Why Fight?

A relative posted that she was thankful to her non-Christian friends and family who are not judging her for having become an active Christian. Unfortunately, some have judged her negatively for this change in her life.

Hey kid. Couldn’t stop thinking about your post so I decided to respond to it in more detail.  You know me well enough to know I believe in a great deal of tolerance. Agree or disagree, we all should respect each other‘s opinions and beliefs by not forcing them on each other.
What too many people don’t seem to be willing to understand today is that there are different ways of deciding what is true, how we can know what is true, and even what we can know is true. In philosophy this is called your epistemology.
Generally speaking, in ancient Greece there were considered to be two different epistemologies. Two different ways of knowing truth.  Certainly there were some Greeks who preferred one over the other, but as a general rule, both were considered respectable and mutually interacting, even mutually supportive ways of determining reality. One was logos which means ‘the word’.  It is the basis for logic and empirical science as we know it today. The other was mythos which meant ‘story’.
Evenly highly regarded biologist Stephen Jay Gould referred to what he called two magisteria. That is, two different ways of determining truth. Being a scientist, one of course was logos which is what we use is the basis for logic and science today. But the other one, which he equally respected, was mythos. He said each have their own areas where they should be considered to be superior and they should not be seen in conflict.
Mythos may sound  automatically false to us today but to the Greeks it simply meant another way of knowing. Not the logical way but the spiritual emotional way.
Unfortunately, in American society today there are extremists on both sides who want to turn this into some kind of football game or maybe even a war. One side must win and the other side must lose.
To me this makes no sense. The world is a very big place. If someone says I’m going to move and the person to being spoken to asks to the North Pole or the South Pole? You know there’s something wrong with the person who can’t realize there’s an entire planet in between the North and South Poles.
One of my most favorite quotes ever is about people trying to comprehend and make sense of God.
“A dog might as well contemplate the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.“ The very tolerant and thoroughly scientific Charles Darwin said that. It’s a good rule for life in general. God is beyond our comprehension so let us all hope and believe what we can. Also, let’s not fight about it.  ☺️

https://users.manchester.edu/FacStaff/SSNaragon/Kant/LP/Readings/Armstrong,%20Mythos-Logos.html
> In most premodern cultures, there were two recognized ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge.  The Greeks called them mythos and logos.  Both were essential and neither was considered superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary.  Each had its own sphere of competence, and it was considered unwise to mix the two.  Logos (“reason”) was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled people to function effectively in the world.  It had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality.  People have always needed logos to make an efficient weapon, organize their societies, or plan an expedition.  Logos was forward-looking, continually on the lookoout for new ways of controlling the environment, improving old insights, or inventing something fresh.  Logos was essential to the survival of our species.  But it had its limitations: it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life’s struggles.  For that people turned to mythos or “myth.”
Today we live in a society of scientific logos, and myth has fallen into disrepute.
In popular parlance, a “myth” is something that is not true.  But in the past, myth was not self-indulgent fantasy; rather, like logos, it helped people to live effectively in our confusing world, though in a different way.  Myths may have told stories about the gods, but they were really focused on the more elusive, puzzling, and tragic aspects of the human predicament that lay outside the remit of logos.<

Watering Thoughts

While watering this morning I wrote these  down.  They’re entirely unpolished and I may just leave them as they are or I may pick them up again and change them or expand them. But this is what I thought and felt while I was watering this morning.

Deleted three words from the first poem and added a stanza break. But otherwise exactly as I wrote them with my smart phone in one hand and a hose in the other.

                 Shovel

Shovel 

Shining new and sharp

Shovel

Digger of foundations

Shovel

Layer of the garden

Shovel

Rusting by the grave it dug

Shovel

            Crown of Thorns

This crown of thorns is mine. 

I did not want it 

Hate it so

 But it is mine

 I could rip it off 

And leave the scars to heal 

But it is my blood 

I will shed it where I will

Quasiparticle

Started it last night and then didn’t quite know how to finish. I’m satisfied with it now. It may seem a bit obscure but it makes perfect sense to me.   

