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/
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Still Waiting For The Light To Change
Still Waiting For The Light To Change
We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past.
- Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936)
Sometimes all we can do is to roll with the punches, deal with the circumstances life throws at us, and look for the chance to enact change.
Many would call that powerlessness. After all, when your choices in life are outside your control, you can't be said to have control of your life.
Do others have control over your life? Many times it seems that way, that if only someone else would do what you want or what they promised to do, life would be better. It's hard to wait for someone else, especially when you know that the other person is giving your promised work low priority but its very important to you because you can't progress with several other things in the meantime.
I confess, I allow disappointment to creep into my life sometimes. It's always a disappointment with people. The vagaries of weather (no one's is stable now, likely never was), the ups and downs of politics (the few honest ones get shot down more often than the crooks), illness, even being the next person in line after the last item on a great sale was sold don't bother me.
That's life. If I expect to find great pleasure in the good things about life, I must be prepared to accept the things that really suck. Without one, I couldn't appreciate the other. The good looks good only by comparing it to the bad. "No pain, no gain" may not be true for athletics and exercise, but it's true for emotions. The more and worse you experience that bad, the greater your opportunity to appreciate the good when it comes.
People who promise something but don't deliver really get to me. The guy who delighted me when he said he could fix my tractor--he unstuck a valve and replaced a spring--has kept the parts at his place for weeks because he is too busy with his own projects to put my tractor back together. The computer expert friend who may have been able to help me avoid having a rootkit destroy my hard drive if he had given me the necessary advice in a timely fashion has kept my computer out of commission for weeks because he's too busy to help, even though he has promised to do so several times.
I bought a snow blower for my tractor. I asked if the man could deliver it because I had no way to get it home. He said "No problem" and I paid him. He phoned that evening to ask how I planned to get the 750 pound blower off the back of his pickup truck. I reminded him that I had told him ahead of time that I had no way to get the blower down from a truck. He forgot. Now he has my money and my snow blower, because he forgot he couldn't deliver what he said he could.
These people were not intending to lie when they made their promises to me. They simply didn't organize their thoughts and plans to the extent necessary to avoid conflicts. They didn't plan ahead. They got too busy to get all the work done they promised to others, but didn't extend the courtesy of telling the others when they might be able to get to their needs.
Sometimes just coping with the problems life throws your way--whatever their nature--is all you can do. It's called survival. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. It's always painful at first. Eventually, if you keep looking, you will find a way to circumvent what may be severe consequences of a problem.
Some say God doesn't give us more than we can handle, though they wish God didn't trust them so much. Some call it courage or perseverance or strength of character that people can get through their lives with burdens far greater than the average. It's not really any of that.
Life is tough. Those who have it easy and don't appreciate what they have waste their lives because they don't accomplish much of real value. Those who slog their way through what seem to be incredible trials and tribulations, always looking to a brighter future find ways to enjoy life more because they appreciate the contrast between the bad and the good.
Moreover, the survivors act as role models for the rest of us. If it weren't for them, our species would never have survived the long process of natural selection.
We literally exist because those before us--at least many of them--survived rigors of life far worse than we can imagine. We don't owe them anything. We do owe it to ourselves and to those who will follow us to survive and to improve.
Those who don't struggle with life don't improve because they don't know how. They have never had to work their way out of problems and difficulties that might have destroyed them. The survivors know how. They learn as they struggle.
As individuals and as a species, we inherited much because of those who struggled and survived before us. It's our job to struggle and survive so that future generations will know it can be done.
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 teach their children the skills of coping, of surviving and of thriving in a struggling world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past.
- Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936)
Sometimes all we can do is to roll with the punches, deal with the circumstances life throws at us, and look for the chance to enact change.
Many would call that powerlessness. After all, when your choices in life are outside your control, you can't be said to have control of your life.
Do others have control over your life? Many times it seems that way, that if only someone else would do what you want or what they promised to do, life would be better. It's hard to wait for someone else, especially when you know that the other person is giving your promised work low priority but its very important to you because you can't progress with several other things in the meantime.
I confess, I allow disappointment to creep into my life sometimes. It's always a disappointment with people. The vagaries of weather (no one's is stable now, likely never was), the ups and downs of politics (the few honest ones get shot down more often than the crooks), illness, even being the next person in line after the last item on a great sale was sold don't bother me.
That's life. If I expect to find great pleasure in the good things about life, I must be prepared to accept the things that really suck. Without one, I couldn't appreciate the other. The good looks good only by comparing it to the bad. "No pain, no gain" may not be true for athletics and exercise, but it's true for emotions. The more and worse you experience that bad, the greater your opportunity to appreciate the good when it comes.
People who promise something but don't deliver really get to me. The guy who delighted me when he said he could fix my tractor--he unstuck a valve and replaced a spring--has kept the parts at his place for weeks because he is too busy with his own projects to put my tractor back together. The computer expert friend who may have been able to help me avoid having a rootkit destroy my hard drive if he had given me the necessary advice in a timely fashion has kept my computer out of commission for weeks because he's too busy to help, even though he has promised to do so several times.
I bought a snow blower for my tractor. I asked if the man could deliver it because I had no way to get it home. He said "No problem" and I paid him. He phoned that evening to ask how I planned to get the 750 pound blower off the back of his pickup truck. I reminded him that I had told him ahead of time that I had no way to get the blower down from a truck. He forgot. Now he has my money and my snow blower, because he forgot he couldn't deliver what he said he could.
These people were not intending to lie when they made their promises to me. They simply didn't organize their thoughts and plans to the extent necessary to avoid conflicts. They didn't plan ahead. They got too busy to get all the work done they promised to others, but didn't extend the courtesy of telling the others when they might be able to get to their needs.
Sometimes just coping with the problems life throws your way--whatever their nature--is all you can do. It's called survival. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. It's always painful at first. Eventually, if you keep looking, you will find a way to circumvent what may be severe consequences of a problem.
Some say God doesn't give us more than we can handle, though they wish God didn't trust them so much. Some call it courage or perseverance or strength of character that people can get through their lives with burdens far greater than the average. It's not really any of that.
Life is tough. Those who have it easy and don't appreciate what they have waste their lives because they don't accomplish much of real value. Those who slog their way through what seem to be incredible trials and tribulations, always looking to a brighter future find ways to enjoy life more because they appreciate the contrast between the bad and the good.
Moreover, the survivors act as role models for the rest of us. If it weren't for them, our species would never have survived the long process of natural selection.
We literally exist because those before us--at least many of them--survived rigors of life far worse than we can imagine. We don't owe them anything. We do owe it to ourselves and to those who will follow us to survive and to improve.
Those who don't struggle with life don't improve because they don't know how. They have never had to work their way out of problems and difficulties that might have destroyed them. The survivors know how. They learn as they struggle.
As individuals and as a species, we inherited much because of those who struggled and survived before us. It's our job to struggle and survive so that future generations will know it can be done.
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 teach their children the skills of coping, of surviving and of thriving in a struggling world.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/
Friday, September 25, 2009
The Journey: Yours, Mine, Ours
Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
- William James, American psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)
The Journey: Yours, Mine, Ours
Join me on a journey. An unusual journey in that it will be one of the mind, prompted by my words and filled by your imagination.
Yet not unusual in that every experience we have is of the mind. The rest of the body has no means of recording or evaluating experiences. The brain records but has no inherent ability to critique, nor reason to do so, unless it is prompted by other experiences of the mind.
Our lives are of the mind, not of the body. Come along to learn more as we travel.
Our journey will take place over water. We will travel together, more or less, but each in separate boats. We may link together our watercraft, some of us. From time to time we will separate from each other, then link with others. Some of us will grieve the separation, others welcome it. We will all welcome the company of others, though some may not know how to show their pleasure in social interaction because they simply don't know how. They may remain alone more often than not.
So many of us will be on this journey that we will never meet everyone. Some will say that the ones we don't know are bad, stupid, simple, or evil, will plot against us given the chance. We don't know. The more we realize how little we know about the others we don't know and have never seen, the more likely we are to believe unfounded rumours about them. In all likelihood, they are just like us, but why take the chance?
We will meet relatively few others on our journey, compared with the total of us. We'll base our opinions and thoughts about them and what they are like on our own experiences with the few people we know. Many will not realize that if we think they are like us based on our experiences with those we know, it doesn't make sense to believe the people we don't know are any different from the ones we know.
Some won't like us. They will judge us based on their opinions about our boats, the looks, the component materials, the shape, the paint job, our own attire for the trip, our apparent ability to pilot where we want to go. There will always be people to tell us we should go another way, their way, even though they don't know where they are going either.
We're not sure of our destination. Some will say the destination doesn't matter, that we should make the best of what we have on the trip. Others will say that we should deprive ourselves on the voyage so that we will have an abundance once we reach our destination. Oddly, many who recommend depriving ourselves here believe that we will have abundance when we get to our destination. It may not make sense, but it's human nature. Still, nobody knows for sure what our destination is.
Some say that if we don't conduct ourselves on our voyage the way they say, our destination will surely be dire and tragic, eternal tragedy. They claim that if we follow their path the destination will be glorious. Strange how people who don't know a thing have the insight for forecasting what anyone's destination will be like. "It's in the book," they will say.
Some say they know the way and the destination because they heard of a man who had done it before and reported back. Others will say that man never existed. Many will admire the life that man led, according to reports they have read and heard, and will pay homage to the advice he gave. But few will actually follow that advice because it doesn't make them happy.
Many we meet along the way aspire to be happy. They haven't a clue about how to actually be happy, but they have read about their right to pursue happiness and it sounds really good. They will keep trying to buy and trade with others what they have for happiness. They will get thrills. The thrills pass, a bad period follows, then they will try again to buy or trade for a new kind of happiness. Like a good drug trip followed by a bad recovery. But they keep trying as if the routine will change by itself.
No one is sure what happiness is. So many hold happiness up as the greatest goal of life. They keep chasing happiness, but they can't ever achieve it because they can't buy it or trade for it. Yet they have been told that hard work and wealth buys happiness, and they believe it to a large extent.
What they know how to do best is to buy and trade their efforts for bargaining power. Acquiring, they have learned, is the way to happiness. That lesson, reinforced by every medium they know, has been taught to them since childhood. What you get and what you do will make you happy. That's the lesson.
Yet each joy or thrill passes. Happiness, it seems, never wants to stay.
A few people seem to enjoy some sort of joy that stays with them. They don't seem to necessarily be happy, just content all the time. Some say these people are delusional. Others that they are emotionally unbalanced, socially not "with it."
They are suckers by the standards of most. They spend far more time helping others along the voyage than they do acquiring for themselves. They don't seem to understand that they can't give and get at the same time. If the objective is getting--and almost every social norm suggests that's what is desirable--then they will never be happy because they keep giving so much they can never build up a sufficient treasure to be happy. Still, they seem to mysteriously enjoy life far more than most people. They don't experience as many thrills though.
Only the delusional, unbalanced, socially "different" people who give to others, who help others, who work with others along the way, seem to have some kind of inner joy that lasts, that stays with them no matter what trouble they endure along the way. The "suckers" can't be happy because that's not how most of us define happiness.
Some will look around and see multitudes of others in nearby boats, yet still feel lonely. They think that the others want to ostracize them or they feel isolated from the others because of something social abhorrent about themselves, while the others simply ignore them because they act invisible. They may just lack the social skills needed to make friends. Or they may be looking too much for what others can and (they believe) should give them while not concerning themselves about what they can give to others.
Some will be sick, weak, lack body parts that allow them to move through the water like others. Somehow they manage to move along the same route as the rest of us. We don't know how. They must have some scary secret remedy or formula that allows them to manage when they aren't "whole" like most of us. Most of them can't afford the same thrills as the wealthy ones. But they don't experience the same depressions either. Weird.
Some won't seem mentally "right" at times. They get angry, act out, get into battles with others. Some have periods of depression. Others periods when...they act strange. We try to ignore them. We may have something they need. We may even be able to help them. But we don't know what it is they need or how to help them. It's easier to ignore them, to pretend they don't exist for a while. Best keep them at a distance.
Some beg from others. They gain such skills at begging--they may call it by some other word--that we wonder why they don't apply the same devotion and effort at learning skills that will better benefit them so they can be more self sufficient. They won't learn. They admire their own skills at begging.
Some believe they are totally alone, with no one to help them. They move through the water by paddling with their hands while leaving the oars within reach sitting unused. They can't see what is obvious to us. We don't point this out to them because they are likely stupid and we don't want to seem socially intolerant. One must be correct, mustn't one?
Many will wonder what the purpose is of the voyage. "Why are we even doing this. All we ever see is the same old water." When told by the old ones that they once left solid land to make this voyage, they will be suspicious. When told the purpose is to learn something that will help them once they reach the new land, they will be suspicious. All they can remember seeing is water.
Maybe water is all there is. Maybe there was no land we once left and there will be no land to establish a new life after we reach a new shore. Maybe it's just water, water, water. What can you do with water? Better get as much as we can from others to make this endless voyage bearable.
Some will believe there never was land. Some that there never again will be land ahead. Some will say that land is a myth, that the only true way to define anything is according to the conditions of the present. If they can't see it, feel it, touch, smell or hear it today, it doesn't exist.
They will say that having faith that something existed in the past and will exist again in the future is self delusion. They ignore the argument that water must be supported by land underneath it, instead claiming that only what they can sense and "prove" today actually counts, actually matters.
Here's the Catch-22 of this story. Now that you are on the voyage, you must stay on it. Sorry, I kind of forgot to mention that earlier, before we launched.
