Scenes from a Memory

Potemkin Village - an impressive facade that hides an undesireable fact or state

Here's my potemkin village, among many that I'm trying to destroy - I developed sight reading during piano lessons from the age of 5 to 11 so now I can hide the fact that I'm an entirely mediocre bass player.  The term came from a Russian guy who was trying to impress Catherine the Great on a tour of the Ukraine back in the 18th century by making a bunch of fake villages.

I woke up around 4:45 and couldn't get back to bed - from about 1am until I finally got up, it felt like my thoughts were racing; it was entirely about jiu jitsu, and I figured I'd write down what I learned last night, mostly for me, but also for those who decided they had more important things to do.

It was only me and Joey at class - and Joey was 10 minutes late, so at first I thought it would just be me and Marco, which feels way awkward, and I'm sure he doesn't like it much either.  Anyway, we didn't do drills or anything, just straight into techniques, and it was awesome.  I feel as comfortable as it's possible to feel (as a white belt with less than a month) with most parts of jiu jitsu right now except submissions.  The gi chokes feel very comfortable for me, but I've realized they're a bit tougher to work than they seem on a non-resisting opponent.  The triangle and arm bar that we'd worked a few weeks ago still felt clunky; I could tell I didn't quite have the movements on the triangle right, and haven't had a chance to fix it really.  So last night, Marco worked with us on 5 specific attacks from the guard (when you are on your back and have your opponent between your legs).  And he presented it in a sort of "5-point" plan.  If your opponent puts his arm here, then you can do this.  And he showed us 5 very specific attacks.  An arm bar, an arm lock, kimura, triangle, and omoplata.  The arm bar is done with an extended arm directed straight ahead. The arm lock is done with an extended arm across your body.  The kimura is done with an extended arm to your side.  The triangle is done if your opponent goes for an underhook in your guard.  The omoplata is done when he has an arm extended too far back. 

I hope I got all those right; anyway, my point is that given the "private lesson" nature of the class along with the amount of time we were able to drill all those positions, I feel very good about all of those (except the omoplata, that one is freakin' complicated).  The reason I loved the lesson so much was because it felt so pragmatic - everything felt like "this is something I can use."  Also, it was a small boost of confidence as well when I was able to lock in the arm lock while Joey had problems.  I'm not rejoicing in his failure, it probably had to do with my stupid lanky limbs, but it felt good to realize that I'm possibly not so far behind him as I feel.  Maybe it's me being delusional. 

So I woke up at 4:45, cruised the net a bit, checked up on my social networking sites (which, let me tell you, are always chock full of activity; I can't keep up with all of my 23 myspace friends <roll eyes>), read a few articles about politics, and then decided running was a good idea.  I've not run in the morning since I was 17, and I remember being creeped out because it was really windy/pre-stormy that morning, so it lasted the one day.  I guess it's a good sign that I got bored and decided to go running.  I hope this love of jiu jitsu keeps up, because it's inspiring a bunch of other stuff - healthy diet (ok, mostly the elimination of coke and junk food, but it's a start), better sleep (sometimes less, but seems better quality), and actually wanting to work out.  If I hadn't started jiu jitsu, that would all go down the drain most likely. 

Well, that's it for now - 3 weeks is better than the 4 I went between last posts.

Maelstrom - a violent or turbulent state of affairs

I'm not going to make it to the "been a month without blogging" mark, so that's a shame, but in other news, I've decided to write a bit on a few of the books I've read in the past few weeks. 

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin - This was an excellent read.  The title and description I was given made the book sound more like a how to learn manual, when in reality it's mostly an autobiography of sorts.  Josh Waitzkin is the subject of the movie "Chasing Bobby Fischer" due to the incredible talent and potential he showed as a young chess champion.  He went on to win the 2004 world championship in Push Hands, a type of martial art competition.  He "conquered" two incredibly difficult and different disciplines with international recognition in both before he turned 30.  His stories alone were inspirational, and what he had to say about learning and psychology was also a bit inspiring.  He made the separation between people who believed most things to be talent and those who believed that everything could be worked toward.  The latter is more likely to be an expert in any one thing, because every difficulty or wall just becomes a challenge to work past rather than a peak of natural potential.  I've realized I'm not that, and am trying to adjust my mentality as much as possible, because I believe it does have the potential for more pay off.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Wow.  I feel that this is a must-read book for anybody who was raised in the American/Christian/western/etc. tradition.  It seems most people you talk to realize that Islamic societies can be pretty backwards.  Women's rights, praying 5 times a day, crazy terrorists, hating Jews, hating Americans, etc.  This book, Ayaan's memoirs, bring to life the horrible experience that was her childhood; of course, this is from my perspective.  She says in the book that she doesn't hate her family or anything, and it's astonishing after reading her experiences.  Also incredibly inspiring to be a Somalian Muslim girl with a mediocre education and end up a Political Science college graduate in the Dutch parliament.  This book was great on so many levels.  And I can't think of a single person I wouldn't recommend it to.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - This was a nice interruption in the amount of non-fiction I've been reading this year.  Excellent story, and also interesting how it seemed to tie into a lot of what Josh Waitzkin had to say.  It's about a kid named Ender who goes to "battle school" when he's 6 years old because he's a genius, and they're looking for someone to lead the galactic fleet against some alien race.  The entire time he's got a ton of adversity, and it's interesting to see how he deals with that and learning in general relative to the real life situations that Waitzkin describes.  I can't write too much, because there's so much of the book that is action-packed and surprising.  Finished it in a day, because it's short and pretty engrossing.

