Does the universe have an end, is there a literal and physical end to the universe? Or is the universe persistent and infinite? If finite, what lies beyond the boundaries of this universe?

I don’t know.

Not only do I not know, the sources I regularly depend on to keep me current on scientific research and speculation don’t appear to agree on the topic, either. At the moment they can only propose hypothesis based on mathematics. IMO, it’s one of the two major questions of life we may never find an answer to. The other is what happens after we die to our consciousness and self-awareness. I am pretty confident we won’t be any closer to an answer in my lifetime.

Since it’s unlikely any possibility we suggest will be completely disproven any time soon, we can enjoy science fiction. This is one arena in which I enjoy contemplating several possibilities with no reason to settle on one as most likely.

Due to the limits of our human imagination, we cannot easily conceive of the notion of infinity except through the language of mathematics. We lack experience with the concept of infinity. Our entire Earthly experience has been in the realm of the finite. We know that everything has a beginning and an end. The finite is intuitive, the infinite is incomprehensible.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Is The Mind Unique For Each Person? (scienceblog.com)
• The Impossible Christian Cosmology (exchristian.net)
• Take a Second Shot at Understanding Math (lifehacker.com)

Back in September of 2009 I posted a story here regarding the pending deportation of an individual to his home country, a country that still lives by social codes common to the 1st century. Had he been deported he faced execution for apostasy. Laws against apostasy (renouncing the state religion) and heresy (speaking out against the state religion) are still common in middle-Eastern countries. I wanted to highlight this story because the injustice embodied in his story needed to be exposed.

Several days ago I received an email from the gentleman who was the subject of that post. The following is a portion of that email, with references to the specific country removed so as not to risk further violence against him.

I am writing to you to ask you very urgently to remove this story from your website. I was very grateful for the publicity a few months ago because it helped in my campaign against deportation back to ****, where the law says I would be stoned to death for having left the Muslim faith. But now the presence of this material on the internet is putting my family’s lives in danger, as they have had reports of Islamic extremists in **** using my name and photograph to try to find them, and threatening to kill them because of their connection to me. Please believe me when I say that I have every reason to believe that these men really do intend to do what they say, and that I am in constant terror that they will actually do it. I could never forgive myself if my family were killed because of me. I am therefore begging you to remove all information about me from your website, as soon as you possibly can, and to be especially careful to make sure that all photographs are removed.
I know it is hard for anyone in a Western country to imagine that a whole family could be murdered because one person stops being a Muslim, but in ****, where there are many extremist Muslims who really believe that they will go to heaven for murdering an apostate or anyone connected with him, it really is something that could happen…Please please please help me and my family by doing these things urgently. It really is a matter of life and death.
Thank you very much for helping to save my family.

This request put me in an awkward position and presents a moral dilemma.

I certainly have no respect for any religion or philosophy that would threaten the life of a person or his family over a difference in opinion. In fact I think threats like this need further exposure in order to show the true character of these oppressive and inhumane theocracies. Normally I would gladly name names and be as specific as possible so that no one could question the reality of this personal terrorism. Radical Islam in the 21st century has adopted the attitude and methods of the Catholics during the Spanish Inquisition. They attempt to have heresy declared an international crime and terrorize those who openly challenge their violent tactics. They win every skirmish in which we are too fearful to speak out against them. Al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremists have caused us to go about our everyday lives in fear, fear of the next airplane bombing, fear of reprisals against our troops, fear of our own freedoms.

Yet I am also aware of the fact that no matter how righteous I may feel my position is in opposition to Islamic extremism, I have no right to put this man and his family in harm’s way. I cannot in good conscience risk his family being killed just so that I can be specific in the examples I provide of theocratic inhumanity.

I’m also aware that this could be a scam, a way for the theocracy that this man fears to make sure this story disappears from world view and scrutiny. By sending out this appeal in his name they could ensure that we would willingly censure ourselves and save them the effort of defacing our sites or creating a denial of service attack. After all, a DDoS attack is far more complicated than exploding underwear.

