Friday 31 July 2015
Another harsh post, readers.
I often have to work at being patient when people begin to speak of their latest New Age faith or philosophy or self-help regimen. Jargon. Rituals. Gurus. These are the trappings of a way of going backward. Many of them get traction today because they are anti-science, anti-Western, and anti-establishment, and not ...the latest poison term ...Eurocentric. For God's sake, don't be Eurocentric.
God bless Barack Obama for going to Africa, to Kenya, the country of his father's birth and heritage, so that what he had to say would carry ten times the weight of anything that, for example, I might say, and then saying, without mincing words:
“Every country and every culture has traditions that are unique and help make that country what it is, but just because something is part of your past doesn’t make it right; it doesn’t mean it defines your future,” Obama said, citing the recent debate in America over the Confederate flag.
“Around the world there is a tradition of oppressing women and treating them differently and not giving them the same opportunities, and husbands beating their wives, and children not being sent to school. Those are traditions. Treating women and girls as second-class citizens. Those are bad traditions. They need to change.”
This speech went largely unnoticed by the mainstream media in the West, but it seems to me it is huge in terms of the philosophical issues it tackles. He is saying that moral relativism is wrong. It doesn't work. People everywhere have to stop using it as an excuse for staying mired in the practices that they find comfortable, and this is especially true when reasoning and evidence can be given which show those practices are cruel, stupid, and unnecessary.
I am a Western, scientistic kind of thinker through and through. I believe that we can show with reasoning and evidence - evidence found in the history of every country and civilization of which we have any records - that the values called "courage" and "wisdom" and "freedom" and "love" keep rising as a society's levels of civilization, culture, and affluence keep rising. This is not a lucky coincidence. There is a system of cultural evolution operating among the human societies of the earth. The study of that system is a science that we have only begun to understand.
But the larger view - the one that says the scientific method can be applied by us to all other phenomena, including ourselves, and that it is in that direction of improving our knowledge that our salvation lies - that larger view I subscribe to absolutely.
On this matter of moral realism, I have written at length in other posts on this blog.
Today, I will speak of one of the implications of this position, which is that whatever else we do, we can't start seeking our salvation or redemption by going backward. Stopping scientific research. Refusing to vaccinate our kids. Rejecting genetically modified foods outright. I am in favor of our doing more research on these technologies and on others that are controversial. For example, GMO's make me especially nervous. I worry that we may be losing biodiversity, and it is one of the four main pillars on which our planet's ecosystem rests, the others being air, water, and soil. I worry that one of our genetically modified crops or several of them acting in conjunction may cause the ecosystems of the earth to evolve a virus or fungus that will wipe out some of the current species of the earth completely before we can even begin to find an answer to it. We have to proceed with great caution when we insert new life forms into an ecosystem.
But to turn away from the achievements of the West to anything, however vague and unproven, that is non-Western simply because it is non-Western seems like madness to me. The scientific advances of the West have created so many helpful technologies including the ones that have enabled you and I to communicate as we are right now.
Yes, we are going to have to find alternatives to war - values, mores, and comprehensive ways of running economies that keep us vigorous but not militaristic. Yes, we are going to have to find energy alternatives and end our use of fossil fuels. But no, we can't do those things by getting seven billion people to go back to burning wood in caves.
There are many similar issues that I could discuss, but I think the point is clear. We can't go back. We have to go on - more carefully than we have in the recent past, with more sensitivity to systems, living and non-living, biological and cultural, but this will be hard, not impossible.
A song that captures my antipathy for all forms of mystery, bafflegab, and pseudo-science is the one that I give a link to below. It was actually written about a personal love relationship that fell apart, but it describes a man who was very skillful at mystery-making. It also contains some of the most intensely honest, un-cliche lines ever written in any language, and it was written by someone who knew that mystery-making, famous fellow the best of anyone in his life. Her indictment is as damning as an indictment of a human being can be.
Now you're telling me you're not nostalgic.
Then, give me another word for it.
You were so good with words,
And at keeping things vague.
'Cause I need some of that vagueness now, it's all come back too clearly,
Yes, I loved you dearly,
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust,
I've already paid.
Joan Baez (writing about her long term relationship with Bob Dylan)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MSwBM_CbyY>
Tuesday 28 July 2015
![](https://nbcolympictalk.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/barack-obama.jpg)
Today is a good day, I think, to talk about one of the heroes of our time. I believe that Barack Obama will one day be looked back on as one of America's greatest presidents. I can support that view with a great deal of hard evidence.
In the first place, he is an African-American who became president of the United States. That already is an accomplishment. It wouldn't be a special feat if we lived in a just world, but we don't. In this real world, there is still a lot of suspicion and prejudice between people of different races, ethnic groups, religious groups, and so on. It is just hard for a black man to reach that high office. Whites are the majority in America and many of them hate him.
This point deserves a bit of digression which will turn out to be relevant to my thesis.
Xenophobia is built into our natures because it leads to wars and war for centuries was the means by which our species stayed vigorous. We are the only species that survives by culture, by knowledge being transmitted from generation to generation, in other words. Other species evolve genetically. The weak and defective die young, do not breed, and do not transmit their genes to future generations of their species. Nature red in tooth and claw is what keeps all other species strong.