              Quasiparticle

Alexia

My Lexi 

My mini kaiju girl

Terror of the styrofoam

I wish to take you fishing

Out on our private bay

We’ll fish up giant plankton

Then toss it all away

And you can gobble cashews

And never eat a one

A heart that loves to share

I used to once hold near

Now these are empty places

Where once you were at home

You are the electron

That’s now a hole within my heart

Rain, Rain

Surprisingly pleasant day today. It was difficult. It had its strains and stresses.  

And then it rained. Not The Rains of Ranchipur, but still, The Rains Came.

I have always loved the rain. I can’t remember a time when it didn’t delight me. When I was very young the bubbles rain would make in the gutters would sail away.  They  were to me strange dome shaped ships. The sound of the rain on an umbrella or a rain hat is one of the most pleasant sounds in the world. And, although it’s a bit hard now, I still feel the urge to stomp and splash in every puddle I see.

Rain rain, go away

Come again another day                                              

Little Johnny wants to play                   

Became for me:

Rain rain, come today

Come and do not go away

Little Jimmy wants to play

Woolley cat sees things differently. He has spent the day sitting on the porch glaring at the rain. He won’t come in the house except for a moment or two. He instead prefers to sit out there to… Intimidate the rain?

Anyway, in spite of having a very difficult morning, I decided to write a brief poem to reflect my pleasure with the weather.

Rain, Rain

Rain

Blessed rain

Giving of life to all the land

Rain 

My friend

Bring your sounds of peace

Rain

Earth’s shower bath

Come make the desert Bloom

Rain

My childhood love

Come heal the wounds of time

Wood Or Marble?

 

A Facebook post on the Guardian article is copied here. I have added additional thoughts which I felt needed to be shared. To be honest, I don’t suppose they really needed to be shared, I just wanted to do so.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/05/the-big-idea-why-relationships-are-the-key-to-existence

https://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8847863/holographic-principle-universe-theory-physics

 >So quantum physics may just be the realisation [sic] that this ubiquitous relational structure of reality continues all the way down to the elementary physical level. Reality is not a collection of things, it’s a network of processes.<

Which sounds an awful lot like the weak holographic principle. This concept declares that the entire universe is not real in and of itself, but only real in so far as it is an exchange of information or data points. Nothing is real except the information and how it interacts with the other information about it.

This has been expanded from its original concept into a very complex and interesting theory of quantum entaglement on a two dimensional surface causing  a projection of all that we consider to be real, including ourselves.

Lots to talk about here such as Berkinstein’s Bound, der ding an sich, etc.  Just the sort of stuff I love to talk about at great length with friends, pizza, and beer.

I can’t help but add a couple more thoughts because this is one of my favorite topics of discussion. Philosophy is a very broad subject area encompassing theology, metaphysics, science, government and just about everything else you can imagine.  Today many scientists express a great contempt for philosophy which is bizarre considering that science is and always has been a branch of philosophy. It’s rather like a scientist declaring, “I really hate automobiles.  They are stupid and a waste of time, unlike my Chevy Malibu which is so much better than a car.”

You could argue that the scientists are simply doing a poor job defining the term “philosophy”, but scientists should not do a poor job of defining their terms.  This is inherent in the very nature of what we regard as scientific.

Still, they have a certain point. If they were to argue that their particular branch of science is rigorous, logical, and meets other strict requirements for accuracy whereas other branches of philosophy can be quite vague, they would have a possibly valid point.

What I wish to share with you as my thoughts is that while this particular branch of philosophy, originally called natural philosophy, has isolated itself from the other branches and can make a case for considering itself superior in that it requires empirical evidence which is continuously tested and which requires a level of confirmation not applicable to other branches of philosophy; I think it is possible that the schism may be slowly healing.

As quantum physics advances and continuously undermines the rigidity of the old physics which insists the universe is utterly, totally and completely deterministic, thus abolishing the concept of free will and probability, the absolute certainty of the old physics crumbles. And absent that absolutism, science itself begins to look at least a bit more like the other branches of philosophy.

