Category Archives: society

Wisdom for Week’s End

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It’s not every day I get to share words of kindness and wisdom from the Dalai Lama. He doesn’t post every day. I checked.

We need the message of compassion as often as he – or anyone else – feels inclined to impart it, especially in the country where I live. Maybe also in yours?

Dalai Lama originally shared this post:

If each of us can learn to relate to each other more out of compassion, with a sense of connection to each other and a deep recognition of our common humanity, and more important, to teach this to our children, I believe that this can go a long way in reducing many of the conflicts and problems that we see today.

The Slaughterhouse and the Furnace

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In 1973, the amazing writer Kurt Vonnegut wrote a letter to a book-burning school board in North Dakota.

http://goo.gl/lyJmj

Book burning is an act of profound ignorance and stunted civility, which should never be tolerated by free people. It’s right up there with forcibly ejecting demonstrators from public parks and denying women unfettered and dignified access to quality healthcare.

Liberal and Conservative

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Liberal and conservative are not mutually exclusive. They are not opposites.  Ford is not the opposite of Chevy, Coke is not fundamentally different than Pepsi. It’s all an illusion, a myth perpetrated by people who make a very good living getting other people to buy their brand – their product or their thinking.

Mac and PC are both computers. But didn’t Apple do a great job with it’s “I’m a Mac” ad campaign? Conflate the product with the buyer’s personal identity, and away you go.

Conservative and liberal are impulses, not states of Being. Two sides of the same pancake, no matter how thin you make it; two points on the same continuum of social thought, two knots on the same string. In fact, they work very well together, in any brain capable of holding two apparently contradictory thoughts at the same time, and admitting that both might be valid. But that doesn’t work if the brain’s thinking is being done by someone else.

Pelosi is not the opposite of Boehner, Obama is not the opposite of Romney, Bachman or Cain. These are all politicians trying to get hired or keep their jobs. Funny that some of them can’t relate to millions of their fellow Americans who are trying to do the same thing.

grailknightIn the end, somebody has to be hired to do the job, and it’s up to us to decide. Let’s hope we shake off this deep hypnotic state and learn to choose wisely.

So if Liberal is not the opposite of Conservative, what is? The opposite of each is the same: it’s indifference.

Powerless

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My neighbors and I have received a postcard from the electric company. I don’t know how many of us received it, but it may be several thousand people. The eastern half of the Carpinteria Valley, which lies on a shelf of land on the California coast, under the coastal hills, near Santa Barbara.

They are going to shut off our electricity tonight just at the start of prime time TV, and it will be off for 10 hours.

I’m told they did the center of town 2 nights ago, but I don’t know for sure. 

Why? “Upgrading aging infrastructure or completing other repairs to make needed improvements.”

Sounds vague to me. Boilerplate language. But I think I can translate.

In order to increase corporate profits, we cut staff and deferred maintenance to a point that things have really gone to shit. We’re worried. Before the whole city goes dark for days or weeks on end, we’re taking drastic action regardless of the inconvenience. 

How do you think I did?

I have family close by, but part of me wants to cowboy up and ride it out here in camp.I have plenty of battery-powered electric lights; enough to dimly light my condo for several hours. It might be OK to shake off the video habits for a night, sit quietly and read a book. I have an iPod with tons of music, stories, poetry, if my eyes get tired.

But it’s hot. We’re having a heat wave, and I’ve been sleeping with a fan blowing on my bed. So I don’t know.

Bright and Early

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It was early for me to be up on a Sunday. I usually set the alarm for 8:00 on Sunday, earlier on other days. But today I’ve been up since 5:30; I’ve been awake since 4:48am. This is because some inconsiderate moron drove a loud sports car into the alley between the condo buildings of the complex where I live, stopped right outside my bedroom window, left his loud car running, and did some sort of business with a neighbor. Maybe he was delivering something, I don’t know. I just saw him walking away from the building, talking on his phone, getting back in the car and driving away. I could still here the engine from a great distance, because it had very distinctive rising and falling sound, as opposed to a steady idle.

Strangely, the idiot in question has to go out of his way to get into this private driveway. My condo is the only one in this building that faces the private alley; the others face a public street. That’s where the baboon should be driving his noisy car.

This has happened daily for maybe a week, though this was the first time I was unable to go back to sleep. I tried to descend back into rest by playing my nature sounds CD, a woodland river, which usually helps me sleep. But it was futile. And I know that since I stayed up to watch a movie, went to bed at 12:30, and to sleep at 1:00am, I’ll be tired now all day long.

I don’t mind getting up bright and early, if I’m expecting it. It’s fun to get up before dawn and go fishing, or open Christmas presents, or take a trip with family. But this ain’t that, and it’s not cool. 

Obviously, I’m annoyed. I’m not going to put up with this. There’s gonna be a roshambo dialogue .  Later, when the sun is up and warm. It is the Sabbath after all, and I’m a civilized person. 

Born to be Addled

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Addled sounds a little like wild, doesn’t it? That’s what I was going for. It’s not easy to put a clear title on one’s ruminations on the topic of abject confusion, my least favorite state of mind.

