tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43987866164687840142024-03-05T04:39:26.310-08:00Religious DeviantLausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.comBlogger416125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-61165336605820787132024-01-12T15:45:00.000-08:002024-01-12T15:45:54.682-08:00Superior Hiking Trail Caribou Trail<p> <a href="https://winter60.blogspot.com/2021/10/superior-hiking-trail-lismore-rd.html">Previous Section</a><span> </span><span> a few miles<span> </span><span> Next Section</span></span></p><p><span><span>3 Campsites<br />Stunning views and a beautiful lake</span></span></p><p>https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/caribou-river-wayside-to-lutsen/#section_4</p><p>This is a skip way up the shore since last time. I can't believe we missed two years of hiking. Ruth did a camping trip with some friends, but 2023 had some nasty weather to deal with. I don't know what happened to 2022. </p><p>2024 started out with very little snow, we found ourselves hiking in January. It's been a winter of either mud or ice, but we got lucky. The elevation changes were not dramatic, so that helped. We followed the directions to Caribou Trail, the road, which is also Co Rd 4 and a short drive to the trailhead. It's a small parking lot. We passed it once. </p><p>No problem finding the trail from there. The white markers let us know it's a spur trail. Normally I don't mention them, but this one was </p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-82704696823931208882024-01-01T05:43:00.000-08:002024-01-02T06:54:43.187-08:00One more trip around the sun<p> Nick Cave says, </p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">"We’re often led to believe that getting older is in itself somehow a betrayal of our idealistic younger self, but sometimes I think it might be the other way around. Maybe the younger self finds it difficult to inhabit its true potential because it has no idea what that potential is. It is a kind of unformed thing running scared most of the time, frantically trying to build its sense of self — This is me! Here I am! — in any way that it can. But then time and life come along, and smash that sense of self into a million pieces.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">Then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others. You somehow grow into the fullness of your humanity, form your own character, become a proper person — I don’t know, someone who has become a part of things, not someone separated from or at odds with the world." -- from Faith, Hope, and Courage</span></p><p><br /></p><p>I can get that. The trouble with a lot of these types of musings is they come from people who have found comfort in their later years. Maybe that came from some hard work, and maybe from some luck. When you're young, you can't predict how those forces will play out. So the old repeat the old truisms, that are true, except, not always. </p><p>If they were always true, then people who are working three jobs would have enough to feed their families. </p><p>We are stuck between centuries of traditions and an uncertain future. The one got our ancestors through adversity and the other we can only imagine. When I read the stories of those ancestors, I can feel their sense of being in this same place. I see myself as the result of their dreams. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-24686946189533967502023-12-25T12:09:00.000-08:002023-12-30T17:00:32.758-08:00Travelling MO and AR<p> Doniphan MO historical marker </p><p>https://youtu.be/Tr1d0ivyTTk?si=W7Nd_K0PT5JhwSgF</p><p>Holt to Hoxie</p><p>https://goo.gl/maps/bup9CB4u6aukc3gz6</p><p><br /></p><p>https://g.co/kgs/MvJJx1o</p><p>Clover Bend Historical Preservation</p><p>(870) 869-2708</p><p>https://herroncenter.org/</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">https://lchsar.org/publications/walnut-ridge-hoxie/</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinjWug7Hg2tOyaZIrExvpDiMXeb4gEq81qQJq3cthRz5GcumXXoCzoY71UQZeXnK7_lFdiLdxBQacKPtwjsypt-NlAg_b3Noq6oejkiIzv_5-mY0yOuTLSuGlo2nvnbj3DX5AdfHndebx_rGrqj2Useja9Xm5pmYDO-P0nnIQPjKFG8Mh3XXJROWU0HJgx" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEinjWug7Hg2tOyaZIrExvpDiMXeb4gEq81qQJq3cthRz5GcumXXoCzoY71UQZeXnK7_lFdiLdxBQacKPtwjsypt-NlAg_b3Noq6oejkiIzv_5-mY0yOuTLSuGlo2nvnbj3DX5AdfHndebx_rGrqj2Useja9Xm5pmYDO-P0nnIQPjKFG8Mh3XXJROWU0HJgx" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6xo3luVuHtTQ1rNCJkMeBHp2pJfzTFczA2TeJhOnIzBHHvGbH3e1e6KEEpZjmzIC4-z-RvQSg7jlrKLmjkc1Q-zJKJSiNimBGJOd2J-iKh1f7-HAB3Wa8fAwa4BCCzLoktqKzUw6dpC31_BM02OW1i6Jg7nhWXH4oq4BtyCAT7p6cb6aS-hsl2-H2Zsof" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="453" data-original-width="737" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6xo3luVuHtTQ1rNCJkMeBHp2pJfzTFczA2TeJhOnIzBHHvGbH3e1e6KEEpZjmzIC4-z-RvQSg7jlrKLmjkc1Q-zJKJSiNimBGJOd2J-iKh1f7-HAB3Wa8fAwa4BCCzLoktqKzUw6dpC31_BM02OW1i6Jg7nhWXH4oq4BtyCAT7p6cb6aS-hsl2-H2Zsof=w581-h358" width="581" /></a></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Moore Cemetery, 2 miles west of Hoxie, near Black Rock<br /><a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Moore+Cemetery/@36.0937642,-90.6483666,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x87d688846fdb4c05:0xfc49cb96f37bd4da!8m2!3d36.0937642!4d-90.6457917!16s%2Fg%2F1tvq4nsg?entry=ttu">Moore Cemetery - Google Maps</a> - probably not it, because it's east of Walnut Ridge</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://roadsidethoughts.com/ar/cemeteries/moore-cemetery-xx-arkansas-profile.htm">Moore Cemetery (Arkansas County, AR) (roadsidethoughts.com)</a> - also not it</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://nlmatthews.com/moore.htm">Moore Cemetery (nlmatthews.com)</a><br /><a href="https://www.cityofblackrock.com/">City of Black Rock</a> <br /><a href="https://www.fsicoop.com/about-us">About Us | Farm Service, Inc. in Walnut Ridge, AR (fsicoop.com)</a> Farm Service founded by Joe Belk</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.hmdb.org/map.asp?markers=179903,208763,208768,208769,208771,208770,208775,208778,208772">Doniphan Historical Marker (moved from the Kittrell House)</a> <br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Then on to bird watching</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeFmDFef1jTroPQRAEZrxA7F3ve4MkA7QC_jV9st0OjixYXC42nGKpOZwJ1QDd_wsSTLzYT_6XRCUAk9af4quXzZZ653jP3y0Ml2YJSF4WTNLucE1s1dcs7YsxdquwO1A7-XYpXWhPKQxdZJhOL9XO4K1BqeGTvP-90dDWM9d5BJCosJxPUd0BhAPeHh8s" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="712" data-original-width="1398" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgeFmDFef1jTroPQRAEZrxA7F3ve4MkA7QC_jV9st0OjixYXC42nGKpOZwJ1QDd_wsSTLzYT_6XRCUAk9af4quXzZZ653jP3y0Ml2YJSF4WTNLucE1s1dcs7YsxdquwO1A7-XYpXWhPKQxdZJhOL9XO4K1BqeGTvP-90dDWM9d5BJCosJxPUd0BhAPeHh8s=w428-h218" width="428" /></a></div></div><br /><br /><p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-64258037754892055322023-11-18T14:36:00.000-08:002023-11-18T14:37:14.448-08:00Barnabas Pope<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ5TGX4FRaaImQU013jXIoG83CgnIeaUiHPE7VdRTq8TLBNq6PvntuzqCqI8I6hGaDBFZ6efZdjPOMAOHCn8oYPee7nkTG2RptcnIP3LEL-LkrYl0OgwBchpvhq9DVZxBjFE20A0RtwTfS4y3XHi1fjfzRGEvYedtAde1Odb3Jw9c6tonTJ1HS0lVGUiRG/s3997/Ernest%20to%20Barnabas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1293" data-original-width="3997" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ5TGX4FRaaImQU013jXIoG83CgnIeaUiHPE7VdRTq8TLBNq6PvntuzqCqI8I6hGaDBFZ6efZdjPOMAOHCn8oYPee7nkTG2RptcnIP3LEL-LkrYl0OgwBchpvhq9DVZxBjFE20A0RtwTfS4y3XHi1fjfzRGEvYedtAde1Odb3Jw9c6tonTJ1HS0lVGUiRG/w652-h212/Ernest%20to%20Barnabas.jpg" width="652" /></a></div>This little section of my ancestry is a companion to The Unfinished Podcast. It's the first chapter after the end of reading of the book, "The Unfinished Symphony". The main characters in that story are Barnabas and Aletha, who lived during the 19th century. Their great-grandson is my grandfather, on the far left of this picture. It gets to be tough to keep track of all the "greats" so provided this visual aid.<p></p><p><a href="https://jwolforth.podbean.com/">The Unfinished Podcast | a podcast by jwolforth (podbean.com)</a></p><p><br /></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-24645424174418250692023-08-13T17:28:00.001-07:002023-08-13T17:28:13.624-07:00Computers Are Easy<p> Computers are easy, there are icons, you don’t need to know
all the technical terms.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They are not easy. I’m a writer. I know how to type. I tried
to move some text, like everyone said I could, and now it’s gone. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s on the clipboard, look for the clipboard icon. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why can’t I just look for the clipboard itself. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, you can’t see the clipboard, but, that doesn't matter.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of course it matters. We are literally talking about
something existing. That’s what matter is. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, this is more like energy. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Okay, great, whatever, show me the icon. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(shows icon)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That’s two rectangles and a little scribble I can barely see
on top of one of them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, it’s the clipboard icon, now you know. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, now it’s easy? Because I know what some nerd in
California drew on his lunch break one day, and now I know the name of it.