Einstein, and no doubt other scientists like him, abhorred the uncertainty of quantum physics. This is why Einstein spent (many would say wasted) the last 30 years of his life trying to disprove quantum physics and failing miserably. He would say that he preferred a world of marble, not one of wood.  By this he meant a world like that of Greek or Roman architecture. A world of mathematics. A world of certainty. A world of predictable engineering and meticulous design. What he disliked was the randomness of a forest.

This is not to say he didn’t enjoy a walk in the forest or wish to spend his life sitting in a Greek temple. He was speaking metaphorically of how he wished the universe to be designed.

But today, with matters such as the holographic principle, we see science becoming potentially more and more like the living forest and less and less like the engineered Greek temple.

Personally, I much prefer this more open ended universe. I would say the opposite of what Einstein said, and, in fairness, it is because of personal preferences rather than objective reality that I have this inclination – – as, no doubt, with Einstein.

So much more to say, but there are other things I must do today and I doubt many have had the patience to read this far, so at this point I will  tuck this away for future discussions with those who do enjoy them.

Lord Of The Woke?

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/03/entertainment/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-controversy-blake-cec/index.html

A pox on on both their houses, from my frame of reference.

I will start with the original work of Tolkien.

> Some fans are even questioning if Tolkien was a racist.<

They finally noticed? Like so many of the greats of British literature, the human enemies were all dark skinned people from the south. Of course Tolkien was a racist. It’s very hard to find a Brit back in those days who wasn’t a racist.

This does not excuse the racism in the books, but it does identify why it is there.

That said, the issue of changing the race of some of the characters becomes a difficult one. If the changing of the races serves the storyline, then it is justified. If it is just done to make a token show of, “Look how non-racist we are!“ Then it is morally repugnant. Making a show of being not racist is not a good thing. Actually not being racist is a good thing.

Consider the remake of the Sherlock Holmes story which placed Holmes in our utterly non Victorian New York City and made Dr. Watson an oriental woman. When I heard the series was coming up I was interested because I am always interested in what is being done with the Holmes  milieu.  Nevertheless, I anticipated it would be a piece of garbage presenting itself as incredibly wonderful and ‘with it’ and all the great things that come with artificially and nonsensically casting minority characters in classically white roles for no good reason but only to engage in virtue signaling and good sales tactics.

I loved the show.  It had its flaws and it was far from perfect, not least of which was that it really wasn’t presenting the kinds of mysteries that Sherlock Holmes solved, but it was nevertheless an excellent and interesting adaptation.

So, at this point, I have no idea as to whether the casting of non-White characters in what was originally an all white series (with the exception of the evil Southerns) is good or bad. I can tell only after I have observed the results by watching the show.

In short, both sides are being excessive in their prejudicial responses.  

Note: First, I must clarify that when I’m referring to a pox on both their houses I mean those who are defending and those who are attacking the changes without actually knowing anything about how the series unfolds.  Therefore, in fairness, I must add that the defense made of these changes by those involved in producing the series sound valid. But I will not attempt a judgment until I have seen the results.

History As Propaganda

This stimulated me to actually make a new post! I have been neglecting my blog so terribly because I spend so much time publishing on Facebook. And for personal reasons it has been challenging. It’s good to make another post.

A response to the YouTube presentation, Untold History: White Slaves in America

In reality there is nothing to do with political correctness when we do not refer to indentured white servants as slaves. It has to do with historical fact. Indentured servitude was exactly that. It was a form of bondage, but at that time apprentices were often treated very poorly as well. 

Still, both groups retained their basic human rights. They were not property. Their testimony in court was accepted.  Their children were not born into bondage. Their children could not be sold away from their parents. They could not be brutally beaten. They could not be raped. They could not be tortured.  They could not be murdered.

At least not legally.

All of those things could be legally done to black slaves who were considered to be chattel, that is, property. Or, as the Dred Scott decision pointed out, not human.

