Showing posts with label thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thinking. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
How True Is What We Believe?
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
- George Bernard Shaw, Irish writer, Nobel laureate (1856-1950)
While I like Shaw's quotation, I would alter that last part a little. We may believe that our country is superior to all others because we have been told that. What we believe is what we think and what we think we believe is true. If we believe something is true, we accept it as true and valid. Yet our belief is based on what we have been told by others.
Once we think something, we believe it. "If I think something and have no questions about it or doubts, it must be true." If we believe it's true, we will believe it as fact.
Once we believe something, our conviction is hard to shake. One example might be cars. Some people will go through their entire lives owning few cars that are not Fords. They believe in Ford cars. "GMs are crap." Other people devote themselves so much to General Motors cars that they wouldn't be caught dead owning a Ford. That devotion might be based on their experience. But more than likely it's based on what their fathers believed about GM and Ford cars. Seldom does either group have any hard evidence that their car of choice is the best, though they will tend to accept the advertising of their preferred choice as more true than the advertising of other manufacturers.
For many years my wife and I owned a couple of coffee shops. We believed our coffee was the best. The owner of the company that supplied our system's coffee also supplied coffee to coffee shop franchises that competed with ours. He told us once, in confidence, that ours was better than the others, even giving some evidence to support the claim. A few years later he denied both the evidence and the claim that our brand was superior. (He even denied the additive that was proven to make coffee addictive.)
Our customers were so devoted to our coffee that they would not buy coffee in other coffee shops. Customers in competitors' shops were equally convinced that their favourite brand was best. Over a period of years, several of the original stores closed. The customers all transferred their loyalties to their new favourite shops and coffee brands, without hesitation. Their new brand was best, because they drank it (though they would never admit that as their reason).
Because they believed something, it must be true. People don't think of their beliefs that way, but when you argue them to a fine point, they hold fast that their beliefs are true even without supporting evidence.
Advertising depends heavily not on persuading people that the advertised product is better not based on evidence, but on persuading them that the product is best because they have heard the advertising so often they have come to believe it. In the advertising industry it is accepted among big advertising agencies that a person who receives the same advertising message ten times or more will believe it. Big industries spend fortunes on advertising to deliver the exact same message to your television screen a few dozen times each evening or day. The most bought products tend to be those that are advertised most heavily. People believe what they have been told. Told often.
I have had people tell me that when they want to buy a product they know nothing about, they ask people who already own that product which brand and quality level they prefer. "I would rather take the word of someone who has experienced a product," they say. They will take someone's word about a product, even the word of a stranger who has experience with the product or at least an opinion, rather than do some research themselves to learn tested and proven facts about it. They believe something about the product because they have been told.
People tend to vote for candidates in elections that either belong to parties they have always voted for or that have the strongest presentations in the community. The latter means television advertising or lawn signs. The more signs people see, the more they believe that the candidate must have great support. They vote for the candidate they believe will win because they equate numbers of yard signs with popularity. Most voters know very little or nothing about the political persuasions of the candidates they vote for. When their candidate is elected, then later helps pass laws they believe are bad, they simply justify it by claiming that "politicians are all crooks."
We each like to believe that we have chosen, as adults, the best religion to belong to. In fact, most belong to the same religion (or lack thereof) as adults as they were introduced to by their parents when they were children. When people change to a different religion than the one they were brought up in, it is usually the one in which they find greatest acceptance by others of that religion. Religion is a social association, so attending service with friendly people is a very persuasive factor.
Many people around the world wonder how terrorist organizations manage to persuade individuals to commit suicide as they kill many others in events such as suicide bombings. Studies of suicide bombers suggest that most of them came, alone, from small rural settings to the city to find work. They don't find work or friends, but they do find a few people who welcome them into their small religious community. That social acceptance begins the process of brainwashing that eventually shows itself in suicide bombing. The bombers believe that the religious beliefs of the sect must be best because they have been accepted where no one else would welcome them. Eventually they believe what they are told about what will happen to them--how they will be welcomed in heaven--when they kill the enemy.
Suicide bombers do not make the connection that life here on earth, in the present, is good because it hasn't been for them. Except in one case where they were accepted by a group and promised something greater in the afterlife. [I have often wondered how those lonely country boys would fare in heaven if they were "given" 72 virgins. When you think about it, not only does it not make sense, it is totally unrealistic. In fact, dangerous. Virgins know nothing and can be clumsy or insensitive.]
This tendency to believe what we have been told is worldwide. Politicians, religious leaders and advertisers depend on it. If people are told something often enough, most people will believe it. No matter how wrong it seems and how unsupported it may be. Do you suppose that US troops are still looking for those "Weapons of Mass Destruction" they heard so often that Saddam had in Iraq? The believers never thought that someone else would benefit from a lie that was told so often. Told by those who would benefit. And it worked.
The only way to change a society that depends on the gullibility of its people is to teach the children to ask questions, to doubt, to wonder, to investigate, to think. It would not be hard to effect such change. It would be cheap, almost without cost. But it would require people who care to urge those who create curriculum for schools to change the way kids are taught. Today most kids learn to not think, only to obey and believe.
Our kids need to learn differently. Your kids and mine. The people who one day will decide our living arrangements when we are too old to do for ourselves. If we want them to think of us instead of themselves first, we will have to teach that now. Most kids today learn that they are the most important people they will ever know.
Remaining quiet and letting others decide for us is what got us where we are now. What our parents did, which was to trust that someone who cares would do the right thing. So, how do you think that worked out?
Bill Allin is the author of Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for people who want things to change for the better. Social problems depend on our doing nothing, were created because we let others make decisions for us. This book shows a path for change without great cost or revolution.
Learn more at http://billallin.com/ How True Is What We Believe?
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Your Life In A Day
Your Life In A Day
With the passage of time, all such actions or lack of them, appear less significant. And anyway, since the cells in our body die and are renewed, replaced by different ones, we do in a literal sense become difference individuals. The connection I have to the boy I once was is now so fragile that it requires an act of conscious 'faith' to maintain that we are in any significant sense the same person.
- Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, Vintage Press (Random House), 2008
Today ain't like it used to be. But then, you aren't either.
As Faulks suggested in the quote, our physical self changes every day. In fact, there is no part of your body that still has the same cells as it had 15 years ago. Over that period you have been completely rebuilt.
In a world obsessed with the shape and appearance of the human body, that might seem disappointing. Especially as strings of genes in our DNA don't always and forever reproduce themselves exactly. Over time, they tend to lose code at their tail ends. Even our replacement parts don't reproduce exactly.