But we get our living out of the environment by subtle tricks of behavior that get us nutrition, warmth, protection from predators, and so on. These are learned tricks; most of the time, we learn them from our parents and the other mentors of our tribe as we are growing up. Only once in a long while do we devise a new trick of our own. We have been evolving in this cultural way for more than 4,000 years and perhaps as many as 50,000. It's a good way to evolve. It's nimble and resilient. We dominate this planet like no other species ever has. In fact, we had to become our own predators and that is why war became a way of life for our species. Stronger cultures swallowed up weaker ones and war kept the whole species strong.
But our weapons have gotten too big. We now have the capacity to drive the few thousand of our species who might survive a full nuclear exchange to cave lifestyles in a single afternoon. There is even a good chance that by two years after that war, there would be no humans left on our planet. Therefore, "Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind" (from one of John Kennedy's speeches to the UN).
There are people all over the world, including in America, who think the only way to world peace is by one culture completely dominating all others. Such a vision of the future could never work. We need competition between different ways of life. The competition, if it is kept inside the limits of the marketplaces of the world, keeps us growing, changing and evolving. It is also worth noting in passing that any living thing that is not evolving is dying. "Life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday" (Kahlil Gibran). We have to evolve or die.
The dilemma that we are in now is that we have gotten used to war as our way of life and yet we cannot practice war anymore. It can be solved by a moral code which allows us to compete, to stay vigorous, and yet to refrain from full military conflict. This is difficult but not impossible. We are reasoning creatures. Staying on our old warlike course is, in the most basic terms, unreasonable. We really only need to get that truth in order to save ourselves.
So we have to create a code of human behavior, a moral code, that we can, in large majority, accept and adhere to. There will be delinquents, but they can be handled by a moral code that is translated into a legal code that people really believe in because it has shown that it really works. The courts in the West do, mostly, mete out justice. Again, it is worth noting in passing that this basic need for a legal code that does get justice most of the time for most citizens who have to appeal to it is the key to making a society, perhaps a world society, that works. Judges, lawyers, and policemen being fair will be the key to our survival over the long haul.
All of this preamble is only leading up to my saying again more emphatically that I really love the current US president, Barack Obama.
He has searched from the beginning of his first term in office to find the rational solution to every pressing matter that has confronted his administration. He believes in a balance of courage and wisdom, freedom and love.
Are there tyrants in the world? Of course. Can they be dethroned without a war? Well, if their own people abandon them, yes they can. Can we persuade their people to abandon them? George Bush and his advisers never considered that option. They chose to lie to the American people about the so-called "weapons of mass destruction" that Saddam Hussein was supposedly building in Iraq. America and Britain just had to invade in the face of this "existential threat to the West". Later evidence proved there were no wmd's, and the reports of their existence were all lies. People who could prove that Bush and Blair had knowingly lied to their own populations were even killed for knowing too much. (Dr. David Kelly in Britain)
Contrast that scenario with Obama's handling of the Arab Spring. A whole slew of tyrant regimes were overthrown by the West's making information available to the peoples of the states living under those tyrants. Not one American life was lost in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. More than 8,000 American lives and a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) in funds were lost in Iraq. And for what? A new regime that is continuously unstable because its leaders are full of spite for other groups in their state that they see as enemies. Iraqi Sunnis (the minority) and Iraqi Shia killing each other as they have for centuries. Libya today is still far from being a stable state, but its internal problems and the problems it causes for the rest of the world pale into insignificance beside what ISIS and its allies are doing in the former Syria and Iraq, that madhouse created by Bush and his cronies. In the meantime, Libya is making progress. Democracy just takes time.
This way will very likely work in Iran as well. A treaty which limits Iran's nuclear ambitions to peaceful programs and in return lifts the sanctions of the major nations of the world, of which America is only one, lets the Iranians save face while it also opens them up to the ideas, goods, and mores of the West. With the rates of information flow available to the young of Iran, I believe that the old guard, the ayatollahs and their supporters, are doomed to extinction. Young people in Iran mostly don't think that the US is the "great Satan" anymore. The hand held out by a treaty written in a spirit of friendship and respect is powerful confirmation of their belief that they can be citizens of the world, just like people in the West. They can even keep their religion if they want to. The laws of the Western countries guarantee them freedom of religion even if they move to Michigan, Bristol, or Toronto. And those laws, for the most part, work.
In short, Obama's way can work. Reason and respect can work. They just take time. But Bush's way of war and humiliation does not. The hatreds just deepen and go on and on.
Add to this picture the fact that Obama got health care for all Americans. The plan is far from perfect, but now that it's in place, amendments can be made. The first hurdle has been successfully overcome.
I could go on and on, about immigration, gun control, women's rights and many other matters, but I think my main point is clear. Barack Obama is trying the way of decency and sense, at home and abroad. Courage carefully balanced with judgement; freedom balanced with love. He is trying to do what John Lennon said: "give peace a chance".
War may be good for some businesses, but it is terrible for most. They lose assets without a dime of compensation. War may be good for some military people. Career officers who can't move up in a peacetime force, but can in a wartime one. But war is terrible for most ordinary soldiers. They die horribly or come home maimed to a country that does not want to care for them now that their time of military usefulness has passed. Then they watch the schools that their children must be sent to deteriorate. And for centuries, the poorly educated kids that came out of those schools in every part of the world got sent off to another war.
