Become Aware Of It, Pay Attention To It. Read About It, Learn About It, Write About It, Talk About It. Teach It.
Reflections upon anything under the sun and beyond. It may not be easy to be a Global Citizen, but it's not hard to engage the Globe.
What Can A Technologist Do About Climate Change - a must read!
Planet Beautiful
I really hope everyone will read this.
What A Technologist Can Do About Climate Change (A Personal View) by Bret Victor
We indeed dump carbon into the atmosphere at an amazing rate and we are causing change.
We have solutions all around us, but we need the social and political will to coordinate efforts across domains to implement solutions that will mitigate and possibly even reverse the damage.
The science, engineering and technology sectors need to increase their efforts and attack this problem now. Leaders need to get behind these efforts. We need a global push.
There is no magic bullet. We need a carefully integrated, coordinated and comprehensive bundle of solutions.
The information on this web page, along with its hyperlinks, addresses how we might do this and touches on all the important aspects of the problem and its solutions.
This web page is an amazing resource. Please study it and share it with everyone you know.
My heart goes out to mothers of Jihadists, and I need to thank the people of Paris.
These are mothers of children who joined ISIS.
Remember, no one can make you waste your time on any social media platform. Everyone is welcome to scroll through and pick and choose what they want to take a look at. We can all comfortably retreat to our echo chambers and enjoy the solace of our own cliques whenever we feel too annoyed to wince and glance at another person’s point of view.
What I’m sharing now is an interview from the BBC World Service series, Documentaries. “Mothers of Jihadists” reminds us that even the evilest people on earth are human and came from real families, families full of love, hope, and compassion.
It’s easy to let heuristics and biases, our hard-wired xenophobic tendencies, our fears, and emotions push us towards hate. We are all only human. Our genetic differences being insignificant compared to ants. We are one family responsible like no other species with the heavy burden of being able to determine not only our own fate but the fate of other species of life on Earth.
If we surrender to medieval, regressive ideologies by forgetting our own hard fought battles, our enlightenment, and scientific heritage, we have already lost our souls and have become the walking dead. Remember what we are fighting for.
Talk to young people, talk to families, talk to friends and strangers and let them know who you are and why you care. The outsider is just like you, worried and concerned about outsiders.
We can rise to the challenge and do better, or we can go with the flow of fashion, hatred, greed and fear and surrender to fate as if we had no power at all.
Solutions to our problems are complex and difficult to solve so let’s not be too lazy. If we put in a little effort into solving our problems in community with others we can still make things better.
This is what I’ve learned from Paris in 2015. I am grateful to the people of Paris. My heart goes out to mothers of jihadists.
I believe in progress and I am not willing to give up yet. That statement is as close to a prayer as I can stomach right now.
We live in a dark world full of light. How ironic is that?
#JeVis
"Earth To Paris" We caused climate change and we're going to have to deal with it - now!
Don't forget the hashtag like I did. #earthtoparis
I am amazed when I talk with people who don't think that human activity has any effect on our global ecosystem. Really? Look around you.
Please join the Earth To Paris grassroots campaign to make sure our leaders understand that you are concerned.
We caused the problem and we're going to have to fix it.
http://earthtoparis.org Send a message from #EarthToParis telling world leaders to make bold commitments to combat climate change at the UN 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21). Share a Video or a Photo by Nov 22nd using the hashtag #EarthToParis. We'll Make Sure Your Voice Gets Heard....
Expanding the climate conversation
to advance progress for people and planet
This December, world leaders are gathering in Paris for a landmark United Nations convening to complete a new global climate agreement – an extraordinary opportunity for the international community to rise to meet the threat of climate change. To achieve a world where everyone lives with dignity and opportunity – a vision leaders embraced in the global goals for sustainable development – we must take strong action on climate change.
Everyone has a role to play. As governments convene for the conference, civil society groups, businesses, experts, innovators and citizens will also gather to share climate solutions and to let leaders know that we care about the outcome of Paris.
Earth To Paris—the Coalition:
What happens in Paris matters to all of us, which is why we need to expand the climate conversation beyond Paris and to the world.
A diverse coalition of groups – from foundations to technology companies to media organizations and more – is coming together to launch Earth To Paris, an innovative campaign and convening strategy to drive awareness and host events, including a two-day “Earth To Paris—le Hub” (December 7 & 8) to highlight the connection between people and planet and the need for strong climate action; showcase climate solutions and innovations; bring together communities to promote collaboration; and engage people around the world in the dialogue happening in Paris. This coalition will raise the pro le, volume and level of discussion and action around COP-21.
Earth To Paris—le Hub:
On December 7 at the Petit Palais and December 8 at UNESCO headquarters, experts, advocates, CEOs, and other leaders will discuss creative and impactful solutions to climate change. Through digital com- munications, people and groups across the globe will be able to join the event, share ideas, and raise their voices for climate action. This is an opportunity to raise awareness of the important conference taking place in Paris and to inspire bold, meaningful action for people and the planet.
Earth To Paris—the Drumbeat:
In the lead up to the United Nations convening, the Earth To Paris coalition will lead a digital activation, social media conversation with the hashtag #EarthToParis, and rally global voices on climate change.
earthtoparis.org // December 7-8 // Paris, France
Related
What if we told you even a wonderful landscape could potentially reach dangerous levels of pollution? In some regions, human activity has left over invisible harmful elements from as early as Antiquity.
AXA Futures Plenary Session on Climate Change, July 1st, hosted by the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London In December 2015 the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 21) will take place in Paris and is widely expected to see countries pledging to introduce more stringent cuts in carbon emissions and debating how to control global warming.
To help inform the public discussion in the run-up to the COP-21 Paris climate conference, the AXA Research Fund had researchers, AXA experts, NGOs, students and media participate in a climate risk workshop at the occasion of its 2015 Annual Ceremony. Watch the best-of!
Why Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature? Another in the series, "For those of us who didn't go to Yale".
I'm having a dandy old time on social media and at several blogs talking with people on different sides of this or that social-political fence regarding the U.S. presidential race. Whether you are a "Libtard", a "Moronative", a Commie, some brand of Anarchist, a Democratic Socialist (sounds so Nazi right? Right?) or a complete and utter Apathetic, we all seem to have some normative, set-in-stone definition of who we are politically, and therefore, certain things annoy the hell our of us.
One of my favorites kinds of pedestrian pundits is the current breed of constitutional libertarian. I always wonder when I hear someone tell me that they are a constitutional libertarian if they have heard of John Locke or anyone else from the global canon of political philosophy. Perhaps not, but I'm sure their heart is in the right place and they believe they are involved with the right side of the fence.
I have recommended the books, "The Blank Slate", "Thinking Fast and Slow" and "The Righteous Mind" to everyone regardless of how they define their political place in the world. I do this again and again and am doing so again here. At the same time, I wonder how much this helps. We have several things that contribute to our political biases that are inescapable: our genes, our circumstances at birth, our family, the quality of our education, our experiences and social normative pressures. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. There is also a vast literature about how grandparents lives influence us the minute we are conceived. It seems we all inherited certain propensities from our parents and ancestors. Imagine that.
So what do philosophy and the science of human nature have to do with my political discussions with friends and acquaintances on social media? It occurs to me that although all of us inherit political views from our parents, society and experience, very few of us take the time to reflect upon our points of view in any meaningful way. We simply take it for granted that we are a member of a pure, and righteous political clique. We're certain that if everyone just followed our ideology we could solve all of our problems. We imagine the good old days of Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan as if they were truly the best of times, forgetting how messy things really were and always have been regardless of who's in charge. This is not to say that a leader can't have an incredibly positive impact. Take Augustus as an example, the founder of the Roman empire. Perhaps Rome never had it so good as when the great Augustus created the Pax Romana and lead his vast empire for the longest period of any Roman leader. Oh, to have been born into those good old days. I sometimes think that Baby Boomers, my generation, had the best of times and worry about what we're leaving behind for the children of Millennials.
You all know that I'm a big fan of continuing education. I think we all benefit by continuing to learn, by broadening our horizons, and picking up new skills. Everyone today needs to be an autodidact, a bit of a skeptic and brush up on their critical thinking skills. We are, like our ancestors before us, trapped on an arch of time that is unpredictable, unfathomable and heading towards a black box we call the future. Even with our science and technology most of us are simply blind to how things really work. Ten years from now things will not be simpler, even if we do swallow handfuls of Modafinil. (Oh, the side effects!)
In an attempt to encourage people to break out of their bubble, to flee the echo chamber for the wide open spaces of endless possibilities I'd like to recommend the wonderful work of one of the most respected professors of philosophy in the world - Dr. Tamar Gendler.
Below are some of her lectures and an interesting paper she wrote for the Journal of Philosophy. I truly believe that everyone no matter where you're from or what side of a particular fence you're on, can benefit from this material. Please take your time and listen to these lectures. Listen when you are cooking or cleaning or taking a shower. There's no excuse not to understand ourselves better. We simply must understand each other better if we are going to create a long lasting Pax Homo Humanus. August times can be ahead.
Alief and Belief Tamar Szabó Gendler1 tamar.gendler@yale.edu Draft of 1 October 2007 Forthcoming: Journal of Philosophy Abstract: I introduce and argue for the importance of a cognitive state that I call alief. Paradigmatic alief can be characterized as a mental state with associatively-linked content that is representational, affective and behavioral, and that is activated – consciously or unconsciously – by features of the subject’s internal or ambient environment. Alief is a more primitive state than either belief or imagination: it directly activates behavioral response patterns (as opposed to motivating in conjunction with desire or pretended desire.) I argue that alief explains a large number of otherwise perplexing phenomena and plays a far larger role in causing behavior than has typically been recognized by philosophers. I argue further that the notion can be invoked to explain both the effectiveness and the limitations of certain sorts of example-based reasoning, and that it lies at the core of habit-based views of ethics.
http://www.pgrim.org/philosophersannual/pa28articles/gendleraliefbelief.pdf
Revisiting Dr. Erich Fromm
"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape."
I first read his works when I was 19 or 20 years old and I was rapt. Recently I saw a piece on Dr. Fromm on the wonderful website Brain Pickings that reignited my interest in this marvelous intellect. His works are still relevant. If you've read him I recommend rereading his works. If you're unfamiliar read some of his books, you'll be happy you did. His style is neither too dense or too technical and he writes with a heart full of love. His insights are predictive and go straight to the heart of human nature and society maintaining their authority even in the 21st Century.
Click on the image to visit Erich Fromm dot net
To get reacquainted with Dr. Fromm spend a few minutes here:
The Mike Wallace Interview: Erich Fromm (1958-05-25) Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and social critic, talks to Wallace about society, materialism, relationships, government, religion, and happiness.
From the archives of the UCLA Communications Studies Department. Digitized 2013. The views and ideas expressed in these videos are not necessarily shared by the University of California, or by the UCLA Communication Studies Department.
We forget our intellectual heritage at our own peril.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
I just love the Internet. This is a fantastic resource. Please take a look.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics
Feynman • Leighton • Sands
Richard Feynman (full version) Lectures at Cornell - The.Character of Physical Law - Part 1 The Law of Gravitation (full version)
Thinking The Way Humans Do: Nature vs. Nurture / Parenting & Our Connectome
Human Connectome
I'm interested in why people think what they think and in how people think. Recently I've read and heard new information along the "nature vs. nurture paradigm". You know what I'm talking about. Are we conditioned to think in a particular way? Is most of our style of thinking determined by our genes? Are we born with certain propensities and our circumstances either amplify or diminish our abilities? I think it's undoubtedly a combination of all that and more.
Recently I listened to two of my favorite podcasts that had me thinking and googling again topics concerning the mystery of differences in human thought.
Rationally Speaking Podcast: RS144 - Bryan Caplan on "Does parenting matter?"
"Does Parenting Matter" brings these questions to light in the context of parenting. What are the long-term effects of parental manipulations of children's lives? Will all the work and time spent on our children's education and activities equal a happy, successful, healthy adult? One takeaway for me was the thought that discipline, motivation, conditioning are always contextual and have a temporary effect. As long as you are in a peer group that expresses certain things, as long as you are with your parents and they are actively guiding your choices and behaviors there will be a significant effect. When those conditions are no longer present a person's behavior and beliefs will revert back to an inherent mean. We are our parents children after all. And, we are all influenced by our peers.
I've been interested in this topic for a long time and we're learning more and more about nature vs. nurture every day. I would encourage you to listen to the podcasts. They are particularly interesting.
I'm looking forward to reading Bryan Caplan's:
Click the image for link to Amazon.
In his best-selling book The Myth of the Rational Voter (2007) George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan demythologized the notion that American voters know what they are doing when they step into the ballot booth.
Parenting guru Bryan Caplan prescribes less fuss – and more fun
Economist Bryan Caplan argues that nurture counts for so little that parents can 'cut themselves a lot of slack'
The Economics and Genetics of Parenting: A Guest Post by Bryan Caplan
Next we'll explore the implications of brain connections.
At this podcast, Steven Novella from The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe initiates a fascinating discussion regarding, "The Connectome Project".
Latest Podcast: Episode #534 – 10/03/2015
They explore implications of causality a bit more. They also talk to Andy Weir the author of the online novel, "The Martian". Enjoy it!
Immigrant Taxi Drivers, Rent Seekers, Disruptive Business Models, Rationality Theories, Bayesian Theorems, The Real World and our perceptions of it.
I am guilty of speaking emphatically about something I haven’t really looked into; I have seen a photo in an article and commented on the photo and not the article thereby missing the point the article was trying to make; I have made claims without adequate evidence to back them up; I am sometimes riotously arrogant when I should be humble; I sometimes talk too much. The confession could go on and on as I'm sure you can imagine.
I also make an effort to communicate. And I know I'm living in the real world, and that our world is to a certain degree knowable. And until my brain gives out, I'll continue to try to learn more about the real world. I'll make an effort to refine my use of the intellectual tools I've inherited so that I might have a clearer picture of the knowable tomorrow than I have today.
Simple misunderstandings can lead one to explore hitherto unfamiliar ideas, or facilitate connections of ideas that may seem unrelated at first glance. When one is interested in a lot of things, one often finds connections that may or may not be significant.
Oh no, I see patterns in everything, doctor, I think I need some meds!
Before we get started let me share some ideas with you as a potential conceptual framework stemming from a simple, colloquial and harmless encounter on facebook. I have these all the time, as many of you know, and I recognize that most of the time people are just trying to be nice and share. We're there sharing information, our very public diaries of what we are looking at or involved with on any given day. I don't see too much meanness in the online spats or repartee I have with my friends. Most of the real fireworks take place in the realm of PMs (private messaging) and are therefore harmlessly out of sight and off the wall - in more ways than one.
As of 2014 there were 1.9 billion active facebook users. I guess a lot of people like interacting there. We are social creatures and facebook proves it. One can debate the quality of our virtual interactions, but one must also acknowledge that this form of communication is not going anywhere soon. In fact, it's highly probable that our virtual relations and their impending impact on humanity are unimaginable to us now.
We are but like cockroaches awaiting our interaction with flimflam Gods of the future. We are waiting to be fooled again. Where all of this innovation, disruption, and black box technology will lead is hardly even ponderable. The speed at which science and technology progress today far surpasses our ability to evolve socially, physically and dare I say morally and ethically. The Singularity and other sci-fi fabulousness aside the Gods of the future can not be known now and may never be knowable by the vast majority of people. And I would argue that perhaps even future generations caught in the exciting embrace of miraculous science and technology will hardly know what these invisible super wonders do within the context of their lives. Even if they are enhanced beings. Most of us will have become waifs wandering about in a mysterious forest of man-made, machine-made, artificial-intelligence-made, super-computed constructs the original conditions of which would have been long forgotten or misplaced.
And we do not fully appreciate the randomness of all of this.
*** Please don't feel like you must read all of this in one sitting. Feel free to browse and take your time delving into the links. It will be more satisfying. My narrative the science and philosophy are layers of the same adventure. I only provide the shallow part to wade into, the deep parts are in the hyperlinks.
The following is a stochastic (in the poetic sense of the word) meandering exploration, spontaneous and improvised, of what it means to approach the truth through communication and collaboration with no set plan or ideological envelope. It's, in a quirky way, an homage to finding common ground in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom while attempting the lonely task of educating myself on Bayesian principles and Bayesian logic. Believe me, I can't do the math so it's a struggle to create an accurate enough facsimile of Bayesian logic in my mind that might eventually become useful as a tool for analysis of complex stuff.
"Holy shit! are you kidding me?"
Yes, kind of, but not really - this really is cool stuff. It worth spending some time on it.
Let me flesh out my "situationist" and poetic use of stochastic via the article below:
"Resisting any attempts to file their ideas into a static ideology, situationism, the SI called attention to the priority of real life, real live activity, which continually experiments and corrects itself, instead of just constantly reiterating a few supposedly eternal truths like the ideologies of Trotskyism, Leninism, Maoismor even anarchism. Static ideologies, however true they may be, tend, like everything else in capitalist society, to rigidify and become fetishised, just one more thing to passively consume."
STOCHASTIC POEMS - LEARN HOW TO MAKE A GOOGLE POEM
And just for fun take a quick look at Kant.
THE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
The categorical imperative (German: kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, it may be defined as a way of evaluating motivations for action.
"In Bayesian statistical inference, a prior probability distribution, often called simply the prior, of an uncertain quantity is the probability distribution that would express one's beliefs about this quantity before some evidence is taken into account. For example, the prior could be the probability distribution representing the relative proportions of voters who will vote for a particular politician in a future election. The unknown quantity may be a parameter of the model or a latent variable rather than an observable variable."
It's interesting to discover that communication and probability theory are linked in profound ways. I'm struggling joyfully with Bayesian ideas and still working at being a better communicator. A struggle is its own reward. It's indeed fortunate to have the time to take these kinds of intellectual journeys. To be able to dedicate time and energy to ideas so well and expertly digested is exciting. However, one must know that most people will never have the time, energy and desire for such curiosities and so a healthy social media, marketing, advertising and public relations industry to say nothing of more malfeasant forms of propaganda will be necessary for generations to come as motivations for, shall I say, merely getting up in the morning.
The continued growth of the global economy is dependent on early risers with the desire conditioned into their hearts and minds to terry forth to work, watch and spend. One does one's duty even if one's not aware of doing so. When I look at economic growth in the area I live in I am flabbergasted at the potential number of clerks it will take to make this growth continue to happen. We will find a way to grow the service sector until machines can make lazy pets of all of us. Who will be our master is another question. Let's just hope that our value as pets presupposes our good treatment by our masters. There may come a time when we will have to surrender our will to the generosity of our betters. We may finally know what it truly feels like to be domesticated by our inventions.
I'll feed the cat now.
That was nice.
Alas, I find it immensely satisfying to dream of picking tomatoes. Nostalgia has a way of slowing things down a bit.
And with all the weight of my curiosity clearly bearing down on me here's the question I keep asking myself:
Can rational people from opposing sides of a complex issue, through debate and discussion, eventually move closer to a better understanding of the world? We’re talking about the real world as it truly is and not our biased opinions of the world based on stories, superstitions, ideologies, and wishes.
Oh, and how much easier is this when one practices pure science?
The main assumption here is that within nature, at least, there are things people can know and regard as true. And, the world we all share is the same world. We all obey the same laws of the universe. We are all humans, we share our humanness and the factors that make us human. And these things we share are real and not merely abstractions of some super, all-permeating, consciousness.
And yet, assuming such, we have different ways of viewing our world depending on our conditioning and circumstances; our experiences with our own unique nature, nurture feedback loops. Culture, economics, our state of health, our feeling of security or insecurity, our unique experiences, our education, what we practise, how we use our bodies and our minds, all blend into a complex matrix we know as "our self" and this identity is always subtly changing, evolving, even if it doesn't seem so. Most of us take our identity, no matter how vigorously self-examined, for granted. The differences between our "selves" also remain in a continual state of flux, buffeted about by the complex interplay relationships impose on our perception of the "selves" we identify as our own.
Individuals are compelled to act and so we focus our attention on this thing or that without knowing the dark and secret ways these random landings of attention influences us. Sometimes we must shut our eyes to see. And often, no matter how diligent we are in the deployment of our senses and our intellect what we see, feel or experience can seem quite different to what someone else sees, feels or experiences. A tree is indeed a tree, but its meaning can be infinite.
“There is an infinite number of ways to see an elephant.” (Preferably said with an authentic Punjabi accent.)
We are easily fooled, although we don't want to believe this. We are credulous people and yet we are full of doubt. We are, in general, in hot pursuit of knowledge and power while at the same time made ignorant by the knowledge and power we know must be there but that we can't understand. Human life is paradoxical, whimsical and yet we desire to be in control so much that it can be excruciatingly difficult to let go and let the whimsy open one up to creativity and vitality. And despite all the many ways we can describe our experience and phenomena, we are, in many ways conventional. And we are mortal, and time passes all too quickly. Life is wonderfully busy and then we die.
(A skeptic should feel a greater responsibility to be skeptical of his own thought.)
And because these processes are so mysteriously ephemeral it's important, I think, to become conscious of who our epistemic peers are. It's also important in light of the complexity of nature to remind ourselves to be epistemically a little more humble.
The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement
ˌɛpɪˈstiːmɪk,-ˈstɛm-/Submit adjective
relating to knowledge or to the degree of its validation.
*** Let's pause here while you read the PDF at the link above. It's well worth your time and adds to the journey here.
We all have our points of view, our experiences, our knowledge and areas of expertise. We live in communities. We are not fully autonomous creatures, but we have degrees of freedom, liberty and license depending on many factors relating to our circumstances and our current state of health etc.
AUTONOMY IN MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
We all need respect, dignity, consideration, and love. We all, to a certain degree, are self-centered. We desire things. We identify with products and brands that seem representative of our values and of the values we want to signal to others. (That old, I love you and you love me roundabout.) We take action and behave in certain ways so that we may receive what we need from people to feel good about ourselves in the unique context of our own particular lives. Few children in Kansas ask grandpapa, "why aren't we Hindu?", while worshipping at the Episcopal church on Sunday. We simply sing the hymns loud and clear and get a nod of approval from grandmama.
Not many of us want to be alone. We crave approval from our peers.