Oh, and I have to leave you here because I promised to join with others away from here. I hope you don't mind. You will have to figure out the rest of the voyage for yourself.
You can do it. Think it through. Remember the kind of future you want so that you don't get stuck dwelling on the endless water around you. The better you plan the rest of your voyage, the likelier it is that you will reach the destination you hope for.
It's a voyage. Voyages end eventually. That's how they work. What may differ is the destination you reach. There are many to choose from.
But plan where you want to get eventually. If you don't, you may spend eternity paddling around in this same old water.
Good luck! See you around.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want to know how to make their lives and their communities better. It all begins with teaching children what they need to know, when they need to know it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- William James, American psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910)
The Journey: Yours, Mine, Ours
Join me on a journey. An unusual journey in that it will be one of the mind, prompted by my words and filled by your imagination.
Yet not unusual in that every experience we have is of the mind. The rest of the body has no means of recording or evaluating experiences. The brain records but has no inherent ability to critique, nor reason to do so, unless it is prompted by other experiences of the mind.
Our lives are of the mind, not of the body. Come along to learn more as we travel.
Our journey will take place over water. We will travel together, more or less, but each in separate boats. We may link together our watercraft, some of us. From time to time we will separate from each other, then link with others. Some of us will grieve the separation, others welcome it. We will all welcome the company of others, though some may not know how to show their pleasure in social interaction because they simply don't know how. They may remain alone more often than not.
So many of us will be on this journey that we will never meet everyone. Some will say that the ones we don't know are bad, stupid, simple, or evil, will plot against us given the chance. We don't know. The more we realize how little we know about the others we don't know and have never seen, the more likely we are to believe unfounded rumours about them. In all likelihood, they are just like us, but why take the chance?
We will meet relatively few others on our journey, compared with the total of us. We'll base our opinions and thoughts about them and what they are like on our own experiences with the few people we know. Many will not realize that if we think they are like us based on our experiences with those we know, it doesn't make sense to believe the people we don't know are any different from the ones we know.
Some won't like us. They will judge us based on their opinions about our boats, the looks, the component materials, the shape, the paint job, our own attire for the trip, our apparent ability to pilot where we want to go. There will always be people to tell us we should go another way, their way, even though they don't know where they are going either.
We're not sure of our destination. Some will say the destination doesn't matter, that we should make the best of what we have on the trip. Others will say that we should deprive ourselves on the voyage so that we will have an abundance once we reach our destination. Oddly, many who recommend depriving ourselves here believe that we will have abundance when we get to our destination. It may not make sense, but it's human nature. Still, nobody knows for sure what our destination is.
Some say that if we don't conduct ourselves on our voyage the way they say, our destination will surely be dire and tragic, eternal tragedy. They claim that if we follow their path the destination will be glorious. Strange how people who don't know a thing have the insight for forecasting what anyone's destination will be like. "It's in the book," they will say.
Some say they know the way and the destination because they heard of a man who had done it before and reported back. Others will say that man never existed. Many will admire the life that man led, according to reports they have read and heard, and will pay homage to the advice he gave. But few will actually follow that advice because it doesn't make them happy.
Many we meet along the way aspire to be happy. They haven't a clue about how to actually be happy, but they have read about their right to pursue happiness and it sounds really good. They will keep trying to buy and trade with others what they have for happiness. They will get thrills. The thrills pass, a bad period follows, then they will try again to buy or trade for a new kind of happiness. Like a good drug trip followed by a bad recovery. But they keep trying as if the routine will change by itself.
No one is sure what happiness is. So many hold happiness up as the greatest goal of life. They keep chasing happiness, but they can't ever achieve it because they can't buy it or trade for it. Yet they have been told that hard work and wealth buys happiness, and they believe it to a large extent.
What they know how to do best is to buy and trade their efforts for bargaining power. Acquiring, they have learned, is the way to happiness. That lesson, reinforced by every medium they know, has been taught to them since childhood. What you get and what you do will make you happy. That's the lesson.
Yet each joy or thrill passes. Happiness, it seems, never wants to stay.
A few people seem to enjoy some sort of joy that stays with them. They don't seem to necessarily be happy, just content all the time. Some say these people are delusional. Others that they are emotionally unbalanced, socially not "with it."
They are suckers by the standards of most. They spend far more time helping others along the voyage than they do acquiring for themselves. They don't seem to understand that they can't give and get at the same time. If the objective is getting--and almost every social norm suggests that's what is desirable--then they will never be happy because they keep giving so much they can never build up a sufficient treasure to be happy. Still, they seem to mysteriously enjoy life far more than most people. They don't experience as many thrills though.
Only the delusional, unbalanced, socially "different" people who give to others, who help others, who work with others along the way, seem to have some kind of inner joy that lasts, that stays with them no matter what trouble they endure along the way. The "suckers" can't be happy because that's not how most of us define happiness.
Some will look around and see multitudes of others in nearby boats, yet still feel lonely. They think that the others want to ostracize them or they feel isolated from the others because of something social abhorrent about themselves, while the others simply ignore them because they act invisible. They may just lack the social skills needed to make friends. Or they may be looking too much for what others can and (they believe) should give them while not concerning themselves about what they can give to others.
Some will be sick, weak, lack body parts that allow them to move through the water like others. Somehow they manage to move along the same route as the rest of us. We don't know how. They must have some scary secret remedy or formula that allows them to manage when they aren't "whole" like most of us. Most of them can't afford the same thrills as the wealthy ones. But they don't experience the same depressions either. Weird.
Some won't seem mentally "right" at times. They get angry, act out, get into battles with others. Some have periods of depression. Others periods when...they act strange. We try to ignore them. We may have something they need. We may even be able to help them. But we don't know what it is they need or how to help them. It's easier to ignore them, to pretend they don't exist for a while. Best keep them at a distance.
Some beg from others. They gain such skills at begging--they may call it by some other word--that we wonder why they don't apply the same devotion and effort at learning skills that will better benefit them so they can be more self sufficient. They won't learn. They admire their own skills at begging.
Some believe they are totally alone, with no one to help them. They move through the water by paddling with their hands while leaving the oars within reach sitting unused. They can't see what is obvious to us. We don't point this out to them because they are likely stupid and we don't want to seem socially intolerant. One must be correct, mustn't one?
Many will wonder what the purpose is of the voyage. "Why are we even doing this. All we ever see is the same old water." When told by the old ones that they once left solid land to make this voyage, they will be suspicious. When told the purpose is to learn something that will help them once they reach the new land, they will be suspicious. All they can remember seeing is water.
Maybe water is all there is. Maybe there was no land we once left and there will be no land to establish a new life after we reach a new shore. Maybe it's just water, water, water. What can you do with water? Better get as much as we can from others to make this endless voyage bearable.
Some will believe there never was land. Some that there never again will be land ahead. Some will say that land is a myth, that the only true way to define anything is according to the conditions of the present. If they can't see it, feel it, touch, smell or hear it today, it doesn't exist.
They will say that having faith that something existed in the past and will exist again in the future is self delusion. They ignore the argument that water must be supported by land underneath it, instead claiming that only what they can sense and "prove" today actually counts, actually matters.
Here's the Catch-22 of this story. Now that you are on the voyage, you must stay on it. Sorry, I kind of forgot to mention that earlier, before we launched.
Oh, and I have to leave you here because I promised to join with others away from here. I hope you don't mind. You will have to figure out the rest of the voyage for yourself.
You can do it. Think it through. Remember the kind of future you want so that you don't get stuck dwelling on the endless water around you. The better you plan the rest of your voyage, the likelier it is that you will reach the destination you hope for.
It's a voyage. Voyages end eventually. That's how they work. What may differ is the destination you reach. There are many to choose from.
But plan where you want to get eventually. If you don't, you may spend eternity paddling around in this same old water.
Good luck! See you around.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want to know how to make their lives and their communities better. It all begins with teaching children what they need to know, when they need to know it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, August 18, 2008
This Is Who Controls Your Life And The Lives Of Your Kids
Men are born to succeed, not fail.
- Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet and philosopher (1817-1862)
Well, heck, that sounds simple enough.
So why doesn't it work?
Because to succeed, a person must have the tools to succeed and the attitude that the goal is possible. In other words, a person needs a good work ethic, something to do and the means to do it.
Easy again.
But most people settle for less than what they are capable of, then either overwork to benefit their employer or underwork in the mistaken belief that only partial success at work does not equal only partial success in life.
If the original statement is correct, then why are most people not feeling successful, fulfilled and personally complete?
We don't teach to success of the individual. We teach success for the nation. We teach that success for corporations is good. We teach that our working to keep corporations successful is good. We teach that spending every bit of income we get is good, that it should make us happy and keep the economy rolling.
But we don't teach to individual success. That is, we don't teach to success of the individual on a massive, nationwide scale.
What we do teach individuals is that they should have the skills to satisfy employers sufficiently that they will keep us employed. We almost never teach entrepreneurial skills because that would be counter to the benefit of corporations.
Ask most teens why they will continue with their education past high school and you will hear "so I can get a good job" more than any other answer. In other words, "so that I can get a good paying job." Hopefully, one that will not disappear when the employer downsizes because it has not forecast future markets correctly and has lost money, so needs to cut staff to show more profit or minimize losses to satisfy its shareholders.
We don't even teach our children what it means to be successful, other than that they will be happy being constant consumers. Which few are, really. Again, ask a teen what it means for an adult to be successful and the answer will most likely be related to a secure job with good income (with which to buy lots of stuff).
It's not my purpose to teach you what success is. I know what it is for me. But it took me a few decades of searching to learn.
You need to learn what success is for you. What it really is. What it really means to lead a fulfilling life.
Then teach it to every kid you know.
Schools don't do this. Their purpose is to train employees to be good workers and consumers.
Corporations control the curriculum. If you doubt this, check the name brands on all kinds of products in today's high schools and even in grade schools. Including in text books.
First you must learn what success in life really is. Then teach it to others, both adults and children.
How many people, on their deathbeds, have claimed that they should have worked harder or that they should have spent more of their money in order to make their own lives and the lives of their family members better? Corporations want us to believe that we should follow that line of unthinking.
Learn, then teach. It's what we are supposed to do. Corporations took that responsibility from us because we walked away from it ourselves.
When you teach children what is meaningful in life, don't report it to your employer. The employer won't like that. Just do it in private.
A recent study (actually several of them) showed that large corporations were set up to be sociopathological (amoral, capable of violence or spreading fear without feeling guilty). It's part of their corporate ethic.
This is the power that will control the destiny of your children unless you change what your kids believe.
If you don't like it, do something about it. Talk it up. Social change happens only when enough people believe that children should be taught differently. Every socially acceptable norm of today was once a radical idea. Then people talked about it.
So talk. It's easy.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have a time scale, content and methodology for teaching children what they need to know to lead successful lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet and philosopher (1817-1862)
Well, heck, that sounds simple enough.
So why doesn't it work?
Because to succeed, a person must have the tools to succeed and the attitude that the goal is possible. In other words, a person needs a good work ethic, something to do and the means to do it.
Easy again.
But most people settle for less than what they are capable of, then either overwork to benefit their employer or underwork in the mistaken belief that only partial success at work does not equal only partial success in life.
If the original statement is correct, then why are most people not feeling successful, fulfilled and personally complete?
We don't teach to success of the individual. We teach success for the nation. We teach that success for corporations is good. We teach that our working to keep corporations successful is good. We teach that spending every bit of income we get is good, that it should make us happy and keep the economy rolling.
But we don't teach to individual success. That is, we don't teach to success of the individual on a massive, nationwide scale.
What we do teach individuals is that they should have the skills to satisfy employers sufficiently that they will keep us employed. We almost never teach entrepreneurial skills because that would be counter to the benefit of corporations.
Ask most teens why they will continue with their education past high school and you will hear "so I can get a good job" more than any other answer. In other words, "so that I can get a good paying job." Hopefully, one that will not disappear when the employer downsizes because it has not forecast future markets correctly and has lost money, so needs to cut staff to show more profit or minimize losses to satisfy its shareholders.
We don't even teach our children what it means to be successful, other than that they will be happy being constant consumers. Which few are, really. Again, ask a teen what it means for an adult to be successful and the answer will most likely be related to a secure job with good income (with which to buy lots of stuff).
It's not my purpose to teach you what success is. I know what it is for me. But it took me a few decades of searching to learn.
You need to learn what success is for you. What it really is. What it really means to lead a fulfilling life.
Then teach it to every kid you know.
Schools don't do this. Their purpose is to train employees to be good workers and consumers.
Corporations control the curriculum. If you doubt this, check the name brands on all kinds of products in today's high schools and even in grade schools. Including in text books.
First you must learn what success in life really is. Then teach it to others, both adults and children.
How many people, on their deathbeds, have claimed that they should have worked harder or that they should have spent more of their money in order to make their own lives and the lives of their family members better? Corporations want us to believe that we should follow that line of unthinking.
Learn, then teach. It's what we are supposed to do. Corporations took that responsibility from us because we walked away from it ourselves.
When you teach children what is meaningful in life, don't report it to your employer. The employer won't like that. Just do it in private.
A recent study (actually several of them) showed that large corporations were set up to be sociopathological (amoral, capable of violence or spreading fear without feeling guilty). It's part of their corporate ethic.
This is the power that will control the destiny of your children unless you change what your kids believe.
If you don't like it, do something about it. Talk it up. Social change happens only when enough people believe that children should be taught differently. Every socially acceptable norm of today was once a radical idea. Then people talked about it.