Where is my missing text? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At one point it was on the clipboard. You probably used “cut”,
right? I hope you didn’t do “delete”. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I learned the delete lesson early, so no. Yes, someone said,
“cut and paste” is cool. So I tried that. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And what happened? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I cut and it was gone and I haven’t seen it since. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(opens mouth)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do not tell me it was on the clipboard. You know that’s
exactly where you started, right? If you say it was on the clipboard, then you
are proving to me that you have so far told me nothing. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Okay, what else have you done. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This was two days ago. I turned off the computer. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Um, exactly how did you turn off the computer? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Really? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, there’s sleep mode, there’s restart, there’s
Ctrl-Alt-Delete then sign-out or switch user, there’s…<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Stop. At what point are you going to say computers might not
be easy?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fine. Let’s say someone helps you maintain the computer,
turns it on and off for you, selects the software, installs it, and makes sure
you are protected from viruses. They get you to your thing that you are writing
when you want. Where are your files saved by the way? Never mind.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, I need a computer expert in my house?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Or use help.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You’ve never tried that have you?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No, I learned from others mostly, as computers changed, I
read the occasional article on what’s new.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yeah, so I hit “help” yesterday, watched a video, and it
showed me how to cut and paste in Microsoft Word. There were a bunch of words
like “app” that I wasn’t sure about. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Uh-huh. And that didn’t help? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I don’t have Microsoft Word. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Oh.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But, cut, copy, and paste are universal. It comes from
literally cutting paper with scissors and pasting back together. The icon for
paste used to be a bottle of paste. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How does that help me? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">(nothing)<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Have you heard the joke about the kid who asked why the save
icon is a vending machine? <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Yeah. I don’t like jokes about nerds. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s not a joke. It’s bad graphic design. It’s like using
terms from the American South before 1863 in regular speech or naming your
sports team with a racial slur. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Okay, no need to get political. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not the analogy I was going for. Language isn’t easy. Which
is why computers aren’t easy. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, if you just understand that there is temporary memory
and permanent memory, then you can imagine your text being in that temporary
place for a minute, while you move to the next window where you want it, then
you paste it, and then save it to the hard drive, to make it permanent, then,
oh. Okay.<o:p></o:p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-39014757607048362502023-08-11T19:58:00.000-07:002023-08-11T19:58:10.920-07:00Garbage and Worship<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO6FbyzatnxfLT22HEmOL8WDImaBW99znGJjxCQsp9rmcWoSvpLEux8sLy9kPpb7eOqoNwLrxB7en6-IQgP1PhlB_RkTHZ0IPbJaNLYJUfP9Xr7HFAKv3lch1rZTvAI7RT3lVe7uQDeK9jT6vmRKaIZfuG1_SDrjyr8xqsYyNl-Erky1XvfwFEUEnPL0FB/s960/Cant%20hate%20and%20be%20Christian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO6FbyzatnxfLT22HEmOL8WDImaBW99znGJjxCQsp9rmcWoSvpLEux8sLy9kPpb7eOqoNwLrxB7en6-IQgP1PhlB_RkTHZ0IPbJaNLYJUfP9Xr7HFAKv3lch1rZTvAI7RT3lVe7uQDeK9jT6vmRKaIZfuG1_SDrjyr8xqsYyNl-Erky1XvfwFEUEnPL0FB/s320/Cant%20hate%20and%20be%20Christian.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This was posted on an atheist facebook that I'm a member of. It's private, so you might not have seen it. They didn't if it was in a church, or where they found it. That doesn't really matter. It's the kind of thing that people who say "God is energy" or "God is love" say. It's better than saying that God hates all the same people you hate, so I don't want to critique it too harshly. But, this is my blog. I say things here that I might not say in polite company. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Someone else commented that "at that point you see the Divine in yourself and others. Not really worship. Just acknowledgment." Good point. Let's set aside what "worship" means, or give it your most generous interpretation of something kind and generous. I agreed with the comment, adding that when you learn to love the stranger, even the enemy, you see that religion doesn't support that. If you want to hang on to your religion, you need to distance yourself by creating an other, some other version of religion that isn't the one you are trying to articulate.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Some go even further, saying they are spiritual, but not religious. That even has an acronym, SPNR. In all cases, these are stepping stones. They are a recognition that there are aspects of religion, or religions, or the origins of your religion, that need to be jettisoned. There is no right way to leave religion, or as it's sometimes called, "deconstruct", but for me, the above is preferrable to being angry at the lies, manipulation, history of abuse, and anything else someone might experience or find out. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'm still working this out. If someone has something that caused anger, I can't say to not have that feeling. The meme here though, is an opening. It's a chance to dig into what it's talking about. It's an admission that somewhere, some church person has treated people like garbage. Other comments noted that God killed almost everyone in a flood and recommended stoning as a cure for problems. So, there's that. Maybe, take a highlighter to a Bible and start crossing the parts that encourages treating people terribly. </div><br /><p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-13301490790787345112023-06-30T05:11:00.003-07:002023-06-30T05:13:31.011-07:00Why Philosophy Matters - History<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal">I hope I don’t lose too many with that heading. I promise
not to list a bunch of dates and Greek names. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Philosophy is part of science. I’ll get to more on that
soon. Long before the word “science” was coined, there were the “Natural
Philosophers” in ancient Greece. That’s a good place to start for this blog
series which is about the line between and the gray areas around philosophy and
science. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Natural Philosophers</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Those ancient Greeks were philosophizing about what things
are. They didn’t know about quantum physics or laws of motion and likewise,
much of what they concluded was wrong. We can give them a pass because they
were doing something new. They are set apart from earlier attempts to answer the
question “why” because they didn’t resort to wild claims about supernatural
forces or beings that lived up on inaccessible mountains. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Shamans</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For thousands of years before them, there were the Shamans. Sorry,
I said Greece was the place to start, but I need to discuss what that “starting
place” grew out of. “Shaman” is just one title of this group that I’ll refer to
later. They, like the Natural Philosophers, also used methods of
experimentation and gathering of data but I’m distinguishing them because they
would also claim cosmic origins of their knowledge or include supernatural
explanations of their methods. I’m not trying to lessen their importance.
Without them most of us might not be here. As tribes of humans migrated around
the globe, to new climates and new ecosystems, they needed to learn. And they did,
quickly. If they hadn’t, they would have had a lot of trouble surviving. So, we
are the descendants of those who were successful. That’s just basic Darwinian
logic, but amazing, nonetheless.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They would find the healing herbs and learn to read the movement
of the winds and the waters. The reasons the Shamans spoke of sprites and
mystical explanations varied. It might have been for job security, to make it
look mysterious so others would think it required special powers to learn. In
other cases, it might have been a way to help others remember their lessons, or
a way to pass them on. A story or a dance is easier to remember than a formula.
The older the archaeology, the less we know about their thinking. <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/659/">Brú na Bóinne - Archaeological
Ensemble of the Bend of the Boyne - UNESCO World Heritage Centre</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If you go back in history further, something motivated us to
come together in groups of a few hundred, and to split off into smaller groups when
they grew larger than that. The size was conducive to some of them leaving for
days at a time to hunt, or to having some who could protect the young and
protect the mothers while they were vulnerable, and to help those who were sick
or hurt. Maybe as a lucky accident, or maybe by design, it allowed for
exploration and for figuring out how to make an arrowhead, how to corral a
mastodon, or just to stare up at the stars because they might tell them
something. Keeping the groups smaller allowed for social control of liars,
thieves, and freeloaders.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are still Shamans on the Earth today <a href="https://floweringmountain.com/">Home - Flowering Mountain</a>. Some
literally call themselves that. I don’t have a list of skills or abilities that
qualify one for the job. A modern version of a Shaman could be someone who
passes on oral traditions, or someone who forages for food or material to
create tools or works of art. It could include musicians or healers of any type.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The Grateful Dead</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A friend of mine followed a band called The Grateful Dead
one summer while I was in college <a href="https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-electric-kool-aid-acid-test-by-tom-wolfe/247045/item/10426792/?mkwid=%7cdc&pcrid=76691100269129&pkw=&pmt=be&slid=&product=10426792&plc=&pgrid=1227055229833426&ptaid=pla-4580290575586169&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping+%7c+NEW+condition+books&utm_term=&utm_content=%7cdc%7cpcrid%7c76691100269129%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7cbe%7cproduct%7c10426792%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c1227055229833426%7cptaid%7cpla-4580290575586169%7c&msclkid=d5e01eaa2ed2152d50ff7a34105e4daa#idiq=10426792&edition=5000100">The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test book by Tom Wolfe (thriftbooks.com)</a>. When she
told her story, she said, “Gerry Garcia is God.” Through experiences like hers
we recreate ancient discoveries. With enough people, and the right music, and
your own ability to let ourselves go with that flow, we can feel like it’s not us
that is doing the dancing, but something else, something larger than just ourselves.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some of my friends thought that was a little weird, calling
a guitarist a god. We have methods now to figure out if such claims are true.
I’m sure my friend wasn’t the first to propose Gerry’s divinity, nor were my
other friends the first to be skeptical. In similar ways, young people discover
the wonders of nature through curiosity and experimenting. It can be a fine
line between encouraging that creativity and suppressing it in the name of
safety.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A good teacher today not only shows children how to pass a
science test but encourages them to discover science on their own. Kids also
recreate some of the not-so-scientific phases of our past, like “might makes
right”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be good for children to
develop the skills of sorting out reality before they start making decisions
about how to spend their summers. But I’m getting ahead of the discussion here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The Axial Age</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Moving on, a big leap in the transition from those ancient
days in Greece, and everywhere else, into the modern era, took place in the
last millennium BCE. Major philosophies and theisms coalesced, blossomed, and
were codified into the scriptures and words and common sense that still
survives in the modern world. We, the whole planet, are still discussing
exactly how “common” common sense is and what we should keep or throw away, but
I’ll get to that later. I bring it up because this period is significant enough
to be named. It was The Axial Age, and we can trace worldviews and current colloquial
sayings back to it. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Civilizations had grown and fallen before that, and we
should be careful, and not discount them. A simple distinction, my opinion,
between the ones before this time and now, would be that the earlier
civilizations emphasized “might makes right” over reflection on what “is”
right. The familiar names from the Axial Age include Confucius, Zoroaster, and
Siddhartha Gautama aka the Buddha <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc7_VyVXDLs">(293) Documentary - The
Buddha - PBS Documentary (Narrated by Richard Gere) - YouTube</a>. Judaism has
much deeper roots, but the Torah that has been handed down to us came together
after they were released from captivity by the Babylonians. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">The Golden Rules</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Common ideas, like how to put boundaries on the right of
self-defense, variations on the Golden Rule, how to maintain larger populations
and divide work, came from all these traditions. The phrasing varies, <a href="https://winter60.blogspot.com/2018/12/atheism-for-religious-andor-spiritual-4.html">but the ideas are the same</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Many words have been spilled over the Axial Age. There is no
need for me to regurgitate them here. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It is important to note that questions about the nature of
faith and arguments about what gods are did not develop until hundreds of years
later. This was still a time of cultures being enmeshed with their spiritual
histories and governments making war because of beliefs. The philosophy behind
these questions became necessary when faith, politics, work, family, and other
parts of life were separated into the silos that most of us are familiar with
now. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Order</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To complete our journey from the past to recent events, I’ll
quickly cover three types of societal order, Nomological, Normative, and Narrative. See an excerpt from: <a href="https://youtu.be/mRh4lwtgfVE?t=785">John </a><a href="https://youtu.be/mRh4lwtgfVE?t=785">Vervaeke Episode 19: Augustine and Aquinas. </a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Nomological order can be traced back to the Shamans, up to
the foundational assumptions of science. It says there are laws that just are.
The methods of science allow for those laws to be questioned. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Normative order has codes to designate what is good, or what
is permissible, or not. They may or may not be logical. Moral codes are based
on some natural laws, something demonstrable. Purity codes might claim some
logic, but they are based on tradition. See an excerpt from: <a href="https://youtu.be/rpndwf45nao?t=2407">Vervaeke Episode 14 Cynics.</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A Narrative order is a story that presents a point of view.
It’s a path to be followed with a promise of some future end. The Catholic
story is a good example. Luther came along and said their narrative is wrong,
that salvation is arbitrary.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: large;">Now</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That brings up to the 16<sup>th</sup> century. Soon after Martin
Luther made his mark on history, Galileo made his bold claims about the
planets. Then came Newton. His formulas got us to the moon. The place where science
is trying to figure out what is going on with gravity and quantum mechanics,
and non-scientists are trying to figure out what that means to them is where
this blog series heads next. If you’re still with me, thank you.<o:p></o:p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-74702896000575102762023-06-16T19:40:00.003-07:002023-06-16T19:40:38.269-07:00Why Philosophy Matters - Transcendence<p> Where to Start? That is not meant to be a philosophical
question. When searching for roots, tracing down from the plant, you must ask
how from the main root do I want to go? Roots eventually become tiny fibers
that are indiscernible from the earth itself. Rather than starting at a place
or time, I will begin with “Transcendence”.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a discussion on a religious podcast in 2023, an agnostic
mentioned a transcendent experience they once had. The religious host asked
him, “transcended from what, or into what, and you said you were grateful for
it, grateful to whom?” The agnostic, Bart Campolo <a href="https://humanizemepodcast.com/">Humanize Me – Home of the Humanize Me
podcast, hosted by Bart Campolo</a>, had also stated he never has intentions to
convince someone that his experience is better than anyone else’s. Transcendent
experiences are a human occurrence. They can happen at any gathering. Music can
help them come about, and maybe dancing. Practices to help create them include refraining
from eating or sleeping. A quicker path can be found by taking drugs. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bart defined transcendence as an experience where you are
overwhelmed by the presence of some “invisible other”. They discuss what or who
that other is, but Bart doesn’t need to. He is defining the experience as
something anyone from any culture could experience. An examination of history
and literature backs that up. Unfortunately, something that unites all of humanity
has often been used to divide us. Tribes, and now nations give names to the “other”.
