In Learn to Grow Old, Dr. Paul Tournier first diagnoses, then prescribes, treatment for the ills of the retired person in society. Although he is speaking about Swiss society of the late 60s and early 70s, I find a comment on almost every page that applies to me and my peers or to my parents and theirs. The central thesis of the first half of the book seems to be that if retirement is to be successful, preparation, not financial but mental and logistical, must begin well in advance.
I think I can't wait to not have to work, because I am exhausted, but I know that the contact with young people, the mental challenge, and the structure to my week are valuable to my mental health. I have seen some people just shrivel up in retirement, especially if it was a forced, "golden parachute" situation. But there are so many interesting and important things to do besides work-- how can I be bored in retirement??
Tournier feels that when we are at the height of our earning powers, the time we have left at the end of the day often cannot include great challenges. Most people can't write a novel or paint beautifully in the 2 hours they have in the evening after work-- although I know some who do!
But the majority of working age people find their evenings and weekends consumed with caregiving, community service and the simple tasks of daily life, and count themselves lucky if they can get the chance to putt a few holes or stitch a bit on a needlework project over the weekend. Such people-- and I am sometimes one-- imagine retirement as a sort of earthly heaven consisting only of these hobbies and leisure activities that we can't get enough of now. But those same people find, when the day comes, that knitting, TV and golf are really not enough to hold their attention.
Tournier says we must instead imagine retirement as an opportunity to pursue employment of our time, our hands, and our minds that will actually challenge our capacities. He reminds me of Viktor Frankl, who taught that the wellspring of mental health was a sense of meaning. Just so, an older person needs a purpose, and leisure activities and hobbies may not be enough to satisfy this need. That is why preparation for retirement must begin well in advance, as we identify and begin to dip into the gifts, the passions and even the neglected skills we will be able to pursue when we have less structured days.
As Tournier says, "A second career is like a plant whose seed has been sown in the midst of a person's active life, which has taken root, which has developed tentatively at first, but which bears all its fruit in retirement." (p. 125)
Tournier does recognize that there are both societal and individual obstacles to living meaningfully during retirement. No amount of personal planning can overcome the prejudice against old people that was certainly present in the 70s and has by no means improved since then. We look down on those activities of our own that are not visibly productive, so we look down on those who are no longer able to be visibly productive at all.
We are consumed by technology, so we leave behind those who can't keep up. In family gatherings, we speak over our older members about swiftly-moving pop-culture topics, and don't give them time to contribute what might be valuable perspectives. We marginalize old people as we used to marginalize young people, as being messy, unattractive and uninteresting. We regulate retirement so that it must occur at a certain age and all at once, rather than through gradual reduction of the workload as each person is able.
With such marginalization and lack of recognition of the individual, how is a retired person to find meaning?
In addition to these discriminatory public attitudes, there are the many circumstances that conspire to prevent many older people from moving forward. As any of us discover if we are out of work for a stretch of time, or try to take a "stay-cation," there seem to be an infinite number of small tasks that instantly expand to fill our day, so all our well-laid plans for self-improvement, community service, learning and creating go by the wayside.
Some have been forced to retire before they could really afford it, while others are forced to keep working to the detriment of their health. Many really don't have the extra money that makes them both respected in the marketplace and independent with respect to their families. They may not be able to afford the tools or tuitions for the projects that would provide their free time with meaning.
Older people may become increasingly isolated-- especially if they are required to move to a facility. There, it is very difficult for all but the most socially gifted people to form true friendships, since people who have nothing in common except their age are just stuck in a room together. In real life, as opposed to in a movie, the other inmates of a care facility are not Judy Dench and Dame Maggie Smith-- they may have very different interests from oneself, and they are all, by virtue of their presence in such a place, more or less in medical crisis, which makes it difficult to reach out.
When one can't drive, one is completely dependent on the schedules and convenience of others to have a social life. Tournier talks about the villa he and his wife chose for retirement, walkable to town and family, but most parts of the US are not walkable, most families do not all live in the same town, and even so, excellent health is required to be able to enjoy this non-driving lifestyle.
Yes, it seems to me that health, or lack thereof, is a major determiner of how well one can enjoy retirement. I might plan all kinds of philanthropic and creative pursuits for my golden years, but if I become too ill to carry them out, will I have the mental flexibility to think of something I can do, like Tournier's friends who can paint, if not walk, or watch the winds, if nothing else?
Tournier is a strong advocate of accepting one's limitations and determining to work within them. He says, and I agree, "those who are most in rebellion against their misfortunes put up less of a fight to overcome them than those who accept them." I hope that if I become too disabled to do anything else, I will be able to find peace and purpose in prayer... but I can't promise anything.
Friday, December 18, 2015
Sunday, November 22, 2015
240-249: How to Be Good (Biblically)
The Dewey category 240-249 encompasses devotionals, "Christian living," Christian family life, Biblical ethical philosophy, and, inexplicably, a whole section devoted to church furnishings. If you are a Muslim or a Hindu, you will have to look much harder to find information about what kind of rugs or altar to buy for your place of worship.... so hard that I cannot provide you with your Dewey number offhand. But then, I can't give you your LCCat number either.
I picked three books from that all-encompassing Christian Living section found in my own church library. Just Courage, by Gary Haugen, is a challenge to take risks in the service of God's heart for the redemption of the world. Haugen is best known as the founder of International Justice Mission, of which I am a huge fan and supporter, but he cut his teeth in the Justice Department, investigating police misconduct in the US. I hope that role continues to be filled by smart, aggressive lawyers with a heart to protect the marginalized!
College Ruined Our Daughter, by Wesley Shrader, probably needs a new name. The subtitle is: "Letters to parents about the baffling world of the college student," the copyright is 1969, and I think the point is that college did not, in fact, ruin the daughters and sons in question. By just dipping into the letters, I sense that the issues students and parents are grappling with may not have changed much: sexuality, politics, drugs, hypocrisy, appear on just about every page. Only the clothes have changed-- love beads and Nehru jackets were mentioned!
Learn to Grow Old, by Paul Tournier, is the book that resonates most greatly with me at this moment as I progress through my 50s and walk with my mother through her 70s. The jacket blurb cheerfully assures me that "Dr. Tournier feels that old age and retirement need not be feared or hidden from."
I picked three books from that all-encompassing Christian Living section found in my own church library. Just Courage, by Gary Haugen, is a challenge to take risks in the service of God's heart for the redemption of the world. Haugen is best known as the founder of International Justice Mission, of which I am a huge fan and supporter, but he cut his teeth in the Justice Department, investigating police misconduct in the US. I hope that role continues to be filled by smart, aggressive lawyers with a heart to protect the marginalized!
College Ruined Our Daughter, by Wesley Shrader, probably needs a new name. The subtitle is: "Letters to parents about the baffling world of the college student," the copyright is 1969, and I think the point is that college did not, in fact, ruin the daughters and sons in question. By just dipping into the letters, I sense that the issues students and parents are grappling with may not have changed much: sexuality, politics, drugs, hypocrisy, appear on just about every page. Only the clothes have changed-- love beads and Nehru jackets were mentioned!
Learn to Grow Old, by Paul Tournier, is the book that resonates most greatly with me at this moment as I progress through my 50s and walk with my mother through her 70s. The jacket blurb cheerfully assures me that "Dr. Tournier feels that old age and retirement need not be feared or hidden from."
230-239: Father, Son and Spirit
Fun fact: The idea that Father, Son and Spirit are three aspects of one God rather than three distinct individuals who still make up One is not within the scope of orthodox Christianity. Seems like splitting hairs to me, but there you have it. Whichever view you take, if you want to explore the trinity, this is the Dewey decade for you. May I recommend:
Father: The Return of the Prodigal, by Henry Nouwen, that sweet, broken healer, is beautifully summarized here.
Son: The Everlasting Man, by the always entertaining, often in error but never in doubt, G.K. Chesterton, is now out of copyright and freely available in print and audio forms.
Spirit: The Forgotten God is by the one living author on my short list, Francis Chan, a man who, as far as I can tell, never wrote a word he didn't live out with shocking integrity.
All of these I have read at other times in my life. For this project, I returned to the theme of the Father of the Prodigal Son with Abba's Heart, by Neal and Matthew Lozano. They have preached in my church, and I have attended their retreats, so their concerns and the format of the book are very familiar to me. Stories of people they have met are interwoven with devotional meditations on Scripture, all with a therapeutic focus. My favorite story in the book is this one:
Father: The Return of the Prodigal, by Henry Nouwen, that sweet, broken healer, is beautifully summarized here.
Son: The Everlasting Man, by the always entertaining, often in error but never in doubt, G.K. Chesterton, is now out of copyright and freely available in print and audio forms.
Spirit: The Forgotten God is by the one living author on my short list, Francis Chan, a man who, as far as I can tell, never wrote a word he didn't live out with shocking integrity.
All of these I have read at other times in my life. For this project, I returned to the theme of the Father of the Prodigal Son with Abba's Heart, by Neal and Matthew Lozano. They have preached in my church, and I have attended their retreats, so their concerns and the format of the book are very familiar to me. Stories of people they have met are interwoven with devotional meditations on Scripture, all with a therapeutic focus. My favorite story in the book is this one:
I always had a hard time believing that God loved me. I knew He loved everyone, and that included me, but I was loved as one of the multitude. My dad often said wonderful things to me to communicate his love, like "You are my favorite daughter." I knew what he meant, but I was his only daughter! I met those words with disbelief, not allowing them to penetrate my heart....
I was on a retreat when I faced the insecurity and emptiness in my heart. The worthlessness speaking from within was louder than the voice of God. How could you love me? I thought. For days I was overwhelmed by these lies. Suddenly the voice of the Father broke in: You are my favorite.First of all, I have a favorite niece who is also my only niece. But she really is my favorite, too! So I get how this works. I also love how this narrator takes responsibility for her own responses, as it were. She doesn't blame her father for choosing the "wrong" way to express his love for her... she acknowledges that it was her own human limitations that kept her from accepting those expressions. Likewise, it's not our heavenly Father's fault that we don't trust Him, feel loved by Him, or understand what He is doing half the time. These roiling emotions are just our lot as humans, and we have to keep making better choices, opening our hearts again to Him, doing that work of repentance none of us likes! The Father has done and is doing His part to love us, even coming into the world to experience the same obstacles we deal with. Now it is our turn, by the power of His Spirit, to receive what He has given.
Friday, October 23, 2015
More Questions without Answers: In the Beginning by Karen Armstrong and Abba's Heart by Neill Lazano
Karen Armstrong's In the Beginning doesn't begin at the beginning. She opens with the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel to illustrate her main point: God is confusing, it takes work to understand Him, and you may get hurt in the process.
The Bible is also really good at answers that are not what I wanted to hear, for example:
Me: "Why can't I just try harder and be better?" The Bible:"Because you're a sinner by nature; trying harder will never work." Me:"What can I do about my mistake?" The Bible:"You are going to have to apologize." Those kinds of answers are okay too, I mean once I get over the initial disappointment, because at least now I know what I'm working with.
But I've also talked about how okay I am with realizing there is no answer, and that's a space Armstrong likes to operate in. In fact, sometimes I wish she'd stay in that space more frequently; I'm very distracted by her constant references to two authors of Genesis and an editor. I think I would be similarly distracted by constant references to the "real" identity of Homer in a discussion of the Odyssey. But when she's not referencing this to my mind overly complicated and somewhat outdated interpretation of the origins of Genesis, she does something I really appreciate in a Biblical scholar: she encourages you to see what is actually there in the words themselves.
Of course other Bible commentators do the same. I've also been reading Abba's Heart. Neill Lazano discusses Luke chapter 15, where Jesus talks about the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. He talks about a shepherd who leaves 99 healthy sheep out in the open so he can go retrieve one that has wandered; he talks about a woman who spends all day looking for a coin, and then throws a party when she finds it; he talks about a man who allows his son to blow half the family legacy on partying and then welcomes him home with open arms; and he talks about them all as if they are perfectly normal people! In Sunday school we just draw pictures of shepherds carrying lambs; we don't face the fact that the behavior described is actually kind of strange. Jesus, surprise, is not teaching platitudes, and Karen Armstrong feels that Genesis also is a story that, if we are really paying attention, is meant to unsettle us.
For example, Armstrong writes about Cain: "God gave no reason for his rejection of Cain and his gift; he simply told him that he had the power to resist the surge of anger and rage rising in his heart." Not so unlike that father of the prodigal son, who had a similar message for the resentful elder brother who had always done everything right. Now, commentators and Sunday School teachers have come up with many ideas about why Cain's offering was rejected, but Armstrong is strictly correct: in the text, God does not tell Cain or us. I imagine myself opening gifts from my kids and saying, "Yeah, I'll wear this scarf, but not this other one." I would never do that, but God does, and doesn't seem to think there's a problem.