Candide by Voltaire - First classic I've read in a while, outside of some Alexandre Dumas I went through a few months ago.  I was pleasantly surprised by this book - I'd seen it referenced in a few other books I've been reading and decided to give it a run.  First off, it is really funny; you probably won't be roflcoptering, but this guy, Candide, just has a life full of strange coincidences and weird situations.  But the book was meant to be a commentary on some philosophers of Voltaire's day.  The philosophy, which Candide subscribes to through most of the book, is that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and it goes something like this: If God made the world, he would want to make the best of all possible worlds.  God made the world, thus this is the best of all possible worlds.  Or something like that - similar to "Everything works for the good of xxx person."  In the end, Candide come to realize that the "best of all worlds" is not such a helpful worldview after all.  Clever little book, with some insights into happiness and life in general.

One of a Kind by Mike Sexton - This book is a biography of Stu Ungar, one of the greatest card players to ever live.  And I had no clue until I read this.  I'd seen the name reading poker books and stuff like that.  Only guy to win the WSOP 3 times (the other guy (Johnny Moss) won the first WSOP on a vote).  Come to find out, he was the best gin player in the world by the time he was 16 - played world champs and took them 50 games in a row.  Another inspiring sort of story in a lot of ways, sad in a lot of other ways.  He won millions playing cards, and lost it all on sports betting, drugs, horse racing, etc.  But a great book, and a great character.

I Don't Believe in Atheists by Chris Hedges - You apparently can't see the ratings I give books on the page, but this got a one star.  And I was reluctant to give it one star because of the title and thus the immediate conclusion that I have a bias.  First, this book has little to nothing to do with the title.  It was a tough read, mostly because his arguments, reasoning, and writing all seemed convoluted.  He's obviously got some intelligence, and a nice vocabulary as well; I just didn't feel he made any good points.  A lot of this book was about fundamentalism more than just atheism.  He included Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Christian fundamentalists.  He seems to defend Islam though.  As an example, he displays Sam Harris's warmongering, intolerant attitude by attacking a statement he made in The End of Faith.  Harris makes a very very contingent statement regarding fundamentalist nations (specifically muslim nations) obtaining a nuke.  He said IF they have one and IF they are likely to use it with as little provocation as a cartoon in a newspaper (my example), THEN the only thing to do MIGHT be to preemptively strike.  The statement evaluated by itself I feel is completely fine; it's a concern we need to address - what do you do if crazies get WMDs?  Hedges takes this statement and distorts it with sensationalism saying that his atheism is just as fundamental and warmongering as the Islam he's attacking.  This book was full of sensationalism. 

New paragraph, same book.  Another big problem I had is that he seems to claim Christianity, but talk about Christian fundamentalism as an out-dated thing that no one believes.  No one really believes the earth was created in 6 days; no one really believes that gays should die.  He never defines his brand of Christianity, but it feels nebulous.  My problem is that it's the sort of Christianity many people will claim when "cornered" about it.  If you don't believe in a literal interpretation of the bible, then what use is Christianity?  If Genesis is a metaphor, or extend that to the majority of the old testament, or that Jesus was never really raised from the dead, what use is it?  I've been told that I need to talk to theologians about such issues, but from my knowledge of Christianity and the bible, I've got a pretty basic idea about the foundations of the religion.  And the "moderate" religion that many people claim ignores many of those things.  So what use is it?  If you admit to a selective, subjective interpretation of the bible, how can you claim objective truth in any way?  Anyways - it was a horrible book, and that has nothing to do with any attack on any belief I might hold.  Some of his critiques of fundamentalism, both religious and non, were accurate, but nothing life-changing or deep, I felt.