The transcendent experience gets converted into dogma, liturgy, rituals, and codes
to live by. The ineffable experience gets turned into a belief. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Studies that have talked with people who have had these
experiences find a person might have beliefs about how or why such supernatural
events occur, or they might not. They might want to believe things that others tell
them they should believe, or they might not. They may have been surrounded by
believers, or not. It is understandable that someone who had an overwhelming
experience would want to have explanations. The experience itself might have
included images or sounds from a tradition or history, or a family member. It
may not seem like a belief to the person who experienced it, it may seem like
logical conclusions made from the evidence seen, heard, or felt.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The attachment of whatever was felt to something tangible
doesn’t have to be supernatural. If music inspires, then the attachment could
be the musician, or to the one who wrote the lyrics, or something more generic
like the type of music. It could be the ones attending the event too, something
that might be closer to the truth, that the feeling of being with people who
care about you and are doing the same things is really the source of the feeling
of an “other”. Not an other that isn’t there, but something that is greater
than the sum of all the parts.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">https://youtu.be/d0A_hA5OQSs<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In answer to the questions posed by Eric Huffman, the
religious person in the podcast, it is an experience that has a feeling of
going from one place to another, although it doesn’t require physically going
anywhere. The “from” is the experience of day to day living, the regular
routine, whatever it is that has become or has been learned to be “normal”. The
“into” can be a combination of things. It might be insights into ways of living
that will increase happiness. It might be a feeling of connections, to a person
or place, or the whole universe. It might include a vision. Words, voices, or
stories might come into your head.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The “grateful to whom” part gets complicated. It has been a
philosophical question for most of human history and might remain one. When
something so profound happens, it’s natural to want to give thanks for it. It’s
not illogical to think that a sudden flush of knowledge and insight must have a
source, something other than our own brains. But transcendence doesn’t come
with evidence that can be shown, or demonstrated, or even easily replicated. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For Bart, there is no “who” that caused this. Something
happened in the first generation of stars in the universe, cooking the few
elements available into more, exploding, and spreading them around to the
galaxies and solar systems that we see today. At this point in the podcast,
Justin Bryerly jumped in and asked something about why matter went to all that
trouble? It’s hard for me to grasp exactly where a question like that comes
from. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The narrative of human origins from the Big Bang to now is
13.7 billion years long. If you prefer a narrative that is only a few pages, I
can see how it would be hard to think of these as in the same category. But in
a very real sense, they are. Grasping that, I believe, is essential to our
survival. In the rest of the series, I hope to find ways to demonstrate that and
consider how all of us can accept the variations in the interpretations of transcendence
and find the commonalities. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">This entry might need some polish, but I wanted to get out there before moving on.</p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-53105374465530810342023-06-10T17:24:00.007-07:002023-06-10T17:24:55.992-07:00Why Philosophy Matters - Introduction<p> <span style="font-size: medium;">Welcome to another blog series. Sometimes, I don’t complete
the series that I start, but in all cases, something along the way is worth it.
Thanks for reading this far. To keep this from being 100,000 words, I will need
to refer to other existing discussions, like the title itself. Bigger thinkers
than me have questioned the usefulness of philosophy in an age of science.
People like Lawrence Krauss and E.O. Wilson. I won’t recreate their arguments here
and may not specifically reference them as I address their concerns. It’s a big
question. I’m not out to win the debate.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Succinctly, for me, it matters because in this age of
science, we have people with uniforms, authorized by their government, to cut
off the breath of life of another, in public, until they are dead. This is
debated. In some countries, if you try to debate it, you will join the dead. In
industrialized democracies, you still need lawyers and new legal precedents to
win the case that such actions are wrong. That is a debate I am out to win. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Very recently, I purchased a beverage, legally, publicly,
that was made by a company owned by women. The beverage contained some THC. A
half of a lifetime ago, there were very few companies owned by women, and
buying, selling, and imbibing THC was illegal. Because of that, I lived outside
the law for a couple decades, risking a felony offense almost every day. I had
a lot of time to think about what is moral and right. For this one example, the
state I live in finally caught up to me.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">When a rich and powerful person claims they can act in ways
that others can’t, that is an expression of a philosophy. It’s a statement that
human nature and some imagined natural laws justify oppressing others, taking
what isn’t theirs, and invading others bodily autonomy. To me, it shows that
powerful person did not spend much time reflecting on what it is to be human
and how we develop society to match natural laws, or if there are any. It shows
that anyone can jumble words and have them appear to have a basis in logic and
reason. I want to talk about how we can examine if those words are reasonable.</span><o:p></o:p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-30221808364788877842023-06-06T19:02:00.000-07:002023-06-06T19:02:12.035-07:00What I Want You to Know<p> <a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/4302220/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Im-gonna-make-a-change-for-once-in-my-life" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; font-family: Programme, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">I'm gonna make a change</span></a></p><div class="Lyrics__Container-sc-1ynbvzw-5 Dzxov" data-lyrics-container="true" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Programme, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; grid-column: left-start / left-end; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 1.5rem 1.5rem 0px;"><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/4302220/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Im-gonna-make-a-change-for-once-in-my-life" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">For once in my life</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/8656802/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Its-gonna-feel-real-good-gonna-make-a-difference-gonna-make-it-right" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">It's gonna feel real good<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Gonna make a difference<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Gonna make it right</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/3026638/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/As-i-turn-up-the-collar-on-my-favorite-winter-coat-this-wind-is-blowin-my-mind" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">As I turn up the collar on my favorite winter coat<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />This wind is blowin' my mind</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/14836090/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/I-see-the-kids-in-the-street-with-not-enough-to-eat-who-am-i-to-be-blind-pretending-not-to-see-their-needs" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">I see the kids in the street, with not enough to eat<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Who am I to be blind, pretending not to see their needs</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/3472728/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/A-summers-disregard" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">A summer's disregard,</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span> <a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/1642353/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/A-broken-bottle-top" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">a broken bottle top</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/8656784/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/And-one-mans-soul-they-follow-each-other-on-the-wind-ya-know-cause-they-got-nowhere-to-go-thats-why-i-want-you-to-know" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">And one man's soul<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />They follow each other on the wind, ya know<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />'Cause they got nowhere to go<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />That's why I want you to know</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />[Chorus]<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/3178146/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Im-starting-with-the-man-in-the-mirror-im-asking-him-to-change-his-ways-and-no-message-could-have-been-any-clearer-if-you-wanna-make-the-world-a-better-place-take-a-look-at-yourself-and-then-make-a-change" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">I'm starting with the man in the mirror<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I'm asking him to change his ways<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />And no message could have been any clearer<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />If you wanna make the world a better place<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Take a look at yourself and then make a change</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Na-na-na na-na-na nana-nana<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />[Verse 2]<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/1041207/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Ive-been-a-victim-of-a-selfish-kinda-love-its-time-that-i-realize-there-are-some-with-no-home-not-a-nickel-to-loan-could-it-be-really-me-pretending-that-theyre-not-alone" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">I've been a victim of a selfish kinda love<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />It's time that I realize<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />There are some with no home<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Not a nickel to loan<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Could it be really me pretending that they're not alone?</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/105726/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/A-willow-deeply-scarred-somebodys-broken-heart-and-a-washed-out-dream" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">A willow deeply scarred, somebody's broken heart<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />And a washed-out dream</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/1041212/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/They-follow-the-pattern-of-the-wind-ya-see-cause-they-got-no-place-to-be-thats-why-im-starting-with-me" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">They follow the pattern of the wind, ya see<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />'Cause they got no place to be<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />That's why I'm starting with me</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span></div><div class="RightSidebar__Container-pajcl2-0 jOFKJt" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Programme, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; grid-column: auto / right-end; justify-self: right; margin: 0px; min-width: 300px; padding: 0px;"><div class="SidebarAd__Container-sc-1cw85h6-0 OkYJy" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 612px; margin: 0px; max-height: 50%; min-height: calc(600px + 0.75rem); padding: 0.75rem 0px 0px; width: 300px;"><div class="SidebarAd__StickyContainer-sc-1cw85h6-1 bfJlEN" height="600" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: sticky; top: calc(0px + 3rem + 0px + 0.75rem);" width="300"><div class="DfpAd__Container-sc-1tnbv7f-0 kiNXoS" style="-webkit-box-align: center; -webkit-box-pack: center; align-items: center; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; justify-content: center; line-height: 0; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 300px;"><div data-google-query-id="CMy5m_eHsP8CFcU_AQodirwHSg" id="div-gpt-ad-desktop_song_lyrics_sidebar-desktop_song_lyrics_sidebar-1" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><iframe aria-label="Advertisement" data-google-container-id="5" data-is-safeframe="true" data-load-complete="true" frameborder="0" height="250" id="google_ads_iframe_/342026871/desktop_song_lyrics_inread_0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" name="" role="region" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" scrolling="no" src="https://8c0d50697b74c4b6691425493c972187.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html" style="border-style: initial; border-width: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: white; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom;" tabindex="0" title="3rd party ad content" width="300"></iframe></div></div></div></div></div><div class="Lyrics__Container-sc-1ynbvzw-5 Dzxov" data-lyrics-container="true" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Programme, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; grid-column: left-start / left-end; margin: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 1.5rem 1.5rem 0px;">[Chorus]<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/3178146/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Im-starting-with-the-man-in-the-mirror-im-asking-him-to-change-his-ways-and-no-message-could-have-been-any-clearer-if-you-wanna-make-the-world-a-better-place-take-a-look-at-yourself-and-then-make-a-change" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">I'm starting with the man in the mirror (Who?)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I'm asking him to change his ways (Who?)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />And no message could have been any clearer<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />If you wanna make the world a better place<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Take a look at yourself and then make a change<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I'm starting with the man in the mirror (Who?)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I'm asking him to change his ways (Who?)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />And no message could have been any clearer<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />If you wanna make the world a better place<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Take a look at yourself and then make that change<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I'm starting with the man in the mirror (Man in the mirror, oh yeah)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />I'm asking him to change his ways (Change his ways)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />(Come on, change)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />And no message could have been any clearer</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />[Bridge]<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />If you wanna make the world a better place<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/4799757/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Take-a-look-at-yourself-and-then-make-the-change" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">Take a look at yourself and then make the change</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/4722858/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/You-gotta-get-it-right-while-you-got-the-time" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">You gotta get it right, while you got the time</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/128016/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Cause-when-you-close-your-heart-you-cant-then-you-close-your-mind-close-your-your-mind" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">'Cause when you close your heart (You can't)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Then you close your mind (Close your, your mind!)</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />[Chorus]<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><a class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__ClickTarget-sc-110r0d9-0 cehZkS" href="https://genius.com/3178146/Michael-jackson-man-in-the-mirror/Im-starting-with-the-man-in-the-mirror-im-asking-him-to-change-his-ways-and-no-message-could-have-been-any-clearer-if-you-wanna-make-the-world-a-better-place-take-a-look-at-yourself-and-then-make-a-change" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #7d8fe8; margin: 0px; padding: calc((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) 0px; position: relative; scroll-margin: calc(max(10vw, 0px) + 3rem + 0px + 1.5em); text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="ReferentFragmentdesktop__Highlight-sc-110r0d9-1 jAzSMw" style="background-color: #e9e9e9; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; margin: 0px; padding: calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.75px) 0px calc((((1.5em - 1.125rem) / 2) - 0.0625rem) - 0.25px);">(That man, that man) I'm starting with the man in the mirror<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />(That man)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />(Ooh!)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />(That man, that man) I'm asking him to change his ways<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />(That man, the man)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />(Change his ways, ooh!)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />And no message could have been any clearer<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />If you want to make the world a better place<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Take a look at yourself and then make that<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />(Take a look at yourself and then make that)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Change!</span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; height: 0px; margin: 0px; opacity: 0; padding: 0px; pointer-events: none; position: absolute; width: 0px; z-index: -1;" tabindex="0"></span></span><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></div><div class="RightSidebar__Container-pajcl2-0 jOFKJt" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Programme, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; grid-column: auto / right-end; justify-self: right; margin: 0px; min-width: 300px; padding: 0px;"><div class="SidebarAd__Container-sc-1cw85h6-0 cFlBmm" style="-webkit-box-align: center; align-items: center; 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line-height: 0; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 540px;"></div></div>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-46985283210387499572023-04-30T08:21:00.004-07:002023-05-01T14:31:49.306-07:00Where meaning making happens<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal">I discovered a new author that I hope to study further in the
near future. He crosses many of the disciplines I am interested in and applies
them to the issues I care about, like polarization of views and how it affects
us daily, and the changing face of religion. There are some time stamps for the
parts I cover here. <o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hfzde3NiE-s" width="320" youtube-src-id="hfzde3NiE-s"></iframe></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This interview begins with many terms. As it progresses, they
get sorted out. About halfway through they apply the ideas to the polarization
happening today. It’s a battle of nostalgia vs utopia. Each is a vision of
perfection. One looks back at how far we’ve fallen and the other is claiming
some wondrous world is just around the corner. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">28:00 The question is posed, how do we square this human
desire for perfection, our need for transcendence, with all the side effects
that come with it. The answer, which he then elaborates on, is that we need to
reconfigure transcendence. People will continue to have visions of something
larger than us, either hallucinated or extrapolated. And we will want to bring them
into reality. This is the well-studied idea of “peak experiences”. People can have
them at church, or a Grateful Dead concert.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">29:32 We need to stop thinking of these as perfection, as
something to complete. Instead, see them as a process of optimization. In our
normal existence, we are doing this already, striving to fit ourselves into
whatever reality is throwing at us. We might see that in a context of maximizing
some value, but we don’t always reach those goals.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The idea that we can move beyond who we are is how transcendence
has been traditionally viewed, but in the last couple of centuries we have begun
to understand how we came to be what we are. The Theory of Evolution has
provided a framework for seeing ourselves as part of a long process. This differs
from transcendence in that it is not a story of a quest for a final form. It’s an
impersonal story of natural processes, not something that has desires or goals.
