Kafka On The Shore

Didn’t you just hate when you were given a book in English in high school and had to do a book report
on it. For Christmas 2017 my daughter gave me Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami to read.
She did this so we could compare notes after we’d both read it. She’s not an English teacher but she
enjoys critically dissecting and discussing a “classic” book or idea.

As I read Kafka on the Shore I got that deja vu feeling. I realized I’d started reading it many years ago
but had put it down. Why would I do that if it were such a good read? After all it had been on the
New York Best Selling List.  I thought it through.

First, I’ll tell you what I’m going to tell you.  This book is unadulterated crap. It is a fantastical, mystical,
hogwash, spiritual, hocus pocus waste of time. It’s only redeeming quality might be for an English
teacher to use it as a tool to determine a student’s incredulity or critical thinking and perhaps to show
a student what not to read.

I felt like the character Kevin Pearson in the pilot TV series This is Us where he denounces the crappy
script he must read. Because it was a gift this time I soldiered on reading to the bitter end. It never
gets better from “entrance” to exit. Like Kevin Pearson I don’t blame the author for writing such tripe
as much as the audience that laps it up. How could it get such good reviews and sell so many copies?

The author references the old idea that life is but a metaphor and continues with this idea ad nausea.
The whole plot revolves around nonsense instead of grounding itself in any form of reality.  There is
continual implication that most people doing a normal job are just all hollow people with no substance.
How ironic is that. The characters depicted are all hollow spiritual ghost-like holographs. The projecting
by the author of himself comes to mind. A telling reference in this regard is made to Charles Darwin’s
ten page description of something or other.  Whatever Darwin described in 10 pages, corals or clams,
it would be much more insightful than what Murakami’s does in his 450 pages of empty drivel, where
ghosts and cats talk to people and a stone acts as an entrance to another world.

I love fantasies but I would much prefer reading an honest book on fantastical things such as
Harry Potter, Jurassic Park or Animal Farm.  Here impressionistic people can clearly tell fantasy from
fiction. But in Kafka on the Shore the nonsense is depicted as though it could be someone’s reality. It’s
not made clear though that this would only be an insane person. I had the same repulsive response
when I read the Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho. At least most people realize that Coelo had
been institutionalized for his way of thinking and could consider the source before plunging in further.
After completing Coelho’s Devil and Miss Prym I swore I would never read another such book of this
genre. Life is too short and quite frankly, as Darwin realized and described, life is much stranger than
could be revealed by anyone’s imagination.

I have a sister who perpetually loves this spiritual way of thinking. Instead of the nonsense perpetuated
by religion she substitutes spiritualism for her superstitious predispositions. She’s not a critical thinker
and can thus be led to believe almost anything. Unfortunately there are enough Murakami’s and
literature critics out there to perpetuate her fantasies.

While reading Kafka on the Shore I also discovered Bach’s sublime and hypnotic motets. Bach’s music
transcends the religious and spiritualistic words used. Too bad there is no such redeeming quality to
Kafka on the Shore.

Now I’ll tell you what I really think. Reading Kafka on the Shore is a mammoth waste of time.

Aboriginal People - From Idle No More to Indian Act No More

When the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015 uses the phrase “cultural genocide” to describe the indigenous experience you know you have a problem.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/chief-justice-says-canada-attempted-cultural-genocide-on-aboriginals/article24688854/

There is no doubt that in 2017 Indigenous People continue to suffer under their present situation in Canada. As Canada begins to celebrate its 150th Birthday it's time to evaluate the deplorable situation still existing for its Indigenous People. Why do Indigenous People in this country feel they have nothing to celebrate? Why after over 150 years under Canadian rule has the situation for native peoples remained the same or probably worst.

Thinking about, dwelling upon, whining about or obsessing about the past is a fool’s game. It really is not too productive. It reminds me of the old saw about worrying.  Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair.  It gives you something to do but doesn't really get you anywhere. Forget the past if you can. At least don't focus on it. As George Burns stated: “I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.”

Being a white person, having grown up poor and having lived in Northern Ontario adjacent to Indian Reserves provided me with one perspective on the impact of "colonialism" on Indigenous People. It’s awful. I worked both in business and government in my working careers and believe this has allowed me to view the situation of Indigenous Peoples from a unique pragmatic perspective.