So what is the real you? Your body changes over time, completely replacing itself repeatedly over your lifetime. Your brain's memory contains all the same stuff it did 15 years ago, but it has added 15 years worth of learning and experiences to itself. If you attempted to count the new information your brain has added over the past 15 years it would be so staggering you wouldn't be able to count it if you took the rest of your life. Your brain has changed markedly over the past 15 years.
Your personality has changed. Sure you retain many of the same habits, relationships, values and so on, but if you could meet the you of 15 years ago today you might not recognize yourself. You don't even look the same in the mirror.
What identifies you as you? How do you know you are the same person?
Let's add a little perspective. Do you remember a movie or television program you watched over the past week or month? Was it real? Was there a real program you saw or maybe it was just a memory? In fact, you can't prove you even saw it. Memory proves nothing, as the recall of witnesses in recent court cases has shown. Some memory has been altered over time, some is purely invented.
For that matter, you can't prove you existed yesterday, or that there even was a yesterday. As shocking as it may seem, maybe today and the world you know about today came into existence when you gained consciousness this morning. If you believe that someone can create a movie in which you participate as viewer and in which you find yourself thinking that it's really happening at the time, then why could it not be possible that a whole past, an entire history, was created when you woke up today?
I know, it's not the way you have been taught to think. It's not what you have been lulled and trained into believing.
You have family members, loved ones, neighbours, work friends who aren't with you now as you read this. You can't prove they even exist, at this moment as you sit reading this. You trust that you can move from where you are to some other place and you will find them where you expect.
You may be right. But you can't prove it. When you move to one of these places, you change your own reality. You change from the present NOW to another NOW. Once there, what you are doing in this NOW will be equally as unprovable. It might be just a created memory, like your memory of that movie or TV program. What we know as memory and history could be entirely self-created memory.
The only reality you can depend on is this one, the one you are in. If you hope to be remembered by someone in a future NOW, then you had better act in ways that will cause you to be remembered. If what you do in this NOW only benefits you, then others will have no reason to remember you later. Why should they? They will be busy with their own NOW of the moment.
That may give you some insight into what you do with your time, the time you think of as NOW, as your own. Do you want to be remembered or not? Memories of people who think only or mostly of themselves don't last long. People remember (or create memories of their NOW moments) others who helped them, who cared for them, who showed them that they mattered.
If you believe that your body, your own personal NOWs, are all that are important, you have no reason to believe in a God. God serves no purpose if all your NOWs will eventually vanish and be forgotten. If there will never be anything left of the YOU you know when you die, then there is no need for God, no afterlife. Not even any purpose to what you are doing in this NOW. If nothing of you will continue to exist after you die, then life has no purpose. Does that make sense, that everything around you has no purpose?
Look around you. Does it seem as if all this could have happened by accident? The moon is as old as earth, as are the other planets in our solar system, yet they have nothing remotely similar to the reality of NOW you live in. Why? Cosmologists and science fiction writers claim there are likely many other civilizations out there somewhere in our universe, but they have absolutely no evidence to support their claims or speculations. No one has any evidence that the NOW you live in is anything but unique.
Does everything change constantly or does it all remain the same? Or do--gasp!--some things change constantly while others remain the same? Sorry, that last statement doesn't make sense to a thinking person. It's inconsistent, unlike anything in evidence around you. Everything you know changes, though some things change slower than you can detect so it seems as if they remain the same. Rocks change just as surely as the universe itself changes. We have evidence. At least we have memories of evidence we believe we read.
Your body changes when you die. Many of the bacteria that cohabit your body with "you" today--there are more of them than of cells in your body--may live on in other environments when the life that was your body has dissipated. Your body cells may separate into various atoms and molecules, but they won't disappear. Even if someone were to burn your body, the matter would change into energy, as Einstein proved. Remember e = mc2
Does that mean that when you die you are gone, or not? Are you comprised of your body and nothing else? Every atom that was your body remains and becomes something else. Does the part of you that you think of as "me" disappear? In nature, nothing disappears. It's the natural Law of Conservation. Why would the "you" that you spent so many years creating disappear? That's assuming you believe there is something more to you than animated cells.
If the "you" you created disappeared at your death, that would defy nature's laws. It would defy everything you have come to believe is real. Stuff doesn't disappear, it just changes.
You created something. You created you. Maybe you didn't create everything you know as real, but you created something. Does that make you a Creator? Does that make you God? Well, sort of. For that to be strictly true then there would have to be 6.7 billion other Gods on the planet. That doesn't make sense.
What makes more sense is that you, as creator, are part of a larger Creator, a system. You can't hold the whole system together. But you can be a component of it. You can't be God. But you can be part of God. God can be part of you. This isn't a religious lesson, it's an exercise in logic.
Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of Christianity and the figure believed even by Muslims as the Son of God (Jesus and his mother are both mentioned in the Qu'ran), taught that. Read the Gospel of John. Read it straight, not filtering what you read through what you have been taught. If you grew up in a Christian family, your beliefs were more those of Paul, not so much of what Jesus taught. Paul, a Greek, taught what he believed and attributed it to Jesus and God. That's what inventors of religions do, they never give themselves credit or their followers wouldn't believe them. Read the actual words of Jesus, not their context because the Church of Rome doctored up the context of the few words of Jesus that were recorded.
Jesus taught that God is within each of us, not up in the sky somewhere. He said that we could find God within ourselves. We just have to look.
Having read this far, you have had a peek at possibilities relating to existence, your own and that of the world you know. Look further. Never mind the crap you have been taught by others. (Sorry, that was rude. I detest being asked to "have faith" in something for which there is no evidence when real evidence of something different is all around us.)
God, the purpose of life and the continuance of you after the death of your body are not subjects about which you need to "have faith." The evidence is all around you. Nature gave you some of it. Your brain can now give you more. If you want to know what life is about, study your surroundings and think it through.
What is real may not necessarily be what is around you. NOW is like that movie you saw and remember. Reality is much more significant, more grand, much superior to what you see in advertising or hear in your place of worship. Or to what you see as you look around the room you are in.
Look for it. Start now.
One final point. While you are creating you, create something worthwhile, something worth enduring. Keep in mind, if you want to be remembered, don't be too generous at helping yourself because selfish people aren't remembered fondly.
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 grow children who can think for themselves as adults, who will pay attention to what is real instead of advertising disguised with smoke and mirrors.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
With the passage of time, all such actions or lack of them, appear less significant. And anyway, since the cells in our body die and are renewed, replaced by different ones, we do in a literal sense become difference individuals. The connection I have to the boy I once was is now so fragile that it requires an act of conscious 'faith' to maintain that we are in any significant sense the same person.
- Sebastian Faulks, Engleby, Vintage Press (Random House), 2008
Today ain't like it used to be. But then, you aren't either.
