Robert Heinlein: un-American Rebel With A Cause
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- Robert A. Heinlein, American science-fiction author (1907-1988)
That's outrageous! Why, look at what our experts have done for us.
Our expert chemists have created chemical fertilizers and pesticides to put on our agricultural crops so megafarming agribusinesses can produce lots more food than our ancestors ever dreamed of. And diseases and weaknesses such as diabetes, allergies and heart disease at rates never previously imagined because our bodies can't cope with the chemical attacks over long periods of time. (Tests are usually over three years, seldom longer, as if nothing could affect our health over a long period of time.)
Other expert chemists, medical specialists, have developed drugs to rescue us from the ravages of those chemicals, which have also made their way into our air (over half a million kinds) and our drinking water (over 300,000 kinds).
Our expert medical doctors happily prescribe those drugs for the rest of our lives so we can stay on our feet and work harder than our ancestors ever dreamed. And, so they won't forget what to prescribe, many of them accept reminder gifts from the pharmaceutical companies. A comfortable arrangement for the experts.
Our business specialists, MBAs tucked neatly in safe locations, figure out how to manufacture things to make our lives easier. Our communications specialists devise ways to sell those products to us through advertising, making us believe we need stuff we seldom use. The facts that our lives are not easier, that we have more stress than any previous generation, take more drugs than any previous generation and buy so much we don't need that we have to have yard sales and to give other stuff to "needy" people in neighbouring countries is never mentioned, so we forget. (Donations by Americans are often sold in Canada, and vice versa, a fact seldom noted publicly.)
Our expert architects design skyscrapers so well that most people who have to work in them have their health compromised. Sick building syndrome--no one knows how it will affect our length of life--stands as a hallmark of modern architectural progress.
Our legal specialists are so good at defending bad guys with cash to spread around that few go to prison and the ones who do have short stays. Our lawyers have reputations worse than used car salesmen of the old days. Their accounting specialists advise them how to Hoover every available dollar from ordinary folks who know so little of the skills of relationships they don't know how to stay married, so little about money management that more cash goes out than comes in for too many people and so little about getting along with neighbours that whole television courtroom series have cropped up to document the conflicts and allow the rest of us to be voyeurs.
Our specialists have made us the great Western World are persuaded those who are not part of it envy to such extremes that some of them want to murder us because of it.
We are, in short, the epitome of progress. We have our specialists to thank.
Let's take a moment to consider the parts of their lives that our experts and specialists don't want us to think about. Would you expect to see one of them changing a flat tire? No, because they have roadside assistance insurance. Or is it because they have no idea how to change a tire? Or because they fear getting their hands dirty. Ask one.
Most pay little attention to their diet until they are diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease, have a stroke or are told point blank by their doctors that they are obese or dangerously overweight such that their lives are at risk. They know little about nutrition, what their bodies need to stay healthy.
Most have no idea how to fix their own computers, even how to keep dust out of them, and many don't even keep their security programs up to date. They don't change the oil in their own cars because they don't know how. They can't change a washer in a leaky tap/faucet. They have to call a plumber when their toilet plugs up because they have no idea how to use a plunger (or how to avoid plugging the toilet in the first place).
They don't plant their own gardens where they can grow pesticide-free and chemical-free veggies and fruit because they "don't have time." In fact, most don't have any idea how to tend a garden.
On the other hand, a high school dropout may know how to do all of these things and hundreds more. Does this make the dropout more fit for life in the 21st century than the highly educated person? Not necessarily. But maybe.
Consider this possibility. Something happens that causes the power to go out in your part of the world and you learn that it will be out for a whole year or more. Would you rather have the high school dropout who has had to survive by the seat of his pants for many years as an ally or one of the experts or specialists mentioned earlier in this article?
Of course you assume that such a thing will never happen, even though a terrorist bomb could accomplish it. The 30 million people of the US state of California believe their state will never sink into the Pacific either, even though scientists have been warning it would happen for years from a split of earth's tectonic plates along the San Andreas fault. Many Americans are unaware that what is known as a super volcano is brewing under Yellowstone Park, even though a blow that would darken the skies of the world possibly for years is overdue. These things can happen. Eventually one will. Some call it Armageddon, but it's really just nature in action.