Your Inner Fish: a Journey into the 3.5-billion-year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin - I really enjoyed this one, and I think part of it stems from my evolutionary miseducation.  In 2004, Neil Shubin discovered Tiktallik, a fish with legs, pretty much.  There were a lot of things that were interesting, but he described a lot of the how's and why's of human development in evolutionary terms.  One of the things I found most interesting, which makes me feel really stupid, was how they conducted digs.  Of course they're expensive, so of course they do a ton of research before hand.  But when he explicitly stated that they went to X area because Y was the sort of fossil they were looking for, and then they find the sort of fossils they expect, it was exciting to me.  It's hard to explain, because it should be obvious - of COURSE they're going to find 300 million year old fossils in 300 million year old rock.  But my high school education always involved poking holes in the "millions of years" and "fossil layers" "theories."  So to see evidence of what scientists do and how it works out was exciting to me.  Anyway, he describes a lot of problems that humans have like hernias, bad knees, and such stuff and how it relates to evolution.  Just a lot of interesting stuff that probably shouldn't be so amazing to me, but it is. 

So there's the books I've read since my last blog post.  A lot of biographies, but I didn't realize it so much while I was reading them.  They all seemed to have more meat to them than just the story of someone's life; I guess that's what makes good biographies.

I'm having a tough time deciding what I want to learn.  I've got HTML, Javascript, and Jiu Jutsu on my plate as new things I'm doing, but I don't feel any passion for any of them.  It might come, and I've not even really started on any of them yet.  It doesn't mean I'm not excited, I just don't have that sort of instant emotional connection where I say to myself "Wow, this is awesome."  Who knows, they might be stepping stones, or skipping rocks; the future will tell.   And when he doesn't, I'll resort to waterboarding, because everyone knows that when a guy doesn't tell you what you want to know, you torture him.

Obsequious - compliant to excess

It's 5 a.m. as I write this, and I've not had any sleep so far.  Our clocks sprang forward last night and collided with a 13 hour sleep make-up my body decided to have and created some insomnions and maybe a hadron or two.  So I'm awake when the opposite is exactly what I need to do. 

A quick quote that relates to some of my recent thoughts, from Carl Sagan: "Well, it seems to me that there is only one conceivable approach to these matters.  If we have such an emotional stake in the answers, if we want badly to believe, and if it is important to know the truth, then nothing other than a committed, skeptical scrutiny is required."  The skeptical mind immediately sees the wisdom in this.  A friend pointed out to me that the key phrase missing in a theistic mindset was the "if it is important to know the truth"; so I'd like to try to evaluate this claim a little more in depth.

"These matters" I think should be applied to anything - I don't recall exactly what Sagan was talking about, but "these matters" should be any claim, really.  There is only one honest way to approach issues in which it matters at all if the matters at stake are true or not.

"If we have such an emotional stake in the answers" - while I believe the goal should ultimately be to remove emotions from an evaluation, as humans, it is mostly impossible.  Something as simple as a rock-paper-scissors match has an emotional stake in the outcome.  So questions in which the answer will affect our lives in any way are bound to our emotions inextricably.  And even questions which don't necessarily affect our lives as well.  Anything that would require us to change our mind I believe is tied up with the emotions in some way. 

"If we want badly to believe" - seeking out confirmation to what we already think.  The emotions involved with changing your mind are all here.  If you want badly to believe something, it's usually because of something you already have in your head.  The desire for proof of what you think seems to be a big motivator. 

"If it is important to know the truth" - this is where my friend seems to have the largest problem.  I can't think of a whole lot of people that would say the truth isn't important.  Most people have no problem with little white lies, and deceptions of that sort, but will agree that for the big things, the truth is important.  The whole ten commandment thing of no false testimony and Jesus saying multiple times "I tell you the truth..."  The Bible seems to point towards truth being important.  And since Christians are my most common "target" (only due to the sense of familiarity), I'll stick with that.

So - those are all the "if"s - it seems the only one that is up in the air in applying it universally is the "wanting badly to believe," which might have more merit than I gave it, but moving on...the "if"s apply for the most part to any human being with a brain.  So I must then look at the "then."  If it follows, we have something to work with.

"Nothing other than a committed, skeptical scrutiny is required."  The only thing that you can give to something that matters so much is every single thinking ability you have available.  Critical thought and skepticism are absolutely required.  This "then" follows only because it is necessary to search for every nook and cranny for places where you might be wrong.  I've tried to establish that every evaluation involves a certain emotional stake; the higher that emotional stake is, the more thought that needs to be applied.  It is required.  Requisite.  Necessary.  Nothing else will do.  You have to commit to the scrutiny of the claim and you have to commit to the skepticism.  This is only so because you have to make sure you are not giving your emotions more credit than they deserve.