So talk. It's easy.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have a time scale, content and methodology for teaching children what they need to know to lead successful lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, August 04, 2008
Collection of Quotes to Touch the Heart
Hope is the ability to hear the music of the future.Faith is having the courage to dance to it today.
- Dr. Peter Kuzmic, theologian, Slovenian-born, citizen of Croatia
Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.
- Dennis Wholey, American television host and producer (b. 1939)
Laughter is a smile with the volume turned up.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
People laugh because I'm different, I laugh because they're all the same.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
No amount of darkness can hide a spark of light.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
Be like the flower that perfumes the very hand that crushes it.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
Last night I watched a movie that was so difficult to understand that I couldn't figure it out until the very end. Then I had to return it to the store. It reminded me of life.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
You don't have to win at life. Life is not about winning. Life is about playing the game and trying to influence others so that they win.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
They say you can't go back to your childhood, that the places you remember will have changed. Even if they haven't, you will have changed so that the you of long ago wouldn't recognize the you of today.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
When your heart breaks, it changes your life. But you had a chance to avoid the hurt. When a child's heart breaks, the child has no defences, no preparation, no means to recover. The reassembled life has no possibility to achieve it's former potential.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
If you hear a great piece of music and your day is not better for it, the problem is not that the music is deficient.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
No matter how much technology you have at your command and friends in your social networking site, there is no substitute for the gentle touch of another live human, for the feel of their breath on your neck, for soft whisper from their lips into your ear.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
Don't think you're ugly. Everyone is beautiful sometimes, always when they smile. Don't think you're beautiful. Everyone is ugly sometimes. The difference is attitude and confidence. Even movie stars are pretty plain looking without makeup. They believe they're beautiful, so that's what they become.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
- Dr. Peter Kuzmic, theologian, Slovenian-born, citizen of Croatia
Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.
- Dennis Wholey, American television host and producer (b. 1939)
Laughter is a smile with the volume turned up.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
People laugh because I'm different, I laugh because they're all the same.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
No amount of darkness can hide a spark of light.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
Be like the flower that perfumes the very hand that crushes it.
- Anonymous (Google's best guess)
Last night I watched a movie that was so difficult to understand that I couldn't figure it out until the very end. Then I had to return it to the store. It reminded me of life.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
You don't have to win at life. Life is not about winning. Life is about playing the game and trying to influence others so that they win.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
They say you can't go back to your childhood, that the places you remember will have changed. Even if they haven't, you will have changed so that the you of long ago wouldn't recognize the you of today.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
When your heart breaks, it changes your life. But you had a chance to avoid the hurt. When a child's heart breaks, the child has no defences, no preparation, no means to recover. The reassembled life has no possibility to achieve it's former potential.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
If you hear a great piece of music and your day is not better for it, the problem is not that the music is deficient.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
No matter how much technology you have at your command and friends in your social networking site, there is no substitute for the gentle touch of another live human, for the feel of their breath on your neck, for soft whisper from their lips into your ear.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
Don't think you're ugly. Everyone is beautiful sometimes, always when they smile. Don't think you're beautiful. Everyone is ugly sometimes. The difference is attitude and confidence. Even movie stars are pretty plain looking without makeup. They believe they're beautiful, so that's what they become.
- Bill Allin, stalwart pilgrim of life, http://billallin.com
Monday, July 28, 2008
We Need Better Lightning Bolts
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
- Bill Watterson, comic strip artist (1958- ), in his comic strip Calvin & Hobbes
If only...
Those who claim that organized religion is on the wane may be correct. A few key reasons come to mind.
First, religion is supposed to benefit the individual believer, yet it more often benefits the leaders of the various segments within each religion. Religion benefits the leaders more than the individual followers.
Second, historically as well as at the present time clerics have been widely known to be among the worst violators of the sins their religions speak against in commandments.
Third, the massive expansion of media coverage of violations of the law among religious leaders among religious leaders has made following some of them like belonging to an organized crime family.
We must be suspicious of any religious leader who claims that what we do on earth is supposed to be solely to please God. While most of us want to be cooperative and follow religious and moral rules, we must question what kind of God had to create humans to be his servants and slaves. Does this sound like the beautiful and beneficent God our clerics tell us about?
Why did God give us free choice so that we could violate what he wanted of us? Isn't that like a master-slave relationship where the master gives the slaves free reign to do what they want, then punishes them with eternal damnation if they do anything other than what they have been commanded to do? That doesn't even make sense.
Clerics have over the centuries attributed every bit of misfortune to breaking of God's commandments, resulting in everything from fires and floods to AIDS, bankruptcies and divorce. Enough people believe this nonsense that the rumour mill keeps churning behind the scenes even when the real causes and sources for natural disasters and personal misfortune can be proven.
It's God's way of paying people back for their sins, say some. But isn't that what the hell they threaten us with is for? Either we should be punished here on earth so that we can all go to heaven cleansed or we should have free reign here and pay for our sins eternally after we die. If we get punished both here on earth and in hell, isn't that double jeopardy?
If the strongly religious people truly believe that their God is all-powerful and will punish sinners accordingly after they die, why do the self-righteous want to punish people here on earth? Are they concerned that God might miss a sinner? Or do they have God-envy?
Let's look at the self-designated upright pillars of society in a different light. If we examine their behaviour carefully, ignoring their message while focussing on what they do, they are really closet bigots. In fact, the self-righteous may be the most prejudiced people we have in our communities. They ignore that part of their holy book that says "Judge not that ye be not judged." They tend to be the most judgmental people we have in our societies. Yet prejudice, they claim, is a sin. One for which they personally have no intention of paying any penalty.
On the surface, every religion is designed to help guide an individual through a complex and confusing life. In practice, most organized religions are tax collecting agencies who want to control the behaviour of their taxpayers so that they will give more.
If God is ashamed of anyone in our society, he could find no better objectives than the highly religious.
Every religion has good at its core. Every religion goes corrupt over time. Every religion has people who profit from donations and who know how to maximize them for their own benefit. Every religion has people whose prime objective is to bend the minds of the followers to do their will.
That's what religions do. Not what they say they do, which is quite different, often quite the opposite.
Attendance at religious services is declining in most parts of the world where people are well educated. Not because the core of religion is at fault--because it isn't--but because educated people understand fraud and choose to avoid it.
This doesn't mean that belief in any doctrine is disappearing. I suspect the opposite. I think that we have more people who believe in what the core of the religion they were born into teaches while attendance at places of worship declines. Of course there will always be places where charismatic speakers can charm large audiences. We also have advertising that sells product well and politicians who can get themselves elected by making all kinds of promises they have no intention of fulfilling once elected. It's hype. It works. It brings in money.
I find it ironic that I have never met an atheist who is anything other than a good person who tries to do his or her best for their family and their community. What they don't believe in is the false gods that organized religions use to manipulate the minds of their followers. Most haven't yet figured out how to find the real God.
The more self-righteous among us rail against false gods. Maybe they should look into a mirror.
Where are those lightning bolts when we need them?
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who can tell truth from fiction, what is worthy from what is deceptive, what is real from what is devised by the greedy for their fraudulent purposes.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Bill Watterson, comic strip artist (1958- ), in his comic strip Calvin & Hobbes
If only...
Those who claim that organized religion is on the wane may be correct. A few key reasons come to mind.
First, religion is supposed to benefit the individual believer, yet it more often benefits the leaders of the various segments within each religion. Religion benefits the leaders more than the individual followers.
Second, historically as well as at the present time clerics have been widely known to be among the worst violators of the sins their religions speak against in commandments.
Third, the massive expansion of media coverage of violations of the law among religious leaders among religious leaders has made following some of them like belonging to an organized crime family.
We must be suspicious of any religious leader who claims that what we do on earth is supposed to be solely to please God. While most of us want to be cooperative and follow religious and moral rules, we must question what kind of God had to create humans to be his servants and slaves. Does this sound like the beautiful and beneficent God our clerics tell us about?
Why did God give us free choice so that we could violate what he wanted of us? Isn't that like a master-slave relationship where the master gives the slaves free reign to do what they want, then punishes them with eternal damnation if they do anything other than what they have been commanded to do? That doesn't even make sense.
Clerics have over the centuries attributed every bit of misfortune to breaking of God's commandments, resulting in everything from fires and floods to AIDS, bankruptcies and divorce. Enough people believe this nonsense that the rumour mill keeps churning behind the scenes even when the real causes and sources for natural disasters and personal misfortune can be proven.
It's God's way of paying people back for their sins, say some. But isn't that what the hell they threaten us with is for? Either we should be punished here on earth so that we can all go to heaven cleansed or we should have free reign here and pay for our sins eternally after we die. If we get punished both here on earth and in hell, isn't that double jeopardy?
If the strongly religious people truly believe that their God is all-powerful and will punish sinners accordingly after they die, why do the self-righteous want to punish people here on earth? Are they concerned that God might miss a sinner? Or do they have God-envy?
Let's look at the self-designated upright pillars of society in a different light. If we examine their behaviour carefully, ignoring their message while focussing on what they do, they are really closet bigots. In fact, the self-righteous may be the most prejudiced people we have in our communities. They ignore that part of their holy book that says "Judge not that ye be not judged." They tend to be the most judgmental people we have in our societies. Yet prejudice, they claim, is a sin. One for which they personally have no intention of paying any penalty.
On the surface, every religion is designed to help guide an individual through a complex and confusing life. In practice, most organized religions are tax collecting agencies who want to control the behaviour of their taxpayers so that they will give more.
If God is ashamed of anyone in our society, he could find no better objectives than the highly religious.
Every religion has good at its core. Every religion goes corrupt over time. Every religion has people who profit from donations and who know how to maximize them for their own benefit. Every religion has people whose prime objective is to bend the minds of the followers to do their will.
That's what religions do. Not what they say they do, which is quite different, often quite the opposite.
Attendance at religious services is declining in most parts of the world where people are well educated. Not because the core of religion is at fault--because it isn't--but because educated people understand fraud and choose to avoid it.
This doesn't mean that belief in any doctrine is disappearing. I suspect the opposite. I think that we have more people who believe in what the core of the religion they were born into teaches while attendance at places of worship declines. Of course there will always be places where charismatic speakers can charm large audiences. We also have advertising that sells product well and politicians who can get themselves elected by making all kinds of promises they have no intention of fulfilling once elected. It's hype. It works. It brings in money.
I find it ironic that I have never met an atheist who is anything other than a good person who tries to do his or her best for their family and their community. What they don't believe in is the false gods that organized religions use to manipulate the minds of their followers. Most haven't yet figured out how to find the real God.
The more self-righteous among us rail against false gods. Maybe they should look into a mirror.
Where are those lightning bolts when we need them?
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who can tell truth from fiction, what is worthy from what is deceptive, what is real from what is devised by the greedy for their fraudulent purposes.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, June 22, 2008
When There Are Too Many Stupid People
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
- Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947)
Sometimes it's hard to tell if knowledge is dead and buried or if it's alive and well, toiling in laboratories, libraries and offices all over the world.
Knowledge may be summed up as facts we can use. Trivia that has value only on quiz shows and in party games wouldn't be considered knowledge because you can't actually do anything with it. A nonfiction book sitting on a shelf is not knowledge, in itself, because without a person to do something with it, it has no lasting value.
The sum of human knowledge doubles about every 15 years now. In the days of the ancient Greeks, who were known for their wisdom and knowledge, the sum of human knowledge varied little from one year to the next. So as a person got older, he or she could learn a greater portion of the available knowledge, thus gaining wisdom in the process.
Today, people who know a great deal are considered freaks, geeks, specialists or people who should be avoided because they may be dangerous. Dangerous? Adults who know very little tend to be suspicious of, if not actually fear, others who know lots.
Why? Humans are still in our infancy in terms of social development, even if we are well into our midlife technologically. We still function, as societies, much the way our prehistoric ancestors did when they were part of a tribe. Though we have grown beyond the optimum size of a tribe in most communities and cultures, our social system has not advanced with our population. We still think in tribal ways, to some extent.
People who are knowledgeable on a variety of subjects tend to be feared as if they were part of a visiting tribe. We all understand physical strength, agility and ability with weapons. We don't understand what a person with a huge library of information between his ears could do. Likely nothing, but we aren't certain. Could he be dangerous and we wouldn't even know it?
Wisdom today has much less to do with absorbing information we are able to use and more to do with the ability to see beyond the problems of the moment to solutions that are not evident to most people. It's being able to find answers while others are still trying to figure out the problem.
Wisdom and knowledge today may be more rare among educated people than in the ancient past (slaves and peasants were always kept ignorant and illiterate) because too many of us believe we know what we are doing when in fact we haven't a clue. Too many of us believe we can buy our way out of any problem we can't manage ourselves and we're shocked when we can't.
Personal relationships show excellent examples of this. While there are many reasons why relationships fail, one is that many people have never asked what the other person in the relationship wanted from them. They assume that if they are together, they must be providing what the other wants. They buy their way through a divorce because they don't understand each other. Never tried. Didn't know they should.
While I can't believe Whitehead's assertion that knowledge will die because so many people are not aware of how little knowledge they have and how little ability they have to find the answers and solutions they require, this deficit is nonetheless huge and is having an unpleasant impact on many societies.
Not knowing something we need to know is one thing, especially if we know how to find what we need. Not realizing how clueless we are about so many things is dangerous because these people often don't abide by the rules of society. This includes such things as not following speed limits on the roads, taking drugs that we have no idea how they will react with our particular metabolism and wasting fuel in our cars while we watch the prices soar.