Am I suggesting that high school and post secondary education is worthless or counter productive? Not at all. What is needed is a change of focus in our elementary and high schools. We need to teach children life skills, not stuff they know they will never need or use. How much do you remember or use of what you learned in high school? Would you have willing traded much of it for some of the life skills you have learned by experience since then?
Adolescents and young adults have trouble in high school often because they see how useless what they are forced to learn is and will be to them in the future. They know they need to learn life lessons--that desire to learn is instinctive--but they don't know what those lessons are or how to get them. They rebel. They drop out. They take drugs or alcohol, get tattoos, listen to music that could destroy their hearing, and so on. Eventually, most of them learn the lessons they need, get back on track and become upstanding citizens. But not quickly enough. Those lessons often come the hard way, by making mistake after mistake and learning from them. A few don't make it.
As radical as Robert Heinlein's suggestion in our opening quote seemed when you first read it, it makes more sense now. We have time to teach these life lessons and more. We simply need to eliminate what was better suited for 18th century schools than it is for today's world. In the 18th century kids learned life lessons at home. Today's kids can't learn them at home because many of their parents don't know the life lessons themselves to teach. With both parents working to earn enough to buy the fun things of life as well as what we believe are necessities, we need someone to teach the life lessons that used to be taught at home.
They aren't being taught at school today because the curriculum is too crowded with other (often unnecessary) stuff. They aren't being taught at home. And our young people experience more problems at school and outside of it than any previous generation.
This is a simple connect-the-dots problem and solution. By the way, I still don't know how to set a bone, but I can do most of the rest of what Heinlein suggested. It took me six decades of life to learn these lessons. I should have been able to learn them in school, before I needed them. You too.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, an easy to understand guidebook (with a threatening sounding title) for parents and teachers who want to grow children who know how to manage their lives. It includes specific lessons.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Showing posts with label experts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label experts. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Saturday, December 12, 2009
When The Experts Are Just Plain Wrong
When The Experts Are Just Plain Wrong
'I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.'
- Ursula K. Le Guin, American author (b. 1929)
'You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium.'
- Ursula K. Le Guin, American author (b. 1929)
If these two quotes give evidence of one thing, it's that just because a person is an expert in one thing does not give him the right to believe that he is on every subject.
By virtue of the needs of his art, a writer must be a thinker. However, there is no requirement that the thinking be clear, orderly, logical or that the material presented must be truthful. We need only follow the spoutings of pastors and politicians to show that.
Members of other professions, experienced with receiving respect for their knowledge and skills within the context of their work, often come to believe that their thinking must be correct on all subjects. Engineers and architects, for example, seldom admit they don't know something. We call it arrogance when they act as if others don't know what they are talking about and hubris when they can't imagine being wrong.
As admirable as Le Guin's writings are, especially her utopian science fiction, I can't help taking issue with the two quotes that began this article. They are based on her thinking, her understanding of the world. On the subjects of education (child development) and ecology, her understanding may be of questionable value to the rest of us.
First, it's true that children do not grow into eggplants. However, many grow into adults with precious little imagination and ability to think for themselves. Consider that the average American, for example, has his television running more than five hours a day. Television, the great stupidifier, encourages people to not think by providing them with whatever the producer wants his audience to know and believe. Viewers are not allowed to think for themselves if they follow the producer's intentions.
Look at the lineup of television programs that grace (or disgrace) the screen these days and you will find faked reality shows, home videos that show people at their absolute stupidest, soap operas that demonstrate the worst in human morals and compassion and advertising designed to convince simple minds that they should become poor and unhealthy by buying the products advertised.
Not eggplants, no. But television is doing its best to bring human intelligence down to the level close to at least a smart eggplant. When the computer is the entertainment of choice, we have YouTube to show us that many people have reached that level of intelligence already.