So, anyway - that helped me understand a bit more on how universal such a statement might be.  So my question now is, would a Mormon/Muslim/Scientologist/etc. agree with it?  The only thing that I can think of right now is the common claim similar to "He works in mysterious ways."  But still, that seems to only be a rationalization of the potential results of such evaluation, and nothing to do with the method itself.  I'd be very interested to see if people disagree with the statement and if so, why? 

I can't think of any reasons, but it is now 6 a.m.  I might think of some later, but if you have any, please comment.  It might help me use this line of reasoning with people, and it makes me happy to see comments - even if you tell me this line of reasoning is balls.

Anathema - an impreciation, a curse

First off, there are all sorts of assupmtions to go with this post.  I'm approaching this defensively and maintaining that people on the opposite sides of my discussions are making claims they believe, not making the claims mean-spiritedly, and that they actually put some value on discussing questions of life, the universe, and everything.  I'm approaching any claim that someone would make about me and the ideas that I put forth as something to be taken seriously and something that is up for discussion. 

Now - as to the topic I want to discuss - the claim of arrogance.   Dictionary.com defines arrogance as an offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.  I feel it's necessary to define key terms in a discussion, even ones that are supposedly apparent to all parties involved, such as this one.  And if that's not an agreeable definition, it's up for discussion, but I'm satisfied with it.  Qualifying arrogance as an offensive display rather than just a normal display of superiority I think is an important distinction.  If I were to play baseball, my most hated sport, with Cal Ripken, Jr., him simply being there playing with me would be a display of his superiority.  But by no means would it be arrogance, I don't know that it would be possible for him to be arrogant in this situation - I suck and he's hall of fame material; if I found such a display of superiority offensive, then I have to believe the problem lies in my thinking and not his skill.  Anyway - I think the adjectives used in this definition are important and help separate the negative qualities of arrogance with the fact that we're all different and everyone is better at something than someone else on the planet.

Anyways, out of definitions and into relationships.  When another person makes the claim that a scientist or an atheist is arrogant, I immediately ask how.   How is it that this large chunk of people all display arrogance that is inherent with the way they think by associating with either label?  By defining arrogance earlier, I think a simple answer to this question would be to say that the people making this claim feel offended by the way a scientist thinks.  Thus, they are offended and actually feel that somehow it is superior to whatever they have.  Right?  This is tough for me to try to wrap my mind around, because I've never understood arrogance in the offensive sense.  A lot of people say my grandfather is arrogant - he's an intelligent man with a large vocabulary and he's done a lot in his life - he knows quite a bit.  I've heard other members of my family say that he was arrogant - and my argument was something along the lines of "Why is it arrogant that he knows a bunch of stuff that you don't?  That's just the way it is."  This happened 3 years ago or so, and it surprised me to hear the claim - knowing and talking with my grandfather for 22 years (well, 20-ish, or whatever) never led me to believe he was arrogant.  Sure I could have been naive and they've also known him a lot longer, but my first assumption is that there is something wrong with the people getting offended by what he is, rather than any true display of arrogance.  Like I said, I'm still trying to get my mind around this claim of arrogance about a difference in thinking.

I try to give credit to the people I talk with - I'll attempt to take any claim they make seriously, even if I already believe it to be false.  This is part of the "I know I might be wrong" mentality.  So, when the claim was made to me that "to scientists, God makes them feel littler than they are" and "curing a disease makes them god," I'll take the claim as seriously as I can take it.  One of my first questions (all of these "gods" are in reference to Bible-God) is "If God gave these people the ability to think and reason the way they do, why is it wrong of them to use it?"  Or as I put it in a discussion with another person "Logic, reason, and critical thinking are some of the best tools we have to observe and draw conclusions about reality.  If God gave us these things, why is it wrong to apply them?"  Because my line of thinking leads straight into "Why would God condemn all of these people that he gave these great intellectual gifts to?"  You could take stories from the new testament to apply to the situation - the parable of the talents (to whom much has been given, much is expected) and the rich man jesus told "it's harder for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than a rich man into heaven."  So there are some answers, but I find them unsatisfactory.  Scientists are doing their best to help alleviate human death and suffering.   How can such a noble pursuit using their "God-given" tools lead them to a fate of eternal suffering?  Why is it that curing a disease makes them God, rather than the more humble approach of realizing that you might have just saved hundreds of thousands of human lives - that is amazing and humbling.  I can't imagine having such an ecstatic feeling and being so humbled that I happened to be the one to stumble across a cure for cancer or the polio vaccine or any of the other numerous things that have extended our life expectancy two and three-fold.  In the same way that a Christian is "humbled" when they save a soul (which they claim was all God's work through them), I believe that a scientist is humbled more so by doing the same thing to the life that they have and we can all see.