Bring to someone's attention that they are not following one of these rules of society or that they should be doing something differently because the way they are doing it might cause them grief and they react with hubris and arrogance. How dare we! Those who try to help clueless others are treated as if they were muggers.
There's nothing shameful about not knowing something. What is shameful is to deny it, to cover it up and to not take the trouble to find out.
There's nothing pretty about ignorance. It's not funny either. Strange that it's so popular.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to understand what kids need to know beyond what's in their textbooks and what they learn on the streets.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947)
Sometimes it's hard to tell if knowledge is dead and buried or if it's alive and well, toiling in laboratories, libraries and offices all over the world.
Knowledge may be summed up as facts we can use. Trivia that has value only on quiz shows and in party games wouldn't be considered knowledge because you can't actually do anything with it. A nonfiction book sitting on a shelf is not knowledge, in itself, because without a person to do something with it, it has no lasting value.
The sum of human knowledge doubles about every 15 years now. In the days of the ancient Greeks, who were known for their wisdom and knowledge, the sum of human knowledge varied little from one year to the next. So as a person got older, he or she could learn a greater portion of the available knowledge, thus gaining wisdom in the process.
Today, people who know a great deal are considered freaks, geeks, specialists or people who should be avoided because they may be dangerous. Dangerous? Adults who know very little tend to be suspicious of, if not actually fear, others who know lots.
Why? Humans are still in our infancy in terms of social development, even if we are well into our midlife technologically. We still function, as societies, much the way our prehistoric ancestors did when they were part of a tribe. Though we have grown beyond the optimum size of a tribe in most communities and cultures, our social system has not advanced with our population. We still think in tribal ways, to some extent.
People who are knowledgeable on a variety of subjects tend to be feared as if they were part of a visiting tribe. We all understand physical strength, agility and ability with weapons. We don't understand what a person with a huge library of information between his ears could do. Likely nothing, but we aren't certain. Could he be dangerous and we wouldn't even know it?
Wisdom today has much less to do with absorbing information we are able to use and more to do with the ability to see beyond the problems of the moment to solutions that are not evident to most people. It's being able to find answers while others are still trying to figure out the problem.
Wisdom and knowledge today may be more rare among educated people than in the ancient past (slaves and peasants were always kept ignorant and illiterate) because too many of us believe we know what we are doing when in fact we haven't a clue. Too many of us believe we can buy our way out of any problem we can't manage ourselves and we're shocked when we can't.
Personal relationships show excellent examples of this. While there are many reasons why relationships fail, one is that many people have never asked what the other person in the relationship wanted from them. They assume that if they are together, they must be providing what the other wants. They buy their way through a divorce because they don't understand each other. Never tried. Didn't know they should.
While I can't believe Whitehead's assertion that knowledge will die because so many people are not aware of how little knowledge they have and how little ability they have to find the answers and solutions they require, this deficit is nonetheless huge and is having an unpleasant impact on many societies.
Not knowing something we need to know is one thing, especially if we know how to find what we need. Not realizing how clueless we are about so many things is dangerous because these people often don't abide by the rules of society. This includes such things as not following speed limits on the roads, taking drugs that we have no idea how they will react with our particular metabolism and wasting fuel in our cars while we watch the prices soar.
Bring to someone's attention that they are not following one of these rules of society or that they should be doing something differently because the way they are doing it might cause them grief and they react with hubris and arrogance. How dare we! Those who try to help clueless others are treated as if they were muggers.
There's nothing shameful about not knowing something. What is shameful is to deny it, to cover it up and to not take the trouble to find out.
There's nothing pretty about ignorance. It's not funny either. Strange that it's so popular.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to understand what kids need to know beyond what's in their textbooks and what they learn on the streets.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, April 21, 2008
We Have To Suffer, And We Do It So Well
Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.
- Jose Marti, Cuban freedom fighter and hero (1853-1895)
When you read the quotation you might be tempted to think that it was written recently. But Marti, Cuba's greatest national hero, lived well over a century ago. In the sense of this quotation, nothing has changed in humankind since his time.
The observation about life applies both to political/national and to personal lives. The USA and the United Kingdom, for examples, have been involved with wars at least once in each generation for hundreds of years. Were these wars necessary?
For the few hundreds of years leading up to and including Marti's time, the world was indeed a violent place. The evolution from tribal states to centralized governments took a very long time. That is, though centralized governments try to avoid wars in most cases (the US, UK, some African and Asian countries excepted), many got involved with wars until a century ago for the same reasons our ancestors did, control of land and resources. That's tribal.
Politically weak leaders in countries with centralized governments, who want to make names for themselves, stir up rumours that another nation is out to get them, that the people had better prepare for imminent attack or all will be lost. As this kind of politicking appeals to our natural sense of caution, fomenting fear within a population is relatively easy. In some cases, simply making up lies is sufficient to get people behind the leader who will defend them in their "time of great need."
Even in more peaceful times, political parties feel the need to devise the appearance of conflict between parties to get votes and between candidates to help one succeed over another. In most cases, the afflictions (conflict) are more imagined than real, as becomes obvious after an election when a new party in power assumes similar policies that it railed against when it was in opposition.
In our personal lives, some people revel in conflict. In business, for example, succeeding through conflict often gets one person the top job in a company over others who see no valid reason for it. Or who lose the battle.
At the personal level, family doctors see many patients every day who have nothing wrong with them except an overactive imagination and a penchant for hypochondria. Some hand out prescriptions which are nothing more than sugar pills, just to satisfy the imaginary needs of these people to be "cured."
Any phenomenon that can be called a bandwagon effect plays on the same need for an affliction even if one doesn't exist.
Is the planet really warming, inexorably and inevitably, as some say? The Arctic ice cap is melting, to be sure, but the ice cap in the Antarctic is increasing in size. That has always happened in cycles. Some parts of the world are getting hotter--more temperature extremes--while others are having colder temperatures in their winter than have been seen since the Little Ice Age.
Oh, that Little Ice Age. It happened roughly between 1450 and 1850. Since 1850, so our records show, earth has been warming. Reason suggests that it is warming naturally, as we would expect after a minor ice age.
Are we truly in danger of warming our own planet to the point of killing off most of its inhabitants? The hubris of that is astounding, that one species believes it has power of that magnitude. Our weather is governed by the sun more than by any other factor. When we learn to control the sun, we can control weather.
But fear over the effects of climate change is our global affliction of the day. I haven't heard of a single coastal city or even a low island that had to be abandoned because of rising sea levels.
I have heard of many possible causes for the increase of asthma. One primary cause is surely air pollution. We are polluting our air with about half a million chemicals emitted from smokestacks and about half that number of chemicals enter our waterways. That's the stuff we breathe and drink. Why aren't we riding that hobby horse, since it affects the health of almost everyone on our planet?
The air pollution scare tried and failed a few decades ago. Now scientists seeking government grants are ignoring our terribly polluted air that actually kills thousands of people in large countries every year in favour of scaring us into believing in the potential tragedies of climate change.
Meanwhile, several older climatologists who claim that climate change is natural and cyclical have been virtually silenced by the younger ones. The older ones are beyond needing grants, while the younger ones have great careers in fear mongering ahead of them.
It's hard to know what the real facts are because they get obscured by so many who have financial interests and celebrity in mind for themselves.
As Jose Marti said, we need to suffer. There are lots of people around who are well prepared to help us to do just that.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want children to have the skills to be able to distinguish between advertising propaganda and fact so they can live healthy and safe lives without fear of emotional bullies.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Jose Marti, Cuban freedom fighter and hero (1853-1895)
When you read the quotation you might be tempted to think that it was written recently. But Marti, Cuba's greatest national hero, lived well over a century ago. In the sense of this quotation, nothing has changed in humankind since his time.
The observation about life applies both to political/national and to personal lives. The USA and the United Kingdom, for examples, have been involved with wars at least once in each generation for hundreds of years. Were these wars necessary?
For the few hundreds of years leading up to and including Marti's time, the world was indeed a violent place. The evolution from tribal states to centralized governments took a very long time. That is, though centralized governments try to avoid wars in most cases (the US, UK, some African and Asian countries excepted), many got involved with wars until a century ago for the same reasons our ancestors did, control of land and resources. That's tribal.
Politically weak leaders in countries with centralized governments, who want to make names for themselves, stir up rumours that another nation is out to get them, that the people had better prepare for imminent attack or all will be lost. As this kind of politicking appeals to our natural sense of caution, fomenting fear within a population is relatively easy. In some cases, simply making up lies is sufficient to get people behind the leader who will defend them in their "time of great need."
Even in more peaceful times, political parties feel the need to devise the appearance of conflict between parties to get votes and between candidates to help one succeed over another. In most cases, the afflictions (conflict) are more imagined than real, as becomes obvious after an election when a new party in power assumes similar policies that it railed against when it was in opposition.
In our personal lives, some people revel in conflict. In business, for example, succeeding through conflict often gets one person the top job in a company over others who see no valid reason for it. Or who lose the battle.
At the personal level, family doctors see many patients every day who have nothing wrong with them except an overactive imagination and a penchant for hypochondria. Some hand out prescriptions which are nothing more than sugar pills, just to satisfy the imaginary needs of these people to be "cured."
Any phenomenon that can be called a bandwagon effect plays on the same need for an affliction even if one doesn't exist.
Is the planet really warming, inexorably and inevitably, as some say? The Arctic ice cap is melting, to be sure, but the ice cap in the Antarctic is increasing in size. That has always happened in cycles. Some parts of the world are getting hotter--more temperature extremes--while others are having colder temperatures in their winter than have been seen since the Little Ice Age.
Oh, that Little Ice Age. It happened roughly between 1450 and 1850. Since 1850, so our records show, earth has been warming. Reason suggests that it is warming naturally, as we would expect after a minor ice age.
Are we truly in danger of warming our own planet to the point of killing off most of its inhabitants? The hubris of that is astounding, that one species believes it has power of that magnitude. Our weather is governed by the sun more than by any other factor. When we learn to control the sun, we can control weather.
But fear over the effects of climate change is our global affliction of the day. I haven't heard of a single coastal city or even a low island that had to be abandoned because of rising sea levels.
I have heard of many possible causes for the increase of asthma. One primary cause is surely air pollution. We are polluting our air with about half a million chemicals emitted from smokestacks and about half that number of chemicals enter our waterways. That's the stuff we breathe and drink. Why aren't we riding that hobby horse, since it affects the health of almost everyone on our planet?
The air pollution scare tried and failed a few decades ago. Now scientists seeking government grants are ignoring our terribly polluted air that actually kills thousands of people in large countries every year in favour of scaring us into believing in the potential tragedies of climate change.
Meanwhile, several older climatologists who claim that climate change is natural and cyclical have been virtually silenced by the younger ones. The older ones are beyond needing grants, while the younger ones have great careers in fear mongering ahead of them.
It's hard to know what the real facts are because they get obscured by so many who have financial interests and celebrity in mind for themselves.
As Jose Marti said, we need to suffer. There are lots of people around who are well prepared to help us to do just that.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want children to have the skills to be able to distinguish between advertising propaganda and fact so they can live healthy and safe lives without fear of emotional bullies.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Are You Really That Helpless?
Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
- Thomas A Kempis, German ecclesiastic (1380-1471)
Let him that would move the world first move himself.
- Socrates, Ancient Athenian philosopher (470-399 BC)
Many people claim they wish they could change the world, but they can't. Yet they would find it difficult to change themselves, even offensive if someone else suggested it.
Changing the world isn't hard. It simply can't be done by one person. Because they know they can't do it alone, many fail to make any attempt. Rather than working to gather others who will spread the same message, they do nothing, often ignoring the advice they would give to the world as to how to achieve new objectives and goals.
"If you can't beat them, join them." As common as that saying is, it identifies its users as guilty of something, and as quitters, if not as losers.
Starting with the ancient Jew we know as Abraham, the Semites began to spread the word among the other tribes they met about how to live a good life. Jesus of Nazareth picked up the theme about 550 years later. The Muslim Prophet Mohammed continued the theme with his own religion. In about 2500 years, around half the world believes the same precepts about living a good life.
Mind you, not every one of those people adheres to the rules. Generally speaking, the Jews are fairly peaceful people, except as they must defend themselves against those who would annihilate them in the Middle East. A large majority of Christians and Muslims are peaceful people, I believe. In fact, most of the people who belong to non-Abrahamic religions have similar beliefs about how to live a good life.
Considering how incredibly brutal the world was up until 600 years ago (and how brutal it still is in pockets around the world), we have come a long way. We probably have six times as many people on earth today as 600 years ago, which means that even more than in the past we humans have changed to a more peaceful and helpful life style.
We have no trouble hearing about those who violate our norms. The media ensure that we hear as much that's bad among us as they can get their hands on, and they make up some of what they tell us as it is. But the vast majority of people on the planet live good lives, healthier and longer than ever before in history.
Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed spread their words, others paid attention and passed them on. The same can be said of The Buddha and the originators of Hinduism, Taoism and other religions.
These people believed that their words would eventually spread around the world. They were right. They didn't give up because it couldn't happen within their lifetimes.
What does that make us, the good people of today who don't believe we can make a difference? Short-sighted, at the least.
Changing our own attitudes about what effect we could have on the future of our world could make such a difference in decades, centuries and millennia to come.
It's not so hard to tell others about the values we hold, so long as we don't try to convert them to a particular religion or ask them for donations. They will listen and, in time, they too will spread the word.
You can make a difference, if you believe in yourself.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to make a big difference in the world of the future by teaching children what they need to know to operate it with integrity and with honour.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Thomas A Kempis, German ecclesiastic (1380-1471)
Let him that would move the world first move himself.