So as not to be hoodwinked, I checked the other sites referenced elsewhere in his email and found that those sites have removed all references to his earlier story. Even their cached pages return a 404 page. This leads me to accept the veracity of his claims.

So I’m following a path that allows me to speak out against state-sponsored terrorism against its critics while preserving this man’s anonymity. My post about him has been removed from public view and all references to his name and nationality in this post have been expunged. All that I’ve left intact is the story of a man who by speaking his mind and holding unpopular beliefs has been subjected to intimidation and death threats by a religion so insecure in its own validity that it can only maintain its authority through such practices.

Perhaps keeping the identity of this individual hidden achieves an important purpose; it allows us to understand that this issue is larger than one man against one intolerant regime. Thousands of people in totalitarian theocracies suffer every day by being different, by being non-believers or believers in other religions, by being gay and being women.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The futility of terrorism-related stop-and-search (leftfootforward.org)
• Mohsin Mohi-Ud Din: Dear Muslim World (huffingtonpost.com)
• Salam Al Marayati: Hate Speech Can Be Countered With Truth, Leadership (huffingtonpost.com)
• Blasphemy, an unjustified privilege | Ophelia Benson (guardian.co.uk)
• Abdel-Rahman, Randall Terry, and Incitement to Violence (firedoglake.com)

In 1963 Martin Luther King made his famous “I have a dream” speech. Two years later many of those who shared his dream rioted for six days in Watts. What happened, what changed?

Nothing. And that was the problem.

Those who heard King’s speech and wanted to share his dream were hoping that the ideal he expressed would one day soon become a reality. The nation’s founding fathers expressed many of the same ideals. Living only 300 years after the arrival of the pilgrims, they were aware of what we seem to have forgotten these days, that the pilgrims didn’t come here to establish a democratic society which would guarantee freedom and equality to all Americans. They were escaping religious intolerance, seeking a land free of other Europeans where they could set up their own religious society and practice their own intolerance toward anyone not of their faith. As we’ve witnessed so many times throughout human history, an oppressed minority wanted to be the oppressive majority. The pilgrims didn’t want freedom for everyone, just for themselves and those like them. Three hundred years failed to produce much of a change in attitude. Sure, Thomas Jefferson wrote “… that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” in the Declaration of Independence, but it’s clear he equated “all men” with the rich, White male class to which he and all the members of the Constitutional Congress belonged.

Another nearly 300 years has passed since that time, and again very little has changed. We like to think that we live in a classless society, that everyone has the opportunity to succeed and obtain wealth and influence. We talk about our democracy, ignoring the fact that a representative republic is not necessarily a democracy. We live in a dream, a fantasy world perpetrated by the rich, White males in power to keep us from seeing reality.

The sad reality is that in the 21st century America, not all people are created equal, that we are not all endowed with certain unalienable rights. Not all Americans are free to pursue life, liberty or happiness. America has classes, and while a few fortunate souls may be able to break free of their “place in society” and improve their lot, far too many others are locked into an endless struggle to live from paycheck to paycheck, unable to afford an education that might allow them to better their circumstances. Too many Americans born into poverty live their entire lives in poverty, and usually condemn another generation to the same fate by not being able to provide for their children a life any better than they endure.

And who are the rich, White males who still hold power in the U.S.? The majority of them are men who haven’t earned their wealth themselves and therefore have no empathy for those unlike themselves. They are born into wealth and privilege, and no matter how badly they screw up or embarrass themselves they are seldom demoted from their class. Members of the upper class enjoy privileges denied the rest of us. Their children are welcomed at the best universities and they, of course, can afford to send them. Our children are fortunate if they can afford junior college. Their children go to West Point, ours to Ft. Hood. They enjoy the perks of wealth and power the rest of us can only dream about.