Ursula Le Guin seems to live in a world protected from the realities of entertainment by the average person. For one thing, she reads, which gives her perspectives that non-readers never experience. Reading stimulates the imagination as television, the internet, movies and video games never can. She can't conceive of people not having an imagination. She is sadly mistaken.
As an educator who has taught young children as well as older ones, I can tell you that imagination has been all but eliminated (at least channeled) in many of them before they leave primary school. As I classroom teacher I found it hard to stimulate children to be creative in non-traditional ways.
As for ecology, Le Guin is correct that the universe is in equilibrium. However, she is dead wrong that nothing should change. Nature itself is the greatest force for change.
When one factor changes or many change as a result of natural disaster or human tragedy, nature regroups and establishes a new equilibrium.
Look what happened after the disaster 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. Whether an asteroid struck our planet or climate change eliminated the food dinosaurs ate matters little now. What matters is that mammals succeeded them, and here we are.
Look what happened 225 million years ago when as much as 97 percent of life on land and 85 percent of life in the oceans were wiped out.
Nature adjusts. The universe establishes equilibrium with whatever conditions exist at the time. No matter if we destroyed ourselves, nature would adjust to a new equilibrium.
When Le Guin recommends that we "must not change one thing" for fear of upsetting the equilibrium she fails to understand the concept. In fact, we must change what we do that is destructive, at the least.
We need to consider as many consequences of what we do as we can possibly conceive. We will never know them all, positive or negative. We will always make mistakes and have some successes.
What's more important is that we must not let those who will profit in the future from mistakes we allow to be made today convince us that we are doing the right thing by ignoring the negative consequences of the action. As the saying goes: if something looks too good to be true, it likely is.
US wars in Iraq and Vietnam spring to mind, events costing millions of lives and trillions of dollars. With nothing gained from either but obscene wealth for suppliers of war materials and fuels. Education, meanwhile, suffers as teachers must do without more and more.
Demanding that politicians tell us the truth and the whole truth will never work. The only thing that will work is to educate all people, all children, and to promote diligence and civic responsibility actively.
Doing nothing out of fear of making mistakes and allowing the imaginations of our children to be destroyed through rigid teaching methods and strict control (consider the tragedies of Zero Tolerance, for example) do nothing to make the world a better place.
Denying the truth simply makes it worse. We teach and learn or we suffer the consequences.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to know what to teach children that will help their development, and when.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
'I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.'
- Ursula K. Le Guin, American author (b. 1929)
'You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium.'
- Ursula K. Le Guin, American author (b. 1929)
If these two quotes give evidence of one thing, it's that just because a person is an expert in one thing does not give him the right to believe that he is on every subject.
By virtue of the needs of his art, a writer must be a thinker. However, there is no requirement that the thinking be clear, orderly, logical or that the material presented must be truthful. We need only follow the spoutings of pastors and politicians to show that.
Members of other professions, experienced with receiving respect for their knowledge and skills within the context of their work, often come to believe that their thinking must be correct on all subjects. Engineers and architects, for example, seldom admit they don't know something. We call it arrogance when they act as if others don't know what they are talking about and hubris when they can't imagine being wrong.
As admirable as Le Guin's writings are, especially her utopian science fiction, I can't help taking issue with the two quotes that began this article. They are based on her thinking, her understanding of the world. On the subjects of education (child development) and ecology, her understanding may be of questionable value to the rest of us.
First, it's true that children do not grow into eggplants. However, many grow into adults with precious little imagination and ability to think for themselves. Consider that the average American, for example, has his television running more than five hours a day. Television, the great stupidifier, encourages people to not think by providing them with whatever the producer wants his audience to know and believe. Viewers are not allowed to think for themselves if they follow the producer's intentions.
Look at the lineup of television programs that grace (or disgrace) the screen these days and you will find faked reality shows, home videos that show people at their absolute stupidest, soap operas that demonstrate the worst in human morals and compassion and advertising designed to convince simple minds that they should become poor and unhealthy by buying the products advertised.
Not eggplants, no. But television is doing its best to bring human intelligence down to the level close to at least a smart eggplant. When the computer is the entertainment of choice, we have YouTube to show us that many people have reached that level of intelligence already.
