What's the Plan

Often in life, we are obsessed with planning everything in detail. We plan meals, vacations, sales quotas, home redecorating, retirement, budgets, parties, dates, what car we are going to buy, what we are going to say, and what we are going to wear. There's something uniquely human about our desire to plan everything.

It occurred to me that all this desire to think about the future course of things comes to a grinding halt in one conspicuous area. Thoughts of our impending doom. We don't want to think about our bodies failing or how we might die. We spend a considerable amount of time avoiding thinking about it. We spend a furious amount of time planning for everything else that comes between now and then.

It occurred to me that if we spent just a little bit of time thinking about our own mortality when making all our other plans, we might eat healthier, exercise more, and treat our friends and family with a little more love and respect. This doesn't always happen. Many of the people in the hospital or just in poor health today ate, drank, or smoked their way into that condition without much thought about where they were headed. People take the easy path of doing what pleases them, indulging in their vices and expend as little effort exerting themselves as possible. Not everyone, but most people. The planning is all about the things they love or want to do and not about how they are going to finish their life.

But we also plan for what happens after that. It's called religion. I think many people think about religion in a negligent manner. They look at it as a country club membership. They'll pay their dues by going to church when they can and contributing what they can. They'll say they believe and try to live a pious life, when it occurs to them. They may not have any real control over what happens after they die, but they will plan and act as if they do.

Sometimes, I wonder if people are really just fooling themselves. How do they know they're signed up for the right religion and doing the right things to get into heaven? What if they die and instead of the pearly gates, Zeus spends eternity berating them for not offering enough animal sacrifices? There was a South Park episode where a bunch of people died all at once and they were being sorted out in heaven, and someone in the crowd shouts out "Who was right? What is the one true religion?" and God or St. Peter says, "The correct answer is.... Mormons." You can hear people in the crowd going "What!? No way!"

I'm not an atheist. I'm of the belief that we don't know, can't know, and won't get to know what happens after we die until we die. Anything can happen. We could simply stop existing, nothing that was us may continue at all. It's hard to imagine, hard to believe, because it seems like such an insult, but it could happen. We could get recycled, reincarnated and reborn (what if it's no guarantee that you'll be human?). We could have something else entirely happen that we don't even have a frame of reference to understand. We could have any one of the religions in the world's story be the one and only thing that happens, or we could have each person's individual belief come to pass for that person. I kind of like the idea that your own personal force of will and belief will manifest itself - makes you feel powerful to imagine that's true.

To me, we don't get to know what's on the other side of life. It's a lot like a singularity, the universe, the big bang. They call it a singularity because there's no way of knowing what happens on the other side of that point in time. Some physicists believe that the universe may be like an enormous single stroke engine. It could be continuously expanding, collapsing, and being reborn in an endless cycle. To not know something isn't necessarily a bad thing. Often it's a good starting point for knowledge. I like to listen to everyone's idea of what they think the answer to this question is. I think often they just believe what they want to believe, what gives them comfort. What gives me comfort is to keep an open mind and wait and find out when it happens to me.

And to eat well and exercise enough. I would like to plan a little for the physical demise.

Who's in Control

I realize that inspiration for some ideas don't always seem related, so bear with me here. I was listening to the Savage Love podcast, an online broadcast of a sex advice column by Dan Savage. Savage Love is the name of his popular newspaper based advice column that has been around for years, usually in some little local newspaper you find in a rack next to the gum machines in your favorite Bar & Grill.

What I heard in passing in the middle of a explanation was a bit of a revelation. The idea resonated with me and later evolved into a different train of thought. Dan was saying, "This is about control and dominance, so much of sex really is, isn't it? ...humans are all about domination and control. Human society is all about domination and control, why shouldn't human sexuality [also be about domination and control]...." He mentioned marking your territory, taking possession, submitting to someone else's authority, and demonstrating control over others. The context here was sexuality, and Dan Savage didn't dive into the way that this mirrors society as a whole or human traits in non-sexual situations, but you could immediately see the connection.

Later, on a long road trip, my wife and I were talking about how parents try to control their children. I told her that I thought that parental control was only an illusion. You can try to shape your children's behavior, but you can't control their thoughts and desires. You can exert influence, and you can modify behavior through punishments and rewards, but you can't change what they think or what they want to do. We acknowledge that people grow up and are given their own freedom and independence gradually over time, but what many parents don't recognize is that their children have already developed their own way of doing things and thinking long before the parent finally realizes this. We also discussed abuse (parental and spousal), which is a sick twist on control, but that is another subject.

Human society is all about control.