Many people on both the left and right of the political spectrum are lamenting the collapse of the American dream. Well folks, that’s because that’s all it’s ever been, a dream. We have failed to establish “freedom and liberty for all” as a concrete fact in this country. We have allowed rich, White males to retain their positions of power and influence because we were grateful for the scraps of opportunity we were thrown. We accepted our lot because we were told that to rock the boat would mean the end of our country. We were warned that malcontents and radicals threatened our way of life. And who told us these lies? The rich, White men in power who knew that equality for all would mean less privilege for them. So they made sure to tax themselves less, govern themselves less and ensure that we never read the rest of the Declaration. For instance, the following complaint against King George could be applied to many politicians today: “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.” Those in power also fear our taking seriously these words from the Declaration, written immediately after “…all men are created equal…”:

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I was 15 years old in 1969. In my teens I was a radical anti-government liberal. I had watched Kennedy be assassinated, listened to King’s speeches, watched the Watts riots on TV and Nixon be elected president. I saw the war in Vietnam as a death pool for the children of average citizens. The kids of the rich, White males stayed at home and went to university. The rich, White males chanted, “America, love it or leave it”. I wanted to change it because I loved it. Like a father watching his son sink into addiction and making every effort to turn them around, I wanted to aid in the “intervention” of America, to help it become the country we all dreamed it could be. The 60s radicalized me, made me determined to try and make the dream a reality. I failed, my generation failed, and succeeding generations have failed.

We are leaving our children a country mired in class, privilege and inequality. We have failed to establish a direction for our country while allowing it to become a debtor nation. We have failed to uphold the ideals of our founders and have even failed to keep the dream alive. Now we face the ugly results of our failure.

If, perhaps when, our country falls into anarchy and chaos, it won’t be because we allowed gays to marry or gave women the vote. It will be a direct result of our failure to heed the admonition of the Declaration of Independence to remove an oppressive and non-representative form of government and install one that gives the power, privileges and opportunities to all citizens regardless of status, sex or color. We have accepted what is instead of fighting for what could be. We have adopted a new dream, more like a nightmare, in which we count ourselves fortunate to be able to scrape by every day while the upper class enjoys the fruit of our labor. We have become a nation of slaves. Slaves with no dream of freedom.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Created Equal (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)
• Happy We-Should-Restore-The-Monarchy-And-Rejoin-Britain Day! (stephankinsella.com)

Image via Wikipedia

There’s an interesting write-up and video at Edge on the nature of consciousness. From the introduction:

On October 17, Edge organized a Reality Club meeting at The Hotel Ritz in Paris to allow neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene to present his new theory on how consciousness arises in the brain to a group of Parisian scientists and thinkers. The theory, based on Dehaene’s past twelve years of brain-imaging research is called the global neuronal workspace. It promises to offer new tools for diagnosing consciousness disorders in patients.

“For the past twelve years”, says Dehaene, “my research team has been using every available brain research tool, from functional MRI to electro- and magneto-encephalography and even electrodes inserted deep in the human brain, to shed light on the brain mechanisms of consciousness. I am now happy to report that we have acquired a good working hypothesis. In experiment after experiment, we have seen the same signatures of consciousness: physiological markers that all, simultaneously, show a massive change when a person reports becoming aware of a piece of information (say a word, a digit or a sound).

“Furthermore, when we render the same information non-conscious or “subliminal”, all the signatures disappear. We have a theory about why these signatures occur, called the global neuronal workspace theory. Realistic computer simulations of neurons reproduce our main experimental findings: when the information processed exceeds a threshold for large-scale communication across many brain areas, the network ignites into a large-scale synchronous state, and all our signatures suddenly appear.

But this is already more than a theory. We are now applying our ideas to non-communicating patients in coma, vegetative state, or locked-in syndromes. The test that we have designed with Tristan Bekinschtein, Lionel Naccache, and Laurent Cohen, based on our past experiments and theory, seems to reliably sort out which patients retain some residual conscious life and which do not.

