Dr. Forbush Thinks

How do we know anything about God?

For this piece I am going to jump past the question of whether there is a God and assume that He exists. I know that there are many who read my blog that choose to believe that there is no God. Personally my belief that there is a God is tied tenuously to the thread of the mystery of free will and the wonder of the Universe itself. That being said I am a skeptic and I continue to question these mysteries.

Different religions give us many different ways in which we make our connection with God. Some religions place an enormous weight on the Bible or other religious writings. Some religions place more weight on prayer, tradition, or other divine revelation. So, how do we know anything at all about God if we assume that he exists?

As we think about this problem we can go back in history and look at how earlier generations dealt with this problem. We can assume that earlier generations must have had religious rituals like those that were witnessed by early explorers when they discovered the Native Americans, Australian Aborigines and others. All of these people had sought ways to “make contact” with their gods. Why did they do this? What moved them to make the effort? What were the results of these attempts? Were they valid, in that they were trying to connect with the one God that Christians recognize as the God? Or, is there something different happening here?

In ancient times people created tribal gods that were created out of fear for the want of protection from the unknown. One way to look at this is that people just made up stuff to make themselves feel better. Another way to look at it is that these guys didn’t know the One True God, so they ended up praying to and worshiping daemons, which were recognized as their real personal gods. Still another way to look at this is that these people felt the love of God, but they were too immature to know how to respond to that love.

These are not the only interpretations and I’m sure there are others that are not so extreme, but my point is that all humans tend to form similar religious foundations around the world. Basically gods are created to protect. And, as an extension to that, the more powerful the god then the more powerful the protection. Native Americans had personal gods or namesakes. Even modern Catholics have embraced a similar tradition when they name their children after the Holy Saints. Even without the details the human urge to build a relationship with God persists in similar ways.

This is certainly not the only way that humans try to make contact with God, whatever form the true God actually takes. The case is that if we assume that there is a God, we need to wonder if the urge to build a relationship with God is initiated by God, by man, or by both. I don’t believe that anyone will be able to answer that question definitively like many other religious questions. The only way to answer this question would be to raise a person completely out of any religious culture and monitor the person and God until the person has his first religious experience. Of course we can not monitor what is going on in the mind of God and it is extremely difficult to know what the person is thinking continuously either.

But, regardless of who initiates the relationship a relationship between a person and God generally emerge in most people, without the aid of organized religion of any sort. People who never go to church plead with God for mercy, help or protection. Fear often motivates people in this direction, but once that relationship is established, other interactions occur. People thank God for his gifts. And, people become inspired to seek deeper understanding and insight. But how do people get this inspiration? Is it God or something else? Is it Satan or other daemons? For that matter, does Satan even exist as a supernatural being, or is that some hypothetical religious idea created as man sought his relationship with God?

If we continue to think about religion as man’s response to develop a relationship with God, then it becomes clear that the evil in the world is due to man’s failure to respond to this relationship at all. Many Holy men have come from many areas of the world trying to tell us how to improve this relationship with God, but unfortunately they haven’t completely understood the relationship perfectly themselves. Or, maybe they did understand it, but they couldn’t communicate it to the population that they tried to communicate it to. The main problem tends to be a balancing act between what aspect of this relationship that has been discovered and the expectations of those want to know about it. Failure to listen or failure to explain are failures, but it doesn’t mean that nothing happened and nothing was tried.

Ancient Greeks discovered the power of inspiration when you weren’t seeking it. The Rite of Dionysis may have been an attempt to replicate that moment again and again. Drugs have been used to “see” spiritual revelations, and drugs have been used to avoid “seeing” anything. Religions have pushed the mind through meditation and prayer and religions have punished the minds of men because they thought to much. Each of these attempts to do the “right” thing may have been the “right” thing for that person, but it isn’t always the “right” thing for all people. The problem is that we each find a path to God in different ways. Not all paths work for all people. Some paths do not work for many people and other paths work for many. But one thing is certain, when one turns his back on seeking a relationship with God in favor of selfishness there is a problem. Assuming of course for a moment that there is a God.

So, the main point here is that we all seek a relationship with God. Or at least all of us that believe that there is a God are seeking this relationship. Those of us who are trying to find a connection with God do this through organized religion or a personal disorganized religion. This tends to imply evil comes from the lack of an effort to seek a relationship with God.

But, what about the atheists? OK, I can’t leave these guys out, because even if they don’t believe in God they are certainly awed by His creation, even if they deny an attribution to Him. This shouldn’t bother us, because a healthy respect for God’s creation, even if they don’t attribute it to Him is what an atheist does anyway. Atheists still have ethics and they still know in their heart what is right and wrong on a social scale. They want to help society improve, not destroy it. They want to preserve nature not destroy it. These are basic human ideas and feelings that everyone gets from being human and having emotions. Atheists are still disturbed by senseless violence. Atheists are still upset at the destruction of people’s homes. This empathy, regardless of their personal religious beliefs are in line with forming a relationship with God even if they don’t attribute it to Him.

Is it easier to build a relationship with God if you are trying to do it? I would guess that the answer is yes, because it makes logical sense. But, God is not a natural human being, He is supernatural by definition, therefore regardless of your belief in God you can never know Him. And when you don’t know a person the relationship is more difficult. But that goes for us all, not just any one religion.

We all just need to know that the Spirit Moves Us All and that is how we build our relationship with God whether we believe in Him or not. Be Thankful!






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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Religion

Greed is a reflection of someone who fears that they don’t have enough money. If you think about a person who seems to have everything that anyone could want, you will undoubtedly think of greed. A person amasses a huge fortune because of many reasons, and among them is greed. We can think of Scrooge from the Dickens story A Christmas Carol. His focus was no longer on the purpose of his company but instead on making money at all cost of human suffering. Putting money above human need is the traditional definition of greed. And, the most obvious reason that someone would put money over other people’s needs is because of a fear of not having one’s own needs met.

Not long ago I wrote about fear and its relationship to our motivations. We react out of fear when we don’t think through the logic of the situation. Fear is a natural reflexive emotional reaction to the unknown. In the case of greed, we don’t know if we are going to have enough money in the future so we strive to make more money and save more money and spend less money in order to protect ourselves from the unknown future.

On the other hand, gluttony is another form of greed. Gluttonous people fear that they will not be able to eat the food that they love, so they eat more of it. A person in this state of mind suffers an even more exaggerated problem when they try to cut high calorie foods from their diet. This is because they are accustomed to eating particular foods, and they have formed a habit of eating them. There is comfort in eating what one is familiar with, and when someone denies themselves from a particular treat the mind begins to fear that it will never have this treat again. Over time the fear grows larger the long that the fear remains unsatisfied. Ones mind is quite imaginative, and that imagination makes the fear grow, until the person ravaged by fear finally caves in and eats the treat to allay the fear and receive the comfort sought.

The odd thing is that gluttony is the greed of food and also the fear of starvation. But, a very similar but exactly the opposite problem is anorexia nervosa. In this case narcissism has gotten out of control because of the fear of obesity. People suffering this affliction begins to fear that they will not measure up to the social or cultural standards. They fear that not measuring up will result in an isolated existence where people will shun them for their appearance. As a result a sufferer will do anything to reduce weight and even starve themselves. The fear becomes so large that all other fears are minimized. Obviously a person suffering from anorexia nervosa fears being fat above the fear of not having their favorite treat. In fact they fear being fat beyond the fear of death in some cases. It is quite curious how these two extremely opposite fears can play such havoc with people.

And, in this sense I was beginning to think about my personal health. As I have written many times before I have been a bit more health conscious over the last few years. I have increased my exercising and decreased my calorie intake. I have lost 50 pounds and I am currently maintaining my weight. And, this is where the fear comes in.