As Faulks suggested in the quote, our physical self changes every day. In fact, there is no part of your body that still has the same cells as it had 15 years ago. Over that period you have been completely rebuilt.
In a world obsessed with the shape and appearance of the human body, that might seem disappointing. Especially as strings of genes in our DNA don't always and forever reproduce themselves exactly. Over time, they tend to lose code at their tail ends. Even our replacement parts don't reproduce exactly.
So what is the real you? Your body changes over time, completely replacing itself repeatedly over your lifetime. Your brain's memory contains all the same stuff it did 15 years ago, but it has added 15 years worth of learning and experiences to itself. If you attempted to count the new information your brain has added over the past 15 years it would be so staggering you wouldn't be able to count it if you took the rest of your life. Your brain has changed markedly over the past 15 years.
Your personality has changed. Sure you retain many of the same habits, relationships, values and so on, but if you could meet the you of 15 years ago today you might not recognize yourself. You don't even look the same in the mirror.
What identifies you as you? How do you know you are the same person?
Let's add a little perspective. Do you remember a movie or television program you watched over the past week or month? Was it real? Was there a real program you saw or maybe it was just a memory? In fact, you can't prove you even saw it. Memory proves nothing, as the recall of witnesses in recent court cases has shown. Some memory has been altered over time, some is purely invented.
For that matter, you can't prove you existed yesterday, or that there even was a yesterday. As shocking as it may seem, maybe today and the world you know about today came into existence when you gained consciousness this morning. If you believe that someone can create a movie in which you participate as viewer and in which you find yourself thinking that it's really happening at the time, then why could it not be possible that a whole past, an entire history, was created when you woke up today?
I know, it's not the way you have been taught to think. It's not what you have been lulled and trained into believing.
You have family members, loved ones, neighbours, work friends who aren't with you now as you read this. You can't prove they even exist, at this moment as you sit reading this. You trust that you can move from where you are to some other place and you will find them where you expect.
You may be right. But you can't prove it. When you move to one of these places, you change your own reality. You change from the present NOW to another NOW. Once there, what you are doing in this NOW will be equally as unprovable. It might be just a created memory, like your memory of that movie or TV program. What we know as memory and history could be entirely self-created memory.
The only reality you can depend on is this one, the one you are in. If you hope to be remembered by someone in a future NOW, then you had better act in ways that will cause you to be remembered. If what you do in this NOW only benefits you, then others will have no reason to remember you later. Why should they? They will be busy with their own NOW of the moment.
That may give you some insight into what you do with your time, the time you think of as NOW, as your own. Do you want to be remembered or not? Memories of people who think only or mostly of themselves don't last long. People remember (or create memories of their NOW moments) others who helped them, who cared for them, who showed them that they mattered.
If you believe that your body, your own personal NOWs, are all that are important, you have no reason to believe in a God. God serves no purpose if all your NOWs will eventually vanish and be forgotten. If there will never be anything left of the YOU you know when you die, then there is no need for God, no afterlife. Not even any purpose to what you are doing in this NOW. If nothing of you will continue to exist after you die, then life has no purpose. Does that make sense, that everything around you has no purpose?
Look around you. Does it seem as if all this could have happened by accident? The moon is as old as earth, as are the other planets in our solar system, yet they have nothing remotely similar to the reality of NOW you live in. Why? Cosmologists and science fiction writers claim there are likely many other civilizations out there somewhere in our universe, but they have absolutely no evidence to support their claims or speculations. No one has any evidence that the NOW you live in is anything but unique.
Does everything change constantly or does it all remain the same? Or do--gasp!--some things change constantly while others remain the same? Sorry, that last statement doesn't make sense to a thinking person. It's inconsistent, unlike anything in evidence around you. Everything you know changes, though some things change slower than you can detect so it seems as if they remain the same. Rocks change just as surely as the universe itself changes. We have evidence. At least we have memories of evidence we believe we read.
Your body changes when you die. Many of the bacteria that cohabit your body with "you" today--there are more of them than of cells in your body--may live on in other environments when the life that was your body has dissipated. Your body cells may separate into various atoms and molecules, but they won't disappear. Even if someone were to burn your body, the matter would change into energy, as Einstein proved. Remember e = mc2
Does that mean that when you die you are gone, or not? Are you comprised of your body and nothing else? Every atom that was your body remains and becomes something else. Does the part of you that you think of as "me" disappear? In nature, nothing disappears. It's the natural Law of Conservation. Why would the "you" that you spent so many years creating disappear? That's assuming you believe there is something more to you than animated cells.
If the "you" you created disappeared at your death, that would defy nature's laws. It would defy everything you have come to believe is real. Stuff doesn't disappear, it just changes.
You created something. You created you. Maybe you didn't create everything you know as real, but you created something. Does that make you a Creator? Does that make you God? Well, sort of. For that to be strictly true then there would have to be 6.7 billion other Gods on the planet. That doesn't make sense.
What makes more sense is that you, as creator, are part of a larger Creator, a system. You can't hold the whole system together. But you can be a component of it. You can't be God. But you can be part of God. God can be part of you. This isn't a religious lesson, it's an exercise in logic.
Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of Christianity and the figure believed even by Muslims as the Son of God (Jesus and his mother are both mentioned in the Qu'ran), taught that. Read the Gospel of John. Read it straight, not filtering what you read through what you have been taught. If you grew up in a Christian family, your beliefs were more those of Paul, not so much of what Jesus taught. Paul, a Greek, taught what he believed and attributed it to Jesus and God. That's what inventors of religions do, they never give themselves credit or their followers wouldn't believe them. Read the actual words of Jesus, not their context because the Church of Rome doctored up the context of the few words of Jesus that were recorded.
Jesus taught that God is within each of us, not up in the sky somewhere. He said that we could find God within ourselves. We just have to look.
Having read this far, you have had a peek at possibilities relating to existence, your own and that of the world you know. Look further. Never mind the crap you have been taught by others. (Sorry, that was rude. I detest being asked to "have faith" in something for which there is no evidence when real evidence of something different is all around us.)
God, the purpose of life and the continuance of you after the death of your body are not subjects about which you need to "have faith." The evidence is all around you. Nature gave you some of it. Your brain can now give you more. If you want to know what life is about, study your surroundings and think it through.
What is real may not necessarily be what is around you. NOW is like that movie you saw and remember. Reality is much more significant, more grand, much superior to what you see in advertising or hear in your place of worship. Or to what you see as you look around the room you are in.
Look for it. Start now.
One final point. While you are creating you, create something worthwhile, something worth enduring. Keep in mind, if you want to be remembered, don't be too generous at helping yourself because selfish people aren't remembered fondly.
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 grow children who can think for themselves as adults, who will pay attention to what is real instead of advertising disguised with smoke and mirrors.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Don't Listen to van Gogh
If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.