Now, I would agree that there was a form of white slavery in America.  These men (and it only applied to men) were treated very much as chattel property, although legally they were not. Again, technically they had rights. Said rights were almost never respected.  They could be beaten and brutalized, and if they were murdered it was unlikely to ever have been accurately reported.  That is, those whites who were swept up in the Jim Crow chain gang down South. Technically, they were convicted prisoners, but they were treated as slaves. 

Of course, they would be released after they served their sentences, which was not true of actual slaves.  Neither could they be sold to a new owner, although they were sometimes “rented“ or “loaned“ to local businessman to complete specific tasks before being returned to their cells at night.

So, for both the indentured sevants and the men in the chain gang, at the end of the term of servitude, they were released and were full, free human beings. This was never true of a black chattel slave.

On a rare occasion, such a slave might be allowed to buy his freedom from his master, and perhaps even be allowed to buy his family’s freedom, but it was very hard for a slave to earn any amount of money much less the cost of such high-quality “property”.  Finally, once free, a slave was always subject to being seized and resold.

Our history is very ugly. We humans are known for our cruelty and greed, but chattel slavery was the worst of the worst.

I must note that there were actual white slaves at the time of the founding of America, but not in America. The Barbary pirates and other Muslim groups had for centuries been perfectly content to enslave whites. It was one of the causes of the Barbary Wars (a series of two wars).  They are recalled in the Marines’ hymn as “the shores of Tripoli”.

Furthermore, the speaker does have a correct point in that slavery has existed for all of human history as far as we can tell. The Romans enslaved everybody, but actually their slaves were able to become freedman and, once free, were respected Roman citizens, something impossible to America’s black slaves. Some slaves, once freed, actually became wealthy in Rome.

The Greeks also enslaved anyone they could, except fellow Helenes.  Well, some Greek cities toward the end of the Greek era did enslave their fellow Greeks, and the rest of the Helenes were horrified at the practice.

It is worthy to note that many of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes became slaveowners.  Numerous slaves died on the Trail of Tears along with their Native American masters.

If the  author’s case is that we humans are really stinking and pretty rotten as a species,  I won’t argue with him.  But black slavery was a different thing in America from other forms of slavery at other times in history, except when it was much the same (it all depends on what nation and what era we are   referring to), but white slavery never existed in America. Forms of bondage, yes. But not slavery. And certainly not chattel slavery.

These facts are bitterly denied by many conservative websites, but they are conflating the very harsh and sometimes brutal treatment of indentured servants with chattel slavery. The conditions, as harsh as they were, were much better for the indentured servant, although they were still horrific by today’s standards.

It’s all a matter of historical fact.

If you’re interested in a fact check on the subject click on the following link:

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-irish-slaves-idUSKBN23O2BS

Additional notes:

It is interesting note that the author also wants to see the American public school system destroyed and to return to the appalling situation of 200 years ago with apprenticeships replacing education.  No more free education. You have to pay for it, and suffer for it, and be abused for it.  

Remember, he himself identified apprenticeship as often brutal and sometimes even a form of slavery. Yet he wants to return to it for our children. It’s better than a public education, isn’t it?

Throughout the presentation, horrific pictures are posted as if they are signs of the evils of white slavery. In fact most of these are pictures of atrocities committed against criminals, rebels, and other “ne'er-do-wells” which have nothing to do with the slavery. I’m pretty certain that some of those pictures were Russian serfs being abused. What does that have to do with slavery in America? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Amazingly, the author compares illegal acts such as kidnapping and shanghaiing individuals to serve on ships as proof that slavery was an accepted practice. Such actions were illegal. While it was very difficult to get the captain convicted for such a crime, he was a criminal. Peddling in human flesh in America, as long as the flesh was black, was totally legal and even actively encouraged by our laws.

Better yet, we suddenly see a picture, for no discernible reason, promoting Michael Hoffmann‘s hate filled screed, Judaism Discovered. Hoffman is a notorious holocaust denier and antisemite.  At first it’s shocking to see this suddenly appear in the middle of the interview, but on second thought, of course this website is also promoting vile bigotry, anti-Semitism, and hatred. Are you really surprised? I am not.