But in these times of the internet, at least one of Karl Marx's predictions is coming true. When people get informed, they realize that they don't have to put up with this madness. In our times, blind obedience is no longer necessary or even possible. People are becoming too well informed for the tyrants to manipulate anymore. Even the wealthy and powerful know that.
All of this, I believe, Barack Obama knows. And he knows the upside too. Give people a chance and they will, usually, do the sensible thing, which, it turns out, is usually the right thing.
God bless Barack Obama. I don't know for certain whether he is aware of all of the subtleties of cultural anthropology and history, but he is acting like a manager of world affairs who is. He even went so far as to say recently in Kenya that traditional cultural mores can't be used anymore as justification for the mistreatment of women and girls. This was a very daring statement, it seems to me, because it is addressed to people all over the world who hide behind their culture and the values it espouses even when those values are clearly wrong.
It also is clear evidence that he does understand the nuances of anthropology and history. He is gently but firmly telling not just Kenyans but the whole world: "We have to change. Ourselves. Our ways of thinking. Americans. Russians. Indians. Chinese. Christians. Muslims. Jews. All. Even you and I."
It also is clear evidence that he does understand the nuances of anthropology and history. He is gently but firmly telling not just Kenyans but the whole world: "We have to change. Ourselves. Our ways of thinking. Americans. Russians. Indians. Chinese. Christians. Muslims. Jews. All. Even you and I."
He's trying to give humanity a better future. He gets it.
President Obama in Kenya (July 2015)
Friday 24 July 2015
Orlando Bloom as Balian in "Kingdom of Heaven"
I keep trying to frame my thoughts on moral realism in slightly different language and to support my argument with different examples taken from life and art so that some people who do not get the main point in one post may get that same point when it is presented in different form in a later post.
So what is that main point? Let's give the argument another, fresh form.
The words we use to name our values really only name patterns in human behavior, patterns that we believe are valuable to remember, to give prominence to in our thoughts, and to use to guide our own behavior, first, in our daily lives, and second, in the special circumstances of a crisis. For example, we learn the concept that we call "courage" because our ancestors discovered the concept and then taught it to their children eons ago. And the whole community in those ancient times developed this concept because living while trying to be courageous, and teaching children to do the same, caused more people in that society to survive and pass the concept on to their children. A courageous society grows. An indolent one shrivels and dies out.
Our ancestors also simultaneously learned the concept that they called "wisdom" because experience taught them that courage alone could do a lot of damage. Aspiring to be courageous and nothing else gets young people killed in risky behavior and gang fights. Courage guided by judgement/wisdom gets good results for the whole society over the long haul.
![](https://wordtolife.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/02_02_12-frodo-gandalf.jpg)
Frodo and Gandalf in "The Lord of the Rings"
These values were closely linked in the minds of our early ancestors in myths. The hero who goes on a purifying journey and takes on enormous challenges always has a teacher. As I've said before, Jason and Achilles must have Chiron, Arthur must have Merlin, Dorothy has Glinda, and Luke Skywalker has Yoda. Frodo needs Gandalf. These myths embed the courage/wisdom balance.
Freedom and love are more recent discoveries in the values-concepts domain, but they have certainly become important to us. Democracy is a kind of religion in the modern Western belief system and lawyers and newspaper reporters are its priests. "All The President's Men", "To Kill A Mockingbird" and so many other titles dramatize our belief in the values of democracy. It is useful, by the way, to catch that these books and movies would have seemed like much ado about nothing to many of our ancestors. Freedom and love, and the democracy they create, are recent concept acquisitions and we have only been programmed to feel emotional about them in comparatively recent times.
In more primal forms, Mel Gibson loves playing William Wallace, and audiences love watching him do it. Wallace just has to cry out "freedom" even as the English torture him to death. Orlando Bloom was the engaging hero Balian in "Kingdom of Heaven", a movie that was praised in both Western and Islamic countries. He sought to create a kingdom of the soul, a kingdom of conscience, and the mutual understanding and respect that he eventually finds with Salah ad-Din saves the lives of thousands of his followers.
Ayn Rand has had an impassioned following for decades, and her novels argue that free people are not equal and equal people are not free. Freedom must reign. Her heroes don't just espouse the value of individual freedom, they revel in it. They are creative geniuses who care next to nothing for anything other than the free pursuit of their own talents and entrepreneurial projects.
Which brings us to some more nuanced thoughts we have to deal with when we look to balance the concept/value we call "freedom" with some other value that will keep the unrestrained pursuit of freedom from turning our society into a wrangling set of mutually hostile vested interest groups that deteriorates into a collection of constantly warring gangs. Freedom run amok is just as destructive to a society as courage is, and just as much in need of a moderating value to keep it on track.
That moderating virtue is love. Love your neighbors and you will respect their rights to be themselves and to pursue their dreams in any way that does not directly harm you. We can even be in the same line of work and compete fairly in the marketplace and may the best team win. Love teaches us all of that and all of that makes our whole larger society strong.
