{"id":4318,"date":"2014-07-26T00:02:21","date_gmt":"2014-07-26T05:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4318"},"modified":"2014-07-26T09:31:28","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T14:31:28","slug":"adaptive-optics-for-insensitive-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4318","title":{"rendered":"Adaptive Optics for Insensitive Men"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not always the most politically correct guy on the block, admittedly. I don\u2019t go around calling people names, and I do generally believe in the principal of human equality. But I don\u2019t instantly buy into every particular complaint regarding prejudice, injury or unfair treatment to alleged victims who are gay, female, persons of color, or members of a certain religious heritage. (E.g. I didn’t automatically jump on the liberal bandwagon for Treyvon Martin; I felt that Martin’s tragic death was a rather nuanced situation<\/a>, one not entirely free from prejudice, but not entirely driven by it either.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m even more wary when such claims are based on the alleged \u201csubconscious intent\u201d of the alleged oppressor (who is usually a white male, just like me — or sometimes ALL privileged white men are cast as the “oppressor class”). I.e., that I\u2019m a racist or anti-feminist or gay-basher or anti-Semitic without even knowing it. Human beings come in all shapes and sizes, and some humans are known to take historical wrongs and use them to drum up exaggerated or distorted tales of personal exploitation, so as to claim attention and perhaps money from their accused oppressors. <\/p>\n

On the other hand, I will admit that I did grow up and developed my present ways of thinking under social circumstances that contained many misunderstandings and unhealthy or fearful presumptions regarding minorities, women and gays. Even though I try to be open-minded, even though I try to take each individual that I deal with one-at-a-time regardless of what they look like or act like or profess to believe, I certainly was subject to biases and presumptions about people who aren\u2019t like me. Over the years I have become more and more aware of these biases, and have tried to eliminate them; but I can\u2019t be sure that I have fully rooted them up. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve noticed that there are various white, privileged men of my age group who consider themselves \u201cenlightened\u201d in this regard, and therefore go out of their way to compensate for their own corruptions. They seem to accept the theory espoused by some activists that they themselves are incapable of seeing the truth about their attitudes and actions towards those not like them; so they will almost instantly defer to even the slightest hint that they are being \u201cregressive\u201d in some fashion. I even know one or two \u201ctruly sensitive\u201d fellows like this.<\/p>\n

But to be honest, I\u2019m not \u201ctruly sensitive\u201d myself, not by modern progressive liberal standards. I don\u2019t accept that I should instantly yield to any claim or implication from a woman, a person of color, a gay person, or someone of a particular heritage or other distinction, that I am being insensitive to them. This holds whether the accusation is made to me personally, or to a group that I may be part of, e.g. aging privileged white males. Actually, I\u2019ve been pretty lucky in my life \u2013 I haven\u2019t had many personal accusations of insensitivity or racist bias. But by the same coin, I\u2019m not lauded for my \u2018exceptional sensitivity\u2019 either.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the difference between the fellow who is \u201cexceptionally sensitive\u201d and myself is that I still make my own decisions about whether I am right or wrong about my own potential prejudices. I have faith that I CAN identify any defects in my thinking; perhaps not always instantly, but usually before I would do any harm or render any insult to another. I don\u2019t accept that just because I\u2019m an older straight white guy who never was poor, that I can\u2019t identify, understand and sympathize with the legitimate concerns from those who too often are treated unfairly. I don’t agree that I’m implicitly a racist<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My confidence in myself \u2013 along with my recognition that I need to be ready at all times to question and second-guess my immediate impressions, that I need to be able to chide myself and later admit that I was wrong — is based on the notion of \u201cadaptive optics\u201d.<\/p>\n

As a science guy, I keep up a bit with our overall efforts to peer into the heavens and learn more about the cosmos. Since the days of Galileo, the telescope has helped human-kind to learn much about \u201cwhat\u2019s out there\u201d beyond our tiny little niche in the universe. Humans have built increasingly bigger and more powerful telescopes using not only visible light but many invisible forms of radiation to learn about the heavens. But no matter how big we built our eyes on the sky, they have always been subject to what our atmosphere lets them see. Cloudy nights will obviously cancel an astronomy event, and pollution, moisture and background lighting is increasingly making the atmosphere more of a problem for high-precision astronomy. <\/p>\n