That was a rather large tangent - but I'm just trying to show the sort of thinking I'm willing to take to discuss things with opposing viewpoints - just about every claim made was outrageous and required a million assumptions, but I'm willing to go with it and lead out their claim to it's logical conclusion and try to show them how with this one thing, their thinking might be wrong.  And mine might be too.  But that's why we discuss it.  How is any of this arrogant?  If you find any of my claims offensive or any of my attitudes offensive, please tell me, and tell me why, and I can try to fix in the name of politeness or because I'm wrong or try to tell you that you might be wrong to be offended, and here's why.  But to be offended simply at ideas is a horrible starting point.  If you have bad premises, you're likely to draw poor conclusions. 

In conclusion, I find the claim of arrogance to be anathema - on both sides of an argument or debate, any claim of arrogance is a curse.  It is a damning curse to the one making the claim, for they've shown that they find an idea so offensive to be off limits for discussion, and thus needing no reasonable qualification, because the idea is arrogant, and that's the final word.  And it's a curse to the one receiving the claim of arrogance; by receiving a claim of arrogance, even ridiculous ones, many reasonable ideas are immediately discarded by the rest of society. 

Indolent - habitually idle; lazy; inactive

Faith - being sure of what one hopes for and certain of what one can not see. (Paraphrase from Hebrews 11:1, NIV)

Reason - to form conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises. (Direct from dictionary.com)

I have faith that on my next PT test, I will run a mile and a half in 7 and a half minutes.  In other words: I am SURE of what I hope for, which is to run a mile in five minutes, and continue that pace for another half a mile.  I am CERTAIN that stop watch will have a beautiful 7:29:78 on it when I cross the finish line (though I'll never see it).  And I'll insist on it when they're writing down my score.

I have reason to believe that my time will most likely be between 11 and 12 minutes.  In other words: I have formed a conclusion based on the FACT that tonight (March 17, less than 2 months to PT test) was the first time I've willingly worked out in over 9 months that to run a mile faster than I ever have in my life is highly improbable.  My life includes the experience of 3 years on a track team during junior high and high school where we ran distance and sprints 5 days a week for a period of 3 months.  I peeked at a 6 minute mile in 7th grade.

My legs hurt.

Sojourn - a temporary stay

I suck at golf.  Instead of actually learning biology in college, ice cream and golf took priority.  I took the class with a friend and my brother, and there was a 3 hour gap between my last class (jazz band) and biology.  So me and my buddy would go get some ice cream and then play a few holes.  I regret this because firstly, I suck at golf, and secondly, because I wish I'd have learned that stuff - the class was pretty horrible though.  The professor had zero explanatory skill and just threw up facts with no connecting thoughts.  My memory might be a bit flawed, but I remember it being horrible.

But the golf thing - I suck at video game golf too.  In trying to figure out why, I've moved on to another game.  And that's that.  Actually, I now have 4 games in the queue (Super Smash Bros. Brawl being number 1, Tiger Woods 08, No More Heroes, and Mass Effect).  I love smash.  I don't think I've ever played a single game more, though Warcraft is a likely contender.  But I see this string of games as symptomatic of the real problem - lack of focus. 

I don't have problem focusing on little things.  It's big things.  I can read a 1200 page book in a single sitting if my needs are taken care of.  Working on complicated problems and projects through school was never a problem either.  That's little stuff: the big stuff is just sojourns into whatever has my fancy at the time.  I'm not quite ADD about it either.  There's never been one thing in my life that I've had a staying desire to be an expert at. 

Anyway - on to my daily attempt at refining my definition of what it is to be a reasonable individual. 

I've noticed that in conversation I've been listening less and thinking and talking more, and I think that's a bad thing.  I do a lot of on-the-fly reasoning/debating when discussing issues with people; I very rarely have any pre-structured arguments or defenses.  It's been satisfying enough so far, and when I go way off the beaten path mistakenly, either they or I catch it pretty quickly.  I say that only to try to work out what weight my resources need to go to in discussing things with people.  How much of my mental resources need to go into building that argument and how much into processing what's been said?  Ideally, I install two processors in my head so each part gets 100%, but I've not figured out how to engineer a brain that does that...yet.

