EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

EDUCATION

 It always amazes me when a cult member in one breath denounces education and in the next claims various politicians warrant emulation and support because they graduated from Ivy League law schools. It is as if the ability to hold and act upon diametrically opposing thoughts is a prerequisite for cult membership.

Further observation leads to some assumptions. For the cult member:

-          Education that leads to social acceptance is bad.

-          Education that builds or upholds power is good.

-          Education that improves life is a blessing bestowed by a deity.

-          Education that explains the universe is evil when not in strict compliance with holy books.

We are left with the necessity to form our own decisions regarding our feelings toward education. This leads to some troublesome crossroads:

-          Educated research and analysis may conflict with long held beliefs.

-          Education may teach us to be more adept at doing evil.

-          Picking and choosing the results of education can bolster our reverence for the ridiculous.

-          Stated by the powerful and respected, with enough repetition, education can be twisted to induce regrettable results in a populace moved by fear, not logic.

When used intelligently, education can be good:

-          People in America live free from many historic diseases because of education.

-          We understand so much of our world, from geology to evolution, because of education.

-          We understand the confounding complexities of trying to understand history because of education.

-          Education can help free us from primal fears, many caused by being raised in a cult.

-          And so forth.

The trick is not to conflate education and the wisdom that guides our lives. Two of the wisest, and most competent men who have guided my life each garnered an eighth-grade education. One carried the mental scars of being called “A dirty Hun” in his youth. The other carried physical scars that justified his Purple Heart Medal.

Each could have built a complete house without resorting to a single written note.

Education comes from many sources, some good, some bad. Intelligence growing from education can be used, as can a surgeons’ scalpel, for good or evil. Wisdom born of learning and doing, and dedicated to the common good is, as Shakespeare once wrote, “a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 DANGER

Some years ago I read a scientific treatise stating that we have a genetic trigger withing us that alerts us to danger. This made sense. When we roamed the savannah, danger, immediate and unforgiving danger, lurked everywhere. After the old and weak, the overly complacent probably found themselves eaten next. One might even say stress was good. Maybe it still is, within certain boundaries.

The piece, more interestingly, stated that the genomic trigger still activates when all seems safe and calm. Perhaps it is there to tell us that seeming safety is the most prevalent forecaster of danger. In other words, when all seems safe and secure, that's the time to be most alert. Ever know any of these feelings?

• Something just didn't seem right.
• I had this feeling something was wrong.
• It was too quiet.
• Some sixth sense told me to be careful.
• I felt as if someone was watching me.
• What had I done to make everyone suddenly start acting so nice toward me?

Perhaps we shouldn't be so critical of a little stress in our lives. I say, "a little" for when genetic triggers suffer negative mutations, chaos can result. Responses can seize and direct us when there are no modern-day lions and tigers in the vicinity. What is even more alarming is that scheming people and institutions can use these triggers to generate responses, to accomplish their own ends, within those willing to listen without reasoning. Whether danger exists or not, we mentally stand ready to take action.

When that goes to an extreme, we don't simply plan a safer route through life, we climb onto a building and start shooting people.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 DECISIONS

The most interesting thought this week derives from a post I saw about rational thinking. It dawns on me late in life, that the following is true:

If a person finds themselves in a situation because of decisions based on emotion, not rational thinking, they will not extricate themselves from that situation through decisions based on rational thinking, and not emotion.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 SCIENCE

Interesting evening. While waiting for some soup to cook I flicked on the TV at random and was too lazy to change channels.

Well let me tell you.

It was a documentary featuring grown men, some with PhDs behind their names claiming that the Jewish book of Genisis actually spelled out dependable and reliable history. Yep. The universe is not billions of years old (Old Age Paradigm “OAP”) but thousands of years old (Young Age Paradigm “YAP.)

The reason, they claim, that we base scientific claims on the OAP is that scientists are too “invested” in it to admit they are wrong. So, facts must be tortured to comply with it.

The documentary aimed solely at torturing facts to comply with the YAP.

Time about is fair play, I suppose.