But in the past 50 years, humanity learned how to use rockets to put sophisticated instruments and objects into space, including telescopes themselves. Space-based telescopes obviously don\u2019t have to worry about clouds or distortions from humidity, winds, dust, pollution, etc. Thus we built and launched various forms of high-capacity space observation satellites, including the celebrated Hubble. We now have in the works a next-generation space telescope called the James Webb observatory, taking up where Hubble leaves off.<\/p>\n

So what does this all have to do with the prejudices of the human brain? Well, here\u2019s the analogy \u2013 let\u2019s think of a telescope akin to the way that we observe other people and groups. Just as a telescope cannot perfectly see every star or planet or comet or galaxy out there because of humidity and dust and pollution, our minds are also given blurred and sometimes inaccurate views of other people. If we follow this analogy, then perhaps some of us need \u201ctelescopes in the sky\u201d to help us get beyond the inner prejudices and fears and past experiences that can blur our understanding of others. Obviously, my \u201csensitive\u201d friend looks to the \u201cvictim class spokespersons\u201d as his own Hubble, his own way of getting accurate information about what lies beyond the fuzziness of his own inner psychological atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, there is some value to this — although it’s not guaranteed that self-appointed spokespersons for the exploited class are always being objective and are never acting primarily for their own financial or political enrichment. So, to take the astronomy analogy even further, in recent years there has been renewed interest in building ground-based telescope observatories. There are certain places on the earth in high mountain regions where a lot of pollution and humidity can be avoided. But not enough, really, to be as good as what you can get from the Hubble. So why waste money on new ground-based telescopes? Because, in recent years, advances in<\/a> electronics, lasers, computers and optics have allowed ground telescopes to figure out how the atmosphere might be distorting their view at any time, and compensate for that. <\/p>\n

Space-based telescopes are limited by the rockets needed to launch them; rockets are very dangerous and expensive, and can hold something about the size of a bus, at maximum. For the same money or less, you can build a much bigger telescope on earth, one that can gather much more light from a distant galaxy than a bus-sized telescope. And now, with adaptive optics, you can adjust your focus for how the atmosphere is bending your light rays. <\/p>\n

Right now, a consortium of nations is building the Giant Magellan Telescope on a mountain in Chile. When this facility goes on line in 2020, it will be 10 times more powerful<\/a> than the Hubble — thanks in large part to adaptive optics. And there are others like it being built in other places, including Hawaii<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Adaptive optics \u2013 it ain\u2019t just for telescopes. To me, it\u2019s a philosophy of life; i.e., that I can ultimately trust my thoughts about those unlike myself. It\u2019s faith in myself, belief that I ultimately will get it right about those around me. BUT, it is also a warning and a duty, i.e. that my mind does NOT get things right automatically<\/a>, that I need to remain open-minded, to listen, to learn, to question myself, to sometimes admit that I was wrong about someone or some other class of people. I AM subject to prejudices and mental distortions, and that never goes away. I will always need the \u201cadaptive optics\u201d of self-questioning, in order to be \u2013 well, I don\u2019t claim that I\u2019ll ever be a Buddha or a saint . . . but I hope that if anyone has reason to look back at me after I\u2019m gone, they could say \u201ceven though very imperfect, he was a person of good faith\u201d.<\/p>\n

(Actually, we ALL may need adaptive mental optics; recent studies suggest that there is a genetic basis<\/a> for prejudice and stereotyping. Those genes would likely NOT be unique to privileged white males. Working on our own personal prejudices would be better, IMHO, than back-and-forth accusations of prejudice and counter-prejudice, which our society seems to be engaging in more and more. Conservative commentators are getting quite good at hurling counter-racism charges<\/a> back at liberal and minority groups on behalf of whites and males. I’d say that it would be better to seek the beam in one’s own eye versus the mote in your neighbor’s. “Adaptive mental optics” is basically looking for the beam, and trying to see around it.)<\/p>\n

For now \u2013 back to the adaptive optics of life!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not always the most politically correct guy on the block, admittedly. I don\u2019t go around calling people names, and I do generally believe in the principal of human equality. But I don\u2019t instantly buy into every particular complaint regarding prejudice, injury or unfair treatment to alleged victims who are gay, female, persons of color, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4318"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4335,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions\/4335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}