Iran
Sunday, June 21st, 2009 | Author: Moody

Neda

Neda

It is my sincerest hope that the people of Iran will find a peaceful resolution to the conflict that is tearing Iran apart. It is my sincerest wish that no-one else will lose her or his life, that no more families will be doused with the gasoline of grief and set afire by the agony of losing a loved one.

I have been torn up since last night, when I watched the video [not suitable for minors] of a young Iranian woman dying in the street after she’d been shot in the chest. I do not recommend watching it, and yet I feel like people should watch it. People are dying in Iran over these protests, over their desire to see justice, because they demand to be heard as their government attempts to silence them.

People have said, “Why do you care so much about Iran? People are dying all over the world for similar reasons”. And they have a point, but I think that the reasons are moot. What matters is what’s happening right now, and the fact of the matter is that what is happening in Iran has captured a great deal of attention. A great many Iranians are struggling for fairness, for justice. They are struggling en masse to be heard, and they are being heard. It is not a matter of imposed unfairness against others who struggle. It simply is what it is, and I think it’s wrong to penalize people in any way for paying attention to the plight of Iranian protesters. Instead, let’s encourage others to get involved, to pay attention now to what’s captured the attention of so many people who otherwise would not know or have any reason to care compelling enough to so command their attention.

When the crisis in Iran has passed, and whatever resolution has been reached, perhaps there will be more people socially aware (in a global sense) enough in the wake of the crisis to become cognizant of other crises in the world.

But for now, for this time, let us extend ourselves toward helping the Iranians in whatever way we can. And let us mourn the death of this young woman, Neda, who was not doing anything but observing when she lost her life in front of her music teacher. Watch the video if you don’t understand.

[Edited: Neda was shot while with her music teacher, not her father.]

Category: Humanism, Out in the World, Society and Culture  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
Knowledge and Doubt
Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | Author: Moody
The following material, in this and related posts upcoming, draws extensively upon the writing of philosopher Walter A. Kaufmann, whose 1958 book, Critique of Religion and Philosophy, I have lately been re-reading. I have attempted to provide my own take on the material, putting it into my own words, with the idea of saying what I think, of expressing what I understand, while also promoting his work to those who may not have read it. I also wrote this post as a way for me to test my own understanding of the material discussed and to put it out there for public scrutiny and comment.

Part 1: What do you know?

I.

When it comes to religion, I think it is fair to say that there are difficulties with regard to the definition of “truth” and “knowledge”. Many (if not most) religious people will tell you that they “know God exists”. The immediate question arising from this is, How do they know? Perhaps a better first question would be, What do they mean by “know”? And but so, of course, we need to have a firm idea about what “to know” means to us.

If I say to a friend that “I know my car is in the garage”, I am stating that it is true that the car is in the garage, and I am peremptorily and implicitly stating that my assertion is true (or correct). I am also making a falsifiable statement; someone can check to see if it is true or false that my car is in the garage. But what does it mean to the statement if the car is, in fact, in the garage? Is it certain then that I actually knew? Is “I know my car is in the garage” (S1) equivalent to a statement like, “I know my name is James” (S2)?

Let’s look at S1 and S2 in a bit more detail.

Assume that the friend I am talking to recognizes which car is mine. Does it affect any quality of my stating S1 if I make the statement over the phone to my friend, who is not there, while standing in the garage with my car, vs. making the statement while standing, say, in the living room of my friend’s house with my friend, both of us unable to see my car? In either case the statement remains falsifiable. If the car is right there with me when I state S1, then, barring delusion or insanity, one could grant that I certainly do know, even if no-one else is with me at that moment. The same goes for if my friend is there with me when I state S1, only one might add that this latter situation would grant an immediate empirical quality to my statement. But does any of this make a significant difference to our understanding of knowledge itself?

Can there be empirical knowledge of S2? Yes, of course. Is it then the same kind of knowledge as indicated by S1? Yes. Empirical knowledge of the stars gained through the use of telescopes does not differ from empirical knowledge of various mathematical proofs gained from studying mathematics. That is, S2 is just as falsifiable and evidence-based as S1. In the case of S2, I have a birth certificate, a drivers license with my picture on it, a Social Security card, and other forms of identifying material. I have the testimony of my parents who named me. In a room full of people, I honestly respond to the name “James” and not to others. Although “James” is not a physical thing that one can touch or sense directly like a car in a garage, there are nonetheless multiple ways of obtaining empirical (real world) evidence to support my assertion that “I know my name is James” is a true statement.