“My laboratory is now pursuing this research intensively on patients, animals, human adults and young children, with the hope of turning our brain-imaging measurements into a real-time monitor of conscious experience. The time thus seems ripe to share this work with a broader audience of readers interested in cutting-edge science and technology, but also those concerned with the philosophical, personal and ethical implications of these findings.”

The questions regarding what consciousness is and how it impacts our lives are numerous and fascinating. Investigating consciousness is essentially our brains attempting to understand themselves. Some speculate we’ll never fully understand consciousness because we’ll never be able to make objective observations using the very organ we’re trying to understand. Yet in the last decade or so we’ve developed new tools that allow us to explore our consciousness better than before, and may allow us to draw conclusions we couldn’t using only our minds in the effort to understand our minds.

(Tip o’the hat to Josh Ellis on Friendfeed)

Related articles by Zemanta

• Conditional Consciousness: Patients in Vegetative States Can Learn, Predicting Recovery (scientificamerican.com)
• Cracking the brain’s numerical code (scienceblog.com)
• Man Actually Conscious Throughout Two Decades of “Coma” (neatorama.com)
• Vegetative Patients Can Still Learn (science.slashdot.org)
• Bigger not necessarily better, when it comes to brains (biosingularity.wordpress.com)

Humans love drama. We also have an exaggerated notion of our importance to the universe. We cannot imagine the demise of humanity without a world-wide melodrama worthy of the best CGI artists in Hollywood. We simply cannot accept that humans could face extinction because bats disappeared first. Yet when you consider that all living systems on this planet are highly interdependent it’s a conclusion that is suddenly not very far-fetched.

Humans do not exist on Earth in isolation. We depend on the planet and our fellow creatures to provide what we need to survive. Strip the planet of all other living things and how long do you imagine humans could survive? A year, a month, a week? We’d have no food, no protection from the elements, no fresh air, none of the necessities of life. Over 90% of all the species that have ever existed are now extinct. What grand egotism leads us to believe we are exempt from the same natural processes?

It has only been in the last 100 years or so that we’ve had the scientific tools that permit us to examine the interconnections between us and all the other species with whom we share this isolated rock. In many cases we are just now beginning to learn how we all help each other survive. We are finding previously unsuspected dependencies between widely diverse groups of organisms, dependencies vital to our survival as a species. We are beginning to understand that the loss of one species in the chain of life can have drastic implications on the continued survival of other species thousands of miles away.

Case in point.

At least 1 million bats in the past three years have been wiped out by a puzzling, widespread disease dubbed “white-nose syndrome” in what preeminent US scientists are calling the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in human history. If it isn’t slowed or stopped, they believe bats will continue disappearing from the landscape in huge numbers and that entire species could become extinct within a decade.

This would have drastic repercussions for the rest of us. As Tim King, a conservation geneticist with the US Geological Survey in West Virginia, told Chase, “We’re at the vanguard of an environmental catastrophe.”

Why? Because bats are insect-eating machines, capable of consuming nearly half their body weight in insects each night. Take them out of the equation and we’ll have an explosion of pests, including disease-carrying mosquitoes and agriculturally destructive beetles, moths, leafhoppers and other foes of the farmers, who may be forced to use more pesticides as a result.

Bat colonies in Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont have averaged a shocking 94.5 percent decline since white-nose syndrome was first detected there in 2006, plummeting from 48,626 bats to 2,695. The disease’s spread “has been terrifyingly swift,” according to the Globe, starting in the Northeast and South Atlantic states and now infiltrating “caves and mines in Kentucky and Tennessee, and possibly North Carolina and Ohio.”

But, unlike colony collapse disorder, the highly publicized disease that’s destroying our bees, white nose syndrome isn’t getting much attention. As Susi von Oettingen, a biologist who works for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, noted, “They’re not charismatic. . . . We don’t make money off of them. They are not cute and cuddly.” Let’s face it; even baby bats aren’t all that adorable.

This is more than just about bats dying. It’s about a key player in our ecosystem disappearing before our eyes. It may be a model for the severity of diseases that our native species are going to be confronted with.