Some of us are more curious than others and are more interested in discovering the "truth" about how things work in the real world. We want to walk towards Zeno and cut closer to reality, reality being another word for truth. But understanding a paradox may not get us any closer to a human being's reality. Many truth seekers are philosophers and scientists, although they can just as easily be waitresses, musicians, carpenters, engineers, pilots, English teachers, or undersea welders. And no matter their humble origins or lofty achievements they possess the same fallibilities that make them all human.
We'd like to believe that a majority of scientists work hard to walk together towards truth, editing and updating their opinions based on evidence, investigation, inference, deductive reasoning, experience, creative musing, collaboration, critique, and peer review. We'd like to think, perhaps, that professionals would change their point of view many times as their journey moved forward towards a solution or a clearer view of what they are investigating. And we might like to imagine that sometimes their work is pure and untainted by the marketplace. We'd like to feel that pursuing knowledge for its own sake is a good and productive thing.
Hopefully we're also excited that when a solution is found it often leads to more questions, more things that must be investigated, more things that must be understood before the next question, the right question, occurs to our intrepid seekers allowing them to begin again the arduous routine work of science, reason, and creativity. And many of us may be extremely satisfied that scientific work will never end - the mysteries of the universe being so vast and complex. And many of us may be comfortable with the unknown - drawn to it like a moth to an invisible flame - a flame we know as inference.
And when we glance back on subjects pertaining to culture, society, and the individual human being, colored by experience, values, biases, and ideologies, we'll have a healthy respect for just how complex the nature of humanity and the human individual is. Again, we all have different ways of viewing our world, but nevertheless we all live in the same world. We are human. A human is a human despite individual differences. The gravity on earth is what it is, the gasses we breath are what they are, the water we depend on is what it is and so on.
What we do together in our world, within all the systems that we maintain and operate, within the many complex domains of human endeavor and inquiry have impacts and consequences. Everything we do or think contributes in varying degrees to how things are. We should all be familiar with ideas surrounding cause and effect. We should all be familiar with questions of free will and determinism.
Free will is a problem. If it seems obvious that you are perfectly free to choose and decide, then it seems perfectly clear that you do not understand the problem. Free will is a huge problem, because our sense of free will and the physical structure of the world contradict each other.
And to be a part of this adventure communication is very important. We are the talking, writing, reading Apes. Disagreements are a starting point and a motivation for us to better understand our world. Even misunderstandings and misinterpretations are an opportunity to move on and self-correct.
Trust me - the silverback is faking it.
*** I hope you've spent some time with the links above. Please continue.
Let’s move on to the event that triggered this prickly post.
Below is a comment a good friend recently left regarding an article I shared on my Facebook wall relating to the need for good governance of technology and the tech business sector.
The author is Ara Shirinian, a young student at the University of California Los Angeles. He’s an aspiring writer and video game maker. He’s keenly interested in technology.
Ara Shirinian: Government must regulate technology market to ensure social progress
The Daily Bruin is a USLA student newspaper.
Below are my friends comments broken up into his main points:
“Taxi operators are government rent seekers that have a license to participate in a government established cartel and gouge the public.”
This perspective is nothing new. You can find it all over the place. Just google the phrase above. Barnett gives taxi rent seekers the bird
“Let the consumer decide! You can just see this in the price of a taxi license if you had to buy one!”
“The sad thing is taxi drivers don't make that much money, but they are unskilled and many are new immigrants,”
“and it is an entry level job that they can do. Let consumers decide what's best for them, let Uber drivers decide whether it is worth their while.”
Uber’s cut-rate prices are destroying immigrant jobs
“Uber technology has made government intervention in this market place no longer warranted in terms of creating a supply limiting marketing board type cartel.”
“I have had the Uber experience in China, if it was pissing rain I couldn't get a taxi, and I'd have to stand outside wasting time getting soaked to flag one down.”
“Now I can sit in the coffee shop, read my newspaper, call up an Uber driver, he will arrive in front of the shop in a new clean vehicle as opposed to a very dirty public taxi, he texts me to announce his arrival and I can walk outside and get in the car. Isn't this better??”
The Uber experience sounds good to me and I’ve had one too. I’ve also taken hotel limos from the airport to the hotel and enjoyed that. I’ve rented apartments in cities I’ve had extended stays in instead of staying at a hotel. I haven’t done tried AIRBNB yet.
Let’s assume that the statements and assumptions above are true. I certainly agree with what he’s saying. I have nothing against Uber, although I'm not a big fan. (I won’t go into why here because, believe it or not, it'll take us way off course.) My friend and I come from similar backgrounds and have similar prior experiences and beliefs about things.
Now let's extrapolate and expand on the points and assumptions. Not to be cheeky, but only to expand the box a little bit. I want to do this exercise because it sheds light on how different people who are focused on different things will be inspired to go down different trains of thought.
- We are rational, and therefore, able to learn from our world and update our perspectives and behaviors based on the best information available. We're also cognizant of where the information is coming from and able to discern good information from bad information, and good sources of information from bad sources of information. We know that the effort we make doing this makes the world more transparent. We take little for granted, but what we do take for granted is well established.
- The customer is always right and it’s up to the customer to decide how she wants to ride around town and what she wants to buy etc.
- Well, that’s a bit of a stretch. Sometimes a customer wants what marketer’s want them to want, but for the sake of discussion let’s assume that the point above is true. We live in a free market - um, cough, wait, let’s not go there.
- Also, sometimes you don't want the best toaster available, you just want the toaster that looks good next to your blender.
- The price of a license to be in the taxi business and leasing a taxi to drive is always and everywhere exorbitant, and stemming from rent-seeking government cartels.
- Of course, it's still a market.
- Not to equivocate but not all markets are the same, not all cities are run in the same way; not all countries have the same laws etc. And this may not be the best of all possible worlds. But let's just deal with how things are now - for now.
- Let’s also assume that Uber’s current offerings, its service and its technology, its app, is disrupting the car for hire business in a currently close to ideal way. Again, the customer’s always right. This is not a fad. This is the way people want things now. Uber is fulfilling a profound market need. People want to use apps on their smartphones to connect with goods and services. Uber is expanding in China at a blistering pace. Customers like Uber - full stop!
- Let’s assume that the Uber customer experience is close to universally similar and that if a given Uber car is a bit less clean, or a particular Uber driver less than charming, or a Uber driver is an immigrant (recall the story of the cop who abused a Uber driver because he had a foreign accent) or that a particular Uber driver arrives very late, or a Uber transaction is less than pleasant, or that a Uber driver is killed by a client, or that a Uber driver kills a client, or that, if a Uber driver rapes a client, or gets raped by a client, or performs a hit and run killing a pedestrian - that these are all just outliers and highly unlikely events for Uber. UBER TERMS OF SERVICE USA
- Should Uber even offer a service with continuity of standards of quality and experience, because it's better that way and to define the brand of course...
- Assume that Governments always conspire in their licensing and other agreements to gouge the public and let’s further assume that this opinion is not ideologically biased - it’s just what governments do. We elect them and they repay us by gouging the hell out of us.
- Let’s also assume that private corporations, free and unfettered of inefficient, draconian and unreasonable regulations are always better because their profit motive always incentivizes them to do the right thing for their market and for society as a whole wherever possible. (Or just for the market, what's society have to do with it?) And if they don’t do a good job they just go bankrupt and disappear (like Donald Trump) and that that rarely causes any perturbation in society. (Oops, the Donald is gone, oops, the Donald is back. Some failures are obviously more valuable than other failures. "Fall down seven times and stand up the eighth". But really folks, Trump is no Miyamoto Musashi.) People just wait for the next company to come along and provide a similar product or service. And let’s assume that most companies make a serious effort to internalize their externalities wherever possible providing that it doesn’t impact their management’s compensation packages or shareholders too much.
- Let’s assume that private corporations are never rent-seekers or cartels.
- OK, that’s a bridge too far, we know that’s not true. So let’s move on.
- Let’s also assume that all cities in all states in all countries have the same problem crying out for the same solution and that Uber is the company of the moment that can best fulfill this need, and that in each culture the Uber solution is a perfect fit.
- Finally, let’s assume that UBER management will almost always do a fantastic job on all fronts. They have a similar ethic as Google’s “Do no evil”.
Uber is, of course, a global offering so it will have to contend with the legal environments of each country and city in which it operates. It’s an on the road service company and its local Uber drivers will have to obey local laws. It’s not selling iPods, or designer bags or solar panels. It can’t hide its less than ethical practices overseas in a dingy industrial park. Service companies are notoriously complex primarily because they are people serving people. Materials are far easier to deal with. And, the potential scale of Uber’s service offering is huge.
“Uber is the hottest private tech company around. Its growth is incredible. The ride sharing app is on track to make $2 billion in revenue this year. Its valuation has surged 400% over the last year to $18 billion.Sep 8, 2014”
Now let’s have a superficial glance at some of Uber’s legal Issues. I’m not a lawyer are you?
Uber Has 30 Days To Comply With The Law Or Face Suspension In California
France Is Right to Mistrust Uber
Uber vs. the Law (My Money's on Uber)
https://lawreview.uchicago.edu/page/social-costs-uber
http://www.lxbn.com/2014/06/04/top-legal-problems-facing-uber-lyft-ridesharing-services/
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28615392
So, pray tell, oh maniacal blogger of the Globe Hackasphere, what is your point?
Now that we’ve had a quick glance at some of the glorious assumptions and other issues surrounding this disruptive company, is there any place for any kind of regulation here? Is it reasonable to assume that there are no other interests except Uber corporate interests and the interests of a fast-growing market for Uber’s service?
No, I'm not going to discuss forms of radical libertarianism or a socialist utopia. We can play with those some other time. I'm just asking if government regulation has a place in our world today as we take this rocket of ours into the black-box of the real-science-tech-future?
We have seen customers in the streets demanding their Uber rides and we’ve seen other constituencies voicing a different point of view. Is there a way for all sides to walk their way towards an agreement of how to move forward and better manage and regulate this service and this transition to a new business model? Or is it, hands off, and don't you mess around the magic of the market? See, we are rational people with common priors and we care about the truth so eventually we should be able to arrive at the same conclusions on the matter. But we're human beings etc., etc.
Personally, I think we could go slow or even pause from time to time and get a better understanding of risk before we move forward in certain areas. Uber is not a good example for this. I expect things to get sorted out for Uber. They'll be in business for some time to come.
I enjoyed this article about The Yuan Percent in China, second generation rich kids trying to figure a way forward. One of the lads featured is an Uber driver who runs around town late at night in his Lamborghini picking up hot prostitutes to enjoy because it's more honest to enjoy the company of a prostitute than to con a "normal girl" into having sex. What a gentleman.
Uber anger in Belgium.
Uber and the sharing economy:
It can be annoying when the old guard or the damn government we elect tries to hang on to a place in an industry that’s obviously changing because of technological and service innovations. We can easily feel like we just want them to get out of the way or get on board. We want the cabbies to save up, buy a car, quit their jobs at the taxi company and join Uber. We want government people to get out of the damn way and let the market do its magic.
Well, it does and it is. We are still responsible for thinking things through. Nothing is easy. There are impacts and unintended consequences for everything. When things change there is always a struggle. And let's not forget that it's primarily about money.
(I'm not sure if idealism, intellectual pursuits or the noble quest for money require more calories.)
I hate private vehicles in cities so I’m happy if we can innovate out of having to devote so much urban space to automobiles. Which brings up an interesting question: How many Uber taxis would N.Y.C. need to service its population if no private cars were allowed inside the five Boroughs? How many derivative companies would rise up to compete with Uber, or would Uber become a government-backed cartel eventually because of its billion $$$ lobbying war chest? What other kinds of government and private sector transportation services would we need to radically improve the N.Y.C. urban environment - the urban experience? Let’s start Googling urban planners, designers, architects, and engineers. I love dreaming about this kind of stuff.
Competition for Ube in India. The brand has only three letters. Imagine that.
If you stop and really think about the wider ramifications of developments in the transportation sector you’ll be overwhelmed by how complex the subject is and at how many aspects of our lives it influences.
- employment
- safety
- convenience
- economic
- social
- cultural
- environmental
- health
- technological etc, etc…
So far we are immersed in a whole lot of big assumptions. We’re still struggling to accommodate differing points of view, and we're noticing changes in the urban transportation market.
Sometimes it’s necessary to drill a bit deeper and consider multiple sides before we label, spin, demonize, or frame something. However, it’s hard to do this because we tend to have an immediate rational yet emotionally driven intuition on subjects that fall within a certain domain of interest that we have certain settled beliefs about. Or, we’ve read some stuff on the subject that fit with our view of reality, of how we understand the world works and we're eager to make our points known to the ignorant masses, or to a friend who posted an Oped piece from a college student in a college rag.
Was the article in question yet another salvo in the Uber debate that’s been raging in communities around the world and in the media for years now?
Let’s take a look at the article in question.
Ara Shirinian: Government must regulate technology market to ensure social progress
The author starts by acknowledging that we are probably reading his article through various tech platforms: websites; smartphones; computers. OK kid what else?
“Despite how it may seem, technology doesn’t inherently make our lives better.”
There is a lot of good current social science literature on this. In many ways, we don’t understand the long-term effects of technology on happiness or on many other aspects of our lives. Climate change is a good example. Cheap energy and the industrial revolution had a big part to play in our getting to the current era of high technology. Without having to embark on counterfactual historical musings about the social impacts of the industrial revolution we might be able to agree that human-generated carbon emissions have something to do with climate change and that the net results of climate change might wind up making many of us much less happy in the future. Cheap fossil fuels and our amazing genius in finding ways to extract coal, oil and gas from the earth is technology driven.
The science regarding climate change is right there and in your face. You have to try really hard to ignore it. But people do of course and that's the crux of the biscuit. We simply can't talk about negative impacts of human endeavors without being labeled a libtard or something worse.
Wars lead to better technologies, but war is still hell. It's a tricky cost benefit ratio to contemplate.
There are those faithful and hopeful visionaries who believe that technology is the answer to every problem that technology might create. We’ll just have to, as the guy in The Martian movie says, “Science the shit out of this.”
Human beings are just so damn heroic! "We're going to need a Manhattan type project to solve this or that..." Well, if we were currently involved in a world war and to win it we had to make sure that everyone on the planet could read we'd have our Manhattan type project for sure. I suppose when China really starts stepping on The West, and it will, it will have to, it's inevitable, we'll have new incomprehensible pools of recourses to hurl at the effort to retain western hegemony. Later, we'll look back at the millennials and call them "The Greatest, Greatest Generation". You see, we have to stand up and say to China that you can't outperform us because we have the moral high ground. If only we could clone Mohamed Ali. Oh I forgot, it's Donald who's going to make America great again. We're the greatest of all time!
Depending on selective criteria, America is still pretty great I suppose.
But even as we have to defend our greatness against global upstarts, apparently, we may need to terraform Mars because we may cause our environment here to change in so many negative ways that we’ll need another planet to keep our economic growth at a decent clip. Also, our economic growth as we calculate it today may exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth to such a degree that we’ll need more planets just to keep up with business as usual. Well, good luck humanity, I can’t wait to visit McDonald's on Mars, or buy at cap from Alibaba while eating my synthetic cheeseburger in the McDonald's on Mars.
Oh no, it's probably going to take a global effort to establish human colonies on Mars. It's probably not going to be a Chinese or U.N. flag flying over the synthetic beef plant on Mars.
Anyway, isn't that what geoengineering is for? We fix the problems technology has caused with new technologies and when we've run out of resources or space on Earth we just go to other planets and expand. We're just that good! I mean, we're really good!
How Many People Can Earth Support?
“Exploit those on other planets before they exploit us. Let’s get our soldiers back in the middle east before all these refugees and jihadists start killing us at the shopping mall! We've got to be proactive and consume it all. We've got to defend our way of life."
Facts and fears may both be five letter words starting with the letter “F”, but it’s fear that rules the world of men. Fear really motivates.
It may be as simple as: technology equals power over our fears. Most of us love technology. It improves our lives in so many ways. But we still have to keep an eye on it. We still have to think about how it may impact our lives, our future, our ecosystem and so on.
Does technology make us happy or not? A few simple articles to have a look at. There are many good academic papers on the subject.
Project Happiness - the science of happiness
Are new technologies making us happier?
Technology linked to happiness, study claims
I am reminded of another persistent question pestering me: Why is it so easy for us to ignore evidence? That’s another well-covered topic you’d have to really try hard to ignore these days. Perhaps a better answer is that many people just don’t really care about things like evidence and facts. They are not concerned so they are not aware they are ignoring anything. They are more interested in familiar, terrestrial and mundane things. Or they are stressed to the point of not having any leftover energy to delve into ideas & data. Or perhaps their culture is simpler and less concerned complexities.
Regardless we are all just people and subject to the same glitches of thought. We have "buggy" brains.
- cognitive dissonance
- motivated reasoning
- confirmation bias
- natural human credulity
- cherry picking
I think it is important to consider the challenges rapidly evolving high technology will impose upon humanity and our precious ecosystem. A.I., Super-Intelligent Machines, Robotics, Virtual Reality, Pharmaceuticals and the list goes on, are all challenges to the process of human evolution in the sense that they speed material progress up so much that wisdom gets left behind. We also have to do the calculus of unintended consequences. We have to do the risk analysis.
Why not quote the New Testament here, there is some wisdom in the literature. We can find good lessons in mythology. What kind of soul will Ex Machina have?
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Mark 8:36
And for that matter, what is love? We can be secular, rational, scientific, skeptics and still talk about the soul and love right? Poetry doesn't go out the window. Maybe that's what Kyoko will ultimately find interesting in us. She won't get the same serotonin rush from us, but she just might enjoy the abstractions we represent and depend on. The Goddess with the power of life and death and an unspeakable creative power begins worshipping her creator just because we're kind of cute.
We idnore myth at our peril.
Excuse me for the long aside. Let’s get back to our UCLA student’s points.
“A problem arises when we only focus on making technology better, but we forgo finding ways for technology to make our society better.”
From my perspective, this makes complete sense. It’s a good point. “But Cleghorn, what’s utilitarianism have to do with it?” Sorry, I meant, “But Cleghorn, what’s making society better have to do with making money off of technological innovation?” “If people buy it, it’s already good dude!” “Customers are rational and make enlightened decisions based on their wants and needs and their emotional connections with a brand man!” “If you want to smoke so what? It’s your body!” “I buy it because I like it, idiot!” “I climb it because it’s there!” "I do it because I can!" "I've got a lot of money!"
But really, why think about things like this young man? Relax - drink some herbal concoction.
Often we disagree simply because we don’t share enough common information or shared similar experiences. Some people hear things like, “make society better”, and they immediately think the person talking is a progressive moron trying to undermine the foundations of decent traditional life. Whatever we think that is. And yet, we all hold certain ideals to be self-evident. Or do we?
We’re all familiar with issues like these:
- Freedom to believe in and practice one’s religion is not the freedom to impose one’s religious values on others or on society at large.
- Are we really living in a free market? How would we define that? There are differing views.
- You can believe passionately that your child should not have to have the MMR vaccine for whatever reason, and that your right to keep your child from getting vaccinated preempts the greater good of broader public health. Are there ethical problems with this?
- Just cut taxes and people will be more efficient and productive and value will trickle down to those at the bottom in the form of jobs and opportunities.
- How can American deal with its gun crime? Should we get rid of guns or lock up everyone in the country who's mentally ill or a potential threat based on some kind of profiling algorithm? I guess it's time to buy stock in private prisons and mental private mental institutions. Don't forget to invest in firearms while you're at it.
- And on and on…
This is where things get complicated and a whole lot of influences come into play. Rational people just can't arrive at the same conclusions when their biases get in the way. You're not going to jump off the bandwagon just because there's evidence that you're about to drive off a cliff.
Let's get back to our student friend.
“Over the summer, I spent my time trying to identify specific ways in which new technology eroded protections we spent generations putting in place. They are prime examples of how marketplaces often facilitate new technological developments, but not new ways of thinking, which can lead to a social regress.”
He doesn’t provide any specific examples, but his point is reasonable enough don’t you think? It’s also debatable, of course. New technologies also influence new ways of thinking right?
“The damn liberal is talking about social regress! WTF!!! Why would he waste time thinking about that? Uber management is Uber! Everything will be fine. This is obvious!”
Uber is a bad example here. But the article had a photo of people holding up signs with Uber on them so that automatically becomes the flash point of the comment on Facebook.
“The article’s addressing the Uber phenomenon, let’s get him!”
The point is he’s not really talking about Uber so much as optimizing utility in society through a well-managed, well-regulated tech industry that’s concerned about internalizing externalities and benefiting stakeholders and shareholders alike. And he’s saying that good governance has a role to play. At least that’s some of what I’m getting from what he’s saying. Am I projecting too much on this? Chuckle. Ya, we all do that, it's kind of fun to chase rabbits.
“Government you say? Governance!?"
This really bothers some people who believe that thinking such things is a nuisance and hampers a corporation’s ability to innovate and make money, by producing goods and services that we want.
"It’s great that Carly Sneed Fiorina made a lot of money, that’s what our system is all about. I don’t know about you, but I’m at Harvard Business School for the eventual golden parachute.”
But seriously folks, is there something wrong with efficient and evidence-based governmental regulation that would be an overall benefit to shareholders, customers, workers, and stakeholders alike. It may be hard for many of us to imagine this delicate interplay between communities, government, laws and private enterprises.
"But damn it, Steven, this would take a Manhattan style effort!"
“Unfortunately, technology moves quickly and legislatures move slowly. So sometimes, when technology changes, it negates the protections that have been put in place to ensure that companies do not abuse the public.”
So we start the dialogue, the give-and-take, and we sometimes have to slow down and figure things out before we take steps to optimize or improve things, or even to make markets. This process almost always involves a fight of some sort as various interests hash out what’s next.
Or we can have a Chinese-style capitalism and bulldoze the future into place. Another topic for another day.
“Most of the fundamental technologies we know today, like the Internet and GPS, have either been created by government agencies or been heavily funded by them. But the real spread of consumer technology has arisen from the private market, where companies have created countless products and services that people have used as tools for social change.”
There’s nothing new here, his comment is true, but he brings in social change again and that just rubs some people the wrong way.
