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...
Friday, July 24, 2015
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)