This point particularly resonates with me because I have been thinking a lot lately about the fact that in the Bible, envy is called a sin. From the Ten Commandments to the letters of Paul, wanting what someone else has, whether their cow or their position in the family, is just plain wrong. Being jealous of someone else for any reason (other than to protect monogamy) is not, in the Bible, an emotion that you need to learn to control, like anger or worry, but a sin you need to choose against. So already in the 3rd chapter of Genesis, God seems to be bringing up this point, saying to Cain: "So I liked your brother's gift better than yours. It happens. Get over it." And honestly, couldn't Cain be overreacting just a tiny bit? It's not like God said he liked Abel himself better. Cain and God were obviously still in relationship, so what was Cain's problem?
See, when you dare to see what's actually in the passage, it does make you look at the story differently. The story of Cain and Abel becomes not some kind of convoluted foretelling of the necessity of blood sacrifice for sin, but just the first of many times that life is not going to be fair, materially or relationally, and that God is trying to give us the tools to cope with that inescapable fact.
It is a hard struggle to discern a sacred reality in the flawed and tragic conditions in which we live, and our experience will often be disconcerting or contradictory.My faith tradition tends to emphasize answers: Jesus is the answer, love is the answer, on the day I called, He answered me. And in previous posts I've talked about how aggressively I pursue answers.
The Bible is also really good at answers that are not what I wanted to hear, for example:
Me: "Why can't I just try harder and be better?" The Bible:"Because you're a sinner by nature; trying harder will never work." Me:"What can I do about my mistake?" The Bible:"You are going to have to apologize." Those kinds of answers are okay too, I mean once I get over the initial disappointment, because at least now I know what I'm working with.
But I've also talked about how okay I am with realizing there is no answer, and that's a space Armstrong likes to operate in. In fact, sometimes I wish she'd stay in that space more frequently; I'm very distracted by her constant references to two authors of Genesis and an editor. I think I would be similarly distracted by constant references to the "real" identity of Homer in a discussion of the Odyssey. But when she's not referencing this to my mind overly complicated and somewhat outdated interpretation of the origins of Genesis, she does something I really appreciate in a Biblical scholar: she encourages you to see what is actually there in the words themselves.
Of course other Bible commentators do the same. I've also been reading Abba's Heart. Neill Lazano discusses Luke chapter 15, where Jesus talks about the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. He talks about a shepherd who leaves 99 healthy sheep out in the open so he can go retrieve one that has wandered; he talks about a woman who spends all day looking for a coin, and then throws a party when she finds it; he talks about a man who allows his son to blow half the family legacy on partying and then welcomes him home with open arms; and he talks about them all as if they are perfectly normal people! In Sunday school we just draw pictures of shepherds carrying lambs; we don't face the fact that the behavior described is actually kind of strange. Jesus, surprise, is not teaching platitudes, and Karen Armstrong feels that Genesis also is a story that, if we are really paying attention, is meant to unsettle us.
For example, Armstrong writes about Cain: "God gave no reason for his rejection of Cain and his gift; he simply told him that he had the power to resist the surge of anger and rage rising in his heart." Not so unlike that father of the prodigal son, who had a similar message for the resentful elder brother who had always done everything right. Now, commentators and Sunday School teachers have come up with many ideas about why Cain's offering was rejected, but Armstrong is strictly correct: in the text, God does not tell Cain or us. I imagine myself opening gifts from my kids and saying, "Yeah, I'll wear this scarf, but not this other one." I would never do that, but God does, and doesn't seem to think there's a problem.
This point particularly resonates with me because I have been thinking a lot lately about the fact that in the Bible, envy is called a sin. From the Ten Commandments to the letters of Paul, wanting what someone else has, whether their cow or their position in the family, is just plain wrong. Being jealous of someone else for any reason (other than to protect monogamy) is not, in the Bible, an emotion that you need to learn to control, like anger or worry, but a sin you need to choose against. So already in the 3rd chapter of Genesis, God seems to be bringing up this point, saying to Cain: "So I liked your brother's gift better than yours. It happens. Get over it." And honestly, couldn't Cain be overreacting just a tiny bit? It's not like God said he liked Abel himself better. Cain and God were obviously still in relationship, so what was Cain's problem?
See, when you dare to see what's actually in the passage, it does make you look at the story differently. The story of Cain and Abel becomes not some kind of convoluted foretelling of the necessity of blood sacrifice for sin, but just the first of many times that life is not going to be fair, materially or relationally, and that God is trying to give us the tools to cope with that inescapable fact.
Friday, September 11, 2015
220-229: Through the Bible in one Dewey Decade
Melvil Dewey dedicated a full decade to the Bible and commentaries on it. I read the Bible every day, but it didn't seem in keeping with the spirit of this project to just check that box and go on to 230-239. So I looked at the offerings in the church library I manage, and came home with these choices:
J. Vernon McGee's commentary on Daniel is pretty much still cheating. I have gone through stretches where I have read McGee every day. His plain-spoken style and opinionated observations, originally developed for the Through the Bible radio program, certainly translate well to print. I've been consulting him as I've been reading through the overwhelming and mysterious details of the prophecies in Daniel. While I am always mindful that he's coming from a specific perspective which includes a sort of Left Behind eschatology about which I am agnostic at this point, Daniel himself identifies the weird animals he sees with various existing nations of his day, so it's not some kind of weird mythology to say the winged lion is Babylon. What McGee adds, and I'm sure the other commentators would do the same, is the historic information about how the activities of the empires moving across the Middle East correlated with Daniel's vision.
Hard Sayings of the Bible, available as software here, was recommended to me by a fellow member of my church. It is really long and not something you read straight through. I've referred to it as I've been reading the visions of Daniel and that tough stretch in Romans where Paul is talking about God's continuing relationship with the Jews in the midst of the welcoming of the Gentiles.... well, if you want 1000 words about whether Daniel's prophecy of the 70 weeks depicts one Messiah or two, this is your resource. If you don't really want answers to questions you didn't even have, maybe this is one you don't need.
I was surprised to find Karen Armstrong's In the Beginning in our church library, even though I'm the one who catalogued it. Faithful readers may remember that I tried and failed to read another of Armstrong's books earlier in this project. (She's really more of a Buddhist than a Christian, in my opinion, and I find the Buddhist approach to self-improvement very depressing). I thought I would try again when the subject was more theological, and this time I was not disappointed. Although Armstrong makes a lot of assertions with no attribution-- not unlike J. Vernon McGee, I guess-- her perspective has just the right amount of distance from mine. I can learn from her even when I don't agree with her, and that's the heart of this whole project: to learn about topics I never thought I cared about, to hear voices I would never seek out otherwise.
(And, by the way, to discover that someone, somewhere, has used a child's set of zoo animals and some hot glue to make models of Daniel's prophetic beasts!)
J. Vernon McGee's commentary on Daniel is pretty much still cheating. I have gone through stretches where I have read McGee every day. His plain-spoken style and opinionated observations, originally developed for the Through the Bible radio program, certainly translate well to print. I've been consulting him as I've been reading through the overwhelming and mysterious details of the prophecies in Daniel. While I am always mindful that he's coming from a specific perspective which includes a sort of Left Behind eschatology about which I am agnostic at this point, Daniel himself identifies the weird animals he sees with various existing nations of his day, so it's not some kind of weird mythology to say the winged lion is Babylon. What McGee adds, and I'm sure the other commentators would do the same, is the historic information about how the activities of the empires moving across the Middle East correlated with Daniel's vision.
Hard Sayings of the Bible, available as software here, was recommended to me by a fellow member of my church. It is really long and not something you read straight through. I've referred to it as I've been reading the visions of Daniel and that tough stretch in Romans where Paul is talking about God's continuing relationship with the Jews in the midst of the welcoming of the Gentiles.... well, if you want 1000 words about whether Daniel's prophecy of the 70 weeks depicts one Messiah or two, this is your resource. If you don't really want answers to questions you didn't even have, maybe this is one you don't need.
I was surprised to find Karen Armstrong's In the Beginning in our church library, even though I'm the one who catalogued it. Faithful readers may remember that I tried and failed to read another of Armstrong's books earlier in this project. (She's really more of a Buddhist than a Christian, in my opinion, and I find the Buddhist approach to self-improvement very depressing). I thought I would try again when the subject was more theological, and this time I was not disappointed. Although Armstrong makes a lot of assertions with no attribution-- not unlike J. Vernon McGee, I guess-- her perspective has just the right amount of distance from mine. I can learn from her even when I don't agree with her, and that's the heart of this whole project: to learn about topics I never thought I cared about, to hear voices I would never seek out otherwise.
(And, by the way, to discover that someone, somewhere, has used a child's set of zoo animals and some hot glue to make models of Daniel's prophetic beasts!)
Sunday, August 30, 2015
A Theistic Physicist Identifies "Questions without Answers": More about God's Universe
"What passes for truth in science is a comprehensive pattern of interconnected answers to questions posed to nature-- explanations of how things work (efficient causes), though not necessarily why they work (final causes)." Owen Gingerich finds that physics never found a question that it didn't at least think it could answer, but that it eventually always runs up against metaphysics, which poses questions for which we do not expect to ever have definitive answers in this life. However, that does not keep him from trying!
Why is there something instead of nothing? Given that there is something, why does it take a form that includes sentient life? This is where Gingerich finds the theistic worldview more compellng than the atheistic, although both require faith. "Without quite knowing what the purpose of the universe is, we can at least conjecture that somewhat we are part of that purpose, and that perhaps understanding the universe is a part of that purpose. In that case, the universe might just be comprehensible because it is part of its purpose to be so."
Is humanity (or at least some kind of being able to appreciate it) the point of the universe? Gingerich says we'll never know. You can't prove that homo sapiens was the objective of evolution, but you can't prove it wasn't. "One can believe that some of the evolutionary pathways are so intricate and so complex as to be hopelessly improbably by the rules of random chance, but if you do not believe in divine action, then you will simply have to say that random chance was extremely lucky, because the outcome is there to see."
Which makes me wonder: why do lesson plans on "imperfect adaptations" always seem to have as their main objective disproving Intelligent Design? Since ID is not asking the same question as evolutionary theory, it's really neither here nor there. Just teach imperfect adaptations and let the students sit with their own unanswerable questions: did God make the eye inside-out for some reason, or is it just the result of natural processes (whether engineered by God or themselves the product of other natural processes?
Which in turn prompts an even more burning question: What is the point of having a face instead of a muzzle? You just don't have enough room to put all your teeth, and you can't open doors with your nose, carry things very conveniently in your jaws, or eat very neatly without your hands. Sure, it's a great example of an imperfect adaptation, but why did it even occur in the first place? What evolutionary advantage did flat-faced humanoids have? I get that we didn't need snouts after we acquired hands, but wouldn't they have been, well, handy to keep around anyway?
Should theistic scientists do science differently? Gingerich is convinced that they cannot. ".. my subjective, metaphysical view, that the universe would make more sense if a divine will operated at this level to design the universe in a purposeful way, can be neither denied nor proved by scientific means. It is a matter of belief or ideology how we choose to think about the universe, and it will make no difference how we do our science." It seems to me that maybe it's the atheist scientists who should change their methods, because after all the whole endeavor of experimental science is based on the idea that the universe is rational and orderly, and why should it be if no one's in charge?
"The idea of a vast and ancient universe making itself, which I have to some extent adopted in the foregoing ruminations, yields only a distant God of large numbers. Awesome as the creating transcendence is, it is the sort of deity that few would worship. What good is a God who does not interact with creation?"
Nancy Cartwright contributes a final unanswerable question: "Is everything that happens in the natural world fixed by the laws of physics?" In the real world outside the lab, "Some important areas of systematic behavior are precisely predictable, but in other swaths we can predict what will happen only for the most part." So the space described by physics may have room within it for a theistic space, a universe where God can move, "unnoticed by science, but not excluded by science." So instead of a divine engineer of a perpetual motion machine, the notorious watchmaker who wound up the universe and then left it lying around for us to stumble upon, he is a painter like Turner, who did not hesitate to add new compositional elements to his work even after it was hung for display! (Thanks to my daughter-in-law for drawing my attention to this analogy).
Theologically, this conception of God-- this attempt to answer a radical unanswerable-- resonates with me because it reinforces what I believe about His involvement in human lives. I believe that stuff happens on this planet, and that God doesn't always directly intervene. Sometimes I can't find a parking place. Sometimes a volcano erupts. Sometimes someone shoots up a school. None of that is God's fault or was God's responsibility to stop. But sometimes God does stop stuff from happening. Sometimes (usually) I get up and get dressed and eat toast without a big conversation with God about it. Or sometimes God does speak to me about what to eat or what to wear. There's room in the Universe and in this planet for Him to act or to let things run their course. That's what I see in Scripture, and that's what Nancy Cartwright sees in the world.
I said in my last post that I love questions and seeking answers to questions. But I also love that moment when, in all my searching, I come to that brick wall with the sign on it: "You're done now. No further answers available." I just need to find out for myself where that wall is, not take anyone else's word for it!
Why is there something instead of nothing? Given that there is something, why does it take a form that includes sentient life? This is where Gingerich finds the theistic worldview more compellng than the atheistic, although both require faith. "Without quite knowing what the purpose of the universe is, we can at least conjecture that somewhat we are part of that purpose, and that perhaps understanding the universe is a part of that purpose. In that case, the universe might just be comprehensible because it is part of its purpose to be so."