Of course, there are troubling issues like the dating of rocks based on radioactive decay.

No problem, the YAP scholars say. The Creator simply altered the time frames for radioactive decay from initial to present. A million years in in the early stages of a rock was only a second or two, depending on how busy the Creator was creating the 350,000 species or so of beetles, (Order Coleotera).

That, of course, reminds one of when British evolutionary biologist and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane quipped that if a god or divine being had created all living organisms on Earth, then that creator must have an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Seems the dinosaurs were around until the flood, that wondrous event that created the Grand Canyon in a few months, not the ridiculously long time espoused by mainstream science (MS). The canyon and other majestic features are just remnants of the flood’s subsiding, according to their better science (BS).

I went to sleep thinking about the fact that, in my state of Arkansas, tax dollars that I have worked hard for are going to private schools that teach BS.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 PASSWORDS

Although the claims abound, I’m not sure that it is the economy, specifically inflation, that has America teetering on the edge of anarchy. A simple anecdotal observation is that, on my trips to our local Walmart, the baskets I see driven by folks with MAGA hats or Confederate flag decals are filled with Mountain Dews, bottled water, and snacks.

Seems that there is something else troubling us. It may be that technology is outpacing our evolutionary adeptness. As a “near” Baby Boomer, I am distressed with passwords. The demand for them has become so ubiquitous and complex that I sometimes verge on the edge of despair. The ultimate, and sometimes most circuitous demands are those required to pay a bill online.

I can’t help but feel that if a someone wishes to hack into my account and pay my bill, what the hell?

So passwords exasperate me. But I don’t blame Joe Biden for them.

But wait. Suppose, just suppose, that I suffered a fall and woke with a penchant for watching Fox “news” ten hours a day on the television.

And suppose that for a majority of those ten hours, the pundits thereon preached an incessant stream of claims that Joe Biden was, in fact, the inventor and dictator of passwords.

Day after day the message lands. Joe Biden equals passwords. The word "password" sends me into an apoplectic frenzy like the character in the old "Niagra Falls" routine.

Would I then join The Cult?

Jeez, I hope not but the jury might offer a different opinion.

Oh, wait, can’t mention the word “jury.” That’s a current obsession on Fox.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 TRIBAL INSTINCTS

We wonder what is happening to America. Civility as we once knew it has not only disappeared in politics, but it is now considered a weakness.

If one accepts the idea currently circulated among scientists and academics that evolutionary psychology is the main determinant of our actions, (and I know what a hard intellectual pill this is to swallow) the answer becomes clearer.

Some postulate that what we call a movement toward morality is not a spiritual movement, but rather a long process of socio-economic tradeoffs.

• We won’t raid your village if you don’t raid ours.
• I won’t try to kill you if you won’t try to kill me.
• We will trade goods with you for mutual gain.
• We will agree to use artificial objects, i.e., money for exchange instead of direct and laborious bartering.
• We will agree to live in peaceful harmony in cities to facilitate life’s needs and make life easier.
• Etc.

Accepting that, what we now see is simply a reversion to a more primitive, tribal state of evolution, spurred by fake news outlets and social media.

• Danger is everywhere.
• We must band together as a tribe for survival.
• The Tribe is the most sacred of all entities.
• We must destroy all who threaten the tribe.
• We must forget personal peace and pleasure to protect the tribe.
• We will develop a spiritual belief system to control large populations withing the tribe.
• Our leaders must offer strength, not goodness.

Kind of begins to make sense, doesn’t it?

Why we are who we are

It’s interesting. There are approximately four billion DNA base pairs, or letters, that make up the human genome, an organism's complete set of DNA. Think about that for a moment.

While you are thinking, consider that a typical internal combustion engine car has about 10,000 moving parts.

Oh, you science majors may say that is a false comparison. That doesn’t make it less interesting. Science haters may say that it is false news. They learned so on Facebook. That doesn’t make things less scary.