If it’s frogs yesterday, bees two days ago, bats today, and something else in two more years, how long before this system falls apart on us?”

(Source-Eating Liberally)

So forget a nuclear or apocalyptic Armageddon. A far more likely scenario for the eventual extinction of the human animal is a slow imbalance of the entire ecosystem that leads to our inability to sustain ourselves. A failure of food crops due to the loss of pollinators, pandemics brought on by pestilence, silent but sure killers. How will we replace the bees and the bats? Do we even understand their complete role in making our lives possible?

We understand so little about the grand interconnectedness of life on this planet. And it’s quite likely our ignorance will prove fatal long before we manage to blow ourselves to kingdom come or we witness the great battle between good and evil in the sky above us.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Night Stalker: White-Nose Fungus in Bats–Why It’s Our Problem, Too (scientificamerican.com)
• Bats Are Good Because They Make Poop! Kristen Mozaffari Mod (slideshare.net)
• Water: The Neglected Resource (liveactivecultures.net)

Image via Wikipedia

Another sign that intelligence and an education are becoming a liability in our society.

A US man has been rejected in his bid to become a police officer for scoring too high on an intelligence test.

Robert Jordan, a 49-year-old college graduate, took an exam to join the New London police, in Connecticut, in 1996 and scored 33 points, the equivalent of an IQ of 125.

But New London police interviewed only candidates who scored 20 to 27, on the theory that those who scored too high could get bored with police work and leave soon after undergoing costly training.

Mr Jordan launched a federal lawsuit against the city, but lost.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld a lower court’s decision that the city did not discriminate against Mr Jordan because the same standards were applied to everyone who took the test.

He said: “This kind of puts an official face on discrimination in America against people of a certain class. I maintain you have no more control over your basic intelligence than your eye color or your gender or anything else.”

He said he does not plan to take any further legal action and has worked as a prison guard since he took the test.

The average score nationally for police officers is 21 to 22, the equivalent of an IQ of 104, or just a little above average. (Source-ananova.com)

In a job that at times requires the ability to make reasoned and informed decisions on matters of life and death, do we really want only those of average intelligence?

The United States has backed a new UN resolution on free expression which would be considered unconstitutional under its First Amendment — which protects freedom of expression and bans sanctioning of religions.

The UN Human Rights Council on 2 October adopted the resolution, which the US had co-sponsored with Egypt. The US had finally joined the Human Rights Council in June, and its support for the measure reflected the Obama administration’s stated aim to “re-engage” with the UN.

While the new resolution focuses on freedom of expression, it also condemns “negative stereotyping of religion”. Billed as a historic compromise between Western and Muslim nations, in the wake of controversies such the Danish Muhammed cartoons, the resolution caused concern among European members.

“The language of stereotyping only applies to stereotyping of individuals, I stress individuals, and must not protect ideologies, religions or abstract values,” said France’s representative, Jean-Baptiste Mattéi, speaking for the EU. “The EU rejects the concept of defamation of religion.”

France emphasised that international human rights law protects individual believers, not systems of belief. But European members, eager not be seen as compromise wreckers, reluctantly supported the measure.

On the other side of the fault line stood the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which lobbied for a measure against “religious defamation”.

“We firmly believe that the exercise of freedom of expression carries with it special responsibilities,” said Pakistan’s delegate, speaking for the OIC. The “defamation” of religion, he said, “results in negative stereotyping of the followers of this religion and belief and leads to incitement, discrimination, hatred and violence against them, therefore directly affecting their human rights.”

Following the OIC’s logic, one could equally apply the language of the resolution to Islamism, a political form which is arguably a “contemporary manifestation of religious hatred, discrimination and xenophobia. It results in negative stereotyping of the followers of other religions and beliefs and leads to incitement, discrimination, hatred and violence against them, therefore directly affecting their human rights.”