“I’m an individual consumer, idiot! What the hell does social change have to do with it?”
Well, you know, he’s young, and our system to date has probably robbed a lot of “goods” from this boy’s future so his idealistic concerns might have some real foundation. Plus, don't you know that everyone is getting behind social movements these days? We're all grouped up on social media taking on a cause. It's the best way to brand these days. You've got to have an uber cause to be somebody these days. And businesses schools even have classes of social enterprises. Oh god!
I know, I’m relying on satire as a rhetorical device the same way Donald Trump uses emotional, hot button issues as a rhetorical device. You can’t imagine how many times I’ve heard people say that the Donald speaks the truth simply because he’s not politically correct. Trump sound bites have become “THE TRUTH” while the complex issues they refer to are drowned out by frustration and pure emotional reaction. Who’s going to take the time to look into the complexities surrounding the issue of immigration when it’s so darn fun just to get riled up about it. Spouting invective makes you seem tough. I don’t know about your mates, but my mates like tough guys. We may actually feel helpless, or just angry at the perceived threats immigrants pose to our countries. We might feel we need a tough guy to fix things; a Benito Trump to come in and sort everyone out. We may feel too old to shave our heads, put on our jackboots, grab a blade and a bludgeon and go out for a night of a little bit of ultra-violence against minority groups and migrants. Let the brand and his functionaries take care of it for us. And let's not forget that the best place for radical and violent social experiments are failed states.
Oops, there I go again running off on a tangent. We’re still waiting to find out what Uber has to do with our budding writer’s article.
“Cellphones were once a toy for the super-rich, but now they are available to everyone, including those in the most impoverished countries. The same thing is happening now with smartphones and access to the internet.”
Ah, ya, right - so?
“For this reason, it’s paramount that legislatures at both the state and federal level work to keep up with new developments and change the laws accordingly.”
Or update current laws? Depending on our priors of course. I mean prior assumptions about how the world works. And why not? Because it might interfere with a nascent business model that impacts hundreds of thousands of jobs across the world? Damn cartels! Damn rent seekers! Damn immigrant taxi drivers! Damn maids! Damn farm hands! Damn Irish Coppers! Damn wetback restaurant workers! Damn, damn, damn! Why don't the Syrians just stay in their own country and fight someone?
“Thankfully, technology has made it even easier to make sure that Congress stays on track. With online petitions and social media activism, it’s become significantly easier to tell lawmakers how we feel about regulations. Though these methods don’t always bring fast results, they at the least have an important effect on public opinion.”
Ya, that’s true. They now have more noise to deal with too. Public opinion - oh my. I know I’m being facetious again. I can’t help it. I’m sorry. And yet we accomplish so little with our elected officials these days. The game is an echo chamber and a rigged experience of revolving doors and vain deals. People are just bystanders. They’re not really that involved. Their civic duty has been replaced by their duty to be good consumers. Big business gets what it pays for and we get to consume their products and services to our great delight. And thanks to the global nature of business these days, things are pretty cheap in the U.S.A. And people in developing countries are flying out of poverty like jets off an aircraft carrier, like rockets to Mars.
But again, why have any regulation at all. Can’t we just let businesses get on with making money and providing us with stuff we want and cool services we can rely on? OK, let’s not go there. That’s a whole other wormhole the gravity of which would suck in an eon of back and forth bickering.
“Though it’s easy to take the technology we use every day for granted, it’s important to keep in mind what it took to get us here. For decades, the government has been helping shape the adoption and development of technology for the better. It doesn’t always make the right decisions, but it’s the best tool we have for shaping the market from a utilitarian standpoint.”
Is it now? Bloody utilitarian! Why bring government into it. For many people today, GOVERNMENT, is the boogeyman. What is American? The Constitution? The Christians? The Geology? The Resources? The Citizenry? The Culture? The Dream? The Government? All of the above?
And now we have to deal with the Chinese Dream. There goes the world order.
But seriously folks, you can’t have anything good without good government. We could be tribal, or paleo, but I doubt we really want that. The arrow points to the future and the future is empty.
America today is a reflection of a population of people who can’t trust the government they elected and who can't decide what it is they want. The government functions poorly because we’ve elected representatives that reflect the fear we have that government is all bad. It’s politically correct now to be in government and hate government so how can government improve? Oh hell, we’re in a pickle!
And there are those odd people who think getting things right is a struggle but that we're making progress.
“Internet service providers, search companies and sharing services are some of the most important businesses around. We use these services constantly. The companies that control these businesses are only doing what companies must: looking to create better products and make a profit.”
Gee, he hasn’t even mentioned Uber yet.
“If we can shape products and services just a little bit, those two things can remain unharmed, but result in a better environment for us all.”
Perhaps he’s talking about “we the people” here. But aren’t corporations people? I mean, in a legal sense. Corporations are run by people, they employ people right? Let's just say, corporate law matters and good corporate governance matters. How will the VW scandal play out? Will managers go to jail? I think our young writer is concerned about these things.
People elect the people who serve in government, and those elected people appoint people to do various jobs or functions within their office and in government, and those people hire people to work for the government, and various agencies in the government hire private contractors to do work for the government. (What is blackwater called now I wonder? Academy? Nice name, nice rebranding.) It seems like we’re talking about a whole lot of people. I hope these people are motivated by more than money, like let’s say, social goods. Let’s hope they’re trying to do the right thing.
Now I just have to insert another movie clip. Haha, do the right thing! I love this clip.
Time out! Ya'll take a chill! Ya need ta cool that shit out! And that's the double truth!
Thanks Spike, for the chill.
Oh yes, and somehow we have to trust the data. We have to learn how to discover who to trust. How do we know that she's an expert and she can be trusted? Don’t ask Joseph Stalin, or George W. Bush.
Trofim Denisovich Lysenko - Stalin's scientist.
What have you learned about bad advice?
"Bad advice tends to be simplistic. It tends to be definite, universal and certain. But, of course, that's the advice we love to hear. The best advice tends to be less certain — those researchers who say, 'I think maybe this is true in certain situations for some people.' We should avoid the kind of advice that tends to resonate the most — it's exciting, it's a breakthrough, it's going to solve your problems — and instead look at the advice that embraces complexity and uncertainty."
Click on the image of the book cover above and read the introduction at least.
"A few years ago I attended an event where the guest speaker was a Cabinet member. In conversation afterwards, the subject of long-term petroleum supplies came up. He warned that at some point, perhaps a century or so in the future, someone would put his key in his car's ignition, turn it, and nothing would happen – because there would be no gasoline.What shocked me was not his ignorance of the economics of depletable resources – if we ever run out of gasoline it will be a long, slow process of steadily rising prices, not a sudden surprise – but the astonishing conservatism of his view of the future. It was as if a similar official, 100 years earlier, had warned that by the year 2000 the streets would be so clogged with horse manure as to be impassable. I do not know what the world will be like a century hence. But it is not likely to be a place where the process of getting from here to there begins by putting a key in an ignition, turning it, and starting an internal combustion engine burning gasoline." From Future Imperfect by David D. Friedman
But what of unknown tipping points related to climate change? Could these changes be more suddent and catastrophic? We'll find out I guess.
“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make a difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t make a difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong.” – Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman in 1981
This may well apply to physics, but when you start to study people things get a lot murkier. Science is hard and it's super hard when people are the subject.
Thank you Ara Shirinian (sounds like an immigrant to me) for the wonderful adventure you've inspired. Tell me more.
“Just think about it, without government intervention, you’d probably still be waiting for this article to load on an AT&T dial-up connection. Ouch.”
It’s cute that the young man uses the word ouch at the end of a paragraph. I like to use the word, “ouch” like that too sometimes. I like Oops too.
I just don’t see what the fuss is about. I’m trying hard to imagine it and put myself in the other guy’s mind. When someone brings up the government, regulation or, oh God, government intervention (scream) some people, mostly Americans, get immediately frustrated and pissed off.
They then fire off a quick argument with exclamation points after each sentence that seem to imply that if you don’t agree you are a moron.
On Facebook one can fairly assume that most people don’t read the full article posted and when they comment they are commenting only on the title, subtitle, photo, or some hot button issue that pops out at them in highlighted text. We only have so many hours in a day and we can’t be expected to delve into everything that pops up on our screens. Even if we do consider carefully our comments we only have so much time to make them and may likely muff our statement up a bit. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We're just talking here. Most of the time it’s an emotional reaction to something that makes us comment in the first place. Few of us are disciplined enough to push the pause button and think carefully about what’s being discussed. And even with the most deftly employed emojis it's hard to get the spirit of the comment across. "Was he joking?"
We want to share our knowledge and the stuff that sticks with us when we’re reading.
I’m guilty of this too. When a simple comment bothers me I can go overboard with my replies. But honestly, I’m more interested in communication than in winning arguments. I really do want to understand another person's thinking if I can.
Many people today are excited about new Facebook buttons that will allow us to signal our disgust, anger, fear or dislike, all of which are among the primary emotions present across mammalian species, including humans.
People enjoy expressing their emotions a lot more than expressing their thoughts and ideas. Even when they think they are expressing thoughts and ideas, many times they’re only expressing their emotions. We’ll jump to an emotional reaction, slow down, think about it and then backtrack to a more thoughtful response. Or we’ll think that our background knowledge and expertise presupposes that we are correct in forcefully stating our views without any consideration towards our listeners who may not share our “priors”.
If we hate the Catholic Church we won't give a damn if some of the Pope's interests are reasonable, we'll just point out what's still wrong with the Church and express our opinion that one billion Catholics are obviously stupid. But, you know, the market is there and the TV ratings are high. The people just want to feel that they are good. They hanker for a higher power. They like that supernatural God of ancient scripture a lot more than Kyoko.
Instead of facing the causes of violence in the black community in the U.S. we only focus on letting people know we aren't racist. The causes are always much more complex than the wonderful, self-righteous feeling we get when we think we are convincing people that we are good.
"I am a nice guy, I'm a fucking nice guy - bitch!" This speaker is not politically correct i.e., he speaks the Truth.
"We have to deal with the fact that in 2015 white cops shoot black people. I'm not a racist, all black lives matter." That must feel good.
I’m not trying to be a cheeky here. I’m interested in what it is that makes perfectly rational and intelligent people unable to see things in a broader way, or to completely ignore details, or fail to work towards better resolution of an issue. We don't seem to be concerned with reality in a broad sense, instead we get stuck in silos where we only rely on our personal experience, tastes, expertise and our epistemic peers to help us form our opinions. We are afraid to venture through unfamiliar territory. And, we're always motivated to fit in.
Once opinions are formed they are often difficult to dislodge regardless of lines of evidence across domains. The latest knowledge developed through the arduous labor of experts in various silos / fields may be of little concern to people who are too distracted, too busy or too poor and ignorant to notice its impending impact on their lives. Who has the energy?
Yet, in certain cultures, in particular, the cultures of science, engineering, and technology, people continue to do amazing work even if they may not collaborate as much as they should across disciplines. Their common cause is in finding the truth in the solution to a problem or challenge.
Philosophers, artists, writers, community leaders, entrepreneurs and other creatives contribute and voice their concerns adding profoundly to our shared human experience. They shed light where there can be no light and through doing so our material tools get better and better. We need the lost poets.
Many of these people work hard not just for financial compensation but because they want to make things better for society and for the future of humanity. Dare I say, not only for their children’s benefit but for the benefit of other people’s children in future times.
Perhaps it’s too much to ask that we attempt to be more rigorous in our thinking and more adept in our communications - and, to be more thankful for the work others do on our behalf.
We all come across knee jerk reactions to things all the time, we come across what appears to be ideologically based arguments that are stubborn and intractable and we struggle to figure out how to make the conversations more productive. We're trying to figure out how to have an exchange of ideas that’s more based in evidence and a quest for truth rather than the usual, I’m afraid you appear to be coming from a different universe type of exchange.
Take a look at these two videos the subject of which is the refugee problem in Europe and the Middle East. If you can, take some time to do the math. Both videos are approaching the math in very different ways. Can you tell which one is more correct and why? Statistics and demographics are not most people’s strong suit I know. But the basic math here is not hard to figure.
Our Culture is Doomed!
European Culture Will Survive.
Now if you insert a lot of sociocultural issues into the conversation, values and the like, things become orders of magnitude more complex and moving towards a compromise or agreement becomes significantly harder.
If you fear refugees and dislike Muslims then the first video is the one you believe. Can you spot the biases? People will believe what they want to believe based on their individual propensities. This is why rational people disagree all the time.
There are no easy answers. Yelling at a situation will not make it go away. Emotional reactions are useful rhetorical devices that can be easily deployed. Sometimes righteous anger is intellectually honest and justified. At best issues in our world can become clear through the analysis of good information, at worst issues are misinterpreted and misunderstood leading to a kind of paralysis and decay. When we don't understand the underlying facts and reality of a situation decay can morph into war. Upsetting the balance is a great human pastime.
Emotion is needed for good cognition. More on that below. What we’re really trying to avoid is the old “Cool Hand Luke” classic retort, “what we have here is a failure to communicate”.
Before moving on let’s consider some points that may help improve our communication:
- It’s a good idea to get into the habit of questioning one’s assumptions.
- When addressing an issue, address the core points of the issue and leave the sidebar, hot-button issues aside, or as a point to bolster your core position later.
- We don’t always have to state our positions with exclamatory speech or with exclamations after each point. Even if we think we are absolutely right and justified to do so. It makes people defensive, shuts down their desire to listen, and makes the speaker look a bit like a, well, you know. It’s also a bit of a red flag. If you have to yell at me to make your point maybe you’re not the person I should be talking to. This has nothing to do with political correctness and has everything to do with good communication. Sometimes we all get impatient and use exclamatory speech, but we should try to avoid it if we can.
- If you trust someone, even a little bit, try to really listen to her points and if you don’t understand them ask for clarification, references or examples.
- Try to drill down into other points of view before telling someone that they are stupid. We have silos inside silos inside more silos and those who can drill through the silos of experience, knowledge, expertise and context may find themselves with an original or particularly useful point to make. We don’t have to think outside the box - just expand the box.
- Try to be epistemically humble. If you are not willing to attempt to update your point of view, then you need good reasons for not wanting to.
- You don’t have to win the argument. Focus on communication and try to develop understanding. Later, you can try again to nudge your friend into expanding the box or drilling through to another silo of understanding.
Thinking about this today brought to mind reading that can greatly illuminate aspects of these kinds of inquiries. I first became truly interested Bayesian stuff when I read Nassim Taleb's, "The Black Swan" in 2007. Before that, I had a cursory interest in problems of randomness, probability, and uncertainty.
Now let work begin.
Start here, listen to this podcast and if you are particularly energetic read the transcript. I think reading the transcript first is better because it makes understanding the conversation that much easier. You can also check any references.
Rationally Speaking Podcast, RS143 - Scott Aaronson on "The theorem that proves rationalists can't disagree"
I believe strongly that it’s well worth your time to delve into these subjects. What we should strive for is a better understanding of reality and we should try to learn how to help other people achieve the same thing.
Here are more things of interest:
What makes a belief an epistemically justified belief?
by Peter Gibson
Aumann’s Theorem a theorem in interactive epistemology. Do the rules of rationality allow for people to agree to disagree?
Reading the major economists of our day will help you understand “rent seeking”. They can also give you insights into what is meant by externalities. I mentioned internalizing externalities. This relates also to corporate ethics or business ethics. I’m thinking of: Garry Becker; Francis Fukuyama; Daniel Kahneman; Robert Lucas Jr.; Elinor Ostrom; Joseph Stiglitz; Nassim Taleb; Thomas Piketty and others. Economics is a broad subject and should never be thought of as done and dusted. Economic policy and philosophy are still active and important pursuits - muddy as they may seem to most of us.
The real reason why most countries keep Uber out
“The real reason for the aversion to Uber by ministers and mayors alike, I contend, lies in the risk of a permanent loss of government control over large swaths of public policy realms.
“The government will no longer have a say over passenger safety, pricing, taxation and quality of service.”
Google “breaking up the cartel”. There are lots of cartels people want to see broken up. It’s all over the place.
Uber: Breaking New York’s Taxi Cartel
Bad Connections: breaking up telecom cartels. Ya, from 2012, so what?
Breaking Up the College Cartel: “Dangerous” or Necessary? Andrew Kelly, FORBES
“Conservative reformers (myself included) have identified the accreditation process as a barrier to entry that limits the kind of innovation and competition that can curb tuition costs and give rise to more flexible options.”
All of these issues are very interesting. In the real world, we rarely find absolute agreement on anything despite how rational we are, our expertise, our shared experiences and background knowledge.
Decisions Are Emotional, not Logical: The Neuroscience behind Decision Making.
“Think of a situation where you had bulletproof facts, reason, and logic on your side, and believed there was absolutely no way the other person could say no to your perfectly constructed argument and proposal. To do so would be impossible, you figured because there was no other logical solution or answer.
And then the other person dug in his heels and refused to budge. He wasn’t swayed by your logic. Were you flabbergasted?”
Trying hard to converge to the truth - the martingale property (probability theory).
Bayesian inference
This page from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a must! Learn about Bayesian Epistemology, Bayesian Probability Laws and so on. We can start to understand why we are at odds with each other most of the time even though we are all living in the same world with similar information and “priors”. http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=Bayesian
Face-to-Face Bayesian conversations
Detection of Social Roles in Conversations using Dynamic Bayesian Networks
Are Disagreements Honest?
Robin Hanson Overcoming Bias Blog
Agricultural workers and Taxi Drivers are no longer born in the USA. I wonder why? A cultural take.
NYC TAXICAB FACT BOOK
Taxi. Season 3, episode 7, "The Call of the Mild"
LINKS
Decisions Are Emotional, not Logical: The Neuroscience behind Decision Making
Martingale (probability theory)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(probability_theory)
Are Disagreements Honest?
Tyler Cowen
Robin Hanson*
http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/deceive.pdf
http://www.overcomingbias.com/
What makes a belief an epistemically justified belief?
http://www.philosophyideas.com/files/papers/Justified%20belief.pdf
Jonathan Haidt: <iframe src="https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html" width="854" height="480" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
Liberals vs. Conservatives S
http://www.moralfoundations.org/
http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/author.html
Antonio Damasio When Emotions Make Better Decisions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wup_K2WN0I
Scott Aaronson on “The theorem that proves rationalists can’t disagree”
THE TAXI BUSINESS
American Born Cabbies: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/nyregion/american-born-cabbies-a-vanishing-breed-in-city.html?_r=0
NYC Gov on Taxi’s THE DREADED CARTEL and the evil RENT SEEKERS: http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/2014_taxicab_fact_book.pdf
THOMAS GRIER Uber: Breaking New York’s Taxi Cartel
Attorney, The Law Office of Thomas Grier
http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/28/uber-breaking-new-yorks-taxi-cartel/
The real reason why most countries keep Uber out
http://www.ejinsight.com/20150727-the-real-reason-why-most-countries-keep-uber-out/
2015 Documentary Film Recommendations
This is a short list of some of the documentaries we love so far in 2015. All of these films have been reviewed already elsewhere. The trailers speak for themselves. These are laudable productions dealing with real stories that have a tremendous cultural impact.
We love documentary films!
Listen to Me Marlon
“An Open Secret” be careful what you dream of...
“A Poem Is A Naked Person”
With Wenders at an event in Tokyo 2006
(T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation. Directors: Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe www.terrordocumentary.org facebook.com/TERRORdocumentary @TERRORDoc (T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation.
HBO documentary "Thought Crimes" The case of the cannibal cop. I DO NOT OWN THE RIGHTS TO THIS VIDEO
Subscribe to TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/sxaw6h Subscribe to COMING SOON: http://bit.ly/H2vZUn Subscribe to INDIE & FILM FESTIVALS: http://bit.ly/1wbkfYg Like us on FACEBOOK: http://goo.gl/dHs73 Follow us on TWITTER: http://bit.ly/1ghOWmt Iris Official Trailer 1 (2015) - Iris Apfel Documentary HD IRIS pairs legendary 87-year-old documentarian Albert Maysles with Iris Apfel, the quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed 93-year-old style maven who has had an outsized presence on the New York fashion scene for decades.
Watch some of these films and let us know what you think. Are you planning to make a documentary? If you have any recommendations let us know. Enjoy!
On "Parrots" mostly, and Mature Experts
Above is a grayscale gradient line. I’d like to use this to illustrate a continuum from parrot to mature expert. I'll be talking mostly about parrots because I am not an expert.
Definition:
Mature Expert (very far right of the continuum in almost pure white)
A mature expert not only has a great deal of knowledge and skills in a particular area, they are experts in other domains as well. They tend to dabble in as many domains of knowledge as they have the time or inclination for. Crucially, they are also wise, mature and considerate members of society who care deeply about things. Mature experts like to share their expertise in order to improve things.
In the dark and light gray areas of the gradient, we have various populations of "Parrots". Parrots are people who may or may not be highly intelligent; they may or may not be attractive; they may or may not be very good people; they may or may not be well liked; they may or may not be industrious; they may possess many positive qualities or many negative qualities or any mix thereof; they may have expertise in certain things, but they are not mature experts.
There are many types of parrots along the gradient; where and how one kind evolves into another no one knows. We can only express what kind of parrot a parrot is by virtue of our experience with and observation of a given parrot’s various aspects and behaviors. One could invent a virtual Darwin’s Beagle and spend a lifetime exploring the phenotypes of parrots. And, of course, parrots mostly attend to other parrots although some parrots are more attentive to experts.
The most important and deceptive aspect of parrots is how numerous they are compared to the population of mature experts.
(Where this blogger lies on the gradient must be determined by those who are interested.)
Many parrots alight upon the gradient and never even know they are stuck at a given point. Others may move back and forth on a narrow band of gradient oscillating in a quivering of musical illusion. For some, the motion of existence all around them will give them the illusion that they are changing while it is, in fact, only the world that is changing; the parrot’s socially and experientially inspired thoughts will only appear to change as a mere reflection of what’s happening around them.
We all start off as parrots. For a lucky few being a parrot is a journey that ends in being a mature expert.
Most parrots are intelligent people who are capable of learning, remembering facts, fixing problems and growing but are held back for many reasons from achieving any kind of maturity, wisdom or expertise across domains.