Is humanity (or at least some kind of being able to appreciate it) the point of the universe? Gingerich says we'll never know. You can't prove that homo sapiens was the objective of evolution, but you can't prove it wasn't. "One can believe that some of the evolutionary pathways are so intricate and so complex as to be hopelessly improbably by the rules of random chance, but if you do not believe in divine action, then you will simply have to say that random chance was extremely lucky, because the outcome is there to see."
Which makes me wonder: why do lesson plans on "imperfect adaptations" always seem to have as their main objective disproving Intelligent Design? Since ID is not asking the same question as evolutionary theory, it's really neither here nor there. Just teach imperfect adaptations and let the students sit with their own unanswerable questions: did God make the eye inside-out for some reason, or is it just the result of natural processes (whether engineered by God or themselves the product of other natural processes?
Which in turn prompts an even more burning question: What is the point of having a face instead of a muzzle? You just don't have enough room to put all your teeth, and you can't open doors with your nose, carry things very conveniently in your jaws, or eat very neatly without your hands. Sure, it's a great example of an imperfect adaptation, but why did it even occur in the first place? What evolutionary advantage did flat-faced humanoids have? I get that we didn't need snouts after we acquired hands, but wouldn't they have been, well, handy to keep around anyway?
Should theistic scientists do science differently? Gingerich is convinced that they cannot. ".. my subjective, metaphysical view, that the universe would make more sense if a divine will operated at this level to design the universe in a purposeful way, can be neither denied nor proved by scientific means. It is a matter of belief or ideology how we choose to think about the universe, and it will make no difference how we do our science." It seems to me that maybe it's the atheist scientists who should change their methods, because after all the whole endeavor of experimental science is based on the idea that the universe is rational and orderly, and why should it be if no one's in charge?
"The idea of a vast and ancient universe making itself, which I have to some extent adopted in the foregoing ruminations, yields only a distant God of large numbers. Awesome as the creating transcendence is, it is the sort of deity that few would worship. What good is a God who does not interact with creation?"
Nancy Cartwright contributes a final unanswerable question: "Is everything that happens in the natural world fixed by the laws of physics?" In the real world outside the lab, "Some important areas of systematic behavior are precisely predictable, but in other swaths we can predict what will happen only for the most part." So the space described by physics may have room within it for a theistic space, a universe where God can move, "unnoticed by science, but not excluded by science." So instead of a divine engineer of a perpetual motion machine, the notorious watchmaker who wound up the universe and then left it lying around for us to stumble upon, he is a painter like Turner, who did not hesitate to add new compositional elements to his work even after it was hung for display! (Thanks to my daughter-in-law for drawing my attention to this analogy).
Theologically, this conception of God-- this attempt to answer a radical unanswerable-- resonates with me because it reinforces what I believe about His involvement in human lives. I believe that stuff happens on this planet, and that God doesn't always directly intervene. Sometimes I can't find a parking place. Sometimes a volcano erupts. Sometimes someone shoots up a school. None of that is God's fault or was God's responsibility to stop. But sometimes God does stop stuff from happening. Sometimes (usually) I get up and get dressed and eat toast without a big conversation with God about it. Or sometimes God does speak to me about what to eat or what to wear. There's room in the Universe and in this planet for Him to act or to let things run their course. That's what I see in Scripture, and that's what Nancy Cartwright sees in the world.
I said in my last post that I love questions and seeking answers to questions. But I also love that moment when, in all my searching, I come to that brick wall with the sign on it: "You're done now. No further answers available." I just need to find out for myself where that wall is, not take anyone else's word for it!
Intelligent Design vs. "intelligent design": in Praise of Questions (More on God's Universe)
Gingerich starts his second lecture by talking about miracles, and whether Hebrews 1:3 means that God is constantly working miracles in the universe to keep it running. That was Newton's belief, but "Leibniz replied that it was a mean notion of the wisdom and power of God which would imply He could not have gotten the universe right in the first place"! He then examines various aspects of organic and star chemistry that make possible the extremely long lifespan of the universe required for consciousness to come about via evolution. Here is a vision of God as Creator not of a painting or a drawing but of a "machine that would go of itself," of a sort of perpetual motion kinetic sculpture. And indeed, what does every child like best at the museum? The interactive art and the art that has a component of engineering to it. If God's Creation requires His constant interference just to operate, it does become more of a performance piece, doesn't it? Not that there's anything wrong with that, I suppose-- God can create whatever He likes, but to see Him, as William Blake did, as not the divine artist but as the divine engineer, is a glorious vision in this technological age.
But now, about Intelligent Design specifically. If evolution is the mechanism through which species arise, there are two big problems, one philosophical and one logistical. The first is that every child is not the same species as its parent. There may be a Scriptural issue with this idea, but more important, I think, is that it seems intuitively incredible or even repugnant on the basis of our own experience. Has a human ever given birth to a non-human? Our very laws depend on the impossibility of such an occurrence. Or has any domesticated animal in the history of farming ever produced an offspring not of its own species? Such an event is unrecorded, although Gingerich refers to the complexity of the structure of DNA to argue that this is theoretically possible.
The second problem is that, again, based on observation and on reasoning, we see that most mutations are harmful. "Everyone will agree," says Gingerich, "that on the basis of merely random mutations the process is extremely unlikely to come up with successful products." Gingerich goes on to provide the best elevator speech for Darwin's achievements I have ever heard. Darwin's way of resolving the latter issue was to posit lots and lots of time-- that the earth was very old-- and lots of lots of tries-- that life was very generous and given to prodigious rates of reproduction.
"Granted these two fundamental conditions, fecundity and antiquity, combined with mutations, [Darwin] then brilliantly argued that the competition inherent in natural selection would take care of the rest, even though he had essentially no information concerning how the variations themselves could arise," meaning that he had no knowledge of the structure of DNA.
Intelligent Design theorists do not dispute the antiquity of the universe and the earth, nor yet the fecundity of life. "At issue for them," explains Gingerich, again providing them with a better elevator speech than they ever wrote,
Gingerich does not allege that the ID theorists make an error in their science. He agrees that our current state of knowledge absolutely leaves room for God to intervene to steer the process of mutation and selection, as they postulate. What he objects to is their confusion of the question, "How can time, chance and possibly divine intervention produce species," which is a physical question, with the question, "Did time and chance alone produce species, or was the universe designed by an Intelligence that created time and chance in such a way as to produce species?" which is a metaphysical question.
Gingerich is not, however, an evangelist for evolution as the Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, like Richard Dawkins.
Proverbs 25:2 has always meant to me that it is the job of a certain portion of humanity to figure things out. Some Christians talk about the dangers of thinking too much or asking too many questions, but I disagree strongly with that view. In my view, God gave some of us thinking, questioning hearts so the rest of us could live peacefully trusting what was so discovered. So I believe God may have appointed and gifted some scientists to continue to press the inquiry into the mechanical origins of life, just as he appointed and gifted some to learn more and more about the mechanical origins of disease. If Christians had all been content to accept, for example, childbed fever as the sovereign hand of God instead of the dirty hands of a doctor, we would still have a maternal infection rate of close to 20% instead of the 2% we now experience. Who knows what blessings may accrue as Christian scientists press their inquiries just as far as they can, assuming that the universe, created by a master engineer, is a rational, knowable place that will yield explanations to those who know how to ask.
But now, about Intelligent Design specifically. If evolution is the mechanism through which species arise, there are two big problems, one philosophical and one logistical. The first is that every child is not the same species as its parent. There may be a Scriptural issue with this idea, but more important, I think, is that it seems intuitively incredible or even repugnant on the basis of our own experience. Has a human ever given birth to a non-human? Our very laws depend on the impossibility of such an occurrence. Or has any domesticated animal in the history of farming ever produced an offspring not of its own species? Such an event is unrecorded, although Gingerich refers to the complexity of the structure of DNA to argue that this is theoretically possible.
The second problem is that, again, based on observation and on reasoning, we see that most mutations are harmful. "Everyone will agree," says Gingerich, "that on the basis of merely random mutations the process is extremely unlikely to come up with successful products." Gingerich goes on to provide the best elevator speech for Darwin's achievements I have ever heard. Darwin's way of resolving the latter issue was to posit lots and lots of time-- that the earth was very old-- and lots of lots of tries-- that life was very generous and given to prodigious rates of reproduction.
"Granted these two fundamental conditions, fecundity and antiquity, combined with mutations, [Darwin] then brilliantly argued that the competition inherent in natural selection would take care of the rest, even though he had essentially no information concerning how the variations themselves could arise," meaning that he had no knowledge of the structure of DNA.
Intelligent Design theorists do not dispute the antiquity of the universe and the earth, nor yet the fecundity of life. "At issue for them," explains Gingerich, again providing them with a better elevator speech than they ever wrote,
"is whether random mutation can generate the incredible amount of information content required to produce even the simplest of cells, and whether even the great antiquity of the universe could make this possible. Here science, dealing with extremely low probabilities balanced against vast numbers of opportunities, is frankly on very shaky turf."Given that Darwinians and ID theorists both run aground only on the point of random mutations and natural selection as the mechanism for the origin of species, Gingerich finds himself unable to join the camp of the ID theorists even though and because he believes that a Designer is a more compelling explanation for the existence of the universe than time or chance. His reason is that "It might be that the physics and chemistry of life's origins are forever beyond human comprehension, but I see no way to establish that scientifically." He feels that ID theorists say, "God did it, that settles it," and thus end scientific endeavors, whereas if God is indeed conceived as a master engineer, the greater likelihood is that there is a mechanism for the creation of species, and that that mechanism is discoverable.
Gingerich does not allege that the ID theorists make an error in their science. He agrees that our current state of knowledge absolutely leaves room for God to intervene to steer the process of mutation and selection, as they postulate. What he objects to is their confusion of the question, "How can time, chance and possibly divine intervention produce species," which is a physical question, with the question, "Did time and chance alone produce species, or was the universe designed by an Intelligence that created time and chance in such a way as to produce species?" which is a metaphysical question.
"I am holding a fragment of the Allende meteorite in my hand, and I propose to let go. You will not be surprised by what happens. It drops to the floor. Why? I could say that it is God's will that the stone falls. I am not being facetious, for I firmly believe that God is both Creator and Sustainer of the universe....I could declare that part of God's sustaining power consists in the maintenance of the laws of the natural world. In fact, the very expression, "laws of nature," from the time of Boyle and Newton, derives from the concept of divine law, and it is probably not accidental that science arose in such a philosophical/theological environment. However much we might assert that the stone fell because of divine will, though, such a statement does not pass muster as a scientific explanation. What science requires is a broader explanatory schema..."So the problem with Intelligent Design is not that it is wrong, or that it contradicts known, proven discoveries in the fossil record or in our observations. Its problem is that it is not answering the same question the unfinished theory of evolution is exploring! ID is talking about final causes, but the theory of evolution is talking about efficient causes, and for the exploration of efficient causes, "methodological naturalism" is the only functional research strategy. "As a philosophical idea ID is interesting, but it does not replace the scientific explanations that evolution offers."
Gingerich is not, however, an evangelist for evolution as the Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, like Richard Dawkins.
"Evolution as a materialist philosophy is ideology, and presenting it as such essentially raises it to the ranks of final cause. Evolutionists who deny cosmic teleology and who, in placing their faith in a cosmic roulette, argue for the purposelessness of the universe are not articulating scientifically established fact; they are advocating their personal metaphysical stance. This posture, I believe, is something that should be legitimately resisted. It is just as wrong to present evolution in high school classrooms as a final cause as it is to fob off Intelligent Design as a substitute for an efficacious efficient cause."
Proverbs 25:2 has always meant to me that it is the job of a certain portion of humanity to figure things out. Some Christians talk about the dangers of thinking too much or asking too many questions, but I disagree strongly with that view. In my view, God gave some of us thinking, questioning hearts so the rest of us could live peacefully trusting what was so discovered. So I believe God may have appointed and gifted some scientists to continue to press the inquiry into the mechanical origins of life, just as he appointed and gifted some to learn more and more about the mechanical origins of disease. If Christians had all been content to accept, for example, childbed fever as the sovereign hand of God instead of the dirty hands of a doctor, we would still have a maternal infection rate of close to 20% instead of the 2% we now experience. Who knows what blessings may accrue as Christian scientists press their inquiries just as far as they can, assuming that the universe, created by a master engineer, is a rational, knowable place that will yield explanations to those who know how to ask.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Is Physics Theology? or, Physics and Metaphysics: God's Universe, by Owen Gingerich
Owen Gingerich is a retired Harvard professor and Smithsonian Institution astronomer. These days he writes articles about global warming and gives lectures about Copernicus. He also wrote a book called God's Universe. The introduction sets the tone for the whole book by pointing out that naturalistic explanations of how things happen neither contradict nor confirm teleological explanations of why they happen. Yet Gingerich also rejects the non-overlapping magesteria (NOMA) model proposed by Stephen Jay Gould, wherein science sticks to how and lets religion deal with why.