My larger point today is that if you see the good sense of teaching values concepts to young people and thus shaping their patterns of behavior so that our whole culture grows larger in numbers and territory by growing greater in courage, wisdom, freedom, and love, then you are, in a profound sense, a religious person. You have a kind of faith. You believe in things that you can't see and you stand by them in times when the events happening around you don't seem to be favoring people who support those values and it would be much easier just to do what's expedient. Give in. Join the Nazis. Sneak around and burn your rival's warehouse. Lie behind your friends' backs. Take the bribe. Cheat on your spouse. But when you truly have values, you don't do those things. Millions like you make your society efficient, affluent, and strong.
What is even more important to see is that this belief in the realness, the physical realness, of values and in the visible effects that they have on the patterns of behavior of whole societies - this belief has the potential to unite our world. The most determined of atheists and the most devout of religious believers, if they can agree on these minimum essential beliefs, can learn to live together in peace. We can build that better future that you used to dream of when you were a child.
It is that simple. Or in the words of Salah ad-Din in the film "Kingdom of Heaven", it is nothing and it is everything.
Ghassan Massoud as Salah ad-Din in "Kingdom of Heaven"
Monday 20 July 2015
Jim Holtz, teacher
I have to depart from my usual weighty topics today, readers. A dear friend has just died. I am feeling very sad tonight, and in no state to discuss Philosophy, Anthropology, or History.
I'll try not to get this personal again for a long time. But I have to be personal today. I can't think of anything else. He was a very special man.
I've decided to post testimonials from a few of his former students, as a way to commemorate his passing, but also as a way to show those of you who visit here and who are teachers, or who may be thinking of becoming teachers, how much what you do matters. You will have many discouraging days, but never forget how important teachers are. You link together the only real, enduring resources that any society has, namely knowledge and children. When that link begins to fail, that society is on its way out.
Anyway, here are a few of many testimonials I've gathered about Jim. Feel free, if you are a teacher, to imagine that they are spoken to you.
from Jamie
Mr. Holtz, I'm sorry to hear of the battle
you are going through right now. I can't imagine how challenging this is for
you and for your family. I just wanted to let you know that not a day goes by that
I haven't benefited from your teachings. You gave me a space to feel truly
comfortable in myself. To explore, to challenge, to trust, and it's something
that I'm sharing with my three year old son as he grows. I wish you the deepest
peace you can find and for your family, also. You are in my prayers and I am
sending you all my love.
Jamie
from Kristal
Mr. Holtz, Thank you for always believing in me and nurturing my love for
the performing arts. I appreciated your insight and guidance and your class was
my favorite. You didn't just treat us as students, but as people, when you
invited us into your home for apple cider after the show. I still think of you
often and credit you for giving me the confidence to stand up and be vulnerable
in front of my peers. I have carried that confidence with me in my life and for
that I am so grateful. Love from "one of your little aphids" forever.
–
Kristal
from Corey
Dear
Jim,
I was
saddened to hear of your fight against cancer, and I hope this note can offer
some comfort. I have nothing but fond memories of you as a teacher at George
Elliot--your acting class was for me not just a chance to act out, but to be
myself and learn to be comfortable in front of others (something that didn't
then come easy). Indeed, one of my fondest memories of high school was playing
the lead in “Get Smart”, and taking your direction on not trying to do an
imitation of Don Adams' voice, but my own version of it (probably because my
imitation was terrible). Perhaps your most important lesson, though, was not
just how to act, but how to act more like you--someone entirely comfortable
within his own skin, erudite and always a gentleman. These are lessons that I have internalized and made use of in my chosen career (university
professor), and I'm sure I'm not alone. I hope it brings you comfort to know
the important and lasting impact you've had on the lives of those you've
taught.
All my best,
Corey
from Christy
I can't believe I've been out of high school 27
years. Crazy! But those memories are so clear and you figure in those memories
so strongly! And not just in memories. I can honestly say that you played
a huge role in my formation. I'm so happy I took Drama. It helped so much with
my confidence in everything from acting to job interviews to just thinking on
my feet. Thank you, Mr. Holtz! Thank you for going above and beyond as a
teacher. You even took Karen and I sailing!
Love,
Christy
from
Katharine
Jim's
teaching inspired confidence and his classes were some of the most memorable,
even long after graduation. He spoke to his students like adults and never
patronized us, he encouraged interesting discussions in his English classes,
and his guidance helped me overcome my fear of public speaking. His Drama
classes fostered creativity and were so much fun, I always looked forward to
them. I send my best wishes and support to his family during this difficult
time.
Katharine
from Muriel
What Mr. Holtz Meant To Me!
I don’t know
if I appreciated at the time how much work and effort it would have been to
head up a Drama department and put on plays with a limited budget. I do know
that I loved it. It was a highlight of my high school experience.
I have
always loved reading stories, but the chance to bring them to the stage meant
that I was engaged in active storytelling in ways that I hadn’t known that I
could do. It gave me confidence, self-value, and new skills of expression.
Being in
plays allowed me to be excited about a project and to use my imagination. I could
be creative. I was passionate. I was free to be all these other parts of
myself. It gave me new insights into what was important to me and what I was
capable of doing.