I have been very rigid about my workout schedule. In fact, any of my previous attempts to control my weight have generally failed because of the randomness of my commitment. So, I had been working out every morning for about one hour. This workout generally burns about 800 calories, based on my treadmill work. I assume that swimming with about the same effort for the same amount of time would result in the same number of calories burned. Therefore, I have been burning 4800 additional calories per week on average for a couple of years now. But, in September things changed. The last two years I had continued working out for an hour each day, and my wife would drive the second car to the health club and work out about 15 minutes less in order to get home to make sure the kids were ready for school on time. This year I thought that the 15 minutes wasn’t so important, so I decided to go with my wife, leave with my wife and work out 15 minutes less. Therefore I could help getting the kids ready for school.

The weird thing about this is that I know that I don’t need to burn as many calories now that I am not trying to loose any weight. But, I have an irrational fear that I may not be doing enough. If I am burning 75% of what I was burning which means that I am now burning 3600 calories per week on average. Rational thoughts that float through my mind keep telling me not to worry about it. But the irrational thoughts come back occasionally and tell me that I should be doing another 1200 calories worth of work per week. Maybe I should run an extra hour and a half on Sundays. Or maybe I should run an extra half hour every other day at lunch time. But, I know that I am doing enough the way that it is. The battle of fears continues in my mind.

Even when you know that it is there fear can make you do irrational things. I guess that’s why laws work so well. People know that it is against the law to steal things, so for the most part people don’t take each other’s stuff, even if they see it sitting on the side of a building. Only a small number of people actually do break into people’s home and steal stuff. These are obviously the people who are not subject to the same fears as most people. These are the people who don’t fear being arrested or going to jail. People who don’t fear traffic tickets will disregard the traffic laws. People who fear the retaliation of local gangs will break the laws to avoid the more fearful prospects. Whatever the fears are, it is difficult to control our reactions to them.


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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Fear, Psychology

I’ve written about expectations before. I don’t remember when or in which post I told this story, but I believe that I have told it before. I may have written about it trying to make another point, but the story tells how and why I began to think about expectations.

When I was an undergraduate I was in love with a woman, a student at the school. I was attracted to her bright cheerful outlook on life. Nothing seemed to phase her. She wasn’t a brainless cheerleader; she was a bright young woman with tremendous insight into life. She told me things about the world that I hadn’t even imagined. She recommended books that I read and learned quite a bit. I read about an Indian Yogi and a book on human psychology. Some of the ideas went against my preconceived view of the world, but these ideas always got me thinking.

The problem with our relationship was rooted in our disagreement about how we saw the world. We both seemed to be naïve about how our relationship should develop. She seemed to be looking for some mystical connection that she felt didn’t exist. I felt a strong mystical connection and I expected our relationship to deepen. So I began to create in my mind the way things should play out. And, since we talked a lot we continuously talked about the problem with our relationship. And, finally after some long period of discussion she told me this: “You just have too many expectations.”

At that moment I hadn’t even thought about my expectations. Obviously, I had many expectations, but I just hadn’t thought about them as expectations. In fact, since they were expectations I just expected them to be the way my world was. Yes, I did have expectations. I expected that I would finish college, learn what I needed to know to get a job in some science-related way. I expected that I would meet a girl, fall in love and have a wonderful life. I expected that I would continue to explore and discover the world with travel as well as observation. I expected that all these things would help me live the wonderful life that I expected to have.

But, the next statement that I heard from her changed the way I thought about everything. It was a simple observation that both enlightened and baffled me. She said, “If you don’t have any expectations then you will never be disappointed.”

Reread that sentence again and think about that. It is certainly true. If you don’t expect to pass a test, then how could you be disappointed with failure? If you don’t expect to graduate from school, then how could you be disappointed with not graduating? If you don’t expect a happy life, then how could anything disappoint you? If you don’t expect anyone to fall in love with you, then how could you be disappointed with no one falling in love with you?

Suddenly, the whole picture came into focus. This giddy young woman was a bubbling spring of happiness because she had no expectations. She was on a karma stream. She did nice things for people without expectations, and she was rewarded without expecting it. I began to ask myself if my problems were only problems because of my expectations instead of my lack of luck or skill.

Well, this idea is not a Western idea. In America we believe in setting goals, planning and accomplishing those goals. We set goals with expectations in mind; particularly we expect to reach our goals. We plan our actions based on the expectation that each step will be accomplished. And, we become disappointed when we don’t reach our goals. We can argue that this cycle of goal orientation is what made America strong, and we can argue that this cycle of goal orientation is at the root of the stress in so many Americans today.

It is clear that all of us can not live in the extreme version of this life with absolutely no expectations and still have the society in which we live in. Maybe the society that we would have instead would be a little bit more laid back and a lot less technical. Maybe a Hippie Commune would approach life in this way. But, the question that would bother most of us is: “Where does motivation come from if we have no expectations?” Why would someone choose to excel in anything that they do without the motivation to excel? The woman that I was dating was certainly motivated, but it wasn’t from her own expectations.

In fact, as our relationship gradually withered I discovered that she did have very few personal expectations, but instead she had a multitude of parental expectations to satisfy. She was free to live in a world believing that she wasn’t disappointed because she never expected to satisfy her personal expectations. But I became aware that my relationship with her wasn’t part of her parental expectations for her. And, even though it took me some time to realize this when I finally did I was already in another relationship and it really didn’t matter. I no longer had any expectations that the relationship would work out. And, I wasn’t disappointed. It was an ironic ending to a doomed relationship anyway.





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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Relationships, Love, Culture

How can we live in a world of uncertainty?

Yesterday I wrote about measurement, in the sense that some things are difficult to measure. But, it is more than that. Some things we just can’t know for certain.

For example, when we plan for the future we try to measure the risks and the benefits, but we never know how the future will play out until it is too late to plan. We generally can’t read minds, so we can only guess what people are thinking, what they are planning and what they will or will not do. For the most part uncertainty is the only certainty that we know.

However, uncertainty can be frightening. In fact, the better off one is the more frightening uncertainty can be. One can imagine two people. The first person living “the Life of Reilly,” that’s Bill O’Reilly, if there is any doubt as to whom I’m referring to. Everything is going fine, nothing can be too good, every experience can be had, most possessions are within reach and problems can be solved by throwing money at them. The second person, however, is quite the opposite. Things began going bad in school, and things continue to be getting worse. Disease, poverty and broken relationships seem to happen day and night. Both people have to deal with the uncertainty of the future, but that uncertainty looks different for the two. Uncertainty for the first person means that there is a possibility that everything might be taken away. Uncertainty for the second means that something “good” just might happen at any moment. For whom does uncertainty hold the most promise and for whom does it hold the most threat? It is quite obvious that uncertainty has both its risks and promises.

Is there any doubt that the current status of a person’s well being influences ones opinion on the subject of uncertainty? The wealthy will buy insurance to protect their wealth. The poor will buy lottery tickets to change their luck. Both will hope for the best and against the worst. Uncertainty may be a friend or a foe.

But, the future isn’t the only uncertainty in our lives. Like I mentioned above, we can’t know what people are thinking. We can’t know what people are going to do. We are limited to what we know about our world, from our own experience. But we have the ability to learn more about our world, or we can choose to ignore the world around us and live by our own guts and feelings. Of course we ignore the fact that we formed our personal feelings from our past experience. At some point we considered our world and chose how we would respond to our world.

If we think about uncertainty for a moment or two we must come to the conclusion that uncertainty is a fact of life and we can not eliminate it. We can only reduce the amount of uncertainty that we have by studying the world around us. Or, we can assume that the amount of uncertainty that we have is just too overwhelming and so we resolve that we will always be uncertain about the world, therefore we accept uncertainty can not be overcome. So we may come to the conclusion: “Why should we even try?”

