I'm
trying to figure out utility. So far I guess utility primarily
signifies the quality of being useful, although it is somewhat more
abstract than the traditional definition of usefulness or use. Utility is often employed to denote
adaptation to produce a valuable result, while usefulness denotes the
actual production of such result, perhaps some tangible thing. I've
tried comparing and contrasting beauty and utility, in that
beautiful art can elicit utility. It can be said that an invention's
utility is questionable even while it's usefulness has been proven by
trial, even if only by a few individuals. Still utility and usefulness
are interchanged as synonyms on occasion despite their differences.
Expediency refers primarily to escape from or avoidance of some
difficulty or trouble; while either expediency or utility might be used
to signify either profit or advantage as considered apart from rights or
entitlement as the grounds for ethical or moral obligation, or of
actions that have a moral character, expediency denoting immediate
advantage on a contracted view. Especially with reference to avoiding
danger, difficulty, or loss, while utility might be so broadened as to
cover all existence through all time, as in the utilitarian theory of
morals. Policy is often used in a kindred sense, more positive than
expediency but narrower than utility, as in the proverb: 'honesty is the
best policy' although policies are rarely directly honest. Utility is
often partially synonymous with profit, the returns or receipts
including all that is received from an outlay or investment. Avail
stresses the idea of effectiveness and effectualness. Gain is what is
secured beyond previous possession. Benefit is anything that provides
or does good, but is not necessarily utility. Emolument is profit,
return, or value accruing thru an official position. Expediency has
respect to profit or advantage, real or supposed, considered apart from
or perhaps in opposition to what is correct or proper action in terms if
moral or ethical character. Utility is chiefly used in the sense of
some immediate or personal usefulness, and some material good, as in
product; although financial goods are immaterial. Advantage is that
which provides one a vantage ground, either for coping with competitors
or with difficulties, needs, demands, or perhaps to empower later
utility. As in to possess the advantage of a good education. Profit is
frequently used of what one has beyond another or secures at the
expense of another if you believe in scarcity. As in to have the
advantage of another in a argument, or take advantage of another in a
bargain; although I hope that is not utility as itself.
The Greek word for "kind" as in "Charity suffereth long, and is kind" has
both the idea of goodness and usefulness. I think for something or
some policy to be utilitarian in a true sense, it must be both good and
useful. If not good it will soon cease to be useful; if not useful it
can do no good. God is kind to men in both senses, and utility fulfills both senses.
Trying
to avoid the dualistic psychological nature of utility although the
semantic confusion between goodness and a good is an issue. The idea of
psychological products recently expounded upon in the growth of the
experience economy could be analogous to the feelings of righteousness
sold by the church for centuries, implemented as the delight of
discovery by science, or the excitement of epiphany could all be said to
have utility by the individuals who do recall such memories,
experience, or knowledge as positive. Spite, schadenfreude, and
righteousness could be other psychological experiences perceived as
possessing utility due to positive feelings although the utility,
advantage, or usefulness is ripe for moral and/or ethical discourse due
to the fact that it might not garner a net benefit. The enemy of
charity is pride to define a simple dual relationship, or the opposition
to kindness is spite; although the dynamics are really more geometric
as charity could be in opposition to pride, greed, righteousness, sloth
and any other number of co-occurring emotions, beliefs, or constructs.
Which is why I wanted to avoid it. Even something as enjoyable as humor
could be thought of as a zero sum game. A recent example from the
'news' might be fat shaming versus fat jokes, versus motivation or there
might be a net benefit. It is hard to define en masse as the utility
of each individual is exactly that, individual in the aggregate. It
really comes down to outcomes, a priori, and a posteriori. Utility is
observable in some behaviors, although the variables that affect,
effect, and lead to those behaviors are cognitive, as are some forms of
utility. Utility can be said to be received from both vice and virtue,
and either to excess is the other.
There
is something about statistics that separates us from each other,
dehumanizing a group, and portending marginalization. Stereotypes do
exist for a reason but they are measurable with statistics. Individuals
need not embrace stereotypes, however doings so does elicit utility for
the in-group through shared experience, belonging and doing do does
elicit utility for the out-group through identification of the in-group,
righteousness of knowledge; but not of understanding or discernment.
Stereotypes can serve to reinforce a group which can provide utility to
that group, such as nationalism in terms of integration, or the
individuality of sub culture differentiation. I have some ideas
concerning chaos, synchronization, and game theories that progress in
that order, but I prefer to be able to test them first, I appreciate
utility in that.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
poetry 1
The sugar is wind
Touch my pen this mourning with inspirations fire
Teach me to write the story of a souls intense desire
Tell me why souls must hunger and languish as they go
And why the spirit thirsteth, while crystal waters flow?
A little child once whispered, in lisping accents sweet,
"Don't talk to me, dear Papa,-I'm hungry and must eat!"
And while she sat in silence and ate her milk and bread,
I gathered inspiration from what the prattled said.
I too have been so hungry I did not wish to speak,
But pain would sit in silence, if bread I found to eat;
The milk of human kindness when poured into life's bowl.
Is often skimmed so closely it starves the humans soul.
There's milk for babies a plenty, and meat for some, it seems,
But O, I want a little of the thin, rich, and yellow cream.
Something we cannot relish, all free from processes taint and mold,
To strengthen and nourish the fibres of our souls
Nor are they satisfying, the quickly passing showers
That for a moment burning souls like ours;
But there's a living fountain within the human brest
That like the boiling geyser will never, ever rest,
Until the oil if gladness, sympathy, and peace,
Is poured into the fountain to bid its tumult cease.
Our human hearts are selfish, and human love is vain,
So angels guard the fountain from earthly taint and stain.
In ignorance we we murmur, and wonder why is so,
But God has set the boundary and will not let it go.
So human souls go hungering and thirsting on the way,
Till they have cast the garment of selfishness away.
Why selfish passions gather like frost drops on the soul
We look in vain for nectar within life's flowering bowl
The wine of human passions intoxicates the breath,
And leads the human
Spirit into the vale of death.
But, by-and-by the angel will roll away the stone
And to the living fountain bid every spirit come.
Then all may taste the waters, high on the mount above,
When they have learned to cherish the souls unselfish love.
The ground is salt
Between dost flow, yo
Love
Touch my pen this mourning with inspirations fire
Teach me to write the story of a souls intense desire
Tell me why souls must hunger and languish as they go
And why the spirit thirsteth, while crystal waters flow?
A little child once whispered, in lisping accents sweet,
"Don't talk to me, dear Papa,-I'm hungry and must eat!"
And while she sat in silence and ate her milk and bread,
I gathered inspiration from what the prattled said.
I too have been so hungry I did not wish to speak,
But pain would sit in silence, if bread I found to eat;
The milk of human kindness when poured into life's bowl.
Is often skimmed so closely it starves the humans soul.
There's milk for babies a plenty, and meat for some, it seems,
But O, I want a little of the thin, rich, and yellow cream.