Jim created
a space where it was safe to do this. I could trust him implicitly with my
ideas, which is a rare gift for a teenager. He was patient, kind, and
supportive with us all, even when rules were challenged (by others!). It was
always a thrill when he would demonstrate his acting ability. I loved his
humour and the ways he inspired us to try more. I admired him as a teacher, and
I am so grateful that he has been in my life. He made a lifelong difference for
me.
Thanks Jim
Muriel
from Eiko
Dear Mr. Holtz,
I was so sorry to hear about your illness. I am sending you
good thoughts and thinking of you often. Dwight is keeping me updated on how
you are doing.
I don’t know if I ever told you what a huge impression you
had on me, or how much I enjoyed being your student. I always said that you
were the hardest English teacher I ever had, in high school or university
(everything was a cake walk after Grade 12). And I like to tell people about
how we had no classroom, and had to squat in the drafting room and sometimes at
the Burger Baron.
But of course it was Drama that was my favourite. You saw
something in me that I didn’t know was there, and playing Ruth in “Man-in-the-Moon
Marigolds” changed me forever. You helped me become who I am, and I will always
be grateful for that. Being up on that stage, cigarette smoke clouding around
me, Nanny doddering in the background; it’s one of my very fondest memories. I
think a part of me is still there, sitting next to Beatrice. “Apples! Pears!
Cucum…bers!” Thank you, thank you, thank you, for not letting me be Tillie. Anyway, I thought you should know. Thank
you so much, for everything.
Fondly,
Eiko
from Neil
I was blessed to have
two high school teachers - Dwight Wendell and Jim Holtz - that taught me to be
curious and to live a moral life. A moral life requires difficult choices,
but delivers meaningful rewards and relationships. A curious life is
one of joyful discovery and wide-eyed admiration of the wonders of life but
life-long learning also demands a willingness to change and take action, to
make ourselves and our world a better place for everyone.
I have
two favourite memories of my time as Jim's student. The first was Jim's
frank discussion to our English Lit class about how he came to Canada as a
draft dodger. I appreciated his trust in me and my classmates to
share a painful time from his private life in hopes that we took away a
deeper appreciation of the power of governments and the power of individuals.
The second was something straight out of “The Graduate”. "Learn
Mandarin," Jim stressed to me late in my Grade 12 year, after I had found
out I had been accepted into Carleton University's journalism school.
"China will change the world in your lifetime." Just like the guy
telling Dustin Hoffman's overwhelmed character in “The Graduate”, “One word:
plastics. Think about it." Jim was right about Mandarin and China.
I didn't take Jim's
advice, and I have no regrets for that because Jim also taught me to walk my
own path, to improvise not only in his Drama class, but with both the
opportunities and the obstacles life brings. Times in Jim's Drama and English
classes are some of my fondest high school recollections. It was my pleasure
and my privilege to be one of his students and to experience his gentle
wisdom and his sharp wit.
Neil
from Karen
In high
school, I had a habit of writing song lyrics on the chalk board before classes,
which mostly annoyed my various teachers, who would have to erase them when
class started. Mr. Holtz on the other hand, found it totally appropriate for
his English Literature class. He asked me to write a number of poetry quotes of
my choosing on large sheets of paper, leaving room for future writing, and post
them around the classroom. He could see when students had unutilized potential,
or perhaps just needed some attention, and do something about it.
He wanted us
to think for ourselves, to think about literature and what it was for. He
wasn't just teaching the curriculum. He challenged me, asking directly, “What
is art? Why should anyone care?” Rather than selecting a short play for us to
perform at the district drama festival in 1988, Mr. Holtz wrote the play
himself. It was titled, “Why Might We Be.” The play depicted the friendship
between three teenaged girls, who didn't fit in because they were exceptionally
intelligent, talented, and just a little eccentric. The play is about dance,
music, math, feminism, and literature. I'm not sure, but I may even still have
a copy of it in a box somewhere. I think “Why Might We Be” was mostly written
with his daughter in mind, who is the same age as I am.
I was a teenager, so of
course I goofed around and dropped lines and generally didn't take it as
seriously as I should have. But, as a creative soul who also felt peerless and
odd, I can't begin to say how much this play meant to me.
Mr. Holtz: he got it.
Karen
from
Jannelle
Dear Mr.
Holtz,
Janelle here. Needless to say, it’s been awhile. I thought I’d write you a
letter to tell you all the sentimental things I never told you.
I graduated
from GESS in 1997. Sometimes it feels like a life time ago, but my memory is
long, and things are seldom as far away as they seem. I had you for English in
Grade 9, and for Drama all through high school. I’m not sure how much of me you
remember, students come and go (as do teachers), and the years have a bad habit
of blurring and blending, but I’d like to take a moment to let you know that
you were so significant.
You used to
call us your “little aphids.” Acting class was in the cafeteria. And we spent
hours there! Experimenting, exploring, learning, reading and re-reading lines.
We auditioned there, we rehearsed there, we created there. We found our voices
in that cafeteria, and a part of ourselves that we couldn’t find in any other
class. Granted, we were an eclectic bunch, and we tried your patience more than
once, but we all belonged there. You included. And it bonded us, didn’t it?
