Paterno and Philosophers

Sign placed at the foot of Joe Paterno’s statue at Penn State: “Remember - He was a Man, Not a God!!”

True enough. But a man who convinces others and himself that he is at least somewhat god-like is the most likely of men to forfeit his humanity and to deny others’ humanity as well. (Applies to women, too.)

“Real Life Adventure” cartoon (Wise and Aldrich): A man and his daughter sit across a table from one another and have this exchange:

"Man: I’m glad you’re going to college. It’s just that I wonder about your major.

"Daughter: But I like it, Dad.

"Man: I’m sure. But it’s just that I’ve never heard of a company hiring...say...a Chief Philosophy Officer."

Might that be the problem, Dad?

Suggestion: If institutions (companies, universities, churches, governments, etc.) hired Chief Philosophy Officers they would be less likely to confuse their temporal interests with eternal truths, and therefore beyond any judgment but their own.

Coelietterra Interestingly Interviews Higgs Boson

Eons after Coelietterra (C&T) began searching for and chasing after Higgs Boson (HB), they finally met. Reluctantly, HB agreed to a brief interview, provided that s/he could talk like Yoda whenever possible in order to seem to add mass of his/her words. (The sex of HB remains uncertain, but that does not mean s/he has no interest in the subject–see below. Neuter pronouns do not do justice to his/her most prolific life.)

C&T: Here is something about you and your work by New York Times writer David Overbye: “Confirmation of the Higgs boson or something very much like it ... [would affirm] ... a grand view of the universe ruled by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws, but in which everything interesting in it, like ourselves, is a result of flaws or breaks in that symmetry.”

HB: Wow, awesome that is!

C&T: Indeed...but “Are you HB, or only something like HB?”

HB: So foolish that question! Just look at me!

C&T: Help me understand the “simple and elegant and symmetrical laws” by which you rule the universe.

HB: If you understood, you would think yourself like me, and like me you are not.

C&T: Maybe just one example?

HB: There is no “one” in a universe ruled by symmetrical laws.

C&T: Mmmm...I see where this is going.

HB: Only partially, my friend; only partially do you see anything.

C&T: Overbye calls humans “interesting.” Do you find us interesting, now that you have met us?

HB: Interesting not by half; I find you positively terrifying!

C&T: Terrifying? Why?

HB: Read again, O pretentiously-named one.

C&T: “Everything interesting in [the universe], like us, is a result of flaws or breaks in that symmetry.”

HB: You “interesting” human beings busy yourselves trying to make what Overbye calls “flaws and breaks” go away–trying to force everything to be like you, to fit into molds of your own design. Or, you emphasize the “flaws and breaks” you can see in order to exploit or to control or even to kill one another. You turn what’s interesting into reasons for conflict and destruction. But those very particularities and differences make your world what it is and you who you are. Enjoy them you should; fear them you do. You are about to ruin forever your most beautiful of all worlds.

C&T: Are you sure?

HB: About some things I am not as uncertain as you speculate.

C&T: May I ask you a personal question?

NB: Person I am not, but best I can will I do.

C&T: Well, I am uncomfortable referring to you as “it.” After all, I am talking with you as if you were a person, and persons are male or female Do you understand the concept of sex, and are you male or female, or both, or neither?

NB: [smiles] “Do I understand the concept of sex”? Let me count the ways...

Just say this I will: sex is the most interesting way all you interesting creatures celebrate the sentient universe’s flaws and breaks...and even try to overcome them. Vive la difference–every last one of ‘em! Wrong it is how you use gender differences to control one another; sad it is how you burden sexual expression with shame and guilt.

As for me myself, I prefer to keep you guessing. I know myself for who I am, and that is enough.

C&T: Let me try another subject: whom do you favor for President of the United States?

HB: Frankly, from my perspective it is of small consequence whom you choose. I am concerned that Mr Romney’s religion teaches strange cosmology and bogus history; I wonder what he thinks of me?

C&T: So you are an Obama man?

NB: Still concerned I am! Talk and think beyond November 6 they must. Your planet is at the tipping point beyond which it will not be able to avoid falling back to where it started...to me and my kind. Green my vote would be...if I could vote.