Gingerich opens this series of talks by explaining that for him,
In the first lecture included in this book, he demonstrates at some length how the Copernican principle, also called the principle of mediocrity, is both an essential aspect of a certain perspective on physics and a strong basis for the conception of the universe as having been designed to support life. And yet he demonstrates that it has never been found useful to solve any actual question in astronomy! From there he meanders over to the tantalizing possibility that we are not alone in the universe, as expressed everywhere from Star Trek to SETI. His sense is that although the Copernican principle almost requires that there be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, attempts to communicate with it, as the SETI project does, are, paradoxically, deeply anthropocentric. They assume that ET not only exists but developed along lines so similar to ours that we will be able to find a point of contact.
Yet evolutionary theory presents us with a path to consciousness that is truly a garden of forking paths, a virtually infinite number of possible outcomes. How many dice had to be rolled the right way for life to even exist at all? And how many more for the emergence of the human brain, which Gingerich calls "the most complex physical object known to us in the entire cosmos"? Therefore, intelligent life was not inevitable on this planet, nor on any other, and the forms it could have taken here or could take elsewhere are by no means inevitable.
Gingerich then, supported by Paul Davies, provides this rather unexpected summary of "two diametrically opposed worldviews":
Reading Gingerich does not make me feel like I understand everything, or, for that matter, anything, about physics. It makes me feel like I can fearlessly learn more and more, never fearing that I will come to the end of what can be known, because, to rip a verse right out of its context, "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!" (Romans 11:33)
Gingerich opens this series of talks by explaining that for him,
"a final cause, a Creator-God, gives a coherent understanding of why the universe seems to congenially designed for the existence of intelligent, self-reflective life.... Somehow, in the words of Freeman Dyson, this is a universe that knew we were coming. I do not claim that these considerations are proof for the existence of a Creator; I claim only that to me, the universe makes more sense with this understanding." (p. 12)
And this statement is typical of Gingrich's tone. He is not strident, he is not doctrinaire, and he does not seem to be trying to bend facts to fit his theology, nor bend theology to fit the latest scientific findings, nor yet to wall the two fields off from each other.
In the first lecture included in this book, he demonstrates at some length how the Copernican principle, also called the principle of mediocrity, is both an essential aspect of a certain perspective on physics and a strong basis for the conception of the universe as having been designed to support life. And yet he demonstrates that it has never been found useful to solve any actual question in astronomy! From there he meanders over to the tantalizing possibility that we are not alone in the universe, as expressed everywhere from Star Trek to SETI. His sense is that although the Copernican principle almost requires that there be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, attempts to communicate with it, as the SETI project does, are, paradoxically, deeply anthropocentric. They assume that ET not only exists but developed along lines so similar to ours that we will be able to find a point of contact.
Yet evolutionary theory presents us with a path to consciousness that is truly a garden of forking paths, a virtually infinite number of possible outcomes. How many dice had to be rolled the right way for life to even exist at all? And how many more for the emergence of the human brain, which Gingerich calls "the most complex physical object known to us in the entire cosmos"? Therefore, intelligent life was not inevitable on this planet, nor on any other, and the forms it could have taken here or could take elsewhere are by no means inevitable.
Gingerich then, supported by Paul Davies, provides this rather unexpected summary of "two diametrically opposed worldviews":
"The one view, that intelligent life emerges at best very rarely through extraordinary and improbably contingencies, encapsulates a strict Darwinian understanding: humankind is a glorious accident. The other view, that the universe is abundantly inhabited by intelligent creatures, carries the hidden assumption of design and purpose, in other words of teleology." (p. 40)So you would think that Gingerich, who has already said he finds theism to be the most compelling explanation for the why of the universe, would come down in favor of the principle of mediocrity, that is, the idea that our solar system, our intelligence, our very self-awareness is not unusual but is the natural consequence of a universe designed for life by a life-loving God. And yet Gingerich concludes, "We human beings are the most extraordinary creatures we know about, and part of our glory is that we can imagine we are not the most remarkable creatures in the entire universe."
Reading Gingerich does not make me feel like I understand everything, or, for that matter, anything, about physics. It makes me feel like I can fearlessly learn more and more, never fearing that I will come to the end of what can be known, because, to rip a verse right out of its context, "Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!" (Romans 11:33)
Friday, July 31, 2015
210-219: Is God Necessary?
The Dewey numbers 210-219 are reserved for the intersection of philosophy, science and theology. Allow me to contrast a sample of the county library's holdings in this section:
God's Universe, by Owen Gingrich, is a slim volume published by Harvard and recommended by Polkinghorne. It looks like it might be appropriate for devotional reading, and, in any case, at 120 small pages, it would be faster just to read it than to try to guess exactly what the author is at. This may be exactly the kind of book I've been looking for-- an intersection of physics and theology. It seems so likely to me that physics IS theology, I've been surprised how much difficulty I've had finding books that would explain it to me.
with some from our church library:
I'm always up for CS Lewis or John Polkinghorne, but I also selected a couple of items from the public library.
Honey from Stone, by Chet Raymo, is subtitled "A Naturalist's Search for God." It makes me wonder whether I could be reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in this Dewey decade. It recommended itself to me primarily because of its lovely woodcut illustrations. The search takes place on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland, a geography about which I know absolutely nothing. The book was published by the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, a monastic order of the Episcopal Church about which I also know nothing. So, prime opportunity to branch out if this is the book I actually read.
In Praise of Learning Things You Are Pretty Sure Are Not True: Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero
After listening to Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero, here is what I know:
The United States will always be a secular state by law because of the establishment clause. It will always be a religious country by choice because of the free exercise clause. So everyone can stop panicking. The Religious Right (whoever that is) will never make the US a theocracy, and the Godless Commies (or whoever today's Great Satan is) will never outlaw Christmas.
The reason nobody knows anything any more is not because of the Godless Commies. It's because of the Godfearing and truly nice people who thought it would be a good idea to focus on where we agree, not on those pesky doctrinal points that divide us. So back in the first half of the 20th century, Protestants united against Catholics, which meant they had to stop arguing about baptism and predestination. Then Protestants and Catholics united against everyone else, which meant they had to stop arguing about whether salvation is by faith or works and what to do about Mary. Then Jews joined the party and we started hearing about Judeo-Christian values, which meant we needed to stop talking about Jesus (VERY divisive!). And then, after the excesses of post 9-11 hostility towards Muslims, it just seemed so... well, so mean to insist that Islam was substantively different from Judaism or Christianity. After all, it's nice to be nice, and we can all hold hands and feel terrific. And so, while loss of consensus in schools meant no more Bible reading there, a desire to seek greater consensus among people of faith stripped weekend and evening religious teaching of its meatier content.
The fact is, people of faith don't all believe the same thing. We may not even be interested in the same goals. And the more we know about each other, the less we might agree! So, much more pleasant to focus on the big picture. And the more diverse America gets, the smaller the big picture is, until we reach the least common denominator of faith: a "Universe" which we all agree we live in and that we all hope is somehow benevolently disposed. Next thing you know, Christians think Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, and Muslims think God got married, and we can't even have a conversation that makes any sense. And that's not even counting the growing number of Americans who claim no religion.
But Prothero argues that, like the students in Modesto, California who take a world religions class, we should all pull up our socks and just learn some facts. Even if a given religion, or religion in general, is not important to us, it is important to the people around us. Newsmakers are constantly giving Bible references and claiming religious motivations and practicing their unfamiliar customs in our civic spaces, so it would be worth knowing something about how their religions work. This is the case for religious literacy.
Here's the case against it: We will learn that Islam and Christianity and Judaism cannot all be true, at least not in all particulars, because, for example, they take mutually contradictory views on the identity of Jesus. We will discover that not all disagreements stem from misunderstanding; some of them spring from extremely accurate understanding!
But we're all grown-ups here-- can't we face the fact that people hold differing opinions? Are we that insecure -and that ignorant- of what we claim to believe that we are afraid to even hear other ideas?
As for me, I learned some facts about my own religion from Religious Literacy. Most startling was that the letters of Paul were written before the Gospels, and that Protestants and Catholics divide up the 10 Commandments slightly differently. I also learned some facts about other religions-- I think I almost can explain the difference between Sunni, Shiite and Wahabi Islam, and (at least today) I know the Four Noble Truths, if not the Eightfold Path, of Buddhism. Take this quiz and see if you know enough religious facts to read a newspaper intelligently!
Remember: you don't have to believe an apocalyptic interpretation of the Bible to learn what it is. You don't have to belong to any of the major sects of Islam to benefit from knowing what they are. "The truth will set you free," that's from Jesus Himself. It doesn't sound like He's afraid of information, and you don't need to be either.
The United States will always be a secular state by law because of the establishment clause. It will always be a religious country by choice because of the free exercise clause. So everyone can stop panicking. The Religious Right (whoever that is) will never make the US a theocracy, and the Godless Commies (or whoever today's Great Satan is) will never outlaw Christmas.
The reason nobody knows anything any more is not because of the Godless Commies. It's because of the Godfearing and truly nice people who thought it would be a good idea to focus on where we agree, not on those pesky doctrinal points that divide us. So back in the first half of the 20th century, Protestants united against Catholics, which meant they had to stop arguing about baptism and predestination. Then Protestants and Catholics united against everyone else, which meant they had to stop arguing about whether salvation is by faith or works and what to do about Mary. Then Jews joined the party and we started hearing about Judeo-Christian values, which meant we needed to stop talking about Jesus (VERY divisive!). And then, after the excesses of post 9-11 hostility towards Muslims, it just seemed so... well, so mean to insist that Islam was substantively different from Judaism or Christianity. After all, it's nice to be nice, and we can all hold hands and feel terrific. And so, while loss of consensus in schools meant no more Bible reading there, a desire to seek greater consensus among people of faith stripped weekend and evening religious teaching of its meatier content.
The fact is, people of faith don't all believe the same thing. We may not even be interested in the same goals. And the more we know about each other, the less we might agree! So, much more pleasant to focus on the big picture. And the more diverse America gets, the smaller the big picture is, until we reach the least common denominator of faith: a "Universe" which we all agree we live in and that we all hope is somehow benevolently disposed. Next thing you know, Christians think Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, and Muslims think God got married, and we can't even have a conversation that makes any sense. And that's not even counting the growing number of Americans who claim no religion.
But Prothero argues that, like the students in Modesto, California who take a world religions class, we should all pull up our socks and just learn some facts. Even if a given religion, or religion in general, is not important to us, it is important to the people around us. Newsmakers are constantly giving Bible references and claiming religious motivations and practicing their unfamiliar customs in our civic spaces, so it would be worth knowing something about how their religions work. This is the case for religious literacy.
Here's the case against it: We will learn that Islam and Christianity and Judaism cannot all be true, at least not in all particulars, because, for example, they take mutually contradictory views on the identity of Jesus. We will discover that not all disagreements stem from misunderstanding; some of them spring from extremely accurate understanding!
But we're all grown-ups here-- can't we face the fact that people hold differing opinions? Are we that insecure -and that ignorant- of what we claim to believe that we are afraid to even hear other ideas?
As for me, I learned some facts about my own religion from Religious Literacy. Most startling was that the letters of Paul were written before the Gospels, and that Protestants and Catholics divide up the 10 Commandments slightly differently. I also learned some facts about other religions-- I think I almost can explain the difference between Sunni, Shiite and Wahabi Islam, and (at least today) I know the Four Noble Truths, if not the Eightfold Path, of Buddhism. Take this quiz and see if you know enough religious facts to read a newspaper intelligently!
Remember: you don't have to believe an apocalyptic interpretation of the Bible to learn what it is. You don't have to belong to any of the major sects of Islam to benefit from knowing what they are. "The truth will set you free," that's from Jesus Himself. It doesn't sound like He's afraid of information, and you don't need to be either.
Friday, July 24, 2015
200-209: Introductory Remarks about Religion
Many people complain that Dewey's system reflects a limited worldview, and point to the fact that 86% of the digits of the 200's are allocated to Christianity as an example thereof. Of course this is not a completely unreasonable observation; it never occurred to Dewey that English-speaking people would not be much more interested in the Bible than in, say, the Tao Te Ching. However, a quick glance at the 200s in my local library demonstrates that modern librarians are not limited by Dewey's assumptions, and that any religion that has left any record at any time anywhere can be studied in this Dewey decade. Below please find just a small sample of our county library's holdings in this department:
Even though they were available, I did not choose a book about creation stories, goddesses or animals. I chose Spirits Rejoice: Jazz and American Religion, by Jason Bivens, from the New Releases shelf, because my son-in-law is a jazz drummer. Check out the link; it provides a soundtrack to the book! I also chose Religious Literacy, by Stephen Prothero, because it was from the audiobooks collection. Turns out we already own a previous work of his, God Is Not One, dedicated to his theory that all religions are not, in fact, different paths up the same mountain, but rather climbing completely different mountains.