When we put this on the table in such stark terms the evidence seems to suggest that reducing uncertainty would tend to reduce risk. Therefore we should put our efforts into learning as much as we can about the things that we can know. But, the human mind is not always rational. Particular people become overwhelmed by things that even other people do understand. The emotion of being overwhelmed by the knowable can be even more dramatic when someone is forced to face the unknowable unknown. And, very early in human history people created stories to calm this emotion by creating simple to understand explanations for the unknown. As people become comfortable, they are less likely to disturb this comfort. Therefore a large number of people tend to stay attached to the stories that give them comfort rather than reducing their personal uncertainty by learning what our brightest have discovered.

What I have just written might be a bit confusing, so let me give an example of this in the real world. In the ancient world most people understood very little about the world. We can imagine creation stories and myths from the different cultures around the world tend to explain beings greater than ourselves fashioning the world in different ways. These stories result in many different worlds described in different ways, and I would venture to guess that very few of these stories describe the final product of the world as a huge sphere where people are stuck to the surface because of the gravitational interaction between objects. We have stories of birds pecking holes in the sky, which resulted in the stars. Or, the earth being a bubble surrounded by a huge bath of water. When someone discovered that the Earth was a round sphere floating in space, a large group of people were not thrilled to leave their stories behind and accept the new revelation. This lack of enthusiasm for embracing new certainty is rooted in the comfort that stories give to people in the attempt to comfort them from uncertainty. In the end some people accept the certainty of myth over the large world of uncertainty of the unknown that overwhelms them.

It is not the case that these stories do not have any use. The stories help people deal with the emotion associated with uncertainty. The emotion can become overwhelming, and stories calm the emotion. This is just like the way that people will make up stories to deal with the behavior of a family member. An abusive husband might be explained away having difficulty controlling his passion, or not being able to deal with a trauma from the past. The story may have some thread of fact with elaborate details that lend comfort to the sufferer.

In summary, there is uncertainty in the world, but happy humans don’t like uncertainty. Happy humans are usually in control, so they like to keep uncertainty under control as well. Since it is impossible to know everything uncertainty can not be eliminated. So, the next best thing is to create stories that explain what is unknown. These stories comfort those who feel uncertain by providing a false certainty. People cling to these false stories even when the truth becomes known through observation and understanding. Some people then end up relying on false stories created in an attempt to comfort themselves from not knowing something that is now known. Now, that is ironic.





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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Religion, Philosophy

Science is about observation. A scientist asks questions, observes and tries to answer those questions. Actually we all do this to some extent, but a scientist does this in a very careful way. I’m not saying that we don’t try to be careful in other aspects of our lives, but it is easy for us to be confused with the simplest things.

For example, your Aunt Sally might have gotten sick. She might have gotten sick the day after she went skiing, and it might be easy to come to the conclusion that skiing caused the sickness. This would be a flawed conclusion, because we are disregarding all of the other people who went skiing on the same day and did not get sick. This is called anecdotal evidence. We have seen this anecdotal evidence asserted every day in every way. In fact, advertisers use anecdotal evidence to persuade to buy their products all the time. Someone gets in front of the camera and tells you that ever since they started using X they feel Y. This guy in front of the camera may be the only guy on the planet that the product has ever effected in this way, but the advertisers don’t tell you that.

If you think that advertisers are bad about using anecdotal evidence in an effort to persuade you, then consider that the FCC actually regulates what they are allowed to say in their pitches. However, politicians, religious leaders and many other people are not obligated to support their claims in this same way. Politicians are not required to support their claims, simply because it is assumed that the opposition to the politicians has it in their interest to debunk at least the most fantastic claims made. Religious leaders don’t need to support their claims either, simply because religious leaders are protected by the first amendment right to protection. Therefore, in a religious context religious leaders can say just about anything that they would like to say and claim whatever supporting evidence that they would like to proclaim.

Now, most American religious leaders and American politicians are mainstream and the public is protected from outrageous claims simply by American culture. When one of these people make an outrageous claim members who hear the claim come to a conclusion that the guy must be a little bit “whacked out.” The buzz from the statement has little or no support from the evidence, just like the outrageous statement itself. There is no valid measurement that can be used to weigh either of these statements unless it can be proven that one of the statements violates some observed fact. And, this is a major problem, because observed facts and publicly understood facts are not always the same. Politicians, religious leaders and con artists are among the people that use these “publicly understood facts” to get what they want.

So, when people intentionally alter one’s perceptions what is one to believe? How can one defend one’s self from outrageous claims. As for religion, one is asked to suspend all disbelief and puts one’s faith in the unknown and the unknowable. As for politics, there are often many ways to look at a problem and there are many possible solutions to the problem. The problem is that politicians know that it is virtually impossible to treat everyone “fairly” in a world where the definition of “fairness” is a legally alterable term. In other words, one can change laws so that the majority of supporters believe that they are being treated fairly. Or, in another attempt to be even more clear: If a candidate can persuade enough people that he will give them the best deal, then they can be elected over and over again even if the minority is being treated unfairly in real terms when “fairness” is defined by the laws that they make. These two groups don’t fall far from the con artists who use slight of hand to convince the unsuspecting of an altered form of reality.

Only true measurements based on reality can compete with the desire to alter how people see the world.

But, even our measurements can be corrupted if we are not careful about how we define measurements or understand the error on those measurements. For example, polls make very good measurements of how elections might turn out, if one conducts a carefully randomized sample of likely voters. But if we were to poll the American public on whom the 23rd American President was, chances are that the results might not give us an answer worthy of the paper it was written on. Of course, this fact can not be reliably gathered by polling, unless the sample of the poll was limited 19th century American History teachers. This is why we value experts in particular fields. But, even experts do not always agree on every aspect of the area of their expertise.

Now, imagine a fictional episode where Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly gets on his talk show and tells a story about the 23rd American President, Benjamin Harrison. Of course, the story is a bit skewed to illustrate their personal political point of view. Some pieces may be left out and other points might be exaggerated, all in the effort to make an “important” political point. A large fraction of the listeners to the program never knew that Ben, was the 23rd President before the story went out to the public. But, now listeners suddenly believe that they are experts at least on this story. They have begun calling him Ben, like he’s an old college buddy and suddenly Ben has become part of the American culture in such a way that disagreeing with the story creates an atmosphere of rancor as if you were saying that Thomas Jefferson was the first president.

This imaginary episode has played out over and over among those who have been trying to mold the American culture into a more conservative light. And, in recent years some liberal radio personalities have been trying to push back with their own versions of this alternate universe. The problem is that these attempts to put forth alternative visions and perspectives alter the way Americans see the world. In fact, it changes the body of knowledge that we call American culture, the things that Americans understand as the facts, even if they aren’t the truth. And, unlike science, we do not have a reliable way to measure the facts. It always comes down to a battle between the opinions of the American people, no matter how poorly those opinions are distorted by those who play fast and loose with the facts, as if anyone really has a way to measure what those facts are.




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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

I have recently written about predicting the future based on the cycles of history.

This is based on a book written in 1990 by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It is called, “Generations: the history of America's future, 1584-2069”. The book has altered the way I think about history and why people do what they do. We easily acknowledge the fact that people are influenced by what the surrounding culture finds acceptable and unacceptable. If this wasn’t the case, then people wouldn’t try so hard to change how people look at the world. Religious leaders scream and yell at their congregations, telling them how they should change their ways, but when people go back out into the secular world they are drawn into the secular culture and they participate in the secular world ignoring the words of the preacher. This is why so many religious leaders have targeted “Hollywood” and “secularism” as evils that are a threat to our culture.

The reality of the situation is that these very same preachers are part of the larger woven culture of our society. As has been happening for at least the last four hundred years there is a cycle of ebb and flow in our society. Religion is part of that ebb and flow as is the secular world as well.