- Socrates, Ancient Athenian philosopher (470-399 BC)
Many people claim they wish they could change the world, but they can't. Yet they would find it difficult to change themselves, even offensive if someone else suggested it.
Changing the world isn't hard. It simply can't be done by one person. Because they know they can't do it alone, many fail to make any attempt. Rather than working to gather others who will spread the same message, they do nothing, often ignoring the advice they would give to the world as to how to achieve new objectives and goals.
"If you can't beat them, join them." As common as that saying is, it identifies its users as guilty of something, and as quitters, if not as losers.
Starting with the ancient Jew we know as Abraham, the Semites began to spread the word among the other tribes they met about how to live a good life. Jesus of Nazareth picked up the theme about 550 years later. The Muslim Prophet Mohammed continued the theme with his own religion. In about 2500 years, around half the world believes the same precepts about living a good life.
Mind you, not every one of those people adheres to the rules. Generally speaking, the Jews are fairly peaceful people, except as they must defend themselves against those who would annihilate them in the Middle East. A large majority of Christians and Muslims are peaceful people, I believe. In fact, most of the people who belong to non-Abrahamic religions have similar beliefs about how to live a good life.
Considering how incredibly brutal the world was up until 600 years ago (and how brutal it still is in pockets around the world), we have come a long way. We probably have six times as many people on earth today as 600 years ago, which means that even more than in the past we humans have changed to a more peaceful and helpful life style.
We have no trouble hearing about those who violate our norms. The media ensure that we hear as much that's bad among us as they can get their hands on, and they make up some of what they tell us as it is. But the vast majority of people on the planet live good lives, healthier and longer than ever before in history.
Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed spread their words, others paid attention and passed them on. The same can be said of The Buddha and the originators of Hinduism, Taoism and other religions.
These people believed that their words would eventually spread around the world. They were right. They didn't give up because it couldn't happen within their lifetimes.
What does that make us, the good people of today who don't believe we can make a difference? Short-sighted, at the least.
Changing our own attitudes about what effect we could have on the future of our world could make such a difference in decades, centuries and millennia to come.
It's not so hard to tell others about the values we hold, so long as we don't try to convert them to a particular religion or ask them for donations. They will listen and, in time, they too will spread the word.
You can make a difference, if you believe in yourself.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to make a big difference in the world of the future by teaching children what they need to know to operate it with integrity and with honour.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, April 13, 2008
A Tribute To Collected Wisdom
While I always have a book on my bedside table, waiting to be to read before I go to sleep, rarely do I have one that so absorbs my mind that sleep eludes me while I continue to turn pages. Richard Paul Evans' novel The Gift is one.
The Gift is admirable not just for its inspiring story, but also for the collected wisdom he puts into excerpts from the journal of Nathan Hurst, the story's protagonist, observer of life and receiver of "the gift" that makes him feel his life has value and meaning. (Before that he listened to others who treated him as a murderer.)
You can learn more about The Gift and the many other best sellers by this multi-award winning author from his web site at http://richardpaulevans.com
What I want to tweak your interest with is a few of those journal excerpts, one of which begins each chapter of the book. They stand on their own. As you read them, take a moment to consider each after allowing it to imprint on your brain. Each has a special value that deserves your consideration.
Having completed your read, consider that Richard Paul Evans has Tourette's syndrome and chronic tic disorder. Tourette's is "an inherited neurological disorder characterized by physical and vocal tics." The fact that Evans is a much sought after public speaker gives evidence that he has overcome a great deal.
........................
I don't believe society has ever grown more tolerant. It just changes targets.
........................
It's one thing to order an execution, it's a whole different matter to swing the axe.
.........................
I feel like I've been handed a prize orchid. And I can't make a weed grow.
.........................
Sometimes I think all I have ever known are McRelationships.
.........................
The most important story we will ever write in life is our own--not with ink, but with our daily choices.
.........................
I just want to get through life without ending up as a cautionary tale.
.........................
I struggled to get out of bed this morning. I think I had an emotional hangover.
.........................
Sometimes I wonder if it's not so much that we intend to do harm as we don't intend not to.
.........................
Today Addison [Hurst's love interest] told me she loves me. I wasn't sure how to respond. I haven't much experienced with that sort of thing.
.........................
To the thief, everyone's a crook. To the liar, everyone's a fraud. The curse of all sin is the mirror of false perception it traps us in.
.........................
Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings: small and flawed. It's only their sprits that are beautiful and strong.
.........................
I believe that the difference between Heaven and Hell is not so much the climate as the company. Living in a world populated by people like themselves would, for many, be Heaven. And for others, it would, indeed, be Hell.
..........................
It is one thing to take joy in a child's achievements and quite another to aggrandize ourselves through them. It is emotional incest to live vicariously through a child's success.
..........................
Small kindnesses often, unintentionally, produce the biggest payoffs.
..........................
I feel spiritually cleansed and happy just reading these.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to teach life lessons to children before they need them, instead of trying to fix broken adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
The Gift is admirable not just for its inspiring story, but also for the collected wisdom he puts into excerpts from the journal of Nathan Hurst, the story's protagonist, observer of life and receiver of "the gift" that makes him feel his life has value and meaning. (Before that he listened to others who treated him as a murderer.)
You can learn more about The Gift and the many other best sellers by this multi-award winning author from his web site at http://richardpaulevans.com
What I want to tweak your interest with is a few of those journal excerpts, one of which begins each chapter of the book. They stand on their own. As you read them, take a moment to consider each after allowing it to imprint on your brain. Each has a special value that deserves your consideration.
Having completed your read, consider that Richard Paul Evans has Tourette's syndrome and chronic tic disorder. Tourette's is "an inherited neurological disorder characterized by physical and vocal tics." The fact that Evans is a much sought after public speaker gives evidence that he has overcome a great deal.
........................
I don't believe society has ever grown more tolerant. It just changes targets.
........................
It's one thing to order an execution, it's a whole different matter to swing the axe.
.........................
I feel like I've been handed a prize orchid. And I can't make a weed grow.
.........................
Sometimes I think all I have ever known are McRelationships.
.........................
The most important story we will ever write in life is our own--not with ink, but with our daily choices.
.........................
I just want to get through life without ending up as a cautionary tale.
.........................
I struggled to get out of bed this morning. I think I had an emotional hangover.
.........................
Sometimes I wonder if it's not so much that we intend to do harm as we don't intend not to.
.........................
Today Addison [Hurst's love interest] told me she loves me. I wasn't sure how to respond. I haven't much experienced with that sort of thing.
.........................
To the thief, everyone's a crook. To the liar, everyone's a fraud. The curse of all sin is the mirror of false perception it traps us in.
.........................
Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings: small and flawed. It's only their sprits that are beautiful and strong.
.........................
I believe that the difference between Heaven and Hell is not so much the climate as the company. Living in a world populated by people like themselves would, for many, be Heaven. And for others, it would, indeed, be Hell.
..........................
It is one thing to take joy in a child's achievements and quite another to aggrandize ourselves through them. It is emotional incest to live vicariously through a child's success.
..........................
Small kindnesses often, unintentionally, produce the biggest payoffs.
..........................
I feel spiritually cleansed and happy just reading these.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to teach life lessons to children before they need them, instead of trying to fix broken adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, February 22, 2008
What Is Reality? Why You Should Care
I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.
- Jimmy Stewart in Harvey, 1950
In the movie, Harvey was a giant, man-sized rabbit that could be seen only by Jimmy Stewart's character. Harvey was either a figment of Jimmy's character's insane imagination (as his opponents tried to prove) or something supernatural, which no one but the lead character seemed prepared to accept.
Let's take a close look at that quote. Wrestling with reality is something we all do on a daily basis. It's what life is, most of the time.
But what is reality? What does it mean to you?
I submit that "reality" as a concept is something others use to help us define our behaviour as either acceptable or unacceptable. "Get real" and "Do a reality check" are examples of how others use the concept of reality to get us to alter our behaviour to bring it in line with what they want and believe.
Or reality is what we submit to because it's too hard to wrestle with it until we have subdued it. When we give up and act like everyone else, we have given in to "reality," meaning that we have accepted that following the crowd is the only worthy route to take in life.
Are those kinds of realities worthy of our devoting our lives to them? Remember, the people who want us to do those reality checks have something to gain by our behaving the way they would like. That gain may be nothing more than getting us to do what they want. Yet that gives them power over us. The reality behind that reality is that by behaving the way these people want we have granted them some power over our life.
As a young man going to university, I worked in the summers at a meat packing company that operated slaughterhouses. I learned about the flocks of sheep that would follow one goat, without thinking, into the funnel track that would be their last expression of life. (The goat always walked through to lead another flock later.)
The concept of sheep following a leader to their deaths earned a special place in my life as a result of that experience. Seeing people blindly and willingly follow some leader into self destruction raises my anger at the association. Wanting someone to "accept reality" is a way to manipulate that person into doing what you believe he or she should. It's not persuasion by reasoned argument so much as coercion by emotional argument.
If we must wrestle with reality, we must grapple with someone else's reality, what someone else wants, not what we want ourselves. Of course we can persuade ourselves that "reality" is what we wanted after all, but it may not have been that way. Most of us do that. Most of us act the way others around us want us to act.
And that's just fine. Sheep are fundamentally happy animals, even as they enter that funnel in their final moments.
Sheep accept the reality offered by others. They believe it's the only way to go. It's their reality.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for adults to learn how they developed the fears and habits they have today and to figure out how to change them for the future if they so desire.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Jimmy Stewart in Harvey, 1950
In the movie, Harvey was a giant, man-sized rabbit that could be seen only by Jimmy Stewart's character. Harvey was either a figment of Jimmy's character's insane imagination (as his opponents tried to prove) or something supernatural, which no one but the lead character seemed prepared to accept.
Let's take a close look at that quote. Wrestling with reality is something we all do on a daily basis. It's what life is, most of the time.
But what is reality? What does it mean to you?
I submit that "reality" as a concept is something others use to help us define our behaviour as either acceptable or unacceptable. "Get real" and "Do a reality check" are examples of how others use the concept of reality to get us to alter our behaviour to bring it in line with what they want and believe.
Or reality is what we submit to because it's too hard to wrestle with it until we have subdued it. When we give up and act like everyone else, we have given in to "reality," meaning that we have accepted that following the crowd is the only worthy route to take in life.
Are those kinds of realities worthy of our devoting our lives to them? Remember, the people who want us to do those reality checks have something to gain by our behaving the way they would like. That gain may be nothing more than getting us to do what they want. Yet that gives them power over us. The reality behind that reality is that by behaving the way these people want we have granted them some power over our life.
As a young man going to university, I worked in the summers at a meat packing company that operated slaughterhouses. I learned about the flocks of sheep that would follow one goat, without thinking, into the funnel track that would be their last expression of life. (The goat always walked through to lead another flock later.)
The concept of sheep following a leader to their deaths earned a special place in my life as a result of that experience. Seeing people blindly and willingly follow some leader into self destruction raises my anger at the association. Wanting someone to "accept reality" is a way to manipulate that person into doing what you believe he or she should. It's not persuasion by reasoned argument so much as coercion by emotional argument.
If we must wrestle with reality, we must grapple with someone else's reality, what someone else wants, not what we want ourselves. Of course we can persuade ourselves that "reality" is what we wanted after all, but it may not have been that way. Most of us do that. Most of us act the way others around us want us to act.
And that's just fine. Sheep are fundamentally happy animals, even as they enter that funnel in their final moments.
Sheep accept the reality offered by others. They believe it's the only way to go. It's their reality.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for adults to learn how they developed the fears and habits they have today and to figure out how to change them for the future if they so desire.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Rise Above The Dumbosity Of Others
Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.
- Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)
This way of dealing with offences would be very difficult today because so many people act in offensive ways, by intention and by their neglect of commitments they have made.
Developer of the dualistic theory (or philosophy) of mind and matter--everything we know can be designated to one category or the other--Descartes fully believed that more exists than can be attributed to either matter or energy. Science today tries to teach us different from that, claiming that anything beyond matter and energy is pure fantasy or hallucination.
Using this theory of everything that is known, called materialism, science today encourages us to believe that anything that cannot be proven to exist or that at least doesn't have the potential to be proven is nothing more than imagination. That includes the concept of God, which materialists believe is fantasy.
So believers in materialism have created their own god, known to some as manna, to others as money. They believe that any activity that has nothing to do with either the acquisition of money (including investing it) or the spending of money is worthless, time wasted. Money, they claim, has provable value.
One of the key problems of materialists attributing so much to human imagination is that imagination cannot be designated as either energy or matter. Imagination, itself, defies category in materialist terms. So does free will. So do ESP (extra-sensory perception), presentiment, telepathy, premonition, foreboding, precognition, the Evil Eye (some form of which exists in almost every culture on earth) and even the sense of being started at or watched from behind you. An abundance of both carefully conducted scientific experimentation and collected anecdotes exists to prove all of these.
As one Indian materialist scientist told me recently, "I like living in a world where I know that everything can be proven to exist." As I have a great deal of respect for the intellect of this man, I held myself back from telling him that I refused to believe that he exists because he might be nothing more than a fraudulent persona on the Internet.
Sometimes we just have to rise above temptations that will serve no good to engage in. That's the point Descartes was making. Sometimes the issues simply aren't worth the trouble. Often the offender isn't.
To have the ability to detach yourself from the temptation to engage in worthless debate or argument with no possibility of concluding satisfactorily because at least one party persists in intellectual blindness is one clear mark of wisdom.