I've never read God Is Not One and wondered why we owned it, but now I am more intrigued. After starting Religious Literacy, I realize that although I might be able to pass Prothero's little literacy quiz, I really don't know enough about the world's other religions, and maybe not even enough about my own, to properly compare and contrast! So whatever Dewey's original intent or limitations, his system has proved effective at organizing and presenting knowledge in such a way that when I go to the library, I get my limitations and prejudices challenged.
PS: "JOHO" has a great summary of the complaints against the Dewey decimal system with respect to its handling of religion, along with the reasons that the system still works. Some people like the Library of Congress system better, but the reality is that it is not commonly used in local libraries, so, here we are.
190-199: Modern Philosophers One by One
Since "modern" philosophy picks up pretty much in the 17th century, I could have read about John Locke (from Lost) or Thomas Hobbes (not the tiger), but I went with Kierkegaard, because my husband has been studying him.
My husband's a huge fan. He likes the way Kierkegaard engaged with Socrates. He is interested in how Kierkegaard wrestled with his faith and with the difficulties of his upbringing. What he recommended I read had the inviting title of Kierkegaard for Beginners and was part of a series called Beginners Documentary Comic Books, so that sounded promising. But they aren't really comic books. At least Donald Palmer's overview of Kierkegaard was not. It had more of the vibe of an Usborne book, with pictures and text jumping all over the page, except that the pictures were just black and white line drawings, and rather snarky and unattractive ones at that.
So maybe it was just the graphics of the book, but as I was reading I couldn't help but be reminded of a student's summary of Sartre's comments on the burden of freedom: "So this guy just was depressed and negative and wanted everyone else to be depressed too." Palmer certainly made it seem as if Kierkegaard's philosophy was an effort to take his own maladaptive attitude towards life and make it normative. He presented him as the originator of the sentiment that if you are not depressed, you are not paying attention. As a (sometimes) depressed person myself, I do tend to feel that way, but at the same time we have to recognize that God made people with sunny dispositions for a reason!
Let's give Kierkegaard some credit, though, for inventing a phrase that I use a lot to describe my gloomier states of mind: "Existential Angst." It turns out I've been misusing that phrase, though. It doesn't mean exactly, "having trouble with the fact that you exist and that everything else exists and how sort of complicated and difficult everything appears at the moment." It is more accurately described as "the dread you feel when you realize that you are capable of doing and free to do absolutely anything, no matter how obviously bad an idea it is."
I have certainly experienced that sensation as well, although not as frequently. Based on how people react when I try to explain what it's like, I can state definitively that this sensation is not a universal experience. Most people, oddly enough to me, do not, when they find themselves standing at heights, consider that they might suddenly fling themselves down. Most people, apparently, have never driven down the road and vividly imagined crossing the yellow line into oncoming traffic. And unlike Kierkegaard, I say there is nothing wrong with those people! He and I should leave them alone and let them stay in their sunny land of unicorns and rainbows!
So I come to the end of my journey through Philosophy and move forward into Religion with a renewed sense of why I need transcendental help. It's been fun, but humans just talking to each other about The Meaning of It All can't help but have limited perspectives...
My husband's a huge fan. He likes the way Kierkegaard engaged with Socrates. He is interested in how Kierkegaard wrestled with his faith and with the difficulties of his upbringing. What he recommended I read had the inviting title of Kierkegaard for Beginners and was part of a series called Beginners Documentary Comic Books, so that sounded promising. But they aren't really comic books. At least Donald Palmer's overview of Kierkegaard was not. It had more of the vibe of an Usborne book, with pictures and text jumping all over the page, except that the pictures were just black and white line drawings, and rather snarky and unattractive ones at that.
So maybe it was just the graphics of the book, but as I was reading I couldn't help but be reminded of a student's summary of Sartre's comments on the burden of freedom: "So this guy just was depressed and negative and wanted everyone else to be depressed too." Palmer certainly made it seem as if Kierkegaard's philosophy was an effort to take his own maladaptive attitude towards life and make it normative. He presented him as the originator of the sentiment that if you are not depressed, you are not paying attention. As a (sometimes) depressed person myself, I do tend to feel that way, but at the same time we have to recognize that God made people with sunny dispositions for a reason!
Let's give Kierkegaard some credit, though, for inventing a phrase that I use a lot to describe my gloomier states of mind: "Existential Angst." It turns out I've been misusing that phrase, though. It doesn't mean exactly, "having trouble with the fact that you exist and that everything else exists and how sort of complicated and difficult everything appears at the moment." It is more accurately described as "the dread you feel when you realize that you are capable of doing and free to do absolutely anything, no matter how obviously bad an idea it is."
I have certainly experienced that sensation as well, although not as frequently. Based on how people react when I try to explain what it's like, I can state definitively that this sensation is not a universal experience. Most people, oddly enough to me, do not, when they find themselves standing at heights, consider that they might suddenly fling themselves down. Most people, apparently, have never driven down the road and vividly imagined crossing the yellow line into oncoming traffic. And unlike Kierkegaard, I say there is nothing wrong with those people! He and I should leave them alone and let them stay in their sunny land of unicorns and rainbows!
So I come to the end of my journey through Philosophy and move forward into Religion with a renewed sense of why I need transcendental help. It's been fun, but humans just talking to each other about The Meaning of It All can't help but have limited perspectives...
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
180-189: Philosophers, Ancient, Medieval, and Non-Western, Still Arguing
Out of all the thick treatises and skinny "Aristotle for Dummies" overviews in this section, the only book that appealed to me was Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away. Rebecca Goldstein, the author, exposits five aspects of Plato's work, and then places him in five settings that allow him to expound-- or rather to inquire-- on these topics in contemporary context, supporting the thesis of her subtitle. It's more fun than Sophie's World, which, sorry pretentious millennials everywhere, I could not finish, and more inviting than, say, The Story of Philosophy, of which I may not have read every word.
Philosophy is, by definition, the love of wisdom, and Plato believes that it is inherently a Good Thing that leads to goodness. In fact, Plato says truth, beauty and goodness are the braided heart of the universe, the cause and purpose of the world's existence. Goldstein summarizes this way: "Simply to care enough about the impersoal truth, devote one's life to trying to know it, requires disciplining one's rebellious nature, which is always intent on having things its own way..." Our lower natures don't want objective truth, but only the knowledge that will support our own agendas, so simply seeking reality is a corrective to that egocentric self-indulgence. Goldstein portrays Plato as a huge fan of Google.
Goldstein's Plato would also be a huge fan of Nerd Night: Research Speed Dating Edition, which I attended last night. Researchers sat at tables, prepared to give the elevator pitch for their projects, while our mission was to pepper them with questions. I learned about everything from bumper sticker archives to whether Neanderthals wore jewelry (probably). So I was made to pay attention to things I thought I didn't care about and facts that did not fit tidily into my preconceived worldview, and apparently Plato did recognize great value in that practice. I wonder if the real Socrates would have been as enthusiastic about this event, though, or about Google for that matter, since the vision of Truth, Beauty and Goodness portrayed in the dialogues seems to take a lot of time to uncover and experience-- time that just about anyone who has to work for a living will be hard pressed to find.
In fact, Goldstein does bring up and never satisfactorily dismisses the charge that Plato was an elitist, setting up requirements for the Good Life that could only be met by the small percentage of the population that had the aptitude and the leisure to spend hours a day mooching around chatting. (Ironically, the Socratic method was very important to the developers of the Paideia Proposal, built on the decidedly non-Socratic principle that “All children deserve the same quality of education, not just the same quantity.”) Goldstein also devotes a whole chapter to the practice of pederasty in Athens, which strikes me as being a perfect example of elitism in the form of institutionalized sexual exploitation.
I am the first to say that we can't usually judge or even label ancient behavior by modern sensibilities, but the very parameters of this Athenian mentoring system with a sexual component demonstrate that it was oppressive to children. The boys are actually instructed to, for all practical purposes, lie still and think of Athens while their mentors do what they like to their bodies. And I say that any time a person is told up front that his best bet is to dissociate, that is not a healthy situation. It's always been very difficult for me to take the Dialogues seriously when they tend to be framed with chitchat about so-and-so's hot new slave, and I think it's because that kind of talk just reminds me that the Athenians did not think that all their high ideals were for everyone. They believed that the mass of men, and certainly of women, existed only to serve them so they could have the leisure to contemplate said ideals. I believe that people of all income levels and IQs can be valuable and can live a good life.
Yet I agree that Plato does still matter, and philosophy does still matter. It is my experience that, although not everyone is constantly tormented by questions like, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" or "How can we know that we actually know anything?" the existence of people who work on such questions is just as vital to our society's functioning as is the existence of people who know how to operate hydroelectric plants or the Federal Reserve. I wish that the inquiries of Plato's friend Socrates had pushed a little further into practical ethics and led that little group to advocate a more equitable society than the one they found themselves in, but Goldstein does make an excellent case that they were asking important questions and starting to pave the way to some useful answers. They did not remain bound by their society in every respect.
For example, Goldstein talks a lot about the question of "mattering." She references the "axial age," a time from 800-200 BC when peoples all over the world began asking themselves what it was all about. What is the meaning of life? What's the point if we're just going to die in the end? (The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible will get you inside the head of one axial age philosopher's questions, if you don't really understand what we are trying to solve here.) Many ancient peoples concluded that they mattered because of the tribe they belonged to. That was part of Athenian thinking on the subject: Athenians mattered because they belonged to the greatest polis on earth, and thus their glory and their virtue came largely from their participation in political life. Socrates, however, refused to participate in politics. Despite Plato's violent distaste for Homeric poetry, Socrates seemed to subscribe more to the Homeric view that "mattering" was a matter for the individual, and that 100% of one's significance came from one's own personal excellence-- in any field, whether athletics, intellect, war, or whatever endeavor might offer an opportunity to be outstanding.
Obviously, both these definitions of mattering are unacceptable to my democratic impulses. If significance comes from group affiliation, there is no hope for those born on the outside. If significance is only for the outstanding, there is no hope for the vast majority that must form the field in which the exceptional stand. The monotheistic answer-- that significance comes from being made in the image of God, being in relationship with God, fulfilling whatever role God put you in-- is the only one on offer in the Axial Age that contained the seeds of equality. I think too often, though, that modern believers still fall into the traps of tribal or personal exceptionalism. We think that we all have to be special, we all have to find our spectacular callings, or God will be displeased. Or we think that we are already special because of our denominational, political or national affiliation. I, for one, would like to live by what I profess to believe: that every person matters, every person deserves an education, every person deserves to be free, every person contributes, every person is important, regardless of his or her ability to excel or his or her membership in any particular tribe.
Although I don't agree with Plato's (or Goldstein's!) answers to some of the questions posited in this book, I appreciate the spirit of inquiry that marks it and the thoughts it provoked. By the way, Plato at the Googleplex had the additional and rare virtue of being a page-turner about philosophy! Recommended!
Philosophy is, by definition, the love of wisdom, and Plato believes that it is inherently a Good Thing that leads to goodness. In fact, Plato says truth, beauty and goodness are the braided heart of the universe, the cause and purpose of the world's existence. Goldstein summarizes this way: "Simply to care enough about the impersoal truth, devote one's life to trying to know it, requires disciplining one's rebellious nature, which is always intent on having things its own way..." Our lower natures don't want objective truth, but only the knowledge that will support our own agendas, so simply seeking reality is a corrective to that egocentric self-indulgence. Goldstein portrays Plato as a huge fan of Google.
Goldstein's Plato would also be a huge fan of Nerd Night: Research Speed Dating Edition, which I attended last night. Researchers sat at tables, prepared to give the elevator pitch for their projects, while our mission was to pepper them with questions. I learned about everything from bumper sticker archives to whether Neanderthals wore jewelry (probably). So I was made to pay attention to things I thought I didn't care about and facts that did not fit tidily into my preconceived worldview, and apparently Plato did recognize great value in that practice. I wonder if the real Socrates would have been as enthusiastic about this event, though, or about Google for that matter, since the vision of Truth, Beauty and Goodness portrayed in the dialogues seems to take a lot of time to uncover and experience-- time that just about anyone who has to work for a living will be hard pressed to find.
In fact, Goldstein does bring up and never satisfactorily dismisses the charge that Plato was an elitist, setting up requirements for the Good Life that could only be met by the small percentage of the population that had the aptitude and the leisure to spend hours a day mooching around chatting. (Ironically, the Socratic method was very important to the developers of the Paideia Proposal, built on the decidedly non-Socratic principle that “All children deserve the same quality of education, not just the same quantity.”) Goldstein also devotes a whole chapter to the practice of pederasty in Athens, which strikes me as being a perfect example of elitism in the form of institutionalized sexual exploitation.
I am the first to say that we can't usually judge or even label ancient behavior by modern sensibilities, but the very parameters of this Athenian mentoring system with a sexual component demonstrate that it was oppressive to children. The boys are actually instructed to, for all practical purposes, lie still and think of Athens while their mentors do what they like to their bodies. And I say that any time a person is told up front that his best bet is to dissociate, that is not a healthy situation. It's always been very difficult for me to take the Dialogues seriously when they tend to be framed with chitchat about so-and-so's hot new slave, and I think it's because that kind of talk just reminds me that the Athenians did not think that all their high ideals were for everyone. They believed that the mass of men, and certainly of women, existed only to serve them so they could have the leisure to contemplate said ideals. I believe that people of all income levels and IQs can be valuable and can live a good life.