My wife recently graduated from nursing school and started working at a university (teaching) hospital. Before graduation, she was required to shadow a working nurse. She was assigned to a hospital in a system in our city has struggled to maintain profitability. Their hospitals have a reputation as horrible places to work. The atmosphere is bullying, and management never offers the carrot, but is always quick to use the stick - or maybe the sledge hammer. This was a health care system being run primarily as a business, and failing miserably.

While there, basically as an unpaid intern, they started bullying her to come to work for them. This period, just prior to graduation, is when most of my wife's class was busy searching for a job, sharing their experiences with each other. My wife was certain of one thing, she did not want to work for this hospital. It wasn't just that the atmosphere was dismal, it was also that the pay and benefits were nowhere near as good as other hospitals, and the workload was higher. Things kept getting creepier. Managers would "announce" to groups in front of my wife that she was going to work for them, when she wasn't. She finally had it out with the HR manager, when he wouldn't leave her alone. She listed all the better benefits with the hospital she was going to work for. He remained unconvinced, which was his own fatal flaw. If he couldn't see the problem, how could he hope to correct it?

I told her that it was all about control. They mistook the temporary control they had over her during the intership as the same complete control they thought they had over their own employees. They thought that they could just dictate to her to take a job with them because she was assigned to go there like she was working for them. That's the way they treat their employees, so why should they treat her any differently? They were so lost in their warped mindset of controlling others that they didn't understand why she didn't do what they told her to do with her life.

Although she is working for an educational hospital now, and she doesn't get bullied, it is still all about control. This is a different type of control. The school/hospital tries to teach their nurses everything that they will need to know, so that they will understand the best way to do things. This is a more subtle kind of control. They seek to control the way people think through their influence. Given enough free access to information, they trust that people will learn the truth. Understanding should make employees do what is right without being told every step and it will also make them better employees. This is a better type of control, one that recognizes that the person being controlled must ultimately come to the same conclusions themselves and agree that their duties are the best course of action.

And I think this speaks to the great divide in our country right now. I believe the blue/red, republican/democrat, or conservative/liberal debate is also one of freedom versus control. Look at what conservatives attack nowadays. "Liberal" professors on campuses trying to subvert young people's minds. "Liberal" media trying to bring down the conservatives. Attack conservatives are people that are trying desperately to maintain the control of the worst aspects of capitalism in our society.

Capitalism in it's pure form means everyone is voting with their pocketbooks, and only economically viable ideas survive the Darwinism of the marketplace. But excesses and breakdowns in our form of capitalism make it easy for people with lots of money to exert too much control over government and society. In an overly controlled workplace, you see this with a tough profit minded boss trying to dictate what all the employees say and how they act. In our society, you see big companies trying to bend government to their will, restricting regulation and lowering taxes. They don't want any government control of business's behavior. All the while they demand government supports them handsomely with tax breaks and subsidies. We have anything but a pure form of capitalism when you consider that everything goes easily in favor of those that already have the overwhelming majority of the capital. They usually get the best government money can buy.

So the people that support this system (most notably those that benefit handsomely from it) would like everyone to believe that taxes are always bad, regulation is crippling society, our education system is trying to imprint a liberal way of thinking on our youth, and the media is actively against everything they stand for. It's all about control. If you try to impose any kind of control over them, taxes or regulations, for example, they scream bloody murder. If you try to let people explore the truth about the world, and they read up or educate themselves and then learn that things aren't that great, they get really angry. They feel themselves losing the control that they are seeking to impose on society.

My wife summed this up quite simply: one seeks to keep you down, the other seeks to lift you up.

This reminds me of several parallels. Remember how the Soviet Union sought to control their population through oppression, fear, misinformation, and propaganda? In the end it didn't work. Religions don't want you to think too hard about or question what they say, they want you to blindly believe in their gospel so they will continue to have control over you. And look at the way that the interpretation of Islam is used control women in Muslim countries. The common thread here is that people with free will are able to learn the truth. They will then act from the lessons learned and take control of their own lives. This will remove the illusion of control from oppressive governmental, business, and religious leaders. Those that think they are in control now stand to lose everything they care about. Desperate people will say anything to stop from losing that control.