Man by his nature seeks to solve problems. The trouble is that there are a large number of problems and there are a large number of solutions to those problems. Man seeks to fix problems in broad terms as well as specific ways. And, on the broadest level of all we tend to choose between getting everyone to work together to solve the problems or do we get everyone to take responsibility and solve their problems on their own. A large number of problems can be solved with team work, and also a large number of problems can be solved by assigning ownership of a problem. The problem is that not all problems can be solved in the same way.

The cycle described by Strauss and Howe has two extremes in this respect. There is a time when society believes that teamwork can solve every problem and there is a time when society believes that ownership can solve every problem. Now, of course not every person in society looks at the world the same way. Some people align themselves with the popular majority and some people align themselves with the minority. So, when the majority believes in teamwork the minority is still echoing the positive nature of personal responsibility and vice versa. And, religion plays a major role in this cycle.

Since we are talking about a cycle here the current situation is always evolving. Children born today have parents with different experiences than their parents and so forth. So, let me describe this in our current history beginning with World War II. World War II was a crowning moment for the cooperation of our society. We worked together in a major effort where people sacrificed themselves for the society as a whole. This was possible because the Culture was primed to do this through the experiences of the past leading up to that moment. People learned by experience through the Great Depression that working together paid off as work was created through the efforts of society at large. So, it was a natural progression to realized that everyone needed to sacrifice themselves just a little bit more until their efforts paid off.

After the crisis was over this generation of people continued to believe that working together could solve even more problems, like medical discoveries, poverty, racism, and even landing a man on the Moon. The question became: “Just what couldn’t be done through cooperation?” Well, all of this cooperation requires a lot of discipline. And, discipline requires an effort that takes away from personal time and personal reflection. Religion becomes something that you do to get it done with so that you can get on with the important things. Memorized prayers and standard sermons filled the churches. There was a great emptiness in the American culture. And, when emptiness abounds those who feel empty invoke the ills of society as the problem. The natural thing for one to do is revolt against the societal order and then reflect on one’s personal relationship to the world. And as people across the country began to do this many discoveries about our society came to light. Some insight was good and some insight was bad. Efforts to change society erupted everywhere. This is known as an awakening. The majority in the society begins to believe that society is flawed on a basic level and changing one’s personal life will eventually filter to the society as a whole. However, when a multitude of individuals create a multitude of individual ways of doing things the organized order in society breaks down. The break down in order creates inefficiency and society doesn’t function as smoothly as it did when everyone knew their place and did as they had been taught. The lack of organization becomes the pole that begins to demand more order.

Since religion offers both an organized component and an individual reflection component it is the most likely place in society where this can be achieved. Man yearns to find meaning and purpose in the complex machinery of society. Man searches and explores for this meaning through alternative lifestyles and religious movements. Organized religion offers organized answers in an easy to digest way. As time goes on the easy answers become an easy way to deal with the complexity of a complex world. Religion teaches us how organization is a solution to religious problems and people eventually realize that working together solves secular problems as well. As problems arise teamwork pays off and problems are solved. And once again man has rediscovered cooperation solves larger problems.

This cycle has played out four times in the history of America, roughly 88 years in duration. And as far as we can tell it continues to play out even today.

The interesting thing is that with this new insight I begin to view history this way and even the books that I read. I am currently reading Alice McDermott’s “After This,” which is a book about a family that roughly follows the time I outlined above. She goes into some detail about each time period by telling some short stories that all fit together. For example, she tells the story of a date in the late 1940s and then she tells another story of a date in the early 1970s as to show the extreme changes in those 25 years. Alice shows us the contrast in our society by telling these stories, but now armed with this generational information I begin to understand a little bit more as to what these people might be thinking that make them decide to do the things they do.

I have also been thinking about this cycle in the terms of whether the cycle is “good” or “bad.” Of course there are “good” aspects and “bad” aspects of the cycle. Each time a group lives through the cycle they believe that they are inventing these things for the first time, but the truth is that people before them have explored many of these ideas and come to similar conclusions. And, as history continues chances are good that this will continue. The cycle can only be broken when the society as a whole realizes that the cycle exists. Or more specifically the society as a whole realizes that organized society and internal reflection are both important aspects for living a “good” life. For example, people need to explore alternative lifestyles, but they need to realize the value of established lifestyles. And, of course it is nearly impossible for a culture to embrace two polar ideas as being equally valid. But, until society comes to that conclusion we will continue to follow the cycle.




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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

On Sunday all “good” Christians go to church. I don’t know if I would be so bold to declare myself a “good” Christian, but going to church on Sunday continues to be something our family rarely misses. As I have said before, I am Catholic, so the guilt of weekly attendance has been worked deeply into my psyche.

The mixture of politics with religion has always troubled me. Politics always seemed to be man’s business, while religion always seemed to be God’s business. The main problem tends to be that collecting God’s answers on every perceivable issue is mostly impossible. Jesus tells us to take care of the poor and sick, but he doesn’t tell us how we should do that. Man has created many ways to take care of the poor and sick, but it isn’t always clear that giving handouts to people is always the most effective way to persuade someone to contribute to society. And, when power comes to the battle, individuals will push their own ideas over the most effective ideas for society. And, worst of all, when someone declares that their own personal idea is the “Christian” solution or God’s solution there is no possible way to know if that is true or not, because man can not ever know what is in God’s mind.

It bothers me when any religion expends an enormous amount of energy fighting for an issue that isn’t even a critical issue. Abortion and homosexuality come to mind quickly. These two issues have very little support in the Bible, and it is clear that religious people that have opinions on these issues use bizarre Biblical readings to support the conclusion they have already decided in advance. The proof of this is in the lack of such a strong response to issues that are out rightly declared in the Bible. For example, divorce, war and the care for the poor and sick are declared as critical issues many more times in the Bible than the “evils” of homosexuality and abortion. But, religious groups have used abortion and homosexuality as litmus tests to determine whether someone is a “good” Christian. Does this even make any sense?

Well, as I began, I was sitting in church on Sunday listening to the priest give us our weekly lesson. Politics does not directly come up in these discussions. However, issues often do come up, because the object of a lesson is generally a discussion on how one should live a Christian life. From these discussions we generally learn what things we should avoid doing, what things we should strive to do better and how we should find strength to do the first two. When we talk in generalities there normally isn’t much of a problem drawing politics into the discussion. Everyone agrees that abusing alcohol is a bad thing. Everyone agrees that violence is to be avoided unless you need to defend yourself. Everyone agrees that the Ten Commandments should not be broken. And, the list of things that we agree on goes on.

However, I cringe when particular political issues are mentioned in church. During the last election here in California Proposition 85, “Parental notification of a minor seeking an abortion” was on the ballot. I don’t believe that the church should have an opinion on this issue, or seek to influence the members of the church to vote one way or another on this issue. However, in the announcements at the end of mass on several occasions we were asked to volunteer to canvass our neighborhoods in support of this issue.

On the other hand, a local “pregnancy services” group is supported by the church. This group helps pregnant woman have their baby and offer it up for adoption if they can’t keep it for whatever reason. This action does not seem any more political to me than helping the poor. This service offers an alternative for some women who would use it. Even though I understand that the motivation for creating this group is to reduce the number of abortions I don’t believe that the actions of this group will actually result in changing the law and making all abortions illegal. The group’s goal is just to make abortions rarer.

This Sunday was a little different. This Sunday we had a short political insertion and it made me cringe again. I actually agreed with what the priest said during the service, but it still made me cringe because I believe that these political proclamations should not be made in church. Making political proclamations in church is divisive by the mere nature of being political.