Yet I agree that Plato does still matter, and philosophy does still matter. It is my experience that, although not everyone is constantly tormented by questions like, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" or "How can we know that we actually know anything?" the existence of people who work on such questions is just as vital to our society's functioning as is the existence of people who know how to operate hydroelectric plants or the Federal Reserve. I wish that the inquiries of Plato's friend Socrates had pushed a little further into practical ethics and led that little group to advocate a more equitable society than the one they found themselves in, but Goldstein does make an excellent case that they were asking important questions and starting to pave the way to some useful answers. They did not remain bound by their society in every respect.
For example, Goldstein talks a lot about the question of "mattering." She references the "axial age," a time from 800-200 BC when peoples all over the world began asking themselves what it was all about. What is the meaning of life? What's the point if we're just going to die in the end? (The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible will get you inside the head of one axial age philosopher's questions, if you don't really understand what we are trying to solve here.) Many ancient peoples concluded that they mattered because of the tribe they belonged to. That was part of Athenian thinking on the subject: Athenians mattered because they belonged to the greatest polis on earth, and thus their glory and their virtue came largely from their participation in political life. Socrates, however, refused to participate in politics. Despite Plato's violent distaste for Homeric poetry, Socrates seemed to subscribe more to the Homeric view that "mattering" was a matter for the individual, and that 100% of one's significance came from one's own personal excellence-- in any field, whether athletics, intellect, war, or whatever endeavor might offer an opportunity to be outstanding.
Obviously, both these definitions of mattering are unacceptable to my democratic impulses. If significance comes from group affiliation, there is no hope for those born on the outside. If significance is only for the outstanding, there is no hope for the vast majority that must form the field in which the exceptional stand. The monotheistic answer-- that significance comes from being made in the image of God, being in relationship with God, fulfilling whatever role God put you in-- is the only one on offer in the Axial Age that contained the seeds of equality. I think too often, though, that modern believers still fall into the traps of tribal or personal exceptionalism. We think that we all have to be special, we all have to find our spectacular callings, or God will be displeased. Or we think that we are already special because of our denominational, political or national affiliation. I, for one, would like to live by what I profess to believe: that every person matters, every person deserves an education, every person deserves to be free, every person contributes, every person is important, regardless of his or her ability to excel or his or her membership in any particular tribe.
Although I don't agree with Plato's (or Goldstein's!) answers to some of the questions posited in this book, I appreciate the spirit of inquiry that marks it and the thoughts it provoked. By the way, Plato at the Googleplex had the additional and rare virtue of being a page-turner about philosophy! Recommended!
Saturday, May 9, 2015
"Service as a Spiritual Practice."
Now that's what I'm talking about. Not just the bad feeling that makes you feel good but doesn't actually put broccoli on the plates of the starving children in Africa, but actually doing something that actually gets something done, all in fellowship with God. That's what I'm interested in, and that's why I was excited about Deliberate Acts of Kindness by Meredith Gould.
Justice work-- cleaning up Gotham-- is kind of like cleaning your house in that it's a superhuman task that is never done-- or at least never stays done for long-- and this book promised to be a practical guide to how to cope with that fact, a book that recognized my humanity. It came out of Gould's experience in 12-step programs, which, although I realize they are no more effective than the Five Pillars or the Fourfold Path in getting me to enlightenment without divine intervention, just don't bug me as much, maybe because they start by admitting that we are powerless! In any case, the book is not so much based on as inspired by the 12 steps, and only has 5 chapters, if we're still counting things.
First, Gould, like Armstrong, defines compassion as it is found in many traditions. I think my favorite was Maimonides' 8 degrees of justice, which began with "1- To give grudgingly, reluctantly, or with regret" and ascended through very detailed increasing degrees of selflessness to reach its pinnacle at "8- To help another to become self-supporting by means of a gift, a loan, or finding employment for the one in need." This definition of the highest form of justice reminds me of the book When Helping Hurts, which I read a few years ago with a church group. The authors, Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, define three levels of generosity: relief, rehabilitation, and development, and argue exactly the same thing as Maimonides: that the ideal philanthropic situation is one where you are working yourself out of a job!
I really appreciated how Gould distinguishes between caring and codependency. Caring is without expectation of cooperation, appreciation or reward, and (this is what I loved) believes that "compassionate noninterference is sometimes the greatest gift of all." (p. 125) Codependency, on the other hand, rushes in to help whether help is wanted or not, gets its thrills from being needed, and runs on guilt, resentment and recognition. Ouch! Reminds me of what my husband always says: "You can tell you're being a servant when people treat you like a slave."
Gould goes on to offer opportunities to identify where I might serve most effectively. I feel that most people don't set out to be compassionate and then try to find a venue to express that quality; instead, they have a concern about a specific issue and are trying to figure out how to most effectively act on that. Still, I liked some of Gould's exercises here that focused more on one's manner of serving. For example, I'm more project-oriented than relationship-oriented, more short-term than long-term, and I like meeting visible immediate needs. For example: teaching inner-city kids art for 8 weeks? Yes, please! Serving on the board of the Barnes Foundation? Um, not so much.
Gould then digs into the nuts and bolts of service: how to survive committee meetings, how to navigate service organizations (which, sadly, turn out to be staffed by humans, just like every other organization that has ever driven you crazy), how to figure out what your job even is within the group. All useful stuff, if a bit much to take in all at once.
Gould brings up the issue of burnout eventually. I have to admit, I think she breezes through it a little too quickly. You have to start thinking about burnout the day you start to serve-- how can you scale your day, your week, your year so that your service is sustainable? Burnout is one of the reasons I was interested in her book in the first place, but I guess I didn't really need a book to tell me that the exhaustion and apathy I was beginning to feel was a red flag waving.
I really already knew what would help me: slowing down, quitting a bunch of stuff, doing plenty of physical activity, and giving myself permission to enjoy all the blessings God has given me. I also got a kick out of noticing a new phenomenon in my world. I would become aware of a service opportunity and think with dismay about how that was the sort of thing I "should" get involved in, but how I absolutely could not at that moment stand it. The next time I checked, I would find that someone else had stepped forward and the need was filled! The first couple times this happened, it kind of hurt my feelings, because I was so used to thinking of myself as the center of the universe! But soon I learned to thank God for not needing my help to do His job, and by now it's happened so often I just laugh about it.
Ultimately, a life of service takes many forms, from social justice activism on a global scale to caring for one disabled relative. Participating in deliberate acts of kindness and receiving the kindness of God towards me might just be two sides of one coin. So if service doesn't feel like a spiritual practice but like codependency or just another exercise in sleeping backwards on the bed, maybe there's a better way-- a way that involves humility, trust, and a bit more of a sense of humor about myself!
Justice work-- cleaning up Gotham-- is kind of like cleaning your house in that it's a superhuman task that is never done-- or at least never stays done for long-- and this book promised to be a practical guide to how to cope with that fact, a book that recognized my humanity. It came out of Gould's experience in 12-step programs, which, although I realize they are no more effective than the Five Pillars or the Fourfold Path in getting me to enlightenment without divine intervention, just don't bug me as much, maybe because they start by admitting that we are powerless! In any case, the book is not so much based on as inspired by the 12 steps, and only has 5 chapters, if we're still counting things.
First, Gould, like Armstrong, defines compassion as it is found in many traditions. I think my favorite was Maimonides' 8 degrees of justice, which began with "1- To give grudgingly, reluctantly, or with regret" and ascended through very detailed increasing degrees of selflessness to reach its pinnacle at "8- To help another to become self-supporting by means of a gift, a loan, or finding employment for the one in need." This definition of the highest form of justice reminds me of the book When Helping Hurts, which I read a few years ago with a church group. The authors, Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, define three levels of generosity: relief, rehabilitation, and development, and argue exactly the same thing as Maimonides: that the ideal philanthropic situation is one where you are working yourself out of a job!
I really appreciated how Gould distinguishes between caring and codependency. Caring is without expectation of cooperation, appreciation or reward, and (this is what I loved) believes that "compassionate noninterference is sometimes the greatest gift of all." (p. 125) Codependency, on the other hand, rushes in to help whether help is wanted or not, gets its thrills from being needed, and runs on guilt, resentment and recognition. Ouch! Reminds me of what my husband always says: "You can tell you're being a servant when people treat you like a slave."
Gould goes on to offer opportunities to identify where I might serve most effectively. I feel that most people don't set out to be compassionate and then try to find a venue to express that quality; instead, they have a concern about a specific issue and are trying to figure out how to most effectively act on that. Still, I liked some of Gould's exercises here that focused more on one's manner of serving. For example, I'm more project-oriented than relationship-oriented, more short-term than long-term, and I like meeting visible immediate needs. For example: teaching inner-city kids art for 8 weeks? Yes, please! Serving on the board of the Barnes Foundation? Um, not so much.
Gould then digs into the nuts and bolts of service: how to survive committee meetings, how to navigate service organizations (which, sadly, turn out to be staffed by humans, just like every other organization that has ever driven you crazy), how to figure out what your job even is within the group. All useful stuff, if a bit much to take in all at once.
Gould brings up the issue of burnout eventually. I have to admit, I think she breezes through it a little too quickly. You have to start thinking about burnout the day you start to serve-- how can you scale your day, your week, your year so that your service is sustainable? Burnout is one of the reasons I was interested in her book in the first place, but I guess I didn't really need a book to tell me that the exhaustion and apathy I was beginning to feel was a red flag waving.
I really already knew what would help me: slowing down, quitting a bunch of stuff, doing plenty of physical activity, and giving myself permission to enjoy all the blessings God has given me. I also got a kick out of noticing a new phenomenon in my world. I would become aware of a service opportunity and think with dismay about how that was the sort of thing I "should" get involved in, but how I absolutely could not at that moment stand it. The next time I checked, I would find that someone else had stepped forward and the need was filled! The first couple times this happened, it kind of hurt my feelings, because I was so used to thinking of myself as the center of the universe! But soon I learned to thank God for not needing my help to do His job, and by now it's happened so often I just laugh about it.
Ultimately, a life of service takes many forms, from social justice activism on a global scale to caring for one disabled relative. Participating in deliberate acts of kindness and receiving the kindness of God towards me might just be two sides of one coin. So if service doesn't feel like a spiritual practice but like codependency or just another exercise in sleeping backwards on the bed, maybe there's a better way-- a way that involves humility, trust, and a bit more of a sense of humor about myself!
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Compassion Fatigue
When I was 8 years old, I slept on top of the covers, wrong way around on the bed. I had learned at an early age that the world was full of children (and, indeed, adults) who went to bed hungry, or who slept on dirt floors in refugee camps, and I was consumed with guilt that I, who had done nothing to deserve it, got a whole bed to myself and all the dinner I could eat. My guilt didn't prevent me from saying at dinner, as every child does, "Then send this broccoli to China!" But it did make it hard for me to get comfortable under my cozy covers at night. So I slept backwards on the bed, in solidarity with the little refugees on the other side of the world... or maybe in apology to them that I could not share my excessive comfort with their excessive need.
Ever since, I go through episodes where sayings like "None of us are home until all of us are home" are more crippling than challenging. My problem is not that I don't care; it's that sometimes I can't figure out how to care without ending up backwards on the bed again.
And that's why I couldn't finish Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, by Karen Armstrong, even though I had really been looking forward to it. (The link will walk you through all the steps, if you're curious.) Armstrong has made her name as a what she calls a "freelance monotheist," but to my mind, this book is most directly informed by Buddhist thought, which I find legalistic and therefore depressing. This style of teaching-- introspective, absolutist, insisting on "always, tirelessly, without exception" behaviors and "urgent, determined, consistent" maintenance of certain inward attitudes, all under our own steam, with no help from an empowering God-- seems to me like Bel and Nebo:
"The things that you carry are burdensome,
A load for the weary beast.
They stooped over, they have bowed down together;
They could not rescue the burden,
But have themselves gone into captivity." (Isaiah 46, New American Standard Bible)
This is the kind of thinking that got me in trouble when I was 8 years old, and I just can't go back. I became a Christian precisely because I couldn't bear the burden of constant monitoring of my own thoughts and attitudes, because I knew I needed help every single minute just to be a tolerable human being, because I knew that I had to receive as well as give, and that the well from which I drew had to be deeper than myself or any other created thing. Just as God says:
"You who have been borne by Me from birth
And have been carried from the womb;
Even to your old age I will be the same,
And even to your graying years I will bear you!
I have done it, and I will carry you;
And I will bear you, and I will deliver you." (Isaiah 46, continued)
Ever since, I go through episodes where sayings like "None of us are home until all of us are home" are more crippling than challenging. My problem is not that I don't care; it's that sometimes I can't figure out how to care without ending up backwards on the bed again.