The truly talented parrots will desperately want to be seen as experts. These amazing parrots can perform many interesting tricks. They are often talented presenters, storytellers, and entertainers while not limited to those skills. They make good salesmen. They can be well read. They also often find delight in training other parrots. They are the leaders of parrots. Unfortunately, they are mostly incapable of original thought or creativity. They mistake their ability to understand something, their memory, and their presentation skills as a profound kind of expertise. But sadly, it is only the shallow expertise of a parrot. These kinds of parrots voraciously crave attention. The psychology of these kinds of parrots is truly complex. They can be annoying, they can be jerks, bores, nerds, idiots and morons, but they’re generally harmless unless they get unwarranted attention from a niche audience or consumer base. When this happens their lack of expertise and maturity makes them vulnerable to sharing shallow or inaccurate information with their fans. Mature experts often find that dealing with truly talented parrots is a frustrating and never ending challenge. It is hard for mature experts to correct a talented parrot’s misinformation without sounding like a jerk.
A parrot in the black area of the spectrum will be entrenched, dogmatic, bigoted, almost violently adverse to change. They feel that they are always right and can always find information to support their positions. Any evidence that might contradict their position will be ignored or rationalized away. They are less considerate, less cooperative, less compassionate, less intelligent, less inspired; diminished in almost every way of measuring a human personality. But, they are not irrational. Although they are relatively few in number they represent a very real kind of social pathology. However, they are mostly easy to dismiss and to deal with. They are far too brittle to be a real threat. They lack the ability to evolve into a social pathogen capable of infecting anyone but their own kind. They are an inert cluster, a remnant of a more dormant evolutionary past.
I don't have time to go into the more dangerous types of parrots, the ones we are familiar with from our history, we can leave that to the polemics of mature and wise experts. I will say however that the most dangerous types we are likely to encounter are the ones most desperate to be liked.
Most of us parrots fall along the middle to right side of the gradient. Unfortunately few of us become experts and when we do we are experts in only a narrow area of a single domain. An expert guitar player, tennis player, engineer or chemist may or may not feel like a parrot when confronting other areas of expertise. This is best described by the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Dunning-Kruger effect
Parrots toward the lighter shades of the gradient will be aware of this and probably characterize themselves as having expertise in something and being pretty ignorant of everything else. Often this is an exaggeration of either their expertise or ignorance. But it is well known that as one gains a degree of maturity and expertise in more than one domain one becomes aware of one’s lack of knowledge. We often hear people saying, “The more I know the more I know I don't know.”
If we wish to move towards a more evidence-based culture where we learn how to trust experts while developing solutions to problems we will need to become more humble parrots. What can we do to become more humble parrots? How can we help others become more humble parrots?
The Tools of an Evidence-Based Culture: Implementing Clinical-Practice Guidelines in an Israeli HMO
We can only hope that as people become more knowledgeable, more mature and wiser they'll tend to move further along the right-hand side towards the light. As they move into the lighter areas of the gradient they'll have more opportunities to be humbled. Any chance to fall is a chance to get back up and we hope we can learn from our mistakes, failures, and even our misconceptions.
I would like to be able to show you evidence of how this is happening, but unfortunately I am not the brightest parrot. I would need more time. I'll keep trying to sweep away my delusions and mature, but it will be hard work and I know I still might fail. Luckily, for those of us who want to become better parrots failure is a good thing.
One thing I seem to know intuitively is that a parrot who’s conscious of needing to be humble in the face of expertise and who desires to become a wiser parrot can often grow and eventually achieve the nature of a humble, more mature parrot. Humble and wise parrots are generally good mentors for other parrots who may be more challenged and less able to progress.
Parrots who can’t be humble are fakers and must be avoided! Trust me on this at least.
Bertrand Russell: He may not be the most humble of men but he was a true and mature expert.
"A bad teacher will aim at imposing his opinion, and turning out a set of pupils all of whom will give the same definite answer on a doubtful point. Mr. Bernard Shaw is said to hold that Troilus and Cressida is the best of Shakespeare's plays. Although I disagree with this opinion, I should welcome it in a pupil as a sign of individuality; but most teachers would not tolerate such a heterodox view. Not only teachers, but all commonplace persons in authority, desire in their subordinates that kind of uniformity which makes their actions easily predictable and never inconvenient. The result is that they crush initiative and individuality when they can, and when they cannot, they quarrel with it."
It's Time To Review Your Political Philosophy And Old Books.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (painted portrait)
The US presidential campaign is in full swing, like a punch drunk boxer on steroids that only special interests can afford. There are many important issues on the agenda, issues we'll probably overlook until the eleventh hour. But, hopefully, we all know what they are and will be telling all the interested parties to pay attention to us - we the people.
I have one recommendation today that I think would benefit anyone anywhere in the world. We all think we come from great places, but to really understand the gravity of its greatness one needs to know where the ideas came from that made our great place possible. To that end, I'd like to direct your attention to a wonderful, free series of lectures given by Yale political science Professor Steven B. Smith: Introduction to Political Philosophy.
Only a fortunate few can attend Yale, but thanks to iTunes U and Yale we can benefit from some great courses that I feel are fundamental in shaping our understanding of our world.
We can start by autiting his last lecture: In Defence of Politics. If you love this simply download the rest of the lectures in the series from iTunes U and enjoy. You'll be better off for it and better able to recognize the true value of politics in America and the rest of the world even as everything seems to be more and more distorted by spectacle and money.
Read it here:
National Affairs
In Defence of Politics
Steve Smith
Now get out there and crack open those old books. It's never too late!
What Rape Gets You
We almost always react to problems. We identify them and move to mitigate them, fix them or destroy them. Sometimes we’re mystified by problems; we just can’t understand how this particular problem could have arisen. Many times we ignore problems. We might find them inconvenient, or we might simply wish that they would go away because the thought of what we might have to do to make them go away is too difficult to maintain for more than a few seconds. Mutually Assured Destruction comes to mind. Climate Change comes to mind.
There may be a cluster of pernicious problems that when taken altogether seem impossible to deal with. We may even think these problems through and realize that if we were to implement solutions that would solve our problems we’d have to change our world so radically that it would seem like we were living in a parallel universe.
And most of us are used to things as they are. We're comfortable enough with our world. We only know our world. So what's the problem? But perhaps we don't know our world well enough to notice we have a problem.
Some problems explode in our face, seemingly coming from nowhere. “What honey? But just yesterday you were telling me how much you loved me. What happened?” Or, "WOW - that chemical plant in just blew up!"
So what's the problem? We need those cheap chemicals for all our cheap stuff. In the US, it's illegal to build a plant like the one in Tianjin within city limits. Some kinds of plants can't even operate in the US anymore because they are too dirty or too dangerous so we simply move them to other countries where they don't have restrictive regulations and are friendly towards our business pursuits. These countries produce our chemicals and refine raw materials for us so we can have them shipped back to the US as needed for added value manufacturing. This is why we need trade deals. We like things this way because our stuff is cheaper, we're out of danger, and executives can get great salaries for their ingenious solutions to circumventing regulatory problems, taxes, etc. Politicians can bask in the spotlight, lobbyists can get paid and we can enjoy a nice standard of living.
Other problems incubate and grow silently in the shadows, they fester and spread like cancer until the whole system is damaged beyond repair. The cost of these kinds of problems is enormous. Think of corporate and bank bailouts; think Greece; think of healthcare; think civil war; think world war; think terrorism.
Then there are the problems that we don't even notice because they are part and parcel of who we are. Like a bad habit one’s had for so long it seems like a good thing. It’s not even that we rationalize bad behavior or a fragile system in order to maintain the status quo. It’s just who we are. When a cultural anthropologist enters the village of a tribe of cannibals she doesn't look at the behavior of eating other human beings as a problem - it’s just their culture. If she finds out later that the behavior is causing some malady as a byproduct, she’ll investigate and perhaps even intervene and attempt to enlighten the tribe as to the cause of the disease. She'll try to explain that the cure is nothing more complex and difficult than changing a core aspect of their culture. Will she be met with violent resistance or hailed as a hero?
Rape is a problem. For most cultures, since long ago, rape has been viewed as more than a problem; it’s been seen as a horrific, evil crime, a crime that, at its core, is about exerting power over helpless victims. Some rapists can be very clever, they can use drugs to weaken their victim’s will to resist, they can employ subtle forms of intimidation and let the fear that inspires do the softening up, or they can use information and propaganda to convince their victims that they are not actually being violated. Bill Cosby comes to mind. Trade sanctions come to mind. Foreign sanctioned and supported death squads come to mind.
The Death Squad Dilemma
Cuba Trade Embargo Click on the image for more information.
There is a grand and tragic literature across domains about rape - its causes and its consequences. Mostly we refer to rape as a crime committed by one person against another. But what of the many other forms of rape. The kind of rape that one country or empire commits against another. The most convenient example would be The Rape of Nanking during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The mass murder of civilians took place from December 13, 1937, through January 1938. The Japanese military attacked Nanking and raped, murdered and pillaged systematically for weeks. This is, of course, nothing new. During this particular conflict, however, it was so systematic that it's impossible for some historians to stomach the coverup of Emperor Hirohito's crimes against humanity. MacArthur, like other vain leaders, will save a criminal for convenience. To attempt to compile a comprehensive list of these kinds of incidents throughout world history would be exhausting and depressing. I’m extremely thankful that I avoided having to be involved in such State actions of violent rape during my lifetime. I've only avoided such a fate through the lottery of birth. Lucky me.
It seems no country, or culture is innocent.
There is, however, an even worse kind of rape if you can imagine that. The rape motivated by power and greed that seems so much a part of our institutionalized nature that we'd have to be a different species to transcend it. I’m not being metaphorical here. Before we go on let’s take a peek at the common definition of rape. When we use the word rape in a broader sense it's not simply hyperbolic metaphor.
Rape
noun
1.
unlawful sexual intercourse or any other sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, with or without force, by a sex organ, other body part, or foreign object, without the consent of the victim.
2.
statutory rape.
3.
an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation:
the rape of the countryside.
4.
Archaic. the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
verb (used with object), raped, raping.
5.
to commit the crime of rape on (a person).
6.
to plunder (a place); despoil:
The logging operation raped a wide tract of forest without regard for the environmental impact of their harvesting practices.
7.
to seize, take, or carry off by force.
This is the entry is from dictionary.feference.com and it’s plain that what we're talking about is a well-worn path.
READ THIS WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE ABOUT RAPE
We don't have to share any other references to make what we're talking about clearer. Empires have been raping countries and nature for thousands of years. The violence of our violations of human dignity and our ecosystem have been ramping up to enormous proportions since the industrial revolution and continue today unabated.
When we see boatloads, and truckloads of migrants crossing borders all over the world we need to pause for a long hard look at what’s causing this sudden increase in refugees, migrants, and illegal aliens. We also need to remember that it's nothing new. The migration issue exploded in the 19th century along with industry, technology and amazing new means of travel.
When we rape and pillage, when we destroy fine cultures just for profit, we create problems. People in Africa are thinking, where did our culture go? Where did our natural resources go? In what pockets did the booty fall. Why are we in debt? Why is our world on fire? Who started this? What empire is responsible? We don't know, but the Dutch, the British, the Belgians, the Germans, the Italians, the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans seem to have profited nicely from the use of our resources, our markets and our people. Our world is violated beyond repair. We've been raped for decades. Things are better in the empire's homeland. They've made good use of us. We have no choice not but to go there and try to survive. Of course, a rapist will never appreciate his victim or feel compassion. His desire is simply to rape and to have power over his victim. A victim of rape feels worthless, a victim of rape feels that he has nothing to lose - in some ways he's already dead so risking his life to extend his life seems normal. Going on is simply the instinct to survive.
The truth is that the causes of these problems have created an everlasting wound that spurts a fountain of blood from our global socioeconomic system. A culture of greed feeds on the weak and the vulnerable. Indeed globalization has empowered these problems to an amazing degree. And now that we belong to a global culture we need to stop the bleeding and heal the wounds.
When Trump and others like him talk about bringing plants back to the USA, and bringing jobs back to the USA, he’s lying to us. He doesn’t have any solutions. He's just telling us what we need to hear. He couldn’t possibly have any solutions because he is a paragon of the system that’s causing the problems he’s professing to be able to fix. Think carefully when politicians speak. They are more often than not telling you what you want to hear so they can get on with their business.
There are libraries full of books and petabytes of data on the Web focused on the causes of the problems we're speaking of. Many economists, historians, psychologists, social scientists, business leaders, engineers and artists have already produced a museum of information and exhibits on the subject of how our system works. We have all the information we need. It’s all there. We just have to be able to see the patterns and interpret them correctly. Then we might realize that we need some new and radical ideas if we're going to ever be able to live "the good life".
The current socioeconomic, political, cultural global system is untenable. It’s not sustainable. It can't last. It has been and still is a perpetual act of violent rape. It doesn't matter how comfortable, entertained, or busy we are - that's a fact. We only seem to notice rape when the power mad violence happens to us, or someone we love, or to a system we've learned to revere. Ignoring this tragic state of affairs won't make it go away.
When empires rape cultures and the natural environment with impunity for power, money and prestige there are always consequences. The western powers created Iraq, raped Iraq and now Donald Trump says that Iraq doesn’t exist. Shock and awe begets shock and awe. The almighty Super Power triumphs in one moment only to see that nothing has changed. Iraq still doesn't have its Disneyland, it only has its civil war.
We now have another empire movement in Iraq and elsewhere, ISIS, a State that Rukmini Callimachi of the New York Times says, enshrines a theology of rape. A given sect can display good or bad behaviors. We usually know intuitively when something isn't right. In our liberal tradition of tolerance we want to protect believers, we want to protect people's right to do as they wish - until it's too late. It's hard to predict the unintended consequences of our passions. At the end of the day, we still have one State raping another because it can and because it thinks it has the power to remake the world in its image. Nation building is part of that ignoble tradition. There will be no Disneyland in the Islamic State. Whatever they have there when the end comes, and it will, will probably not be the kind of alternative way of life we've been talking about here.
When the US went to Vietnam and facilitated the bombing of Laos and the My Lai massacre it was a powerful State raping the hell out of a much weaker State with impunity. It doesn't matter how we rationalize the need to do such evil, it's still evil. We do this over and over again, sometimes raping and killing for over a decade until we decide to stop. We then pull out, no pun intended and go our merry way as if to say, "enough now, we've made enough out of this conflagration." We do it because we have the resources and the will and many times we do it to defend an ideology that itself is imperfect. Over ten years we've been paying for wars in the Middle East and absolutely nothing has changed for the better. We still don't understand each other. The conflicts multiply and rage out of control. Anyone who calls that a win is either insane or dishonest.
Your can of Coke is a product of rape. My computer is a product of rape. The corn by-products in almost every product on the shelves in your local grocery store are the products of rape. Most of us remain unaware of the trade-offs and the impacts of our consumer culture. It seems we can all live these impacts - until we can’t.
Photos of smelting plants in the UAE and such. Just move the plants where they can operate efficiently and their people will be killed if there is an accident.
The evidence is out there. It’s right there in your face. You can look at it if you want to and do something about it or you can look the other way like an entitled, spoiled, frat boy who clicks a pic of a rape in progress and goes to the other room for a shooter before plopping down on the couch to play a computer game, and do a bong hit with a line of coke.
Kill the market and you kill the problem. It sounds scary doesn't it. It is scary, it means we'll all have to make sacrifices. We fear losing something way more than we fear getting something, even if that new thing is potentially a much better system.
We'd kill our neighbor on boxing day to get a deal on a pair of running shoes. We’d kill flipper for a tuna sandwich. We've heard this kind of thing for decades and yet we just keep plugging along.
I know, I've upset you. I'm sorry about that. I'm upset too. I don't know how we can change this, but it’s the 21st century and we're still staring down intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons; we're still watching our world coming to a boil because of our addiction to consumerism and cheap energy. We're still raping other countries and nature for the raw materials we need for our orgy of consumption.
Consumption
noun
1.
the act of consuming, as by use, decay, or destruction.
2.
the amount consumed:
the high consumption of gasoline.
3.
Economics. the using up of goods and services having an exchangeable value.
4.
Pathology.
Older Use. tuberculosis of the lungs.
progressive wasting of the body.
I'm not aware of any leader who’s really facing the problem square on and trying to find solutions. The US election is nothing but entertainment. It's big business in every way. It’s another diversion to keep us from having to feel guilty. We can simply blame everything on someone else or some other country or culture. We know what cake is for, it's for eating, not having.
We could go on ad nauseam relating events of rabid rape throughout history, and it wouldn't change the institutionalized behaviors responsible for its never ending eruption. We read Flipboard or watch TV news. We know what's happening, and until we can admit we have a problem we'll just keep plugging away. We'll keep on plugging away until things become too painful and horrific to bear. What a sad state of affairs. Like plugging away abusing your body until your heart explodes and hoping that high-tech medicine will fix it for you. If you have the price for it of course.
We need real change my friends, or civilization as we know it will come to an end. The technologists, the scientists, the philosophers, the billionaire philanthropists and even God himself are not going to cut the right wire as the last second ticks down to the ultimate catastrophe. We are simply going to have to save ourselves. We need a rigorous, evidence-based culture before the above forces can unite and help us develop a better way forward.
In an era where every little fellow, people like me, can run their own show, amidst the pathology of that, the overload, the vanity, it’s hard to imagine all of the sensible movements of our world coming together to organize a peaceful revolution that can save us. But that's precisely what it’s going to take. If we don’t come together, help each other and cooperate with one another, our children die. Or, at best live vastly impoverished lives compared to us. Then again, maybe the Paleo Lifestyle is the moral high ground of our ultimate fate.
"But we're going to terraform Mars" I hear someone saying. Even if we could and we injected humanity onto that new Eden, we would still be a potential deadly disease infecting our creation with our toxic hubris. It may not end well even if we were able to upload our avaricious consciousness into a super cool machine. We'd just have a super sick, super intelligent machine wreaking havoc on the universe. Dystopian thoughts indeed. We need to fix our cage. We need to live well to be well and that's a tall order. Traditions have been trying various formulas for that since the dawn of civilization.
Oh, you don’t think so? It’s not rape! It’s progress you say? It’s just human nature? Okay, well there you have it. As a friend keeps telling me, “There is nothing you, me or anyone else in this world can do to change things. You just have to keep plugging away.”
If sensible, evidence based, movements don't come together as a force of good with new ideas that can inspire us to develop and run new institutions that can manage our global resources in a more sustainable way; if we continue to muddy the waters of our consciousness in this information-age; if we can't nurture the better angels of our nature and learn to love each other and our environment then the rapist in all of us all will triumph and we’ll deserve the dire consequences of our actions and our inaction.
Go in peace, but get off that couch.
Style Over Substance - again.
These clowns are going to inspire the world to do what it takes to improve our world, or not.
What are candidates and politicians talking about? What issues are important to them? I can't help but share this with you as an example of what's vexing me. Watch it and concentrate on how the conversation makes you feel. I won't comment.
It was the type of shout-fest debate that would not have been out of place in the original Crossfire. But instead of taking place on the reboot of that show, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) went head-to-head on CNN's The Situation Room Monday afternoon.
The word most said during the debates? "America", the big winner by far, but jobs was a close runner-up. I can't help but think of Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles every presidential election cycle, and I am old enough to have seen US presidential races since this movie came out in 1974. Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs - sign something - jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs...
Donald Trump's favorite words: "me and "I'm" followed by invective meant to show us all how bad things are. It's true, some things are really bad, but a lot of things are really good. Big business in American's doing pretty good. I can't understand why Donald Trump is complaining, and yet there's no call to arms greater than when a billionaire tells you that everything has gone to hell and he alone can fix it.
this may be the last first family we have in the united states.
Trump: "They like me." "I'm a great guy." "I'm ahead in all the polls." "Women like me, I love women." "They're beating us because we're stupid!" "They're not being very nice to me." "They're being unfair..." #GOPClownCar
Trump drones on about Detroit in the most superficial way. And yet, he's the one candidate (Wharton Business School, and all) who should understand labor arbitrage. "They build plants in Mexico..." Of course they do Donald, it's cheaper to make parts for automobile brakes in Mexico or China. Those components must be made cheaper because Americans like cheap things. We don't like paying the true value of anything. Also, the Ford Motor Company has to manufacture abroad to please its board of directors and ensure that its CEO has a competitive pay package. You can't do that if you make brake parts in Detroit. He knows this right? And yet, he's simply saying that we're being victimized by the Mexicans and the Mexican Government. China is beating us. Ya, China is beating us because we like our things cheap. I worked in China during the first wave when money and technology transfer from the U.S. was flowing into China like the Colorado river used to flow into the Sea of Cortez.
Who was Donald Trump in 1983?
Andy Warhol and donald trump in 1983 with a race horse. i can't get off of a horse race theme here. america loves a winner.
THE EMPIRE AND EGO OF DONALD TRUMP
How about we bet on when, or if ever the term: extractive industries, is used in this campaign. Would you bet that only one candidate mentions extractive industries? Who might that be? Quiz.
Toxic mine water accidentally released by EPA in Colorado river flows south
Gold mine's toxic plume extends to Utah
Let's refrain from talking about this stuff folks, these kinds of issues are complex and a lot of political donors would be pissed off if you started flogging this pony.
Instead, let's go back to the horse race and see what we're concerned about now.
The First GOP Presidential Debate By The Numbers NPR
Those are some telling numbers, folks.
Now let's go back to words and phrases.
Here's one GOP debate group's attempt at answering a question in just two words. I know, it's hard. Much has been written.
The sky is falling! But are we going to focus on why the sky is falling and what each and every one of us has to do to stop the worst from happening?
How much is sea level rising?
Global Warming & Climate Change Myths
NASA Images of Change: http://climate.nasa.gov/state_of_flux#Beijing2000-2009_930px_73.jpg
Should we call it "fear mongering" when we go on and on about a real problem that we're creating and that we can fix? Especially when the problem poses a real existential risk to humanity.
of Course, their parents pick the peaches.
Do rapists and murderers pick our produce, take care of our children or clean and maintain our offices and homes?