The EU also had other worries. European members felt that the provision in the resolution on “the moral and social responsibility of the press” was objectionable in that it went beyond the limited restrictions set out in article 19, the provision on free expression in the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. (Source-Index on Censorship)

As Jonathan Turley comments at USAToday,

Thinly disguised blasphemy laws are often defended as necessary to protect the ideals of tolerance and pluralism. They ignore the fact that the laws achieve tolerance through the ultimate act of intolerance: criminalizing the ability of some individuals to denounce sacred or sensitive values. We do not need free speech to protect popular thoughts or popular people. It is designed to protect those who challenge the majority and its institutions. Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech — the literal sacred institution of society.

While I respect the right of any person to believe as they wish, I also believe that the right to speak our minds freely and without fear of reprisal, intimidation or sanction is a hallmark of Western democracy. We should not surrender our rights in order to provide uncertain security in the face of violent opposition to contrary opinions. Ben Franklin wrote, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”.

There is no reason to provide special protection to religious beliefs. The fear that religious believers will suffer “incitement, discrimination, hatred and violence against them” is nonsensical. The majority of people on the planet are religious. Religious believers hold most of the positions of power in both the East and West. They have no reason to fear the opinions of the minority. The most immediate danger to any believer in a particular god are those who believe in another god.

Criticism is not necessarily an act of hatred. Quite often criticism is an act of love. If a family member has become enslaved to drug addiction, is it an act of discrimination or hatred to criticize their addiction? If I firmly believe my country, a country I willingly served to defend, is headed in a dangerous and unconstitutional direction, should I remain mute?

Religious belief in a generic sense is predominant among humans around the globe. But there is little agreement as to the nature of the god the religious believe in. What anti-blasphemy resolutions seek to achieve will result in the inability of Baptists to speak out against the Catholic Church or reasonable people to object to the foolishness of Scientology. We will have to remain silent when Iran decides to execute those who oppose their theocracy or happen to be homosexual. Any theocratic government will be exempt from criticism by anyone for any reason.

The philosophical and legal quagmire with such legislation centers around the definition of “blasphemy.” Practically every religion, sect and cult possesses concepts that are blasphemous to another. As an important example, while Christians believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, Muslims consider him a mere prophet, albeit an important one. Calling Christ the “Son of God,” however, is viewed as “blasphemous” within Islam, as is not believing in Mohammed as Allah’s final and most important prophet. Under such anti-blasphemy legislation, therefore, all Christian literature could be confiscated and Christians arrested, because at its very core, Christianity would represent “blasphemous material” that could cause—and has caused—outrage many times in the Muslim world, explaining in part why the Bible is banned in such fundamentalist Islamic countries as Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore, the punishment for blasphemy according to the Koran includes death and maiming, as stated at Surah 5:33:

“Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land.”

Obviously, many people would object strenuously that there is any relationship between God and all this bigotry, cruelty and gore—to suggest otherwise would be extremely offensive to them and cause them outrage. This notion of a violent, cruel and enslaving God who approves of such behavior would offend their religious sensibilities, leaving its purveyors themselves open to charges of “blasphemy.” (Source-jdstone.org)

The lack of religious belief is just as valid a philosophical position as any religious belief. The only reason theists of any stripe think they can outlaw blasphemy is their majority status. It’s not an issue of rights or responsibility, it’s a matter of “might makes right”.

Related articles by Zemanta

• JONATHAN TURLEY: Obama Administration Accepts “Blasphemy” Exception to Free Speech. “Around the wo… (pajamasmedia.com)
• Blasphemy Day (tuibguy.com)
• International blasphemy day: from Danish cartoons to Jerry Springer The Opera (telegraph.co.uk)
• Man framed with Koran desecration dies in police custody (catholicnewsagency.com)
• Who wants Ireland’s blasphemy law? (guardian.co.uk)
• African Children Denounced As “Witches” By Christian Pastors (huffingtonpost.com)
• The right to offend (guardian.co.uk)
• UN rights body approves US-Egypt free speech text (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Archbishop Chaput: “God Will Demand an Accounting” for Our Moral Indifference (deaconforlife.blogspot.com)
• US refuses entry to radical German publisher (guardian.co.uk)
• Academia Goes Silent on Free Speech (online.wsj.com)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

A fireman, nurse, policeman, soldier, spy, ballerina, pilot, astronaut, but mostly, especially, grown up. We want to stop being children and become adults.