- Vincent van Gogh, Dutch post-impressionist artist (1853-1890)
You may have heard of Vincent Willem van Gogh. To some people he ranks among the best painters ever. To others he's the guy who cut off his ear. To some extent, both beliefs are wrong.
As a great artist, he should have sold many of his paintings during his lifetime, at least to pay his way in the world. Though he produced more than 2000 works of art in the ten years in which he was a painter, having left his jobs as teacher and missionary, he sold either not one single painting or perhaps one (expert opinions vary). His brother Theo supported him financially, including, presumably, his habit for the narcotic liqueur absinthe.
Two painting commissions from his uncle failed when the uncle was disappointed with Vincent's work. Though his work was praised during his decade of painting, people were not lining up to buy his work. If you worked steadily for ten years to produce something, were praised for it, but it failed to produce any income for you, would you be considered or would you consider yourself a success? Whatever was said after van Gogh's death would never have reached his ears.
Or should that be ear? He didn't really cut off an ear. He did have a row with his friend Paul Gaugin and he did cut off part of one ear lobe, but the two may not have been related. Vincent was very ill by the time he sliced off part of his ear. His illness affected his vision and his overall health as well as his mental health.
Given that van Gogh's paintings sell at prices among the highest paid for any paintings in the art world today, we can conclude that he was a great artist. But was he any good at anything else? His quote claims that, as he had mastered and understood one thing well, he should have insight and understanding of many things.
He wasn't much good at shooting. Before his death at the age of 37 he walked into a field and shot himself in the chest with a pistol. Since he didn't die, he walked home and took to his bed where he died two days later. He was a drug addict (or an alcoholic, if you will), he cut off part of his ear for no apparent reason (the spat with Gaugin is likely a red herring), he failed to kill himself in a suicide attempt and he caused himself (no doubt) considerable pain for a couple of days before he finally died. And he couldn't sell the art he produced even when one publication called him a master and his showings received rave reviews for the most part.
On what basis may we conclude that the expert painter van Gogh had insight and understanding of many things? I submit that the quote that began this article came out of a session he had under the influence of the bitter liqueur absinthe. The man was high. And likely out of his mind. A genius of an artist, for sure. But not someone whose advice we should follow.
In fact, this quote is an excellent example of one of the greatest--yet hidden--follies of our time. People who have expertise in one thing assume that they deserve recognition for being knowledgeable in everything. They're wrong.
You wouldn't go to an auto mechanic with a medical problem. You and the mechanic would go to a medical doctor with your medical problems. Doctors don't usually fix their own cars, yet ask a mechanic about how he gets treated by doctors with car problems. Doctors assume that because they can analyze a medical problem a patient has, they can likely diagnose mechanical problems with their cars. They can't.
Computer experts are notorious for claiming expertise beyond the realm of their knowledge. Computers, their software and malware that attacks the latter are so complicated these days that no one can be an expert on all aspects of computers. A designer of computer hardware likely knows little more than the average computer user (or auto mechanic) about software or malware, though they happily express opinions on both when asked.
A software writer may be a genius at the computer keyboard, but know nothing about hardware other than what he needs to know to write his software. These experts (within their respective areas of knowledge) may receive high praise for their work at conferences, but they may not know how to dance, how to form and maintain a healthy relationship or how to fix their own cars.
In this, the age of specialization, people with expertise in one area need to understand that they are not generalists, not experts in everything. Their opinions on subjects outside their areas of expertise may be nothing more than hot air.
More importantly, we more average people need to realize that someone who is an expert in one thing may know less about just about all other subjects than a grade ten dropout. The dropout must learn a variety of skills and accumulate an abundance of knowledge in many areas in order to get a job and to gain some respect for himself in the communities to which he belongs. In most areas of human endeavour, a middle aged person who didn't complete high school may have more knowledge and understanding on more different subjects than someone of the same age with a PhD.
Let's recognize experts for what they are, people we consult when we need their specific skills and knowledge. Beyond that, they may be friends or tennis partners, but they may have incomplete or even wrong information on many other subjects. Let's grant them the respect they deserve, but not more.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who lead balanced lives, not skewed by experts who know little about child development but have lots of opinions about it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Vincent van Gogh, Dutch post-impressionist artist (1853-1890)
You may have heard of Vincent Willem van Gogh. To some people he ranks among the best painters ever. To others he's the guy who cut off his ear. To some extent, both beliefs are wrong.
As a great artist, he should have sold many of his paintings during his lifetime, at least to pay his way in the world. Though he produced more than 2000 works of art in the ten years in which he was a painter, having left his jobs as teacher and missionary, he sold either not one single painting or perhaps one (expert opinions vary). His brother Theo supported him financially, including, presumably, his habit for the narcotic liqueur absinthe.
Two painting commissions from his uncle failed when the uncle was disappointed with Vincent's work. Though his work was praised during his decade of painting, people were not lining up to buy his work. If you worked steadily for ten years to produce something, were praised for it, but it failed to produce any income for you, would you be considered or would you consider yourself a success? Whatever was said after van Gogh's death would never have reached his ears.
Or should that be ear? He didn't really cut off an ear. He did have a row with his friend Paul Gaugin and he did cut off part of one ear lobe, but the two may not have been related. Vincent was very ill by the time he sliced off part of his ear. His illness affected his vision and his overall health as well as his mental health.
Given that van Gogh's paintings sell at prices among the highest paid for any paintings in the art world today, we can conclude that he was a great artist. But was he any good at anything else? His quote claims that, as he had mastered and understood one thing well, he should have insight and understanding of many things.
He wasn't much good at shooting. Before his death at the age of 37 he walked into a field and shot himself in the chest with a pistol. Since he didn't die, he walked home and took to his bed where he died two days later. He was a drug addict (or an alcoholic, if you will), he cut off part of his ear for no apparent reason (the spat with Gaugin is likely a red herring), he failed to kill himself in a suicide attempt and he caused himself (no doubt) considerable pain for a couple of days before he finally died. And he couldn't sell the art he produced even when one publication called him a master and his showings received rave reviews for the most part.
On what basis may we conclude that the expert painter van Gogh had insight and understanding of many things? I submit that the quote that began this article came out of a session he had under the influence of the bitter liqueur absinthe. The man was high. And likely out of his mind. A genius of an artist, for sure. But not someone whose advice we should follow.
In fact, this quote is an excellent example of one of the greatest--yet hidden--follies of our time. People who have expertise in one thing assume that they deserve recognition for being knowledgeable in everything. They're wrong.