Billy: "come on Georgia's finest, tell me, do you all want to work at Starbucks, be a hedge fund manager or pick lettuce?" Hell no! You all want to sell cocaine to bankers and real estate investors. but Where are we going to get our supply from? Who's gonna pick it and process it? Well, We outsource that kind of work to countries in Latin America. It's cheaper. Can you imagine how much a gram would cost if we manufactured that stuff up here? Where would we get the labor? since that article in freakonomics came out we can't even find street distributors for our product, they've all gone off to work at MacDonalds.
Do we remember the Iran Contra scandal? I'm just asking.
Are you Irish American, Polish American, or Italian American? Mmmm Yes, I know, give them a way to come legally. So tell me Mr. or Ms. candidate, how are you going to do that? I'm just asking. Latin American governments have been making mincemeat out of us since 1983! Why? Why? I'm just asking and what the f__ck are you going to do about it! It resonates, it has always resonated.
Scarface movie clips: http://j.mp/1L688ql BUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/vsYGQw Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Immigration officers probe Tony's (Al Pacino) criminal past. FILM DESCRIPTION: Al Pacino stars as Tony Montana, an exiled Cuban criminal who goes to work for Miami drug lord Robert Loggia.
Shoot! I messed up, this immigrant thing's been going on since the 19th century!
Gangs of New York movie clips: http://j.mp/1CS5deH BUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/sgtauV Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: The ploy of American immigration during the Civil War is augmented in this single take showcasing the disturbing circle of an Irish immigrant seeking a better life in America.
The fact remains, Obama and Hillary have been working in government for a long time and we're all still here. Immigration is still an issue. But to hear the GOP hopefuls talk one would imagine that the movie theater is burning and all the exits are locked. It's like when you read about all the toxic chemicals that go into making a simple t-shirt and you think, it must be a dose thing because I've been wearing t-shirts my whole life and I'm still here. How many t-shirts do I need to put on and how long do I have to wear them before I get cancer or some other incurable disease? I have a feeling that these candidates, the so-called "Kid's Table" GOP hopefuls were born already OD'd on anyone not in the GOP. (I recall a friend telling me never to use the term "social normative pressure" again if I wanted to have any friends.) It's positively scary when they talk isn't it. And Governor Jindal said the word "socialist" and FOX didn't even beep it out. I'll bet that added to the dose of horror the audience received listening to the debate. How much of this can we take before we all get lupus disease? I'm having a heavy immune reaction to this election race already and it's just started.
This is going to seem weird, but when I think about how people on Fox News react to the word socialism it always reminds me of this scene in The Water Boy.
The Waterboy. She showed me her boobies! Nuff said.
Debate? More like a chance for candidates to practice their sound bites and for FOX to improve their ratings with a bonafide TV star at center stage.
I'm guessing it's not hard to overdose on the toxic ideologically normative B.S. of this group of presidential hopefuls. If not you must have that special gene in you. Listen to what they talk about. Trump talked more than any other candidate and he mostly talked about himself. Fiorina was righteously fired up attacking everyone. We should all be super angry to be Americans after listening to this rhetoric. Where are the sophists when you need them?
TV news coverage of the race focuses mostly on:
- Words of shock, awe, and comfort
- Words that make us feel good and powerful - that we can be great again
- Self-congratulatory words and words reflecting our pride and vanity
- America
- Jobs
- Border
- Security
- Wall
- Competitiveness
- Death, people dying, being killed, murder, war
- Derogatory words aimed at opponents
- Straw man after straw man
- Fear mongering words
Most of the pundits, anchors and interviewers talk about a candidate's superficial qualities: charm; confidence; looks, energy, likability, toughness, smartness, and so on. In a year from now the chatter will be more substantive but it will still seem like we're in the movie, Groundhog Day. I guess it takes a lot of trial and error and plain old time to get things right.
We'll wait another 9 months before we even get close to important issues. I worry that by then the issues we'll be fixated on won't be the right ones.
After hours of commenting on how the candidates look we get to listen to five minutes of something a little more exciting: the horse race. John King or someone else on another channel or show will talk about the polls: "So and so is up 12% in some poll, but he might fall below so and so later. So and so is up 2% here and down 6% there." Who's ahead? Who's going to win? Place your bets. I'd rather go to Happy Valley, watch a real horse race and win or lose a little paper money. The political horse race in the U.S. will last longer and be more expensive than any other political horse race in the world.
I'll stop now. So much has already been said. As usual. I just want to recommend that you read this piece from Rolling Stone magazine. It's a fun read.
Inside the GOP Clown Car
On the campaign trail in Iowa, Donald Trump's antics have forced the other candidates to get crazy or go home
By Matt Taibbi August 12, 2015
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-gop-clown-car-20150812#ixzz3ifReJm69
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
And allow me to present you with some more hilarious irony. Larry King on RT. Yes, that's, Russia Today. We have more reasons to love America: Freedom to say what you want and the freedom to do business in America even if you are a Russian television company. It's not like we don't have our foxy propaganda on cable new networks spreading across the world like a fast-moving plague.
Self-proclaimed revolutionaries & co-hosts of "Watching the Hawks," Tyrel Ventura, Sean Stone & Tabetha Wallace join Larry with an inside look of their new program. Then the comedic cast of "Redacted Tonight," on delivering news with a punch.
Enjoy the race!
Biblical Christianity vs. Secular Humanism: A war?
Should we refrain from sharing our beliefs because our beliefs might frighten or insult our listeners? We don't think so. We believe freedom of speech is an essential right in a free, democratic society. When one hears something they don't agree with are they victimized? We don't think so. However, we are aware of places in the world where blasphemy is punishable by death. We're also aware that many a feud and duel was motivated by mere words. Even in the 21st century there are places where honor killings are still taking place. When we talk with our Christian brothers and sisters they are happy to point out that their church would never do something like that. In some Christian communities, the worst thing that can happen to someone violating their beliefs is shunning. In other, more fanatical communities bombing an abortion clinic might be condoned.
Subtle differences in beliefs can have major impacts on communities. When it comes to matters of religious doctrine and beliefs we feel it's often very difficult to tease apart all the nuances in dogma, moral tone and social practices grounded in a particular denomination.
We seek to understand the true beliefs of our faithful friends in our community. We feel it's important if we are going to build bridges of trust and focus attention on the many important issues of today that are affecting everyone. Regardless of one's faith it's important to work together to maintain a healthy society and a healthy ecosystem.
We understand that if we joined a bible study group and wanted to discuss geology, history, biblical criticism, Christian apologetics, evolution, the big bang, archeology, philosophy, culture, mythology, current events or other topics not directly related to the "good book" we might be considered quite rude. It's a bible study group after all.
Now, what if we bring up such subjects with our faithful friends outside in the context of everyday life? Most of our faithful friends are not insulted when we bring up the theory of evolution. However, we have encountered on many occasions friends of faith who are frightened and even passionately opposed to any kind of "scientistic" point of view. We have been told that ideas such as evolution through the process of natural selection is the devil's work.
We are not making generalizations here, we're simply sharing some observations. We know all Christians are not science deniers. It just seems to us that too many of our faithful brothers and sisters have spent so much time with their bibles that they have neglected important domains of knowledge vital to our species in the 21st century. We feel our friends of faith might be better citizens of the world if they embraced hard-won scientific knowledge.
The paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Steven J. Gould talked about non-overlapping magisteria. This concept is controversial and deserves a good look as it points out some very real conflicts between the secular scientific community and religious groups who would like to muzzle questions of science and shape them to more easily conform to their particular religious beliefs. We have found these differences to be hard to reconcile, but we still feel it's important to attempt to develop better understanding between different groups whatever their traditions.
Below is a classic discussion with Steven J. Gould we hope you will enjoy. Sadly he left us too soon.
We don't want to threaten the faith of our friends. That's not what we're about. We're simply curious people who enjoy learning about our world, nature, and the universe. We value stories, myths and cultures from around the world. We also value the many scientific discoveries that have so profoundly changed our way of life and contributed to our understanding of Nature and how Nature works.
We value our rich mythological heritage. We value our scientific heritage. We're thankful that throughout human history there have always been thinkers, inventors, storytellers, leaders, and designers; creative people who poured their energy into their thoughts, ideas, and inventions, and stubbornly worked, sometimes at great risk, to bring something amazing into our world. Most of us lack the energy, intelligence, creativity, or the will to work that hard for so many years, often in isolation, and usually for little reward, simply because we need to know. We outsource our thinking to other people all the time. We trust others to do the work for us. We are comfortable having a job as a means to earn enough money to take care of ourselves and our family. We respect common people. And we love the genius that walks among us. We owe a great debt to the people who do the vast majority of thinking for all the rest of us. The fruits of their thought and hard work produces a bounty of labor saving, transformative technologies and products that make our lives so much healthier and give us more freedom and opportunity to enjoy life.
Their ideas have helped establish more equal and just societies. The hard work and sacrifice of countless people have allowed human culture in some parts of the world to transcend evils like slavery. We have done great things and made great progress in recent times.
As these great ideas, technologies and tools become more complex, we will need to know more and more if we are to control our destiny. Living in a world full of "black box" solutions that no one truly understands has its own dangers. The many natural systems that support life on earth are extremely complex. As the complexities of human invention collide with the complexities inherent in nature we will encounter new sets of risks and dangerous unintended consequences that may have the potential of ending human culture as we know it. Back to the Stone Age scenarios are not beyond the realm of possibility.
It's easy to be fatalistic. We have heard people say that there is nothing anyone can do to influence the direction of humankind. We strongly disagree with this sentiment. We cannot wait idly to find out what will happen to us if we remain blind.
We understand that things are never perfect. And yet we feel that through thoughtful engagement with the real world as it is we're able to continue to improve our circumstances and evolve.
We are, quite simply, in awe of nature. And people who revere something often want to care for what they love, to share what they love.
We try to engage our Christian friends in Hong Kong, but they are reluctant and sometimes defensive when we bring up certain subjects. We wonder if they are worried that if they think too much about certain things it might shake their faith. We've heard them express those very fears on more than one occasion. In the popular media, we've noticed that Christians, especially in America, seem to feel oppressed, attacked from all sides by vile, secular humanists who want to tear down their religion and turn everyone into faithless, angry Atheists. We feel these fears are false and dishonest. We are a minority, optimistic by nature; productive and deeply concerned with human progress. The kind of progress that's sustainable and makes things incrementally better for life on earth.
Our aim is not to destroy faith. We respect your right to believe in whatever you wish to believe in, even if we don't respect what you believe. We want everyone to be free to believe what they want to believe. If the bible is your most revered book we want you to be able to spend as much time with its frayed pages as you wish. We just hope that from time to time you'll crack open some other books and enjoy them too. The magic book may be your most important book, but we maintain that there are many great books in the world today, many great thinkers; great men and women who are contributing marvelous things to humanity all the time. They are taxed with solving some of our most pressing and dangerous problems. Real world problems; problems that affect life on earth.
Since we are not religious ourselves and because we want to delve more deeply into these subjects, Mr. Christian, tell us, in detail, what you believe.
We're in China as you know and we find it interesting that a fellow by the name of Hong Xiuquan, a mystic and Christian convert who thought he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ and declared himself the Messiah led a revolt against the Qing Dynasty that lasted from 1851 to 1864 and cost the lives of 20 million people. This was indeed an upheaval of biblical proportions. It's a very sensitive subject over here.
Hong Xiuquan the leader of the Taiping Rebellion.
The Taiping Rebellion began just a few years after another Messiah, Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church died in 1844. It's amazing to us just how many people profess to speak for God. In fact, it's hard for us to imagine the confidence one must have in oneself to claim to know the intentions of the creator of the universe. Many a bench scientist has labored quietly for little monetary compensation for decades before figuring out something useful or coming up with a scientific theory that others can critique and elaborate on: And then they have to deal with rigorous peer review. Religious leaders, it seems, simply have a private revelation and declare that they know what God wants. It's amazing, and we feel it's even more amazing that people will believe them. You see, we're always a bit skeptical of stories and blind assertions. It's just the way we are, a default mode of critical thinking and skepticism that motivates us to ask difficult questions and demand good evidence.
The First Photo of Joseph Smith - the founder of the Mormon Church.
Perhaps a skeptical stance can be a bit off-putting to your average person of faith. I think I can speak for many of us when I say that we are not trying to annoy you, we're simply trying to develop greater understanding with you through our own, however unskilled, form of Socratic questioning.
I can almost hear you saying. "But the arrogance of being skeptical and questioning!"
What can we say except that we ask because we clearly want to know what you believe and why you believe it. We want to know if you are interested in Nature the same way we are. Perhaps your attempt to enlighten us here as to the necessity of your particular faith will humble us a little. Actually we think a little humility is good for everyone. So please do your best to tell us, in detail, what it is you believe.
We hope this preamble has helped establish some trust, Mr. Christian.
Below are two of the many possible responses to a simple question:
What do you believe Mr. Christian?
“I'm thrilled that God loves me, that God thinks that I am a really great guy. I belong to a great tradition responsible for most of the good in the world. I’m blessed to have a very special, personal relationship with the creator of the universe and with my Church. I need that relationship. I need to be loved by GOD. I need the love and companionship of my fellow parishioners. It makes me feel safe and secure. I’m comforted in the knowledge that when I die, I’ll go to heaven and live forever with my loved ones. And, I’m comforted in my knowledge that even if I’m bad, even if I’m really bad, God will forgive me if I accept His will and have faith in Him. God loves me so much that he sent his only son a couple of thousand years ago to die for my sins. Almost everything of importance that I need to know regarding what it means to be a good human being, and how to live in this world, is in the Old Testament and the New Testament – in the bible. There’s really nothing more important than the bible – the word of God.”
What do you believe Mr. Atheist?
“I'm comfortable just being human. I believe life evolved on our planet over millions of years. Although I'm familiar with several scientific theories about how the Universe came to be, I still don't know exactly how the Universe started and I'm ok with that. There were agnostics thousands of years ago, people who knew they didn't know everything. I come from that ancient tradition I suppose. I’m aware that empirical and scientific inquiry continues to bring ever more evidence to light about how Nature works. Through scientific inquiry, we've learned about many things and because of that knowledge, and the technology that has sprung from it, we have created many amazing things. Not all of them good, but one could argue that life for humans has gotten a bit better since the Age of Enlightenment. I love nuance and I'm not afraid of complexity. It’s exciting to learn about things we can actually know. It’s a rigorous process learning about nature and how nature works. And despite all we know, human life and the universe remains wonderfully mysterious. I believe we can learn a lot more if we want to. I believe in human progress. Odds are humanity will become extinct at some time the future. That’s just natural. I'm hopeful that that won't happen anytime soon. I'm not superstitious. I’m not afraid of reality. I’m happy that I have some friends who love me. I'm pretty healthy so I love myself enough too I guess. When I die I cease to be and that’s OK, hopefully, others will come after me and live a good life too.”
Before we move on here is one person you may have heard of who believes we're in an ideological war of horrific consequence.
Sarah Palin's charming wink.
Sarah Palin "...sees a battlefield littered with corpses – all of them Christian. They are causalities in a war against faith in America."
“We need to protect the heart of Christmas and not let angry atheists armed with an attorney – a scrooge – tell us that we can't celebrate traditional faith in America.”
It's clear to us she doesn't know a thing about the history of the Christmas holiday.
Now let’s go a little deeper; if that's OK?
Which kind of Christian are you Mr. Christian? We promise to tell you what kind of Atheist we are below. We acknowledge that there are many kinds of Atheists and Christians. We hope you would agree.
Some Christians are scientists, philanthropists, productive businessmen, creative geniuses and all around nice people.
One could also say, some Christians and some Atheists are murderers, rapists, thieves, liars, and adulterers.
There are a lot of different kinds of people in the world indeed, some are good and some are bad, some are stupid and some are smart. Some wander our communities with bad intent, some reach out in saintly acts of kindness to heal our hearts.
What confuses us is not the variety of Christian people, or the variety of faiths in the world, but the sheer number of Christian denominations there are. We wonder if it's not difficult for Christians to agree on core principles when their books and traditions are so wide open to interpretation.
Take a look at the advice from one faithful preacher below as an example.
Excerpt from Net Bible Study: http://www.netbiblestudy.net/denominations/
“Below are brief descriptions giving where and when each of the denominations listed began and who started them. Also given are some of their basic beliefs especially what they falsely teach and practice that one must do to be saved. Anything that is more than, less than, or different from what the Bible teaches is false doctrine (Revelation 22:18-19). It is a strange thing that the denominations claim to believe the Bible to be God's word, but at the same time they take their man-made denominational creeds over what the Bible says. Satan has many false doctrines which are designed to cause people to be eternally lost. Satan uses people to teach his false doctrines. Quotations from the Bible are in red. 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 says, “For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder; for Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness.” Also near the bottom of this page is a list of these false doctrines with a link to a page giving the Bible’s answer to each one. I do not know of any of the more than 600 different kinds of denominational churches that teach and practice what God says in the Bible that one must do in order to be saved and go to Heaven. Most of them reject, condemn, and even laugh at what God says in the Bible that we must do to be saved so we can go to Heaven. God's word warns, "If anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:9). One cannot go to Heaven and continue to be a member of a denomination, but sadly he will end up in the eternal torments of Hell.
Denominations are man-made organizations which were started by men and not by Christ. There are more than 600 different denominational churches, all with different and conflicting doctrines, beliefs, and teachings. They all wear different names, practice different forms of worship, have different plans of salvation, and each has its own earthly headquarters. None of this is authorized by the Lord in the New Testament. How could anyone conclude that scripture authorizes any of this present confusion or that God is at all pleased by the wholesale abandonment of His plan as found in the Bible? “For God is not the author of confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33), but man is. Denominationalism is making a joke of Christianity. Satan uses the many denominational churches, which are all counterfeits of the Lord's one true church, to fool people and cause them to be eternally lost in Hell.”
So which denomination should we choose? What a conundrum!
Doesn't he look a bit like Jesus?
According to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, there exist roughly 43,000 Christian denominations worldwide in 2012. That is up from 500 in 1800 and 39,000 in 2008 and this number is expected to grow to 55,000 by 2025.
Currently, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimates that a new Christian denomination is formed every 10.5 hours, or 2.3 denominations a day.
Wikipedia does a great job listing the largest denominations. Religion Facts compares the major denominations. And the Hartford Institute for Religion Research has links to hundreds of official denominational websites.
Here's a list of major Christian denominations with an emphasis on Protestantism:
Catholicism - (1,200,000,000 adherents) Click for beliefs.
Roman Catholic Church (1,187,000,000) Click for beliefs.
Protestantism – (792,000,000 adherents) beliefs.
Pentecostalism/Charismatic (612,000,000) beliefs.
Assemblies of God (60,000,000) beliefs.
New Apostolic Church (11,200,000) beliefs.
Foursquare Church (8,000,000) beliefs.
Church of God in Christ (6,500,000) beliefs.
Baptist (100,000,000) beliefs.
Southern Baptist Convention (16,000,000) beliefs.
Lutheranism (87,000,000) beliefs.
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (5,000,000) beliefs.
Methodism (75,000,000) beliefs.
United Methodist Church (12,000,000) beliefs.
African Methodist Episcopal Church (3,000,000*) beliefs.
Reformed Churches (75,000,000) beliefs.
Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (3,000,000) beliefs.
United Church of Christ (1,000,000) beliefs.
Non-Denominational Evangelicalism (40,000,000) beliefs.
Calvary Chapel (25,000,000) beliefs.
The Vineyard (15,000,000) beliefs.
Restorationism (20,000,000) beliefs.
Seventh-day Adventists (17,000,000) beliefs.
Church of Christ (5,000,000) beliefs.
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (1,000,000) beliefs.
Anabaptism (4,500,000) beliefs.
Mennonites (1,500,000) beliefs.
Amish (250,000) beliefs.
Eastern Orthodoxy – (230,000,000 adherents) beliefs.
Oriental Orthodox Church – (82,000,000 adherents) beliefs.
Anglicanism – (85,000,000 adherents) Click for beliefs.
Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. (2,400,000) beliefs.
Nontrinitarianism – (36,000,000 adherents) beliefs.
Jehovah’s Witnesses (7,700,000) beliefs.
Mormonism (14,700,000) beliefs.
Nestorianism – (600,000 adherents) beliefs.
Obviously, there are significant theological differences between the main branches of Christianity: Catholicism, Protestantism, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Church, Anglicanism, Nontrinitarianism, and Nestorianism. Many might argue that some denominations are not Christianity at all.
Keep in mind; there are also significant dogmatic differences among churches within each denomination. For example, there are Charismatic Catholics, and Charismatic churches that act like Baptists. There is a great deal of diversity in the United Methodist Church. And Presbyterians have been divided on homosexuality issues. The list of contentions could go on and on.
There is also a new brand of Christian we've identified who is more socially liberal than some and less hemmed in by traditional dogma. They seem to with to avoid labels and want to think of themselves as simply Christians. They also seem uncomfortable with the small but growing minority of secular humanists who are willing to express themselves on all kinds of subjects.
For members of these churches, asking, "What denomination are you?" seems irrelevant. These groups own their own special DNA.
It's also interesting to note the numbers above. The numbers are significant. With numbers like those these religious "kingdoms" could have their own exciting game of thrones. If the doomsayers in America get their civil war one wonders if sectarian religious war might also follow. For us, it's a scary thought.
There's a whole lot of Christians believing in all kinds of Christian doctrines. Despite all these different kinds of Christians and all of these denominations, our world still has a long list of problems and sins to deal with.
Now perhaps, Mr. Christian, we've been disrespectful because we haven't mentioned all the other religious in the world.
There are a lot of religions in the world. Why is that? There’s a whole library of books dedicated to the question across many domains of inquiry. Why do we believe? Why are we so credulous? All these authors and experts whatever creed or culture they come from have been working hard across many centuries to shed light on the mysteries of culture and belief. Some, like Carl Sagan, would characterize science and reason as a candle in the dark. Perhaps you would entreat us to search for the light within. We're OK with that.
We can't resist sharing this with you.
Did people in India create and develop Hinduism as an artifact of culture, or did GOD divinely reveal Hinduism to particular Hindu prophets and mystics? It's an interesting subject.