This is not to say that I may not, in fact, be mistaken in either case. Although it is unlikely that I am wrong about either one, there is the possibility, however remote, that I don’t actually know, even though my stating S1 or S2 was done in good faith. But I think that it should be fairly obvious to the reader that S1 stated out of sight of the car, would sooner fall into doubt than S2 stated at nearly any time.

II.

True knowledge may always be falsified. If a statement is made that asserts knowledge that cannot be falsified, there is no way to determine if it is in fact knowledge, and reason to doubt that it is in any way knowable. Statements that depend on (or are somehow meant to be justified by) unfalsifiable knowledge—rather than providing a way toward falsifying the asserted knowledge—are doubly suspect. Thus, if one states that “I know faeries are good because they keep trolls out of my garden”, then all one has done is begged the question. Were one to state that “I know faeries are good because they keep slugs off my tomatoes”, that could be tested a number of ways. But here it is very important to note that an absence of slugs on the tomatoes would not in itself constitute any proof that faeries were responsible. There would have to be tests that could actually address the statement. Nor would it do the statement any good if it turned out that your kindly next door neighbor had sprayed the tomatoes for you and you then said the faeries compelled her to do so.

On the other hand, even if something seems difficult to apprehend or test, if it is falsifiable and it passes tests of falsifiability, then it may be said to be known or knowable. Famously, this would apply to Einstein’s formula, E=mc2. It also applies to the theory of evolution, which requires a fairly robust level of education to really grok. One may doubt that something is true (as formulated or presented) or knowable, but it becomes less and less rational to do so as it passes test after test and is not proven false. At this point, for instance, no educated person in her or his right mind (no rational person) would doubt that the earth is a fairly oblate spheroid object orbiting the sun. Again, the same goes for E=mc2 and the theory of evolution.

III.

One thing that should be gleaned from the above paragraphs is that there is no room for “subjective” truth where knowledge is concerned. Although one can make a good faith assertion that something is known or true (S1 and S2) and be mistaken, this is a far cry from a statement like, “It’s true for me that stars are actually plugged in to a cosmic electrical grid”. The fact of the matter is that there is no “true for me” in that sense, regardless of whether you actually believe it or not. If you were to tell me that it was true for you that you could fly by strenuously flapping your arms, I would have every right to doubt your assertion and ask you to prove it. If you then began to strenuously flap your arms and said, “Look! I’m flying!”, I would have every reason to think that something was wrong with you or that you were trying to have one over on me. If you then said to me, in all sincerity, “You didn’t see me flying because you don’t believe, but I [know that I] did fly, and whatever you say it is still true to me”, I would have to say, if only to myself, “You poor, deluded bugger”.

Sincerity and feelings cannot establish the fact or truth of something beyond themselves. One may sincerely believe in faeries, and feel their presence all around, but this in no way proves that there are faeries; it is simply evidence of your sincerity and feelings. Appealing to the number of people who also believe in faeries (though some of them spell it f-a-i-r-i-e-s) does not lend itself as any kind of proof of faeries, either. You must provide something falsifiable. I shall remain a non-faerieist until such time as some real evidence comes my way. But really, I’ve never seen a single shred of falsifiable evidence for faeries that wasn’t in the end a failure for the faerieists. So, truth be told, I’m an afaerieist; I deny the existence of faeries due to lack of supporting evidence; I have no faith in faeries.

But, all kidding aside, is there no empirical evidence for “God”?

…

Stay tuned for Part 2: What do you believe? Suggestions, criticisms and comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Category: Atheism, Philosophy, Religion/Spirituality, Science  | Comments
Walter Kaufmann ist mein Held
Sunday, May 24th, 2009 | Author: Moody

It does not follow that the meaning must be given from above; that life and suffering must come neatly labeled; that nothing is worth while if the world is not governed by a purpose. – Walter Kaufmann

Walter A. Kaufmann

Walter A. Kaufmann

In my late teens and for too long after I had some odd beliefs. They are irrelevant now, and here, save insofar as they led me to read at some depth the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. I don’t think reading Nietzsche was at all a mistake. In some ways, it’s thanks to him that I recovered my self from my convictions. But there is a greater debt I owe, and that is to the one translator of Nietzsche I trusted wholeheartedly: Walter A. Kaufmann (b. 1-July-1921, d. 4-September-1980), Professor of Philosophy at Princeton. So impressed was I with his erudition and lucid prose, after reading two or three of his Nietzsche translations, and moved by his whole attitude toward philosophy and life—as I found it expressed in his prefaces and footnotes to Nietzsche’s works, and especially in his book, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist—that I went out and bought three more of his books.