That sense of belonging. That feeling that we were all part of something bigger
and better and beautiful. Oh, to belong to the stage! And you. You were exactly
what an acting teacher should be. Quirky and creative and fun. You were what
held us all together, running around, calling us “aphids”, pushing us to find
our creative side, ignoring the fact that this was all taking place in a crappy
cafeteria with a creaky wooden stage.
You gave to
us. There’s no other way to say it. You gave and you gave and you gave. You
gave us your time and energy, working with us for hours outside of school,
helping us learn our parts and block out our plays. You gave us your patience
and your humor, your enthusiasm and vision. You gave us characters to create,
roles to devour, exercises to expand on. You gave us a safe place, where we
could be ourselves, where we could make mistakes and act and learn and grow.
You gave us our cues when we forgot our lines.
You gave us your passion when we tired. You gave us your encouragement
when we were frustrated. And then, when the time was right, when the lines were
memorized and the staging was blocked and the costumes were made, we took to
the stage and you gave us the most valuable thing of all. You gave us your
applause. (And some pretty awesome cast parties.) : 0 )
It takes a
lot to put on a play. And you did it. Over and over and over. And I don’t know
that I ever properly thanked you for all that you gave us in that
cafeteria. For me, acting was the best
part of high school. And I can’t even imagine what high school would have been
like without acting. And I don’t want to think about what acting would have
been like without you. So thank you. For giving us a home.
But there’s
more. Because you gave me more.
You
encouraged me to be creative, to think outside the box, to really extend
myself. And then you gave me the space to do it. You let me do my own thing,
let me take my own slant on assignments, let me find my own way and take my own
risks. You let me write. You created opportunities for me, countless
opportunities, even after I graduated. Even after I graduated, you still gave.
And we had candid conversations, you and I, about this, about that, about all
the important things that have nothing to do with classrooms or curriculum. You
taught me so much, about who I wanted to be, about who I could be, and it all
happened during a time in my life when I was just beginning to understand what
that meant, and the gravity of what that meant.
It’s so hard
to put into words what exactly it is that you did for me. I respected you so
much. I valued so deeply everything you had to say. You were one of the ‘cool’
teachers. And you were on my side. You rooted for me, you supported me, you
believed in me. But more importantly, you helped me begin to navigate and
negotiate the uncertain waters of who I wanted to be in this world.
You were not
just my teacher. You were my mentor. And you were my friend. And you never
hesitated, even after I graduated, to give me guidance, direction, and advice.
Please know that your guidance was valued, your direction was appreciated, and
your advice was trusted. And sound. You mattered. In my life, you mattered.
At
graduation, I won an award. You gave me a beautiful speech and presented me
with a trophy. The trophy was nice. It was big. But you also gave me something
else. During our last acting class together, you gave me a video of all the
performances I had done over the years. The trophy went back to the school, for
another student to claim.
But the
video? I still have the video. I will always have the video. And I can’t help
but feel that that the video is the real trophy anyway.
Time moves
forward. Curtains have to close, but only so they can open again. I have an
eight year old daughter. She has her sights set on Broadway. And so it
continues.....
I came to
see you a couple years after graduation. I was unsure of what direction to take
academically. I was tossing around the idea of graduate school. You were so
encouraging. I received my Master of Arts in English with a specialization in
Creative Writing from the University of Calgary in Spring, 2008.
And in the
winter of 2013, I went to Toronto to pitch my children’s book, “Winter and the
Secret of Santa”, to the Dragons of CBC’s Dragon’s Den. The episode aired
December, 2013. And through the whole experience, from first audition to final
taping, I am happy to announce that my theatrical flair is still intact. Yup. I
still got it.
It was
always my intention to send you a copy of my book, because I knew exactly what
the inscription would be. Please imagine the following, hand-written, on the
inside cover:
To Mr.
Holtz,
I
guess you always knew I was a
true Puck at heart, because these
lines have
never left me:
If we
shadows have offended,
think but this and all is mended:
think but this and all is mended:
That
we have but slumbered here,
while these visions did appear.
And
this weak and idle theme,
no more yielding, but a dream.
no more yielding, but a dream.
Consider
this an encore.
With
love, respect, and applause,
(And a
glass of wine held high)
Janelle
Saturday 18 July 2015
The reasoning that supports the view that moral values connect us to physical reality is difficult. Explaining that reasoning once again is what my last two posts were devoted to. But the reasoning that I then follow to argue that it is rational to believe in a kind of a deity in this universe probably still seems to many of my readers to be drawing too large a conclusion from too little evidence.
But let's have another try at reaching that conclusion, anyway.
If we accept that moral values are our names for patterns of behavior that enable us as whole societies to handle the giant, general qualities of physical reality, then I maintain that when we continue along that reasoning path, the theistic conclusion comes up before us as a choice. And it is rational to choose to believe in God.
Let's briefly review. Over millions of people and thousands of years, courage and wisdom, in balance, are the human response to entropy. Freedom and love, taken together, are our response to uncertainty. These values cause us to behave determinedly while being clever, and creatively while being kind. Societies that are better at those balancing acts outlast more intolerant, ignorant rivals. If we accept this picture of the universe and our place in it, then the universe starts looking like it has some kind of consciousness of its own. It favors the good.