If one is an Atheist does one have to be a POLYATHEIST because there are so many religions in the world? Wouldn’t it be disrespectful if one only disbelieved in the Christian concept of God? How unfair. With so many Gods in our world what is it about the Christian God that is particularly unbelievable.
What questions do we have to ask to find out what a particular religious believer really believes?
Do believers of any ink really have a good idea about what it is they believe in? We're assuming they must. When one goes to denominational websites, is one able to get a clear picture of what the particular denomination believes? For us, it's kind of hard to tell.
Jonathan Haidt has done something like this with his moral foundations project, but it's not really directly related to religious beliefs.
We have noticed that the founders of various sects of Christianity received their wisdom through divine personal revelation. Then the founder tells his friends his story and the people who believe him help him develop his new religion. It's amazing the amount of trust a charismatic religious zealot can engender. "Nice story, I believe you."
We've also noticed that many of our faithful friends dislike looking into their faith with a historical perspective. It seems they think this takes some of the magic out of their belief.
And, of course, even in secular domains we hear a lot about belief. How many times have we heard Americans say, "I believe in the Constitution of the United States of America." How many people making that statement have even read the constitution we wonder. Apparently, President Obama is a constitutional scholar which is probably why his statements concerning the constitution are nuanced. And yet many people think he's got everything all wrong. People who know nothing about a given subject still insist they know everything about it. People seem to need to believe they know better than the experts. What a conundrum!
Who's the judge?
There's no need to fear, Super Jesus is here!
How should one study the bible in order to understand what the bible truly means? Is it merely subjective? Do we need guidance to understand the magic words correctly? Who’s going to be the judge of our understanding of the bible? It's all so fantastic.
The Pope has his encyclical meant to guide his flock. But, some Catholics don't like this Pope much because they don’t like his socioeconomic views. Is the Pope, the leader of the Catholic Church sullied by politics? Can any Pope remain above it all, pure and untouched by earthly matters. His flock are simple humans and he is the Vicor of Christ. Christ supposedly walked among the common people.
One can imagine that some people would like Donald Trump’s or Joel Osteen's interpretation of what Jesus wants for us a lot more than the Pope’s. "You see, Jesus wants you to win the lottery! Jesus wants you to be rich! Jesus wants you to be a winner!" Is this a version of the prosperity gospel? Pastor John elaborates passionately about what he thinks is wrong with the prosperity gospel. Jesus said, "________________." Jesus wants you to be, "______________________."
It's certainly true that Pastor John loves this story. He can find meaning his faith and elaborate on it in many ways. He knows God is being dishonored by the false teachings of the prosperity gospel preachers. We must say we've watched them preach and it frightens us like the theory of evolution frightens some of our Christian friends. We think it's easier to use religion to make money than it is to use the theory of evolution to make money. We don't know of any scientists with a private jet.
Should we update the constitution in light of all the changes we've experienced in the last 200 years? Or is the U.S. Constitution like the bible, never meant to evolve, and only meant to be believed and interpreted in one way or another.
Should we reinterpret the bible to make it more contemporary, or will we go to hell for that? There are a lot of versions of the Bible aren't there. Which one do you use? Who are we going to trust? It seems to us that people are merely told what to read and what to believe and that's good enough for them.
If a guy walks on water tomorrow is he God or a fraud? Which church leader is the right one to tell us?
Revelation vs. Empirical Evidence: what a conundrum! Trust in God vs. Peer Review. Our two cultures do seem rather far apart.
It seems that for many people, one's faith is as simple as this:
John: "Hey, are you a believer?"
Robert: "Well, ya, I am."
John: "Cool."
Why do you believe? The best answer we've heard so far was simply:
"I believe what I was taught growing up. My grandfather was a baptist, my father was a baptist and I'm a baptist. My kids are baptists and most of my friends are baptist."
This makes more sense to us than, "You know it when you know it" or "I feel it in my heart."
So may we ask you Mr. Christian, what kind of Christian are you and what are your views:
on the trinity
on the devil
on demons
on angels
on icons
on relics
on talking to god
on holy war
on Adam and Eve
on Noah's Ark
on sectarian conflict
on evidence that the Jesus as characterized in the New Testament existed
on miracles
on life after death
can you tell us what form of goop, energy, force or form God has?
on the origins of the biblical canon
on Christ's come back? When? In what form?
on the rapture
on the apocalypse
on other religions
on hell
on heaven
on Isreal
on faith
We have noticed that many Christians say that you just feel it. We're sure your emotion is real and we know it's valuable to you, but we just don't have any reason to believe so the emotion of faith is diminished for us. Perhaps we don't have the God gene?
We know it's a challenge to explain to people exactly what one believes. We don't mean to put you on the spot, but we still feel it's important for us to know. We are particularly worried about people of faith who might wish us harm simply because we don't believe what they believe. Like Sarah Palin's bodies everywhere thing, you know, the middle east right now. It is a real concern after all.
We're also concerned about tolerance, liberty, freedom of speech, education, the separation of church and state and other issues.
So if you don't mind, just give us the "My Kind of Christianity for Dummies". That should do.
A Secular Humanist Declaration
Issued In 1980 By The Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism
(now the Council for Secular Humanism)
Introduction
Secular humanism is a vital force in the contemporary world. It is now under unwarranted and intemperate attack from various quarters. This declaration defends only that form of secular humanism which is explicitly committed to democracy. It is opposed to all varieties of belief that seek supernatural sanction for their values or espouse rule by dictatorship. Democratic secular humanism has been a powerful force in world culture. Its ideals can be traced to the philosophers, scientists, and poets of classical Greece and Rome, to ancient Chinese Confucian society, to the Carvaka movement of India, and to other distinguished intellectual and moral traditions. Secularism and humanism were eclipsed in Europe during the Dark Ages, when religious piety eroded humankind's confidence in its own powers to solve human problems. They reappeared in force during the Renaissance with the reassertion of secular and humanist values in literature and the arts, again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the development of modern science and a naturalistic view of the universe, and their influence can be found in the eighteenth century in the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment.
Democratic secular humanism has creatively flowered in modern times with the growth of freedom and democracy. Countless millions of thoughtful persons have espoused secular humanist ideals, have lived significant lives, and have contributed to the building of a more humane and democratic world. The modern secular humanist outlook has led to the application of science and technology to the improvement of the human condition. This has had a positive effect on reducing poverty, suffering, and disease in various parts of the world, in extending longevity, on improving transportation and communication, and in making the good life possible for more and more people. It has led to the emancipation of hundreds of millions of people from the exercise of blind faith and fears of superstition and has contributed to their education and the enrichment of their lives.
Secular humanism has provided an impetus for humans to solve their problems with intelligence and perseverance, to conquer geographic and social frontiers, and to extend the range of human exploration and adventure. Regrettably, we are today faced with a variety of anti secularist trends: the reappearance of dogmatic authoritarian religions; fundamentalist, literalist, and doctrinaire Christianity; a rapidly growing and uncompromising Moslem clericalism in the Middle East and Asia; the reassertion of orthodox authority by the Roman Catholic papal hierarchy; nationalistic religious Judaism; and the reversion to obscurantist religions in Asia.
New cults of unreason as well as bizarre paranormal and occult beliefs, such as belief in astrology, reincarnation, and the mysterious power of alleged psychics, are growing in many Western societies. These disturbing developments follow in the wake of the emergence in the earlier part of the twentieth century of intolerant messianic and totalitarian quasi religious movements, such as fascism and communism. These religious activists not only are responsible for much of the terror and violence in the world today but stand in the way of solutions to the world's most serious problems.
Paradoxically, some of the critics of secular humanism maintain that it is a dangerous philosophy. Some assert that it is "morally corrupting" because it is committed to individual freedom, others that it condones "injustice" because it defends democratic due process. We who support democratic secular humanism deny such charges, which are based upon misunderstanding and misinterpretation, and we seek to outline a set of principles that most of us share.
Secular humanism is not a dogma or a creed. There are wide differences of opinion among secular humanists on many issues. Nevertheless, there is a loose consensus with respect to several propositions. We are apprehensive that modern civilization is threatened by forces antithetical to reason, democracy, and freedom. Many religious believers will no doubt share with us a belief in many secular humanist and democratic values, and we welcome their joining with us in the defense of these ideals.
Free Inquiry
The first principle of democratic secular humanism is its commitment to free inquiry. We oppose any tyranny over the mind of man, any efforts by ecclesiastical, political, ideological, or social institutions to shackle free thought. In the past, such tyrannies have been directed by churches and states attempting to enforce the edicts of religious bigots. In the long struggle in the history of ideas, established institutions, both public and private, have attempted to censor inquiry, to impose orthodoxy on beliefs and values, and to excommunicate heretics and extirpate unbelievers. Today, the struggle for free inquiry has assumed new forms. Sectarian ideologies have become the new theologies that use political parties and governments in their mission to crush dissident opinion. Free inquiry entails recognition of civil liberties as integral to its pursuit, that is, a free press, freedom of communication, the right to organize opposition parties and to join voluntary associations, and freedom to cultivate and publish the fruits of scientific, philosophical, artistic, literary, moral and religious freedom. Free inquiry requires that we tolerate diversity of opinion and that we respect the right of individuals to express their beliefs, however unpopular they may be, without social or legal prohibition or fear of sanctions. Though we may tolerate contrasting points of view, this does not mean that they are immune to critical scrutiny. The guiding premise of those who believe in free inquiry is that truth is more likely to be discovered if the opportunity exists for the free exchange of opposing opinions; the process of interchange is frequently as important as the result. This applies not only to science and to everyday life, but to politics, economics, morality, and religion.
Separation Of Church And State
Because of their commitment to freedom, secular humanists believe in the principle of the separation of church and state. The lessons of history are clear: wherever one religion or ideology is established and given a dominant position in the state, minority opinions are in jeopardy. A pluralistic, open democratic society allows all points of view to be heard. Any effort to impose an exclusive conception of Truth, Piety, Virtue, or Justice upon the whole of society is a violation of free inquiry. Clerical authorities should not be permitted to legislate their own parochial views - whether moral, philosophical, political, educational, or social - for the rest of society. Nor should tax revenues be exacted for the benefit or support of sectarian religious institutions. Individuals and voluntary associations should be free to accept or not to accept any belief and to support these convictions with whatever resources they may have, without being compelled by taxation to contribute to those religious faiths with which they do not agree. Similarly, church properties should share in the burden of public revenues and should not be exempt from taxation. Compulsory religious oaths and prayers in public institutions (political or educational) are also a violation of the separation principle. Today, nontheistic as well as theistic religions compete for attention. Regrettably, in communist countries, the power of the state is being used to impose an ideological doctrine on the society, without tolerating the expression of dissenting or heretical views. Here we see a modern secular version of the violation of the separation principle.
The Ideal Of Freedom
There are many forms of totalitarianism in the modern world — secular and nonsecular — all of which we vigorously oppose. As democratic secularists, we consistently defend the ideal of freedom, not only freedom of conscience and belief from those ecclesiastical, political, and economic interests that seek to repress them, but genuine political liberty, democratic decision making based upon majority rule, and respect for minority rights and the rule of law. We stand not only for freedom from religious control but for freedom from jingoistic government control as well. We are for the defense of basic human rights, including the right to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In our view, a free society should also encourage some measure of economic freedom, subject only to such restrictions as are necessary in the public interest. This means that individuals and groups should be able to compete in the marketplace, organize free trade unions, and carry on their occupations and careers without undue interference by centralized political control. The right to private property is a human right without which other rights are nugatory. Where it is necessary to limit any of these rights in a democracy, the limitation should be justified in terms of its consequences in strengthening the entire structure of human rights.
Ethics Based On Critical Intelligence
The moral views of secular humanism have been subjected to criticism by religious fundamentalist theists. The secular humanist recognizes the central role of morality in human life; indeed, ethics was developed as a branch of human knowledge long before religionists proclaimed their moral systems based upon divine authority. The field of ethics has had a distinguished list of thinkers contributing to its development: from Socrates, Democritus, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Epictetus, to Spinoza, Erasmus, Hume, Voltaire, Kant, Bentham, Mill, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, and others. There is an influential philosophical tradition that maintains that ethics is an autonomous field of inquiry, that ethical judgments can be formulated independently of revealed religion, and that human beings can cultivate practical reason and wisdom and, by its application, achieve lives of virtue and excellence. Moreover, philosophers have emphasized the need to cultivate an appreciation for the requirements of social justice and for an individual's obligations and responsibilities toward others. Thus, secularists deny that morality needs to be deduced from religious belief or that those who do not espouse a religious doctrine are immoral. For secular humanists, ethical conduct is, or should be, judged by critical reason, and their goal is to develop autonomous and responsible individuals, capable of making their own choices in life based upon an understanding of human behavior.
Morality that is not God-based need not be antisocial, subjective, or promiscuous, nor need it lead to the breakdown of moral standards. Although we believe in tolerating diverse lifestyles and social manners, we do not think they are immune to criticism. Nor do we believe that any one church should impose its views of moral virtue and sin, sexual conduct, marriage, divorce, birth control, or abortion, or legislate them for the rest of society. As secular humanists we believe in the central importance of the value of human happiness here and now. We are opposed to absolutist morality, yet we maintain that objective standards emerge, and ethical values and principles may be discovered, in the course of ethical deliberation. Secular humanist ethics maintains that it is possible for human beings to lead meaningful and wholesome lives for themselves and in service to their fellow human beings without the need of religious commandments or the benefit of clergy. There have been any number of distinguished secularists and humanists who have demonstrated moral principles in their personal lives and works: Protagoras, Lucretius, Epicurus, Spinoza, Hume, Thomas Paine, Diderot, Mark Twain, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, Ernest Renan, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Clarence Darrow, Robert Ingersoll, Gilbert Murray, Albert Schweitzer, Albert Einstein, Max Born, Margaret Sanger, and Bertrand Russell, among others.
Moral Education
We believe that moral development should be cultivated in children and young adults. We do not believe that any particular sect can claim important values as their exclusive property; hence it is the duty of public education to deal with these values. Accordingly, we support moral education in the schools that is designed to develop an appreciation for moral virtues, intelligence, and the building of character. We wish to encourage wherever possible the growth of moral awareness and the capacity for free choice and an understanding of the consequences thereof. We do not think it is moral to baptize infants, to confirm adolescents, or to impose a religious creed on young people before they are able to consent. Although children should learn about the history of religious moral practices, these young minds should not be indoctrinated in a faith before they are mature enough to evaluate the merits for themselves. It should be noted that secular humanism is not so much a specific morality as it is a method for the explanation and discovery of rational moral principles.
Religious Skepticism
As secular humanists, we are generally skeptical about supernatural claims. We recognize the importance of religious experience: that experience that redirects and gives meaning to the lives of human beings. We deny, however, that such experiences have anything to do with the supernatural. We are doubtful of traditional views of God and divinity. Symbolic and mythological interpretations of religion often serve as rationalizations for a sophisticated minority, leaving the bulk of mankind to flounder in theological confusion. We consider the universe to be a dynamic scene of natural forces that are most effectively understood by scientific inquiry. We are always open to the discovery of new possibilities and phenomena in nature. However. we find that traditional views of the existence of God either are meaningless, have not yet been demonstrated to be true, or are tyrannically exploitative. Secular humanists may be agnostics, atheists, rationalists, or skeptics, but they find insufficient evidence for the claim that some divine purpose exists for the universe. They reject the idea that God has intervened miraculously in history or revealed himself to a chosen few or that he can save or redeem sinners. They believe that men and women are free and are responsible for their own destinies and that they cannot look toward some transcendent Being for salvation. We reject the divinity of Jesus, the divine mission of Moses, Mohammed, and other latter day prophets and saints of the various sects and denominations.
We do not accept as true the literal interpretation of the Old and New Testaments, the Koran, or other allegedly sacred religious documents, however important they may be as literature. Religions are pervasive sociological phenomena, and religious myths have long persisted in human history. In spite of the fact that human beings have found religions to be uplifting and a source of solace, we do not find their theological claims to be true. Religions have made negative as well as positive contributions toward the development of human civilization. Although they have helped to build hospitals and schools and, at their best, have encouraged the spirit of love and charity, many have also caused human suffering by being intolerant of those who did not accept their dogmas or creeds. Some religions have been fanatical and repressive, narrowing human hopes, limiting aspirations, and precipitating religious wars and violence. While religions have no doubt offered comfort to the bereaved and dying by holding forth the promise of an immortal life, they have also aroused morbid fear and dread. We have found no convincing evidence that there is a separable "soul" or that it exists before birth or survives death. We must therefore conclude that the ethical life can be lived without the illusions of immortality or reincarnation. Human beings can develop the self confidence necessary to ameliorate the human condition and to lead meaningful, productive lives.
Reason
We view with concern the current attack by nonsecularists on reason and science. We are committed to the use of the rational methods of inquiry, logic, and evidence in developing knowledge and testing claims to truth. Since human beings are prone to err, we are open to the modification of all principles, including those governing inquiry, believing that they may be in need of constant correction. Although not so naive as to believe that reason and science can easily solve all human problems, we nonetheless contend that they can make a major contribution to human knowledge and can be of benefit to humankind. We know of no better substitute for the cultivation of human intelligence.
Science And Technology
We believe the scientific method, though imperfect, is still the most reliable way of understanding the world. Hence, we look to the natural, biological, social, and behavioral sciences for knowledge of the universe and man's place within it. Modern astronomy and physics have opened up exciting new dimensions of the universe: they have enabled humankind to explore the universe by means of space travel. Biology and the social and behavioral sciences have expanded our understanding of human behavior. We are thus opposed in principle to any efforts to censor or limit scientific research without an overriding reason to do so. While we are aware of, and oppose, the abuses of misapplied technology and its possible harmful consequences for the natural ecology of the human environment, we urge resistance to unthinking efforts to limit technological or scientific advances. We appreciate the great benefits that science and technology (especially basic and applied research) can bring to humankind, but we also recognize the need to balance scientific and technological advances with cultural explorations in art, music, and literature.
Evolution
Today the theory of evolution is again under heavy attack by religious fundamentalists. Although the theory of evolution cannot be said to have reached its final formulation, or to be an infallible principle of science, it is nonetheless supported impressively by the findings of many sciences. There may be some significant differences among scientists concerning the mechanics of evolution; yet the evolution of the species is supported so strongly by the weight of evidence that it is difficult to reject it. Accordingly, we deplore the efforts by fundamentalists (especially in the United States) to invade the science classrooms, requiring that creationist theory be taught to students and requiring that it be included in biology textbooks. This is a serious threat both to academic freedom and to the integrity of the educational process. We believe that creationists surely should have the freedom to express their viewpoint in society. Moreover, we do not deny the value of examining theories of creation in educational courses on religion and the history of ideas; but it is a sham to mask an article of religious faith as a scientific truth and to inflict that doctrine on the scientific curriculum. If successful, creationists may seriously undermine the credibility of science itself.
Education
In our view, education should be the essential method of building humane, free, and democratic societies. The aims of education are many: the transmission of knowledge; training for occupations, careers, and democratic citizenship; and the encouragement of moral growth. Among its vital purposes should also be an attempt to develop the capacity for critical intelligence in both the individual and the community. Unfortunately, the schools are today being increasingly replaced by the mass media as the primary institutions of public information and education. Although the electronic media provide unparalleled opportunities for extending cultural enrichment and enjoyment, and powerful learning opportunities, there has been a serious misdirection of their purposes. In totalitarian societies, the media serve as the vehicle of propaganda and indoctrination. In democratic societies television, radio, films, and mass publishing too often cater to the lowest common denominator and have become banal wastelands. There is a pressing need to elevate standards of taste and appreciation. Of special concern to secularists is the fact that the media (particularly in the United States) are inordinately dominated by a pro religious bias. The views of preachers, faith healers, and religious hucksters go largely unchallenged, and the secular outlook is not given an opportunity for a fair hearing. We believe that television directors and producers have an obligation to redress the balance and revise their programming. Indeed, there is a broader task that all those who believe in democratic secular humanist values will recognize, namely, the need to embark upon a long term program of public education and enlightenment concerning the relevance of the secular outlook to the human condition.
Conclusion
Democratic secular humanism is too important for human civilization to abandon. Reasonable persons will surely recognize its profound contributions to human welfare. We are nevertheless surrounded by doomsday prophets of disaster, always wishing to turn the clock back - they are anti science, anti freedom, anti human. In contrast, the secular humanistic outlook is basically melioristic, looking forward with hope rather than backward with despair. We are committed to extending the ideals of reason, freedom, individual and collective opportunity, and democracy throughout the world community. The problems that humankind will face in the future, as in the past, will no doubt be complex and difficult. However, if it is to prevail, it can only do so by enlisting resourcefulness and courage. Secular humanism places trust in human intelligence rather than in divine guidance. Skeptical of theories of redemption, damnation, and reincarnation, secular humanists attempt to approach the human situation in realistic terms: human beings are responsible for their own destinies. We believe that it is possible to bring about a more humane world, one based upon the methods of reason and the principles of tolerance, compromise, and the negotiations of difference. We recognize the need for intellectual modesty and the willingness to revise beliefs in the light of criticism. Thus consensus is sometimes attainable. While emotions are important, we need not resort to the panaceas of salvation, to escape through illusion, or to some desperate leap toward passion and violence. We deplore the growth of intolerant sectarian creeds that foster hatred. In a world engulfed by obscurantism and irrationalism it is vital that the ideals of the secular city not be lost.
A Secular Humanist Declaration was drafted by Paul Kurtz, Editor, Free Inquiry.
Endorsements
A Secular Humanist Declaration has been endorsed by the following individuals:
(Although we who endorse this declaration may not agree with all its specific provisions, we nevertheless support its general purposes and direction and believe that it is important that they be enunciated and implemented. We call upon all men and women of good will who agree with us to join in helping to keep alive the commitment to the principles of free inquiry and the secular humanist outlook. We submit that the decline of these values could have ominous implications for the future of civilization on this planet.)