I don’t drink, you know. Very rarely and never if I’m going to be driving. That’s my rule. But the underlying reason is not simply fear of disaster and felony charges. It’s not that I think alcohol is inherently evil, though it  certainly has been the instrument of nearly infinite human suffering. Responsible drinking by healthy adults is OK with me, just not generally OK for me. And not because it’s fattening and expensive, although that’s also true.

I don’t drink because it clouds the mind, obscures the consciousness. One of my main goals on any given day is to go forth seeking clarity. And my poor brain is just about as fuzzy now as I want it to be.

No no no no I don’t … no more. 
I’m tired of waking up on the floor.
— Ringo Star (youtube)

Case in pitiful point: A few days ago, I was obliviously shopping in the nearest Trader Joe’s. As I reached up for some cans of tuna, someone behind me spoke my name. I turned and shook hands, exchanged greetings, with a man whose face was very familiar. But I couldn’t place it.

My little brain jumped through the usual lists: work, church, writers’ groups, civic, condo association, etc. Finally I had to give up and admit I needed his help.

It turned out to be a man who has lived with his family across the street and one house down from my parents, for roughly the last 3 decades. I’ve stopped and spoken with him before, and seen him from a distance maybe a thousand times.

I was embarrassed. I blathered some stupid remark about being used to seeing him from a distance, complimented recent improvements to his front yard, etc. He was cordial and did not kick my ass right there amongst the produce, as much as I had it coming. But everyone wants to be recognized. Otherwise, it is far too easy to feel too lightly valued by others.

The thing is, I do value other people. I care and I really want to see people and know them and be friendly and inclusive. And I’ve heard other people over the years say things like, “I’m terrible with names.” This makes no sense to me. You’d think that the ability to recognize faces and identify known individuals would be systemic, universal to the evolution of our species. Otherwise, how would our kind spot enemies and friends and survive in a potentially hostile world?

There is a world of difference between momentary failure to recognize someone – the sin I’m confessing – and forgetting them altogether, which I hope I never do. I mean regarding others with indifference.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”
– Elie Wiesel

This past spring, I heard my name called by another person who recognized me. I turned and recognized an old friend, whom I had not heard from in 12 years. I had assumed that she moved away and her life changed and so it goes. But she’d been living here in this very small town, where my number is in the book. She’d never bothered to call, that’s all. But we were glad to see each other, talked for a while, and agreed to email and to meet for coffee. She said she was moving away in a few months.

I emailed her a week or two later, as promised. She replied saying a few weeks later would be better to meet, so let’s connect again. I emailed again in that time, but have heard nothing since. Three more months have come and gone and maybe she’s gone too, maybe not. In any case, that’s indifference.

It’s important that we know the ones we know. They matter. And nobody wants to disappear.

C‘est la vie.

I guess I could Google how to improve your memory for faces or something. I’m sure there are tips and tricks abounding. Not the point. It’s perplexing that I don’t already have a reliable app for that.

Chatting over the bananas in Trader Joe’s, these lines of T.S. Eliot came to mind, as they often have over the years:

Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. 

— Ash Wednesday

Separate Is Not Equal

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This video really surprised me. I thought the question of separate schools for black and white children in the United States was resolved with Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

But here we have the Koch Brothers, through their racist front group, Americans for Prosperity, trying to buy a board of education in NC. Why? So they can force black students to stay in their own “neighborhood schools.”

The Koch brothers also own a very bad political theatre company called the Tea Party.

I recommend watching the entire 11 minutes. You won’t get the story if you don’t. And it’s worth it.

Full screen version: http://www.youtube.com/v/2mbJhjCbwo8

Throwing Stones

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Sometimes I’m amazed by how beautifully song lyrics and poems find their relevance in my life. Especially songs by The Grateful Dead.

I was riding my bike today and listening to Throwing Stones on the trusty iPod. I thought Yes! There we are! “So it goes, we make what we made since the world began.”

Here’s a video of the boys playing that song, March 1993, with some of the lyrics.

http://www.youtube.com/v/mSC6m4LPW1Y

Commissars and pin-stripe bosses
Roll the dice.
Any way they fall,
Guess who gets to pay the price.
Money green or proletarian gray,
Selling guns ‘stead of food today.

So the kids they dance
And shake their bones,
And the politicians throwin’ stones,
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.

Heartless powers try to tell us
What to think.
If the spirit’s sleeping,
Then the flesh is ink
History’s page will thus be carved in stone.
And we are here, and we are on our own
On our own.
On our own.
On our own.

Decisions, decisions

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Check out this link, the first case of an accident involving Google’s self driving car.

http://jalopnik.com/5828101/this-is-googles-first-self+driving-car-crash

It’s clear that the Google car rear-ended another Prius. It’s not clear whether the other car stopped short or the Google car failed to stop. Either way, it led me to what I think is an interesting thought experiment.
Imagine you’re driving down a city street at 35 mph. On your right is a family with a baby carriage and a toddler, walking on the sidewalk. Coming in the opposite direction, meaning on your left, is a large commercial truck.