Now if we add quantum entanglement and the universal awareness that it implies, the cases for believing in a deity and not believing in a deity get to be pretty nearly even in weight.
Finally, we see ourselves and our ability to choose as mere parts of the overall calculation. We see that the societies in which people believe in their values, and are willing to fight to defend those values if need be, are the societies that go on. The decent and reasonable over and over defeat the devious and obdurate. Of course they do. Higher levels of decency give us more diverse communities. Pluralistic societies are resourceful societies.
Consider some examples.
The Japanese naval codes were broken early on in WWII, but the Japanese never broke the American code because it was Navajo. None of the few thousand Navajo in the whole world ever sold out to the Japanese, and as a result the American code in the South Pacific war was never broken.
The Brits had the master code-breaker, Alan Turing. He was a homosexual. After the war, his sexual preference was even seen as something to persecute. But in Germany, homosexuality was a death sentence from 1931 on if you were caught. Did the Germans have a Turing who stayed out of sight or even hated Nazism and worked for the Allies? We don't know, but I think the point is clear. A diverse society is resourceful in ways a more homogeneous one can't ever be.
The Japanese soldiers and sailors were told that Americans were incapable of discipline and sacrifice. They were stunned when they saw the willingness of the Americans to die for their cause. The navy torpedo bombers in the Battle of Midway, in particular. They kept trying hopelessly for hours. They all died. But they ran the Japanese Zeroes that were shooting them down out of fuel. Then, while the Zeroes were refueling on the decks of the carriers Soryu, Hiryu, Akagi, and Kaga, a flight of American dive bombers caught them by surprise. All four carriers were burning in under ten minutes, and that ten minutes made the Battle of Midway the turning point in the Pacific War.
The first giant step in the building of the atomic bomb was organized and overseen by Enrico Fermi, who had left Europe to escape the Nazis because his wife was Jewish. Many of the scientists who built the bomb in the desert in New Mexico also were Jews who had left Europe for the same reasons. America got the bomb in early 1945. No other country did until well after the war was over. Did the two American uses of the bomb end the war with fewer lives lost on all sides? It's still debatable, but Truman and nearly all of his generals certainly thought so.
It's not that more homogeneous populations in more regimented states don't have courage or wisdom. But they don't have as much of wisdom because they are so homogeneous. They don't have as many different kinds of people. And their unquestionable courage at that point is not going to be enough. The longer the war goes on, the greater are the odds that they are going to lose. The more regimented states won't, in the end, even have as much population. People come to a democracy from all over the earth because they believe that it will give them a chance in life to build their fortunes in ways their countries of origin did not make available.
Yes, democracies are slow to anger and to act, but when they do find resolution, look out.
Now to that picture which shows that the universe is stacked ever so subtly in favor of courage and wisdom and of freedom and love, add the evidence of physics which says that the universe feels itself all over, all at once, all of the time. Quantum entanglement.
Finally, add the confidence you have when you see all of the evidence and conclude that decency for whole populations is just smart gambling in the long haul. In other words, millions of people like you choosing to believe in values that, in the short-term, they cannot see make a society that has better odds of surviving and passing on its values to its kids. Even your choosing is part of the calculation. Your choosing to believe in decency and sense shows you have a kind of faith. Even if you don't like calling it by that name, that's what it is.
Add it all up. You come to the theistic total.
Or to put the matter another way, if you believe values are not just fantasies and they do connect to physical, empirical reality, and you believe that quantum entanglement is not an illusion or a mistake, and you try to live a decent life day by day, choice by choice, I don't much care whether you ever say you believe in God. By the visible evidence, which is all that science cares about, you already do.
You're missing the therapeutic value of meditation and communion with that conscious universe, but choosing to leave that element out of your life is your choice.
Alright, God is a hard case sometimes. Has to be. Adults know that. A vast, subtle universe cannot be pulled into shape instant by instant except by a balance of forces. As a result, there have to be the same odds for tragedy as there are for triumph.
But I'll repeat it one last time: if you try your best to live intelligently and decently, and you keep on trying even when it would be easier to take an impulsive or cynical route, you may say you absolutely do not believe in God. But in reality ... oh yes. You secretly do.
Hermann Hesse
"We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement."
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
"My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men."
"My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men."
Thursday 16 July 2015
My apologies, readers, if my last post seemed confusing. It's hard for me to explain a view of reality that is so different in character from the one held by so many moderns, the moral relativist one. I am a moral realist, through and through. Moral relativism, I believe, if we don't outgrow it, is going to get us all killed. But one more try and I'll move on.
We humans evolve culturally, not genetically. We've stagnated genetically for probably 50,000 years. If anything, we've gotten weaker over the last 2000 generations. We save people who would certainly have died young in Neolithic times and these people with various conditions and injuries then live to breed, which in primitive times would not have happened. The gene pool is getting less fit, but so what? The pool of memes, the pool of ideas that drive our behaviour patterns, is getting more fit. In short, we have embarked on a course of cultural evolution, something no other species has ever done, and that strategy, so far, is working. We have come to dominate the earth in ways no other single species has ever come close to.
We pass collections of ideas and mores down to our young generation after generation, and the ideas and mores that work keep multiplying because they equip the tribes that carry them to multiply. Good culture is culture that causes its carriers to survive and flourish. Weak cultures, by and large, die out, via natural disaster sometimes, but more often via war.