You wouldn't go to an auto mechanic with a medical problem. You and the mechanic would go to a medical doctor with your medical problems. Doctors don't usually fix their own cars, yet ask a mechanic about how he gets treated by doctors with car problems. Doctors assume that because they can analyze a medical problem a patient has, they can likely diagnose mechanical problems with their cars. They can't.
Computer experts are notorious for claiming expertise beyond the realm of their knowledge. Computers, their software and malware that attacks the latter are so complicated these days that no one can be an expert on all aspects of computers. A designer of computer hardware likely knows little more than the average computer user (or auto mechanic) about software or malware, though they happily express opinions on both when asked.
A software writer may be a genius at the computer keyboard, but know nothing about hardware other than what he needs to know to write his software. These experts (within their respective areas of knowledge) may receive high praise for their work at conferences, but they may not know how to dance, how to form and maintain a healthy relationship or how to fix their own cars.
In this, the age of specialization, people with expertise in one area need to understand that they are not generalists, not experts in everything. Their opinions on subjects outside their areas of expertise may be nothing more than hot air.
More importantly, we more average people need to realize that someone who is an expert in one thing may know less about just about all other subjects than a grade ten dropout. The dropout must learn a variety of skills and accumulate an abundance of knowledge in many areas in order to get a job and to gain some respect for himself in the communities to which he belongs. In most areas of human endeavour, a middle aged person who didn't complete high school may have more knowledge and understanding on more different subjects than someone of the same age with a PhD.
Let's recognize experts for what they are, people we consult when we need their specific skills and knowledge. Beyond that, they may be friends or tennis partners, but they may have incomplete or even wrong information on many other subjects. Let's grant them the respect they deserve, but not more.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow children who lead balanced lives, not skewed by experts who know little about child development but have lots of opinions about it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Friday, July 11, 2008
Go Ahead, I Dare you
Everyone confesses that exertion which brings out all the powers of bodyand mind is the best thing for us; but most people do all they can to getrid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstancesdrive them to do.
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)
Checking the dates of birth and death of Harriet Beecher Stowe we can see that what seems to be a condition of modern times has existed for at least well over a century.
In her day, wars were common, more common than today, such that most people experienced at least one war during their lifetimes--usually one per generation--and were either conscripted or volunteered to fight in one. It may have been unhealthy, as war zones then had environments similar to the most polluted cities today. It may have been risky, but young men went to fight for "freedom" or to prevent being attacked by "the enemy," so the risks were deemed worthwhile.
Though they didn't sleep well or eat properly, they got a steady and dependable pay envelope, which was more than could be said at home for many. For young men who didn't want to use their brain much, war offered excitement they couldn't get at home. The average lifespan of men was just over 40 years in those days, so risking their lives for some pretty lively excitement seemed worth it. Even if they died in battle, they would only die a few years younger than the average man in their society.
Today we have young people who would rather die of a drug overdose than do a job that required them to expend physical energy. Even taking drugs itself shows how little they use their brains to learn that both their physical and their mental health could be affected.
Are we naturally lazy or do circumstances drive us to it? As an educator and student of human behaviour, I would have to say the latter is more correct. Only those with physical impairments--many of which go undiagnosed for years--are lackadaisical as children. Those who develop chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia later in life were often not terribly energetic as children, though this has not been studied much.
Most kids are very active both physically and intellectually. Don't two year olds and three year olds have a reputation for asking enough questions to drive their parents to distraction? Asking questions is an indicator of an active mind. Their play tends to be fairly physical in nature at that age, perhaps because they don't have the intellectual development to engage in more mindful pursuits.
Somewhere along the way most people stop asking questions. In fact, it has become so common that it's considered a sign of incompetence in some business communities to ask for help or to ask questions that might annoy or embarrass the boss. If you don't know, at least don't let everyone know you don't know, just shut up, is the rule of thumb.
So we produce a society made up largely of intellectually stunted adults. The thinkers are considered the weirdos, the troublemakers, ones who could possibly be dangerous if given their way.
Intellectually stunted adults who just happen to have a cultural tendency towards obesity, mostly due to the fact that they embrace any activity that requires little physical effort and as little mental effort as possible.
To ensure that the adults produce children with the same preferences, we create a fear of having our children out by themselves where they might learn something other than that prescribed by school and the family. So the kids stay at home, play video games and visit porn sites or chatrooms on the internet, if they aren't participating in some sort of social networking system such as YouTube.
Yet it has become not just the social norm, but social and even legal requirement that kids should be tended by adults all day, every day, such that they can never learn anything not on their required community curriculum. The intellectually and physically lazy adults don't need to teach the kids to be lazy because the kids pick it up from their role models who are required by law and social norms to force their children into social conformity. In so doing they become mentally and physically docile themselves.
Go ahead, dear reader, get angry about this. I dare you. Use your intellect and emotional energy to give me example after example to show that I am wrong.
That would require you to think critically. Are you up for it?
I am. Do it.
Bill AllinTurning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are not bound to social norms that will make them into fat, lazy, unthinking consumers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)
Checking the dates of birth and death of Harriet Beecher Stowe we can see that what seems to be a condition of modern times has existed for at least well over a century.
In her day, wars were common, more common than today, such that most people experienced at least one war during their lifetimes--usually one per generation--and were either conscripted or volunteered to fight in one. It may have been unhealthy, as war zones then had environments similar to the most polluted cities today. It may have been risky, but young men went to fight for "freedom" or to prevent being attacked by "the enemy," so the risks were deemed worthwhile.
Though they didn't sleep well or eat properly, they got a steady and dependable pay envelope, which was more than could be said at home for many. For young men who didn't want to use their brain much, war offered excitement they couldn't get at home. The average lifespan of men was just over 40 years in those days, so risking their lives for some pretty lively excitement seemed worth it. Even if they died in battle, they would only die a few years younger than the average man in their society.
Today we have young people who would rather die of a drug overdose than do a job that required them to expend physical energy. Even taking drugs itself shows how little they use their brains to learn that both their physical and their mental health could be affected.
Are we naturally lazy or do circumstances drive us to it? As an educator and student of human behaviour, I would have to say the latter is more correct. Only those with physical impairments--many of which go undiagnosed for years--are lackadaisical as children. Those who develop chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia later in life were often not terribly energetic as children, though this has not been studied much.
Most kids are very active both physically and intellectually. Don't two year olds and three year olds have a reputation for asking enough questions to drive their parents to distraction? Asking questions is an indicator of an active mind. Their play tends to be fairly physical in nature at that age, perhaps because they don't have the intellectual development to engage in more mindful pursuits.
Somewhere along the way most people stop asking questions. In fact, it has become so common that it's considered a sign of incompetence in some business communities to ask for help or to ask questions that might annoy or embarrass the boss. If you don't know, at least don't let everyone know you don't know, just shut up, is the rule of thumb.