And that's why I couldn't finish Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, by Karen Armstrong, even though I had really been looking forward to it. (The link will walk you through all the steps, if you're curious.) Armstrong has made her name as a what she calls a "freelance monotheist," but to my mind, this book is most directly informed by Buddhist thought, which I find legalistic and therefore depressing. This style of teaching-- introspective, absolutist, insisting on "always, tirelessly, without exception" behaviors and "urgent, determined, consistent" maintenance of certain inward attitudes, all under our own steam, with no help from an empowering God-- seems to me like Bel and Nebo:
"The things that you carry are burdensome,
A load for the weary beast.
They stooped over, they have bowed down together;
They could not rescue the burden,
But have themselves gone into captivity." (Isaiah 46, New American Standard Bible)
This is the kind of thinking that got me in trouble when I was 8 years old, and I just can't go back. I became a Christian precisely because I couldn't bear the burden of constant monitoring of my own thoughts and attitudes, because I knew I needed help every single minute just to be a tolerable human being, because I knew that I had to receive as well as give, and that the well from which I drew had to be deeper than myself or any other created thing. Just as God says:
"You who have been borne by Me from birth
And have been carried from the womb;
Even to your old age I will be the same,
And even to your graying years I will bear you!
I have done it, and I will carry you;
And I will bear you, and I will deliver you." (Isaiah 46, continued)
For me, the first step in how to be good is to give up on the whole project and agree with Jesus that "No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18). Eugene Peterson wrote a book called The Pastor: a Memoir about two models of church development, and they could well be two models of any kind of ministry. There is the Ptolomaic model, the one where the sun, the moon, and everything else we can see goes around us. Makes sense, matches our observations. But then there's the Copernican model, where almost everything does not go around us, but around the sun. That model has the great drawback of being something you can't see but just have to believe. But it is true. The earth, even my own small sphere of influence, does not revolve around me but around Someone who is truly tireless and consistent. The starving and the refugees are not, thank God, dependent on my good intentions. They won't be fed and housed by my gesture of solidarity. Providing beds and bread for all of them was God's concern long before it was mine, and will continue to be His project long after I am gone-- or even if I just burn out and quit.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
170-179: How to Be Good
The subject of this Dewey decade is moral philosophy, or ethics, and it is really popular at my little local library! There are discussions of business ethics, personal ethics, and specific virtues like honesty and courage. A lot of big names turn up in this section, right next to a lot of slim volumes of inspiration. I may have bitten off more than I can read, but here's what I came home with:
Rediscovering Values: A Moral Compass for the New Economy by Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners. My husband said this is the book I should read. I reminded him that he says Wallis always writes the same book. He retorted: "Yes, but have you read it?" Touche.
Learning from the Heart by Dan Gottlieb. He is a psychologist who used to write a charming advice column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He still has a popular radio program and, whether in print or on the air, comes across as a stand-up guy... despite the fact that he's a quadriplegic. He knows something about finding happiness and doing right when it seems like you don't have much to work with. So, granted, the title of the book is hokey, but sometimes hokey is just what you need.
Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong. I mean, Karen Armstrong? That former nun who talked back to Richard Dawkins via The Case for God? Yes, please-- which is to say, I like the idea of trying to read her, anyway. By the way... I don't know why there are 12 steps instead of nine (or none-- is compassion really that simple?). I don't think it has anything to do with AA. But that brings us to the book that I am actually reading...
Deliberate Acts of Kindness by Meredith Gould. I know, she's not a household name like the other three, but her book won because a) it's short and breezy and b) it can be used as a devotional. Oh-- and she's the one who tells you in the preface that the idea for this book came to her from a 12-step program.
So much moral philosophy! If you want to know how to be good, the library can help you!
Rediscovering Values: A Moral Compass for the New Economy by Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners. My husband said this is the book I should read. I reminded him that he says Wallis always writes the same book. He retorted: "Yes, but have you read it?" Touche.
Learning from the Heart by Dan Gottlieb. He is a psychologist who used to write a charming advice column for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He still has a popular radio program and, whether in print or on the air, comes across as a stand-up guy... despite the fact that he's a quadriplegic. He knows something about finding happiness and doing right when it seems like you don't have much to work with. So, granted, the title of the book is hokey, but sometimes hokey is just what you need.
Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life by Karen Armstrong. I mean, Karen Armstrong? That former nun who talked back to Richard Dawkins via The Case for God? Yes, please-- which is to say, I like the idea of trying to read her, anyway. By the way... I don't know why there are 12 steps instead of nine (or none-- is compassion really that simple?). I don't think it has anything to do with AA. But that brings us to the book that I am actually reading...
Deliberate Acts of Kindness by Meredith Gould. I know, she's not a household name like the other three, but her book won because a) it's short and breezy and b) it can be used as a devotional. Oh-- and she's the one who tells you in the preface that the idea for this book came to her from a 12-step program.
So much moral philosophy! If you want to know how to be good, the library can help you!
160-169: Highly Logical!
Yup, a whole decade of the Dewey Decimal System is dedicated to the study of logic. You know, as in:
This book is in the 160s.
Books in the 160s are about logic.
Therefore, this book must be about logic.
I took Logic in college to avoid-- I mean fulfill-- my math requirement, so I kind of feel like I've been here, done this, and don't need to do it again. I still remember some of the fallacies-- that counterintuitive list of arguments that don't really prove anything. For example, it turns out that when you say, "Consider the source," you may be committing the ad hominem fallacy, because even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But, to be a good sport, I did choose a library book from the 160s... well, okay, the only book in the 160s, in my little neighborhood library: The Power of Logical Thinking by Marilyn vos Savant. She provides a summary of some of its contents here, so I won't do the same.
Instead, I will now explain why I didn't finish the book. First of all, anything written by vos Savant is only about 50% about what it's about; the other 50% is about how readers disagreed with what was said, and how vos Savant turned out to be right anyway. Boring! Second, by the time I had worked through her version of the famous Monty Hall problem, the section on which is reproduced here pretty much exactly as it appeared in the book, pages of quarrelsome letters and all, I felt like I might as well be working (I tutor, ironically enough, math, including basic probability). Third, can we talk about the casual sexism in a number of the printed letters, and vos Savant's equally casual acceptance of same? "Female logic" "Oh hush"? This kind of exchange just started to creep me out. Although that might be an ad hominem attack...
This book is in the 160s.
Books in the 160s are about logic.
Therefore, this book must be about logic.
I took Logic in college to avoid-- I mean fulfill-- my math requirement, so I kind of feel like I've been here, done this, and don't need to do it again. I still remember some of the fallacies-- that counterintuitive list of arguments that don't really prove anything. For example, it turns out that when you say, "Consider the source," you may be committing the ad hominem fallacy, because even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But, to be a good sport, I did choose a library book from the 160s... well, okay, the only book in the 160s, in my little neighborhood library: The Power of Logical Thinking by Marilyn vos Savant. She provides a summary of some of its contents here, so I won't do the same.
Instead, I will now explain why I didn't finish the book. First of all, anything written by vos Savant is only about 50% about what it's about; the other 50% is about how readers disagreed with what was said, and how vos Savant turned out to be right anyway. Boring! Second, by the time I had worked through her version of the famous Monty Hall problem, the section on which is reproduced here pretty much exactly as it appeared in the book, pages of quarrelsome letters and all, I felt like I might as well be working (I tutor, ironically enough, math, including basic probability). Third, can we talk about the casual sexism in a number of the printed letters, and vos Savant's equally casual acceptance of same? "Female logic" "Oh hush"? This kind of exchange just started to creep me out. Although that might be an ad hominem attack...
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Freak Out! Levitt and Dubner Teach You to Outwit Yourself
Freakonomics was a very popular and entertaining book a few years ago that drew some pretty controversial conclusions about social problems from statistical analysis, and is classified under "Economics." The authors wrote a follow-up called Superfreakonomics, which I have not read, and have now issued Think Like a Freak, wherein they explicitly try to teach us how to ask different questions in order to get better answers. Their style remains light, entertaining, and long on memorable anecdotes rather than abstract theorizing, and they make 6 main points which are quite adequately summarized on their own website and in this Forbes article.
This book makes a great compare-and-contrast with David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell's latest, about which I wrote here. The tone is much more light-hearted, but the goal is the same: how can we get our minds out of the boxes we normally keep them in and solve some problems? They made a lot of sort of theoretically interesting points that might help me if I wanted to eat a lot of hot dogs or identify terrorists or maybe even weed out a large pool of job applicants, but the chapter that really was directly applicable to my life right now was the last one, the one about quitting.
"Never give up! Never surrender!" says Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest, but in real life it turns out that quitting can really make you happier. I guess happiness isn't everything, but, all other things being equal, it sure beats the alternative. The authors give examples from their own lives and describe a highly unscientific experiment that is still running on their website here. Well, not so much of an experiment any more as a service-- I just tried it, and it's more of a Magic 8 Ball than anything else, as it doesn't harvest any follow-up data anymore. Anyway, the point is that based on the self-reported experiences of many people who did or didn't quit something, quitters do, in fact, sometimes win.
The reasons for this are many. One classy-sounding one is the opportunity cost of continuing what you're doing versus the sunk cost of having done it so far-- when you quit something, you suddenly free up all the resources that were going into it, and can pursue other new and different things that may be more rewarding. But then there's also the unknown possibility of giving up right before it gets good. And then there's just the emotional distaste many of us have for quitting!
To pick a simple example, say you are waiting in line for free Rita's Water Ice on the first day of Spring. The line is moving more slowly than you had expected. Do you keep waiting or ditch? Well, you've already spent x amount of time waiting, so if you bail, that time will be wasted. On the other hand, if you keep waiting, you will miss out on all the other Spring-like things you could be doing instead, such as gathering ye rosebuds or falling in love or whatnot. On the third hand, another counter could open up, and the line could start moving much faster. Yikes! Decisions, decisions! And that's not even a perfect example, because in many quitting situations, there is also some level of probability that you will never get what you want-- that, God forbid, Rita's will run out of water ice before you get there, in which case quitting would have been a much smarter move than holding.
Okay, so I think about this problem all the time. I think about it in my work, because I coach people working towards goals, students who have to decide whether they are done or want to keep trying. I am a firm believer that you gotta know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. There is a time to do one more step on a math problem and arrive at the answer, and there is a time to not waste one more second on a problem that will never love you back. There is a time to try the test again to see if you can improve still more, and there is a time to say that good enough is good enough and the probable return on investment just isn't high enough to justify the massive amount of effort involved.
I also think about it in my personal life with respect to different activities I am involved in. I think about it with this blog! I am always asking myself whether what I am doing is worth the time and effort, but then I don't want to allow myself to be a quitter. But at some point, if you keep adding new things and never quit any of the others, you can't physically do it all, so that's a consideration. I still have trouble with the concept that it could be okay to do some things just for a period of time, though, even though that's obviously sort of how life in the physical world just is. No one joins a bowling league with the idea that they will continue with it for the rest of their life, but somehow teaching Sunday school, for example, seems different. It seems like it's part of who you are and is not something you should just quit. Maybe that's why my favorite kind of activity is an ad-hoc project, with "quitting time" built in!
This book makes a great compare-and-contrast with David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell's latest, about which I wrote here. The tone is much more light-hearted, but the goal is the same: how can we get our minds out of the boxes we normally keep them in and solve some problems? They made a lot of sort of theoretically interesting points that might help me if I wanted to eat a lot of hot dogs or identify terrorists or maybe even weed out a large pool of job applicants, but the chapter that really was directly applicable to my life right now was the last one, the one about quitting.
"Never give up! Never surrender!" says Tim Allen in Galaxy Quest, but in real life it turns out that quitting can really make you happier. I guess happiness isn't everything, but, all other things being equal, it sure beats the alternative. The authors give examples from their own lives and describe a highly unscientific experiment that is still running on their website here. Well, not so much of an experiment any more as a service-- I just tried it, and it's more of a Magic 8 Ball than anything else, as it doesn't harvest any follow-up data anymore. Anyway, the point is that based on the self-reported experiences of many people who did or didn't quit something, quitters do, in fact, sometimes win.
The reasons for this are many. One classy-sounding one is the opportunity cost of continuing what you're doing versus the sunk cost of having done it so far-- when you quit something, you suddenly free up all the resources that were going into it, and can pursue other new and different things that may be more rewarding. But then there's also the unknown possibility of giving up right before it gets good. And then there's just the emotional distaste many of us have for quitting!
To pick a simple example, say you are waiting in line for free Rita's Water Ice on the first day of Spring. The line is moving more slowly than you had expected. Do you keep waiting or ditch? Well, you've already spent x amount of time waiting, so if you bail, that time will be wasted. On the other hand, if you keep waiting, you will miss out on all the other Spring-like things you could be doing instead, such as gathering ye rosebuds or falling in love or whatnot. On the third hand, another counter could open up, and the line could start moving much faster. Yikes! Decisions, decisions! And that's not even a perfect example, because in many quitting situations, there is also some level of probability that you will never get what you want-- that, God forbid, Rita's will run out of water ice before you get there, in which case quitting would have been a much smarter move than holding.