I am currently re-reading the first of those books: Critique of Religion and Philosophy (1958), and I wanted to quote at length from the “Preface to the Princeton Paperback Edition” in the hope that you, dear reader, will perhaps be inspired, too, to seek out his works. Kaufmann is an especially vibrant philosopher, passionate, yet no less incisive for it, and he speaks to the secular humanist with a clear voice of matters oft neglected. He speaks even to the jaded, experienced adult like me, who has seen much but has not necessarily borne in mind some of the most important lessons of an otherwise thoughtful life.

Without further ado, I give you the quotation:

Detail from Rembrandts Large Self-Portrait (1652)

Detail from Rembrandt's ''Large Self-Portrait'' (1652)

Rembrandt’s “Large Self-Portrait” in the Vienna art museum cast a spell on me when I first saw it. But it spoke to me even more when I saw it again in 1962 after three weeks in Poland. In Warsaw I had virtually smelled the blood of the Jews killed there in 1943, and I had also spent an afternoon in Auschwitz. The portrait looked more powerful than ever after these experiences. Rembrandt had been twelve when the Thirty Years War began, and this painting was done four years after the devastation of Europe had ended. In those days there was no market for Rembrandt’s many self-portraits. They were not painted for clients nor with any hope of a sale. Here was integrity incarnate. But how could one pass the muster of these eyes? One has to do something for a living, especially if one has a family, but I felt that I wanted to write only in the spirit in which Rembrandt had painted himself, without regard for what might pay or advance my career. And whenever I think about the millions killed during the second World War and ask myself what I have done with the life granted to me but not to so many others, the books I have written spell some small comfort. …The aspect of [Critique of Religion and Philosophy] about which I don’t have any second thoughts at all is that I feel more than ever that humanists should be concerned less with the opinions of their peers and elders than with the challenge of Rembrandt’s eyes.

Let these words be a clarion call to make the welkin ring, and may we find in our lives the strength to answer.

Category: Art, Humanism, Philosophy  | Tags: , , ,  | Comments
“You get what anyone gets—you get a lifetime”
Sunday, May 17th, 2009 | Author: Moody

Edvard Munchs painting of Rodins _The Thinker_

Edvard Munch's painting of Rodin's The Thinker

Life is precious. I mean, you have to realize it for it to be true—but once you do, you see how obvious it is. It helps if you read a lot, watch good movies, care about others and the state of the world and do something about it. I’m not sure how you can be taught to do that. I’m even less sure that it needs to be taught… at least any other way than by example.

Yet also it is true that “La contemplation rend souvent la vie malheureuse.” So said Nicolas Chamfort. But “the unexamined life”, as per Socrates, “is not worth living”. I know that contemplation and examination are not the same thing, per se, but maybe it is that we have to make ourselves a bit miserable—or have to be made miserable; have to have misery imposed on us, to some degree, by circumstance—in order for life to appear to us as precious as it is? Would this explain why, then, I find life so precious and worth living? And where is the balance point?

I’m just tossing this stuff up in the air to see what will float or fly, and what will fall again.

See, I’ve been re-reading my words here and considering what I’ve been saying. I’ve drawn some definite lines in the sand. I’ve erected some barricades (at least according to some people). I’ve done so because I have come to honest conclusions in my life. Conclusions about life; its nature, its origins, its outcomes, its end and its, life’s, meaning to me. I don’t know with 100% certainty what’s true. It galls me when people claim they do. But maybe I need to let that go. I know that I don’t know everything. I hardly know anything at all. But what I have learned in the last four decades of my life—mostly via trial and error—has given me the confidence to assert that life is meaningful insofar as we find meaning in it. I’ve said this before, I think. It’s worth repeating. I think now that it’s a matter of semantics, whether one says that life is inherently meaningful (or meaning-ready) or inherently meaningless (or devoid of meaning). It amounts to the same thing in the end. Why? Because we still must suss it out, discover it for ourselves, attach ourselves to it and value it. The ultimate meaning of life could be pinochle or the Glass Bead Game, or poker or The Sims. I don’t think it’s any of those things, but I’m saying that it could be and there’d be know way to know it as such unless and until I decided for myself that it was. The ultimate meaning of life could be reserved for bacteria or minerals. What kind of hubris does it take to say, “Yes, well, of course the ultimate meaning of life is this personal, human thing”? So let’s drop the ‘ultimate meaning’ thing here, right here and now.