In watching a video with a Sam Harris lecture, he mentioned something about what ideas to attack.  He's of the opinion that bad ideas need to be attacked, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.  He set it out in a way that weighs the bad ideas, and starts from the ground up.  For instance, a large portion of British muslims wanting to live in a society where apostasy is punished by death.  That's a really really bad idea.  Apostasy does not harm anybody - at all.  And they want to kill someone for it.  This needs to take precedence over something like racism in the bible belt (large paranthetical: in my experience, faith is at least partially responsible for this - if it were completely a culture thing, it wouldn't make sense that the most racist states also had the most conservative christians; back to a previous post, the bible tells you how to act: love.  Racism most definitely doesn't fall under that category; I can't quite place my finger on it, and I've not spent a whole lot of time looking, but I do believe there's a connection with racism and faith; possibly the factionalized* mentality that it creates).  The reason it needs to take precedence is because the racism in the bible belt, while ignorant and partially faith-related, is mostly under control - lynching and hate crimes are relatively rare, and are looked down upon when they happen.  It's important to be able to make a distinction both for you and the people you talk to.

Maybe I didn't pick the best example there, but I wanted two things that could be pointed to as bad ideas, yet weren't quite on eqal footing.   But basically, what I got out of it was the effort needs to go in rooting out bad ideas, the worst ideas, most fervently, and stop attacking the idea of a god so much.  As many people see it, atheism is a "faith" that desires universal conversion.  While that's not the truth, it does come off that way: everyone should rid themselves of belief in a god.  And that comes off as very offensive.  I think one of the "seeds of reason" I'm adding to my bag is to ignore the god question and just attack bad ideas.  I know in my "conversion" to atheistic thinking, it was slow - my bad ideas just kept going and going until I finally realized that the god thing was one of the bad ideas I was holding on to.  It wasn't something that all of a sudden "OMG GOD IS TEH SUXORZ ROFLCOPTER."  It was incredibly subtle in my own experience.  And I believe part of the reason to be that removal of bad ideas, no matter how long it takes.

 

*I believe the factionalized mentality comes from any superficial thing that sets you apart from(or together with) other people.  In the navy: khaki uniforms (and the ranks that go with them); in religions: I go to THIS church, and they go to THAT church (superficial because the faith is basically the same); on the street: I drive a motorcycle and he drives a motorcycle, we're cool.  I'm not saying it's wrong to have these groups of people that create social networks based on similar interests or goals.  I'm saying the moment you start putting up walls regarding it, the walls will go up in other sections of your life, whether you want them to or not.  As to what would not be a superficial thing that sets people apart, that's rough.  I might just believe that anything that creates it is negative, but I'll think more on that later.

Death, Life, and Most Importantly - Girl Scout Cookies

I ran out of girl scout cookies yesterday.  It was a sad day.  Given, I did only buy 3 boxes, and I tend to eat about 2/3 of a box in one sitting.  But the point is, I had, and I no longer do. 

Life is like a box of girl scout cookies - there comes a point when you don't have it any more.   To draw a comparison along the routes of two blogs I've already read and plagarized, the view of an afterlife is like knowing that there will always be girl scouts there at the grocery store selling them every time you go.  I'm almost certain the next time I go, those girls (and probably more importantly, their mothers) won't be there to sell me delicious cookies for way too much money. 

The value of the girl scout cookie comes not in how delicious it is; it most definitely is.  The value is in the rarity of it; it's a special treat.  And I think I almost prefer it that I don't have samoas right now (which I mistakenly told the girl scout mother "Gimme 2 samoans," which to me is much funnier).  Because that means that the next instance I get them, I'll have the great memory of the last time I had girl scout cookies.  In other words, the cookies are not SO fantastic that the anticipation isn't worth it every time.  And I've just destroyed the analogy.  But that's life, eh?

Unfortunately, I found out that I'll be having a new experience soon.  My grandmother (we call her nauna, due to a cousin I have that made the decision 10 years before I was born) has been struggling with cancer for the past 10 or 15 years.  I found out recently that the treatments done previously didn't work, and the new treatments are just meant to hold off the suffering for as long as possible.  But basically, as my brother put it, cancer wins.  I've not heard a time frame, but it sounds like everything is going pretty well, overall.  This is a new experience for me, because the only person close to me that's ever died was my other grandma, and I was soemwhere in the age 5 to 8 area.  It wasn't that I didn't understand death, it was just that she lived in california, we lived in arkansas, and my experiences with her were very limited. 

I've thought before how I'd handle the death of a loved one, but never through the "no-god goggles."  Unfortunately, I'm finding nothing profound or new.  I feel about the same as when I was looking through the god goggles.  The solace I found with an abstract idea such as heaven (as I understood it) seems no more or less consoling then the celebration of her life.  Anyways - my only useful thought is to enjoy that last cookie as best she and all of us can.