Refusing to engage in debate or argument where you might lose, but gain knowledge in the process, does not qualify as wisdom. It qualifies as intellectual cowardice.
The world is filled with people who function barely above the level of retardedness. It doesn't need any more people who are reticent about participating in discussion on topics other than work, the weather or sports for fear of being shown up as knowing very little.
It's amazing how much you can learn by losing an argument you thought out well and presented with confidence. Or by listening with a critical ear.
Humankind did not get this far in its evolution by avoiding thinking. Though, to judge by many people we meet each day, you might wonder.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so that they can be lifelong learners who will not step back from fruitful discussion and learning or teaching opportunities.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Rene Descartes, philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650)
This way of dealing with offences would be very difficult today because so many people act in offensive ways, by intention and by their neglect of commitments they have made.
Developer of the dualistic theory (or philosophy) of mind and matter--everything we know can be designated to one category or the other--Descartes fully believed that more exists than can be attributed to either matter or energy. Science today tries to teach us different from that, claiming that anything beyond matter and energy is pure fantasy or hallucination.
Using this theory of everything that is known, called materialism, science today encourages us to believe that anything that cannot be proven to exist or that at least doesn't have the potential to be proven is nothing more than imagination. That includes the concept of God, which materialists believe is fantasy.
So believers in materialism have created their own god, known to some as manna, to others as money. They believe that any activity that has nothing to do with either the acquisition of money (including investing it) or the spending of money is worthless, time wasted. Money, they claim, has provable value.
One of the key problems of materialists attributing so much to human imagination is that imagination cannot be designated as either energy or matter. Imagination, itself, defies category in materialist terms. So does free will. So do ESP (extra-sensory perception), presentiment, telepathy, premonition, foreboding, precognition, the Evil Eye (some form of which exists in almost every culture on earth) and even the sense of being started at or watched from behind you. An abundance of both carefully conducted scientific experimentation and collected anecdotes exists to prove all of these.
As one Indian materialist scientist told me recently, "I like living in a world where I know that everything can be proven to exist." As I have a great deal of respect for the intellect of this man, I held myself back from telling him that I refused to believe that he exists because he might be nothing more than a fraudulent persona on the Internet.
Sometimes we just have to rise above temptations that will serve no good to engage in. That's the point Descartes was making. Sometimes the issues simply aren't worth the trouble. Often the offender isn't.
To have the ability to detach yourself from the temptation to engage in worthless debate or argument with no possibility of concluding satisfactorily because at least one party persists in intellectual blindness is one clear mark of wisdom.
Refusing to engage in debate or argument where you might lose, but gain knowledge in the process, does not qualify as wisdom. It qualifies as intellectual cowardice.
The world is filled with people who function barely above the level of retardedness. It doesn't need any more people who are reticent about participating in discussion on topics other than work, the weather or sports for fear of being shown up as knowing very little.
It's amazing how much you can learn by losing an argument you thought out well and presented with confidence. Or by listening with a critical ear.
Humankind did not get this far in its evolution by avoiding thinking. Though, to judge by many people we meet each day, you might wonder.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, when and what to teach children so that they can be lifelong learners who will not step back from fruitful discussion and learning or teaching opportunities.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Getting The Best Out Of People
If you cannot mould yourself entirely as you would wish, how can you expect other people to be entirely to your liking?
- Thomas á Kempis, Roman Catholic monk and author (ca.1380 - July 25, 1471)
It's so common we could say it's a part of our human nature. We expect things of others that we don't expect of ourselves.
Or we expect more of others than we do of ourselves. We allow ourselves the maximum leeway (give ourselves a break) because we understand the circumstances under which we are living and working, but we don't understand the constraints others have so we don't give them much slack.
If we could mould another person exactly to our liking, what would that make us? God? Slave owner? Mystic? Magician? Brainwasher? In truth, if we did mould someone exactly the way we would like them to be, that would mean having control over their behaviour, which means over their life. That would be against the law of every country and the moral code of every religion of today.
Rather than being disappointed at how others don't meet up to our standards to satisfy our needs (even if we are paying for the service), we should celebrate the fact that we have people we can depend on to some extent. Many people have isolated themselves from others so much that they have no one to turn to when they have needs they can't meet themselves. That's really a state of helplessness.
We can't get people to do whatever we want them to do, even if we pay them. However, we can encourage them, coax them along, express the unfortunate state we find ourselves in because the job we want done has not been completed. Encouragement helps. Patience, when it's demonstrated as patience and not as shutting up and taking what we get, is appreciated.
Three friends who I depend on for various important tasks I can't do myself--one fixing cars, the second fixing computers, the third doing odd jobs like welding and other skilled projects--routinely take longer than I would like to complete what they do for me. However, by explaining how important the job is to me and attempting to show patience by understanding the time problems they have themselves, I usually get more than I pay for when each job is done. If not, I often get special favours later.
We have no real way of knowing the problems that others live with and the effect these problems have on them. What we can do is to explain the problems that are bothering us and hope that this spurs the others to act on our behalf sooner or more completely. And we can be patient with them when they need it from us.
Every person in our lives, no matter how important they are to us, will eventually disappoint us. No exceptions. However, there is no rule telling us that we have to hold their faults against them. We can achieve more by overlooking their short term disappointments while focussing on the long term benefits we derive from associating with these people.
A saying people have around where I live is: Look at the donut, not at the hole.
Give most people an opportunity to deliver their best for you, even when they are under pressure, and most times they will come through much better than strangers we pay more would. True, we don't have the opportunity to tell our friends and associates what we really think of them at the time we need to most, but holding back pays of in the long run if we manage our relationships properly. And it builds better relationships.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know to be competent and confident adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Thomas á Kempis, Roman Catholic monk and author (ca.1380 - July 25, 1471)
It's so common we could say it's a part of our human nature. We expect things of others that we don't expect of ourselves.
Or we expect more of others than we do of ourselves. We allow ourselves the maximum leeway (give ourselves a break) because we understand the circumstances under which we are living and working, but we don't understand the constraints others have so we don't give them much slack.
If we could mould another person exactly to our liking, what would that make us? God? Slave owner? Mystic? Magician? Brainwasher? In truth, if we did mould someone exactly the way we would like them to be, that would mean having control over their behaviour, which means over their life. That would be against the law of every country and the moral code of every religion of today.
Rather than being disappointed at how others don't meet up to our standards to satisfy our needs (even if we are paying for the service), we should celebrate the fact that we have people we can depend on to some extent. Many people have isolated themselves from others so much that they have no one to turn to when they have needs they can't meet themselves. That's really a state of helplessness.
We can't get people to do whatever we want them to do, even if we pay them. However, we can encourage them, coax them along, express the unfortunate state we find ourselves in because the job we want done has not been completed. Encouragement helps. Patience, when it's demonstrated as patience and not as shutting up and taking what we get, is appreciated.
Three friends who I depend on for various important tasks I can't do myself--one fixing cars, the second fixing computers, the third doing odd jobs like welding and other skilled projects--routinely take longer than I would like to complete what they do for me. However, by explaining how important the job is to me and attempting to show patience by understanding the time problems they have themselves, I usually get more than I pay for when each job is done. If not, I often get special favours later.
We have no real way of knowing the problems that others live with and the effect these problems have on them. What we can do is to explain the problems that are bothering us and hope that this spurs the others to act on our behalf sooner or more completely. And we can be patient with them when they need it from us.
Every person in our lives, no matter how important they are to us, will eventually disappoint us. No exceptions. However, there is no rule telling us that we have to hold their faults against them. We can achieve more by overlooking their short term disappointments while focussing on the long term benefits we derive from associating with these people.
A saying people have around where I live is: Look at the donut, not at the hole.
Give most people an opportunity to deliver their best for you, even when they are under pressure, and most times they will come through much better than strangers we pay more would. True, we don't have the opportunity to tell our friends and associates what we really think of them at the time we need to most, but holding back pays of in the long run if we manage our relationships properly. And it builds better relationships.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about how, what and when to teach children what they need to know to be competent and confident adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Monday, April 16, 2007
Your Future: Eternal What?
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
The days say nothing. Have you noticed how quickly your days pass than they did years ago?
Days, months and years passing quicker is a common perception of people as they get older. These packets of time seem to speed up with each passing decade. Then they are gone, having said nothing.
Oh, we have memories. Maybe pictures. But the pictures serve to mark the passage of time as much as they do to arouse memories.
Not everyone laments the passage of time. Not everyone lets their days pass silently, taking with them the gifts each brought and offered with so little fanfare. Those who made the most of their days look back at them not with regret but with pride.
More importantly, those who look back at days past with pride dwell only lightly on their past because they look forward to their future with vigour. Their future looks exciting because they have built their past up to it with activity that caused them to grow. To them, the future is something to look forward to with anticipation, each day an adventure to be launched with the rising sun.
If this seems poetic to you, consider how productive your past has been, how worthy of your time your investments in the components of your life. If you fear the passage of time in your life, maybe you need to build more into your future.
That doesn't mean more excitement, more daring, more places to visit, more travel, more stuff, more of the things that wear away at your time on earth. It means building something of value to show that you were here. To show others, when you're gone, that you're worth remembering.
To leave that kind of legacy, you need to do things that matter to other people, not just to yourself. If everything you do is for your own benefit, no one will have any reason to remember you after you are gone. If what you do involves and helps others, no matter how small each effort may be, then you will leave a lasting memory.
When you leave this earth, you will not be here to promote yourself. Only the others who are left can do that. If you want to be remembered fondly and with respect, you must act in ways that will benefit those who will succeed you on this planet.
OK, so maybe you're busy now, reading stuff on the internet. But you can begin tomorrow.
Tomorrow--your whole future--should be looked upon with a little apprehension. If you don't stretch yourself beyond what you feel comfortable with, you can never grow. If you don't grow, you will retreat with age. The longer you retreat, you more your spirit as well as your body will atrophy.
Rejoice in the bit of fear that the future holds because only by conquering that fear will you grow to become more than you are today. As you overcome that fear, you become greater than you are. And by helping others who will have greater capacity to do more that is worth remembering.
There is little point in eternal life if you didn't make much use of the one you had here. Eternal boredom offers little to look forward to.
Launch your future when the sun launches itself tomorrow morning. The sun will keep going in circles. You don't have to. You have a future to build. You have to build toward eternity.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to help people build a better future rather than letting the present decay with age.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
The days say nothing. Have you noticed how quickly your days pass than they did years ago?
Days, months and years passing quicker is a common perception of people as they get older. These packets of time seem to speed up with each passing decade. Then they are gone, having said nothing.
Oh, we have memories. Maybe pictures. But the pictures serve to mark the passage of time as much as they do to arouse memories.
Not everyone laments the passage of time. Not everyone lets their days pass silently, taking with them the gifts each brought and offered with so little fanfare. Those who made the most of their days look back at them not with regret but with pride.
More importantly, those who look back at days past with pride dwell only lightly on their past because they look forward to their future with vigour. Their future looks exciting because they have built their past up to it with activity that caused them to grow. To them, the future is something to look forward to with anticipation, each day an adventure to be launched with the rising sun.
If this seems poetic to you, consider how productive your past has been, how worthy of your time your investments in the components of your life. If you fear the passage of time in your life, maybe you need to build more into your future.
That doesn't mean more excitement, more daring, more places to visit, more travel, more stuff, more of the things that wear away at your time on earth. It means building something of value to show that you were here. To show others, when you're gone, that you're worth remembering.
To leave that kind of legacy, you need to do things that matter to other people, not just to yourself. If everything you do is for your own benefit, no one will have any reason to remember you after you are gone. If what you do involves and helps others, no matter how small each effort may be, then you will leave a lasting memory.
When you leave this earth, you will not be here to promote yourself. Only the others who are left can do that. If you want to be remembered fondly and with respect, you must act in ways that will benefit those who will succeed you on this planet.
OK, so maybe you're busy now, reading stuff on the internet. But you can begin tomorrow.
Tomorrow--your whole future--should be looked upon with a little apprehension. If you don't stretch yourself beyond what you feel comfortable with, you can never grow. If you don't grow, you will retreat with age. The longer you retreat, you more your spirit as well as your body will atrophy.
Rejoice in the bit of fear that the future holds because only by conquering that fear will you grow to become more than you are today. As you overcome that fear, you become greater than you are. And by helping others who will have greater capacity to do more that is worth remembering.
There is little point in eternal life if you didn't make much use of the one you had here. Eternal boredom offers little to look forward to.
Launch your future when the sun launches itself tomorrow morning. The sun will keep going in circles. You don't have to. You have a future to build. You have to build toward eternity.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to help people build a better future rather than letting the present decay with age.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Uncontrolled Capitalism Failed Us
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
- Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
And yet we do. In general, the economic system practised in western countries follows the thinking of Adam Smith.
Smith said that the free market system where the wealthy are allowed to invest and make money to their hearts' content was the best system of capitalism. As the rich got richer, the poor would benefit because they would be needed to participate in a system that needed everyone to function. Tax moneys would be available for those who couldn't function comfortably.
Though no one was expected to compete on an equal footing with the rich, there would be equality among the general population because everyone would believe in the values of the system.
Happiness would be a natural benefit of Adam's economy because everyone would have enough money to do whatever they wanted. The pursuit of happiness was, in effect, the pursuit of money.
Unfettered capitalism has at its core the exploitation of greed. The greedier people are, the greater the chance that they will work hard to earn the money they want to make themselves happy by buying what they need and what they want. Those whose lives are less captured by greed would work less but still have enough to meet their more limited needs.