Life, it seems to me, is meaningful. It’s meaningful because I find meaning in it or take meaning from it. I find meaning in it or take meaning from it because, as I live my life, events and things (verbs, and nouns with and without the vocative case) take on an intimate resonance through which I glean, or even grok, a sense of connective value. That value is, in the experience of it, timeless, even when it is realized because it is grasped in an inherently finite moment. In other words, ‘valuation’ is not in itself temporal (used here without any implication of there being some metaphysical eternal state).

Sorry for getting all convoluted there. Thing is, it’s difficult to say exactly why it is that life is meaningful, and “It just is!” is not at all good. Every question leads to several possible answers, and each answer leads to several definite questions, and so on. O!, Philosophie! Or do I mean Oy!—as in vey? Were I to wax poetic, as a non sequitur I’d have to assert that life is meaningful because Eros and Psyche are able to reflect on the song of a goat and not die. Eh…

Sorry for getting all non sequiturish on y’all. Anyway…

I think it’s time for me to go seek out a meaningful bite to eat, and leave the contemplation to my stomach for the nonce. Mostly, it contemplates things in the rich domain of gastronomy. Which reminds me that I must add the brilliant M.F.K. Fisher’s The Art of Eating to my foreshortened list of Must Reads. The other night I read Fisher’s “The Standing and the Waiting” (from the aforementioned book) to Kisha, at her request, and simply loved it.

Oh, and, speaking of reading, I’m within 45 pages of being finished with Infinite Jest. Not sure what I’ll be reading next, but I’m sure it’ll be good. Perhaps V., or Dance Dance Dance. Very likely I’ll supplement with a Walter Kaufmann book. And, too, I’m about halfway done with A Confederacy of Dunces, which I’m listening to in audiobook format at work.

Category: Musings, Personal  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
Google Friend Connect
Saturday, May 16th, 2009 | Author: Moody

In my continuing effort to broaden my connections to the various communities and individuals who use the Web, I have added Google Friend Connect (it’s over there in the sidebar). What is it? According to Google, Friend Connect allows you to “Build your community” and “Increase engagement” without having to do any programming.

Robert Scoble turned me on to it. He did have some reasonable reservations about how easy it would be for the average Web user to install on his or her blog, but even with my limited skills I was able to have it up and running in under five minutes without any problems. I imagine that the process will be streamlined over time, but right now it is not a steep learning curve. A motivated newbie could set things up without shedding tears. However, that said, I think it is fair to say that for some people the task of using an FTP application and having to manually add files to a blog directory may seem a bit much. Lots of people are used to having everything set up for them (like, fill out the sign up form and voila!—it’s ready to go), and technical stuff is all handled in the background by somebody else whose job it is to do the techie thing in the background, like quietly and unobtrusively sometime in the wee hours when decent folks are asleep and dreaming of non-electric sheep or horses or whatever.

There are also a number of other “social tools” available that Google has tied in to the Friend Connect API. All of them require just about the same amount of minor work to install. I think that they are worth looking into. What do you think?

In the meantime, I hope that you, dear reader, will consider joining one of my networks. I’d like to think that doing so will lead us both to a better level of interaction.

Category: Personal, Social Media, Things on the Web  | Tags: , , ,  | Comments
Comment Calamity? No. Not anymore.
Friday, May 15th, 2009 | Author: Moody

Image by _StaR_DusT_

Image by -StaR-DusT-

Sometimes you just have to move on something, or from something to something else. In this case, I have unceremoniously canned IntenseDebate. After having written to their tech support people—after the recent mysterious disappearance of a couple comments—I waited over 24 hours for any response and received not even the usual form response that is automatically kicked out when a user contacts tech support. Seriously, I’m writing this post and thinking, like, Okay… they’ll probably write me back while I’m writing this post. Any minute now. As I write. Uh-huh.

