experiences worthwhile.

Open a Can of Wup Ass

Saturday 20 January 2007

Reading through old journal entries the other night, I found a poem I’d received in a forwarded email in April of 2002:

American Pride

Osama Bin Laden, your time is short;
We’d rather you die, than come to court.
Why are you hiding if it was in God’s name?
Your just a punk with a turban; a pathetic shame.

I have a question, about your theory and laws;
“How come you never die for the cause?”
Is it because you’re a coward who counts on others?
Well here in America, we stand by our brothers.

As is usual, you failed in your mission;
If you expected pure chaos, you can keep on wishing
Americans are now focused and stronger than ever;
Your death has become our next endeavor.

What you tried to kill, doesn’t live in our walls;
It’s not in buildings or shopping malls.
If all of our structures came crashing down;
It would still be there, safe and sound.

Because pride and courage can’t be destroyed;
Even if the towers leave a deep void.
We’ll band together and fill the holes
We’ll bury our dead and bless their souls.

But then our energy will focus on you;
And you’ll feel the wrath of the Red, White and Blue.
So slither and hide like a snake in the grass;
Because America’s coming to kick your ass!!

Looking back on it, almost five years later, the poem and the sentiment it expresses are even more tragically pathetic. Many of the people who sent this around the country were most likely the ones who voted for Bush back in 2000 and were glad that he — “A real man, by God!” — was in office on 9/11. They probably had no doubt that America would go after bin Laden with a fury that the world had never seen.

Most of us had no doubt about that.

Bush’s speech on September 13, 2001, confirmed this: “The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”

They were probably surprised when, eighteen months later, Bush said that while bin Laden must be “on the run, if he’s alive at all,” he conceded that he doesn’t “spend too much time on him.” (Source)

Now, in 2007, with Bush promising a “surge” that virtually no one wants, with bin Laden still at large, with Iraq virtually at war with itself, with the Taliban re-grouping, it all just seems like the taunts of a thirteen-year-old.

It smacks of insecurity — and by that I mean a lack of both self-confidence and a lack of a feeling of safety.