Ursula Le Guin seems to live in a world protected from the realities of entertainment by the average person. For one thing, she reads, which gives her perspectives that non-readers never experience. Reading stimulates the imagination as television, the internet, movies and video games never can. She can't conceive of people not having an imagination. She is sadly mistaken.
As an educator who has taught young children as well as older ones, I can tell you that imagination has been all but eliminated (at least channeled) in many of them before they leave primary school. As I classroom teacher I found it hard to stimulate children to be creative in non-traditional ways.
As for ecology, Le Guin is correct that the universe is in equilibrium. However, she is dead wrong that nothing should change. Nature itself is the greatest force for change.
When one factor changes or many change as a result of natural disaster or human tragedy, nature regroups and establishes a new equilibrium.
Look what happened after the disaster 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs disappeared. Whether an asteroid struck our planet or climate change eliminated the food dinosaurs ate matters little now. What matters is that mammals succeeded them, and here we are.
Look what happened 225 million years ago when as much as 97 percent of life on land and 85 percent of life in the oceans were wiped out.
Nature adjusts. The universe establishes equilibrium with whatever conditions exist at the time. No matter if we destroyed ourselves, nature would adjust to a new equilibrium.
When Le Guin recommends that we "must not change one thing" for fear of upsetting the equilibrium she fails to understand the concept. In fact, we must change what we do that is destructive, at the least.
We need to consider as many consequences of what we do as we can possibly conceive. We will never know them all, positive or negative. We will always make mistakes and have some successes.
What's more important is that we must not let those who will profit in the future from mistakes we allow to be made today convince us that we are doing the right thing by ignoring the negative consequences of the action. As the saying goes: if something looks too good to be true, it likely is.
US wars in Iraq and Vietnam spring to mind, events costing millions of lives and trillions of dollars. With nothing gained from either but obscene wealth for suppliers of war materials and fuels. Education, meanwhile, suffers as teachers must do without more and more.
Demanding that politicians tell us the truth and the whole truth will never work. The only thing that will work is to educate all people, all children, and to promote diligence and civic responsibility actively.
Doing nothing out of fear of making mistakes and allowing the imaginations of our children to be destroyed through rigid teaching methods and strict control (consider the tragedies of Zero Tolerance, for example) do nothing to make the world a better place.
Denying the truth simply makes it worse. We teach and learn or we suffer the consequences.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to know what to teach children that will help their development, and when.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Why the Economy is as Undependable as the Weather
Why the Economy Is As Undependable As the Weather
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?
- Kelvin Throop III, grandson of a likely fictional character of disputed origin, possibly Canadian (in other words, origin uncertain)
No matter where in the world people live, they all complain of the inaccuracies of their weather forecasters.
No matter where in the world people live, they are also feeling the effects of the economic downturn, despite the accumulated expertise of noted economists.
Why are weather forecasts so often wrong? In my country, Environment Canada (the government weather service) claims it is right 89 percent of the time. And it is, if you count only forecasts made within the previous three hours of any given time.
Weather and climate may follow general patterns, but they do not adhere to weather charts nor necessarily follow computerized climate models. As technologically advanced as we are in the 21st century, our meteorologists and climatologists know with certainty as much about the accuracy of their forecasts as doctors know about the human body. Which is very little despite their claims to the contrary.
Have you ever taken the time to watch dust moving around in a puddle or fog swirling on a summer morning? They defy accurate description. I have watched waves on the lake near where I used to live approach each other from opposite directions, then continue on by passing through each other as if the other weren't there at all. Shouldn't they cancel each other out? They don't. Waves are an effect of weather above them.
The economy of a country depends on so many factors that no one person or computer can keep track of them all. The current recession began when unethical bank officers granted mortgages to people who could not afford to pay them back, even though the interest rates were below the prime lending rate. The banks then sold these "loser" papers to other banks around the world, combined with good mortgage papers. Somebody had to pay. Turns out we all did.