 

Lissom - nimble, agile, flexible

I've just visited the website Conservapedia for the first time.  All I can say is wow.  A few quotes from their article on atheism, and I'll move on.

• "The atheists are for the most part imprudent and misguided scholars who reason badly who, not being able to understand the Creation, the origin of evil, and other difficulties, have recourse to the hypothesis the eternity of things and of inevitability." - Voltaire
• "An atheist’s most embarrassing moment is when he feels profoundly thankful for something,but can’t think of anyone to thank for it" - Mary Anne Vincent
• How to trap an atheist: Serve him a fine meal, then ask him if he believes there is a cook. — Source Unknown

It was in the "atheism quotes" section at the end.  The interesting thing about such quotes was that the most contemporary of the quoters were Calving Coolidge and C.S. Lewis.  Being new to the freethinker/atheist/(however you want to define it) "community," this simple read made me realize the importance of being outspoken about certain things. 

Why be outspoken?  The negative effects faith-based thinking have on decision-making and the "moral compass" to me are reason enough.  These are things that I've experienced.  Racism, hooliganism, being ok with knowing someone is going to hell (the absolute worst thing that any of us could imagine, amplified 100x); it's the cognitive dissonance that is talked about so much in specific types of theists. 

Only, it's different than you'd think - this is a way of thinking that trains you to be ok with going against your own beliefs.  The moral code laid out in the Bible is not something that people follow.  My thinking on this, which I came to when I was around 17 or 18 at a Christian school, is that the moral code of the new testament can be summed up very simply.   

How do you, as a Christian behave?  Jesus answered the question to some random dude: Love God. Love your neighbor.  So then the question becomes, what is love?  Well, that's lined out in a letter from Paul to the Corinthians: love is patient, kind; doesn't envy, boast; isn't proud.  Not rude, self-seeking, easily angered; keeps no record of wrongs.  Doesn't delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.  Always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

A quick summation of 1 Corinthians 13.  Anyways - I thought it was a really easy answer as to how to act.  The golden rule is encompassed with that love thing - but even above and beyond that, the love guide teaches you to be a good person.  Be nice, don't get pissed for no reason, don't be a selfish prick, etc.  Good things laid out with some nice specifics.

I was pretty astonished to find that the things I was presenting to people were surprising to them.  Jesus said love is the most important thing (I'm ignoring the God part for now, I'm just interested in moral behavior/thinking right now).  Then this other guy goes on to tell you how to do it.  So if you want to behave like Jesus said - follow the guide book on the topic.  The reason I found it surprising is because of how novel the idea seemed to a lot of people.  I found it an insight into the moral thinking of most Christians.

Ok, so that was all meant to give an idea of why I think we should be outspoken about the benefits of reason over faith.   As far as the purpose of being outspoken: getting rid of these horrible misconceptions.  Step one in convincing people that atheism is a completely reasonable position to have requires that we tear down all these horrible misconceptions.  I believe a lot of that can come from just simple moral behavior. 

I "came out" to my parents over Christmas break.  My dad is a pastor (for 3 years now, long story, but he's always been involved in the church in some capacity) and my mom is also involved in everything at the church.  So, about a week after my bomb,  he and I went out to get a Christmas tree and he started up a conversation regarding it.  He was mostly interested in hearing how I came to take a position of no God vs. God.  So I told him my stories, reasoning, reading, etc.  Since then we've been discussing random topics regarding faith and religion.  But as of now, I feel that I've made headway within that relationship - I'm to the point now where I think that he allows that my position is reasonable and is starting to reconfigure his idea of what atheism is and isn't.  And that's something I feel is immeasurably important. 

I'm not saying that we shouldn't attack the irrational, immoral, and inhumane things that religions and religious people do.  I think that Dawkins' consciousness raising is the most important thing we can do.  Trust the human mind to take over at some point, but we have to plant the seeds of reason.

Irrupt - to burst in forcibly or suddenly

So me and Mike Sapien went skiing on Thursday and Friday.  I've not been skiing in a good 4 or 5 years, and it was Mike's first time.  I decided to give snowboarding a second try; I was a bit worried given the atrocity that was my first attempt - a day full of pain, falls, and bruises.  Well, this time ended up slightly better - I got pain, falls, and bruises, but I also actually did something that could be called snowboarding this time. 

The second day I switched to ski blades (about 3 foot long skis that are shaped slightly different than normal skis).  Mike was doing well, and we wanted to go see the rest of the mountain(s), so I decided it'd be best to not be falling all the time and be able to help him out.  So the second day was great.  First day just good.