Even children use “childish” as a pejorative.  Adults are responsible, mature, somber, sober and serious. The only time most adults let loose and have fun is during sex, which could explain the popularity of that activity among adults. Adulthood has no time for fun. Playing is for kids.

We adults do ourselves a disservice.

Fun is good for everyone, young and old. Playing requires imagination and to imagine is to exercise your brain.  Having fun lets you look at life askew, and what you see may impress you. Playing is refreshing. It recharges our batteries.

Fun keeps us young, it allows us to extend some aspects of childhood into adulthood. There’s value in play, as the following video points out. Not only was this a brilliant way to get people to do something healthy for themselves, it also introduces an element of play into their lives. It improves their inner and outer health. We ought to build all stairs this way. Why can’t we design hopscotch squares into our public sidewalks every few blocks? Why don’t we all relax and have a little fun everyday?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Learn Something Every Day (prathambooks.org)

♦Lane Wallace, writing for The Atlantic, gives us two articles on the process of thinking that deserve further consideration:

In my experience, there are two factors that seem to make the biggest difference as to whether or not two people can have a meaningful and productive discussion from different points of view (assuming both are fairly self-assured and reasonable beings):

1. The first factor is whether the people involved see the world in black-and-white terms, or in more complex shades of gray. For those who see the world in absolute terms of black and white (on the left or the right), the only choice of movement is all the way to the other side. Which is an awfully long distance to move an opinion. People who are more inclined to see the world in nuanced shades of gray, on the other hand, can consider a slightly different shade without feeling their basic values threatened. The options for movement, and therefore their potential willingness to consider another perspective, are far greater.

2. The second factor is how skilled, practiced, and comfortable both participants are in the art of critical thinking. The website criticalthinking.org offers more definitions of what critical thinking consists of than anyone probably needs. But at its most exemplary, the site says, critical thinking is based on “clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.” Critical thinkers “avoid thinking simplisitcally about complicated issues and strive to appropriately consider the rights and needs of relevant others.” And “they realize that no matter how skilled they are as thinkers … they will at times fall prey to mistakes in reasoning, human irrationality, prejudices, biases, distortions, uncritically accepted social rules and taboos, self-interest, and vested interest.”

Which is to say, people skilled in the art of critical thinking make a practice of questioning everything. Even their own opinions. They don’t necessarily sit in the middle ground of any debate, but they understand the potential fallibility of sources, and acknowledge the legitimate existence of other points of view … subject to examination, along with their own. Meaningful exploration and discussion of issues, therefore, becomes possible. Even productive. (The Importance of Critical Thinking)

And

How is it that people can cling to an opinion or view of a person, event, issue of the world, despite being presented with clear or mounting data that contradicts that position? The easy answer, of course, is simply that people are irrational. But a closer look at some of the particular ways and reasons we’re irrational offers some interesting food for thought.

In a recently published study, a group of researchers from Northwestern University, UNC Chapel HIll, SUNY Buffalo and Millsaps College found that people often employ an approach the researchers called “motivated reasoning” when sorting through new information or arguments, especially on controversial issues. Motivated reasoning is, as UCLA public policy professor Mark Kleiman put it, the equivalent of policy-driven data, instead of data-driven policy.

In other words, if people start with a particular opinion or view on a subject, any counter-evidence can create “cognitive dissonance”–discomfort caused by the presence of two irreconcilable ideas in the mind at once. One way of resolving the dissonance would be to change or alter the originally held opinion. But the researchers found that many people instead choose to change the conflicting evidence–selectively seeking out information or arguments that support their position while arguing around or ignoring any opposing evidence, even if that means using questionable or contorted logic.