There are two words used frequently by Indigenous People to describe their condition. These are victims of “colonialism” and “healing”. It makes me cringe now when I hear these worn out cliche descriptions associated with them. It’s almost as if these descriptors of victims now serve to define them.  When I think of the Idle No More Movement I think of getting up from sitting on one’s hands. And the two hands that have been sat on for far too long are “colonialism” and “healing”. How can you heal when the colonial system keeps pulling off the scab? It’s long past the time to stop this vicious cycle of harm.

There's no doubt Indigenous People suffer from colonialism. But it’s not the root cause. Why has their deplorable condition persisted? Who benefits from not changing the situation? There are three primary parties involved, government, indigenous leaders, and the average suffering indigenous person. Why hasn’t positive change been initiated by any of these parties?

Let’s examine government first. A great description, by Elon Musk relating to his ongoing disputes with regulators in getting his Space X off the ground, sheds light on this.

"There is a fundamental problem with regulators. If a regulator agrees to change a rule and something bad happens, they could easily lose their career. Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they don't even get a reward. So, it's very asymmetric. It's then easy to understand why regulators resist changing the rules. It's because there's big punishment on one side and no reward on the other.  How would any rational person behave in such a situation."

So don’t look for help from the government for change. How about the indigenous leadership? Why haven't they been agents of change? That’s an easy one. If change were going to occur for the better from this source it would have already done so. Hoping positive change will come from indigenous leadership is clearly a lost cause. The leadership can answer for themselves as to why they’ve been so ineffective in this matter.

So that leaves the average suffering indigenous people to take matters in their own hands, if they're ever going to get change. Many were hopeful as the Idle No More Movement sprang up from the grassroots.  Finally, here was an initiative that seemed poised to move the needle in the right direction. But it fizzled out or at least lost momentum. Just like the Occupy Movement, it simply lacked a focus.

I believe the Idle No More Movement needs a focus, a big hairy audacious goal to spark positive change.

I believe the root cause of the deplorable condition that the indigenous people live in in Canada is the archaic colonial Indian Act. The goal should be to get rid of it. Phase it out over 20 years. The Idle No More Movement should change into the more focused and audacious goal-oriented  “Indian Act No More”.

Led Down the Garden Path by Our Analogies

Paraphrasing an Einstein quote,, I said to a fellow worker the other day that “You can get from A to B with Logic but you can go anywhere with Imagination”. Her reaction was interesting.  I could see she recognized the quote and gave it passing kudos. However, I also recognized a halting almost begrudging acceptance of this idea. It made me think that she may have been exposed to it in school as the counter argument to a more forcefully endorsed reality.

In school we’re always being taught to compare and contrast differences as though this binary premise was the default. This is probably reflecting the modern computer dominated culture we`ve been raised in. Could it be that the binary nature of today`s computers, it`s bits and bytes as represented by 1`s and 0`s, dominates all our lives by leaking into our very ways of thinking about the world. It wouldn’t surprise me. There must be some reason the modern world is becoming so polarized. Politically, for example, there seems to be little middle ground any more.  

The analogies we use to explain things colour our world. It's as if the tail is wagging the dog.

One of the best analogies I`ve heard to explain speciation on an evolutionary scale involved the idea of a field filled with valleys and peaks whereby the peaks represent new species emerging between the valleys. This is a great way to break with the linear bipolar two-dimensional way that most of us think about nature. The analogies we use certainly limit our understanding of our surroundings. Even Plato`s idea of `knowledge as represented by a dark cave with a light source, casting shadows on the wall, has an inherent binary nature to it. We either see the knowledge or we don`t. We`re either in the light or we`re in the dark.

Binary and linear ways of thinking is most often promoted in our classrooms. It is the easiest way to get from A to B. Thinking outside the box is an anomaly and it's admired by it exceptionalism. The default linear and binary way of thinking no doubt has caused us to diminish our fellow creatures on the planet. Either other animals are sentient like us or not. We very narrowly define intelligence, for example, putting ourselves on a pinnacle and then dismissing anything below us on this scale. How else could we eat animals….

It`s time to teach non-linear, non-binary thinking as a default in our classrooms. But maybe we`ll have to wait until quantum computing becomes established.