Religion and Rhetoric

I got into a short exchange of emails with a coworker recently. He sent me a link to a report on National Geographic from a Russian scientist (actually, the head of the Russian space program, and not necessarily an expert on solar cycles or climatology) that said that there was no human induced global warming, it was just the sun putting out more heat. The proof was that the Martian polar ice caps were shrinking as observed by new Martian satellites, like Earth's polar ice caps. I quickly found another report from about 6 months later by a panel of climatologists. This report went in more depth and said that the sun did indeed have cycles, but that the current warming was greater than the sun cycle alone could account for. It specifically cited the other report and said that it was wrong. The Russian was only looking at the last 3 years, in any case. I knew that any good experiment or research about a theory would account for baseline conditions (how much solar energy is coming in to the planet) and adjust their findings, so in my mind, the later study had more weight, seemed to be more professional, and seemed more thorough. I copied the link to my coworker with a short comment about how the first study was discredited. My coworker, who must be a global warming skeptic, replied to me that he read the second article and found it to be full of rhetoric and opinion.

My initial reaction was that I now knew that he was a global warming denier, and that any evidence or study supporting global warming would simply be disbelieved by him. The second reaction that I had was an emotional distaste of the word rhetoric. In the battle between science and religion, I like to believe that scientists dispassionately cite facts while religionists emotionally cite beliefs without any proof or support. And here someone was calling a scientific report "rhetoric". My reaction was one of taking offense to the statement.

When I realized how irritated I was about this minor issue, I had to figure out why. First, I looked up rhetoric. There are many meanings to the word. The first one says "the undue use of exaggeration or display; bombast". I think that the connotation he was after. That the content was empty and the language was deceptive. If you read more, you see that rhetoric is also considered to be a highly studied method of speaking, usually to try to persuade, sometimes to deceive.

This reminds me of the Dover Pennsylvania Intelligent Design trial. The trial details were very interesting. They said it was like attending an evolutionary science class. One of my favorite parts was when they discussed scientific theory. Anti-Evolutionists like to say that evolution is only a theory. They are using the layman's definition of theory, as in "harebrained idea". Akin to something you dream up in the middle of the night after drinking too much tequila. Scientific Theory is when you propose an explanation for something many observers have witnessed and studied, and the results are reviewed by peers, tested, and torn apart if found to be weak. A mature scientific theory is something that is generally accepted and is used to help understand the world better. Gravity, electricity, magnetism, and germ behavior are all theories. People aren't going to start floating away and you aren't going to get sick from failing to forward that email your Aunt Nelly sent you just because gravity and germ theory are just theories and therefore not valid. Scientific Theory is like bedrock. You can count on it enough to build something to last on it.

Biblical literalists don't know what else to do. The first big famous crisis between church and science was when Copernicus used science and careful observation to put the sun in the center of the solar system. The church did not like the thought that man was not at the center of all things. There have been many other conflicts since, and when people started using geology to date the age of the earth, and started realizing how old fossils actually were, religious scholars that had been telling everyone that the world was 6,000 years old were seriously threatened by this. Darwin studied under one of the most famous geologists of the day, and was influenced to come up with his theory of evolution by learning about the extreme age of the world through geology.

Religious fundamentalists probably feel threatened by this because they think that if people start finding that things in the bible and things we've been told by religious authorities are not correct, then the whole bible is in question. They fear the house of cards effect.

I don't think all global warming denialists are also religious fundamentalists, but they follow the same pattern. The conservatives are under the influence and sway of religious fundamentalists in this country, and pick up on their attitudes and talking points, even when they don't mean to. Conservatives - with their heavy influence of capitalism and it's basic tenet that glorifies conspicuous consumption, fear what will happen if society peeks behind the curtain and actually starts to understand what is going on and what is at stake. And our divided political climate plays into that fear. Those at the pinnacle of society, in regards to wealth and influence, fear the restless masses. What if they rise up and take away all that is dear and precious to them? Scratch the surface of most denialists, and I believe you'll find someone that shares these fears.

Conflict Resolution

Sometimes everything seems so clear.

I was listening to an odd podcast about logical thinking, and the podcaster made an interesting point. He was talking about how stories (on TV in his example, but this also applies to movies and literature) need to have some kind of conflict in order to hold people's interest. If a story just blandly describes a typical day where someone got up and went about their normal routine, no one would be interested. He went on to say that normal every day life doesn't typically have that much conflict in it, so these stories are not typical of life, but are typical of entertainment.

I don't really enjoy watching sporting events, which is pure ritualized conflict. With the popularity of sports in college and on TV, it seems to me that I am in a small minority. I wonder why anyone cares what any particular team does on any particular occasion. It doesn't change anything. Next season everyone will be at zero again. A great deal of the public would probably disagree with me, but I've just never seen the sense in it. For me it's a huge waste of time. I feel that getting really upset when your team loses is a waste of emotion. Again, I'm out of sync with the majority and I expect that most people would disagree with me.