Something we cannot relish, all free from processes taint and mold,
To strengthen and nourish the fibres of our souls
Nor are they satisfying, the quickly passing showers
That for a moment burning souls like ours;
But there's a living fountain within the human brest
That like the boiling geyser will never, ever rest,
Until the oil if gladness, sympathy, and peace,
Is poured into the fountain to bid its tumult cease.
Our human hearts are selfish, and human love is vain,
So angels guard the fountain from earthly taint and stain.
In ignorance we we murmur, and wonder why is so,
But God has set the boundary and will not let it go.
So human souls go hungering and thirsting on the way,
Till they have cast the garment of selfishness away.
Why selfish passions gather like frost drops on the soul
We look in vain for nectar within life's flowering bowl
The wine of human passions intoxicates the breath,
And leads the human
Spirit into the vale of death.
But, by-and-by the angel will roll away the stone
And to the living fountain bid every spirit come.
Then all may taste the waters, high on the mount above,
When they have learned to cherish the souls unselfish love.
The ground is salt
Between dost flow, yo
Love
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Forgiveness
"Beauty is being in harmony with what(who) you are." ~ Peter Nivio Zarlenga
We are all so different in this world, still common themes emerge from our shared experiences. From time immemorial people like the Greek thespians performed allegorical comedy and tragedy. Who doesn't enjoy a good laugh? And why is it funny?
How each of us deals with, copes, and and processes the perceived injustice(s) of tragedy is as various as are we, as our senses of humor, and yet similar and general comparisons can be made to some degree. Spilling a drink is not the same tragedy as losing a loved one, although the same processes do occur in a neuro-electctirc-biochemical sense, although on a different scope and scale. Pastor John Stumbo once said at Salem Alliance that: "We feel hurt by those closest to us because they have the most opportunity to do so". This is consistent with the general idea in social psychology and relationships that feelings of inequity are common amongst people, between individuals in relationships. The arising of such unfairness is a function of an accounting error due to exposure, emerging from limited perspective. The more time we spend with others the fuller our storehouse of memories becomes, the relationships become increasingly dynamic , and further emotional entanglement becomes progressively more complex. Intriguingly some individuals simply move on without observable behaviors that would lead others to draw conclusions. The Kübler-Ross model, commonly referred to as the "five stages of grief" claims that when one is faced with the reality of any awful fate, experience, or loss they will experience a series of emotional stages identified as: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and/or acceptance. Some theorists cling to order. Others believe there is no set order or progression for these cognitive emotive states, rather they can be triggered by environmental or internal stimulus. As states and traits that often define individual personalities as we are cycled thru at a moments notice by our thoughts. It can occur years later as remorse, immediately after as revenge, the saudades of wishing one didn't now know what what didn't know then. Minimizing, denying, blaming, rationalizing, and many other defense mechanisms are tied up in those five stages. Many people too are tied up in the entanglement of their memories, finite knowledge, the superiority of their discernment, the distinctions of categorical knowledge as we can conquer the world just because we can read, write, think, do a little math. With capability follows responsibility.
Personally my least favorite of the five stages of grief is acceptance, for when an event is accepted it becomes part of us, engrained in the psyche, an obligation of the subconscious to our chosen responsibility, to our conscious mind. When one accepts one also claims knowledge and discernment of what is best, while also donning the blindness of expertise, just as justice once did as a cowl of darkness reflected in the robes of judges to this day. Lawyers do not accept loss, just as oncologists do not accept cancer, as firemen do not accept flaming communities. Doctors, Engineers, and Loved ones do not accept death. What a person does or does not accept often sculpts their personal perspective, their psyche, just as their socio-cultural beliefs shape psyche. Whittling away at ourselves and our neighbors in cycles of destruction and creation. Some people might conjecture that forgiveness is a form of acceptance, I was raised a little differently. I was taught that forgiveness was a distinct means to deal with tragedy, with injustice, to transmute divine comedy.
Once the history of percussion, oppression, resistance, power, and their eternal struggle is learned as the cycle it is the key to breaking it becomes obvious. The sickle, the psy, the hammer, all tools are implements only in this moment, the beginningless moment that is now shared by you, the reader, and me the writer, despite the transcendence of time. Often iron flows through our bodies delivering oxygen just as tools & ideas flow through time. The picture of suffering and martyrdom is old. An example of just such an idea is the manifestation and central tenet of the pacifist Mennonite philosophical tradition, that is to "forgive and move on." Life goes on. Creation is almost as infinite as imagination. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." From Galatians five, there is no law against the supposition of all these things in creation either. To the Mennonites forgiveness is a religious imperative, albeit only of kindness, forbearance, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, love, and peace. "Forgive those who trespass against you", to do so joyfully is to be creative by thought indeed. This theology also happens to be a pragmatic strategy embracing the profound limits to what the formal mechanisms of retribution can accomplish. Over powering forces, authority, and punitive actions of the spiteful whither and die before the faith of joyful forgiveness. A moving example of this occurred during the early Stalinist revolution in Russia when the Mennonites were viciously and repeatedly persecuted. Entire villages were wiped from the face of Eurasia. Hundreds of thousands of Mennonites were shipped off to the Gulag Archipelago, scattered by the winds of change across Siberia. Farms were looted and burned to the ground, many poor farmers fled to the United States and Canada. There was a commercial recently memorializing irrepressible farmers:
And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say,'Maybe next year,' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from an ash tree, shoe a horse with hunk of car tire, who can make a harness out hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. Who, during planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, put in another 72 hours." So God made the farmer.
God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to yean lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-comb pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the leg of a meadowlark."
It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, and brake, and disk, and plow, and plant, and tie the fleece and strain the milk, . Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his son says that he wants to spend his life doing what Dad does. "So God made a farmer."
What history's wicked authorities corrupted by the foolishness of power didn't realize is how deeply this cultural artifact is sown into our collective souls. The strength of forgiveness is not in acceptance but is in fearlessness. No amount of punishment, enslavement, wickedness, or authority can force another to do what farmers, Mennonite and otherwise, choose joyfully to do in love for their families, neighbors, strangers, and fellow Samaritans. Life goes on, and so do some individuals, some cultures, when wronged we turn the other cheek and walk away. Some religious movements have their great heroes as warriors or prophets. Some speak truth to power, others allow actions to speak louder than words, compassion for the enemy, the Mennonites have the martyred Anabaptist Dirk Willems. Mr. Willems was arrested in the 1500's for his beliefs and was imprisoned in a tower. When winter came he planned his escape. With the aid of a rope of knotted rags he escaped by lowering himself down from the window and bolted across the frozen moat. A guard gave chase, while a starved Willems made it safely to the other side. The fat and well provisioned guard did not. Falling through the ice into the freezing water. Willems stopped, went back, and rescued his pursuer. His reward for this act of compassion was to returned to prison, tortured, and then slowly burned at the stake as he repeated "Oh my lord, my God" seventy times.