It is continual change.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The sacred connection to the universe is continual change. Reality
in-exhaustively changes, and life evolves to fit it. Vervaeke quotes Ursula
Goodenough (citation needed), You’re constantly trying to transcend into
reality as it constantly discloses unexpected and unpredicted possibilities. When
we connect to that complexity, we have perpetual self-transcendence.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">32:00 How does this relate to today, and our problems with
democracy in America? There is no final answer to the “best” political system.
Democracy should enable us to adapt. The next proposal, the next President, the
next removal by an ethics committee will not solve our problems. We have a
Right that emphasizes a call to personal responsibility and a Left that
emphasizes how we’re subject to fate. What we need is an understanding that the
two need each other. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We are bound to our finitude and capable of transcendence.
If we only pursue transcendence, we get hubris and inflation. If we only see finitude,
we get servitude, despair, and tragedy. We can acknowledge both and focus on
one while allowing those who see the world differently to remind us of the other
perspective. This is where meaning making develops. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We’ve lost shared meaning and even the idea that those who
see the world differently than us can even have shared meaning. With that, we
lost the ability to hear each other. We try to replace it with proposals for
resolving the tension between the worldviews. There is no resolution in the
reality of constant change. The tension is where meaning is created. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m still researching “Opponent Processing Theory”. I think
it started in biology but is finding applications in other systems. <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/opponent-process-theory.html">https://www.simplypsychology.org/opponent-process-theory.html</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Here, it's applied to addiction. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422100095X">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422100095X</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-14237213912395733152023-04-22T10:28:00.007-07:002023-04-23T09:52:58.238-07:00I coulda been a millionaire<p>Mike Lindell offered five million dollars to anyone that could prove that the data he had was not from the 2020 election. He went on to say, the data proved China had helped to steal the election from Donald Trump. This is conspiracy theory slight of hand. It takes a little bit of specialized knowledge to figure out what he did, but someone did and he is in the process of getting the courts to award him the money. Just to make it interesting, the data security specialist that did it is a conservative. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgVZxj-EUKd4quWKxY4IriStzOz_3TEJUi4TzznTi-LS7wfS3R0xahl48N2ehAtJlCtIVq4JihCsn6l4pobPLLMyRKnUntyHN1y3tSPYzirwShczx4A_32dSYJKbCaZ4NEgYUDu_LpLH2XC-cjcfvj9bUY9UgsrP4pASiZq5dR4NG4I2NfSYC--5vvZ3g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="158" data-original-width="691" height="102" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgVZxj-EUKd4quWKxY4IriStzOz_3TEJUi4TzznTi-LS7wfS3R0xahl48N2ehAtJlCtIVq4JihCsn6l4pobPLLMyRKnUntyHN1y3tSPYzirwShczx4A_32dSYJKbCaZ4NEgYUDu_LpLH2XC-cjcfvj9bUY9UgsrP4pASiZq5dR4NG4I2NfSYC--5vvZ3g=w448-h102" width="448" /></a></div><br />Above is from the rules of the challenge. This was obtained by the Washington Post. <p></p><p>I'll pull some quotes from the Post article, but if you can get to it, here's the story</p><p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/04/20/mike-lindell-prove-wrong-contest/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/04/20/mike-lindell-prove-wrong-contest/</a></p><p>It really didn't take that much special knowledge. First, you had to go to the conference that Lindell put on to get the "kit" that he challenged anyone to review. Then, you need to understand what was in it. </p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;"></span></p><blockquote>The data he planned to reveal, he said, were “packet captures” that would demonstrate Chinese government interference. Packet captures, or “pcaps,” are a specific file format that is an industry standard for archiving internet traffic.</blockquote><p></p><p>I know what those are, but I would have needed a little more knowledge to take the next step. When I first heard about someone winning this challenge, I wondered why it took as long as it did. The reason for that is probably the wording of the challenge. Most people who were there and understood it, probably noticed the slight of hand, and didn't even look at the data. Only one person went through the arbitration process.</p><p>All Lindell needed to do was put any random data from the 2020 election in there. Then it would be true that he had that data. No one could win the challenge, and he could have gone on to use that as proof that he is right about China's involvement. </p><p>This is how conspiracy theories work; Get someone to argue against you, claim something minor that is true, get them to say the minor claim is true, go back to saying your bigger claim is true and keep talking really fast, throwing in new claims and bad logic until everyone gives up even trying to argue with you. Anyone witnessing that who wants to believe your theory but doesn't want to do the work of thinking about it, is now on board. </p><p>That's when they'll tell you to "do your own research" even though they have not. The 4 hour video of Mike Lindell does not count as research, BTW. Or, they'll tell you not to listen to the experts, like the news or the courts or the government, while also claiming to be experts on the issue. </p><p>The contest winner, Robert Zeidman, calls himself a "moderate conservative" and voted for Trump twice. At the arbitration hearing where he was awarded the prize, he said, </p><p><span style="color: #2a2a2a; font-family: georgia, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 20px;"></span></p><blockquote>Zeidman testified that he wanted the money and wanted to push back against stolen-election claims. “Mr. Lindell has a lot of followers,” Zeidman said. “He’s making a lot of statements to people that I know, people that are good friends of mine, people that are influential. And they are claiming that he has the data that shows that this election was stolen.”</blockquote><p></p><p>What was in the data Lindell provided? A flowchart of how elections work, a list of IP addresses, and some other files that appeared to be random data. No packets, Chinese or otherwise. I can only imagine the series of conversations that led to this blunder. I imagine Lindell was advised on how to setup the challenge so he could not lose, but somewhere along the line, the advice was bad, or it was horribly executed. Having worked on a few computer projects in my life, I've seen what happens when managers think they know better than their technicians. </p><p>Lindell's response is in the record now, and it's the next step of the conspiracy theorist. He says he actually has the data, but he can't show it to you. It would put him in danger if he did. This is exactly what those who want to believe him want to hear, that he is the real victim, that there are forces out there that are trying take away our rights, and silence our voices, and even to kill us. And Mike knows who they are. But it's too dangerous for him to show you. </p><div class="article-body" data-qa="article-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Franklin, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wpds-colors-gray40); font-family: var(--wpds-fonts-body); font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: var(--wpds-lineHeights-160); margin: 0px; padding-bottom: var(--wpds-space-150);"></p></div><blockquote><div class="article-body" data-qa="article-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Franklin, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wpds-colors-gray40); font-family: var(--wpds-fonts-body); font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: var(--wpds-lineHeights-160); margin: 0px; padding-bottom: var(--wpds-space-150);">Lindell testified at arbitration that he did not share what he had described as his key data to support the foreign intrusion claim during the conference. He held off, he said, after a man seeking a selfie poked him in the side as the symposium was nearing an end — an act that Lindell called an assault and said he took as a signal the government might tamper with his central information if he made it public.</p><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wpds-colors-gray40); font-family: var(--wpds-fonts-body); font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: var(--wpds-lineHeights-160); margin: 0px; padding-bottom: var(--wpds-space-150);"><br /></p></div><div class="article-body" data-qa="article-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Franklin, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wpds-colors-gray40); font-family: var(--wpds-fonts-body); font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: var(--wpds-lineHeights-160); margin: 0px; padding-bottom: var(--wpds-space-150);">Lindell told the panel that, after the incident, his “red team” advisers warned him against making that information public. “They said it could be a poison pill put in the data and we really shouldn’t release the China stuff,” he said.</p></div></blockquote><div class="article-body" data-qa="article-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Franklin, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><p class="wpds-c-cYdRxM wpds-c-cYdRxM-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy" data-el="text" data-testid="drop-cap-letter" dir="null" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--wpds-colors-gray40); font-family: var(--wpds-fonts-body); font-size: 1.25rem; line-height: var(--wpds-lineHeights-160); margin: 0px; padding-bottom: var(--wpds-space-150);"></p></div><p>Regardless of his lose in this fight, Lindell will no doubt carry on as if he won. What will come next are claims that no one is addressing the China vote tampering, even when offered $5 million. Explaining how no one was ever offered that kind of money to address it, takes a few minutes. Time that most people don't take in this busy world of ten second video clips. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-3384490466687365762023-01-16T09:49:00.002-08:002023-01-16T09:50:35.666-08:00Testing a milepost100 entry<p> </p>
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<p>This week begins the lectionary year A. That cycle begins with Advent, the 4 weeks before Christmas, the anticipation of the coming of Christ. This year, we will view that from the gospel of Matthew. Most of the TV specials and Christmas pageants you are likely to see will draw from Luke as well as Matthew, combining parts of each to build the narrative. It makes for a better and more familiar story. But try reading either Luke or Matthew's first few chapters all the way through and see what you recognize or what you notice is missing.</p>
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<p class="ChptrVerse">Matthew 24:36-44</p>
We're not at the birth story yet in the lectionary. This gospel passage looks a lot like the end of the last lectionary year, giving us Matthew's view of the second coming, including the famous statement of a thief in the night that I recently contrasted to Thessalonians. We'll get to the baby Jesus, but they want us to look here first. I like that they start here. It is likely that the birth narratives were not conceived until after the stories of his life and death. So little is known of his life, it seems unlikely that details would be known of his birth and then chroniclers just ignored him for 29 years. <br>
<br>
As Dominic Crossan puts it, Jesus had his short ministry, then died suddenly and violently. The next thing the community would have done would be to go looking in their traditions to explain this, and lo and behold, they found prophecies of a messiah. Richard Carrier and other historians have different theories; that Paul and others were already drawing on those traditions, those prophecies, and creating spiritual versions of a messiah, then those stories were changed into stories of actual people. That's the very short version of multiple books and speeches.<br>
<br>
Frontline did an excellent introduction to these ideas in a four part series, <a href=" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/">From Jesus to Christ.</a><br>
<br>