Okay, so I think about this problem all the time. I think about it in my work, because I coach people working towards goals, students who have to decide whether they are done or want to keep trying. I am a firm believer that you gotta know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. There is a time to do one more step on a math problem and arrive at the answer, and there is a time to not waste one more second on a problem that will never love you back. There is a time to try the test again to see if you can improve still more, and there is a time to say that good enough is good enough and the probable return on investment just isn't high enough to justify the massive amount of effort involved.
I also think about it in my personal life with respect to different activities I am involved in. I think about it with this blog! I am always asking myself whether what I am doing is worth the time and effort, but then I don't want to allow myself to be a quitter. But at some point, if you keep adding new things and never quit any of the others, you can't physically do it all, so that's a consideration. I still have trouble with the concept that it could be okay to do some things just for a period of time, though, even though that's obviously sort of how life in the physical world just is. No one joins a bowling league with the idea that they will continue with it for the rest of their life, but somehow teaching Sunday school, for example, seems different. It seems like it's part of who you are and is not something you should just quit. Maybe that's why my favorite kind of activity is an ad-hoc project, with "quitting time" built in!
Saturday, February 21, 2015
150-159: Tech Support for Your Brain
158, Applied Psychology, is a very popular call number and includes many 'self-help' books. Best of all, it's heavily represented in the audio section of my library, so while I am driving I can get a cognitive tune-up!
I just finished David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell, which was really intense. He told story after story of folks who faced terrible adversity and from it acquired skills and strengths that enabled them to achieve great things. If I were writing an SAT essay about whether failure is part of success or some such uplifting thing, I could pretty much just summarize this book. Didn't I like it, you ask? Yes, if by "like" you mean "found interesting and thought-provoking." By "like" you probably don't mean "listened to while crying over the Irish Troubles and the London Blitz," though, so I can only recommend the book with reservations.
The most obvious question it makes one ask oneself is: "Do I have any weaknesses that are actually strengths?" One example in my case is my chronic low-grade depression. Before you rush to fix my brokenness, hear me out! Listening to this book reminded me that, although I would prefer not to have this condition and would never wish it on anyone else, it does give me a superpower: there are days where I just don't care. On some days, mind you, just some, I don't care what movie we see, because I'm not going to enjoy any of them. I don't care whether you hate me, because I hate myself. I don't care whether I live or die, because it's all the same to me. Therefore, I can be an unusually easy person to negotiate with, I can take all the blame for the problem at hand so we can move on to actually solving it, and I can take physical risks for causes I believe in. And I already know 3 or 4 pretty good ways to talk someone off the ledge, because I have that conversation with myself on a regular basis.
So, you see, I don't need to be repaired. I'd return this condition to sender in a flash if it were that easy, but I have figured out how to work around it. I appreciate the listening ears and encouraging words that have kept me going over the years, but ultimately my "desirable difficulty" has been like Paul's in the Bible. Gladwell quotes him as another David who defeated Goliaths: "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." (2 Co 12:9)
I just finished David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell, which was really intense. He told story after story of folks who faced terrible adversity and from it acquired skills and strengths that enabled them to achieve great things. If I were writing an SAT essay about whether failure is part of success or some such uplifting thing, I could pretty much just summarize this book. Didn't I like it, you ask? Yes, if by "like" you mean "found interesting and thought-provoking." By "like" you probably don't mean "listened to while crying over the Irish Troubles and the London Blitz," though, so I can only recommend the book with reservations.
The most obvious question it makes one ask oneself is: "Do I have any weaknesses that are actually strengths?" One example in my case is my chronic low-grade depression. Before you rush to fix my brokenness, hear me out! Listening to this book reminded me that, although I would prefer not to have this condition and would never wish it on anyone else, it does give me a superpower: there are days where I just don't care. On some days, mind you, just some, I don't care what movie we see, because I'm not going to enjoy any of them. I don't care whether you hate me, because I hate myself. I don't care whether I live or die, because it's all the same to me. Therefore, I can be an unusually easy person to negotiate with, I can take all the blame for the problem at hand so we can move on to actually solving it, and I can take physical risks for causes I believe in. And I already know 3 or 4 pretty good ways to talk someone off the ledge, because I have that conversation with myself on a regular basis.
So, you see, I don't need to be repaired. I'd return this condition to sender in a flash if it were that easy, but I have figured out how to work around it. I appreciate the listening ears and encouraging words that have kept me going over the years, but ultimately my "desirable difficulty" has been like Paul's in the Bible. Gladwell quotes him as another David who defeated Goliaths: "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me." (2 Co 12:9)
Monday, February 9, 2015
Interlude: what I want
I review because I care: I want you to read good books and avoid bad ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/books/review/is-book-reviewing-a-public-service-or-an-art.html?_r=0
I also want to record the flow of human knowledge as organized by a Dewey Decimal library, and, incidentally, I want to record the effect that being exposed to all these branches of inquiry is having on me personally.
I may not do all these jobs every time. I may not do any of them very well at any time. But I am determined to keep trying and to improve as I go. Thanks for coming with me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/books/review/is-book-reviewing-a-public-service-or-an-art.html?_r=0
I also want to record the flow of human knowledge as organized by a Dewey Decimal library, and, incidentally, I want to record the effect that being exposed to all these branches of inquiry is having on me personally.
I may not do all these jobs every time. I may not do any of them very well at any time. But I am determined to keep trying and to improve as I go. Thanks for coming with me.
Friday, February 6, 2015
Everyone's a Critic
Well, not everyone-- after all, most of the 130s was in praise of poltergeists and feng shui. But the critical book I chose, Exposed!: Ouija, Firewalking, and Other Gibberish, turned out to be unreadable. Literally indecipherable in that there were sentences that just didn't convey any meaning to my mind. Maybe something was lost in the translation from the original French, but so much for that.
The redundantly titled 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True was slightly more readable, but it was in a different Dewey Decimal category for a reason. It really wasn't just about debunking specific beliefs, not just about the paranormal, but about various aspects of how people think the world works. It was really about exemplifying and promoting the philosophy of skepticism, which seems to me to be somewhat hollow. It's not so much a philosophy of life as an epistemology. All it has to offer is a certain way to approach knowledge, rather than a coherent body of thought, so I certainly wasn't going to read 50 essays, many of which boiled down to: "Here's a thing people think. I can't prove that it's true, so I won't believe it, which makes me smart!" The one where he pretended to be a psychic was pretty interesting, though. There he really did prove something: that it's not hard to convince someone that you are psychic even though you know you're not!
The redundantly titled 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True was slightly more readable, but it was in a different Dewey Decimal category for a reason. It really wasn't just about debunking specific beliefs, not just about the paranormal, but about various aspects of how people think the world works. It was really about exemplifying and promoting the philosophy of skepticism, which seems to me to be somewhat hollow. It's not so much a philosophy of life as an epistemology. All it has to offer is a certain way to approach knowledge, rather than a coherent body of thought, so I certainly wasn't going to read 50 essays, many of which boiled down to: "Here's a thing people think. I can't prove that it's true, so I won't believe it, which makes me smart!" The one where he pretended to be a psychic was pretty interesting, though. There he really did prove something: that it's not hard to convince someone that you are psychic even though you know you're not!
Friday, January 30, 2015
130-139: Everything Spooky! 140-149: All the Philosophies!
The paranormal in all its glory is the subject of the 130s. Ghosts, vampires, witches; feng shui, the I Ching, astrology, palm reading, and psychics; Nostradamus and 2012; it's all there. And I find it all pretty creepy. So this week I channelled my inner skeptic and only brought home Exposed! Ouija, Firewalking, and Other Gibberish, by Henri Broch, which Amazon, btw, markets under the category of "Controversial Knowledge." Seems to me that's an oxymoron. I mean, knowledge sounds to me like facts, and facts can't be controversial. They just are. You might not like gravity-- it sure annoys me sometimes-- but it's not just a good idea, as the saying goes, it's the law.
(Anyway, at least the title of the book leaves something to the imagination, unlike another offering in the 140s: Dogs Who Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. For some reason, that title struck me as hilariously specific and uninviting to anyone (like myself) who doesn't have a dog or a particular interest in their admittedly admirable loyalty and affection.)
Speaking of unlikeable facts, or fictions, I also went into the 140s, where there is much less selection, and decided to stick with my theme of grumpy cynicism. I chose, mainly because of its absurd title, 50 Popular Beliefs that People Think Are True, by Guy P. Harrison. Is it just me, or is that sort of like 50 Philosophies that Are Ways of Looking at Things, or Cute Kitties that Are Felines? Well, I guess I am going to learn about popular beliefs that people think are true, as opposed to popular beliefs that people think are crap but still invite to parties, because I am in no frame of mind right now to read 500 pages on Romanticism or Humanism, which is what else I could do in the 140s.
Really I just want to get on with it and into the 150s, where 158 (applied psychology, or, unofficial tech support for your brain) is loaded with books I've been actually wanting to read, like Think Like a Freak (sequel to the very entertaining Freakonomics) and The 8th Habit (because 7 weren't enough and Stephen Covey does not come across like a flim-flam artist.) And they're available on audio, so I can get mental hacks in my car!
But first I have to debunk everything from dowsing to Area 51. I'll let you know if I turn up anything really interesting!
(Anyway, at least the title of the book leaves something to the imagination, unlike another offering in the 140s: Dogs Who Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home. For some reason, that title struck me as hilariously specific and uninviting to anyone (like myself) who doesn't have a dog or a particular interest in their admittedly admirable loyalty and affection.)
Speaking of unlikeable facts, or fictions, I also went into the 140s, where there is much less selection, and decided to stick with my theme of grumpy cynicism. I chose, mainly because of its absurd title, 50 Popular Beliefs that People Think Are True, by Guy P. Harrison. Is it just me, or is that sort of like 50 Philosophies that Are Ways of Looking at Things, or Cute Kitties that Are Felines? Well, I guess I am going to learn about popular beliefs that people think are true, as opposed to popular beliefs that people think are crap but still invite to parties, because I am in no frame of mind right now to read 500 pages on Romanticism or Humanism, which is what else I could do in the 140s.
Really I just want to get on with it and into the 150s, where 158 (applied psychology, or, unofficial tech support for your brain) is loaded with books I've been actually wanting to read, like Think Like a Freak (sequel to the very entertaining Freakonomics) and The 8th Habit (because 7 weren't enough and Stephen Covey does not come across like a flim-flam artist.) And they're available on audio, so I can get mental hacks in my car!
But first I have to debunk everything from dowsing to Area 51. I'll let you know if I turn up anything really interesting!
Saturday, January 17, 2015
How to Be Human
I just finished The Most Human Human by Brian Christian, which is about computers simulating human conversation (one working definition of AI). You will get a detailed summary from this interview. Computer simulation of other supposedly exclusively human skills has been all over the news lately, too: moral and ethical improvisations in The New York Times, identification of emotions via facial expressions in the New Yorker.
AI is always all over the place. The IKEA chatbot, for example. It was programmed by a previous winner of the Loebner prize, but was completely unhelpful to me. I asked it if I could arrange for someone else to assemble my order, and it just referred me to generic web pages that did not contain the information I wanted. Then it asked whether its answer had been helpful. When I said No, it responded "Sorry. As an IKEA Online Assistant I don't know the meaning of 'no.' " Well, that's adorable, but shuts down the conversation, doesn't it? As I learned from the book, a good conversationalist offers plenty of holds with her responses, instead of just saying, "That's not what I wanted to hear."
My favorite robots are the ones that don't pretend not to be, like the CVS prescription reorder system. "Press or say 1," "The first three letters of the patient's last name are..." Okay, that's a conversation we can have. If I have any actual questions, I can press 2 for a real person.
So the topic of conversation simulation is interesting in itself, but the description of Christian's experiences as a Loebner Prize confederate went beyond interesting to inspiring. I even emailed the organizers about the possibility of participating next year! If nothing else, what a great excuse to take a trip to Bletchley Park!
AI is always all over the place. The IKEA chatbot, for example. It was programmed by a previous winner of the Loebner prize, but was completely unhelpful to me. I asked it if I could arrange for someone else to assemble my order, and it just referred me to generic web pages that did not contain the information I wanted. Then it asked whether its answer had been helpful. When I said No, it responded "Sorry. As an IKEA Online Assistant I don't know the meaning of 'no.' " Well, that's adorable, but shuts down the conversation, doesn't it? As I learned from the book, a good conversationalist offers plenty of holds with her responses, instead of just saying, "That's not what I wanted to hear."
My favorite robots are the ones that don't pretend not to be, like the CVS prescription reorder system. "Press or say 1," "The first three letters of the patient's last name are..." Okay, that's a conversation we can have. If I have any actual questions, I can press 2 for a real person.
So the topic of conversation simulation is interesting in itself, but the description of Christian's experiences as a Loebner Prize confederate went beyond interesting to inspiring. I even emailed the organizers about the possibility of participating next year! If nothing else, what a great excuse to take a trip to Bletchley Park!
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