A harsh view, but on the other hand, maybe gentler ideas called "morals" have survival value. They must, come to think of it. Look at how many modern tribes contain various versions of them.
In fact, they do. Courage and wisdom are very general moral values that have multiplied as memes in nearly all of the cultures of the world because they make us behave in ways that effectively answer a most basic quality of the real universe, namely entropy. Courage drives us, as whole tribes, into the downward flow of the physical matter of the universe and wisdom enables us to steer.
Everything in physical nature, atoms and molecules, tends to fall apart. Metals corrode. Stars burn out. Living things die. But in life forms, programming drives us to swim into the current and around the obstacles. In most life forms, it's mostly genetic programming, but in humans it's mostly cultural imprinting. And the most general principles that we learn from our parents and mentors are the ones that must inform our behavior in the most general way if we are to survive and pass our values on to our kids. Courage and wisdom, in balance, guide our patterns of behavior in ways that cause us to survive because in the giant picture those behavior patterns are meeting the basic adversity of life.
The other major quality of reality that must be dealt with is uncertainty. We have only begun to understand what this means in physics. Quantum uncertainty is as much a quality of reality as entropy is. But entropy we have understood for a long time. We have formulas in physics that describe it. Uncertainty has only been a seriously considered concept since Bohr and Heisenberg figured it out in the 1920's. But it is a fact. I believe that. There is no single fixed future for the universe as Newton and Laplace pictured it. Bohr and Heisenberg overthrow that whole worldview. We flow into a future that is not only difficult, as influenced by entropy, but also crazy and hazardous as influenced by quantum uncertainty.
Life isn't just hard, it's hazardous. Luckily it is hazardous in probabilistic ways, not random ones. So in the most vigorous societies, we have learned over many generations to live by the values we call "freedom" and "love". Living by freedom gives us a community of variously skilled and talented people, not a uniform, homogeneous population. Love enables us all to live together in the same town and get along. We end up with a pluralistic population, and it is more fit than a uniform population could ever be because when the uncertain universe throws a surprise at us, as it does every so often, a society with a lot of different kinds of people in it has better odds of having someone in town who knows what we can do to get us out of the crisis.
Courage and wisdom, freedom and love. They cause us to behave in ways that, over millions of people and thousands of years, enable us to survive. And that's why values are real. They have real consequences. It's just that those consequences take a long time to become visible in the patterns of human history.
Wednesday 15 July 2015
![](https://psychwire.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/imag0631.jpg)
A couple of posts on moral realism and on how that model connects to the concept of a deity are in order, I think, to remind readers and myself why this blog is called "The Science God".
First, why do I believe in moral realism, in 500 words? Let's look objectively at humans.
All words are labels for sets of sense data or sets of sets
of sense data. Words of greater and greater generality remain in a language
over the long haul only if they name general patterns of phenomena that the
speakers of that language have found are useful to recognize in their struggle
to survive. Our most general words are the ones that have evolved in our
language to name virtues like courage, wisdom, freedom, love, diligence,
honesty, and so on.
We developed the terms “courage” and “wisdom”, for example, because
they are useful. Generation after generation, we impressed these terms on our young
because the patterns of behavior that the terms describe, when the two terms
are used in tandem, guide people to respond to one of the most pervasive
qualities of the physical universe itself, namely entropy. Courage drives us, wisdom steers.
In human terms, entropy simply means things are always driven
by a tendency to fall apart. All life, to survive, must move against the entropy
of reality all of the time. Other living things have qualities like courage and
wisdom written into their dna. Humans are the only species that has discovered
a more nimble modus operandi. Culture. Courage and wisdom, taught to the young in
our culture, shape our behavior, socially then individually, over millennia, in
ways that answer entropy.
The other matched pair of values that I have been able to
discover to this point in my life is freedom-love. These two values steer us
toward patterns of behavior that respond, again over the long haul, to quantum
uncertainty. Life is not just hard, it’s sometimes crazy. In the giant social
picture, freedom and brotherly love balance each other in a manner analogous to
the way courage and wisdom balance each other. Used in tandem, freedom and love
steer us to patterns of behavior that maximize our odds of survival because
they give us a pluralistic nation, the only real way we can insure against the
hazardous quality of reality. Freedom causes us to be varied individuals, love causes us to accept others even when they're very different from us. When disaster comes, a pluralistic society has
higher odds of finding an answer to that unforeseen event than a more
homogeneous society ever could.
If we work hard enough to promulgate and explicate these
values to all of humanity, they will guide us to a balance of love and freedom
that works for our whole species. But in any case, values do work, and they
have worked for a long time, because they connect us to physical reality. Used
in tandem, freedom and love are the human answer to the pervasive uncertainty
of reality.
The emotions that these terms sometimes stir and the blind
loyalty they evoke are useful in survival terms, but they are no guide
to truth. Only the evolutionary usefulness of the values is.
When the concepts called "moral values" are followed through their intermediate behavioral steps into reality, we see they work as parts of a cultural program for long
term survival. Therefore, moral values are observable, testable, replicable,
etc. Moral values are real in the exact empiricist sense of the term.
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