What of the words for this week themselves? Is this a more peaceful apocalypse? One that includes everyone and forgives the sinners, as we see in many gospel stories? I don't see it. I see it invoking Noah, a story that ended with the promise of the rainbow that symbolized God never doing that again. It divides the ones who will be taken from the ones who will be left. The "keep awake" line would be a horrible verse to teach a child. I find no comfort in these words.<br>
<br>
For all the good the Christian communities were doing in the 1st and 2nd centuries, this to me is the reason for their failure. I'm sure not all of them accepted this idea of an apocalypse, but enough of them did. For enough of them, the motivation was wrong. Their reason for being good was not sustainable. This left the door open for a return to the gods of retributive justice of the past and gave each generation a god that was easy to dismiss because their rath never materialized. In the 4th century, the power structures that were built on giving aid to neighbors were co-opted by a theology with strict rules and was combined with a military to enforce them. Councils followed, texts were redacted, until we have the Christianity we have.<br>
<br>
If you want more about that history, I recommend Charles Freeman's "A.D. 381".<br>
<br>
<p class="ChptrVerse">Romans 13:11-14</p>
The Book of Romans has some great stuff. Sometimes it sounds like Ecclesiates or Sirach. Other times it sounds like Deutoronomy. I think the overall message of Romans is one of love, despite these occasional turns into rules. The 3 verses preceding these are ones I often turn to as important verses showing the shift in theology going on at this time. They end with, "Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law." <br>
<br>
But this lection is about salvation, and how to get it. We get a few words about just what is righteous, then we're told to "put on the Lord". I'm sure that means "be like Jesus", as the Easy To Read Bible says. Of course, which Jesus, we can't be sure, and if He is also the OT God, that really complicates things.<br>
<br>
The Book of Romans contains an oft used verse about homosexuals in the first chapter, then in chapter 14, we hear the words Pope Francis used when asked about gays, "Who are you to judge someone else's servant?"I don't know for sure if it is my personal bias or not, but I hear a stronger message of forgiveness and caring in these chapters than I do for specific things that you shouldn't do. The examples given are there to support the general sense, and to guide you in learning to think for yourself.<br>
<br>
I'm not bringing up these seeming contradictions just to pile on with the thousands of other places you could find that list contradictions. In this case, the problem may be translation. The last half of the first chapter of Romans, where those verses on homosexuality can be found, may be a rhetorical device, an argument against gentiles presented in a third person voice ("they"), and then responded to with "you" in chapter 2, "you who pass judgment... are condeming yourself". You can research scholars such as Calvin Porter, James Miller, Mark D. Smith or Roy Bowen Ward if you are really into that.<br>
<br>
These and other scholars note the similarity of the language to that of Jewish missionary literature of that time. Something that Paul refuted. So here, he presents it first, so we know just who he is speaking to for the rest of the book. If you lived in that time, you would have recognized that. Living today, and only reading the Bible does not provide that context. In any time, you can look to a speaker's concluding remarks as a restatement of a theme. In Chapter 14, verse 13, Paul says, "Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister."<br>
<br>
So, I'm going with that. We should at least agree that there is a lack of clarity here on what is being said about people's choices.<br>
<br>
<p class="ChptrVerse">Isaiah 2:1-5</p>
The end of the Book of Isaiah appeared at the end of the last lectionary year, just a couple weeks ago. Now we are back at the beginning. As I alluded to then, it was probably different authors at those two points in the one book. The Book of Isaiah spans a few hundred years, so that isn’t a stretch of the textual scholarship. At the beginning, it could be the Isaiah, son of Amoz, that is claimed in the text. No question, it was and is an important book. One that was familiar to Jews and early Christians. It is also a shift into this idea of “salvation”. <br>
<br>
God is no longer a local war god, or one who provides justice through punishment, instead it emphasizes holiness. These shifts can take a lot of time, and the old ways can return or branch off into sects. Sorting that out is beyond my scope, but we can see the theme in this week’s lection. What we see is visions of buildings on hills and swords into plowshares. I think about churches all across Europe and America. The big ones usually are in prominent locations, occupying good real estate. But that is supposed to be a symbol. If you have the high ground physically, you have a responsibility to demonstrate the metaphoric moral high ground. Sometimes I see that, but more often I wonder which is more important, the beautiful building, or what it is supposed to represent.<br>
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Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-61162194456826250792022-11-21T06:35:00.002-08:002022-12-23T11:55:17.130-08:00Wisdom Through the Ages<p> I started this for a friend of mine. It still needs some work, probably some review by a better historian than me. It's been a hobby for a while, but it's turning out to be more applicable to the world's political problems. We have always fought over resources, and pondering our existence needs some time of peaceful reflection. To have that, someone else needed to be protecting borders and working to create that stability. </p><p>The same forces that create civilization often are the ones that destroy other civilizations. Centuries of this have led to scientific exploration into how the mind works and where we came from. The questions that appeared on cave walls. What we're finding is, feelings and intuitions are more central consciousness than we thought.</p><p>Pre-History</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Before written language, we can see from archaeological
evidence that people were influencing each other in non-violent ways, implying
some reflection on who they are and what type of future they desire<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.science.org/content/article/early-humans-domesticated-themselves-new-genetic-evidence-suggests">https://www.science.org/content/article/early-humans-domesticated-themselves-new-genetic-evidence-suggests</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Axial Age 8<sup>th</sup> to 3<sup>rd</sup> centuries BC<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">3000 BC<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The early books by Homer and the Epic of Gilgamesh show us how they were thinking about the meaning of life, how to organize society,
and what it is to be good. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To develop a robust philosophy that could challenge empires,
civilization first needed to develop. One of those empires fell, but left
behind a middle class, and was isolated enough to stay intact and for them to organize
themselves and trade with neighbors. The advancement of a language that was
easier to learn and could be used across disciplines, helped put the authority
of words above gods and kings. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://infidels.org/library/modern/the-origins-of-greek-philosophy/">The
Origins of Greek Philosophy » Internet Infidels</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">500 BC<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Pre-Socratics then Socrates, Plato, Aristotle are well
documented, so I won’t regurgitate that here. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hindu Buddhist had a tradition of emptiness, as in ‘empty
the mind’ that led to the use of “0” in linguistics. Silent beats also occurred
in music, eventually inspiring Brahmagupta to create zero and negative numbers.
I mention this as an example of how ideas precede inventions and innovations
that become part of our worldview. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/zero-to-infinity/">Zero to Infinity |
NOVA | PBS</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As we’ll see in a bit, it takes more some literature and
good ideas to develop philosophy that can support democracy and increase
cooperation on a world scale. The East didn’t have the ideas the Greeks had,
and the Roman Empire was collapsing. Philosophy was preserved but didn’t
advance for a thousand years.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Indigenous people might have had a better sense of intuition
and a better relationship with the natural world, but without written language and
widespread travel, those ideas didn’t spread. They remained tied up with their
mythology and were almost lost when Western philosophy promoted colonization in
the name of progress. This is not just an aside, it is significant. It’s only
in the last 100 years of advancements in neuroscience that we are beginning to
see the errors of viewing ourselves as creatures separate from our environment,
and worse, ones with dominion over it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">700<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Islamic world had a Golden Age around 750-950AD with
improvements in agriculture, poetry, arts, synthesis of crafts across the Asian
and European continents and even the beginnings of Calculus. But they continued
to be driven by the desire to conquer. They held Greek writings but very few
people could read the language anymore. Averroes was tasked with squaring the
secular logic of that philosophy and the Islamic scripture. Internal threats of
despotic Caliphs and Clerics like Al-Ghazali and external threats like the
Mongols eventually brought down the empire. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1100<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Judaism had been pushed out of the East by Islam, but they
were allowed to live and work within that empire. Sects ranged from strict
adherence of Jewish laws to the more philosophical. Maimonides attempted to apply
ancient ideas to the emerging modern thinking.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As that was happening, Europe was just starting to crawl out
of the mud and mount a challenge to the long domination of the Catholic Church.
Early humanist Christians interpreted the Bible with more compassionate themes.
Thomas Aquinas continued the work that Judaism and Islam had been doing and
found himself in trouble with the Condemnations of 1277. Fifty years after he
died, in 1323, he was canonized as a saint. Some view this period as a time of
horrible oppression of scientific advancement by the Church. Others say it was
moment when the Church agreed to let that knowledge continue to grow, as long
as they didn’t get their noses into the miracles of God and Jesus. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is a good time to take a break from history and go over
just where philosophy fits in the spectrum of human thought and knowledge. People
who are working on discovering the wonders of creation are still called
“natural philosophers” at this time, but where is the line between philosophy
and science?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://richardcarrier.info/philosophy.html">Is
Philosophy Stupid? (richardcarrier.info)</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1500<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With more riches coming into Europe, a class of people who
could do nothing but think about life started coming up with new ways of viewing
the human condition. Descartes famous “I think therefore I am” stands out. This
left many unanswered questions. Descartes attempt at answering them included
thinking up a “perfect being” that must exist. It was an advancement in that we
began to look at ourselves as thinking beings, instead of purely driven by the
whims of gods or magic, but it has also come to be known as the “Cartesian
error”.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With the challenges to the three major religions and the
empires they were tied to, and the growing merchant class, and world travel, the
stage is finally set for science. So many changes happened within a few
centuries, that it’s hard to pin down just what they were and how to label
them. Richard Carrier does a pretty good job of that. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/20886">What
Exactly Was the Scientific Revolution? • Richard Carrier</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1650</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I couldn’t talk about philosophy without mentioning Spinoza.