This is a paraphrase of what he said. I am so proud of the American people. In my country of Mexico there is widespread corruption and hypocrisy in the government, and it is very difficult for the people to do anything about it. But I am very impressed with how the American people were able to defeat their corruption and hypocrisy in the recent elections.
Even though he did not say anything in particular about any particular political party it was quite clear that he was happy that the Democrats gave the Republicans a thumpin’. He is also saying that he viewed the Republican Party as a party of hypocrisy and corruption. Now, anyone that has read what I have written over the last few years knows that I agree 100% with this idea, but I still cringe at the thought that this idea is being expressed in church. What bothers me is the implicit conclusion that Democrats are now the new “Party of God.” Obviously I personally don’t feel this way, and very few people that I know would believe this, but there still exists a large number of people who take what the priest says as coming directly from the mouth of God. When the priest praises a political party we suddenly have people in the group believing that God sanctioned a political party. In the long run this only leads to more hypocrisy and corruption coming from the other side of the aisle.

I think we need to get religion back to talking about generalities and leave the specifics to the lawyers and the politicians. For the most part people know when they deliberately sinned against God. They have a good understanding of how they should lead their lives by protecting the weak and loving their neighbor. They also know what God expects from them and what actions could be abusive. When people are left to judge themselves they are typically tougher on themselves than the society. However, for those few who don’t feel guilt or compassion the government offers another solution: laws and punishment - the political solution. Society functions best when we keep these two prods separate from each other.



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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics, Religion

What’s Next?

I was listening to David Gergen give a talk to the World Affairs Council a few weeks ago. For those of you who do not know who David Gergen is, he is a former advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. He knows his stuff, and he knows people who know what is happening in the current Bush administration, even with their code of secrecy.

So, it was quite interesting to hear him tell us what we already know about Iraq in the light of someone who has been in these types of situations before. He could have told us about all the mistakes that the Bush administration has made, but he chose to tell us about “Plan B.”

As everyone knows, Plan B is what you do when Plan A fails. As most of us agree at this point Plan A, the preemptive invasion and occupation of Iraq has failed. The latest sign of this failure is the Bush administration’s excitement about not only Saddam Hussein’s hanging, but also his effort to get the Iraqis to hold hands in peace. You know that you have failed when you are excited about your enemy encouraging the country you occupy to make a Coke commercial.

Since most of us agree that the US’s plan A has failed in Iraq. Hopefully today’s election will send that signal to the leadership of our country, by giving us a few new leaders with new ideas. And, we have been promised that by Christmas we will have a new bipartisan report on the options in Iraq. So, what are our options in Iraq?

Obviously the new report has several options, and unfortunately the Bush administration will select what should be done in Iraq. Hopefully the administration will really listen to the experts on this issue, instead of pretending to listen and then going off to do what they want to do anyway. If history is any evidence, the Bush administration is bound to “stay the course.”

But, if the president really means that he is willing to “not stay the course, because it really wasn’t the plan,” then there will be some new options on the table. According to David Gergen, the most likely option is to increase the number of troops in Iraq by 100,000. That is almost doubling the number of troops that are already there. This is almost certainly the only way that Iraq can be won, David points out. And, since this is the most likely option we should realize that this is why the Republicans did not want to reveal this plan before the election. This will most certainly be an unpopular decision. But, in an effort to prevent loosing even more seats in congress the Bush administration wisely chose to wait until after the election to reveal this study.

My question however is, “How do we know that 100,000 troops are enough?” I am guessing that 250,000 troops might have worked in the beginning when there were only a few bad apples to take care of. These troops could have been used to preserve order and prevent the looting that we know began the spiral out of control in this country. But, now the situation is much worse. We may be in a situation where 500,000 troops are needed to crack down on violence through out the country. And, once that is done we may be able to use 250,000 troops, alongside another 250,000 Iraqi troops plus the regular police force just to maintain order.

But, even with this forced effort to crack down on violence, there must be a way to give ownership of Iraq back to the Iraqis. The symbolic government that the US has created in Iraq is being viewed as lazy and corrupt. Lawmakers who may legitimately fear for their lives are not showing up for government sessions. The government has been having trouble conducting business, because they haven’t been able to even get a quorum to show up.

We need to ask ourselves that if the lawmakers are not motivated to get their own government functional, then why should we care? Well, like Colon Powell said before the invasion, “It’s the Pottery Barn rule. If you break it you bought it.” It looks like George W Bush crushed this one, and the American people own the rubble.



Listen to David Gergen at the World Affairs Council on October 10, 2006.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

I am currently reading a book on the Future of America. I was wondering how things were going to turn out, so I grabbed the following book from the library. It is called, “Generations: the history of America's future, 1584-2069” by William Strauss and Neil Howe.

This book is quite interesting, because it was written 15 years ago and we can see how well it got these 15 years. But, the point of the book isn’t the exact events of the future, but instead the personalities of the generations that have come since the founding of the American colonies and will come over the next 50-some years.

If you have any doubt about the ability to predict the future please refer to my piece on “Free Will.”

In this piece I show how people tend to do the same thing every day. In principle most people follow routines and when something happens to them they react in predictable ways. People rarely if ever exercise their free will by choosing to do something different or out of the ordinary. If we have a large group of people that are doing things in predictable ways, then it shouldn’t surprise us that we should be able to predict how history might unfold in a predictable way.

Well, exact events on exact dates might be impossible to predict, but more generalized things might be predictable. For example the personality of a generation is predictable. And, this book seems to be able to do just that, predict the personality of the coming generations. One way to describe different generations might be to talk about their upbringing as children first. This book tells us that children in America have actually been brought up in four different ways over the last four hundred years in America. Some children were brought up “protected,” others were brought up “coddled,” others were brought up “disciplined” and the final group was brought up “ignored.” There is actually a fixed pattern of disciplined youth, coddled youth, ignored youth, protected youth, and then disciplined youth again. The cycle lasts about 88 year or about four 22 year generations.

These four different ways in which children are treated actually effects the way in which parents bring up the next generation. And, the way children are brought up results in the way each generation sees itself and the other age groups. These factors result in the way in which each group lives its life. For example, the baby boom generation was actually brought up by parents expecting the children to know discipline but they were coddled from the extremes of discipline. This coddling actually caused these children to be introspective and the result was an outpouring of self-reflection, but this also resulted in the ignoring of the next generation of children. These children were left largely to fend for themselves and learn to deal with the dangers of life very early. This generation actually felt the worst dangers of the drug culture. The baby boomers used drugs in a curious way to further their self-discovery, but the next generation used drugs to escape the lack of caring in their young lives. The boomers realized that drugs were a faulty path and then they criticized the next generation for being stupid and using drugs. Well, the next generation that knows the dangers of the world worries about these dangers and they react by protecting their children and sure enough the current generation of children are protected. This protection continues until the next generation that is disciplined in an effort to force their children to be rational, after seeing the results of their irrational elders. The cycle continues when these disciplined children that coddle their children in an effort to protect them from the discipline they had been subjected to as youths.

The interesting thing is that this cycle continues to this day 15 years after the book was written. The current generation of children have been kept inside away from the dangers of the world around them. They sit playing video games or trying to work on the Internet, if their protective parents allow them to. But, this isn’t the extent of the prediction of the future. It turns out that the 1960s and early 1970s was actually a spiritual awakening that repeats itself every 88 years or so. The dates are not exact, but they are certainly close. This is because every fourth generation groups of introspective youth grow up and realize that their elders don’t know all that there is about life. In general these elders have maximized their externally oriented civic-minded personality to leave spiritual ideas to the wayside. But, the spiritual mind of this boomer generation rebel’s against these ignorant elders. These rebellions repeat every 88 years or so beginning with the Puritans. But, this next spiritual awaken isn’t due until 2055 or so, when everyone has mostly forgotten the 1960s. The event that is the antithesis of this awakening is a crisis. This crisis event is most likely a war, but it could be an economic depression. The point of the crisis is to demonstrate to the coming generation that working together pays off. The Great Depression and World War II was an enormous crisis that taught a generation that working together works. Since a crisis could happen at any time, the idea is more likely created by the elder generation in response to some spiritual awaken awareness. The crisis of the Revolutionary War was created this way, as was the Civil War. It could be argued that if another generation was in control with another personality then World War II might have been left to the Europeans, as it wasn’t really our problem.