United States Of America
George Abell (professor of astronomy, UCLA)
John Anton (professor of philosophy, Emory University)
Khoren Arisian (minister, First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis)
Isaac Asimov (science fiction author)
Paul Beattie (minister, All Souls Unitarian Church; president, Fellowship of Religious Humanism)
H. James Birx (professor of anthropology and sociology, Canisius College)
Brand Blanshard (professor emeritus of philosophy, Yale)
Joseph L. Blau (Profelsor Emeritus of Religion, Columbia)
Francis Crick (Nobel Prize Laureate, Salk Institute)
Arthur Danto (professor of philosophy, Columbia University)
Albert Ellis (executive director, Institute for Rational Emotive Therapy)
Roy Fairfield (former professor of social science, Antioch)
Herbert Feigl (professor emeritus of philosophy, University of Minnesota)
Joseph Fletcher (theologian, University of Virginia Medical School)
Sidney Hook (professor emeritus of philosophy, NYU, fellow at Hoover Institute)
George Hourani (professor of philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo)
Walter Kaufmann (professor of philosophy, Princeton)
Marvin Kohl (professor of philosophy, medical ethics, State University of New York at Fredonia)
Richard Kostelanetz (writer, artist, critic)
Paul Kurtz (Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo)
Joseph Margolis (professor of philosophy, Temple University)
Floyd Matson (professor of American Studies, University of Hawaii)
Ernest Nagel (professor emeritus of philosophy, Columbia)
Lee Nisbet (associate professor of philosophy, Medaille)
George Olincy (lawyer)
Virginia Olincy
W. V. Quine (professor of philosophy, Harvard University)
Robert Rimmer (novelist)
Herbert Schapiro (Freedom from Religion Foundation)
Herbert Schneider (professor emeritus of philosophy, Claremont College)
B. F. Skinner (professor emeritus of psychology, Harvard)
Gordon Stein (editor, The American Rationalist)
George Tomashevich (professor of anthropology, Buffalo State University College)
Valentin Turchin (Russian dissident; computer scientist, City College, City University of New York)
Sherwin Wine (rabbi, Birmingham Temple, founder, Society for Humanistic Judaism)
Marvin Zimmerman (professor of philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo)
Canada
Henry Morgentaler (physician, Montreal)
Kai Nielsen (professor of philosophy, University of Calgary)
France
Yves Galifret (executive director, Union Rationaliste)
Jean Claude Pecker (professor of astrophysics, College de France, Academie des Sciences)
Great Britain
Sir A.J. Ayer (professor of philosophy, Oxford University)
H.J. Blackham (former chairman, Social Morality Council and British Humanist Association)
Bernard Crick (professor of politics, Birkbeck College, London University)
Sir Raymond Firth (professor emeritus of anthropology, University of London)
James Herrick (editor, The Free Thinker)
Zheres A. Medvedev (Russian dissident; Medical Research Council)
Dora Russell (Mrs. Bertrand Russell) (author)
Lord Ritchie Calder (president, Rationalist Press Association)
Harry Stopes-Roe (senior lecturer in science studies, University of Birmingham; chairman, British Humanist Association)
Nicholas Walter (editor, New Humanist)
Baroness Barbara Wootton (Deputy Speaker, House of Lords)
India
B. Shah (president, Indian Secular Society; director, Institute for the Study of Indian Traditions)
V. M. Tarkunde (Supreme Court Judge, chairman, Indian Radical Humanist Association)
Israel
Shulamit Aloni (lawyer, member of Knesset, head of Citizens Rights Movement)
Norway
Alastair Hannay (professor of philosophy, University of Trondheim)
Yugoslavia
Milovan Djilas (author, former vice president of Yugoslavia)
M. Markovic (professor of philosophy, Serbian Academy of Sciences & Arts and University of Belgrade)
Svet. Stojanovic (professor of philosophy, University of Belgrade)
Robert Green Ingersoll 19th Century lawyer, lecturer, Civil War veteran. THE GREAT AGNOSTIC
Mr. Christian, we have to ask, does The Secular Humanist Declaration really sound that scary? Do we seem like people you have to be worried about? If you are strong in your faith we should be able to get along, talk about anything, without being a threat to each other.
We're interested in many things. We just don't see any good reason to believe in God. We feel that the story of Jesus is probably just a myth or maybe just one of many stories about the many prophets who roamed far and wide thousands of years ago.
We love mythology, literature, music, culture and philosophy. We've learned much from THE POWER OF MYTH. And some of our best friends are faithful people from many different cultures. We don't dislike believers just because they believe. We respect you personally, but we might not respect your beliefs. We can't revere something we don't believe is true. We hope you understand.
We're not dogmatic in our disbelief, or in our enthusiasm for reality, reason, logic, science and critical thinking. We're amazed and enthralled by the wonders of life just like you are.
Before we go we have one more thing we'd like to know. Are you excited about the end of the world? Because we're certainly not. We'd like to see humanity survive for generations to come and explore the universe. We're concerned about the sixth extinction, and biodiversity. We revere life on earth. We know we have to be the saviors and protectors of life on earth. We accept this responsibility. We're not prepared to wait for divine intervention. We may have broken the system and we're going to have to fix it by evolving our culture and living in more sustainable ways. To do this we need to understand more about the complex systems all around us.
Please read this book!
We'd hate to think that you thought something like this:
"The apocalypse is going to happen soon, and when it does, damn it, everyone's going to believe exactly what I believe! There won't be any non-believers left that's for sure."
Revelation can be a scary thing. St. John of the Apocalypse said his piece long ago. Have we been waiting for the ultimate disaster since then? We hope you're not inspired by fear. We hate fear mongering. We prefer rational and scientific risk management.
We don't want to put words in your mouth. You know what you believe. Tell us.
We've heard believers say:
“When (x)% of the world’s population professes to be (any brand of Christian) or (this particular brand of Christian) Jesus will come again and everything will get sorted.”
Is it some kind of bandwagon argument?
How Many People Lived on the Earth? How many souls were born during the whole history of Homo Sapiens? We don’t think this NPR article did the math based on 6,000 years of history though. Have a look; it’s interesting, you might want to try to calculate how many souls are in heaven.
So at what point since year 1 AD did the ideal number of Christians as a percentage of the number of people on Earth equal (x), or has it never equaled (x)? Will Chinese converts tip the balance?
PEW RESEARCH DISTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANS:
Current World Total of Christians: 2,184,060,000
Nearly two-thirds of Christians in the Americas (65%) are Catholic.
So how’s your bandwagon looking? If you are Catholic pretty good I guess.
The current world population is 7 billion or so. What’s the percentage needed before Jesus comes back to save us: 40% 50% 75%? When, does God announce - it’s time! Is there a preacher alive today who knows the answer? We suppose there are many, and we're guessing none of their prognostications match.
We're just asking.
THE VERY TELLING, “GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY REPORT” by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life:
Apocalypse Soon?
The expectation that there will be another world war by 2050 is more common among younger and less educated Americans than among those in other groups. Fully 68% of those younger than 30 predict another world war; that compares with 56% of those ages 30 and older. And while 69% of those with no more than a high school education say another world war is at least probable, that view is shared by just 48% of those with a college education.
At the same time, young people are a bit less likely than older Americans to predict that the United States will face a terrorist attack with nuclear weapons. Those under 30 are the only age group in which fewer than half (46%) say such an attack is at least probable. As with expectations about another world war, those with a high school education or less are more likely than college graduates to predict a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States (57% vs. 46%).
Jesus Christ’s Return
As expected, predictions about whether Jesus Christ will return to earth in the next 40 years divide along religious lines. Fully 58% of white evangelical Christians say Jesus Christ will definitely or probably return to earth in this period, by far the highest percentage in any religious group. Only about a third of Catholics (32%), and even fewer white mainline Protestants (27%) and the religiously unaffiliated (20%) predict Jesus Christ’s return to earth.
In addition, those with no college experience (59%) are much more likely than those with some college experience (35%) and college graduates (19%) to expect Jesus Christ’s return. By region, those in the South (52%) are the most likely to predict a Second Coming by 2050.
On a related subject, 65% of Americans say that religion in the United States will be about as important as it is now in 40 years; 30% say religion will become less important. Majorities across all religious groups, including the unaffiliated, see religion continuing to be about as important as it is now in the coming decades.
http://www.people-press.org/2010/06/22/public-sees-a-future-full-of-promise-and-peril/
So what is going to trigger the event? World War? Sin? Drugs? Abortions? Hell, haven't we already had plenty of that in the last 2000 years?
So what do you think will trigger the event? Is that why it’s so important for some sects to convert people? Is it because they really care about people? Is this a kind of no one left behind ethos? And if so, how can people live in a world where many of the people they know and love will be condemned? We wonder.
Here’s what Pat Robertson says:
Is the membership of the 700 Club enough to tip the scales? What do your parishioners say?
We suppose we had to wait for the middle of the 20th Century so we could have a proper Israel that would fit the signs. Well, it's the 21st Century now so are we almost there? Or is climate change the mysterious way God works through men to bring the end?
We still don't have a one-world ruler yet, but we have lots and lots of false prophets – those damn Buddhists and Muslims for example.
What do your parishioners believe? Define your brand. Send us your declaration. We're trying to understand what you believe. Help us make sense of it all.
There are so many faithful people in the world. We're still in the minority. How can we hurt you? It seems people evolved with a need to believe. If you can find it in your heart, let us talk with you about what we are passionate about. We know we can't compete with your concept of God. We're going to need lots of very smart, creative and passionate people to solve the problems of our time. Perhaps we can suggest that we all pray privately and work publicly to make things better. No one group has a monopoly on goodness.
Thanks for your time Mr. Christian. Go in peace.
P.S. And remember, Atheists are loving people too.
Live - My Dinner with Andre
My friend shared a clip from the film, "My Dinner With Andre", on Facebook today. I saw My Dinner With Andre way back 1981 when it came out and was astounded because I kept thinking while watching that those were my people up there; I thought, in this world people actually talk like me, and also that some people actually have these kinds of conversations at dinner.
I thought this kind of thing was so rare that you only encountered it once in a blue moon in urban restaurants with urbane people taking a frantic pause from their self-important lives over a meal they could hardly eat in between breaths punctuated by white water duologues.
Eves dropping in restaurants is a fun pastime. Usually, one only hears your average war stories, complaints, gossip or cargo cult chatter. Whenever I hear a dinner with Andre conversation I can't help but smile, exchange glances with the participants at the nearby table, as if to say, I'd come over there and join you if I were not so utterly respectful of those kinds of moments.
(Today, I suppose, this would be equivalent to not asking a famous person to take a selfie with you.)
Bloody talkers, bloody intellectuals, bloody creative types - I just love them! My self esteem can rest.
For me it's also interesting to note that when one reads Rousseau, Aristotle or another pillar of thought, it's hard to ignore how much they got right and how even NOW much of their thought is still relevant. For me, this film will always be sharp, amusing, poignant and up-to-date.
What can I say, that monologue is so darn Globe Hacker.
Just keep talking!
Cecil - Rest In Peace. Trophy hunting, conservation and wildlife protection are full of complex sets of issues.
"The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when the respect for what is has been exhausted." - Ortega
Cecil relaxing with his pride.
I'm like many people who felt outrage when I heard about a hunter from the USA who, with his paid guides, lured a well-loved animal from it's protected habitat so he could shoot it with a crossbow, track it, and then shoot it again to kill it - and all for sport. The "it" I'm referring to is Cecil of course.
I have to say upfront that I grew up hunting in Colorado. My father and mother loved riding to the hounds at the Arapahoe Hunt Club on the old Highlands Ranch. They would chase coyotes in traditional English equestrian dress. The community was close-knit, a lovely group of people that I was fortunate to have grown up with.
McClure Pass. Paonia State Park.
I used to go Elk hunting with my father and his friends on the Bear Ranch, a high-country ranch in Paonia on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The Bear Ranch was later acquired by Bill Koch - I get dizzy and angry thinking of this particular climate change denying billionaire buying my friend's ranch. I guess, in the future, only billionaires will be able to afford these majestic ranches that will be staffed, no doubt, by a mix of legal and illegal ranch hands and managers. Of course, it's on the market again. I suppose it will be a good trade for Bill.
The house I stayed at when I hunted there was considerably smaller. It was a simple family ranch.
We also enjoyed hunting grounds on our friend's place near Barr Lake where we hunting ducks and dove. Every season we did I did this with family and friends until I was around 18 and decided it was time to move on. After high school, I haven't hunted much. In fact only twice since then. We also went game fishing in various locations around the world. I still like to go fishing once in a while and on sailing trips we've caught tuna and other grand fish.
I can't remember any feelings of elation, guilt, or even a chord of ambivalence although surely I had those feelings. I can only patch together memories that are inevitably colored by recent experience and my current attitudes and beliefs. When I was young I was simply participating in a family tradition - kind of like when I went to church.
The best memory I have of hunting was when, back in the 70s, Buddy Bear and I headed way up by the tree line of a nearby mountain, on horseback with a pack horse trailing behind us. We were hunting elk near a small lake where we planned to sit in ambush. We both had bull licenses that year so we hoped we'd get a trophy. A trophy, in this case, would be a big rack with 12 points on it. A rack is what we call the elk's horns. A bull elk is male, a cow female. After making a small camp above the lake, we went to a stream and caught trout that we ate with potatoes we cooked on an open fire. In the morning, I got my elk and it had an impressive rack. I positioned the carcass so its head was facing downhill and cut its throat so it could bleed out. Buddy and I cleaned it, skinned it, quartered it, put the quarters in gauze sacks (to protect the meat from flies), hung the gauze sacks in a tree near ear-shot of our camp for the night, and settle by the campfire where we ate more trout and potatoes. In the morning we retrieved the sacks of meat we hung up in a pine tree to keep it away from creatures and bears, put the gauze sacks, the skin, and the rack (horns) on the packhorse, and happily made our way back to the ranch. Buddy went out the next day to get his elk while I went out on a drive with my dad. "A drive" is when you go out and move through a location to push game towards hunters lying in wait. You have to plan it well and do it right for safety.
A Bull Elk with a 12 point rack.
Many people have written eloquently about hunting so I'll spare you any more anecdotes here. I can say that we ate what we killed. I was used to it and liked the meat. My first motorcycle jacket was made out of elk skin by a tailor in Denver. I have nothing against licensed, regulated, or traditional hunting. I'm an omnivore and I love to eat almost everything. I've even eaten insects in Thailand and snake in China with only a shrug and a, "not bad" to the host.
All that having been said, I can't understand why people go to far away places in the world to kill endangered species. I can't imagine myself even going out of the way to kill a Black Bear, or hike up a mountain to kill a Bighorn sheep. I don't much care for trophy hunting. I just don't get the thrill. After all the killing humans have done throughout our history I can only imagine one creature that truly might deserve killing. I'm not going to say it. I can only say that my first sentiment at hearing about our Dentist's hunt was a vengeful one.
I also hate media speculation. Stop talking about it until the facts are in please. Give us the news and shut up. Then you can analyse the hell out of the story when you have the facts. PLEASE!
Bighorn Sheep in New Mexico. Amazing animals. It made me want to be a wildlife filmmaker when I saw them.
My next thoughts were of my typical "follow the money" variety that I just can't stop pondering these days. There is a business surrounding everything we do after all, from the acquisition of specialized tools to learning how to use the tools, to equipment and other capital assets needed to carry out our plans, to transportation, lodging, guides, consultants, bureaucrats and their offices (government is a kind of business) and on and on... There is a food chain, so to speak, of money throughout everything we do. In other words, there's a significant amount of money that can be made from the activity of hunting. There are revenues that countries and parks can receive through licensing fees and for other things hunters need to pay for to be able to do their thing. Tourism is big money for some countries where hunting is on offer and happens to be a big draw.
The first time I went to Africa I was 12 years old. We went on "photo" safari in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Congo. We also visited Ethiopia where I had something really spicy while eating with my fingers. I could go on and on about Africa. I'll never forget when our guide shouted under his breath, "look, boy, a lion in a tree!" He pointed up and I was thrilled. Simba katika mti! I don't have any idea how much our family spent, but we didn't kill anything. We took some good photos for sure.
Simba katika mti.
After cascading through my usual follow-the-money thoughts it occurred to me that I had heard and read since childhood about how humans were an integral part of the balance of nature and that through our natural activities we helped maintain populations of precious animals so that they, and we, could follow our natural character and coexist in a stasis of health and mutual respect. Yes, for sure, in an ideal world.
Visit Ducks Unlimited, The Sierra Club, National Geographic, and dozens of other NGOs, nonprofit organizations, government resources etc. There are lots of MOOKS, university programs and so on, where you'll find a lot of well-meaning, decent and smart people who are looking into these issues very carefully. Good information is there if we look for it. Never forget to find and follow primary sources. (I have to remind myself of that all the time.)
As I reminisced about all of this and thought about various aspects of the many complex issues pertaining to Cecil's story, a disturbing question came to mind: isn't it ironic that one of the major ways to finance conservation is through the business of killing the animals we want to protect? Well, that's not the only way we finance conservation, but it's still ironic that one of the ways we finance saving the black Rhino is through hunting the black Rhino. Apparently in 2014 Americans spent eleven million dollars trophy hunting in Namibia. That's a significant amount of money for Namibia and it doesn't include revenues from other kinds of hunting.
I keep thinking that if we valued our natural resources, as well as life on earth, in a different way we wouldn't be facing the sixth extinction. Some would argue that we're also rapidly approaching the end of the Anthropocene and of Homo-Colossus. "The end is near!" It doesn't have to be so.
"The permit was sold for $350,000, well above the previous high bid for a permit in that country, $223,000. While the Dallas Safari Club had the dubious distinction of being the first organization to hold such an auction outside of Namibia itself, it’s fairly unremarkable and actually quite common for an African nation to sell permits for trophy hunting, even for endangered species."
Look at how much money it costs for a license to hunt certain animals in certain places. It's no wonder that you have to be the son of a billionaire to go on such hunts. Give the boy a silver gun and let him have fun. The Trump boys certainly can afford a nice hunting safari in Africa. If Donald gets elected we can well imagine his visits to Africa being quite a bit different from President Obama's mission. Republicans will be proud to have them no doubt. Shot of our president's kids with their prey (perhaps on a war safari) followed by a story of how Donald's bombing the hell out of the middle east and building walls to keep the Mexicans out. You can see by the photo below that the Trump family really does know how to get things done. But I digress.
(Atlus and Steven shrugged, but in different ways.)
The Trump boys having a nice hunt while financing conservation.
The issues here are complex and highly politicized. There are several questions that science can't help address, primary of which is whether or not the money raised from the sale of hunting permits is used for conservation, something often promised by hunting tour operators. But empirical research can help to elucidate several other questions, such as whether hunting can ever help drive conservation efforts.
But if an endangered species as charismatic as the black rhinoceros is under such extreme threat from poaching, then perhaps the message that the species needs saving has a larger problem to address than the relatively limited loss of animals to wealthy hunters. The real tragedy here is that the one rhino that will be killed as a result of Saturday’s auction has received a disproportionate amount of media attention compared to the hundreds of rhinos lost to poaching each year, which remain largely invisible. And while there remains at least a possibility that sanctioned trophy hunts can benefit the black rhino as they have for the white rhino, there is only one possible consequence of continued poaching. It’s one that conservationists and hunters alike will lament. – Jason G. Goldman | 15 January 2014
I'll let you follow some links, do your own research and decide for yourself what complex forces are at play here and what we should do to improve, mitigate or heal things. As always my message is that we can do better and that we have to do better.
It's good that our Dentist "friend" is apologetic and ashamed. I'm not going to shed a tear if his customers shun him. It's fine by me if he feels he has to scurry off into hiding, but it's also true that he may have thought he was on a legal hunt and doing everything by the book; and, he may have reasoned that he was on a righteous hunt and that the revenue made by his hunt would go to the conservation of Lions. I don't know now. We'll have to wait and see. What's his track record as a hunter?
Again I'm back to my main concern: is trophy hunting the best way to finance conservation of these noble species? We can look these creatures in the face and find them beautiful, even elegant, graceful, and we can feel as if we can almost communicate with them, we can call them God's creatures so why do we need to kill them in the first place. For the thrill? Because it's in our nature? As an ego boost and war story to tell our friends? To affect nature's balance?
And what of the flora that disappears all the time that we've never even notices.
When I hunted with family and friends it was a simple, natural, communal process without much fanfare. We enjoyed it. It seemed a healthy thing to do and the food was good. None of us could even have contemplated the extinction of the Elk, or the Canadian Goose, or the Marlin, or the Tuna, but today it's clear that we could lose these creatures and if we did, humanity be damned, it would be a tragedy of, dare I say it, biblical proportions!
While I was reading and mildly researching to brace myself for writing this I was, yet again, amazed at the fine workings of finance in all of this. I guess we can't do the right thing unless we first figure out how we're going to pay for it.
Now that I know Cecil is gone I'll miss him. We've renamed our cat Cecil in honor of that beautiful Lion King.
CECIL, OUR CAT. FORMERLY KNOW AS CASPER, AND GATSBY. FULL NAME: CECIL GATSBY WAHWAH.
Cecil Gatsby WahWha power lounging in the man cave.
I won't go into any detail about financing conservation and the protection of wildlife. I hope you will have a look at the following resources. If you really care about these animals educate yourself about this stuff.
Live in peace.
REFERENCES:
CONSERVATION FINANCE: Credit Suisse / WWF / McKinsey&Company
Review Economic and conservation significance of the trophy hunting industry in sub-Saharan Africa
Hunting in America
** $300 million — Additional monies contributed to wildlife conservation every year by the more than 10,000 private hunting-advocate organizations, like the National Wild Turkey Federation, Ducks Unlimited, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
** $4.2 billion — Amount of money sportsmen have contributed to conservation through a 10% federal excise taxes on firearms, ammunition, and gear since the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Act established the tax. Millions of acres of public-use land has been purchased, preserved, and maintained with this money.
https://www.awf.org/
https://www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/conservation-finance
https://www.worldwildlife.org/about/financials
http://www.wcs.org/conservation-challenges/local-livelihoods.aspx
http://northernwoodlands.org/articles/article/state-wildlife-conservation
https://www.facebook.com/volunteersbeware/posts/799395270107971
http://blog.gaiam.com/as-hunter-numbers-decline-how-will-we-fund-wildlife-conservation/
It's nice to see we can still pull off a huge mining project in the USA.
Of course we need mines and wells and efficient farms and chemicals and pharmaceuticals, but...