Although he maintained his loyalty to the Judaism to his dying day, he has been
called a pantheist. His logical proofs have supported many philosophies of “God
is everything”. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Enlightenment<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Durkheim 1858-1917<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Darwin, Origin of Species published 1859<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Camus<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Boy Who Knew Infinity<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Robert Sapolsky<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bonobo
and the Atheist<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Frans de Waal <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">EO Wilson <a href="https://thisviewoflife.com/what-we-do-2/">What
We Do - This View Of Life</a><o:p></o:p></p><br /><p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-54811877869362204962022-05-28T11:54:00.158-07:002022-11-30T11:23:30.143-08:00American History of Slavery<span style="font-size: medium;">I have read books, listened to lectures, attended college classes, and heard speeches on the topic of slavery all my life. I'm still surprised by some of the details that I find. Recent memorials and museums will hopefully help all of us better understand our own history. My great grandfather was born into a slave-owning family, in 1860. He wouldn't remember it, but his family moved west to opportunity, and I'm sure it was a difficult life. We have very little record of it. </span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">I try to address all of the anecdotes I have heard, as well as the major milestones that are well documented. Some, like Bacon's Rebellion, are murky, but play pivotal roles. International trade and economic forces are important but deserve a timeline of their own, so I only touch on those. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">If there is something I should add, please comment.</span><div><br />
<table border="1"> <tbody><tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">16xx</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">Irish Slaves and Indentured Servitude</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076">This article contains factual errors</a><br /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1641</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">First Law legalizing slavery</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://historyofmassachusetts.org/slavery-in-massachusetts/">The beginning of the triangular trade</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1654</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">First Slaveowner</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://historyofmassachusetts.org/slavery-in-massachusetts/">This article should be fact checked</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1662</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">Slavery is a lifelong heritable condition</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://www.nps.gov/ethnography/aah/aaheritage/Chesapeake_pop2.htm">Virginia law</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1676</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">Bacon's Rebellion</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/bacons-rebellion-1676-1677/">A complicated chapter in American history where the limits of freedom were tested</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1676</td>
<td style="width: 20%;"><b>Bacon's Rebellion</b></td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/indentured-servants-in-colonial-virginia/">This article offers three possible outcomes of Bacon's Rebellion</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1676</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">Bacon's Rebellion</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;">It was a turning point. Worker's demanded more rights and at the same time, the supply of Africans was increasing. Slave laws began to focus more on them.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1690</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">Slave Codes</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/slave-codes/"> increase over the next 50 years</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1705</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">Who can be enslaved</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://owlcation.com/humanities/Slavery-in-America-Slave-Codes-in-Virginia-The-1705-Virginia-Slave-Act">Blacks, mulattos, natives, non-Christians</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1724</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">Code Noir</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/code-noir">Dominated slave treatment in the South through the Civil War</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1778</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">3/5th Compromise</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;">The US Constitution</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1788</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">In Britain</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;">Petition for aboltion had 10,000 signatures. The next year it had 100,000 and kept growing.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1800</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">But slavery continued</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="https://www.whitneyplantation.org/">The Whitney Museum in New Orleans</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="width: 10%;">1862</td>
<td style="width: 20%;">Black Confederate Brigade</td>
<td styel="width: 70%;"><a href="http://lestweforget.hamptonu.edu/page.cfm?uuid=9FEC2DC4-9AC2-AAF9-E9F170DF7240A9CD">Did slaves fight for the South?</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table></div></div>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-29438189949558632912022-04-19T13:10:00.007-07:002022-04-19T13:10:53.327-07:00You Are Here<p style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">You’re in My Light</span></b></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>A blog about my upcoming novel</b></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One of my reasons for wanting to write this book was the story of how religious freedom has evolved in the United States over my lifetime. There are some good sociology books on this topic and plenty of polemics from one side or another as well as those who say they have found a middle way. I hope I’ve avoided any of those types of presentations. Instead, I follow two people who were born in the middle of these changes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don’t ever mention the attack of 9/11 in the book. The Orions arrive on earth in 1999 and that event does not occur in my fictional timeline. Anything before alien arrival is factual, to the best of my ability. The two main characters grow into adulthood in a world where cross cultural relations are improving. The Orions focus on the more basic causes of conflict, like resources scarcity and fair distribution of technology. Cultural divides are in their distant past. Their one continent world developed sustainably and much more peacefully than ours. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Dave in his early thirties. His father divorced his mother because she wanted her son to go to church. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she felt there had to be something that created the universe, and churches seemed to know what that was. He meets Suzanne, whose mother never had a relationship with her father. Her mother disdained organized religion. So she grew up in a community based shunning tradition, unless you call witchcraft and psychic phenomenon a tradition. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The two personalities that result clash, but they gain respect for each other as they are riding across Indiana. The book begins in the middle of their journey, when they come across a conflict that is playing out with weapons and claims on territory. That conflict, of people with traditional values against a government they don’t feel represents them anymore, reflects the conflict that I see many people going through in this real today, of their values versus the world of powers and economics. Through flashbacks to how Dave and Suzanne ended up in the middle of a cornfield that is in the middle of a battle, we see how the world has ended up in the conflicts we experience now. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">We also see some of my thoughts, which are informed by better thinkers than myself, on how the world could have ended up differently. In the lore of the Orion world, in an early chapter, we find out that one of their early leaders fought to prevent the spread of the idea of land ownership. When they come to this planet, before they build their spaceport, they work with farmers who are barely able to feed themselves. When the spaceports are built, they offer an entire continent on a planet near their home planet. This essentially solves our current dilemma of not having a Planet B. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As the heroes travel, we see the world as it has developed for 17 years of improvements to agriculture, reduction in population, and opening of borders. Non-motorized traffic is everywhere with some roads repurposed for pedal power only. Work is flexible and requires fewer hours. Families have more time for each other. Manufactured goods are being recycled into the new economy. By focusing on the poorest in the world, want has been reduced, and that has reduced conflicts and increased cooperation. And yet, not everyone is happy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">With those needs met, the questions of where we came from and why we are here are freely asked. There is no powerful organization that can claim authority by claiming to have those answers. Almost no one feels that they need to give to such organizations to help procure a place for themselves in the afterlife. There is one character who offers religious advice, and her role, her job, includes meeting their physical and medical needs. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I don’t offer much in the way of answers in this story. I hope reading it opens questions about what you might do if you had more choices and a clearer sense of where you were in the universe.</span></p><div><br /></div>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-32360140885257855972022-04-10T17:14:00.007-07:002022-04-10T17:14:47.198-07:00<p> The Worst passage in the Bible. Another expanded sermon helper.</p><p><a href="http://milepost100.com/CX_Holy1.html">Easter Sunday, Year C</a></p><p>I link to an article titled “The Worst passage in the Bible” this week. It’s the Corinthians passage, actually scheduled for Tuesday. It’s not one of those articles that goes on about evil Christians who want to see people burning in hell. It’s not that kind of bad. It’s bad because it is not seen as bad by perfectly kind and loving people. What’s bad about it is that it sets up a wall between Christianity and anything good that doesn’t validate or might even contradict it. It renders useless any discussion about where we come from or something like morality comes from. As it states a few times, such talk is “foolish”. </p><p>There are other difficulties in leaving or challenging religion, like in-group loyalty, or in more insular environments there are people who will come after you if you try. If this bit of bad logic only existed in Christianity then I think we would have overcome it a few hundred years ago, if not sooner. But like many things in religions, it was not invented by just one of them, it’s something more ingrained in human nature. </p><p>That makes the way out of this bad reasoning a lot harder than people think. Those who are not involved in organized religion think they have the right reasoning, but often they are doing the same thing from the point of view of whatever worldview they have chosen. The problem is explained in the link within the Lectionary helper but I’ll skip to the positive answer first, rather than focusing on that negative. </p><p>Religion can and does contain helpful practices and teachings. It is becoming more popular for mainstream churches to say they “don’t own the franchise” on faith. They are willing to partner with other faiths and with secular organizations to accomplish the goals they believe are in line with their faith. They will also use logic like this passage to explain why they still think it’s important to pick one set of beliefs, one denomination, and stick to it. And this logic prevents any curiosity about where else their ethical teachings might come from or why it is that there is so much cross-over with those other faiths.</p><p>The answer to that, I believe, is natural facts. That is, when choosing to put someone’s eye out, turn the other cheek, have an abortion, or enter war with another nation, everyone always relies on facts that can be derived from observing nature. Some experimentation may be needed, and in all cases, certainty is impossible, but deriving our views from our environment is part of being a conscious social creature. We figured out how to get along over millions of years of evolution and what we learned was passed on, with many errors along the way. </p><p>We have some sense of being good. I’m going to have to wave a hand here and acknowledge there are bad people, but it is rare to find someone who can articulate that they know they are bad and that they don’t care. I’m not talking about having too many sweets or not flossing kind of bad, that’s covered in the “many errors” part of how we have passed along these ideas of right and wrong.</p><p>I also acknowledge that we can see bad behavior rewarded. Nature itself does not enforce morality. We can’t claim that killing is moral because predator animals do it. We can observe that and see that those creatures are still leading brutal lives, lives that don’t lead to cures for diseases or vacations by the sea. </p><p>That good person that we think we are, is constantly challenged. Our choice of grocery store includes how our food sources and packaging affect people around the world. It can’t be avoided. Even doing nothing, when there is so much need in the world, is a moral choice. We can’t save the world, and sometimes that is a source of stress. Prayer does not always make that go away. </p><p>Even if you believe in God and love your church, you bring some reasoning to it. When challenged to question your beliefs you will start with facts. You might say something about the value of human life. At some point, you will run out of reasons why, and you will rely on some cosmic origin for those values. These are patches for those errors in our understanding of the world. A less charitable anti-theist might call them “crutches”. In any case, they are a way to bridge what we are able to discern with our rational minds with the place we’d like to be, our aspirations for what we envision. </p><p>I see the same phenomenon in Wiccans, or pagans, of some off-the-grid self-made philosophers. Even an average person on the street of an industrialized nation will admit there is work to do. You may have heard the words that capitalism or democracy are “the worst systems, except for all the others”. We are beings that look to the future, reflecting on the past, with barely a plan. </p><p>It’s interesting that this passage comes on Easter Sunday, a day that attempts to reconcile the world to the Old Testament, and to deal with the death of Jesus on Good Friday. After a few hundred years of Jews trying to understand these letters and gospels, the dominant theology said that death had been conquered. I think that was an interpretation of people who had lost their own history. I think Easter is about accepting death and moving forward, not about finding a way around it or conquering it. </p><div><br /></div>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-16905279092028171842022-03-08T11:41:00.003-08:002022-03-08T11:47:32.515-08:00Sermon Helper: Hagar<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Starting now, I’ll be selecting sermon helpers from
milepost100.com and digging to them for more insights or just interesting