Remember the dotcom collapses several years ago where internet startup companies collected fortunes with little more than a dream to sell? Or the Worldcom and Enron collapses (among others) where their executives stated profits and sales increases in the 30 percent range when they were only a fraction of that?
A great deal of the economy of a country depends on the honesty and integrity of those who move money around it. Stripped to its essentials, an economy functions on the greed and honesty of those with money. In the end, greed always dominates.
So weather forecasts are based on factors we don't even understand, while economic forecasts depend on the integrity of those with money. Is it any wonder that neither can be depended upon?
As for science fiction, some of it from the past may be seen in technology today?
Yet that's not the point of Throop's quote. His point is that many people will believe forecasts created by those who claim to be experts, while deriding technological and cultural forecasts from sources such as writers of science fiction. Science fiction writers don't claim to be experts.
Anyone who claims to have expertise in any subject will find followers provided that they can back up their predictions with good stories.
Weren't snake oil salesmen of the past successful because they told the best stories? Are our biggest advertisers today not successful because they tell the best lies that appeal to our vanity and need for social status? Didn't our ancestors believe the tribal chiefs and medicine men and women who told the best stories?
We tend to believe those who tell the most convincing stories, whether the stories have truth and validity or not.
So it rains on our parades and our retirement nestegg stocks tank. Our lives remain determined largely by our beliefs.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who believe what they can depend on.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?
- Kelvin Throop III, grandson of a likely fictional character of disputed origin, possibly Canadian (in other words, origin uncertain)
No matter where in the world people live, they all complain of the inaccuracies of their weather forecasters.
No matter where in the world people live, they are also feeling the effects of the economic downturn, despite the accumulated expertise of noted economists.
Why are weather forecasts so often wrong? In my country, Environment Canada (the government weather service) claims it is right 89 percent of the time. And it is, if you count only forecasts made within the previous three hours of any given time.
Weather and climate may follow general patterns, but they do not adhere to weather charts nor necessarily follow computerized climate models. As technologically advanced as we are in the 21st century, our meteorologists and climatologists know with certainty as much about the accuracy of their forecasts as doctors know about the human body. Which is very little despite their claims to the contrary.
Have you ever taken the time to watch dust moving around in a puddle or fog swirling on a summer morning? They defy accurate description. I have watched waves on the lake near where I used to live approach each other from opposite directions, then continue on by passing through each other as if the other weren't there at all. Shouldn't they cancel each other out? They don't. Waves are an effect of weather above them.
The economy of a country depends on so many factors that no one person or computer can keep track of them all. The current recession began when unethical bank officers granted mortgages to people who could not afford to pay them back, even though the interest rates were below the prime lending rate. The banks then sold these "loser" papers to other banks around the world, combined with good mortgage papers. Somebody had to pay. Turns out we all did.
Remember the dotcom collapses several years ago where internet startup companies collected fortunes with little more than a dream to sell? Or the Worldcom and Enron collapses (among others) where their executives stated profits and sales increases in the 30 percent range when they were only a fraction of that?
A great deal of the economy of a country depends on the honesty and integrity of those who move money around it. Stripped to its essentials, an economy functions on the greed and honesty of those with money. In the end, greed always dominates.
So weather forecasts are based on factors we don't even understand, while economic forecasts depend on the integrity of those with money. Is it any wonder that neither can be depended upon?
As for science fiction, some of it from the past may be seen in technology today?
Yet that's not the point of Throop's quote. His point is that many people will believe forecasts created by those who claim to be experts, while deriding technological and cultural forecasts from sources such as writers of science fiction. Science fiction writers don't claim to be experts.
Anyone who claims to have expertise in any subject will find followers provided that they can back up their predictions with good stories.
Weren't snake oil salesmen of the past successful because they told the best stories? Are our biggest advertisers today not successful because they tell the best lies that appeal to our vanity and need for social status? Didn't our ancestors believe the tribal chiefs and medicine men and women who told the best stories?
We tend to believe those who tell the most convincing stories, whether the stories have truth and validity or not.
So it rains on our parades and our retirement nestegg stocks tank. Our lives remain determined largely by our beliefs.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who believe what they can depend on.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