So we produce a society made up largely of intellectually stunted adults. The thinkers are considered the weirdos, the troublemakers, ones who could possibly be dangerous if given their way.
Intellectually stunted adults who just happen to have a cultural tendency towards obesity, mostly due to the fact that they embrace any activity that requires little physical effort and as little mental effort as possible.
To ensure that the adults produce children with the same preferences, we create a fear of having our children out by themselves where they might learn something other than that prescribed by school and the family. So the kids stay at home, play video games and visit porn sites or chatrooms on the internet, if they aren't participating in some sort of social networking system such as YouTube.
Yet it has become not just the social norm, but social and even legal requirement that kids should be tended by adults all day, every day, such that they can never learn anything not on their required community curriculum. The intellectually and physically lazy adults don't need to teach the kids to be lazy because the kids pick it up from their role models who are required by law and social norms to force their children into social conformity. In so doing they become mentally and physically docile themselves.
Go ahead, dear reader, get angry about this. I dare you. Use your intellect and emotional energy to give me example after example to show that I am wrong.
That would require you to think critically. Are you up for it?
I am. Do it.
Bill AllinTurning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who are not bound to social norms that will make them into fat, lazy, unthinking consumers.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The World's Worst Problems Can Be Solved
When you blame others, you give up your power to change.
- Douglas Noel Adams, English author (1952-2001)
No one likes to blame themselves for anything. It's not easy to accept fault, then lie down nicely and wait for the consequences to assault.
That's not what Adams is suggesting we should do. He's recommending that we change ourselves to account for the new learning we gained by making the mistake, by committing the crime or the sin, by simply being a fallible human like everyone else.
Change is what growth is about. Change in our lives is more important today than ever before in history.
It used to be, in past centuries and millennia, that the older people were the wiser ones. In the past, the sum of human knowledge changed very little over a lifetime, so the longer one lived, the more one knew. That applied to human experience--personal or vicarious--as well as to information. That is, an old and wise person could speak to the wisdom of a younger person taking a particular action or making a specific decision because he or she would know that the way proposed did not work in the past when others had tried it.
Today the sum of human knowledge doubles every century. It's totally impossible to keep up with it. Older people are more inclined to fall behind with their grasp of new technologies and ways of thinking. They tend to be behind the mainstream, not ahead of it. Most old people are not wise in the traditional sense of the word. They are likely backward. So the younger generations tend to ignore their advice because they don't have the wisdom that older people of past generations were able to accumulate.
Old people today have less value to the functioning of their society and their culture today than ever before in history. The reason is that younger generations need different things from the older generation than the younger generations of the past needed. And the older ones have not changed to fulfill those new needs. Of course there are exceptions, as there are with any generalization.
That disconnect can change. But only when people accept that they must learn and continue to change throughout their lifetime.
Every change is not necessarily right. Some are wrong. Wrong in every conceivable way except that they give more power to one or more individuals. See the history of Hitler or today's Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for confirmation. That requires older people who may have the time and the improved level of wisdom relating to change to speak up and gather people to work toward reversing or eliminating the results of the power mongers who made the wrong decisions.
Would removing Mugabe today result in the same consequences as removing Saddam Hussein did in Iraq? Answering that question well requires much greater cognitive functioning and knowledge retention than life decisions did in the past.
A few years ago we blamed Saddam for the state of health of Iraq. So the US and its allies removed him. That resulted in a war that has lasted for several years. The change that was needed was not simply removal of a dictator, which opened up animosities that captors of Saddam could not imagine. As it happened, Saddam (with his sons) was the one individual who was preventing a civil war in Iraq. Removing him removed the obstacle to civil war.
No one wants to remove Kim Jong Il, of North Korea, because even he was able to change when those who opposed him chose to work with him rather than against him. North Koreans will benefit as a result of changed approaches to apparently intractable problems. Not only has North Korea been removed from the notorious Axis of Evil list (only Iran remains on the list), but the people of North Korea may look forward to some day being able to eat a full meal. That's a big change. It resulted from a big change in approach by governments interested in the problem with the dictator.
Blaming doesn't work. It creates dead ends. And too often dead people.
There are no dead ends, in reality, only people who can't change their ways of thinking enough to see other possible alternatives. As Mr. Spock said in the old Star Trek series many times, "There are always alternatives." Seeing alternatives requires changes in thinking.
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 will be able to learn and change throughout their lives because they have the right foundation to build on from early childhood.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Douglas Noel Adams, English author (1952-2001)
No one likes to blame themselves for anything. It's not easy to accept fault, then lie down nicely and wait for the consequences to assault.
That's not what Adams is suggesting we should do. He's recommending that we change ourselves to account for the new learning we gained by making the mistake, by committing the crime or the sin, by simply being a fallible human like everyone else.
Change is what growth is about. Change in our lives is more important today than ever before in history.
It used to be, in past centuries and millennia, that the older people were the wiser ones. In the past, the sum of human knowledge changed very little over a lifetime, so the longer one lived, the more one knew. That applied to human experience--personal or vicarious--as well as to information. That is, an old and wise person could speak to the wisdom of a younger person taking a particular action or making a specific decision because he or she would know that the way proposed did not work in the past when others had tried it.
Today the sum of human knowledge doubles every century. It's totally impossible to keep up with it. Older people are more inclined to fall behind with their grasp of new technologies and ways of thinking. They tend to be behind the mainstream, not ahead of it. Most old people are not wise in the traditional sense of the word. They are likely backward. So the younger generations tend to ignore their advice because they don't have the wisdom that older people of past generations were able to accumulate.
Old people today have less value to the functioning of their society and their culture today than ever before in history. The reason is that younger generations need different things from the older generation than the younger generations of the past needed. And the older ones have not changed to fulfill those new needs. Of course there are exceptions, as there are with any generalization.
That disconnect can change. But only when people accept that they must learn and continue to change throughout their lifetime.
Every change is not necessarily right. Some are wrong. Wrong in every conceivable way except that they give more power to one or more individuals. See the history of Hitler or today's Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for confirmation. That requires older people who may have the time and the improved level of wisdom relating to change to speak up and gather people to work toward reversing or eliminating the results of the power mongers who made the wrong decisions.
Would removing Mugabe today result in the same consequences as removing Saddam Hussein did in Iraq? Answering that question well requires much greater cognitive functioning and knowledge retention than life decisions did in the past.
A few years ago we blamed Saddam for the state of health of Iraq. So the US and its allies removed him. That resulted in a war that has lasted for several years. The change that was needed was not simply removal of a dictator, which opened up animosities that captors of Saddam could not imagine. As it happened, Saddam (with his sons) was the one individual who was preventing a civil war in Iraq. Removing him removed the obstacle to civil war.