Living with The Lie: Cognitive Dissonance

As I get older, nearing a milestone of 64, I realize how much I like to get good sleep. What makes me lose sleep? Living with a lie. That is the dragon that needs slaying. We have a name for living with a lie - cognitive dissonance. By naming something we put it to bed. How ironical.

What is cognitive dissonance. It’s saying or believing one thing and doing or thinking something else.

We have individual dragons we need slaying and we have social constructs based on lies that need slaying. Machiavellian politics is alive and well creating nightmares around the world. Men cheat and it’s like pissing in their own pools. They try to kid themselves that it doesn’t matter. They know it’s wrong and dishonest but they live the nightmare thinking such macho behaviour is acceptable. Thinking lies are acceptable to a healthy individual leads to unrest. For some individuals and organizations not so much.

Consider some of our most cherished institutions or people. Mother Teresa is nominated by a Pope to be a saint. But her autobiography tells how she despaired in doubting her faith, living with the Church’s biggest sin - despair, yet she promoted her faith anyway. Einstein stated that ”religion is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions”. He got that right. The Roman Catholic priests abuse children and the church covers it up. People of religious faith are themselves stunted children. People of the southern American States have the highest religious subscribers yet are the most unlawful with the highest crime rates. Hypocrisy is the name for recognizing cognitive dissonance and living with it.

We all have dragons to slay. I used to practise praying at meals while believing in evolution. Once I stopped praying at meals I felt honest with myself and slept better.

It seems that normal healthy individuals have a true north and can keep on the straight and narrow, albeit with periodic compass re-calibrations. An organization on the other hand like a church, government or corporation, although given the rights of an individual, appears unable to reconcile lies and inconsistencies and may even create them. The organization I work for for example, the CFIA, refused to acknowledge the inconsistency of claiming to be a scientific evidence-based organization while regulating ritualistic slaughter. They rationalized it to me by claiming such slaughter was based on political science. Apparently organizations don’t require a good sleep.

The reconciliation between the laws in macro or Newtonian physics and strangeness of sub atomic quantum mechanics will probably with time be resolved. This too may be quite ironic as it seems that time heals all. In time we all get a good sleep.

Religion and Mental Illness

Religion is a form of social mental illness - a type of social neurosis.  It would be listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) if they removed the ban on social norms. When capitalism is put on the diagnostic "couch" we can easily see the psychosis involved. Religion too should be shown up for its harmful and delusional behaviour.

When you are over twenty-five and your brain has fully developed and you still believe in something for which there is no evidence, there are three possible reasons. One, you are a fool, two, you have a mental capacity considerably below normal or three, you have a mental illness, that is you have stopped thinking for yourself because you have been indoctrinated. We teach children to believe in something without evidence, by having faith in what elders tell them, so that we can teach them that everything being told them is not true. It's part of teaching critical thinking skills. It's a sad state of affairs when adults still think like children and have unquestioning faith. Faith is not a virtue.  It should be considered a tool to develop critical thinking skills for children.  When adults persist in faith-based thinking then we all suffer in society.

There is a psychological phenomena known as normalcy. We tend to think that what happened yesterday will continue into the future. People generally don't realize that religion is a social construct. It was developed in a time of ignorance about the natural world. People generally don't realize that this institution, like capitalism, can be de-constructed and re-designed. Nothing stays the same.  Why should we be limited by anachronistic institutions. In a healthy society social norms should be questioned. Slavery and apartheid would still be with us if this weren't the case.  Religion is still with us today because of indoctrination and a taboo about questioning social norms. So how can we call ourselves, as a society, enlightened? There is always room for continuous improvement. But it starts with recognizing there is a problem.

One of my proudest accomplishments and contributions is to have raised three children in a way that encouraged critical thinking.  This wasn't easy in a system that perpetuates religious madness. Although we expound secularism in Canada we still endorse religions in all their nefarious forms. Our politics and educational system is filled with religious undercurrents, a vestige of our ignorant past. Our present government, for example, has established an agency to encourage religious tolerance. It has a freedom of religion mandate.  Bet where is the freedom from religion mandate?

Why doesn't our school system make the Origin of Species mandatory reading. Because it's a dangerous idea to the establishment. Before November 24, 1859 when this idea was first published by Darwin you might be excused for believing in religion. At that time it appeared rational, without any other explanation as to how we got here.  Indeed, most people then believed whole heartedly in a creationist god. After 1859 if you were aware of the idea and evidence of evolution you would probably be irrational to believe in a religious explanation. Because now a viable alternative explanation to religion existed. An explanation based on evidence ususally trumps wishful or magical thinking. Why isn't a more rational idea of our world not widely taught.