What is often forgotten by authority is that their power must be legitimate in order for behavior modification techniques to have affect. Those individuals who realize everything is God's gift, God's grace, God's blessings experience a profound freedom from suffering, fear, and control because their's is nothing to lose, to be lost. Such psychological freedom is not limited to the Menonites, the Amish, or the religious; it is available to you and to me, to anyone who appreciates simplicity of faith without fear. Think like a wave, act like a particle, be yourself, in that way we are all a part of the same ocean. We are all of the same universe.
The question then is turned to what we are becoming, and what kind of person would be a good person to become. A more satisfying answer can be found in the works of Soren Kierkegaard, who was a theist, and proposed the idea of different personality types that men develop at in different times of their lives, according to the choices they make and the desires that they have. Kierkegaard argues that, in order to fully personalize those values that we consider to be universal - values such as freedom, equality, or justice - our choices will lead us through three stages of existence he classifies as the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious stage. It is the leap from the ethical to the religious that is most problematic to this modern trend of universal values education, and Kierkegaard uses the story of Abraham to illustrate this dilemma more fully.
Sartre and Kierkegaard are most fully in agreement on the human freedom to make choices for oneself, despite existing external pressures. Kierkegaard has been quoted as saying, "The crowd is composed of individuals, but it must also be in the power of each one to be what he is: an individual; and no one, no one at all, no one whatsoever is prevented from being an individual unless he prevents himself - by becoming one of the masses"
Thus we all make choices, and those choices determine our direction and personal growth. According to Kierkegaard's stages of life, we begin at what is called the aesthetic, or romantic, level of existence. James Valone, Jr., author of The Ethics and Existentialism of Kierkegaard, introduces the concept when he says, "Although we normally reserve the term merely for art, Kierkegaard uses it in its broader sense of anything that refers to the sensual or immediate. Aesthetic means the immediate life of the senses which is the starting point of all human activity.
We are all born as sensual creatures, intently interested in the here and now. These are the primary concerns of the aesthetic individual. Kierkegaard is not satisfied with simply classifying an individual with a single label, either, but introduces several characteristics and levels of aesthetic practice, beginning with sensual immediacy, which can progress to doubt, which can then progress to despair. Valone further explains that "Kierkegaard has given us a two-fold development scheme. We can develop and move from one lifestyle to another, making the transition perhaps to the ethical. But even within a lifestyle...we can move or develop from one phase or mood to another. In the
Taking the next step to an ethical lifestyle, in contrast, means that an individual needs to be "transparent to himself...does not live [thoughtlessly] as does the aesthetic individual...He who lives ethically has seen himself, knows himself, penetrates with his consciousness his whole tangible self...does not allow indefinite thoughts to potter about within him, nor tempting possibilities to distract him with their jugglery...".
Those who are ethical are more disciplined than those who live an aesthetic or romantic lifestyle. They set goals and achieve them. They are bound to rules of law, both making them and upholding them. They are those who create order in society, and enable the functioning thereof. The ethical demands self-knowledge, while the aesthete demands silence. However, not all people choose to leave the life of the aesthetic for the ethical, citing the "stuffiness and staid character" of the ethicist, as well as the tendency for the ethicist to "become excessively legal in his/her attitude and excessively narrow in his/her view of morals. One upholds the law merely for the law's sake, because it is the law...doing the moral thing for duty's sake..."
Kierkegaard clearly felt that, in order to live a more fulfilled life and to benefit society at large, a move from a purely aesthetic worldview to an ethical worldview is necessary, yet we cannot kill the aesthete within us entirely, nor would we want to. One author points out that "in Either/Or...the basic point is that aesthetics must play a necessary and important role in the life of the ethicist; the aesthetic dimension of life is preserved on the ethical level, but in a transformed version." The ethicist must still have the love and human contact that aesthetics demands, but now finds fulfillment of it in the commitment of marriage instead of several love affairs in sequence. The life of the ethical brings order and control to the chaos of thought and experience that lays open to, but can never be fully enjoyed or utilized by the aesthete because of his lack of discipline and control.
Yet Kirkegaard does not end his evaluations with the ethical. The leap of faith for which Kierkegaard is well known refers to the move from an ethical worldview to a religious worldview, where one's own knowledge and desires are sublimated to a power higher than one's own, namely God. In making this move, we are faced with a tremendous paradox, which Kierkegaard personalizes in his book Fear and Trembling. Johansen tells us that "In Fear and Trembling, he wants to make space for the religious dimension, again in terms of a conflict, this time between the ethical and religious spheres of life." Evans gives us some historical background with which we can understand Kierkegaard's deep need to write this book. "The work is a polemical effort to contradict and combat certain culturally accepted misconceptions about faith: those prevalent in philosophical Hegelian circles, and those unthinkingly accepted by the populace of Denmark that had made Christianity a matter of cultural conformity rather than a radical means of authentic existence".
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard lays open the story of Abraham from the Bible, who is required to sacrifice his son on an altar of the Lord instead of the traditional lamb. Kierkegaard points out that, to someone at a level of aesthetic or ethical understanding, Abraham's action is a monstrous, unforgivable crime, made even more monstrous by attempting to justify it with religion. "...efforts to ethicalize Abraham's conduct fail; Abraham is not a moral hero...according to (some), Kierkegaard holds not just the wrong but a dangerous view, that a morally reprehensible act can be justified by religion"
Yet Kierkegaard does not regard it as such. Under his pseudonym of Johannes De Silencio, Kierkegaard expresses in Fear and Trembling his admiration for the tremendous courage that it took for Abraham to obey the commandment that he received from God to sacrifice his son, and admits his own inability to reach such a height on his own. "...my courage is still not the courage of faith and is not something to be compared with it. I cannot make the movement of faith, I cannot shut my eyes and plunge confidently into the absurd; it is for me an impossibility, but I do not praise myself for that...I do not have faith; this courage I lack". It is this religious level of sublimation of one's own will that Kierkegaard regards as the pinnacle of human development. "The sign of childishness is to say: 'Me wants, me-me'; the sign of youth is to say: 'I'-and 'I'- and 'I'; the sign of maturity and the introduction to the eternal is the will to understand that this 'I' signifies nothing if it does not become the 'thou' to whom eternity unceasingly speaks, and says: 'Thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt'"
Could an individual, living at only an ethical level, who is concerned only with values and ethical living, endure a test that Abraham was called to endure? Will teaching values alone without the background of worship of a Supreme Being grant the necessary strength for these values to be lived in abstraction? Arthur King disagrees. "Kierkegaard reminds us more firmly than anyone else that the sacrifice of Isaac is the example that shows religion to be deeper and more important than any morality that may emerge from it....Abraham had absolute faith in God, and therefore felt free to do what God told him to do, even though it seemed to be directly against what he thought God's teachings were...Morality is concerned with deliberate reference to principles to find out what to do. Religion is concerned with spontaneous correct action". What Kierkegaard is trying to say is that the daily living of faith is what makes values work and become automatic in our lives. Making the change from an ethical worldview to a religious one means placing your faith, all your trust, in God and what He tells you to do, and the ethical worldview is then subordinate to the purposes of God, whatever those purposes may be. This presupposes that one has a belief in God, an understanding of God and His purposes, that one has communication with God, and that this communication is sufficiently clear to be able to understand when a message is from God, or from another source. This level of trust is very difficult to reach, and for some, impossible or even unthinkable, because even the very existence of God is still debatable in some philosophical circles.