tidbits. This won’t be every week. I’ll pick the ones that I think stand out. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://milepost100.com/CX_Lent2.html"><span style="font-size: medium;">The second Sunday of Lent in Year C</span></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I didn’t link to the sermon from Cedric Lundy before, <a href="https://www.watershedcharlotte.com/podcast/2017/1/29/stogies-stilettos-2017-i-january-29">but I’m glad it was easy to find</a>. He’s funny, he’s smart, and he brings a new point of view on inclusiveness, a broader
one that we could all take a moment and hear. He jumps off from Hagar feeling
like an extra in this Genesis story and relates it to an experience from his
own youth of going to a movie with two friends and realizing those two are on a
date. He looks at how the church has worked in America for some time now; where
young people are put into the youth ministry and learn to see themselves as
part of a group defined by age. So, they move on to look for the student group,
then the singles, and so on until old age. Then he gets to the heart of the sermon,
talking about the narrow societal focus we have for people in heterosexual
relationships who have children before they are thirty. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Hang on, this is way more than just another preacher telling
us to be inclusive.</b> In the passage, Hagar sees where she fits in and doesn’t like
it, and leaves for the desert. This is early in the Bible, so the nation of God’s
people is just Abram and Sara, and now a pregnant servant. God isn’t even named
yet, but when an angel appears to Hagar, she calls it “a god of seeing” or,
maybe it’s “The God of seeing”. With that, she returns to this dysfunctional relationship
despite there lack of a promise that it will get better. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It could be Hagar rethought her situation; she was risking
death in a time when there were no support systems for single mothers, let
alone escaped slaves. It could be she believed this angel would help her
offspring be “seen” for generations to come. Cedric doesn’t comment directly on
whether that worked out, but it’s obvious to me when I see ancient promises
like this, unfulfilled. He relates this to the “sexual minorities” we have
today when we let everyone remain somewhere in the system, but not as the central
focus of it, to put it lightly. He doesn’t limit this to LBGTQ, rather it’s
everyone outside of those perfect nuclear families.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Cedric is careful to clarify that he is not suggesting that
we blow-up the current system and make it illegal to make anyone feel
uncomfortable or police the use of language. What he is suggesting is a
community where intimacy is not based on identification with a group that has had
certain sexual acts performed in a certain way or time in our lives. Instead, considering
that sitting down at a meal with people who are different is something that gives
us strength. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">I quoted him almost directly at points and added my own
thoughts in others, so take the half-hour to listen and see what you think. </span><o:p></o:p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-11724912318978954842022-01-17T15:08:00.002-08:002022-01-17T15:17:31.440-08:00When Time is Sacred<p><span style="font-size: medium;">In one of my more recent past lives, that is, a part of this life that I am living, I looked for traditions within religions that could and maybe should be kept. It was sometimes challenging. Sam Harris does it like he's ordering coffee. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/269-deep-time">Sam Harris on Deep Time</a><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">He and <a href="https://www.oliverburkeman.com/">Oliver Burkeman</a> discuss the simple topic of time management but in the context of the not-so-simple question of the meaning of life. In the last ten minutes or so, they get to the topic of how difficult it is for any three adults to arrange an evening together or even a lunch (unfortunately, you need to subscribe to get past the 37 minute mark). This includes times of pandemic but it was around long before that, with the demands of work that includes beepers and emails and being on-call, even if you are self-employed. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Oliver brings up the idea of rules of temporal organization that exists in religions, the calling to prayer, the holy days that we sometimes dread but bring us into contact with the community. They are somewhat arbitrary, an interruption to the things you think you need to accomplish in life, but serve as a reminder that you never finish all the tasks or complete all the goals of that lifetime, that you never win the battle with time. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">The Sabbath is supposed to be about anything except "getting things done", aka work. If you don't fill it up with mindless entertainment, contemplation can emerge, something spontaneous that wouldn't occur while your mind is focused on a task. As Sam says, "There are social norms and structures, some of which we've inherited and need to give a modern, non-embarrassing gloss to, and some of which we need to invent. That would punctuate all of this."</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Or, as Hunter S. Thompson put it, </span><span face="Roboto, "helvetica neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;"> </span><span face="Roboto, "helvetica neue", helvetica, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 16px;">“<i>Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!</i>”</span></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-47187828804243133472022-01-01T06:14:00.006-08:002022-01-01T06:53:01.224-08:00A parent's view of existentialism<p> A philosopher facebook friend had a baby a few years ago. While trying to figure out what that baby needed one day, he took some notes:</p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 4.5pt;"><span face=""Helvetica",sans-serif" style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i>So, basically the routine with baby is pretty simple. I pick her
up and sit down and hold her and talk to her and smile at her until she smiles
back. We stay like this for as long as possible until she starts expressing
agitation. Then there's basically a rundown of options. First, check the diaper
and if it needs changing see if we can go back to normal after that. If not, a
bottle if it's been more than two hours. If it's not been two hours, I try
burping her, putting her on the playmat and trying the bouncy seat. If none of
that works, I try to put her to bed. If that won't work, I put her in the
carriage and walk her all around the park until she falls asleep.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p>
</p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; margin: 4.5pt 0in 0in;"><span face=""Helvetica",sans-serif" style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><i>If none of that works and she's still upset, I accept that even
she has no idea what she wants so there is no way to satisfy her. She has an
insatiable and unbearable emptiness that lacks any recognizable means of being
filled. It's essentially an existential crisis. So we read some Camus together
while she screams. Which doesn't fix her problem any more than it fixes anyone
else with an existential crisis---since he is better at confusing people into
nihilism than getting them out of it with his lousy misrepresentation of the
human condition. But I figure Sophie is French and she should learn the vacuity
of 20th Century French philosophy sooner rather than later so that we can get
her on to better things in preschool.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p>His son probably understands the vacuity of Camus better than I do by now, but I did come across this, a speech by Albert Camus, reflecting on the world after World War II. It is still relevant now. Perhaps more, as we struggle to determine if we have prevented another massive conflict or are on the brink of one. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/aaFZJ_ymueA" width="320" youtube-src-id="aaFZJ_ymueA"></iframe></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">I know we are all busy, so here is a summary of the part where he answers, "what are we to do?"</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Reject acquiescent and fatalistic thinking.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Eliminate capital punishment and torture and reduce anything that increases fear in the world.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Put politics behind reflective thought, and focus on our
own values and aspirations.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Create expressions of positive values.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]-->Speak your truth, while being aware of when your
values are shared, and when they are not.<o:p></o:p></p></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-90416689478791089482021-10-23T08:26:00.001-07:002024-01-12T15:46:47.103-08:00Superior Hiking Trail Lismore Rd<p><a href="https://winter60.blogspot.com/2021/08/superior-hiking-trail-traditional-start.html"> Previous Section</a> 4 miles <a href="https://winter60.blogspot.com/2024/01/superior-hiking-trail-caribou-trail.html">Next Section</a></p><p>Two campsites not far from the Lismore.<br />Rural area with some housing nearby<br />Mild hills</p><p><a href="https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/duluth-to-two-harbors/#section_0%C2%A0" style="background-color: white; color: #33aaff; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.85px;">https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/duluth-to-two-harbors/#section_0 </a></p><p>Lots of warnings and notices that this is no longer a trailhead with overnight parking. We parked on the edge of the road near the driveway and felt safe. The landowner is making improvements, including a house. You walk right through his yard for the first hundred feet or so, south of Lismore Rd. This is timber country. It's easy to stay on the trail but you will cross a lot of four-wheeler trails. You will also see signs about the timber section you are in. It's kind of interesting because the signs tell you when it was last logged. So, lots of young forest. </p><p>Water looked good near the campsites. Mud wasn't bad on a warm mid-October afternoon. One of the best sites was a few hundred tamaracks growing just north of the Bald Eagle campsite. You don't often get to walk right up to those. </p><p>As I mentioned in the previous section, this trail splits with SHT on the west and a snowmobile trail on the east. At the northern end, the snowmobile trail was wide and looked inviting. At the southern, 4 miles later, it's full of weeds and branches on the ground. I don't know where the maintenance changes but the two trails are not close together, so you can't just change your mind later and switch. You would be trespassing if you tried that anyway. </p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-19484346174936682172021-08-25T18:09:00.007-07:002021-10-23T08:30:27.965-07:00Superior Hiking Trail Traditional Start<p><a href="http://winter60.blogspot.com/2020/12/superior-hiking-trail-end-of-section-one.html">Previous Section</a> <span> </span>3.1 miles<span> </span> <a href="https://winter60.blogspot.com/2021/10/superior-hiking-trail-lismore-rd.html">Next Section</a></p><p><b>First campsite since Jay Cooke State Park, about 4 miles from Martin Rd.<br />Many road crossings, but no stores or parking.<br />Steady mild uphill climb north from the lake. </b></p><p><a href="https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/duluth-to-two-harbors/#section_0 ">https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/duluth-to-two-harbors/#section_0 </a></p><p>Not much to say about the first 3.1 miles of this section. When we first set this goal of hiking every section of the SHT, there were 4 maps. The first one started in Two Harbors and included a note about future plans. We're now over 50 miles from the terminus and still a ways to go before connecting to this old map. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCXgmbUnmXxnzDicBmH9cgreQE1NTZhNktvTzuxHIwswfeBLtG-XvgsgLFmXPB2qxzcoOxd1pJ2YoZkTL-_DaG-nG0jwXKfc7b-XTFfpu5EpyN8vk8YXxx-gIWgYqdMztz6S3zHsSyeePg/s2048/SHT+Old+Map+1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCXgmbUnmXxnzDicBmH9cgreQE1NTZhNktvTzuxHIwswfeBLtG-XvgsgLFmXPB2qxzcoOxd1pJ2YoZkTL-_DaG-nG0jwXKfc7b-XTFfpu5EpyN8vk8YXxx-gIWgYqdMztz6S3zHsSyeePg/s320/SHT+Old+Map+1.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>At Martin Rd. it's snowmobile trail, so it's wide. The grass can get high, but we were hiking at the end of a drought so it wasn't a problem. There was always at least a single path that was smooth with the occasional rock or tree root. </p><p>There are many businesses and houses. The University farm has a tall barb-wired fence for a while. There was the most specific directions I've ever seen on the trail at the crossing of Martin Rd. The snowmobile parallels the road through what looked like a ditch. We took the pavement.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTWW98LwSYB9u49tnmR4YGHgvbPVizcIGbbkuYrXIQcIbQ3nhyWdhUt1rd0ySMOy21stMTzecmOeEjuEd1EZ6mi_O15fZew-zJc3SVR9OBKwTCPCspVHbbxXakzM9Pi6F2SNu7ejCADAPi/s1069/SHT+Martin+Rd+Crossing+Sign.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1069" data-original-width="997" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTWW98LwSYB9u49tnmR4YGHgvbPVizcIGbbkuYrXIQcIbQ3nhyWdhUt1rd0ySMOy21stMTzecmOeEjuEd1EZ6mi_O15fZew-zJc3SVR9OBKwTCPCspVHbbxXakzM9Pi6F2SNu7ejCADAPi/s320/SHT+Martin+Rd+Crossing+Sign.jpg" width="298" /></a></div><br /><span style="text-align: left;">On my Cairn app, it showed the trail splitting, then coming back together at the Lismore trailhead. It also called the SHT option a "spur". But at that split, it was clear that one way was foot travel and the other was for snowmobiles. We did this out and back, and we'll cover the Lismore section next. The Martin Rd trailhead is listed as a shuttle pick-up point, but all the road crossings are odd locations, even the Lismore Rd trailhead, with possibly difficult addresses to explain to a driver. </span></div><p></p><p>Lismore is not an "official" trailhead. <a href="https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/duluth-to-two-harbors/#section_1">Overnight parking is NOT recommended</a>. </p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-7589728440242452492021-07-25T17:16:00.007-07:002021-07-25T17:21:08.012-07:00Superior Hiking Trail Up the Hill<p> Up the hill</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://winter60.blogspot.com/2020/09/">Back to the Zoo</a> 3.2
miles to Haines <span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><a href="https://winter60.blogspot.com/2020/11/skyline-to-silos-restaurant-on-record.html">Forward to the Silos</a> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/mnwi-border-to-duluth/#section_8">https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/mnwi-border-to-duluth/#section_8</a><br />
<a href="https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/mnwi-border-to-duluth/#section_9">https://superiorhiking.org/trail-section/mnwi-border-to-duluth/#section_9</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Non-SHT lodging is available right on Westgate Blvd.<br />
This is a steep climb, rising a few hundred feet, and many gorges going back
down so you end up climbing nearly 1,500 ft. Rocky, with many stream crossings.
Duluth closes these trails sometimes during rainy periods.<br />
Lots of quaking aspens of all ages. Scattered cedar and maple and occasional
oak. Some city noise.</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">2021 in the middle of a drought turned out to be not such a
bad time to take a hike. We picked up where we left off at the end of Greene
St. after it crosses N. 64<sup>th</sup> Av W. Take the path north following Interstate
35, avoiding any of the turns to the left. You will have to cross Cody St,
which has some high-speed traffic, and walk along Westgate Blvd. for two
blocks. Signage is very good throughout this hike. When we came to the loop
near Haines Rd we could not miss the intersection. You will be constantly
reminded of a bike trail that parallels you, it is not intrusive or confusing. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After a few blocks in the neighborhood near the highway, you
are back into the woods and join up with Keene Creek where you start climbing.