At one time our school system served, by commission, to indoctrinate children with religion. This was the case even in our public school system, a supposed secular school. I remember in grade 7 being given free copies of the New Testament. Our school system today, by omission, serves as indoctrinating students by simply not teaching everyone about a basic truth in nature, namely evolution.

Don Quixote is not a satire of politics but rather a satire on religion.

Religious people suffer from a form of mental illness somewhat like Jesus Freaks on the streets handing out their mental thoughts.

Health Canada just release the abortion pill, days before an election call. Coincidence, I don't think so. Why has France allowed it for 25 years and Canada just now allows it? The tide is turning or has turned. Politicians will now do anything for re-election.

Churches still are exempt from taxes. Why? You might think that they could at least put solar panels on their roofs.

Religion is the New Race.

Religion is the new race. In the past we more identified by what country or part of the world our parents came from. Now the majority of us are more likely to identify ourselves by which form of magical thinking we engage in or were indoctrinated in by our parents. Instead of valuing the secular culture from which many of our western governmental principles and modern day achievements are derived from we are subservient to religion or our child-like way of thinking.

Religion appeals to our reptilian brains or ancient way of thinking. By not recognizing that all religions are forms of magical thinking based on unverifiable beliefs we are doomed to give this way of thinking credibility and thus the ability to wreak havoc in the world.

Faith is not a virtue, it is the opposite. Faith is thinking with your “gut” instead of your brain. Until a critical tipping point of people understand this the world will continue to be a very regressive and dangerous place to live in. When we continue to elect and respect leaders who claim that they are religious we will get the immature world of “The Lord of the Flies”.

Why aren’t we laughing at religious ideas when expressed by adults instead of esteeming those who espouse such nonsense? When someone who is over 25 years old with a fully developed brain and self-identifies as a Muslim, Christian or Jew for example, we should realize that these people are telling us something very profound about themselves. They are telling us that they are retarded. They are demonstrating that although they look like adults they are really mentally still children. I worked with a devout Catholic who said she would not allow her children to read Harry Potter because it promoted magic. The irony was almost too much to bear. Children raising children - a reflection of the world today. Let's all grow up already.

"Science, as physicist Steven Weinberg has emphasized, does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God. Without science, everything is a miracle. With science, there remains the possibility that nothing is. Religious belief in this case becomes less and less necessary, and also less and less relevant" …. from Lawrence Krauss’s “A Universe from Nothing” .

"It is a fundamental tenet of science that we can never prove something to be true; we can only prove it to be false. This is a very important idea, one that is the basis of all scientific progress. Once we find an example in which a theory that may have worked correctly for millennia no longer agrees with observation, we then know that it must be supplemented - with either new data or a new theory. There is no arguing." - from Lawrence Krauss's "Fear of Physics.

Polytheism vs Monotheism

After reading this great Guardian article by Suzanne Moore about trust it occurred to me how the virtues of trust and loyalty are compromised in multi-cultural societies.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/14/charlie-hebdo-add-faithophobia-to-my-crimes

In terms of loyalty one should remember that all religions in their development had to be disloyal to the one they believed in previously. So the virtue of loyalty has been sacrificed.

Living in a multi-cultural society with differing monotheistic faiths must certainly puts the virtue of trust in harm's way as well.

Believing in something without evidence is problematic but to be pragmatic about it it would seem that to believe in many Gods like the Romans and Greeks did would be preferable for a society that claims to believe in just one God and tolerates the rest.

Consider for example whether polytheism or monotheism is better. Doing so it reminds me just how silly all religions really are but it makes for a good thought experiment. Believing in many Gods is as useless as believing in only one God. That's given. However, believing in one God in today's multi-cultural society is probably much worst than believing in many Gods. This is because of what cognitive dissonance brings to the equation.