In fairness to the interviewee, I do not know if he was aware that this book was being pushed during his presentation. Nevertheless, the fact that it was promoted tells you what kind of website promotes his book.

And now, I will confess. Halfway through the video I simply couldn’t stand any more of this nonsense. I did not watch the second half of the video. My patience was exhausted.  To put it another way, “When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” Revelation 21:8

Live And Let Die

https://apple.news/ALCkx-noxRk659K6MujCwHA

The price for our freedom to have guns has become the degradation

 of every other freedom we have.

>While Highland Park captured the most media attention, all in all, 220 Americans were shot and killed over the holiday weekend. That doesn’t include five people who survived being shot during the fireworks after an Oakland A’s game—hit by stray, apparently celebratory bullets from a high-powered rifle fired outside the ballpark. Or two police officers shot—again perhaps by accident—at the Fourth of July fireworks display in Philadelphia.

...  You’d be hard-pressed to find an institution in this country that isn’t buckling under the weight of a gun fetish that has seen domestic firearms production triple since 2000 and a steady rise in mass shootings, as right-wing courts and state legislatures repeal rules and politicians and gunmakers stoke fears of tyranny and civil war. America now has more guns than people, according to one estimate.

...It’s an argument you hear from open-carry activists too: “My Rights … Don’t End Where Your Fear Begins.”<

The last statement, unsurprisingly, totally misses the point. The freedom of these gun cultist ends where my life and the lives of my children and the lives of my grandchildren and the lives of my great-grandchildren end!

>...the law professors Joseph Blocher and Reva B. Siegel note that armed riders were banned from market and fairs back in 14th-century England. Most U.S. states adopted laws against “brandishing” in the 19th century, and in 1874, the Georgia Supreme Court, in a typical piece of reasoning about the limited scope of the Second Amendment, wrote, “The practice of carrying arms at courts, elections and places of worship, etc., is a thing so improper in itself, so shocking to all sense of propriety” that the Framers could never have intended it.

...On the one hand, plenty of Republicans are scared shitless: “Both parties have extremists,” a GOP lawmaker told Politico after the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. “There’s a difference in our crazy people and their crazy people. Our crazy people have an excessive amount of arms. They have gun safes. They have grenades. They believe in the Second Amendment. They come here and Trump’s made them think this is the Alamo.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy reportedly warned members of Congress not to verbally attack one another over their upcoming impeachment votes for fear of endangering their lives (presumably at the hands of armed Trump supporters).<

Please note that even Republicans are afraid of extremist gun cultist Republicans. They know these people are a danger to civilized society but feel they must  be allowed to play their little war games like I did when I was eight (of course, I did it with toy guns and with other little boys who willingly joined in the game).  These children occupying grown-up disguises actually leave dead bodies in their wake.

And, in a completely non-shocking state of affairs; this absolute, total, undeniable, God given right of every decent free human being to carry guns and threaten innocent people by their mere  presence only applies to white men. However, we should know that no conservative Republican is ever, ever racist. Calling them that is offensive.   After all, is it racist to say that every armed black man should automatically be killed on sight?

>...Or at least—it works for them. For others, it’s not even an option. During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the Louisiana Republican Congressman Clay Higgins said the quiet part loud, posting a photo of armed Black men on his Facebook page and writing, “If this shows up, we’ll consider the armed presence a real threat. … I wouldn’t even spill my beer. I’d drop any 10 of you where you stand.”

 

...In Oklahoma last month, a man in a tactical vest carrying a semi-automatic rifle scared everyone he saw: Government employees locked the doors to their building. Target shoppers called 911 from the parking lot, and AT&T employees fled the store when he entered. What got the man in trouble with the police, finally, was his brass knuckles—those are illegal in Oklahoma. Whether out of fear or sympathy, police seem incapable of restraining armed, right-wing demonstrators.<

So you see carrying a weapon designed for assaulting enemy units while dressed for war is terrifying, but it’s perfectly OK. However, you better not have any brass knuckles in your pocket! 

America has gone totally completely, utterly, and certifiably insane.