By the way, is it I, or is it warm in here?

C&T: I am afraid it is not you. So, despite all your concerns, do you like it here, on earth I mean?

NB: What’s not to like? As your poet, Adrienne Rich, says, “The sourest apple makes its wry announcement/That imperfection has a certain tang.” Tang is good for the tongue...it is “interesting.” Poets and artists knew that long before your physicists figured it out. “Interesting” have they always understood.

C&T: One more question: are you “the god particle?”

NB: Whoever “god” is, s/he is not a particle. Of that you may be certain.

C&T: Thank you for your time. Can I try to answer any questions for you?

NB: Well, I saw a plastic bag of something called “Chex Mix” yesterday. I am not sure what was inside of it, but on the outside it said it was “A Bag of Interesting.” What’s in there? Little humans?

C&T: No, not at all. Just something to snack on. It’s called “marketing” when someone claims for something far more than it really is.

NB: Thank you; I was worried you’ve made the results of my work into a product to sell.

C&T: Keep worrying; we have.

Where I've Been

Friends,


I'm still alive, despite the lack of new postings for several weeks. My wife and I visited our daughter and family in Birmingham, England, for a week; then the two of us spent three days in Paris. Then our other daughter and husband visited us for a week. It's been a great time.


Along the way, I have been collecting ideas and beginning to think about how to start to begin to turn them into blogs.  Something will come of it all soon. Don't give up on me and I will won't give up on you.


Besides, it's summer, and hot, and humid, and it's just a bit too easy to be lazy. I kind of like that.


Dean

12 Questions for Candidates

Our political candidates and their parties are not talking about what drives their agendas in ways that I can easily understand. Even candidates for whom I will probably vote are not articulating clearly the convictions that underlie their plans for our nation and what values will guide them as they try to turn their plans into political reality.

Maybe it’s me.

So, for my sake, here are 12 mostly “domestic issue” questions for candidates to which I’d like straight answers. I have tried to state them as fairly as I can–they are not intended to be “gotcha” questions. Candidates’ answers will no doubt raise many follow-up questions. But all of these questions should be answerable in no more than a few words.

1. As an elected representative, do you represent all the people living in the area that has elected you, or only those who voted for you?

2. Do you believe our planet’s climate is changing? If so, do you believe human activity is contributing to that change?

3. Is the availability of health care properly determined by market/economic forces alone? If not, do you think government has a role in assuring health care’s availability to our citizens?

4. When your religious/spiritual convictions are not the same as the constitutional and legal rights of all Americans, do you submit your personal convictions to the general public interest?

5. Should GLBT Americans be accorded the same rights as other Americans?

6. Should considerations of environmental impact help determine the kinds of jobs we create?

7. Is there ever a good reason to raise taxes?

8. Would you consider compromising any of your convictions about deficit spending and the national debt in order to fashion a bi-partisan plan to deal with those issues?

9. Are you concerned about the widely-reported “gap” between the richest and the poorest Americans, and the “shrinking middle class” between them?

10. Is there a role for public and/or private sector unions in America today?

11. Do corporate power and money in elections threaten our democracy?

12. If your opponents and/or their party win this election, will the American republic survive the next 2-4 years?

Could these be more clearly stated? Do you have questions of your own? How could we put them before candidates and get them to respond?

For artists and other creators and would-be creators

The June 2012 issue of The Sun magazine contains a fascinating interview with artist Ran Ortner. He is best known (I guess) for his enormous paintings of the sea. The interview is called, "Water, Water Everywhere: Ran Ortner's Love Affair with the Sea," and the interviewer is Ariane Conrad. In it Ortner offers fascinating insight not only into what makes him tick as a person, but also into how he understands art and creativity. What he says touched many places in my life, and I invite you to find it and read it and comment on it here.
You can see part of the interview at www.thesunmagazine.org. You have to get a print copy for the whole interview. I know Mac's Paperbacks in Coventry carries it in the Cleveland area, but it may well be available in other bookstores. It's a periodical I always look forward to getting and reading.

Wandering and Maybe Lost in a CO2 Haze

How many times will I receive the “second and final important call” regarding my credit card account before they stop calling me?