When we think that faith is a virtue and believe in one God it creates a situation where one may tolerate another's religious faith but one won't trust that believer. There is a cognitive dissonance created where trust in the other person is lacking because the other person doesn't have the same faith as you do, as much as one might claim there is trust. People confuse tolerance for trust. In a diverse society with multi-monotheist faiths trust must be at a deficit. Consider Islamic adherence in Europe and North America. They're in a minority in a society that claims they tolerate them.  Indeed they may tolerate them but they won't trust them. They must constantly feel threatened.

 Faith is not a virtue but that's not obvious to most. Believing in nonsense must sacrifice the virtues of trust and loyalty. No wonder our society today is under threat.  If we must have religion bring back polytheism.

The Hidden hand

There is continual reference to a "hidden hand" at work by economists to explain the apparent inexplicable concept of how pricing works. Adam Smith’s originally used the concept of the "hidden hand" to explain of the marketplace.

It has developed into an almost religious jargon for economist. But when you consider it in basic terms it implies that there is a unknown self-regulating power, a God-like force that is controlling the economic system. As an atheist I find this inference repugnant.

Most people do not adopt an Occam's Razor stance to explain things. They are awed by the unknown, and instead of adopting a wait and see or an experimental method to determine cause and effect, it is easier to attribute fanciful imaginings rather than apply real evidence-based explanations.

A cruise control on a car, like any self-regulating system, is run by a simple algorithm or set of instructions of comparing a set point and an actual desired parameter and then sending feedback to an actuator to resolve the difference. Not knowing how this works one might easily say a hidden hand is at work to account for this self-regulation. But a mystery interpretation usually doesn't develop for this because one appreciates that this self-adjusting mechanism was designed by an engineer. 

So why, for evolution, is the algorithm of “survival of the fittest" too difficult for many to appreciate. Why do magical non-evidence explanations persist to explain nature or our own origins. I suppose for some if you're not actually around to see the development of such an algorithm then a "hidden hand" simplification works. A God is created. It's understandable how magical concepts might arise in the past. It's just not easily understood how they persist in a modern world where we can actual see how hidden hands work. Obviously for many, especially those in power, transparency is threat. The Wizard of Oz didn't appreciate his curtain being removed.

What’s with the Jews?

Any Jews reading this will likely think, or rationalize it, as an anti-Jewish rant and that the author is racist against Jews. Not so. I raised my children to be critical thinkers and always question people’s behaviour not the person themselves. Try to understand why people do what they do and judge them. Yes judge. If what you see doesn’t make sense, you might like to avoid them.

To the point, why are Jews making terrorists on their border. Why are they making a whole new generation of Palestinian children from Gaza into potential and future terrorists? Is it perhaps a Stockholm affect whereby they somehow admire the oppressive tactics of their nemesis, the Nazis. I just don’t get it. Are they collectively that dumb? Witness their over-the-top reaction to the Palestinians in Gaza. Showing little restraint by killing so many civilians, especially children here makes no sense. There is no justification for killing children, who most of us are taught to protect. I was under the impression that Jews were an intelligent group of people, perhaps more so than most. Many have excelled individually in their contributions to society. But collectively, they seem to be not all there. Give them a State and look what happens!

It’s hard for me to understand how putting this religious state into an arab area after the 2nd world war was a good idea. Israel does not separate the state from the church like most civilized and developed countries do today. Most Arab countries here do not either, Turkey being the exception. So, what’s with that?  Is this why, as a country, they’re so messed up.  They appear to be acting somewhat like the southern States, that will not teach evolution but rather Intelligent Design. Also, why are their more Jews in the United States than in Israel, if this homeland is such a great idea?  What was the world thinking?  Guilt?  Is that why the US is still feeding militarily this failed state.

My first experience with a jewish person was when I was boarding in a house in my first year at university in Waterloo, Ontario. He was studying engineering at the University and I was in science. As Waterloo has many Germans the house we boarded at was owned by an old German lady. This student and his landlord just could not get along. The mutual hatred was palpable. Coming from Northern Ontario it was the first time I’d been exposed to this irrational racist behaviour. 

He and I did engage in many lively debates. One centred on his English Mini that he drove. I made the mistake of telling him I thought that the Volkswagen was probably a better made car and I was surprised, that as an engineering student, he could not see that.  Of course his reasoning, or lack of it, was totally emotional against anything German. He was still fighting the battle of his parents. "Never Forget", was so ingrained in his upbringing, I could see it was useless to engage further with him.

For many, emotion and conditioning, override any sense of reasoning.  So it seems has occurred in the middle east.