What would be the rewards of such a level of enlightenment? Hoffman touches on this point when he discusses the modern debate on whether or not our emotions are something to be disciplined and harnessed in such a way that a religious level of living would be possible. He states that this debate was not always what it is today. "...The common ancient assumption is that emotions are themselves intelligent...To say emotions are intelligent...does imply our desires can be examined, developed, educated, and integrated in more or less salutary ways. In Furtak's words, the 'cardinal virtue' of this 'renovated ethics would be nothing less than the readiness to be always affected in the right ways, based upon a care for the right things,' with the goal of having "earned the right to trust oneself in becoming passionate.'" Even within the religious worldview, there are still the qualities of the aesthete and the ethical, finding their highest expression within a still higher framework of the religious. Johansen also echoes these sentiments as he discusses Kierkegaard's idea of faith, the necessary step to lead a religious life. "Faith, according to Kierkegaard, is a double movement in which the first movement would be infinite resignation and the second movement is faith...described from a certain distance, it is not difficult to understand the double movement of faith as exemplified by a person who is confidently present in the world and occupied with its contingencies, but whose confidence and trust is neither an expression of naïve immediacy nor human calculation, but an expression of faith in God." Again we see all three expressions of the personality - the aesthete and the ethical being "confidently present in the world", but expressed without the drawbacks of "naïve immediacy" or "human calculation" inherent in these worldviews Living a religious life would be the highest possible expression of either stage of life.
It is beneficial to teach and model those values in society which will universally lead people to ethically better and improve themselves and others, but by itself it is insufficient to stand against danger or aesthetic despair. The development of a religious life will not happen spontaneously through association with others, and so Kierkegaard means through his writings to encourage individuals - for only individuals can choose what is in their own best interests - to "work for himself, each for himself...for the development is...a progress because all the individuals who are saved will receive the specific weight of religion, its essence at first hand, from God himself". Just as Abraham stood alone and carried his trial alone before God, so each of us as individuals must make those choices that will bring us to the point where we can no longer, by our own efforts, continue forward alone in our progression, when "the cruelty of abstraction makes the true form of worldliness only too evident, the abyss of eternity opens before you, the sharp scythe of the leveler makes it possible for every one individually to leap over the blade - and behold, it is God who waits. Leap, then, into the arms of God".
This freedom is free to all who accept its tenets, from Abraham and Noah, to Moses and you, the reader. The Amish often endured subjugation shoulder to shoulder with the Mennonites. In the book of Amish Grace there is the story of a young Amish mother whose young child was struck and killed by a speeding car. As the investigating officer placed the driver of the car in the police cruiser to take him for an alcohol test, the mother of the child approached the car to speak with the officer. With her young daughter tugging at her dress the mother said: "Please take care of the boy." The officer, assuming she meant her critically injured boy, replied: "The paramedics and doctors will do the best they can, the rest is up to God." The mother pointed to the suspect in the rear if the squad car: "I meant the driver. We Forgive him."
This is how the young learn, not by being taught, or being told. Not by being threatened or being punished. But through consistent actions of their community members. By the behaviors of their society and culture. Your emotions are your responsibility, a result of your choices, beliefs, thoughts, and experiences. Accountability starts with yourself and the situations you have traveled to, the friends and conversations you have had, the actions that speak louder than words or thoughts. Please, release loathing for self and others, taste not bitterness, drop your remorse, forgive another, forgive yourself and be changed. Do not accept it, change it through forgiveness.
"Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harms we do, we do to ourselves." ~ Mitch Albom In order to forgive others we must first seek harmony within ourselves as experienced through our lives, it is only once we have learned to forgive inside and out that we might spread forgiveness, like peanut butter. The forgiveness of peanut butter fills the hungry, mutes mouthy desires, satiates the glutton, and sticks to the bones of those who are able to need and absorb it, harmony is like peanut butter.
We are all so different in this world, still common themes emerge from our shared experiences. From time immemorial people like the Greek thespians performed allegorical comedy and tragedy. Who doesn't enjoy a good laugh? And why is it funny?
How each of us deals with, copes, and and processes the perceived injustice(s) of tragedy is as various as are we, as our senses of humor, and yet similar and general comparisons can be made to some degree. Spilling a drink is not the same tragedy as losing a loved one, although the same processes do occur in a neuro-electctirc-biochemical sense, although on a different scope and scale. Pastor John Stumbo once said at Salem Alliance that: "We feel hurt by those closest to us because they have the most opportunity to do so". This is consistent with the general idea in social psychology and relationships that feelings of inequity are common amongst people, between individuals in relationships. The arising of such unfairness is a function of an accounting error due to exposure, emerging from limited perspective. The more time we spend with others the fuller our storehouse of memories becomes, the relationships become increasingly dynamic , and further emotional entanglement becomes progressively more complex. Intriguingly some individuals simply move on without observable behaviors that would lead others to draw conclusions. The Kübler-Ross model, commonly referred to as the "five stages of grief" claims that when one is faced with the reality of any awful fate, experience, or loss they will experience a series of emotional stages identified as: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and/or acceptance. Some theorists cling to order. Others believe there is no set order or progression for these cognitive emotive states, rather they can be triggered by environmental or internal stimulus. As states and traits that often define individual personalities as we are cycled thru at a moments notice by our thoughts. It can occur years later as remorse, immediately after as revenge, the saudades of wishing one didn't now know what what didn't know then. Minimizing, denying, blaming, rationalizing, and many other defense mechanisms are tied up in those five stages. Many people too are tied up in the entanglement of their memories, finite knowledge, the superiority of their discernment, the distinctions of categorical knowledge as we can conquer the world just because we can read, write, think, do a little math. With capability follows responsibility.
Personally my least favorite of the five stages of grief is acceptance, for when an event is accepted it becomes part of us, engrained in the psyche, an obligation of the subconscious to our chosen responsibility, to our conscious mind. When one accepts one also claims knowledge and discernment of what is best, while also donning the blindness of expertise, just as justice once did as a cowl of darkness reflected in the robes of judges to this day. Lawyers do not accept loss, just as oncologists do not accept cancer, as firemen do not accept flaming communities. Doctors, Engineers, and Loved ones do not accept death. What a person does or does not accept often sculpts their personal perspective, their psyche, just as their socio-cultural beliefs shape psyche. Whittling away at ourselves and our neighbors in cycles of destruction and creation. Some people might conjecture that forgiveness is a form of acceptance, I was raised a little differently. I was taught that forgiveness was a distinct means to deal with tragedy, with injustice, to transmute divine comedy.