But thinking about our love of conflict, that would explain a love of sports. You set up an artificial conflict and everyone gets to be entertained by it. I suppose it beats fighting a war out of excitement seeking, or something like the gladiatorial games in Roman arenas. At least in modern sports, no one is supposed to die.

But there is another popular entertainment genre out there that also appeals to a great deal of people, which I believe is much closer to what I like and how I think. You could call a program that has a riddle or solves a problem a Mystery. The rise in popularity of the CSI series (except for Caruso on CSI Miami - he's just an overacting buffoon) is an example of this other category of entertainment. Whether it's figuring out what's going on, solving for the unknown, or societal or scientific discoveries, I've always loved this type of story. How did it happen? Who did it? What's next?

It's like education or research in science. Life is a cosmic Easter egg hunt, all those hidden goodies just waiting to be discovered, opened up, and appreciated. The fun thing about unearthing knowledge is that there is no limit. Each mystery "solved" spawns questions that generate more mysteries. Every time we think we are at the end of scientific discovery, some new field pops up.

I think religion follows the conflict outline. It deals with God vs. the Devil, good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, moral vs. immoral. Unfortunately, people that are fixated on conflict see everything else in terms of conflict. This is why religious people are threatened by and rise in opposition to scientific progress, new ideas, and progressive thinkers. Scientists mostly don't care about the bible, and if they have religious beliefs, they mostly assume that scientific discoveries fit into God's scheme. Religious people assume that scientists are setting out to disprove God or the bible and that they are under attack from scientists. This is ridiculous, but by the time you realize this is going on, it's too late. Devout people assume that if we discover that the earth is 4 billion years old, that disproves the entire bible. They assume that if people believe that we descended from apes that they will reject the Adam and Eve story and therefore conclude that the everything in the bible is completely in error.

Religious people don't understand something very basic about scientific people. We don't root for one side or the other. We aren't interested in conflict, we are interested in conflict resolution. Nothing is written in stone, you can always enhance, rewrite, or revise any scientific premise with further studies and new discoveries. There's nothing disturbing or disruptive about this, it's just the way it is.

By making a conflict about Religion, whether it's evolution, astrophysics, geology, or even whether or not to say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, certain religious leaders are discrediting their own standing, they are picking an impossible fight. It's unfortunate, because while religion has some great aspects like the ability to give people hope or the belief in treating people well and taking care of those less fortunate. Religious leaders run the danger of discrediting all religion by attacking science. In the end, we need the best from both fields to get the most out of life.

Destined for Destiny

Throughout Christian era history, each generation has its apocalyptic fringe.

They believe that the "end times" are going to happen soon. They'll be here to witness it.

2000 years of people, countless hundreds of thousands have believed this.

They were all wrong.

Peter believed it. He wrote a large portion of the New Testament and helped set Christianity on its path to dominance. He was wrong.

You can believe whatever you want to believe. I don't want to change your beliefs if you think things are going to end tomorrow. I expect you have a plan that conforms to your beliefs. I wonder what that plan is, because I wonder if there's any way I wouldn't max out my credit cards and live a life of wanton debauchery if I believed it was all going to end tomorrow. But the end time believers wouldn't get to heaven if they did that.

The thing that kills me is that some of them got into government. One became President.

That is profoundly scary.

If you honestly thought that God was going to swallow up all the faithful and leave the rest to suffer through the reign of Satan on Earth, what would your motivation be to improve life on earth?

I don't want these people running things. They aren't likely to worry about global warming or to try to explore space to help preserve humanity. They wouldn't see any reason not to burn up all the oil and get rich today, damn tomorrow. They would not have a long term plan - there is no long term for them.

Take your religion and stay home. The future is for those that believe in it.

Trivial Trifecta

From a while back, to a friend:

I've been reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is pretty interesting - how people domesticated plants and animals, and why some "tribes" got more advanced than others. Human development history. I just finished a couple of audiobooks from the library on religion. Actually, they are Teaching Company courses, one on the history of Islam and the other on early Christianity.

Also, there was a really interesting Science Friday program on Neural Plasticity. This lady wrote a book about the Dali Lama's interest in current brain science, and all the new ways of rehabilitating brain injuries. It's at http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1998/Jan/hour2_013098.html, but I downloaded it on my ipod. It's really interesting.

They tried to get me to run for city council in (censored city name) again, so I could help with our (political issue). It's sort of like the Iraq war: we were told a bunch of lies, we voted for a course of action based on those lies, the leadership proceeded to prove that they were wrong and didn't know what they were doing, and now we're stuck. The only difference is there's no bombs involved with our intractable situation.