The Negative Collective

I'm a great believer in the collective. However,  I don't  necessarily believe that the whole is greater than it's sum. In fact at this time in history, in 2014 Canada is demonstrating that we are collectively less than the sum of our parts. Collectively, without positive leadership, we are a poor example for the rest of the world.

My wife and I just returned from a trip to Bentonville Arkansas. Here we toured the Walton's Museum, a tribute to the founder of WalMart. Walton along with their Republican/Conservative government leaders,  Reagan and Bush in spite of their folksy persona, have acted to destroy the American middle class and destabilize a once powerful economy. It shows you how poor leadership, focused on Capitalism and free enterprise, can decimate an economy, a country.  But the Walton heiress, Alice Walton, has erected an art museum in Bentonville. The art museum has free admission. Capitalism's altruism at its best.

When we returned to Canada the news headline was that McDonald's Canada had suspended its Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) hiring practise here. It appears that McDonald's Canada, after exposés about it abusing Canadian workers by paying them less and not hiring Canadians in preference to foreign workers, realized it was hurting their brand. They were falling out of favour by the collective here. McDonald's at least shows more leadership and insight than the government that allowed the policy to hurt its own citizens. This TFW policy clearly undermines the labour force in Canada. But it is is just one example of a Conservative government working here in Canada to undermine the middle class by favouring special interests.

Canadians deserve the dysfunctional government they have now. We collectively suffer from the individuals that voted for these Harper Conservatives, or the ones that apathetically sat back and allowed it to happen. By allowing this collective conservative mindset to dominate our government, the roots of their mental dysfunction finds expression. As an example of this form of mental dysfunction, I work with an admitted Conservative who, although has worked all his life in government and is about to retire on a government pension, does not believe in taxes! He's a rugged individual, a leader of his church, who is a professed Christian. He doesn't realize that Christ was a socialist who believed in caring for the collective. This type of individual mental processing helps explain our present collective state whereby our national sport is the only team sport that allows fighting.

Oh well, we can only mature and get better.  In the meanwhile, pardon me while I tranquilize myself with trivia and return to watching the Blue Jays lose.

A Humanist Credo

I'm a humanist. I believe in my fellow man. This is sometimes more difficult in practice than in principle. But I like a challenge. First and foremost though I recognize that I'm a member of homo sapiens. I have evolved.  

I believe that religious and political identifications split us as opposed to unite us. Once we've seen the planet from space we should realize that we're all in the same lifeboat and either we all row together or we row apart, inevitably onto the rocks. In unfettered capitalism with its emphasis on competition and the rugged individual we certainly row apart.

In cleavages caused by religion or income inequality we row apart. Growing up we're taught to suppress our egos in order to better function in society - to be civilized. 
Yet many of our cherished institutions emphasize splitting the human race into competitive factions. Time for a rethink.

If evil exists it resides in the individual or individual worship, a psychopathic leaning. Hero worshiping emphasizes the individual. Nothing wrong with being inspired by leaders that emphasize the humanity in us but God help us if we admire those that emphasize only the individual.

In a Capitalistic society for example, where all boats rise with the rising tide of individual wealth, the problem is that some boats are yachts that swamp the rowboats. It doesn't recognize we're all ultimately in the same boat together.

Humanist don't generally leave it to God to solve our problems. For many, God is an individual, and like the Devil, acts as one. Most joy and productivity, like in sex, occurs with the merging of more than one. Homo sapiens are social animals and to become human we must unite and take joy in our success as a united group.

When you primarily identify yourself as a particular race or group, First Nations, Christian, Jew, Islamic, WASP, Conservative, Liberal, Democrat etc. you divide yourself away from the collective (humans that we are) and make yourself more of an individual. That may have been desirable, even necessary in the past, but a recipe for disaster in the present.

Good is God

Just a thought for this December.  Here is a corny video but cute.

You may also have seen this article about a New York policeman.

This policeman's actions was great but it's inspirational underpinnings is given here by Mychal Judge.

"With all the commotion over this photo of simple, perfect kindness came an affirmation of a theological precept once proposed by the late Father Mychal Judge, himself widely known as the FDNY chaplain who perished at the World Trade Center. Judge was also an unofficial chaplain to Manhattan’s homeless, able to call many of them by name as he strolled the city in sandaled feet and a friar’s brown habit. “Hello, William!… Hello, Ralph! … Hello, Peter!” he would say.

