Society « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

◊ Little stuff, big stuff: ants, quarks, war and God?

Science ... Society ...

One or two random thoughts, for this evening:

There are many books and articles on the similarity between ancient eastern metaphysics and modern quantum physics (similar on the surface, anyway). This little cottage industry was started by Fritjof Capra’s “Tao of Physics” and Gary Zukav’s “Dancing Wu Li Masters”. There’s also “The Quantum and the Lotus”, “The Visionary Window: A Quantum Physicist’s Guide To Enlightenment”, and “The Universe In A Single Atom” by the Dalai Lama.

Much as I respect the great Lama, this stuff is pretty touchy-feely and New Age-y. It’s mostly written by western or westernized authors and represents neither real science nor real Buddhism, Taoism nor Hinduism. It’s all a Ken Wilbur-esque blur (of course, Wilbur also has a quantum-ish book, “Quantum Questions”).

I haven’t seen any attempts by such authors to find similar parallels between Judeo-Christian thought » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:37 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, November 3, 2011

◊ Before I Was So Rudely Interrupted . . .

Photo ... Society ...

. . . on Saturday morning by a freak October snowstorm and an early power outage, I was posting a picture montage taken outside my bedroom window that morning, just as the temps dropped and the rain turned to snow. The local sparrows were freaking out at the feeder, clamoring and fighting each other off to get to the seeds, often in mid-air. I had to wonder whether they came out ahead, given all the energy they were burning in fighting to get to the trough.

And then the power stopped.

Mother Nature can be beautiful, but it can also be cruel and stupid. Human beings are also cruel and stupid, way too often. Just like these battling sparrows, humans have their own wars, inspired by the desire to secure and enjoy the good things about life. And like these sparrows, they just make it all worse for themselves; for most in the short run, for all in the long run.

But unlike these sparrows, we aren’t entirely blind to our blindness. Sparrows have their beaks and talons (it got really interesting when a woodpecker claimed the perch and threatened all the pushy sparrows with its long pointy schnoz), » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:53 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, September 22, 2011

◊ Don’t Blink Twice, It’s Alright

Psychology ... Society ...

As I mentioned earlier in the month (Sept. 10), I’ve been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”, a popular book on decision-making. Thirty-eight percent of its reviewers on Amazon believe that it only merits 1, 2 or 3 stars. Even one of the 4 star reviewers says “The book is a series of semi-socio-scientific articles on insight and intuition. It is not a cohesive theory . . . Gladwell fumbles in trying take them into some unified theory that is comprehensible let alone cohesive.” My friend Mary basically agrees with that sentiment (see her comments on it); she finds it to be a desultory mix of topics and a grab-bag of sundry theories.

As to myself, I am also scratching my head, wondering why I don’t see what seems obvious to Gladwell, i.e. a big idea that will change how we and our leaders make decisions, big and small, and for the better. Not that Blink is devoid of all worth. There are a number of small ideas that have some value.

One such idea was elegantly presented recently in a short article on the Scientific American web site, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:01 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

◊ Nuclear Kamikaze Geezers

Current Affairs ... Society ...

I heard a report on NPR the other day about the band of elderly Japanese people who are volunteering to do work at the Fukushima nuclear plant melt-down, in place of younger people whose lives might be shortened by the high levels of radiation there. The government and the utility company have not taken them up on this yet, but they might.

Wow, the Kamikaze spirit lives on in Japan! At least amidst the older generation, those who grew up during WW2 or not long after. This is quite an honorable thing, the notion of older people willing to cut short whatever years they have left, so as to keep younger people from losing a decade or two due to radiation-induced cancer.

Practically speaking, these old codgers are going to suffer if Tokyo Electric sends them out to nuclear hot spots » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:06 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, September 4, 2011

◊ Apology of a Baby Boomer

Personal Reflections ... Society ...

When I was around 16 or so, I remember walking down a local street one day and seeing two guys in a city maintenance truck setting up for some sort of job. As I passed them, I remember one saying to the other “Aaron, kids today just don’t want to work”. I couldn’t help but recall incident that after making similar comments recently to another fellow Baby Boomer regarding the up and coming Millennial Generation of today. I guess that it’s a natural cycle; we couldn’t understand why the older people were bitching about us so much when we were young, and we in turn find things to bitch about regarding the next generation now that we’re old. This cycle has probably been going on for a long, long time.

But to be honest, I wonder if Aaron and his friend were fundamentally correct about my generation. Looking back on what has happened to the world during the reign of the Boomers, I can’t say that there is much to be proud of. We grew up when America and its middle class were unquestionably secure in their economic privilege, and we assumed that we could speak for the whole of humankind. We focused a lot on rights – rights of the minorities, rights of women, rights of consumers, rights of long-haired freaky people, you name it. Unfortunately, we didn’t think too much about responsibilities.

So naturally, the Boomer generation fell in love with credit and debt. We found ways to “make borrowing work for you at home”, we allowed our government to borrow staggering sums » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:55 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, August 21, 2011

◊ Middle Class Storm Petrel

Economics/Business ... Society ...

On this blog I tend to be a storm petrel, focusing on things that are going wrong with the Western world. I could talk more about the joy of being alive, and perhaps I should. The Buddha was quite a storm petrel himself; he kept hammering the point that life itself is suffering. And yet, the Buddha’s greatest lesson was to lift a flower before his students. Beauty is the ultimate lesson.

Well, that’s what I try to say when I post a picture here or talk about my Zen experiences. But tonight, it’s back to the suffering side of things. I’m thinking specifically of the American economy and what it has been doing lately to our society. I just read Don Peck’s incisive article “Can The Middle Class Be Saved” in the September Atlantic Monthly. Mr. Peck packs the article with plenty of probative statistics (onomatopoeia intended!), showing where we are and where we are going . For example:

— The richest 1 percent of households in the US earn as much as the bottom 60 percent (i.e., total dollars from all households in top 1 % = total dollars from all households in bottom 60% of households). » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:48 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, August 14, 2011

◊ Some Uh Oh’s from Sci Am

Science ... Society ...

