Unfolding Origami

I had a great 'origami exchange' with a elderly woman on my flight today. I gave her a butterfly in a small envelop. She was so thankful, but, after a few moments, I had to advise her that the gift was not simply a pretty rectangle. She opened it up and marveled at the butterfly. From the corner of my eye, I could see her examining it closely. After about 5 minutes, she asked if I could make her another one. "Sure", I said, "do you want a different color or something?". "No", she said, "the same color would be nice", and then she showed me a rectangular piece of paper which had previously been the butterfly. "I tried to figure out how it was made", she admitted. "No problem!", I replied, and then I countered, "I just hope you did not have a puppy when you were little" ;-)

Religious versus Spiritual

Whenever I hear one person say "we are born with an innate sense of 'goodness'", and another person say "without religion, there would be no check against our 'evilness'", I think that the first person forgot that they were born into a world that is already rooted in religion, and therefore grew up in an environment that is inescapable from its influences, and I think that the second person forgot that religion came from us, not divine providence, so its influences likely stem from an innate understanding of 'goodness', as surely as its perversions likely stem from our inadequate understanding. And then I remember that categorization is yet another fault in our thinking, as both of the actors depicted above likely have views that are along a spectrum of infinite granularity, and therefore always gray. And even here, some would say 'grey' ;-)

The American Roots of Racism

A friend of mine posted a question on FB that asked "if schools stopped teaching [that] America is built on racism and racism exists where none actually does [...] would [...] racism completely disappear in a generation?"

If you leave aside the presupposition and focus on the supposition, it is a very good question.

Here was my answer:

A question within your question is: where do children learn racism, either being racist or suffering from it? I think that they learn it long before they encounter any lessons about it in school. Still, you ask a great question. What if, instead of fixating on our sordid past, we, collectively, focused on the complex present and open future? Would it be better to learn about the causes and effects of economic and social injustice, our shared and personal responsibility to fight it and our common humanity, without linking it back to our racists roots? My answer is yes, because the historical root causes of economic and social injustice have little to do with the present day root causes or solutions, and the fixation on these historical root causes only widens the cultural divide that feeds racism. But this only works if we all commit to the ideals of equality and justice for all. When an African American man is shot 6 times in his car during a routine traffic stop, for no apparent reason other than the officer 'fearing for his life', and said officer is later cleared of any crime, then you have to expect an outsized reaction from African Americans, and you have to expect the search for why such a thing would happen. At that point, finding the cause in our past might actually be more palatable than the truth of the matter: racism is alive and well in the present. So the caveat to my answer is that we would need to grapple with this present day fact.

Thoughts?

Intellectual Acceptance

The more intellectual duels I read on FB - or see on the news - the more I realize that we all need to keep in mind that, at the end of the day, our beliefs are based on... [drum roll]... beliefs. Whether you think there is a God who controls all outcomes and takes a personal interest in your life, or a system of rules that govern the chaos within, with no vested interest in individuals, it all comes down to belief. Of course, a scientist can legitimately state the system of rules embodied in physics, chemistry, biology, etc, are much better explainers of the past and predictors of the future, but, when it comes to the outright origin of 'truth', scientists may very well be just as wrong as religious scholars. I - personally - believe that science offers a better foundation for understanding the world, but I also - personally - believe that there is a threshold between physical bodies and spiritual bodies that science cannot penetrate, even if so-called spiritual realms are merely biochemical reactions. At the end of the day, we all try to use the tools available to us to make sense of the world and deal with the ups and downs of everyday life. So long as there is no imposition of beliefs, we should try to occupy a live and let live kind of world, though I would not force this upon anyone ;-)

Qualified Thinking

I just watched an interview with the Prime Minister of a country that has been lurching from democracy to dictatorship over the past few years, and his belief in his own lies, as well as his ability to calmly recount those lies to the interviewer, was absolutely incredible. Of course, being able to delude one’s self can be a good thing. Believing in your own greatness ahead of your achievement of same is akin to self-delusion. As well, believing in the delusions of those we look to for leadership can also be a good thing, from children of parents to astronauts in the Kennedy era. But both of these are aspirational, whereas this fellow’s beliefs are revisionist. In an era of ever-decreasing signal to noise ratio, with ever-increasing effort to get to objective facts, I can see how convenient it is to just believe in the lie. I can see that Trump’s true allure is his removal of the anxiety of doubt when he speaks to his constituents, even if the certainty in which he says one thing or another has little to do with facts, forethought or even afterthought. It’s comfort food for the common citizen, and, like most comfort food, it’s a heart attack waiting to happen. I think that the most important lesson to teach our children is to think objectively and draw qualified conclusions, but children learn from their parents, so I think that we - collectively - need to learn that lesson first. 

The Final C

This morning on my way to work, I listened to a book on Audible (Guns, Germs and Steel - quite a fascinating book) and did not fire up any other audio or video apps at work during the day, which is why I was duly surprised, as I got in my car at 11pm to drive home, that Jussi Bjorljng's 'Che Gelida Manina' was playing through my Bluetooth audio. I did not try to investigate why or switch back to my book, but, rather, took it as a sign and decided to listen through to its climactic conclusion. If you are familiar with Puccini's 'La Boheme' and you've listened to this particular aria from a variety of tenors, you will instantly recognize how Bjorling completely butchers his Italian and plows through some of the nuances of the aria, but all of that is forgiven with his signature, albeit a bit strident, high C. And that, my friends, is the analogy that I took as a sign. Even after a less than effective day or week or month or year or life, even a haggard wolf can howl in a way that is haunting, so go ahead and slug your way through this life, but leave enough for a high C, in whatever form that is for you, at the very end.

https://youtu.be/K_1Ry44K-MM

The Pattern of the Problem

The pattern of the problem I am noticing in the news and on Facebook seems to have less to do with Republican or Democrat, Right-wing or Left-wing, Conservative or Liberal, or anything in between, and more to do with the oversimplification of stereotypes. I - personally - have not seen anything from my friends that would cause me to love them any less, because I understand that an opinion that I might not agree with is not their defining characteristic. At the end of the day, we are far more alike and not nearly as separate from one another as we think. If we could embrace debates with this kind of understanding, we might get a lot more value out of points and counterpoints than we do today. Given that the world is divided into people who think they are right (wink), we should be open to and investigate differing opinions, with the exception of opinions that are akin to outright hate and discrimination, which I almost never see in my network of friends. How about you?