So how have we done? We don't have equality, as Smith promised, as most members of minorities will attest. That includes inequality for women who have to fight in many workplaces for equal pay for equal work.
People have the opportunity to work to earn a living. But some cannot work or cannot find work because they have problems that were created in the rush to get children brainwashed with the industrial curriculum that preaches that hard work and intellectual adaptation are the means to success in the working world. They "fell through the cracks."
We have come to accept that the homeless will always be with us, even in cities where nighttime temperatures go far below the freezing mark in winter and the homeless can't get social assistance because they do not have a permanent address. The homeless are the most obvious signs of the failure of the system.
Everyone still seeks happiness, but so many do without it that they are no longer certain what happiness is. They seek it in thrills and prescribed and illegal substances as well as other forms of activities that can become addictive. Happiness has not visited capitalist societies, let alone come to stay.
The gap between the rich and the poor has widened so that the two sides no longer recognize each other. The once mighty middle class dwindles as it separates into the two options as some get richer and others lose their jobs, their families, their self respect and their grasp on life.
But the rich are delighted at what capitalism has given them. They are richer than any previous generation, they control the advertising that teaches everything from morality to fashion, governments pass laws that make their fondest business wishes come true and children consider few other options than conforming to the dictates of industry as to how a society should be run.
Even our societal morality is that of industry, not of religion as in the past.
It is not the purpose of this article to offer up a solution that will be open to criticism by those whose fondest wish is to kowtow to industry. Rather it is to point out that the out of control capitalist system continues to function and gain more power because school curricula teach exactly what industry wants kids to know to become industrial workers within a few years.
The first step is not to think about how to change. The first step is to accept that change is needed.
The process of change can only begin what it will be most effective, in the teaching of children. Those children will within a few years be leaders of industry or followers of its demands.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show not just the degree of decay in western society but to offer solutions that are workable and will not cause revolution in any country.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)
And yet we do. In general, the economic system practised in western countries follows the thinking of Adam Smith.
Smith said that the free market system where the wealthy are allowed to invest and make money to their hearts' content was the best system of capitalism. As the rich got richer, the poor would benefit because they would be needed to participate in a system that needed everyone to function. Tax moneys would be available for those who couldn't function comfortably.
Though no one was expected to compete on an equal footing with the rich, there would be equality among the general population because everyone would believe in the values of the system.
Happiness would be a natural benefit of Adam's economy because everyone would have enough money to do whatever they wanted. The pursuit of happiness was, in effect, the pursuit of money.
Unfettered capitalism has at its core the exploitation of greed. The greedier people are, the greater the chance that they will work hard to earn the money they want to make themselves happy by buying what they need and what they want. Those whose lives are less captured by greed would work less but still have enough to meet their more limited needs.
So how have we done? We don't have equality, as Smith promised, as most members of minorities will attest. That includes inequality for women who have to fight in many workplaces for equal pay for equal work.
People have the opportunity to work to earn a living. But some cannot work or cannot find work because they have problems that were created in the rush to get children brainwashed with the industrial curriculum that preaches that hard work and intellectual adaptation are the means to success in the working world. They "fell through the cracks."
We have come to accept that the homeless will always be with us, even in cities where nighttime temperatures go far below the freezing mark in winter and the homeless can't get social assistance because they do not have a permanent address. The homeless are the most obvious signs of the failure of the system.
Everyone still seeks happiness, but so many do without it that they are no longer certain what happiness is. They seek it in thrills and prescribed and illegal substances as well as other forms of activities that can become addictive. Happiness has not visited capitalist societies, let alone come to stay.
The gap between the rich and the poor has widened so that the two sides no longer recognize each other. The once mighty middle class dwindles as it separates into the two options as some get richer and others lose their jobs, their families, their self respect and their grasp on life.
But the rich are delighted at what capitalism has given them. They are richer than any previous generation, they control the advertising that teaches everything from morality to fashion, governments pass laws that make their fondest business wishes come true and children consider few other options than conforming to the dictates of industry as to how a society should be run.
Even our societal morality is that of industry, not of religion as in the past.
It is not the purpose of this article to offer up a solution that will be open to criticism by those whose fondest wish is to kowtow to industry. Rather it is to point out that the out of control capitalist system continues to function and gain more power because school curricula teach exactly what industry wants kids to know to become industrial workers within a few years.
The first step is not to think about how to change. The first step is to accept that change is needed.
The process of change can only begin what it will be most effective, in the teaching of children. Those children will within a few years be leaders of industry or followers of its demands.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show not just the degree of decay in western society but to offer solutions that are workable and will not cause revolution in any country.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Will Your Life Be Worth Living Past Age 65?
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
- Leo Tolstoy
Much as I would like to agree with Mr. Tolstoy, this observation is not so universally true today as it was in the past.
Many members of the Baby Boomer generation that made individuality more of a hallmark than any generation before them had ever done now want to change themselves to address a situation that no previous generation has experienced. They will live long past the traditional age of retirement, 65 years.
When Herr Bismark chose 65 as the age of retirement for the public service of Germany back in the 19th century, the average person didn't live 50 years. That was true well into the 20th century. Making some sort of provision for the few people that lived 65 years and beyond seemed a small price to pay.
Today the average person in the western world will live 80 years or more. In fact, within a few years there will be one million Americans 100 years old or greater.
That means that millions of Baby Boomers are looking at a minimum of 15 years of reasonably healthy life beyond their 65th brithday. Some will live 35 or 40 years past it. That requires some considerable planning.
The trouble is, humanity has no pattern to follow. Many will continue to work past age 65 because they need the income, while others will do so because they like what they have been doing and want to continue.
With more years to explore the individuality they sought so fervently in the 1960s, many open their own businesses. Being their own boss was always a goal for many of them. It's the great dream and countless numbers of them get an opportunity to fulfill that dream.
Volunteering takes up a great deal of time with today's retirees. Social programs for the elderly as well as mentoring programs and many other group activities that could not exist for seniors in the past due to insufficient funds can now be launched because retired people have time to invest time into them while not feeling the need to derive an income from them.
Many people approaching 65 still harbour the dream of their parents and grandparents, to become permanently on vacation from age 65 on. Sadly, most of them are unaware of studies that show that the average person who enjoys that "everlasting vacation" plan lives only six years past the date they begin. From age 65 on, atrophy sets in quickly.
Many retired people return to school, getting diplomas and degrees at an unprecedented rate. It has also become a time when people examine what they have accomplished during their lifetimes, consider what they hope to do with their remaining years and where religion and their beliefs fit into the grand scheme. These big questions can be serious problems because they don't necessarily know where to turn to find the answers.
An equally unprecendented number of retired people with many years ahead of them will live in pain and with severe disabilities, even bedridden. For some these will be the genetics of their families kicking in. For others--a great many others--the consequences of their abusing their bodies in their earlier years will play hard on them. Many diseases and physical afflictions take 20, 30 0r 40 years before they take hold as serious health problems.
Everyone among us has many spots within us that are technically known as pre-cancerous. In the past very few of these became malignant cancers because most people died before these pre-cancerous spots could mature. With more people living nine decades, more people will have time for the potential malignancies to mature.
In addition, diabetes will affect more and more people. Setting aside the rapid increase of diabetes cases among people who are younger at onset than in the past, everyone will get diabetes if they live long enough. It is estimated that even the healthiest among us will have diabetes if they live 140 years.
That's no joke. Many of today's children will live to be 125 to 140 years of age according to recent estimates among medical scientists who study such things.
That requires planning at a level that is unusual both for individuals and for national governments. We who are not into that retirement situation yet would be well advised to give thought to a long term plan for the years that our ancestors never got a chance to experience.
We need something worth living for.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the known problems of the future plain so that we can plan for them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Leo Tolstoy
Much as I would like to agree with Mr. Tolstoy, this observation is not so universally true today as it was in the past.
Many members of the Baby Boomer generation that made individuality more of a hallmark than any generation before them had ever done now want to change themselves to address a situation that no previous generation has experienced. They will live long past the traditional age of retirement, 65 years.
When Herr Bismark chose 65 as the age of retirement for the public service of Germany back in the 19th century, the average person didn't live 50 years. That was true well into the 20th century. Making some sort of provision for the few people that lived 65 years and beyond seemed a small price to pay.
Today the average person in the western world will live 80 years or more. In fact, within a few years there will be one million Americans 100 years old or greater.
That means that millions of Baby Boomers are looking at a minimum of 15 years of reasonably healthy life beyond their 65th brithday. Some will live 35 or 40 years past it. That requires some considerable planning.
The trouble is, humanity has no pattern to follow. Many will continue to work past age 65 because they need the income, while others will do so because they like what they have been doing and want to continue.
With more years to explore the individuality they sought so fervently in the 1960s, many open their own businesses. Being their own boss was always a goal for many of them. It's the great dream and countless numbers of them get an opportunity to fulfill that dream.
Volunteering takes up a great deal of time with today's retirees. Social programs for the elderly as well as mentoring programs and many other group activities that could not exist for seniors in the past due to insufficient funds can now be launched because retired people have time to invest time into them while not feeling the need to derive an income from them.
Many people approaching 65 still harbour the dream of their parents and grandparents, to become permanently on vacation from age 65 on. Sadly, most of them are unaware of studies that show that the average person who enjoys that "everlasting vacation" plan lives only six years past the date they begin. From age 65 on, atrophy sets in quickly.
Many retired people return to school, getting diplomas and degrees at an unprecedented rate. It has also become a time when people examine what they have accomplished during their lifetimes, consider what they hope to do with their remaining years and where religion and their beliefs fit into the grand scheme. These big questions can be serious problems because they don't necessarily know where to turn to find the answers.
An equally unprecendented number of retired people with many years ahead of them will live in pain and with severe disabilities, even bedridden. For some these will be the genetics of their families kicking in. For others--a great many others--the consequences of their abusing their bodies in their earlier years will play hard on them. Many diseases and physical afflictions take 20, 30 0r 40 years before they take hold as serious health problems.
Everyone among us has many spots within us that are technically known as pre-cancerous. In the past very few of these became malignant cancers because most people died before these pre-cancerous spots could mature. With more people living nine decades, more people will have time for the potential malignancies to mature.
In addition, diabetes will affect more and more people. Setting aside the rapid increase of diabetes cases among people who are younger at onset than in the past, everyone will get diabetes if they live long enough. It is estimated that even the healthiest among us will have diabetes if they live 140 years.
That's no joke. Many of today's children will live to be 125 to 140 years of age according to recent estimates among medical scientists who study such things.
That requires planning at a level that is unusual both for individuals and for national governments. We who are not into that retirement situation yet would be well advised to give thought to a long term plan for the years that our ancestors never got a chance to experience.
We need something worth living for.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the known problems of the future plain so that we can plan for them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Dead-Ends of Society Are Drowning Us
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
- Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)
"I don't vote because my one vote won't make any difference." Yet the whole process of democratic government is founded on the collection and sorting of those single votes that "don't make any difference." It's what democracy is.
"I don't contribute to cancer research because my few dollars wouldn't make a difference between solving the mystery of cancer and not finding the solution." Yet every cancer researcher depends heavily on small contributions from individuals who don't have much to give. Solutions are coming, but slower than cancer victims and their loved ones would hope.
"I don't save money in the bank (or under my matress) because I can only put away a small amount each week and that way would take forever to build up. And banks don't give you much interest anyway." Yet the same person will borrow on a 30 year mortgage to buy a house or a long term loan to buy a vehicle. Contributing, one way or another, a little bit each week.
"I don't coddle my child too much because I'm trying to make him independent, to help him learn that he will have to make his way alone in the world as an adult." Yet young children desperately need that cuddling and coddling while they learn the skills, knowledge and ways of the world that will allow them to cope with the downturns of their lives and to excel when they have the opportunities. Too many children grow up to be like trees that lack enough roots to provide the security and nutrition the part above ground needs to survive.
"I don't read magazines and books because no one can keep up with how fast new information is being revealed these days. And beside, my school days of book-learning are over." They likely didn't read a book in school either, except to fake the odd book report. With the rapid increase in knowledge, those who don't try to keep up enclose themselves in a bubble that gradually rolls them into history long before their time on earth is up. They become living anachronisms who increasingly hate the world as they age.
"I don't help those homeless people on the street because it just encourages them to not get jobs where they could afford their own homes." Yet many of those homeless people were so neglected in their childh0od development that the adults in their lives never realized that they had learning problems, coordination problems, physical weaknesses, genetic diseases that would not show up until they were adults or a learning problem similar to a runner "hitting the wall" where everthing taught beyond that point will be missed and most of what went before will be lost. On the street, as begging adults, they're just failures.
In a world of 6.5 billion people, no one person can make a huge difference. Indeed, our design as social animals demands that the only way we can be successful at building rather than destroying our culture, at improving our people rather than harming them, at creating peace rather than sinking again into war, is to work together.
Social animals can survive alone, but they can't grow, can't improve, can't do what our species has the ability to do together.
Failures in life are not those who do not try. Those who do not try are a waste of natural resources. The real failures of life are those who are picking themselves up and looking to how they can build themselves into something new. That kind of failure is temporary. The never-try variety are the dead-ends of our species.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to gather people together to eradicate those problems that the dead-ends claim can't be solved. They can if we work together and have the right tools and methods.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)
"I don't vote because my one vote won't make any difference." Yet the whole process of democratic government is founded on the collection and sorting of those single votes that "don't make any difference." It's what democracy is.
"I don't contribute to cancer research because my few dollars wouldn't make a difference between solving the mystery of cancer and not finding the solution." Yet every cancer researcher depends heavily on small contributions from individuals who don't have much to give. Solutions are coming, but slower than cancer victims and their loved ones would hope.