I’m still a big science buff, and I now have a subscription to Scientific American. I even read it, cover to cover! Here’s a quick review of the July 2011 issue.

To be honest, most of the articles are about science and research at work; i.e. how the day-to-day workings of science (what philosopher Thomas Kuhn called “normal science” and “puzzle solving”) promise a variety of social benefits in the foreseeable future (e.g. better ways to control malaria mosquitoes or contain health care costs), or how researchers are getting closer to affirming or denying a theory regarding an unresolved issue (e.g., dark matter or chronic fatigue syndrome). Other articles inject a scientific viewpoint into a major policy issue, e.g. the question of HIV rates in southern states and what to do with the melted-down Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan. And there are still a few ‘pure science’ articles like SA focused on before 1990, e.g. about trends in the luminosity and surface temperature of visible stars, and the evolution of the eye. But certain SA issues have a handful of articles with broader, more game-changing implications, and the July issue was one of these. So, here is what I think was important.

In the neuroscience realm, I liked “The Limits of Intelligence” by Douglas Fox. I’ve read a lot of books about how the brain works with all its networked neurons and » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:40 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, August 13, 2011

◊ Germany, Manchester; China, Philadelphia . . . and Newark?

Current Affairs ... Society ...

Things aren’t going so well these days in the venerable land of Europe. Greece is bankrupt, Spain, Portugal and Ireland are on the verge, Italy is rolling toward the cliff, France and Britain are in continued recession, and the old cites of England, including London itself, are rioting and burning. Nope, not a good time for Europe.

It’s ironic that the western world fought two major wars and sacrificed millions of people during the 20th century to keep Germany from taking over Europe. But today, Germany is the only European nation that knows how to thrive in the modern world economy. The Germans, with some help from the Chinese (who else?), seem willing to take responsibility for much of the damage that has done by the less business-oriented, less productive members of the Euro community. Up to 2008, Europe could get by as a cultural museum floated by American tourist dollars. But now America is also losing ground economically, and the nations that are gaining it might not be as sentimental about Italian food, French wine, Greek ruins, Spanish fishing villages, London’s theater and all those old cathedrals and wonderful museums. I can’t see throngs of Chinese, Brazilians and Indians lining up outside the Vatican or the Louve.

About the only people who could re-start the engines of Europe are be the Germans. If the Euro Union is going to stick together, the Germans are going to call the shots. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 2:32 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, August 7, 2011

◊ The Tao of Richard Wetherill

Society ... Spirituality ...

Over the past few years, I’ve noticed a lot of full page advertisements in a variety of magazines composed mostly of text, having a small picture of an old 1950’s-style white guy named Richard W. Wetherill. Every now and then I’d try to read some of these ads, but they never seemed to say anything all that interesting. Whoever is behind these ads (the Richard Wetherill Foundation, I gather) obviously has a lot of money, and just keeps on posting them. A quick web search shows that these ads have appeared in Scientific American, Discover, Popular Science and Science Illustrated; the Foundation people are obviously aiming at scientific rationalists. But they have also hit The Smithsonian and The Atlantic at times, trying to broaden their audience a bit (but still aiming at the more educated reading population).

Well, persistence pays off; after 3 or 4 years of seeing these ads, I finally took a few minutes and tried to focus on their message. I also tried to find out a bit about Mr. Wetherill himself, who died in 1989, over 20 years ago. I’d also love to know just who is behind the big push to popularize Wetherill today. But as to Wetherill, he worked for a big railroad car manufacturer in Philadelphia, the Budd Company, as a training executive back in the 1940s. That was back when unions were powerful. I gather that Mr. Wetherill was concerned with union-management and employee-management relationships, which could be rather tumultuous. Well, at some point he decided to quit his job and become a management consultant. Later, he became a prophet, a “man with a message”. (The guy came from Jersey, but must have tapped into an old Main Line family with $$$, which probably pays for all the ads you see out there today). So he wrote all these books to get his message across.

Just what is that message? His ads talk about natural laws of behavior and laws of absolute right. This all has something to do with how people should get along, how political and social and business relationships » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:30 pm Read Comments (14) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, June 9, 2011

◊ Wittgenstein, Socio-Aspie?

Aspergers ... Philosophy ... Society ...

During my readings today I happened across a discussion regarding philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thoughts on words and language. Wittgenstein made the point that most common nouns do not have a precise definition, one that would satisfy the rules of science. That’s not too surprising, as most languages and words evolved long before humankind conjured up the rules of science. According to Wittgenstein, things like chairs and tables and trees are recognized for their “chair-ness” or “tree-ness” by having a significant number of “family resemblances”. However, any one chair need not have ALL of the basic characteristics that chairs can have; it’s as if there were a menu of “chairness” features, and when an object has enough of those features (but not all of them), then it’s a chair. The next chair probably has a different set of features, but with some overlap.

And if you had a hundred different chairs, no one element on the “chairness” list would be present in every chair. But each chair would share at least a handful of characteristics with any other one. That’s just the nature of common language, that’s just how our minds work for day-to-day things. When science came along, it taught us the benefit of having strict definitions; so we can say that beryllium must have a certain number of protons in order to be beryllium (I think the number is four; beryllium is a very light metal, versus uranium with its 92 protons).

This made me think about Aspergers Syndrome. As I’ve said before, Aspergers Syndrome and I have some common ground; I’m not formally diagnosed with it, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:17 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

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