Whose Sorry Now?

 I'm trying to come back from my struggles to survive and, so far as I can, to function at a better level after my bouts of cancer. Considering that I may now have a third cancer, a rare pancreatic cancer, this may be a wasted endeavor. Nevertheless, I am trying. And this is why I am again making an effort to make at least an occasional post on my blog.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/25/slaves-trade-amends-grenada-laura-trevelyan?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1

This article addresses a problem that has come into national focus recently, although it is hardly a new problem. The problem is hardly a simple one. Everyone touched by this must ask themselves what to do about not only public reparations, but also personal and private penance for atrocities committed by your ancestors.

Putting myself at odds with the doctrine of most  Christian sects, I regard the concept of original sin being passed on as morally reprehensible. Children should not be punished for the sins of their ancestors, and we certainly should not be considered to be born sinful and evil, because of what Adam and Eve did 6000 years ago in the Garden of Eden.

Still, being proud of your family history when it is good means it is unreasonable to refuse to be ashamed of your family history when it is bad.

I do not know if any of my ancestors held slaves. I don't know enough of my family history, which is in and of itself a shame, but so it is. And it is possible that some of my ancestors may have been guilty of this crime against humanity. However, I do not know.

After all, my family's Rancho, bordered on the South by the Rio Grande, was a land grant from His Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain, no less. In other words, it goes back a long time. It was in the family hands until the property was finally sold decades ago. Obviously, it was in Texas , which, upon becoming a state, was a slave owning state.  Prior to that, during the Spanish era, there were Indian slaves held in the region. Did any of my ancestors hold slaves to work the horse ranch? I don't know.

It wasn't a plantation or I would be certain. But I don't know. If they did, I would not be proud of it, and indeed would be ashamed of that element of our history.

However, the land is long gone, and so are the ancestors who may or may not have held slaves. So, I will say again, each individual, each corporation, each university, or any other group which formerly profited from the slave trade, must decide what to do about making amends. 

I don't think there is an algorithm to solve this profound and disturbing moral challenge.

In this, and in all other areas, each and everyone of us must search our own soul and take what action we feel we must.

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 wished 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.