His smile was always joined by a few buoying words and a dollar, folded lengthwise because he thought that made it seem less of a handout. He one day summarized his particular theology by inverting the old Irish mantra that God is good.

“Good is God,” Judge said.

What he meant was that just as the devil is to be found in evil, God is to be found in goodness. He further believed that in recognizing the good in others, you strengthen that good and therefore God. He also felt that embracing your own goodness is the way to grace."

Judge died as a first responder in the World Trade Centre doing good.

Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 book "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" effectively argued the case against organized religion.

Interestingly you can say the same thing about profit for business too. Good practice leads to profits. Profit by itself is greed. It's similar to the idea of looking at stars being best done indirectly with your peripheral vision.  Whenever you seek something directly it becomes counterproductive. The best things are accomplished it seems by just doing the right things, as this New York policeman demonstrated.

News Today is Not Real

News today is not real.  It's like wrestling was in the 70's. You know there's a hint of truth about it.  But it's all entertainment.  Even Colbert in The Colbert Report uses a term "truthiness" that implies there is no real truth just a semblance of it.

With the Colbert Report, Jon Stewart, The Onion and This is That satire, for example, the line between the news and entertainment has never been so indistinct. For those who have watched the recent US election coverage you'll know where this has taken us. Journalist are now politically aligned pundints. You throw in a few anecdotes and you then draw your conclusions. It may be highly entertaining but not informative.  And as we see in the Mitt Romney's campaign in the US, if you tell a big enough lie long enough, people believe it. It's all marketing.

Blame it on the toxic bipartisan polarization that exists now but I think you can also blame it on Halloween in 1938 and the radio drama "War of the Worlds" by Orsen Welles.  Orsen Wells used a news-bulletin format. If you came into this program, after the notice at the beginning that it was fiction, you were scared to death that Martians were invading. This marketing gimmick worked. The entertainment industry took notice. This is when people started purposely confusing news for entertainment by not giving any notice about the distinction. Now we confuse entertainment for news. 

Mind-forged Manacles

Today the Arab countries are ablaze with protests in the streets for a slight to their Islamic god. Yesterday it was the physical assault of the Crusades against the Moors. The pattern repeats itself. Who says history can teach us anything?

Nothing better describes religions than the expression used by William Blake in his famous “London” poem -  “mind-forged manacles”.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

Surely religion is the root cause of much of man’s self-inflicted suffering. Oh if only we could shed those chains, those non-evidence-based claims. Not easy but not impossible. We put them on ourselves. Tradition and authority impose them. An uncritical uneducated population maintains them.

William Blake was aware of the self-inflicted limits placed on thought.  He advocated imagination as a means to overcome the restrictions of tradition and authority. He especially disliked science as he saw it as nature being tooth-and claw and in his London poem quoted above saw the nasty effect of the industrial revolution. But Blake himself had a mind-forged manacle based on the time he lived. For he was limited to what was known at his time. He died in 1827, 32 years before Darwin published his “Origin of Species”.  So when he published his Lamb poem asking, "Little Lamb, who made thee?/Dost thou know who made thee?", he did not realize that Darwin would, for the first time in history, provided an alternative answer to the only one at that time - a religious-based explanation.  Tyger complementing the Lamb poem has the narrator ask: "Did he who made the lamb make thee?" The answer of course is yes. Nature through evolution made both. We know today there is now no need to invoke good or evil or a God for paradoxes seen through the lens of religion. Good, evil, God are anthropomorphic terms that may one day be anachronistic. Unfortunately, as we see in the daily news, they still rule in the southern religious intolerant Taliban-like states of the US and in the eastern Islamic countries.

Why not use our imaginations and slightly rewrite the Grassroot’s song Let’s Live for Today?
I think John Lennon would approve.

"When I think of all the worries people seem to find
And how they're in a hurry to complicate their mind
By chasing after religions and dreams that can't come true
I'm glad that we are different, we've better things to do"

False Economies are Based on Arbitrage - the Sleight of Hand Myth of Hedging.