That’s not a news flash to anyone who’s paid attention to any recent national debate–although the researchers pointed out that this finding, itself, runs counter to the idea that the reason people continue to hold positions counter to all evidence is because of misinformation or lack of access to the correct data. Even when presented with compelling, factual data from sources they trusted, many of the subjects still found ways to dismiss it. But the most interesting (or disturbing) aspect of the Northwestern study was the finding that providing additional counter-evidence, facts, or arguments actually intensified this reaction. Additional countering data, it seems, increases the cognitive dissonance, and therefore the need for subjects to alleviate that discomfort by retreating into more rigidly selective hearing and entrenched positions.

Needless to say, these findings do not bode well for anyone with hopes of changing anyone else’s mind with facts or rational discussion, especially on “hot button” issues. But why do we cling so fiercely to positions when they don’t even involve us directly? Why do we care who got to the North Pole first? Or whether a particular bill has provision X versus provision Y in it? Why don’t we care more about simply finding out the truth–especially in cases where one “right” answer actually exists?

Part of the reason, according to Kleiman, is “the brute fact that people identify their opinions with themselves; to admit having been wrong is to have lost the argument, and (as Vince Lombardi said), every time you lose, you die a little.” And, he adds, “there is no more destructive force in human affairs–not greed, not hatred–than the desire to have been right.” (All Evidence to the Contrary)

The brain is an organ of thought. Its primary purpose is to be the body’s command and control center. It has to remember, to decide, to direct other organs and limbs in the performance of their duties. It “thinks” on a number of levels at once, some conscious, others subconscious. Consciousness is the brain considering itself.

We presume to understand what we are doing when we’re “thinking”, “contemplating”, “pondering” something. We generally agree on what constitutes the practice of thinking. Yet we really know next to nothing about the process of thinking. How are thoughts formed, how are they stored, what influences the process? Is thinking simply a byproduct like waste heat from an engine? Can non-living objects think?

Though we can’t answer all the questions raised when we try to think about thinking, we do know that every person thinks slightly differently about everything. No two people think exactly the same. We are first and foremost responsible for the thoughts in our own heads. I believe we are more than just the compilation of our opinions, we are a compilation of all our thoughts. The rest of us is just meat. The brain is meat.

To practice thinking is to exercise our whole person. Thinking is a mental gym membership.

If we make a practice of thinking as consciously as possible, if we are willing to admit that what we think may be in error to some degree or another, if we remain dissatisfied with the extent of our current knowledge both individually and as a society, we should want to think. We should reject the thought that says, “Now you know all there is to know about…”

Certainty is, in many cases, not possible. There aren’t all that many absolutely true statements, especially in philosophy.

We should embrace uncertainty. It doesn’t hurt to examine new thoughts and concepts. We are under no obligation to accept all of them as valid. An open mind, like an open heart, while vulnerable, can produce benefits beyond belief. Beyond belief is knowledge.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Study demonstrates how we support our false beliefs (scienceblog.com)
• Debate Based on Total Lack of Logic (blogs.suntimes.com)
• A need for Philosophy and Critical Thinking (africaunchained.blogspot.com)

We notice other races because nature equipped us to. It’s what we do with that awareness that determines if we are acting as racists in the conventional sense. Every culture produces racial awareness, the knowledge of the difference between them and us. But not everyone in every culture is a racist. The closer-knit the community, the more that community feels threatened by those outside that community, the easier it is for racial intolerance, sexual intolerance, etc., to exist. The more integrated and pluralistic the community (be it a church or a country) the more resistant to intolerance it becomes. Us becomes a broader concept.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s not what we think about people of color, men, women, gays or anything else that makes us intolerant, bigoted, racists. It’s how we act on those thoughts. It’s how we express our perceptions of the differences between us.

Do we focus more on the differences or on the commonalities?

Related articles by Zemanta

• On Class and Race/Sex (lailalalami.com)
• Can white liberals keep their eye on the prize when racism comes a knockin? (seminal.firedoglake.com)