Anyway, think about how many moving parts must operate in both unison and harmony for an automobile to be a Honda Accord instead of a Jeep Cherokee. Of course, an automobile is not the direct product of evolutionary forces acting unaided upon, as it now seems accepted, the genetic structure of an existing body. That’s why we can put it in working order with 10,000 moving parts.

That’s also why it took three billion DNA pairs and four billion years to produce a modern member of Homo sapiens. Now that’s a lot of connections working at once, the product of what Charles Darwin called “descent with modification.” Some connections serve uses that are no longer needed. Some confuse us. I read somewhere once that there is a genetic mechanism in our makeup that served to keep us alert when we shared the Savannah with creatures that ate humans for breakfast, lunch, and supper. No, it didn’t serve to warn us of danger. It warned us of a perceived lack of danger, for a feeling of safety may be the most dangerous condition of all in a violent world.

In other words, “You think things are fine? Think again.”

Could that archaic mechanism be what makes it counter-productive to tell a person suffering from chronic depression to, “Cheer up. Everything is going to be all right?”

Why do I bring this all up? It evolves (no pun intended) from a sermon I heard yesterday, full of the love and grace that eludes most TV evangelists. It included a story of a young man who was almost suicidal because his 3 billion DNA pairs had produced a sexual orientation that differed from his parents, siblings, and the majority of his peers. Why the difference? I don’t know. Multiply 3 billion DNA pairs times four billion years and look therein for the answer.

Do I understand it correctly from my friends who are fundamentalist evangelicals that we are somehow spiritually ordained to hate a person who has a slight difference in his genomic makeup from mine?

Am I supposed to assume that this slight difference is not the result of DNA but the result of a conscious decision by a fourteen-year old that puberty, psychic anxiety, fear of the future, a lack of popularity among peers, and a world seemingly gone insane does not produce enough psychic terror in one’s life? That, in order to round things out, he or she might just choose to adopt a lifestyle that would make them an object of un-reasoned hatred in members of society, including the adults who are supposed to be in charge?

I once knew an individual who thought so. “It’s a choice,” this person avowed, “a result of our ‘old sin nature’ generated by the Devil himself.”

Our what? Only someone as nefarious and full of venom as Franklin Graham could believe that.

As a side note, this individual assured me that a college professor had taught his class, at a central Arkansas university (not my Alma Mater thankfully), that a homosexual could be identified by a certain bump at a location in a certain place on their forehead.

I can’t find one on mine, although I do think Orlando Bloom is awfully sexy.

Anyway, this post-factual age could get me down if I didn’t occasionally run across thoughtful, caring, loving sermons like the one I saw yesterday. Contact me for a source.

There is hope. Study and believe.

Late Morning Thoughts: December 8, 2017

I remember reading about evolution for the first time when I was about eleven. Sounded interesting. Made sense. I mentioned it to a fundamentalist acquaintance who spent the next hour describing a burning and eternal fire to which a loving deity sent people who believed in science. We only broke off our discussion when we had to go watch a film about kids who lived in iron lung because they had polio.

About a week later, I was still pondering the concept as I was taking a shower. I dropped the wash rag and, without even thinking, I clutched it with my toes and retrieved it. At that instant, I knew it was absolutely true, this science stuff.

Years later, I decided I didn’t know enough about the subject to allow me not to suffer fools lightly. I began to study the subject in earnest. I’ve probably read nearly 50 books on the topic and I’m still fascinated. Would recommend, as a starter, the late Stephan J. Gould’s All about Darwin. Then follow up with Origin of the Species. It’s fairly easy going.

Some specific facts amaze me from all the reading I’ve done. One: the early embryos of an alarming number of species are amazingly similar. Two: many species take the same number of breaths during their life. Three: We humans all start out as females in the earliest embryonic stages. The unlucky ones experience some folds and turns and end up as a an inferior model. The way things work is that genetic malfunctions like that offer some advantage, through modification, to the expansion of the species, so here we are. Four: males are inferior creatures who have to rely on size and finery to attract females. Five: Intelligence appears to derive from the size of the brain relative to body size, resulting a head too large for delivery at what would be full birth maturity, resulting in an extended gestation stage outside the womb.