I was fortunate enough to have obtained a science degree before I got an MBA and learned about arbitrage. Something about arbitrage just didn’t make sense to me. Otherwise I might have bought into this win-lose proposition that business use to hedge their bets and thought it made sense. Basically arbitrage is a form of financial speculation whereby you find a resource that is under priced and then buy it as fast as you can and resell it as fast as you can for the real market price or higher, thus making a quick profit. Business use it to hedge their risky bets; to take risk off the table so they say. But in doing so obviously someone (the someone who had underpriced their resource) loses. But for business, especially Conservative or Republican oriented businesses, where a dog-eat-dog mentality prevails, this sleight of hand is fine. In fact it’s ideal because it minimizes your risk at someone else’s expense. An excuse used for arbitrage is that it determines the real price of a commodity. Again the hidden hand of arbitrage reveals all. Hocus pocus. It’s magic. Let’s not really look too closely at it because it works for this and those in power - the wealthy 1%. In fact arbitrage kills capitalism. 

Conservatives Don’t Know Arithmetic

I have often heard that Conservative times are tough times. But I think Bill Clinton proved that in his nomination speech for Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention last week by providing us some very interesting numbers. He pointed out that Democrats produced twice as many jobs as Republicans in the US.

The Conservatives in Canada are in lockstep with their Republican brethren in the US. Unfortunately Canadians are now suffering under a majority Conservative government. It seems collectively we’re not smart enough to learn from the US experience with Republican governments. It seems we need to find out ourselves how bad the Conservative mind set  really is for our economy. Perhaps we can take a reality check from Bill Clinton.

Clinton pointed out a very interesting but not surprising fact, if you know that Conservative times are tough times. In the US jobs growth with Democrats is much better, double, than with Republicans over the last 50 years.

Overpopulation: The Elephant in the Room

On October 31, 2011, the global population boomed and hit the all-time high of 7 billion people. Some people see this milestone as a great accomplishment of humankind, but I feel it is a step in the wrong direction. Since 1915, the world’s population has quadrupled, increasing by 5.2 billion. The Earth is a closed system. Continued growth of the human population is unsustainable because of this. As our population rises, it grows closer to reaching the earth’s carrying capacity. Increasing populations negatively impact both the human race and the environment it depends upon. Although this affirmation is supported by a vast wealth of scientific evidence, it has serious moral implications. Most notably, it has been argued that limiting population growth infringes upon human rights. A counter argument is presented which demonstrates that not limiting population growth causes greater infringement upon human rights. By adopting an ecocentric viewpoint, I assert that population growth must be limited. I support my argument by providing first evidence that population growth is negatively impacting both the environment and human kind and second refuting the stances against limiting population growth.

The Pirates Among Us - The Offshore Tax Evaders

Please take a few minutes to listen to this episode of The Current on offshore tax evasion.

This documentary applies to the US as well as Canada. It points out how governments target the underground economy instead of the offshore economy. The offshore economy is estimated to contain 10-15% of the world’s wealth. The Cayman Islands and Bahamas have been set up by banks, such as the Royal Bank of Canada to, assist greedy people and corporations to avoid paying taxes. Why should this group be allowed to avoid taxes? Lobbyists, lawyers and accountants working for their rich clients may try to explain why such tax avoidance schemes should be allowed but there really is no “public good” reason that governments should allow offshore tax havens let alone assist in setting them up. The bottom line is that there is absolutely no good reason that offshore tax havens should be allowed. Absolutely nothing justifies the use of tax havens. Period!

The Problem of Entertainment

In the past entertainment must have been a luxury that few could afford. Like everything taken to excess today entertainment is problematic. Today entertainment appears to be much more than a diversion but rather an end in itself. Whole industries, movies, theatre, sports, gaming, gambling have sprung up to support the demand. Like consuming too much food or alcohol, consuming too much entertainment is very problematic.

Are Rich People Mentally Ill? Seriously.

You often hear expressions about stashing money away for hard times. This may be prudent or instinctive like squirrels saving food for the winter. However, when hoarding resources goes on for an extended period of time by humans, sometimes over generations, one has to wonder if those that engage in this activity have become deranged. Are they impaired mentally? Why would anyone want more of a resource than they could possibly use unless they are somewhat mentally challenged. You can’t take it with you so why try? Maybe rich people just don’t get it because of a mental impairment. Of course there are always rich people who eventually want to give back but in many cases they’ve already done damage by hoarding and are making repairs.