Der Ding an Sich

 

The bubble that is I 

Flies through time 

Drifting 

Swirling 

Updraft and down

Fragile bubble

Little thing

All that is

All that will be

All that can be

Itself within itself

The  bubble that is I

A Rising Tide Of Asininity

 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2022/03/05/americas-school-accountability-system-is-broken-here-are-the-issues-that-must-be-addressed-to-fix-it/?sh=575473e57f96

Surprise surprise! I got it right again! (OK, I’m not always right — just almost all the time.🧐). When I took my test and measurements course for my masters degree in school administration, one of the critical points made to us (critical now but at the time just one more data point) was that standardized testing is absolutely useless at evaluating the progress of an individual student, an individual teacher, or an individual school. All it is good for is making a bell shaped curve giving a generalized placement of performance according to a very narrow limited standardized test format and placed in a very broad setting. This is very useful in special education testing but useless for general evaluation of educational quality or performance.

Then President Reagan began screwing things up, as he had to find someone to blame for his policy failures. So he blamed teachers.

A propaganda report was issued worrying about a “rising tide of mediocrity “. A nonsense phrase meeting nothing. The report was pure propaganda, almost entirely data free. Nevertheless, based on that we desperately sought out an accountability system which would be based on the virtually useless data of standardized testing. This was designed to stimulate competition among schools and individual teachers. It’s actual primary effect was destroying teachers’ willingness to cooperate with each other. A teacher who found a clever way to get high scores on the test would never share that with another teacher because she had to compete. Collegiality and the mutual self-help system which has always been the hallmark of education was instantly corroded.

As always with standardized tests, it is mandated that, by the very nature of the test, a bell shaped curve results from the data. Failure to accomplish such a curve results in a test result skewed negatively or positively. The test will then be considered invalid and a new test created which will form the proper and only acceptable result: a bell shaped curve. When students began understanding how to find averages (because teachers were teaching it) the test manufacturers changed the test. They stopped calling them averages and began identifying them as “the mean“.

In other words, the test was no longer testing the students ability to understand the concept or perform it. It was deliberately making it hard for the children to understand so as to force a bell shaped curve because too many students were learning the concept too effectively and that’s not allowed in a bell shaped curve or any kind of standardized testing.  It is absolutely mandated that no matter how well a group performs or how badly it performs, 50% of those taking the test must be at or above the second quartile (the peak of the bell’s shaped curve) and 50% must be below it. 25% must fall at the first quartile or below and 25% must place at the third quartile or above. Please note that this is regardless of the actual level of knowledge or performance.

 This means that if the competition system really worked and all second grade students in a given year were now displaying at or above college level reading skills, the test would be adjusted until it showed that these incredibly brilliant children in fact were divided into 25% failures, 50% successes, and 25% high-performing extreme successes. The same would be true if the entire system failed so badly that not a single second grade student in the entire nation knew their alphabet. The same bell shaped curve would result.

Standardized testing does not test the quality of performance.  Criterion based testing does.

Now here we are 40 years later and guess what? Accountability and competition have proven to be a disaster for our public education system. Who would’ve guessed? Answer: anyone willing to look at the facts. 

Educational “experts” who never actually worked in the classroom but had extensive degrees, endlessly praised the system and supported and encouraged it to spread. I have stated on the record and will now repeat;  they are the equivalent of a medical doctor who says to his patient, “Thee hast an imbalance of thine humors. Tis necessary for to bleed thee that thee might becometh more balanced.“

At this point I can only say that stupid is as stupid does.

> The foundation of every recent accountability system, from the dawn of No Child Left Behind to the dusk of Common Core, has been the Big Standardized Test. And that foundation has cracked and crumbled. It has produced no results in the evaluation of teachers. It has produced no progress in student scores. Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) has recently detailed how the bipartisan coalition that supported testing has disintegrated, in part because parents have lost faith.

…High stakes testing has had a hugely corrosive effect on education, pushing to schools to see their goal not as the full education of the whole child, but as preparing students to score well on the big test. It has shifted school resources away from any topics not on the test. <