Follow the money, that old cliche that explains just about everything in the human culture space.
SELL THOSE PEOPLE'S LAND (it is really Federal land after all) make a deal, extract a commodity from it. The world depends on economic growth. It would be terrible if we didn't. This is how our world works. It can't be helped. It creates jobs. We can't have cool things or a badass professional military industrial complex without our own supply of copper. As Donald Trump tells us day after day; the Chinese are kicking our asses hoarding global commodities. We can't be number one if we allow that to happen.
Soon, hopefully, our (US right) technology will allow us to mine other planets and then we can treat our own planet as if it were, cough, sacred.
We need our copper. Sacred land? What a joke. (I'm not laughing.) But, really, how can something be valuable without value added? It's just dirt and stuff obscuring metals we need to make more stuff to fuel and protect our economic growth.
And think of all the fossil fuels we can use to dig that dirt. It's a win-win across industries. What could be more beautiful than that? Well, perhaps, lining someone's pockets to get the project approved might be a bit more attractive to some people.
(I really missed my chance to live the American dream when I didn't follow my classmate Danny O'Neal and become a lobbyist. If your lip balm doesn't smell like a butt hole, you aren't fit to live large.)
We might want to think about how we can provide clean, renewable energy to the process of recycling all the garbage that has copper in it. Recycling copper that is. But we can leave that for our grandchildren. (Or the Chinese who keep kicking our butts.) They'll need to dig down to those landfills to get stuff to do their doomsday preps with, I mean to be able to live their doomsday lifestyles with.
"According to the project website, Rio Tinto expects to be producing copper from the deposit—which is nearly 7,000 feet deep, or five Empire State Buildings below the Earth’s surface—in the mid-2020s."
Imagine that! That's a lot of dirt and rock to move. It's going to leave lots of space for us to repurpose when the last metric ton of copper has been extracted and shipped to China. Well, not if Donald Trump is elected to the presidency of the United States of course.
America can be proud indeed to find more resources to exploit in its own land. And we don't even have to go to Canada. Nice. It's so much easier to do this at home and not have to make complex deals with foreign governments. But again, deal making creates jobs too right? Well, any big business is good business. When billions of dollars are involved the most important minority in the world is happy.
Read this stellar article about investor-state dispute settlement.
THE ARBITRATION GAME - indeed.
THE ECONOMIST MAGAZINE.
Good luck getting the project approved.
(Maybe I'll go to Dump Truck driving school and move back to the States. Or open a cafe near the mine, or offer to film the mining operations for propaganda purposes. I could have some nice cutaways with Native Americans doing sacred dances near a huge dirt digging machine. Cool. The job possibilities are endless.)
Honestly - we do need the copper. The low hanging fruit, 7,000 feet low, needs to be extracted before we get low on gasoline and deasil.
I love the name of the mine: "GREEN FIELDS". Well, maybe someday in the far off future when there's life after people it might resemble its lovely moniker.
Along with the greenwashing, the companies involved are going to allow access to the mine to Native American groups who regard the land the mine is on as sacred land. Think of that. "Thanks for letting us come to the mine, things really do look and feel much better now that you're digging it all up. No means yes after all. Can I also get a haircut, a bible, and a new suit, please? Oh, and can you throw in some quaaludes?"
Looking good!
"Under the bipartisan legislative deal passed by 300 votes to 119 in the House, Rio and BHP would take over 980 hectares of forest land near Superior in southeast Arizona. Federal law currently prohibits mining in the national forest, called Oak Flat. In exchange, Resolution Copper would hand over about 2020 hectares of conservation land to the federal government."
There's always a way if you have the patients and the clout, to get around prohibitions of one kind or another.
"The federal land exchange package was tacked on to the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday, a bill that authorizes Pentagon policies and funding for next year."
These tacked on things are also known as "riders". It makes it easy to slip one bit of legislation into something else providing some camouflage in case someone opposed to the move might take notice.
"Copper is once again king in Arizona, and our military and our manufacturing base will be assured of critical domestic copper supplies," Congressman Gosar said after the bill passed."
Yes, copper is king. I can't imagine life as we know it now without it. In fact, I think most of us can't imagine our world significantly different from the one we have. Perhaps this is a kind of familiarity bias. We simply go along with what we know and come what may...
"Under the legislation, other new land will be added to the federal wilderness register in exchange for land to be developed for oil, natural gas, coal, timber and copper."
And this is key, we now get to see the knock on effects of the copper mine move. They can now add land that can soon be called "wilderness" to a register in exchange for land they want to extract from. Whatever they call a particular parcel of land now: forest, park, reserve etc., now the whatever you call it land, call it sacred if you will, can be developed for the production of more important, industrial commodities. The land you traded for gets put in a registry where it's called wilderness. Does the word wilderness have any meaning at all in this context? Or, I'll trade ou some privately protected land for Federally protected land so we can do what we like. There is oil down there, I don't care what you call this land we need the oil!
Is this resource management at its best or just big business chugging along? Well, we need big business to chug along don't we? We simply can't imagine any other kind of world than the one we have now. And we're convinced that Growth is the answer to all our ills.
"Step right up folks, I've got a tonic here called "Growth" and it's a miracle in a bottle! It will only cost you your future."
Stop slowing us down with your baggage.
Climate skeptics think they've got it all figured out.
And here's the icing on the cake for econo-man:
"This legislation would provide up to 25 percent of the annual US demand for copper, which is critical to US competitiveness and economic security."
Whether it comes from the USA or another country it's critical to US security and competitiveness that we have as much as we can get. The Chinese know this. Donald Trump knows it. We need to be winners! If we can't beat someone we're just imbeciles. And, if that's a zero sum game then so be it.
Hoarding commodities is important for rapid growth, and arguably, for rapid death.
There are still a lot of things out there we can exploit to be winners in the coliseum of economic competition. We can build even bigger buildings with the right materials technology. We've got a long way to go yet. Homo Colossus is still in the driver's seat!
Remember, the transfer of wealth to the most important minority in the world is not "theft", it's vital economic growth that is very important to those who want to be winners and not losers. It doesn't matter if it damages the lives of a large majority of people who aren't players anyway. Remember, real people are consumers, not players. Our role is to work and buy stuff that's had value added to it. This is crucial to our way of life. We've got lots of names to call people who don't believe that and a lot of them are derogatory.
In the end, science and technology will save us (if we really need saving) or perhaps Jesus, or maybe even the Caliphate.
I have to admit, I wish I were a player so I could high five the tough guys who hung in there and made that deal. But it's not for me man, not for me.
I know we need to mine to maintain our world as it is. I just wish we could slow down a bit and reassess the value of our resources and our way of life. I'm only advocating an incremental evolution of our ideas. I want to see a long and glorious future unfold for humankind. I dread the thought of a crash and burn scenario brought about by our arrogance and lack of clear consideration of our place in the universe.
Please watch this episode of Witness, "Rings of Fire".
Now let's change tack and have a look at a very good conversation with someone who has a slightly different point of view. William catton , rest in peace.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-plans-to-build-its-commodity-hoard-in-2015-1425535064
http://www.economist.com/topics/trade-barriers
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21636089-fears-are-growing-trades-share-worlds-gdp-has-peaked-far
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_Copper
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-clears-land-swap-for-rio-bhp-copper-mine-project-1419211774
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2015/07/rings-fire-150729124056943.html
Hey neighbor, what do you really believe?
I’m sure many of you watch TV news or keep up with current events online. Recently we’re seeing more stories about lone wolf attackers committing mass murder in everyday public spaces.
We’re right to be concerned.
Unfortunately, we're all going to have to be more diligent about our safety - more diligent in counter-intuitive ways.
The new fashion among our more fanatical ideological and religious militants is to convince young men and women to commit mass murder against civilians. These heinous crimes can happen anywhere in the world. Random acts of violence with a purpose one might say. Irony is never far from the battlefield or the playground.
Apparently, the lone wolf killer type believes in some twisted way that normal people are somehow guilty of not believing what the lone wolf believes and that that gives him the right to commit murder.
I know, a bit simplistic, but a fair characterization in a limited context.
There are also small groups of people who feel their particular culture, ethnicity, ideology or whatever sets them so far apart from other groups of people that the only way they can imagine a future is if all “outsiders” were dead and buried.
This small minority of humanity we call fanatics. They don't fit into normal society. Our social norms are not valid to them.
What are the odds of our becoming a victim of such people or groups?
Of course the odds that you are killed by a terrorist or fanatic are extremely slim, but if it’s you, your friend or family member who is killed, winning the lottery of death won't be made any less painful because you frame the event as a freak accident. Murder is always going to be more shocking than the bicycle accident that took your cousin.
Is there anything we can do to prevent even one such tragedy, however few and far between these episodes of horrific violence may be in our world; the world outside of the Middle East, Africa and parts of Asia?
See how easy it is to differentiate and regionalize these terrible events in our minds. See how easy it is to think that it’s someone else’s problem? The fact remains that you are more likely to be blown up in Pakistan, Syria, Iraq or Nigeria than in Denver Colorado. And yet, what country has the most deaths from nonmilitary related gun incidents? The good old U.S. of A of course. Let’s never forget Columbine high school.
How are we supposed to know if the boy or girl next door, those nice kids we've known for years, is becoming radicalized and is in the process of persuading himself to take steps towards terror or mass murder? If I ask my neighbor's son to tell me what he really believes, what he's been learning on YouTube, at the Madrasa or from his cohort of haters, should I expect an honest answer? What might a conversation like that sound like?
"Actually, Steven, I believe that there is only one way of life that is correct and it's clear to me you are not living that way so basically, sadly, you are my enemy and I feel morally taxed to kill you and yours anytime I feel like it. If you would like to convert to my glorious medieval religious ideology then you will become my alley and you can join me and help me rid the world of non-believers. You'll be happy living according to the true will of God. You won't have to think so much. You'll be able to live in the right way. Look around you, the world is evil, your society is sick, your culture is destroying everything! I can't get any respect or consideration for being a good religious man. People treat me badly and all I want to be is right with God. I'm justified in doing what I have to do to bring the world back into order. You will be my brother. I'd give my life for my brother."
One could also easily illustrate an imaginary conversation with a white supremacist. “I just want to live with white people and let the blacks live with their people. What’s wrong with that?”
Or you could include the “fresh air” speech of Donald Trump and say, “We have to build a wall on the border and keep the Mexican government from sending their rapists, criminals and murderers into our country.” Really, people think his irrational comments bring “fresh air” into the presidential political contest. An example of delusional people leading delusional people.
How does one argue with these kinds of views? It’s not easy. You’ll experience that same old circular reasoning, and baseless assertions that are vexing to any reasonable person. The true believer simply wants to believe. The hater simply loves to hate. The fear monger loves to engender fear in his audience to garner support for his power play. He may be a smart, well educated, healthy fellow who simply feels more secure believing in a form of moral absolutism. He doesn't care about your reasoning, your logic, your evidence, your historical perspective, or your ideas. It's not hard for him to dehumanize his victims. He doesn't even care if he dies while killing you. He doesn't care who he hurts while he’s making his power play. He simply wants what he wants and damn those who stand against him. His primary concerns are with his particular form of mysticism, metaphysics, ideology, money, power or his religious dogma. He’s a magical thinker. He knows, beyond any doubt, that he is righteous, or that his reward awaits him in heaven. How can you argue with that? For those of us who have tried we know all too well that it’s not easy. It’s a tough, uphill slog full of frustration and disappointment.
It's tragic, but we are all going to have to be vigilant now. As if we didn't always have to be vigilant. Yes, I am a fan of history too. Today, even among the better angels of our nature we are confronted with the possibility of sliding backwards towards solipsism and violence to the good old days of the wild, wild west, or the Mongol Hordes.
Unfortunately, we can't shirk it, we still need to pursue uncomfortable conversations and disputes. We can’t get away from that. We need Socratic dialog now more than ever. Striving for truth is more important now than it ever has been. Public and private debate must go on. We must help evolve our social theories so that society can improve. To succeed, we need to communicate across domains and across cultures. We need to look at the pig picture and care about our future.
We must constantly talk with our children about what they are learning and what they believe. We have to engage our neighbors to find out how they feel about things in our world and in our communities. We need to ask them if they could use our help and support with family members or friends they are worried about.
We are all in denial to some degree.
“What, my boy? My boy may be a bit stressed or depressed sometimes, but he’s just a normal kid, he'll get through his bad patches.”
It may be embarrassing, but we're going to have to reach out and ask for help when we think someone in our family or community might be getting sucked into pathological beliefs. It may be none of our business, but we might want to tell someone that we suspect our neighbors could be entertaining some dangerous beliefs.
We might have to, oh no, confront someone about their thoughts and ideas.
Oh, My God, we're going to have to police ourselves, our neighbors, and potentially even inform on them. We’re going to have to intervene! Is this a slippery slope towards a Fascist Police State, a Surveillance State, an ever expanding Prison Industrial State? Are we sowing the seeds without knowing it for another Nation State to organize and implement genocide? Are we going to have to build several Guantanamo Bay facilities in America and around the world to warehouse our suspects? Do we need deprogramming experts, are we going to have to reform our educational system to re-educate people along social-political lines we’ve adopted as a mindless mob?
Here we go again.
How can we increase our resistance to pathological ideological contagion?
I believe it’s our duty to humanity and life on earth to learn constantly how to be better thinkers, critical thinkers. Choosing this as your discipline is a sure-fire way to limit your vulnerability to pathological ideology and beliefs.
We're all going to have to ask ourselves what we believe in and learn to articulate it clearly. Where do we draw the line? What are we willing to fight for? I know it's easy to fight for money and power, we can all be recruited into that line of work, but what is really worth preserving and protecting. We're going to have to have these uncomfortable conversations if we are going to stop these murders before they happen without becoming that which we are fighting against. How do we define the moral high ground? How can we inoculate people from false and destructive beliefs?
One thing is for sure if we are going to fight this fight we're going to have to have a good understanding of what hypocrisy means. We’re going to have to be more humble. We’re all going to have to be a lot more self-critical. We’re going to have to have a long hard look in the mirror.
This is not to say that eventually we won’t identify a common enemy that must be destroyed. Let’s be real, the exercise of power and self defense is a legitimate part of human life and experience. We must be diligent, and how we go about our diligence is very important.
Are there things we can do to invite people who are vulnerable to toxic beliefs into another reality? Cultural values are profound and important. In a way, the fight against hate is a fight for a particular set of cultural values opposed to hate. What kind of world would we have to create that would make it extremely unlikely that people would turn to hate? Or, simply, how can we improve things to such a degree that these kinds of haters would be highly unlikely to develop? This is not utopian thinking, I'm suggesting incremental improvements, an evolutionary arch heading in the right direction, towards a more loving and compassionate society and global community.
The creation of such an evolutionary arch requires a great deal of decent, skilled and sincere communication. We'd better get better at expressing ourselves in community with the people around us. We need new and positive connections with one another. The difference between Good and Evil is not just a simple juxtaposition of opposite concepts. We need to work hard at teasing apart those things that divide us and find common ground. The alternative is forever having to deal with Hate.
None of us is completely innocent. We all participate in an imperfect system. We face problems of our own making. We cause problems that we can't even see coming. We stumble and fall.
We can all do better.
Watch your backs people. Take care of each other. Take care of your world. The lone gunman or suicide bomb woman are going to keep coming. We need to be careful in more ways than one hundred. Special interests will continue to destroy our world through greed. We'll keep burning fossil fuels until we cross a tipping point that will put more stress on living systems than we can even imagine. We may all become refugees, and think of the violence that could cause.
We need to give a shit!
So ask your faithful friends to tell you what they really believe and ask yourself the same question. We need to have that dialogue, if only with ourselves.
Because we give a damn. I love that.
Have a quick look at two opposing sides of the gun violence debate in America and tell me what you think. There is only a ghost of a chance that anyone on either side of this debate will ever change their minds.
There is a whole literature out there concerning why that is.
VISUALIZING GUN VIOLENCE - COMPARING AMERICA WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD.
The US has higher rates of homicides from guns than Pakistan. At 4.5 deaths per 100,000 people, the US rates aren’t much lower than gun homicide rates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (5.2 deaths per 100,000 people). Annually, the US has about two fewer gun homicide deaths per 100,000 people than Iraq, which has 6.5 deaths per 100,000.
Firearm homicide rates in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United States, and Pakistan, 2010
"Instead of using local data to identify local solutions, the US may largely have to rely on studies done in other countries to gain insight into ways to curb gun violence. Even though Obama lifted a 17-year-old ban on US federal funding for gun violence research in 2013, a congressional ban on funding for this research remains in place."
Engender a little fear shall we Winston? did he really say that? what was the context in which he may have said that?
Above we have a photo of the very mature, Nobel Prize winner, Winston Churchill with his "Islam is as dangerous..." barb boldly printed near his task-master face. What we take from this is whatever we want to take from it.
It's so easy to find something on the internet to fuel your hatred. Anything can be spun into invective. If you want to find a historical figure to bolster your hatred of Islam, or for anything else you can do it with a click.
Paul Snow from The Uncertaintist Blog has an interesting and more informed take on the above quote. A lot of his entry he obtained at snops.com.
WHAT CHURCHILL WROTE ABOUT ISLAM
I don't want to hate of fear anyone on the basis of their faith or cultural beliefs. However, I do want to know very clearly what your faith and beliefs entail. If you love a vengeful God and are taught that your God wants you to kill all apostates, atheists and people of another faith then I want to know about it. I'd want to ask you why you believe God wants you to kill? I'd want to have a civil conversation with you, and if I found you were serious about doing me harm, I'd want to be able to find legal ways to defend myself against your bad intentions.
To get that far we are simply going to have to talk to each other. We must make our views clear. We must act like human beings who give a shit.
Read this fascinating paper on Genocide. We must be vigilant!
The Origins of Genocide
Complex Archetypes Inspired by Simone De Beauvoir
I really love this woman's smile.
My friend sent me a Huffington Post article about Simone De Beauvoir’s dating archetypes. Archetypes are fun, there are many television shows featuring one kind of profiler or another. We like to group things into simple types, it’s a useful way of organizing our knowledge and categorizing things and people. It’s utterly human to do so. Cows pay no never mind to nomenclature. There’s more intelligence in a cow’s gut than in their brains. Omnivores like us need brain power to sort what might be good for us and what might just kill us.
Here’s her list of 9 types of people you are bound to date:
- The Sub Man
- The Serious Man
- The Passionate Man
- The Nihilist
- The Demoniacal
- The Adventurer
- The Critic
- The Artist
- The Free Man
I think most of us would blend into different types during the course of our lives. Some people I know, I must admit, seem very close to only one of the types above.
I have to say that I have met or identified with all nine during the course of my lifetime. I hope I’m not being cheeky if I say I find it difficult to tell what type I am.
Is it possible to evolve throughout the course of one’s lifetime into several different types while ultimately arriving at one’s preferred, natural identity?
While pondering the above question and thinking about my own life I came up with a new type, Type 0.
TYPE 0:
He or She is a creative, autodidact, skeptical-epicurean-stoic with Buddhist and Pantheistic tendencies.
He or she possesses a complex ethical matrix: utilitarian, consequentialist including a large smattering of virtue, and a realistic understanding that it’s really difficult to be ethical in certain social contexts.
She finds truth in stories and knows that a story is a story. "Mama, I may be a simple woman, but I do know what a story is."
He or She does not confuse anecdotes with data, or expert interpretation of data through a rigorous set of scientific processes and methodologies using the most up-to-date standards and tools with simple faith.
He or She tends to trust true experts, but still employs a range of critical thinking skills when learning from experts.
He values honesty, compassion, intelligence, understanding, trust, conviction and considerateness but doesn’t expect too much from people.
(She knows that most people think they are trying to be the best person they can be even if they may fall short of the mark. This is why she can, at times, forgive herself.)
He enjoys the simple pleasures of life and is comfortable in the knowledge that his particular identity and biological life span are temporal. His death is not a big deal. Death is simply the natural end of one's life.
She is uncomfortable with the spooky vanity of people who want to exist forever. Forever is a long time, and generally speaking, people who want to live forever rarely change - SCARY!
Type 0 has a hard time finding people to talk with, but never has a problem with talking with people.
Type 0 knows that a human lifespan is not nearly long enough to satiate her curiosity, or long enough to dampen her love of life. She is comfortable knowing her time is limited. The finite nature of existence only makes her appreciate the journey that much more.
His sense of the future includes his ability to imagine future generations doing much better than he could.
She maintains a healthy sense of humor. Life is serious, absurd, profound, quirky, unpredictable, and that’s just fine.
Her overriding aim in life is to be wise, and yet she remains humble in the face of the many obstacles to achieving wisdom.
She works towards a state of authentic being without the anxiety of becoming and appreciates that most of the time this is an uphill battle.
He wishes to exist in a natural fluid state of wisdom. A wisdom one can never grasp. A wisdom one can only experience in relationship with others. His constant prayer is that more people will desire wisdom.
She knows that values are always more important than value.
(To outsource your thinking and not be critical is the height of idiocy and a tragic surrender to stagnancy. Decent people who do not employ critical thinking are incredibly dangerous.)
Type 0, possessing greater Adventurer / Artist / Critic tendencies as a young man, is gradually tempered by time, study and experience liberating him in his later years to focus on his true desire: to be The Free Man.
(Context: liberty, license, and freedom are complex concepts requiring some serious thought. Political philosophy, philosophy, meditation and science are the best ways to achieve a better understanding of these ideas.)
All of her adventures, critiques and attempts to create were ultimately motivated by her desire to be A FREE WOMAN.
Few young people are truly wise or free. For some of us, if we live long enough, and remain healthy, we might have a chance to be The Free Woman.
To die A Free Man or Woman would be his or her ideal legacy.
A truly free man or woman is always a part of a community of human beings, and therefore, is compassionately dedicated to helping people find and experience their freedom. Freedom is a human, relative term that can only be experienced in the context of normal, healthy, human relationships.
No creed, ideology or affiliation has a monopoly on what it means to be a free man or woman. Free men and women can exist in any culture. Free men and women are never caged or held mentally captive by limiting concepts. Free men and women have a healthy level of vitality and enthusiastically embrace challenges. Free men and women are courageous and value personal integrity. We need more free men and women.