Once the history of percussion, oppression, resistance, power, and their eternal struggle is learned as the cycle it is the key to breaking it becomes obvious. The sickle, the psy, the hammer, all tools are implements only in this moment, the beginningless moment that is now shared by you, the reader, and me the writer, despite the transcendence of time. Often iron flows through our bodies delivering oxygen just as tools & ideas flow through time. The picture of suffering and martyrdom is old. An example of just such an idea is the manifestation and central tenet of the pacifist Mennonite philosophical tradition, that is to "forgive and move on." Life goes on. Creation is almost as infinite as imagination. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." From Galatians five, there is no law against the supposition of all these things in creation either. To the Mennonites forgiveness is a religious imperative, albeit only of kindness, forbearance, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, love, and peace. "Forgive those who trespass against you", to do so joyfully is to be creative by thought indeed. This theology also happens to be a pragmatic strategy embracing the profound limits to what the formal mechanisms of retribution can accomplish. Over powering forces, authority, and punitive actions of the spiteful whither and die before the faith of joyful forgiveness. A moving example of this occurred during the early Stalinist revolution in Russia when the Mennonites were viciously and repeatedly persecuted. Entire villages were wiped from the face of Eurasia. Hundreds of thousands of Mennonites were shipped off to the Gulag Archipelago, scattered by the winds of change across Siberia. Farms were looted and burned to the ground, many poor farmers fled to the United States and Canada. There was a commercial recently memorializing irrepressible farmers:
And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the field, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board." So God made a farmer.
God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say,'Maybe next year,' I need somebody who can shape an ax handle from an ash tree, shoe a horse with hunk of car tire, who can make a harness out hay wire, feed sacks and shoe scraps. Who, during planting time and harvest season will finish his 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, paining from tractor back, put in another 72 hours." So God made the farmer.
God said, "I need somebody strong enough to clear trees and heave bales, yet gentle enough to yean lambs and wean pigs and tend the pink-comb pullets, who will stop his mower for an hour to splint the leg of a meadowlark."
It had to be somebody who'd plow deep and straight and not cut corners. Somebody to seed, weed, feed, breed, and brake, and disk, and plow, and plant, and tie the fleece and strain the milk, . Somebody who'd bale a family together with the soft, strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh, and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his son says that he wants to spend his life doing what Dad does. "So God made a farmer."
What history's wicked authorities corrupted by the foolishness of power didn't realize is how deeply this cultural artifact is sown into our collective souls. The strength of forgiveness is not in acceptance but is in fearlessness. No amount of punishment, enslavement, wickedness, or authority can force another to do what farmers, Mennonite and otherwise, choose joyfully to do in love for their families, neighbors, strangers, and fellow Samaritans. Life goes on, and so do some individuals, some cultures, when wronged we turn the other cheek and walk away. Some religious movements have their great heroes as warriors or prophets. Some speak truth to power, others allow actions to speak louder than words, compassion for the enemy, the Mennonites have the martyred Anabaptist Dirk Willems. Mr. Willems was arrested in the 1500's for his beliefs and was imprisoned in a tower. When winter came he planned his escape. With the aid of a rope of knotted rags he escaped by lowering himself down from the window and bolted across the frozen moat. A guard gave chase, while a starved Willems made it safely to the other side. The fat and well provisioned guard did not. Falling through the ice into the freezing water. Willems stopped, went back, and rescued his pursuer. His reward for this act of compassion was to returned to prison, tortured, and then slowly burned at the stake as he repeated "Oh my lord, my God" seventy times.
What is often forgotten by authority is that their power must be legitimate in order for behavior modification techniques to have affect. Those individuals who realize everything is God's gift, God's grace, God's blessings experience a profound freedom from suffering, fear, and control because their's is nothing to lose, to be lost. Such psychological freedom is not limited to the Menonites, the Amish, or the religious; it is available to you and to me, to anyone who appreciates simplicity of faith without fear. Think like a wave, act like a particle, be yourself, in that way we are all a part of the same ocean. We are all of the same universe.
The question then is turned to what we are becoming, and what kind of person would be a good person to become. A more satisfying answer can be found in the works of Soren Kierkegaard, who was a theist, and proposed the idea of different personality types that men develop at in different times of their lives, according to the choices they make and the desires that they have. Kierkegaard argues that, in order to fully personalize those values that we consider to be universal - values such as freedom, equality, or justice - our choices will lead us through three stages of existence he classifies as the aesthetic stage, the ethical stage, and the religious stage. It is the leap from the ethical to the religious that is most problematic to this modern trend of universal values education, and Kierkegaard uses the story of Abraham to illustrate this dilemma more fully.
Sartre and Kierkegaard are most fully in agreement on the human freedom to make choices for oneself, despite existing external pressures. Kierkegaard has been quoted as saying, "The crowd is composed of individuals, but it must also be in the power of each one to be what he is: an individual; and no one, no one at all, no one whatsoever is prevented from being an individual unless he prevents himself - by becoming one of the masses"
Thus we all make choices, and those choices determine our direction and personal growth. According to Kierkegaard's stages of life, we begin at what is called the aesthetic, or romantic, level of existence. James Valone, Jr., author of The Ethics and Existentialism of Kierkegaard, introduces the concept when he says, "Although we normally reserve the term merely for art, Kierkegaard uses it in its broader sense of anything that refers to the sensual or immediate. Aesthetic means the immediate life of the senses which is the starting point of all human activity.
We are all born as sensual creatures, intently interested in the here and now. These are the primary concerns of the aesthetic individual. Kierkegaard is not satisfied with simply classifying an individual with a single label, either, but introduces several characteristics and levels of aesthetic practice, beginning with sensual immediacy, which can progress to doubt, which can then progress to despair. Valone further explains that "Kierkegaard has given us a two-fold development scheme. We can develop and move from one lifestyle to another, making the transition perhaps to the ethical. But even within a lifestyle...we can move or develop from one phase or mood to another. In the
Taking the next step to an ethical lifestyle, in contrast, means that an individual needs to be "transparent to himself...does not live [thoughtlessly] as does the aesthetic individual...He who lives ethically has seen himself, knows himself, penetrates with his consciousness his whole tangible self...does not allow indefinite thoughts to potter about within him, nor tempting possibilities to distract him with their jugglery...".
Those who are ethical are more disciplined than those who live an aesthetic or romantic lifestyle. They set goals and achieve them. They are bound to rules of law, both making them and upholding them. They are those who create order in society, and enable the functioning thereof. The ethical demands self-knowledge, while the aesthete demands silence. However, not all people choose to leave the life of the aesthetic for the ethical, citing the "stuffiness and staid character" of the ethicist, as well as the tendency for the ethicist to "become excessively legal in his/her attitude and excessively narrow in his/her view of morals. One upholds the law merely for the law's sake, because it is the law...doing the moral thing for duty's sake..."