No one wants to remove Kim Jong Il, of North Korea, because even he was able to change when those who opposed him chose to work with him rather than against him. North Koreans will benefit as a result of changed approaches to apparently intractable problems. Not only has North Korea been removed from the notorious Axis of Evil list (only Iran remains on the list), but the people of North Korea may look forward to some day being able to eat a full meal. That's a big change. It resulted from a big change in approach by governments interested in the problem with the dictator.
Blaming doesn't work. It creates dead ends. And too often dead people.
There are no dead ends, in reality, only people who can't change their ways of thinking enough to see other possible alternatives. As Mr. Spock said in the old Star Trek series many times, "There are always alternatives." Seeing alternatives requires changes in thinking.
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 will be able to learn and change throughout their lives because they have the right foundation to build on from early childhood.
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
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Are You A Doughhead? Find Out
We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all
activity, the intolerable labor of thought.
- Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)
Hand's statement seems like a backhanded universal condemnation of humanity. The hope he offers of success for humanity seems dim, at best.
We are, indeed, surrounded by people who don't think. They have brain activity, but that is usually the means by which they rationalize their agreement with the dominant authority who provides them with the thoughts they absorb and believe. They don't actually think anything much for themselves.
Why, if humans are among the most successful species on the planet (we live and survive everywhere we can find food), how could so many of us lack the power to think or give up the ability to think for ourselves? That ability to think allowed us to survive where hundreds and thousands of other species went extinct.
The answer is: we assiduously teach ourselves to avoid thinking. Commercials and other advertising teach us that we don't need to choose among the many brands of detergents, fashion brands and toothpaste, we only need to choose the brand with the most effective advertising. The best advertising trains us best so we don't have to think about it.
Our media teach us what to think and believe about politics. There is no such thing as a major media network that does not have a political agenda and party it supports more than the others. They claim neutrality, but practise something quite the opposite.We tend to support the party and its candidates that the media we pay attention to advocate.
Within offices we have unwritten guidelines about what's right and what's stylish to wear. It's unusual in a factory lunchroom to find one person who regularly disagrees with the political stance of the majority. Workers may support different sports teams, but they enjoy the camaraderie and competition of challenging "their" team against those of others of their co-workers.
In schools, as children, often the lesson most consistently taught is to be quiet when others are talking, during a video presentation or at certain other times. While this behaviour is both courteous and a means of learning, it also teaches children that their thoughts and ideas and concepts they may devise are not worthy of airing or of consideration.
Opportunities to express and have accepted their own thoughts are few in some cases non-existent in the classroom. Without those opportunities to express themselves in a receptive environment, kids learn to avoid thinking because they have nowhere to speak up.
That's thorough teaching, socialization and training. We teach people that they don't need to think because others will always be prepared to do their thinking for them. Isn't the teacher or parent always right, at least to themselves?
To a great extent, this practice has worth. Every society in the world has values and beliefs it holds dear and these must be taught to every child and adult so that chaos does not ensue with people robbing each other, killing each other, raping or cheating each other. We need conformity to some extent.
What we don't need is the thorough lack of thought that so many people give to their lives. A simple example: at gift-giving time (such as Christmas) do we give a child the gift he or she wants or do we consider what gift would best help the child through the next phase of his or her life? That is, do we give a play gift or a learning gift?
In most cases, the gift will be what will satisfy the child. Toys and electronic games break so easily or get cast aside so quickly because the fun but meaningless gifts do not provide what kids naturally know they must have, preparation for their lives as adults. They inherently know what they need, but they ask for the toys they have learned to want from advertising and peer influence.
They have about 20 years to learn how to be competent and knowledgeable adults. By age 20, most young adults know how they should act, what they should do, how they should think. Each of the "shoulds" in the previous sentence results from repeated training: don't think about this, just do it.
Is thinking such hard work? Very much so. For someone of middle age who has done little of it, thinking independently may be virtually impossible. They don't know what to do to engage the gears required to think. They may literally lack the neural pathways to think beyond the surface level of any subject. They get used to learning from others what and how they should "think." They believe what they're told they should think.
Thinking requires about 33 percent as much energy as heavy lifting. The difference is that thinking can continue for an extended period of time, whereas heavy lifting usually takes place for a brief period of time. Over a one hour period, one person thinking can burn many times more calories than someone doing the average construction job, for example.
What happens from years of brain atrophy? Senility, for one. Senility results from long term lack of use of the brain. Senility is totally preventable. Just think.
Health professionals advise now that people should find many activities that will engage their brains to get them thinking as they get older. It's a way to greatly reduce, if not totally eliminate, the risk of Alzheimer's. Just as grass doesn't grow on a busy street, the lesions of Alzheimer's may not grow in a busy brain.
Whoda thought? Not nearly enough of us, judging by the increasing numbers of people dying from Alzheimer's. If you want more evidence, walk down the halls of many nursing homes where patients are left in the halls: watching people walk back and forth along their passageway is the most stimulation the brains of many of them get. There is no brain activity to speak of behind those hollow eyes.
Learned Hand said that "we shall succeed only..." He should have said "we shall survive only..." As individuals and as a species.
The world does not need a flood of more stupid old people to support. Let's make some changes.
Start with yourself. Being a reader, you are not likely to suffer from senility or Alzheimer's, but you know people who will. Maybe you can motivate them to change. Think about it.
Some of the most brilliant thoughts these days are coming from elderly people who have recently learned to think for themselves. One thing we could do is to give them a forum to be heard.
Remember, they have been taught since childhood that their thoughts are not worthy and they will not be heard. They need you to listen to them. And maybe to find others who will pay attention as well.
Bill Allin
"Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems," a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to raise children who can think, instead of socially acceptable automatons who do and think what they are told for their entire lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
activity, the intolerable labor of thought.
- Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)
Hand's statement seems like a backhanded universal condemnation of humanity. The hope he offers of success for humanity seems dim, at best.
We are, indeed, surrounded by people who don't think. They have brain activity, but that is usually the means by which they rationalize their agreement with the dominant authority who provides them with the thoughts they absorb and believe. They don't actually think anything much for themselves.
Why, if humans are among the most successful species on the planet (we live and survive everywhere we can find food), how could so many of us lack the power to think or give up the ability to think for ourselves? That ability to think allowed us to survive where hundreds and thousands of other species went extinct.
The answer is: we assiduously teach ourselves to avoid thinking. Commercials and other advertising teach us that we don't need to choose among the many brands of detergents, fashion brands and toothpaste, we only need to choose the brand with the most effective advertising. The best advertising trains us best so we don't have to think about it.
Our media teach us what to think and believe about politics. There is no such thing as a major media network that does not have a political agenda and party it supports more than the others. They claim neutrality, but practise something quite the opposite.We tend to support the party and its candidates that the media we pay attention to advocate.