Based on what I know the War on Terror might culminate into some crisis. It makes sense, because the current rulers are creating this crisis by the way they have chosen to handle the problem. This is due to the spiritual awakening personality of the generation. It has bred a deep-seated idea of black and white, right and wrong that the majority of this generation has accepted. This black and white idealism was alive during the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and the Great Depression/WWII. And we should expect a crisis in the next few years of this order of magnitude. Unfortunately it looks like we will continue on this cycle for some time, until some of us claims to exercise his free will and break this chain of repetition.










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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

Yesterday I listened to a talk given by Chris Anderson, the author of the book, “The Long Tail.” He also has a blog over @ The Long Tail.

The idea behind his book is quite simple, yet it is also quite eye opening. Basically Chris tells us that all markets can be described as a power curve. OK, the mathematicians out there know what I’m talking about, but the rest of you are lost. So, imagine a piece of graph paper with an x and a y axis. The x-axis runs across the bottom of the graph and it describes items of different types arranged in order of popularity. The items to the left are the most popular and the items to the right are the least popular. Now, imagine the y-axis representing sales of those items. Obviously the most popular items sells the most and it will be plotted as the highest on the y-axis. So, now if you plot the points on the graph you should find that all the items lie on a curve that has a very long tail to the right.

If you are still following me, then I can assume that the math I’ve already described wasn’t to complicated so I’ll go on assuming that it isn’t.

The point that Chris makes is that in the last century mass marketing has concentrated on the few items to the left hand side of the graph and it has ignored the items to the right hand side of the graph, even though 80% of the potential market is ignored while 20% of the market is pushed with unrelenting marketing and advertising. This brings up many questions, including: “why is so much marketing money wasted on pushing items that are already popular?” It obviously has to do with what is desired by the business side of the equation, rather than what is desired for the customer side of the equation. The market shape described by Chris is not just hypothetical, it has been observed by the sales of music. The thousands of titles that are now available on line represent a market that is unencumbered by distribution of rare titles. And what is observed is a power curve with a very long tail.

One can imagine that the sales of 1000 individual rare one of type songs costs the same as selling 1000 copies of the most popular title. In the “old days” before the Internet, however it would have been difficult to know where to ship a single copy of some rare song so that the person who wants it would be able to find it on the self of the record store that he frequented. So, the idea of matching a person to a rare infrequently desired item is much easier.

Although music was the example that Chris used, this idea applies to all markets. Amazon.com showed us this with books, and E-Bay shows us this with the diversity of matching even rarer more random types of items. This long tail is the future and many new companies know this and they are acting on their own ideas related to targeting this long tail.

The key to using this information is the method needed to match the people to the items in the long tail. If we think of a plot of “all items transacted” we would start with the most popular item that is bought and sold. I have no idea what it is, but surely someone does. Maybe it is waste. Out in the tail there are cupcakes and coffeecakes sold once a year at the school Christmas fundraiser. Even further out there are even rarer transactions. If someone wants to make money out on the tail there needs to be a way to collect the things together in some way so that one can sell a lot of these rare items. For example, someone could start a business that specializes in selling home baked goods. They could collect a large number of potential bakers together online and they would submit web pages describing their food. The potential business would be a way to match all of these potential bakers with those that appreciate home baked food shipped overnight by FedEx or some other overnight shipping company.

Imagine the problems solved by the collection of all of these potential bakers. A person is not limited to one person or another person, but they could select from thousands of potential dishes or deserts. The person who cooks the meal no longer needs to advertise or search for business. Instead they rely on getting a hit on their item advertised at a place where people who are looking for food are shopping. Assuming that the business creator works out the shipping problem, then this model could offer unlimited diversity of food to a potential customer. Of course this model might not work for all food from anywhere around the world, but it is true that it increases the diversity available to the people that it can reach.

Now, this curve is not static. Items become popular and they become less desirable. This happens for various reasons. Some items just might be better than all other similar items. Word of mouth spreads this information, and the best item is sought by the majority of those looking for that type of item. Another way that an item becomes popular is by forced marketing where an item is advertised so much that people are unaware of any similar items in the market. People who need that type of item will select the only item they believe to be available fitting the desired class.

The point here is that there will be a large number of new potential business opportunities that are available looking for people to start new businesses. The idea is to create new ways to get diverse goods aggregated into groups that people will be able to search for particular rare items. There might be an opportunity for an online model train scenery supplier that collects artists together that will produce specialized pieces on demand. Or, it might be political blogs that aggregate all of the best writing on particular ideologically specific areas. Oh, I guess that’s been done already. Well, there are still phrenology and numerology aggregates that don’t exist yet.

:-}



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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

Here’s a quickie.

Over at The American Spectator Quin Hillyer has written a piece worth reading.

Quin thinks he knows how people on the right are thinking. It might just be speculation, or maybe he has a sensitive finger to the political winds. I don’t know if he draws the correct conclusions, but it seems to me that he might have his finger on the stream of consciousness guy out there thinking of what to do on election day. If that’s the case, what do Democrats who want to take control of congress tell this average right leaning guy to calm his fears?

The right has built such an edifice of lies portraying the demonic left as seeking to rob you blind and kill your first born for some tribute to the secular gods of socialism. Obviously this is nonsense, but what can be said to calm the fears that the right has been spreading for years?



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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

As a physicist I look at nature through the eyes of a scientist. Looking at the galaxies, stars, planets and moons they all have one thing in common. They all behave in one predictable way mainly based on the physics that we understand. They all follow the laws of physics and the motions of these objects can be predicted millions of years into the future, or at least thousands. The Universe is simplified when we think of the motion of the planets, the burning of stars, and even the birth of black holes. Some details are still sought, but these details will most certainly fit into the big picture of the Universe. The point is that we know the basic forces on a mass in the universe then we can predict where it will be in the future and how it will be moving.

Similarly, on the microscopic and subatomic scales we can also predict what will happen to molecules, atoms and particles as they travel through space. And, we can look at biological organisms and at least on a statistical level we can predict what plants and animals will do under certain conditions. We can predict an enormous number of ways in which organisms will react to external stimuli.

Being animals ourselves we also react to certain external stimuli in very predictable ways. For example, if you put food in a room full of hungry teenagers we can certainly predict that the teenagers will eat it. As humans, we know that we have free will. We know that we can choose to do or not do what we want when we want to do it. We know that this “free will” exists, but we also know that we put ourselves on autopilot as well. We wake up in the morning when the alarm goes off, and we do pretty much the same thing each morning. This is our routine and we follow it. If something happens out of the ordinary we react to it, and most often we react to it in a predictable way. Often we react in selfish ways that we view as best for our personal self interest. We also react in predictable ways to protect our family and friends or help them when we see that they are in need. When someone hurts us, we react in predictable ways where we shun the person, verbally abuse the person, or even violently attack the person. These are natural reactions to real problems and these reactions themselves can lead to real problems.

If we didn’t have free will we would react in predictable ways to problems we perceived. Life could certainly exist and our life would play out in a very predictable although perhaps very complicated way. The only thing that we have that can break this predictable and perhaps tragic cascade of events is free will. And, Jesus told us how we could use our free will to break this endless cascade of disharmony. He told us that when someone strikes us we should turn the other cheek. Nature would have us retaliate in some way when we are struck by someone. But retaliation is not the only choice. And Jesus made this succinct often quoted verse a profound statement of Christianity.

Christianity does not begin and end with Jesus’ simple statement on conflict resolution. There are other choices that we all make based on our free will to do something other than the natural reaction. We may choose to help someone in need. We may choose to read the Bible. We may choose to fight for what is right. And we may choose to follow Jesus. All of these choices may be counter to our natural inclination and therefore require us to use our free will.

Let’s think about this for a second. How does this work?