These are all from Gould’s writings, so if I’m wrong, I learned it from him. I still trust him more than any TV evangelist I’ve ever heard.

Oh, one final fact, since the publication of “Origins” in 1859, practically every scientific discovery has supported Darwin’s theory of descent through modification. (He never actually used the term “evolution.” It came about later). There may have been no more prescient book ever written.

Just thinking, and wondering why we would elect a person to political office that would deny science but use antibiotics when facing a serious illness. Scary. Oh hell no. It's beyond scary.

Torment

In the rural community in which I grew up, there was a man who suffered from what we would now classify as moderate retardation. An African-American man of indeterminate age, he was known by all as “Happy Bill.” As far as I know, he never harmed a living soul. He tended to roam the neighborhood and was a frequent visitor to my family’s grocery. His pleasant and non-threatening personality made him welcome on most any occasion.

He had a trait, this unfortunate man, that made him a frequent target of torment and frivolity. When jabbed in his ribs, he would yell out whatever thought was lurking in his mind at that second, or so folks thought. The thing I remember is that his outbursts involved neither anger nor retaliatory insult toward his tormentor. Neither did he ever lash out at another individual, the crowd assembled, or a definable group. To have done so, would certainly transformed the act of torment from fun to revenge, or a more dangerous and sinister situation.

I’ve often wondered what miraculous and internal defense mechanism directed his utterances to the ridiculous, and yes … even humorous, instead of the vindictive. It is unthinkable what dangers might emerge if a person were to answer any mental provocation with an unfettered and unfiltered response, with no regard for the possible consequences. I suppose the ability for restrained and analytical reaction to provocation, along with the gift of thoughtful discourse, represent two of the many blessings that evolution has provided humankind, as this most gentle of men demonstrated. Good for us.

"A soft answer turneth away wrath:

 but grievous words stir up anger."
 - Proverbs 15

Thoughts: Darwin and Stuff

As most readers know, I shamelessly paraphrase the late Lewis Thomas. He, however, reflected late at night while listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. I reflect during the quiet times of the morning listening to whatever the YouTube sprites might suggest. This morning they slipped in a collection of Maria Grinberg’s rendition of the Beethoven sonatas. Have mercy!

It did remind me of a Thomas quote I read somewhere about the majesty of the earth’s life moving from blue algae to the B-minor Mass in only five billion years.

Then my friend Michael Hester posted “25 Life Lessons from Albert Einstein.” All were good, but the last one hugged my neck like a long-lost friend: “Never lose a holy curiosity.”

It reminded me that I heard a speaker say once that if you studied a topic for 30 minutes a day, in five years you would be an expert. That led me to a long crusade to learn about Charles Darwin’s writings on descent with modification, commonly referred to as “evolution," or, by some fundamentalists as "oozings from the pits of hell," It had seemed the most logical thing I had ever heard of when I encountered it in high school but I had not taken the time to learn, really learn, about it.

So, with the help of “Books on Tape,” a career involving a lot of travel, and Little Rock Public Library, I started. I began with Stephen Jay Gould’s “Ever Since Darwin,” proceeded to a life of Thomas Huxley (Darwin’s “Bulldog”), and then to the works of Darwin himself. Hardly an expert, I do find myself able to converse freely on the topic.

I worked myself through the feuding between Gould and Richard Dawkins over whether the process of modification occurred at the organism or genetic level, an argument that ended with Gould’s untimely death and the advances in genetics that seem to have proven Dawkins right. Imagine the thrill of attending a presentation by Richard Dawkins himself in what will probably be his only trip ever to Little Rock.

It has been a joyous journey. I still marvel at the mind of this self-taught man Darwin (science as such was taught in universities as a field of study until after Huxley’s campaign for it in the late 1800s). Since its publication in 1859, there hasn’t been a scientific study or breakthrough that was not consistent in all important aspects with “On the Origen of the Species.”

Amazing. That’s all I can say. Amazing. Well, the sonatas are as well.

 

See also: www.wattensawpress.com