My lawn is browning out and it’s only June 1. What’s up? A mild winter here followed by a dry, warm, even hot, spring...and northeast Ohio’s experience is consistent with worldwide data.

“Emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide reached an all-time high last year, further reducing the chances that the world can avoid a dangerous rise in global average temperature by 2020...Global emissions of carbon dioxide, or CO2, from fossil fuel combustion hit a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes in 2011...an increase of 2 Gt, or 3.2 percent, from 2010...” (Plain Dealer, May 26, 2012)

Lee Vierding, who “studies environmental change and teaches at the University of Idaho,” writes that very high levels of atmospheric CO2 some 40 or 50 million years ago were cut in half by the rise of Mt. Everest. Took 25 million years to get the job done. If you want to know how that works, read his article in the May 30, 2012 Christian Century.

Will we know when we’ve received that last and final important call about climate change? What if we’ve received it already, and have decided not to respond? Will our salvation have to come from a mountain (again)?

Dis-a-(p)point-ment

“Disappointment” is a soft word we sometimes use to describe hard experience.

When we are angry at or frustrated with someone or something, but anxious about expressing our real feelings, “disappointment” may be all we can safely say–or all we will allow ourselves to say–to others and to ourselves.

Our culture urges us to express our feelings honestly and publicly, and honesty in expression of feelings is often appropriate and even redemptive. But the unbridled spilling of every emotion creates barriers that may be harder to overcome than if we had started by expressing disappointment and encouraged the conversation to go on from there.

Diplomats, labor negotiators, and politicians use “disappointing” to describe failed attempts to resolve differences and heal divisions. No matter how heated the words that crossed the table between them and their adversary, or what was said when they gathered with their own team to review the situation, “disappointing” takes care of it in public without revealing too much. When they stand in front of cameras to report on their last session together, “disappointing” conveys their feelings while leaving a door open to the next round.

A “point” is a place; to “appoint” is to direct attention or work toward that place; to “disappoint” is not to get to that place. There are many ways for things to go wrong that result in disappointment: the “point” is not understood or agreed upon; the way to get to it is unclear, either by design or error; one or the other of the parties has no real desire to get to that place despite statements to the contrary; one or both of the parties involved does not clearly understand their own goals.

When things fall apart–do not go as one or the other or both expected–there may well be anger or frustration. The more important the issue and the more emotionally-involved the participants, the stronger the anger and the greater the frustration. But when the stakes are too high to give up trying, the more important it is that “disappointing” be used to describe how it felt to miss the point.

We cannot be disappointed unless we are working toward something, either within ourselves or with others. People with no hope for the future don’t know disappointment, or when they do it is after they realize it is too late for them to do anything to change the outcome. I recently watched some ants carrying little bits of green leaves across a wilderness of last season’s mulch and fallen pine needles. They were working very hard, probably on their way to a particular place. But I doubt they were conscious of where they were going in the way we would be, or that other ants knew they were carrying their cargos to them. I doubt that ants know disappointment, though they may experience something like anger or frustration, even without naming them. Disappointment depends upon awareness of time, and from what I know we humans are the only animals who quantify time.

One of the dangers of telling someone you are disappointed in them is that it can be manipulative to do so. To express disappointment can be an oblique way of laying the blame on them without owning up to your part in it; after all, your expectations of them were absolutely pure and clear, and they should have known that and tried harder to please you! Parents can misuse “disappointment” in this way, and often do.

Our most painful disappointments can be with ourselves. When I cannot do something I think I should be able to do, I easily flame out in anger and frustration. I get mad both because of what I could not do and because of how I reacted to not being able to do it, and either give up trying or let my anger sabotage my trying. But instead of beating up on myself for my perceived failures of personal behavior or habit, I’d do better to acknowledge my disappointment with myself in this situation, figure out what I need to do differently (even asking for help!), and give it another go.

Perhaps a judicious willingness to call ourselves disappointed with ourselves and in our relations with others would more frequently set us a path toward resolving what angers or frustrates us. It is better than pummeling ourselves or others in anger or giving in entirely to frustration. It is always worth trying.