Within offices we have unwritten guidelines about what's right and what's stylish to wear. It's unusual in a factory lunchroom to find one person who regularly disagrees with the political stance of the majority. Workers may support different sports teams, but they enjoy the camaraderie and competition of challenging "their" team against those of others of their co-workers.
In schools, as children, often the lesson most consistently taught is to be quiet when others are talking, during a video presentation or at certain other times. While this behaviour is both courteous and a means of learning, it also teaches children that their thoughts and ideas and concepts they may devise are not worthy of airing or of consideration.
Opportunities to express and have accepted their own thoughts are few in some cases non-existent in the classroom. Without those opportunities to express themselves in a receptive environment, kids learn to avoid thinking because they have nowhere to speak up.
That's thorough teaching, socialization and training. We teach people that they don't need to think because others will always be prepared to do their thinking for them. Isn't the teacher or parent always right, at least to themselves?
To a great extent, this practice has worth. Every society in the world has values and beliefs it holds dear and these must be taught to every child and adult so that chaos does not ensue with people robbing each other, killing each other, raping or cheating each other. We need conformity to some extent.
What we don't need is the thorough lack of thought that so many people give to their lives. A simple example: at gift-giving time (such as Christmas) do we give a child the gift he or she wants or do we consider what gift would best help the child through the next phase of his or her life? That is, do we give a play gift or a learning gift?
In most cases, the gift will be what will satisfy the child. Toys and electronic games break so easily or get cast aside so quickly because the fun but meaningless gifts do not provide what kids naturally know they must have, preparation for their lives as adults. They inherently know what they need, but they ask for the toys they have learned to want from advertising and peer influence.
They have about 20 years to learn how to be competent and knowledgeable adults. By age 20, most young adults know how they should act, what they should do, how they should think. Each of the "shoulds" in the previous sentence results from repeated training: don't think about this, just do it.
Is thinking such hard work? Very much so. For someone of middle age who has done little of it, thinking independently may be virtually impossible. They don't know what to do to engage the gears required to think. They may literally lack the neural pathways to think beyond the surface level of any subject. They get used to learning from others what and how they should "think." They believe what they're told they should think.
Thinking requires about 33 percent as much energy as heavy lifting. The difference is that thinking can continue for an extended period of time, whereas heavy lifting usually takes place for a brief period of time. Over a one hour period, one person thinking can burn many times more calories than someone doing the average construction job, for example.
What happens from years of brain atrophy? Senility, for one. Senility results from long term lack of use of the brain. Senility is totally preventable. Just think.
Health professionals advise now that people should find many activities that will engage their brains to get them thinking as they get older. It's a way to greatly reduce, if not totally eliminate, the risk of Alzheimer's. Just as grass doesn't grow on a busy street, the lesions of Alzheimer's may not grow in a busy brain.
Whoda thought? Not nearly enough of us, judging by the increasing numbers of people dying from Alzheimer's. If you want more evidence, walk down the halls of many nursing homes where patients are left in the halls: watching people walk back and forth along their passageway is the most stimulation the brains of many of them get. There is no brain activity to speak of behind those hollow eyes.
Learned Hand said that "we shall succeed only..." He should have said "we shall survive only..." As individuals and as a species.
The world does not need a flood of more stupid old people to support. Let's make some changes.
Start with yourself. Being a reader, you are not likely to suffer from senility or Alzheimer's, but you know people who will. Maybe you can motivate them to change. Think about it.
Some of the most brilliant thoughts these days are coming from elderly people who have recently learned to think for themselves. One thing we could do is to give them a forum to be heard.
Remember, they have been taught since childhood that their thoughts are not worthy and they will not be heard. They need you to listen to them. And maybe to find others who will pay attention as well.
Bill Allin
"Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems," a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to raise children who can think, instead of socially acceptable automatons who do and think what they are told for their entire lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Powerful People Do Not Live Balanced Lives
The power to command frequently causes failure to think.
- Barbara Tuchman, author and historian (1912-1989)
While most of us could think of many examples of people in power who fail to think, the majority of examples would be about powerful people who do not consider the full range of consequences of their actions. Especially they do not consider who might be physically hurt or killed or whose lives might be destroyed by their command choices.
Those who gain power must focus their attention in two different directions: how to maintain the power they have and how to increase their power. As these two often each take up more time than the people have available, they may try to increase their power by harming others who would compete for their power base or prevent them from climbing higher on the ladder.
Power demands a huge commitment to maintenance and growth. That usually requires the power mongers to sacrifice other parts of what are common to ordinary folks. They pay lip service to family, but family can never take precedence over their work. They may belong to a religion, but they use their fellow members as contacts for their network. Almost everyone they know have the potential to be used to their advantage at some point.
Powerful people do think. They simply think in so narrow a range that they necessarily ignore other aspects of life around them. Like happiness. Like addicts of other varieties, the power monger believes he is happy because he is "successful," as he has learned that power, success and happiness roll together into one great ball. They don't, but that is what they believe.
Power seekers can never be satisfied because they always need more. A person who can never be truly satisfied with themselves can never be truly happy. They have a very narrow focus of life, but convince themselves that theirs is what life is about.
Consider this when you admire or give considerable attention to those in positions of power.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put a human face on those with fame and fortune. They are all people, just like you and me.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Barbara Tuchman, author and historian (1912-1989)
While most of us could think of many examples of people in power who fail to think, the majority of examples would be about powerful people who do not consider the full range of consequences of their actions. Especially they do not consider who might be physically hurt or killed or whose lives might be destroyed by their command choices.
Those who gain power must focus their attention in two different directions: how to maintain the power they have and how to increase their power. As these two often each take up more time than the people have available, they may try to increase their power by harming others who would compete for their power base or prevent them from climbing higher on the ladder.
Power demands a huge commitment to maintenance and growth. That usually requires the power mongers to sacrifice other parts of what are common to ordinary folks. They pay lip service to family, but family can never take precedence over their work. They may belong to a religion, but they use their fellow members as contacts for their network. Almost everyone they know have the potential to be used to their advantage at some point.
Powerful people do think. They simply think in so narrow a range that they necessarily ignore other aspects of life around them. Like happiness. Like addicts of other varieties, the power monger believes he is happy because he is "successful," as he has learned that power, success and happiness roll together into one great ball. They don't, but that is what they believe.
Power seekers can never be satisfied because they always need more. A person who can never be truly satisfied with themselves can never be truly happy. They have a very narrow focus of life, but convince themselves that theirs is what life is about.
Consider this when you admire or give considerable attention to those in positions of power.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to put a human face on those with fame and fortune. They are all people, just like you and me.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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