First, consider how we live our lives. Most of the things we do are routines. We get up in the morning and do the same routine on school or work days. We finish one routine, and we start the next routine. We encounter problems and we solve the problems with routines that we call on them as they are needed. Some routines may involve learning new things, listening to others and making decisions. Most of the time we deal with particular types of situations in particular ways. With all of this routine in our lives, when do we actually exercise our free will? It comes down to very few actual times, mainly when we change between routines, or when we change the routines themselves.

For example, one routine might be, come home, make dinner, clean up the kitchen, do homework, watch TV, then go to bed. Each piece of this routine involves other routines - like making dinner requires following a recipe, or recalling an easy to make meal. There may be a list of meals that you generally choose from. Day after day you may follow this routine, or some other similar routine. One day instead of watching TV you may decide to read the paper. When you exercise this change in routine then you are exercising free will. Similarly, you may decide to pick another meal to eat that isn’t among the meals you generally choose. Sometimes exercising free will is a “good” thing, and sometimes exercising free will is a “bad” thing. Free will itself is neither good nor bad it is what you decide to do that makes free will good or bad or even neutral. Routines that we have chosen at an earlier time may be “good,” “bad” or “neutral.” So, we may decide to use our free will to make our lives better. We may also choose to use our free will to hurt others or do things that will in the end make our lives worse.

Even though most of the time we choose to run on autopilot and perform routines that we have determined that we enjoy we also need to realize that opportunities to use our free will occur all the time. I the middle of a routine shopping trip we may meet a friend, acquaintance or foe. We may pull out the old routine and behave the way we normally do, or we may choose to use our free will to change the course of events.

Last week I performed an experiment. I split a room of teenagers into two groups. The two groups became teams and competed against each other. The winning team was rewarded with a pizza. I was careful to provide enough pizza to feed everyone in the room one piece each. The winning team however was rewarded with the entire pizza. My son, daughter and wife all correctly predicted that the winning team would eat the pizza themselves and fail to even think of offering any or the remaining pieces to rest of the room. This is an automatic reaction. This is how people react to their environment and the situation that they are put in. There was nothing wrong with their personal choice from our cultural point of view. But, the team missed an opportunity to break from the natural progression of events and offer to share their winnings.

As Christians however Jesus asks us to choose to use our “free will.” We need to decide to break with nature. We have the free will, but we must choose to act, instead of react to the things in our world. The use of free will to change our routines could help us in many ways. We could loose weight, exercise and get physically healthy. We could put down the video game, read a book, and get mentally healthy. And, we could look around us to take the opportunity to share what we have, make our local world a little bit better and get spiritually healthy.


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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Religion, Philosophy

George W Bush has a problem. It isn’t anything that he has done, because he never does anything wrong, or make any mistakes. Except for his speech. He has always been ridiculed for his lack of mastery of the English language. And, whether you realize it or not, George W Bush has used this lack of skills to his advantage.

George W Bush has a problem, and it isn’t what he has done, but what he has failed to do. He has failed to properly convey his vision to us. Things are going exactly as planned in Iraq, but George W Bush is no longer going to “stay the course.” It isn’t that he isn’t going to “stay the course,” but he is not going to say that any more. This is because “Staying the course” is a good thing to do, but it isn’t the way he wants to say. Instead, he is telling us that he is “going to get it done.” This is the same thing as “staying the course,” but it’s just saying the same thing with different words. It means the same thing, but it says the same thing in a different way. Or, perhaps he is doing something different and saying something different and hoping that we don’t notice too much.

George W Bush and his press secretary are both telling us that they aren’t doing anything different. They are, however, changing the way they are saying what they are doing. So, are they or are they not doing something different? Well, he is hoping that the Republican congressmen think that he is doing something different. They are loosing in the polls and they might loose one of the houses of congress. They want to be able to tell the voters that they are going to do something different. But, George W Bush has made a big deal out of not changing even when all odds are against him. What else can he do but walk the tight rope by not admitting to doing anything different, but changing the way he talks about doing what he has been doing. Later his action will fall into line with what he was saying and abracadabra George W Bush magically changes course by “staying the course.”

This isn’t the first time the administration has done this. In fact, their entire six years in office is riddled with these changes in vocabulary. Does anyone remember “compassionate conservatism?” This whole idea was based on having religious organizations distribute eight billion dollars a year to the poor and disadvantaged. Well, the idea got many religious people on board and could have been instrumental in getting just the right number of votes in Florida to put him over the top. But, shortly after the creation of this new bureaucratic department the Bush administration ignored the department. The money never came, and those religious groups were left out in the cold. Of course a small number of groups received a small amount of money, but that was measured to be just enough to keep these religious leaders on board until the 2004 elections. And, the creative text - “compassionate conservative” was dropped from the Republican vocabulary.

So, when we look at Iraq and the mess that George W Bush has created for himself we need to listen carefully to the words that are used to describe the debacle there. It isn’t a Quagmire, but the current situation in Baghdad could be compared to the Tet Offensive. Personally I am surprised that he doesn’t compare it to the storming of the Beaches at Normandy. We can compare some things in Iraq to some things in Vietnam, but certainly not “bad” things. Unless the “bad” things show the Bush administration in a positive light. But, the vocabulary used is more complex than just mere comparison.

If anyone was breathing at the time of the Iraq invasion we all know that George W Bush told us that this was going to be a long road. In fact, besides telling us that we were going to stay the course he also told us that there would be no timetable or schedule for when we will be going home. We all know that the Iraqi government could have us leave at any time, but we would stay as long as they wanted us there. So, now we have an Iraqi government that would rather not take responsibility. They would like us to stay until the violence goes away. We don’t have any means to put any pressure on them, because we pledged to stay as long as they want us there. So, why would they want to take up the tough fight if we are doing it for them? The answer is that they want us to stay and there is nothing we can do about it, except change the vocabulary.

So, George W Bush will not even mention the words “deadlines,” “ultimatums,” “timetables,” or “schedules.” Instead George W Bush talks about “milestones” and “benchmarks.” These subtle distinctions in language don’t seem to match the image of an American President that stumbles over every other sentence and barely understands what he is reading himself. And, this is where the truth becomes apparent. George W Bush has used his inability to move his tongue to created the image of a person who can’t string two sentences together. Based on this illusion he has been able to forward his message cloaked in lies and inaccuracy and blame the problematic language on his lack of mastery of the language.

So, when George W Bush uses the subtle language of being willing to change “tactics,” but not being willing to change “strategy” we should realize the this is a “political tactic” that is part of a “political strategy.” The “strategy” is to maintain political power at any cost, and he is unwilling to change it.





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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics

My wife and I are skeptical. We may not be skeptical about the same things in the same ways, but we certainly have a skeptical outlook on most things. We would both certainly fit in well in Missouri, “The Show Me State.” Questioning what we have been told comes natural, and being a member of any religious faith is difficult in some degree. This difficulty is only in the fact that neither of us completely agrees with any particular religion, so we are certainly being hypocritical in some aspects when we worship, because we don’t take everything that we are told hook line and sinker.

In my opinion and in the true nature of the skeptic I believe that religion has no certain answers, because almost nothing in religion can be proven. And, of course since religious principles are taken on faith instead of observation there is a wide range of what is acceptable religious reasoning. I tend to believe in my own personal understanding of religion, that is ever changing as I learn more about both religions and nature. I am happy with my religious belief and understanding and I have no problem with any disagreement between my own personal religious revelation and what any other religion preaches. My wife has her own personal religious beliefs and understanding which may not agree with my own, but she also has no problem that we disagree and together we disagree with some aspects of other religions. For us these are personal issues.