I finished Victor Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis; it was good stuff, and I enjoyed his approach to the arguments.  It was disappointing in the sense that I didn't come away from the book with the feeling he'd really shown the God hypothesis as a failure.  In contrast, The God Delusion left me with exactly the feeling the title encompasses - belief in a god is delusional, and not in the antagonistic sense; in a really sad sort of way.  The last chapter of the book really just leaves me feeling something akin to pity - firstly, that people get into these situations in life that they feel some sort of belief is requisite, and secondly, that their beliefs can cloud so many parts of their life that could be so great! 

I might be a bit biased towards the book, because it was my first real bit of atheist literature, but I've re-read it twice now, and I still love the arguments and writing style.   Anyway -  that brings the book total for the year up to 19.  I know I won't be able to keep up with this average of 10 books per month that I've set, but it's nice to have that in the "new year's resolution" mentality; I don't make new year's resolutions by the way.  First, it's a pretty arbitrary point at which to be making some life changing decision.  Secondly, because it's such a cliched sort of thing to do in our culture, the resolutions are almost destined to failure, because that's the preconception.  Thirdly, I'd feel dishonest - I know my track record with keeping commitments to new things in my life; it's not that I'd feel bad when I drop off the horse, I just see it happening and decide to be truthful about it up front.

To completely change the topic - I only recently noticed what, at first glance, I perceive to be a flaw in discussing religious topics with religious people.  Being so entrenched in Christianity for so long, I have a fairly large "database" to pull from in discussions.  The flaw: I end up discussing things in their territory.  Why is this a flaw?  I'm having a theological discussion about a god I don't believe exists, so we're just discussing nonsense.  In a sense, it gives credit and credence to any of their arguments.  It's something I need to work on: attack the faulty premises, not the faulty conclusions. 

But, I would like to discuss the possible value of arguing faulty theology with a Christian.  Which leads to the question of the possible value of discussing reason in the face of the tidal wave that is faith.   I know that I'm glad someone at some point decided that pointing out flaws in my thinking was important enough to do. 

Anyway - sleep still sucks and I gotta go back to work tomorrow.  Here's hoping that things can only get better.

Mien - demeanor, aspect, appearance

So here's an interesting bit.  I've not slept through the night since the night of Dec. 30.  First it was dealing with the jetlag from the ocean hop.  Then it was the stress of a new environment coupled with our wonderful accomadations on LSD 43, USS Fort McHenry.  The location of our berthing was excellent - close to the galley, easy to get to every location we would ever need to be.  The problem is that we're with the "shipriders" which in this case means smelly Africans.  Their idea of hygiene is slightly different than ours. 

But that was mostly another person's problem; my complaint comes from a device that I never figured out the function for.  My rack was next to this giant tube(?) that was about 6x5 feet in a rectangular shape that made noises all the time.  It sounded as if there were 17 angry gnomes in there taking turns contorting sheet metal into mediocre works of art like life-size wire frame statues of the band who did the Friends theme song.*  These gnomes liked to do most of their work right next to my rack and in the middle of the night.  Someone said their sculptures contributed to the air conditioning; I couldn't see how their workspace was in anyway connected with the A/C units, but if it was, someone needs to give them a paycut.

Anyways - so now I'm awake on my day off at 7am.  I've read that a lot of great men kept their sleep to a minimum.  Apparently we're least productive when laying on our backs with our eyes closed doing nothing.  Buckminster Fuller, all around smartie, tried a power nap route - any time that he got tired or felt his concentration drift, he would take a power nap; it worked out to about 2 hours of sleep a day.  Apparently, it worked rather well, but existing in a society that sleeps only at night got rough and he switched back to normal.  Or so I've read.

Rather than struggle with getting back to sleep, I decided I would "be productive."  My first thought was to do some laundry before I start my exciting day.  The second thought was "yeah, that would definitely be a good thing to do."  My first action, after relieving myself, was to jump on the computer and write a blog.  This is one of the aformentioned "mental hurdles."   The easiest solution is to "just do it," but that advice seems incredibly practical and not at all helpful.   But this line of thinking occurs multiple times throughout each day.  "Hey, I should do this" and "this" never gets done.  I've not figured out if the problem is just laziness or procrastination, or there is no true problem on that side of the equation; it could just be I've not found the solution yet. 

But I guess this is an improvement: I haven't done any laundry, but I did blog.  And that's a step in the right direction, because the last blog I tried lasted 3 entries.  And they all sucked. 

*The band's name is The Rembrandts - who, by the way, had a track in Dumb and Dumber as well