"I don't save money in the bank (or under my matress) because I can only put away a small amount each week and that way would take forever to build up. And banks don't give you much interest anyway." Yet the same person will borrow on a 30 year mortgage to buy a house or a long term loan to buy a vehicle. Contributing, one way or another, a little bit each week.
"I don't coddle my child too much because I'm trying to make him independent, to help him learn that he will have to make his way alone in the world as an adult." Yet young children desperately need that cuddling and coddling while they learn the skills, knowledge and ways of the world that will allow them to cope with the downturns of their lives and to excel when they have the opportunities. Too many children grow up to be like trees that lack enough roots to provide the security and nutrition the part above ground needs to survive.
"I don't read magazines and books because no one can keep up with how fast new information is being revealed these days. And beside, my school days of book-learning are over." They likely didn't read a book in school either, except to fake the odd book report. With the rapid increase in knowledge, those who don't try to keep up enclose themselves in a bubble that gradually rolls them into history long before their time on earth is up. They become living anachronisms who increasingly hate the world as they age.
"I don't help those homeless people on the street because it just encourages them to not get jobs where they could afford their own homes." Yet many of those homeless people were so neglected in their childh0od development that the adults in their lives never realized that they had learning problems, coordination problems, physical weaknesses, genetic diseases that would not show up until they were adults or a learning problem similar to a runner "hitting the wall" where everthing taught beyond that point will be missed and most of what went before will be lost. On the street, as begging adults, they're just failures.
In a world of 6.5 billion people, no one person can make a huge difference. Indeed, our design as social animals demands that the only way we can be successful at building rather than destroying our culture, at improving our people rather than harming them, at creating peace rather than sinking again into war, is to work together.
Social animals can survive alone, but they can't grow, can't improve, can't do what our species has the ability to do together.
Failures in life are not those who do not try. Those who do not try are a waste of natural resources. The real failures of life are those who are picking themselves up and looking to how they can build themselves into something new. That kind of failure is temporary. The never-try variety are the dead-ends of our species.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to gather people together to eradicate those problems that the dead-ends claim can't be solved. They can if we work together and have the right tools and methods.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, April 01, 2007
At The End Of The Rat Race
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemons)
Funny. But odd once you think about it.
The western world has developed a culture where it's rare to hear anyone admit "I don't know."
"Never let them see you sweat" better fits the tactic advised when faced with a situation we can't handle. Never admit you don't know the answer. Never admit you don't know what to do. Never admit you don't have the situation under control, that you can't manage alone.
That's the rat race. In many situations people don't know the answers, don't know what to do, don't have any idea how to control the factors in play.
They go to war before they know whether their information is accurate. They manipulate financial reports to make their company look good on the stock market. They hire away the best employees the competition has, steal their knowledge and expertise, then express surprise when some steals their own best people away along with their insider knowledge and expertise.
They make mistakes rather than ask others for advice or find consensus. They go for the kill rather than the compromise because dead (or destroyed) enemies seldom cause much problem. When cornered, they lie by diverting attention to someone else to give them time to alter circumstances to make themselves look good (or at least not so bad as someone else).
With the amount of new information develping each day in the world being more than any genius with a photographic memory could take in, every one of us doesn't know enough about most subjects. We can only be the best at one or two things and we are bound to be wrong about them once in a while.
Entering a restroom at a major conference centre in Toronto a few years ago, I found a young man dressed in a dapper tan suit, holding his right leg up in the air under an air hand dryer. He was drying the outside of his pants, beside his fly. No doubt he was a good salesman, but there are some things you just can't hide. His pending heart attack faded away when I looked then turned away from him to do the job I went in for.
Sometimes there is no substitute for honesty.
Ignorance is much harder to disguise than most people think. Lies are much easier to uncover than the liars believe.
What has the winner of the rat race proven? Most lack the respect they desire, the recognition they feel they deserve once their glory days are past. Who wants an old rat?
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to keep it real and above the table so that we can all lead healthier lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Mark Twain (Samuel Clemons)
Funny. But odd once you think about it.
The western world has developed a culture where it's rare to hear anyone admit "I don't know."
"Never let them see you sweat" better fits the tactic advised when faced with a situation we can't handle. Never admit you don't know the answer. Never admit you don't know what to do. Never admit you don't have the situation under control, that you can't manage alone.
That's the rat race. In many situations people don't know the answers, don't know what to do, don't have any idea how to control the factors in play.
They go to war before they know whether their information is accurate. They manipulate financial reports to make their company look good on the stock market. They hire away the best employees the competition has, steal their knowledge and expertise, then express surprise when some steals their own best people away along with their insider knowledge and expertise.
They make mistakes rather than ask others for advice or find consensus. They go for the kill rather than the compromise because dead (or destroyed) enemies seldom cause much problem. When cornered, they lie by diverting attention to someone else to give them time to alter circumstances to make themselves look good (or at least not so bad as someone else).
With the amount of new information develping each day in the world being more than any genius with a photographic memory could take in, every one of us doesn't know enough about most subjects. We can only be the best at one or two things and we are bound to be wrong about them once in a while.
Entering a restroom at a major conference centre in Toronto a few years ago, I found a young man dressed in a dapper tan suit, holding his right leg up in the air under an air hand dryer. He was drying the outside of his pants, beside his fly. No doubt he was a good salesman, but there are some things you just can't hide. His pending heart attack faded away when I looked then turned away from him to do the job I went in for.
Sometimes there is no substitute for honesty.
Ignorance is much harder to disguise than most people think. Lies are much easier to uncover than the liars believe.
What has the winner of the rat race proven? Most lack the respect they desire, the recognition they feel they deserve once their glory days are past. Who wants an old rat?
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to keep it real and above the table so that we can all lead healthier lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
When The Suffering We Know Is Better Than The Unknown
People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Of the many peculiarities of human nature that are difficult to explain, this ranks near the top of the list.
We have people (men and women both) who are afraid to leave an abusive relationship because they don't want to live alone, because they are afraid that their lover will find them and harm them, because they don't know what to do to get away and can't bring themselves to make plans. Or, perhaps, these are mere excuses offered to those who know about the abuse they suffer and urge the victim to leave.
Many people work jobs they hate because they are afraid to leave. Their excuses include the risk of not finding a better job, of getting a new job and finding it worse, of needing the stability of an old job they know well during this "difficult time" of their lives, of the current job market being slim. In fact, most of them refuse to even look for a new job.
Many people attend the services of the religion they grew up with, regularly, because they fear the consequences of leaving.
Their minds are often made up so steadfastly that they can't be knocked off their position by reason. They don't feel the need to expalin to anyone else because their minds are so solid on the subject. But they will sometimes confide in others, leaving that small opening for change.
There are other examples of the fear that many people have of leaving the suffering they are familiar with, but they all have one common factor. The issue that is the problem is a very important parts of their life. Whatever the relationship they fear severing, it has constituted a major factor and commitment of their lives, an undeniable portion of their lives they invested in who they are today.
Of the several people I have personally helped over a major hurdle in their lives, they all wanted to know that they had someone behind them to support them if they faltered. They needed to know that it was alright for them to take the big step and fail, that they would not be failures in life if they did, that other opportunities would present themselves that would be better if they made a mistake with thier first choice.
They wanted to know that they were not alone when they changed their lives.
In the final analysis, we are each alone when we make major life decisions. Few of us have one friend so close and dependable that we can be absolutely certain they will be there for us if we try and fail.
What each person in a position of making such a life-altering decision needs to know is that no matter what happens, the sun will rise the next day and they will rise with it. Somehow, those of us who survive the night manage to find a way to build better lives if we dare take the big chance.
And there is always someone who will help if we look hard enough and ask people we believe we can trust.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the real opportunities for a better future.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Of the many peculiarities of human nature that are difficult to explain, this ranks near the top of the list.
We have people (men and women both) who are afraid to leave an abusive relationship because they don't want to live alone, because they are afraid that their lover will find them and harm them, because they don't know what to do to get away and can't bring themselves to make plans. Or, perhaps, these are mere excuses offered to those who know about the abuse they suffer and urge the victim to leave.
Many people work jobs they hate because they are afraid to leave. Their excuses include the risk of not finding a better job, of getting a new job and finding it worse, of needing the stability of an old job they know well during this "difficult time" of their lives, of the current job market being slim. In fact, most of them refuse to even look for a new job.
Many people attend the services of the religion they grew up with, regularly, because they fear the consequences of leaving.
Their minds are often made up so steadfastly that they can't be knocked off their position by reason. They don't feel the need to expalin to anyone else because their minds are so solid on the subject. But they will sometimes confide in others, leaving that small opening for change.
There are other examples of the fear that many people have of leaving the suffering they are familiar with, but they all have one common factor. The issue that is the problem is a very important parts of their life. Whatever the relationship they fear severing, it has constituted a major factor and commitment of their lives, an undeniable portion of their lives they invested in who they are today.
Of the several people I have personally helped over a major hurdle in their lives, they all wanted to know that they had someone behind them to support them if they faltered. They needed to know that it was alright for them to take the big step and fail, that they would not be failures in life if they did, that other opportunities would present themselves that would be better if they made a mistake with thier first choice.
They wanted to know that they were not alone when they changed their lives.
In the final analysis, we are each alone when we make major life decisions. Few of us have one friend so close and dependable that we can be absolutely certain they will be there for us if we try and fail.
What each person in a position of making such a life-altering decision needs to know is that no matter what happens, the sun will rise the next day and they will rise with it. Somehow, those of us who survive the night manage to find a way to build better lives if we dare take the big chance.
And there is always someone who will help if we look hard enough and ask people we believe we can trust.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to show the real opportunities for a better future.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, March 25, 2007
The Only Way To Succeed
"I’d spent my whole life feeling like a freak and an outsider and that nobody understood me and suddenly I felt like it's OK to feel different."
- Madonna
You may have wondered how the performer who has reinventd herself several times to remain among the leaders of the music industry got to be the way she is.
She knew something special. She knew that she had to be among the best in her field--whatever field she chose to enter--and she committed herself to work extremely hard to the best of her ability to reach that goal and to stay there.
That may seem trite, that someone has to work hard. But in Madonna's case she worked hard in a field in which she was considered an outsider, because she was a woman, because she was aggressive, because she was talented, because she was bright and because she would not allow anyone to put her down. She was determined to be who she wanted to be.
Not many people can say that they plotted the course for their lives and have followed it through relentlessly. The reason is that most of us face too many setbacks that cause us to take detours, so many that we lose our way and become someone we didn't plan to be.
Staying the course for a lifetime is very difficult because there are always people who want to divert us, for their own reasons and often for their own benefit. Ignoring the naysayers requires a kind of devotion of its own, one in which a person must develop a kind of emotional armour to let attacks against them bounce off while they continue on their chosen path.
No doubt detours will happen along the way. Life's detours get most people lost from their course. Those who eventually reach their goals find their way back to the direction they were headed after every detour. Every time.
Along the way they find others who want to either join them or to support them. They become the few good friends that persistent goal-seekers have.
Those who succeed at anything always have fair-weather supporters and hangers-on friends. These are accepted with gratitude, with the understanding that they will disappear again when the going gets rough again.
The going has got rough again many times for Madonna. Recently it was because she wanted to adopt a child from Africa. The media searched endlessly for some way to trash what she wanted to do. To help the media, several people were prepared to lie along the way to get their share of attention.
She will win again because her attitude is "To hell with the naysayers and the trash media!"
Sometimes winners can only succeed by turning and walking away from detractors. Over the long term, the critics disappear while the winners continue on. The winners work harder and never lose sight of their goal.
Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to shine a light on the path through the mess that life can sometimes become.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Madonna
You may have wondered how the performer who has reinventd herself several times to remain among the leaders of the music industry got to be the way she is.
She knew something special. She knew that she had to be among the best in her field--whatever field she chose to enter--and she committed herself to work extremely hard to the best of her ability to reach that goal and to stay there.
That may seem trite, that someone has to work hard. But in Madonna's case she worked hard in a field in which she was considered an outsider, because she was a woman, because she was aggressive, because she was talented, because she was bright and because she would not allow anyone to put her down. She was determined to be who she wanted to be.
Not many people can say that they plotted the course for their lives and have followed it through relentlessly. The reason is that most of us face too many setbacks that cause us to take detours, so many that we lose our way and become someone we didn't plan to be.
Staying the course for a lifetime is very difficult because there are always people who want to divert us, for their own reasons and often for their own benefit. Ignoring the naysayers requires a kind of devotion of its own, one in which a person must develop a kind of emotional armour to let attacks against them bounce off while they continue on their chosen path.
No doubt detours will happen along the way. Life's detours get most people lost from their course. Those who eventually reach their goals find their way back to the direction they were headed after every detour. Every time.
Along the way they find others who want to either join them or to support them. They become the few good friends that persistent goal-seekers have.
Those who succeed at anything always have fair-weather supporters and hangers-on friends. These are accepted with gratitude, with the understanding that they will disappear again when the going gets rough again.
The going has got rough again many times for Madonna. Recently it was because she wanted to adopt a child from Africa. The media searched endlessly for some way to trash what she wanted to do. To help the media, several people were prepared to lie along the way to get their share of attention.
She will win again because her attitude is "To hell with the naysayers and the trash media!"
Sometimes winners can only succeed by turning and walking away from detractors. Over the long term, the critics disappear while the winners continue on. The winners work harder and never lose sight of their goal.
Bill Allin
Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to shine a light on the path through the mess that life can sometimes become.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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