As you near the walking family, the toddler suddenly breaks from the group and runs right in front of you. There’s no way you can stop in time to avoid hitting him. You’re going to have to change direction too.
If you steer right, you wipe out Mom, Dad, and baby. If you steer left, you hit the big truck head on. If you do neither, you wipe out the little kid. You have 1 second to decide.

I hope that my brain would steer left. Save the pedestrians. Chances are at 35 mph and slowing, the driver of the big truck will be OK. And maybe he’ll see the child too, brake and steer to his right, reducing the impact somewhat. That would be nice.

The conundrum arises because this is a moral decision, not a pragmatic one. It’s a self-sacrifice, choosing not the path of least resistance but the path of the greater good.

Some people might choose to go straight ahead, or turn right. I’m not saying that’s wrong. There are arguments to make that justify that course. We’ll skip them here.

The question is this: Would a car driven by a computer be able to make a decision like that? I doubt it, don’t you? So I think self-driving cars are cool, very interesting, but they can’t replace the instinctive judgment of having a human being behind the wheel.

UPDATE:

PCWorld: One of Google’s self-driving cars got into an accident earlier this week. But Google is claiming the auto-pilot-equipped Prius was actually flipped into manual mode when the accident happened, making this a case of user error.

Captain’s Blog Stardate 20110727

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P80_19_braid

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."*

As a little kid I imagined future technology: cars without steering wheels, computers that spoke with us out of thin air. Humans would be different, all the same basic size and shape, carrying little communicators and wearing comfortable clothes.

Well, I was partly right. We’re getting the communicator thing down so well that I even the Sci-Fi writers of my youth didn’t imagine their power and ubiquity. And I don’t think the touchless, voice-controlled computer is very far off. (Our cell phones have voice commands, but they’re more reactive than interactive. Like the government.) We still have to steer the car, though Google is working on a Driverless Car right now; in fact, it already works for their engineers. I don’t think clothes have really changed very much.

I got one thing about future tech very wrong: I imagined that future being farther away that it turned out to be. I imagined the new world without me or you still in it. I thought the world of my childhood – in terms of our tools and toys – would be basically the same in my middle age, that technology would advance more slowly. I – we – would be long gone before cars looked like this.

2009 Cadillac Converj Concept

That’s a 2012 Cadillac. Click to enlarge.

They say that one sign of intelligence is the ability to hold two contradictory concepts in the mind at one type time, and accept them both as possibly valid. So I give you a couple of concepts to ponder: A typewriter and an Apple iPad. (The latter, you’ll notice is just a screen with keys, no keyboard at all.)

royal ipad 

Click to enlarge.

Who would have thought that in a short time we would type without buttons or keys, and publish without paper? But if you sent out today to buy either a 1937 Royal desk typewriter or an Apple iPad, which would be easier to find? And easier to use? I’ve used a Royal typewriter and it was hard to make it work! People who did it for a living were called typists. It was a hard job for low pay and it no longer exists in the world, as far as I know.

Do any companies still have people who do word processing – transcribing dictation? I don’t know. That was common in the 1980s and into the 1990s. Guys like me would dictate memos, letters, etc., with recorders, then take the little tapes to be transcribed. Then we got our work back printed on thinly pressed slices of tree.

Which reminds me of one Fail in the future tech that’s here so far: The paperless office we were promised 15 or 20 years ago. I’ve been trying to accomplish it for years but I can’t get other people to cooperate. I guess that can be a rant for another day.

I guess one of the most compelling ways in which computer technology has changed our lives so far is that anyone who wants to do it can be a writer and a publisher. For example, you’re looking at a page of a digital periodical, an occasional publication for which I do the writing and publish using a free medium. And over the years, Metaphor has been read over 20,000 times. That’s right, over twenty thousand deliveries. Not too shabby for a little blog with one frequently complacent writer, no paper, no costs, no charges, no advertising, and a very passive delivery system. And anyone can do it.

What do you suppose would have been required for Benjamin Franklin to put his Poor Richard’s Almanac into the hands of 20,000 citizens? A lot of money, time and effort. A lot of trees, too.

So here we are, the same bunch of primates who thought push button phones, the TV remote and the CB radio were pretty cool. And we’re blogging and using VOIP and feeling thankful that the VCR went the way of the Dodo before we had to take an adult ed class to program that sunofabitch.

It occurs to me, though, that it’s all teetering on a house of cards. I have a copy of Leaves of Grass that was printed before the Great Depression, and it survived on shelf somewhere because no special system was required to sustain its existence there. Not so with the Great Terra of Infinite Terabytes of human thought that we now have suspended around the planet in vast server farms and countless hard drives. All of that requires an economy to keep it going. What would it take to make all the stuff we know as modern life online just go blip and disappear? Not much. 

planetoftheapesendingIf Congress and the President fail to keep the lights of our tenuous, practically fictional economy burning next week, how far is it from default of the US to all the whirring drives of the Internet falling silent and blank? I mean we’re talking chain reaction, global economic meltdown, am I wrong?

I worry more about things like that, than whether Google+ is better than Facebook; more about America without Social Security and Medicare than about keyboards without keys.

New prime directive: the cloud must be sustained.

 

*Quote: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.