Rocks in the creek were easy to find as we crisscrossed, but we were in a dry
period. A trailhead with a nicer parking
lot than Greene Street is not far up, on W Skyline Pkwy. This is the Highland
St trailhead on SHT maps. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Follow the creek a little longer and you’ll see steps and
even wires to help you climb the steep section that lies between a switchback
in Skyline Pkwy. You will cross the Pkwy, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There
is no way to safely park here and start a hike! Things flatten out a little at
this point. If you have the Duluth Trails Map, you will see quite a few rock-climbing
icons around this area. You stay above them, which lends the one nice scenic
vista on this hike. It is on the official SHT part of Brewer’s Loop. The north
part of that loop is still nice and it’s shorter if you want to get to Haines
Rd trailhead. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lots to offer on this little section.<o:p></o:p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-9879991884161415582021-06-05T07:11:00.005-07:002021-06-05T07:13:20.958-07:00Understanding CRT<p> I'm seeing many articles that make some pretty nasty claims about Critical Race Theory. It's a legal theory, stating that people are not inherently more criminal or less intelligent based on their skin color or any other biological factor. However, we see a disparity of incarceration and educational achievement correlated to those factors. The theory then, is that there is something in our laws and our culture that is causing these disparities. I find this non-controversial. Many do not. </p><p>Here is a recent article that was linked to me to make the anti-CRT case. </p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/should-public-schools-ban-critical?fbclid=IwAR2-hejN6gyQXvCFZKYFDQLFnjq75n5cxNR9JJHfgjRmgtOY2tKENH-tqc0">https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/should-public-schools-ban-critical?fbclid=IwAR2-hejN6gyQXvCFZKYFDQLFnjq75n5cxNR9JJHfgjRmgtOY2tKENH-tqc0</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I could take it on face value, accepting the half dozen or so anecdotes as evidence. My experience is that information presented like this usually misses much of the data behind it. I'll drill down on one of them to demonstrate this.</p><p class="MsoNormal">This article gave examples, claiming they made up a case against
CRT. Here’s one:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; line-height: 19.2pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 47.25pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; margin: 0in 0in 0in 47.25pt; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; tab-stops: list .5in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: Symbol; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 14.5pt;">California’s Department of Education is
proposing to <a href="https://reason.com/2021/05/04/california-math-framework-woke-equity-calculus/" style="color: var(--print_on_web_bg_color, #1a1a1a);">eliminate opportunities</a> for
accelerated math in the name of “equity.” That means discouraging algebra for
eighth graders and calculus for high schoolers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> The "eliminate opportunities" goes to Reason magazine. I would call this a "polemic". If I accepted the opinion of the author, I could have stopped there. This research was fairly easy because it had the report in this article. Although, it is long. I haven't read the whole thing, but if anyone would like to point out something in it, I'd be glad to respond. I'll respond to one of the quotes in Reason magazine below.</o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><a href="https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/">https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/ma/cf/</a></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://reason.com/2021/05/04/california-math-framework-woke-equity-calculus/">https://reason.com/2021/05/04/california-math-framework-woke-equity-calculus/</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This one reminded me of The National Enquirer, repeating the
words in the title in a subheading, then again in the first paragraph. It
quoted a report, and picked out some of the evidence for how it made it’s case.
I’ll give them credit that they linked to the full report. It claimed the “entire
second chapter is about connecting math to social justice concepts”. I
downloaded that chapter and could not confirm that. I
was hard pressed to find mention of social justice, let alone a theme. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;">The Reason article quotes the report, </span><span style="color: #333333;">"To encourage truly equitable and engaging
mathematics classrooms we need to broaden perceptions of mathematics beyond
methods and answers so that students come to view mathematics as a connected,
multi-dimensional subject that is about sense making and reasoning, to which
they can contribute and belong."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: #333333;">Robby Soave,
the Reason author, follows up with the comment, “This approach is very bad.” He
makes some general statements about people having natural abilities to excel at
math and how we should encourage them. He cites no data, no studies. In the
next paragraph, he says, “<span style="background: white;">young people who
aren't particularly adept at any academic discipline might pick up art, music,
computers, or even trade skills.</span>” I have a computer degree. Calculus was
required because of the way it teaches you to think about problem solving. I
have trouble trusting Robby after this comment. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;">There is still a lot of that report to read, but so far, I’m
seeing how it encourages a method of engaging young people in reasons for using
math and working with others to solve a problem. The “discouraging” that is
mentioned in the Bariweiss article is probably one of many possible
recommendations to consider, not a main theme. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="background: white; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="background: white; color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Here's one of the vignettes in Chapter 2 of the report. Not sure how farming is a social justice issue.</span></span></p><div style="border-top: double windowtext 6.0pt; border: none; mso-border-top-alt: thin-thick-thin-small-gap windowtext 6.0pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 1.0pt 0in 0in 0in;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: thin-thick-thin-small-gap windowtext 6.0pt; mso-padding-alt: 1.0pt 0in 0in 0in; padding: 0in;"><a name="_Toc60597764"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;">Vignette–36 Fences</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Lori,
a high school geometry teacher, introduces a problem to students. Lori explains
that a farmer has 36 individual fences, each measuring one meter in length, and
that the farmer wants to put them together to make the biggest possible area.
Lori takes time to ask her students about their knowledge of farming, making
reference to California’s role in the production of fruit, vegetables, and
livestock. The students engage in an animated discussion about farms and the
reasons a farmer may want a fenced area. While some of Lori’s </span><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; mso-fareast-font-family: Arial;">long-term
English learners show fluency with
social/conversational English, she knows some will be challenged by forthcoming
disciplinary literacy tasks. To support meaningful engagement in increasingly
rigorous course work, she ensures images of all regular and irregular shapes
are posted and labeled on the board, along with an optional sentence frame, “<i>The fence should be arranged in a </i>[blank]<i> shape because </i>[blank]<i>.”</i> These support instruction when Lori
asks students what shapes they think the fences could be arranged to form.
Students suggest a rectangle, triangle, or square. With each response, Lori
reinforces the word with the shape by pointing at the image of the shapes. When
she asks, “How about a pentagon?” she reminds students of the optional sentence
frame as they craft their response. Lori asks, the students think about this
and talk about it as mathematicians. Lori asked them whether they want to make
irregular shapes allowable or not.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">After
some discussion, Lori asks the students to think about the biggest possible area
that the fences can make. Some students begin by investigating different sizes
of rectangles and squares, some plot graphs to investigate how areas change
with different side lengths.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Susan
works alone, investigating hexagons––she works out the area of a regular
hexagon by dividing it into six triangles and she has drawn one of the
triangles separately. She tells Lori that she knew that the angle at the top of
each triangle must be 60 degrees, so she could draw the triangles exactly to
scale using compasses and find the area by measuring the height.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Niko
has found that the biggest area for a rectangle with perimeter 36 is a 9 x 9
square—which gave him the idea that shapes with equal sides may give bigger
areas and he started to think about equilateral triangles. Niko was about to
draw an equilateral triangle when he was distracted by Jaden who told him to
forget triangles, he had found that the shape with the largest area made of 36
fences was a 36-sided shape. Jaden suggested to Niko that he find the area of a
36-sided shape too and he leant across the table excitedly, explaining how to
do this. He explained that you divide the 36-sided shape into triangles and all
of the triangles must have a one-meter base, Niko joined in saying, “Yes, and
their angles must be 10 degrees!” Jaden said, “Yes, and to work it out we need
tangent ratios which Lori has just explained to me.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Jaden
and Niko move closer together, incorporating ideas from trigonometry, to
calculate the area.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p style="background: white; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #333333;">
</span></p><div style="border-bottom: double windowtext 6.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: thin-thick-thin-small-gap windowtext 6.0pt; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-border-bottom-alt: thin-thick-thin-small-gap windowtext 6.0pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; padding: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As the class progressed many
students started using trigonometry, some students were shown the ideas by
Lori, some by other students. The students were excited to learn about trig
ratios as they enabled them to go further in their investigations, they made
sense to them in the context of a real problem, and the methods were useful to
them. In later activities the students revisited their knowledge of
trigonometry and used them to solve other problems.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><br /><p></p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4398786616468784014.post-63091178685790456732021-01-04T09:33:00.007-08:002021-01-04T18:16:23.588-08:00Personal Responsibility<p> A friend of mine who has one of those larger than life personalities once lamented on his wife's interest in genealogy. "They're dead. These are dead people. Why would you want to look up uninteresting facts about when people died or were born or when they moved?", he said with his hands waving. It's hard to argue with logic like that. But I'm going to do it anyway. </p><p>One hundred and fifty years ago or so, some people who are now dead were creating the luckiest moments of my life. My grandparents, and their parents were forsaking their family histories because the world was changing and because those families were not including them in their plans for their legacy. Half of them were coming from Europe and half from south of the Mason-Dixon line. They came to Flint, Michigan where my parents and most of my cousins were born.</p><p>My great grandparents were born in a time when being born first still meant something. The first male traditionally received more of the family fortune and was treated as more important than his siblings. It was a time when fewer resources meant more competition. As one of my ancestors found out, even if you asked for help from your own brother, you might be met with an illogical response such as, "God helps those who help themselves."</p><p>Sometime around my late teens, I had to make my own decisions and decide how I could find my own fortunes and choose my own legacy. My heritage was helping with that, but sometimes it was a barrier. The illogical phrase that I have come up against was; I am "personally responsible" for my fate. </p><p>It's true to a point, I had choices about my education, including how hard to study. I could have worked out harder and done better in sports or practiced more and improved by ability to play an instrument or just read more books and paid more attention to the adults who were deciding to send people my age off to fight in some place on the other side of the globe. No matter what I did though, decisions about my fate were being made that were just as much out of my control as the ones made by people before I was ever born. </p><p>My dad's grandfather was cut out of any inheritance so he left Germany and eventually came to America through Canada to Flint. My mom's grandfather was born just as slave's were being freed. His father could no longer keep the people he had inherited so he moved west. I know very little about why made his decisions, but I'm guessing the economy of Tennessee was suffering in the post Civil War era. For my mom's dad, there was a falling out with his brother, and he packed up his young family and drove from Arkansas to Flint to get work. </p><p>Both of those grandfathers of mine took advantage of the growing economy of the auto industry. The next generation took advantage of unions and the low cost of higher education in the war years and after. They were not rich. The rich were being taxed to build the infrastructure that made America the most powerful country in the world and kept the USSR in check including beating them in the so-called "space race". All of that had positive and negative consequences. </p><p>I only know of those good and bad effects because of the advantages they gave me. To continue to keep up with the evil in the world, we need higher education and a healthy defense system. You may not like the Liberal professors that are created by that, or the crimes we commit in foreign countries, but I know I would not be able to understand all of it without the advantages that they created and keep creating. It's not a perfect world. </p><p>If I could overcome the culture created by 10,000 years of human history, and live in a world that matches my vision of loving, caring, good neighbors, who work hard, I would do it. I may not know what to do, but I know tearing down everything from the past is not the place to start. Breaking a tradition, questioning an authority, opening a dialogue, those are things that my great grandparents did and I honor them by thinking for myself. </p><p>I know that they knew that they could not know what I know. They were muddling through life just like the rest of us. Powerful forces altered their futures. Random events that may have seemed small changed their future. They kept on. I wouldn't be here if they didn't. </p><p>Bruce Springsteen put it more poetically. As Bruce was about to become a father, his own father visited him and made a sort of apology for the father that he had been. It was more than that. It was a warning of the mistakes he had made. Telling his son not to make them with his own children. In Bruce's words, "To release them of the chains of our sins, my father's and mine and our father's before. That they may be free to make their own choices and to live their own lives. We are ghosts or we are ancestors in our children's lives. We either lay our mistakes, our burdens upon them and we haunt them. Or we assist them laying those old burdens down and we free them from the chain of our own flawed behavior. And as ancestors we walk alongside of them, and we assist them in finding their own way and some transcendence." </p>Lausten Northhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06784935133094816365noreply@blogger.com0