As I have written before, every religion that exists is guaranteed to have some aspect of that religion in error with reality. It is can be assured that since most every religion disagrees with every other religion on some issues, or else the two religions would simply be one religion and all religions that claimed to be “right” must somehow reconcile their “right” faiths together as “The One True Faith.” Therefore, the probability that any one true faith exists is exceedingly small. And therefore whatever faith one has chosen to worship with is most likely to have errors in its teachings. If there is any possible doubt in this one only needs to recall some of the more famous quotes of Pat Robertson saying "Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up" talking about nuking the State Department. Or, Jerry Falwell saying, “The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That's like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight.” So, a personal search for truth, which is also likely to have errors as well, is not likely to be any better than any other religion. At least when one chooses to follow Christ’s teaching without being told what they mean one is free to keep what Jesus said in the forefront. If we have an issue we can be reassured to remember the most important commandment, “Love God above all others and love your neighbor as yourself.”

My wife and I are not shy about sharing our disagreements about religion with each other. And, we are not shy about sharing our view of the issues with any religion with others that are willing to listen. As my readers have witnessed, I have shared my heretical views freely here on the web. And, I have shared my views within “faith groups” and the random “Jehovah Witness” or “Mormon Missionary” on the street. And as happens most often, the people I talk to will disagree with me. And, at the end of the conversation when the person becomes frustrated and doesn’t know what else to say they tell me that they will pray for me. And, I always respond that I’ll pray for them too.

But, what is the point of having a person that disagrees with my views praying for me. It seems to me that they are trying to use some type of subtext in this discussion. Do they believe that since I don’t agree with them then I must need their prayers until I believe what they tell me? Should I agree with everyone that comes to my door or I meet in the parking lot, then I wouldn’t have anyone praying for me? My wife tells me that she has this same problem with people from our own church.

So, lets use the “God as an old man sitting on a cloud watching over us and listening to our prayers” metaphor for a second. One can imagine God sitting up on a cloud hearing a Mormon praying, “Please let Dr. Forbush realize that he is wrong and let him accept the Mormon faith as the one true faith as we all know that it is.” And, one can imagine God sitting up on a cloud hearing a Jehovah Witness praying, “Please let Dr. Forbush realize that he is wrong and let him accept the Jehovah Witness faith as the one true faith as we all know that it is.” And, one can imagine God sitting up on a cloud hearing a Baptist praying, “Please let Dr. Forbush realize that he is wrong and let him accept the Baptist faith as the one true faith as we all know that it is.” And, one can imagine God sitting up on a cloud hearing a Roman Catholic praying, “Please let Dr. Forbush realize that he is wrong and let him accept the Roman Catholic faith as the one true faith as we all know that it is.” I think you get the idea.

Is God really sitting up in Heaven listening to all this and taking any action?

It seems to me that if any of these true believers are actually praying these prayers they are praying out of their own personal guilt or maybe something deeper. God certainly would not like the sound of all this discord. This type of shouting and yelling about who is right and who is wrong is the type of arguing that must happen before a “religious war” breaks out. Each side of the conflict prays that the side of “right” will win out over the side of “wrong.” They are praying that the other side will change their minds and come to their senses. But, it is also true that each side is also praying that their own side will not change their minds, because they know that they are right. How can any rational human being step back and look at these two groups at war with each other over religion and not see the tragic irony in this. Similarly, but only slightly less tragic is the effort that people take to try to convince someone that their own faith is the flawless truth.

It seems obvious to me that the only true way forward is to listen to one another and begin to agree with one another that there is not one true faith that is “right.” This faith does not exist. Instead, there are aspects of all religions that are helpful in ones personal spiritual growth. Each person is different and each person requires different types of spiritual needs. Different religions offer different spiritual tools to meet these different spiritual needs. But, the only way that one can make progress is for each person to learn as much as they can and take personal responsibility for their own spiritual growth.

God’s grace and good luck on your spiritual journey!




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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Religion

The people of the United States of America believe in fairness. There are great platitudes that offer the illusion of fairness to the people of the United States. We have heard about our freedom and justice for years. But, how many Americans know where the limits of their freedoms are? How many people know how unfairly American justice is served? Since most people never press the limits, most people just believe that they have justice and freedom as far as they can see. But, maybe Americans need to pick their heads up, put their glasses on and look around.

We do have considerable freedom in the United States. However, we also lack freedoms as well. We pass laws that limit our freedom, and other people’s freedom. For example, we become adults at age 18 or 21 depending on the state we live in. This law limits the freedoms of those below the age of adulthood. We have limits on the medication we can purchase, and the food we can sell. We have limitations on the services we are allowed to provide and limitations on the activities that we are allowed to take part in. We have limitations on just about every aspect of our lives. These limitations are reductions of our freedom, like it or not.

If our freedoms are all limited in the same way, then we can still say that the government may limit freedom, but at least they are fair about it. Another freedom that is important to Americans is property rights. People in the United States are allowed to own land, buildings, companies as well as personal property. With this ownership comes both freedom and responsibility. Even without explicit laws stated it must be apparent that one person’s freedom to use their property may certainly effect another person, whether intentional or unintentional.

For example, if a person owns an acre of land and decides to dump rusty old cars on his land, that pile of broken old cars is bound to effect his neighbors. Is it fair to the people around him that he decides to do this? It is his land, but he is changing the environment by the pollution that leaks from the cars into the water table, the eyesore that it creates, and the vermin that a pile of old cars attracts. In this case many cities have passed local ordinances that restrict the use of private land in this way. However, if you live in a rural area where less people are effected there is often less proclivity to pass or enforce these types of laws. Does that mean that the person who decides to turn his land into an eyesore is doing any less damage to the environment because of his location or the local law? Of course not, but Americans have come to believe that following the legal statutes implies some type of “fairness.”

The truth is that freedom and fairness can not exist in the same universe. The universe is inherently unfair. People are born into wealthy or poor family and they are not given the same chance to succeed. People are born into families of different cultural and racial backgrounds with different cultural biases that don’t change easily. If a person is free to use all of the resources that he is given by the chance of his birth, then it is impossible for the person who is born into a situation without these resources to have an equal chance of success. If we are ever going to advance beyond where we are today we need to acknowledge as a country that we do not believe in fairness as a cultural ideal. The world is not fair, and there is nothing that we can do as a society to make things fair. It will never happen.

That being said, we still need to also acknowledge that there is some minimal level of existence, below which we will not tolerate as a society. This poverty level should be a function of some real numbers, not some random numbers that can be arbitrarily changed as the political mood changes. These numbers need to reflect the changes in economic situation, like cost of living and availability of employment. We also need to recognize the reality of the challenge of raising a child and the reality of a need for education in order to drive a society as well as an individual. In other words, there needs to be some recognition and agreement on the minimal level for a person to function and be productive in our society. It may not be fair that people fall into this category from time to time, but it should be recognized as a societal disgrace to allow a member of our society to fall below this level as we realize the cost to society in crime, wasted lives, health, and motivation for allowing this to happen. These simple standards should be agreed upon, but unfortunately we continue to argue about these things.

However, even if we agree that there is no fairness in our economic status, health status or social status we often believe that we have some order of fairness in the justice under our system of government. But, we need to realize that justice in America is not as fair as we would like. One only need examine the OJ Simpson murder case from a non-emotional point of view to realize that justice is not fair. OJ Simpson had the ability to hire a huge legal team to fight every aspect of his murder case and was able to convince a jury to ignore DNA evidence that should have convicted him easily. Compare this to an average poor man with no means to fund even one lawyer and needs to try his case with a lawyer fresh out of law school or worse. The number of defense tactics used alone shows the unfairness of the justice system to favor who ever has the money to spend on his or her defense.

We can only come to the conclusion that fairness might be an objective, but in the real world fairness does not exist. So, how should a reasonable person address this issue?

Should we as a society use the government to assist getting closer to the goal of fairness? Should philanthropy be considered the main means in dealing with this issue? Are there other means that could be used to address this issue? Or, should we just learn to live with the truth of this situation and have a policy of letting everyone deal with the inherent unfairness in the world?



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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit



Politics