Kierkegaard clearly felt that, in order to live a more fulfilled life and to benefit society at large, a move from a purely aesthetic worldview to an ethical worldview is necessary, yet we cannot kill the aesthete within us entirely, nor would we want to. One author points out that "in Either/Or...the basic point is that aesthetics must play a necessary and important role in the life of the ethicist; the aesthetic dimension of life is preserved on the ethical level, but in a transformed version." The ethicist must still have the love and human contact that aesthetics demands, but now finds fulfillment of it in the commitment of marriage instead of several love affairs in sequence. The life of the ethical brings order and control to the chaos of thought and experience that lays open to, but can never be fully enjoyed or utilized by the aesthete because of his lack of discipline and control.
Yet Kirkegaard does not end his evaluations with the ethical. The leap of faith for which Kierkegaard is well known refers to the move from an ethical worldview to a religious worldview, where one's own knowledge and desires are sublimated to a power higher than one's own, namely God. In making this move, we are faced with a tremendous paradox, which Kierkegaard personalizes in his book Fear and Trembling. Johansen tells us that "In Fear and Trembling, he wants to make space for the religious dimension, again in terms of a conflict, this time between the ethical and religious spheres of life." Evans gives us some historical background with which we can understand Kierkegaard's deep need to write this book. "The work is a polemical effort to contradict and combat certain culturally accepted misconceptions about faith: those prevalent in philosophical Hegelian circles, and those unthinkingly accepted by the populace of Denmark that had made Christianity a matter of cultural conformity rather than a radical means of authentic existence".
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard lays open the story of Abraham from the Bible, who is required to sacrifice his son on an altar of the Lord instead of the traditional lamb. Kierkegaard points out that, to someone at a level of aesthetic or ethical understanding, Abraham's action is a monstrous, unforgivable crime, made even more monstrous by attempting to justify it with religion. "...efforts to ethicalize Abraham's conduct fail; Abraham is not a moral hero...according to (some), Kierkegaard holds not just the wrong but a dangerous view, that a morally reprehensible act can be justified by religion"
Yet Kierkegaard does not regard it as such. Under his pseudonym of Johannes De Silencio, Kierkegaard expresses in Fear and Trembling his admiration for the tremendous courage that it took for Abraham to obey the commandment that he received from God to sacrifice his son, and admits his own inability to reach such a height on his own. "...my courage is still not the courage of faith and is not something to be compared with it. I cannot make the movement of faith, I cannot shut my eyes and plunge confidently into the absurd; it is for me an impossibility, but I do not praise myself for that...I do not have faith; this courage I lack". It is this religious level of sublimation of one's own will that Kierkegaard regards as the pinnacle of human development. "The sign of childishness is to say: 'Me wants, me-me'; the sign of youth is to say: 'I'-and 'I'- and 'I'; the sign of maturity and the introduction to the eternal is the will to understand that this 'I' signifies nothing if it does not become the 'thou' to whom eternity unceasingly speaks, and says: 'Thou shalt, thou shalt, thou shalt'"
Could an individual, living at only an ethical level, who is concerned only with values and ethical living, endure a test that Abraham was called to endure? Will teaching values alone without the background of worship of a Supreme Being grant the necessary strength for these values to be lived in abstraction? Arthur King disagrees. "Kierkegaard reminds us more firmly than anyone else that the sacrifice of Isaac is the example that shows religion to be deeper and more important than any morality that may emerge from it....Abraham had absolute faith in God, and therefore felt free to do what God told him to do, even though it seemed to be directly against what he thought God's teachings were...Morality is concerned with deliberate reference to principles to find out what to do. Religion is concerned with spontaneous correct action". What Kierkegaard is trying to say is that the daily living of faith is what makes values work and become automatic in our lives. Making the change from an ethical worldview to a religious one means placing your faith, all your trust, in God and what He tells you to do, and the ethical worldview is then subordinate to the purposes of God, whatever those purposes may be. This presupposes that one has a belief in God, an understanding of God and His purposes, that one has communication with God, and that this communication is sufficiently clear to be able to understand when a message is from God, or from another source. This level of trust is very difficult to reach, and for some, impossible or even unthinkable, because even the very existence of God is still debatable in some philosophical circles.
What would be the rewards of such a level of enlightenment? Hoffman touches on this point when he discusses the modern debate on whether or not our emotions are something to be disciplined and harnessed in such a way that a religious level of living would be possible. He states that this debate was not always what it is today. "...The common ancient assumption is that emotions are themselves intelligent...To say emotions are intelligent...does imply our desires can be examined, developed, educated, and integrated in more or less salutary ways. In Furtak's words, the 'cardinal virtue' of this 'renovated ethics would be nothing less than the readiness to be always affected in the right ways, based upon a care for the right things,' with the goal of having "earned the right to trust oneself in becoming passionate.'" Even within the religious worldview, there are still the qualities of the aesthete and the ethical, finding their highest expression within a still higher framework of the religious. Johansen also echoes these sentiments as he discusses Kierkegaard's idea of faith, the necessary step to lead a religious life. "Faith, according to Kierkegaard, is a double movement in which the first movement would be infinite resignation and the second movement is faith...described from a certain distance, it is not difficult to understand the double movement of faith as exemplified by a person who is confidently present in the world and occupied with its contingencies, but whose confidence and trust is neither an expression of naïve immediacy nor human calculation, but an expression of faith in God." Again we see all three expressions of the personality - the aesthete and the ethical being "confidently present in the world", but expressed without the drawbacks of "naïve immediacy" or "human calculation" inherent in these worldviews Living a religious life would be the highest possible expression of either stage of life.
It is beneficial to teach and model those values in society which will universally lead people to ethically better and improve themselves and others, but by itself it is insufficient to stand against danger or aesthetic despair. The development of a religious life will not happen spontaneously through association with others, and so Kierkegaard means through his writings to encourage individuals - for only individuals can choose what is in their own best interests - to "work for himself, each for himself...for the development is...a progress because all the individuals who are saved will receive the specific weight of religion, its essence at first hand, from God himself". Just as Abraham stood alone and carried his trial alone before God, so each of us as individuals must make those choices that will bring us to the point where we can no longer, by our own efforts, continue forward alone in our progression, when "the cruelty of abstraction makes the true form of worldliness only too evident, the abyss of eternity opens before you, the sharp scythe of the leveler makes it possible for every one individually to leap over the blade - and behold, it is God who waits. Leap, then, into the arms of God".
This freedom is free to all who accept its tenets, from Abraham and Noah, to Moses and you, the reader. The Amish often endured subjugation shoulder to shoulder with the Mennonites. In the book of Amish Grace there is the story of a young Amish mother whose young child was struck and killed by a speeding car. As the investigating officer placed the driver of the car in the police cruiser to take him for an alcohol test, the mother of the child approached the car to speak with the officer. With her young daughter tugging at her dress the mother said: "Please take care of the boy." The officer, assuming she meant her critically injured boy, replied: "The paramedics and doctors will do the best they can, the rest is up to God." The mother pointed to the suspect in the rear if the squad car: "I meant the driver. We Forgive him."
This is how the young learn, not by being taught, or being told. Not by being threatened or being punished. But through consistent actions of their community members. By the behaviors of their society and culture. Your emotions are your responsibility, a result of your choices, beliefs, thoughts, and experiences. Accountability starts with yourself and the situations you have traveled to, the friends and conversations you have had, the actions that speak louder than words or thoughts. Please, release loathing for self and others, taste not bitterness, drop your remorse, forgive another, forgive yourself and be changed. Do not accept it, change it through forgiveness.
"Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from the inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harms we do, we do to ourselves." ~ Mitch Albom In order to forgive others we must first seek harmony within ourselves as experienced through our lives, it is only once we have learned to forgive inside and out that we might spread forgiveness, like peanut butter. The forgiveness of peanut butter fills the hungry, mutes mouthy desires, satiates the glutton, and sticks to the bones of those who are able to need and absorb it, harmony is like peanut butter.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Moon
It is a fact that our Moon is drifting further away from Earth every day at a rate measured as 3.8 cm per year. Leading to tidal braking that lengthens everyday by 0.002 seconds every century as measured by what Neil and Buzz left on the moon.
The Moon has had dramatic effects on our planet and the life that inhabits it. The Moon stabilizes Earth's rotation preventing dramatic movements of the poles that contribute to climate swings that some scientists claim might have doomed any chance for life to form, let alone evolve, if not for the Moon. And biologists speculate that tides (generated primarily by the Moon and Sun) would have been a logical place for life to originate. Sea creatures might have then used tidal regions as experimental sites for testing the habitability of land providing an opportunity to develop lungs. It has been postulated that ancient gilled creatures might have used the Moon like a gravitational guiding light similar to modern migratory birds to the first non-aquatic procreation sites. In that sense, the only coincidence in all this is the fact that the Moon ever came to exist in the first place. For there was a brief time in the early history of our planet (Approximately 100 million years or less) when there was no Moon in the sky above Earth.
During the past 4.5 billion years, the Earth's gravity has slowed the Moon's rotation down resulting in the satellite's drifting away. The cause is complex, involving tides. (discussed below) The amazing result is now a readily observable set of very interesting facts: It takes the Moon 29.5 days to make one revolution about its axis. All the while, of course, the Moon is also going around the Earth. This orbit also takes 29.5 days. Both are computed as sidereal periods of the moon, with respect to the stars.
Because the Moon's orbit and rotation times are the same, the satellite currently shows the same face to us on Earth. The area of the moon that is illuminated is visible to us when sunlight reflects off the Earth facing side. On the Moon, all this means that the Sun rises every four weeks, roughly 29.5 days. It also means there is no "dark side" of the Moon, at least not to someone living in any hypothetical Lunaville. The side of the Moon we cannot see from Earth gets its full share of sunshine periodically, when the Moon is between Earth and the Sun. In this configuration, the Moon is said to be new, and it reflects no sunlight our way. Just as a lunar eclipse these are the often the darkest of nights on Earth.
There was a time when the timing of our system was much different.
So close your eyes and picture this with the largest portion of your mind, the visual cortex. The center of the Earth actually orbits around this barycenter, once a month. The effect of this is very important. Think, for a second, of a spacecraft orbiting Earth. Its astronauts experience zero gravity. That's not because there is no gravity up there. It's because the ship and its occupants are constantly falling toward Earth while also moving sideways around the planet. This sets up a perpetual free-fall, or zero-g. Like the orbiting spaceship, the center of the Earth is in free-fall around the barycenter of the Earth-Moon system. And on he side of Earth opposite the Moon, the force of the Moon's gravity is less than at the center of the Earth, because of the greater distance. It can actually be thought of as a negative force, in essence, pulling water away from the Moon and away from Earth's surface -- a second high tide. Our planet rotates under these constantly shifting forces, which is why high and low tides are always moving about, rolling in and rolling out as far from the perspective of observers on the shore.
The Sun, too, has a tidal effect on Earth, but because of its greater distance it is responsible for only about one-third of the range in tides. When the Earth, Moon and Sun are aligned (at full or new Moon), tides can be unusually dramatic, on both the high and low ends. When the Moon is at a 90-degree angle to the Sun in our sky (at first quarter or last quarter) tides tend to be less extreme.
Tides are at the root of alterations in the entire Earth-Moon orbital system. Tides affect the Earth as it spins once per day, while the Moon goes around the planet at a much slower monthly pace. The planet is always dragging the tides along. The high-tide bulges are pulled just ahead of an imaginary line connecting the centers of Earth and the Moon. It might seem rather amazing, but a terrestrial bulge of water has enough mass to tug at the Moon from yet another angle. The effect is to constantly prod the Moon into a higher orbit, which explains (in part) why it is drifting away from our Earth. Meanwhile the moon is yanking back on the tidal bulges. Therefore water, down where it meets the ocean floor, rubs against Earth. This slows the planet down, explaining why there are 24 hours in a day instead of the mere 18 hours per rotation experienced a billion years ago.
The final factor that
helped all these opposing dynamics reach an agreement of sorts involves the deformation of solid rock. More
than just water is pulled up by tides. Earth's solid self actually
stretches under these astrological forces as well. The Earth's gravity lifts tides on the Moon, raising
relatively small bulges of solid material in the seemingly solid satellite. (Similarly, Jupiter's gravity raises tides on its icy moons in the frigid outer
region of the solar system, stretching some so dramatically that the
action generates enough heat to maintain liquid oceans under their frozen shells, scientists believe.) Continual tugging on the lunar
bulges reduced the Moon's rotation rate over time. When the rotation had
slowed to the point that it equaled the time it took for the Moon to go
around the Earth, the lunar bulges lined up with our planet, and the
slowdown stopped. At that moment, one face of the Moon became forever
locked in our direction. But it is not the only natural satellite. Earth's rotation rate is still decelerating as our days are getting longer and longer. Eventually, our planet's tidal bulges will be assembled along the, a fore mentioned, imaginary line running through the centers of both Earth and the Moon, and our planetary rotational change will pretty much cease. Earth's day will be a month long. When this equilibrium is attained, billions of years from now, the terrestrial month will be longer (approximately 40 of our current days) because during all this time the Moon will continue moving away.
In this future Earth-Moon any lunar colonists would then, henceforth, see just one face of Earth. We can imagine this setup by stretching out our arms, and looking at our palms. Now twirl around like a whirling dervish. Our face and palm are relatively parallel the whole time. If the United States happens to be on the back of your head, well, just think what people there do not see, and will never see again from there.
One day our descendants, if they survive our swelling Sun, cosmic, and human perils, will have at least 960 hours to work
with each day. On some nights, half the world will be able to stare up
at a full Moon for what (today) seems like days and days. Imagine the loony
things they will have time to imagine, the strange lore they might conjure, the problems they will discover and solve, the peace they will enjoy.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Herding Goats
There once was an old goat herder who passed away leaving 17 goats to his 3 sons. To his first son he left half the goats, to his second son he left a third of the goats, and to his youngest son he left a ninth of the goats.
After his passing the sons fought over the goats and how to divide or butcher them.
With no resolution in sight they went to the edge of the city to speak with a wise woman who had traded goats for many years. Her solution was to give them her last goat. They then divided the goats evenly and returned her goat to her.
And everyone received more than they were promised.
After his passing the sons fought over the goats and how to divide or butcher them.
With no resolution in sight they went to the edge of the city to speak with a wise woman who had traded goats for many years. Her solution was to give them her last goat. They then divided the goats evenly and returned her goat to her.
And everyone received more than they were promised.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
A rock
Technology is great, until it is not. Cases in point: a diver in scuba gear must be careful upon their return to the surface for they might get sick or even die from Decompression sickness (DCS; also known as divers' disease, the bends or caisson disease). A condition arising from dissolved gases coming out of solution into bubbles inside the body on depressurization. Even once a diver surfaces they must wait before climbing to altitude or flying away.
In a World War I or II era sub seamen had to be careful not to turn their iron behemoth into a iron casket, at just few 100 Meters of depth the structure would fail and all aboard would be sent to a cold death in Davy Jones locker.
The epitome of technology is a rock, by grasping a rock a freediver (like World champion freediver Guillaume Nery in the video above) was able to fall to the bottom of Dean's Blue Hole. It is the world's deepest known seawater blue hole Plunging 202 meters (663 ft) in a bay west of Clarence Town on Long Island, Bahamas. This ability is possible due to the effects of Dalton and Henry's laws. Because the gas in his lungs are under increased partial pressure at depth, his body requires less oxygen to operate. In other words, the deeper you go, the longer you can go without breathing. Not to mention that 5 minutes of breath holding isn't unheard of. And this is due in part to the greatest technology ever created: rocks, no science has been able to create matter, that is why a rock is the highest form of technology, ever.
What is it that makes a rock a rock, a stone a stone, and a pebble a pebble? What is a pebble: "Each pebble contemplates the sea and the tides, the currents and the storms, the mass of sister pebbles, flotsam and broken shells. It is a passive synthesis of these events, a contemplating soul ground from repeated washes, like the limpet stuck to its side contemplating it in return: 'What organism is not made of repeated elements and cases, of contemplated and contracted water, nitrogen, carbon, chlorides, sulphates, other star stuff, thereby interweaving all the habits composing it?'" All created at once, cycled, recycled, diving deeper while reaching out.
excerpts from: Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide
Tao Te Ching Chapter 77
Tao Te Ching Chapter 77
The Tao of heaven is like the
bending of a bow.
The high is lowered, and the low
is raised.
If the string is too long, it is
shortened;
If there is not enough, it is
made longer.
The Tao of heaven is to take from those who have too much
The Tao of heaven is to take from those who have too much
and give to those who do not have
enough.
Humanities' way is different.
We take from those who do not
have enough
to give to those who already have
too much.
What person has more than enough
and gives it to the world?
Only those of the Tao.
Therefore the sages work without recognition.
Therefore the sages work without recognition.
They achieve what has to be done
without dwelling on it.
They do not try to show their
knowledge.
Also Paraphrased as:
The way of the Tian is like archers drawing their bows.
To hit something high in the air,
they pull the string downward;
To hit something lower, they pull
the string upward.
They do not try to show their
knowledge.
When they have drawn the string
too far back they let some go,
And when they have not drawn it
far enough they pull harder.
The way of the Tian is also to let some go where there
is excess
And to augment where there is not
enough.
The way of Human Beings on the
other hand is not like this at all.
It is instead to take away from
those who do not have enough
In order to give more to those
who already have too much.
Who then in having too much is
able to draw on this excess to make an offering to the world?
Perhaps only those who are
way-making (dao or tao)
It is thus that sages act on
behalf of things but do make any claim on them,
They see things through to
fruition but do not take credit for them.
It is in such a way that they
refrain from making a display of their worth.
Commentary, Insight, and
Reflection:
The way of the world in which we
live is one of sustained equilibrium (and/or balance), some translations
mention Tian as ‘Heaven’s Road’,
chapters 9 and 73 do this. Chapter 73
speaks of “Tian’s net is cast wide, And
although course in its mesh, nothing slips through it” consistent with Calvinism’s
total omniscience of God as well as a demonstration in Indian Buddhism of the
total omniscience where all individual characteristics (svalaksana) are
available to the omniscient being. The
Metaphysics (specifically the epistemology) of Indian Buddhism also speaks of
the possibility of omniscience through apprehending the selfless universal
nature of all knowables, by examining what it means to be ignorant and the
nature of mind and awareness. Many
theologians and philosophers have agreed "And yet again, there is Gods knowing of all things by a simple act of
knowing. And there is Gods distinctly seeing with Gods divine, all-seeing, and
immaterial eye all things at once" Chapter 9 of the Tao reminds us
“To retire when the deed is done is the way that Tian works” just as the first story of the Bible, the story of Job
reminds us in Job 1:21 “Jehovah gave, and Jehovah hath taken
away; blessed be the name of Jehovah”. Chapter
77 goes on to remind us of the excesses and insufficiencies in our
various ecological environments which most certainly do occur, but in the
course of time they are righted through a process of redistribution, and
balance is restored. In this way Matthew
20:16 “So the last shall be first, and the first shall be last” is congruent
with the sustained equilibrium metaphorically represented in chapter 23 of the
Tao which observes, “Violent winds do not last a whole morning and torrential
rains do not last a whole day.” These
concepts have even spilled over into similar teachings in Kabbalah and Hassidic
Judaism from the Torah’s Bereshit (In
the beginning aka Genesis) where “YHVH placed his bow in the clouds, as a sign
that the great flood would not recur.”
Other translations of Genesis 9:12 are “And God said: This is the sign of the covenant,
which I am placing between me and between you, and between every living soul
that is with you, for everlasting generations.”
While we human beings would do well
to imitate the pattern of sustained equilibrium, we instead tend to create a
vicious circle in which the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Chapter 75 states what is a familiar refrain
in the (DaoDeJing) Tao Te Ching: “The people’s hunger is because those above
are eating too much in taxes.” It is
only the enlightened among us who are able to coordinate fully their
participation in their natural, social, and cultural environments, and who in
so doing, extend the way forward for all concerned. The bonus, of course, is that while sagacious
conduct conduces substantially to a thriving world, the persons responsible
make no claims upon the dividends that such efficacious living produces. Chapter 78 closes with “Appropriate language
seems contradictory” The classic (Dao) Taoist example of the inseparability of
opposites is an insight into the working of things that seems obvious enough to
everyday experiences: There is no down without up, no external without
internal, no front without back, no hot without cold, no left without right, no
within without outside, being without unbeing; although few people are able to
apply it to the way they live their lives.
When this characteristic of experience is applied to the political
order, privilege invariably entails responsibility, and the attainment of high
office is anything but an umixed blessing.
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