And so but I’ve still not received a response. And it’s all academic now anyway because I’ve disabled and removed the plug-in—I canned it; trashed it; dumped it; chucked it out; tossed it; wasted it; binned it; deleted its presence and erased its map—and then I deleted my blog from the IntenseDebate site. Such a shame it came to it, but there you go. It’s not something I needed to debate intensely. It simply came down to the fact that the system failed me all around and I didn’t want to put a lot of effort into it when it seemed like nothing good was going to come out of it anytime soon.

I apologize to anyone who is in any way inconvenienced by my drop-kicking IntenseDebate. It is my sincerest hope that, all things considered, y’all will be pleased with the replacement I chose: Disqus (pronouned “discuss”). You can now log in to your Facebook or Twitter account to make comments here, which seems fairly cool. I still have to learn a bit about how Disqus works, but it seems like a good replacement for something that failed me utterly. And, btw, I have walked away from this whole experience having learned a valuable lesson: Know Your Options. I should have looked around before installing something that was maybe good, maybe not so good. If I’d looked around I might have found Disqus in the first place. Then again, it may be that I’ll be failed again. I sure hope not, but I’m not so naïve as to assume that Disqus is a panacea just because it’s popular and loads of people use it. If you have any thoughts about Disqus, please share them with me. In the meantime I’ll be checking out just how well it works for me.

Category: Personal  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
Comment Calamity? No. Not yet, anyway.
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 | Author: Moody

A quick update to let visitors to this blog know that I appear to be having some issues with the comment system. I have contacted IntenseDebate’s tech support people and am hoping to get some resolution before anything worse happens.

What happened? Yeah, well, I lost a couple of comments. One apparently is permanently gone, but I was able to retrieve and re-post the other. Most frustrating, but I shall refrain from whingeing.

If you have posted a comment and not seen it show up, please know that—unless I’ve personally told you I was going to (probably because you have actually threatened me in a comment or proven yourself to be a total nutcase, wanker, crank, git or prat)—I have not blocked you. And don’t worry that maybe your comment wound up being erroneously flagged as spam. I regularly check on the Oubliette (which, I suppose, is kinda funny that I do that and still call it an oubliette) de spam to make sure there’s only the excretory vomit of spammers and ne’er-do-wells emprisonné dans l’enfer existentiel.

UPDATE: No word yet from the tech people at IntenseDebate, which I understand it’s late and all—but…. The comment I re-posted has vanished again! I checked my blog out in another browser and it’s not showing up there, either, so I’m fairly convinced it’s gone from the page (though not from the WP Dashboard). I’m not yet having the fantods over it, but I am certainly about ready to send the present comment system packing in favor of—oh, I dunno, Disqus, maybe? ::shakes fist at IntenseDebate people in an unhappy manner::

Category: Personal  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
This Mothers Day
Sunday, May 10th, 2009 | Author: Moody

Her voice is unsteady. “It goes up and down like a ping-pong ball, I guess I’d say”, she says. She wants to know how I am, and I carefully steer the conversation away from the topic. I want to know how she’s doing, all things considered…. All things considered. For over two years now, I and my family have been sitting on the most discomforting chair there is. Over two years ago, I wrote that my mother is dying. She had expected it. We had all expected it. And we sat together, figuratively speaking, as a family, and we waited, as she waited. Only, the day hasn’t come yet. The medication has gotten stronger. Morphine and methadone were prescribed to keep the pain manageable. They have prolonged everything, necessary as they are for her. Long, managed suffering is preferable to sheer agony of unknown duration. (Isn’t it?) So we have waited, worried, wondered when. We continue to do so.

My Mother

My Mother

It has been over two years. I know the day will come. It will be a relief for her, most of all. But we all will finally let go that breath that we have held for so long, now. She breathed her life into us, and we will exhale when hers is done. And then we will inhale again, and it will hurt to take that breath.

The pictures you see here were taken in front of my childhood home. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for most of my early years. She kept a clean house. She watched the Lawrence Welk Show and loved the Lemon Sisters and Time Magazine. She played the piano as best as she could and sang to her heart’s content. She was old school. She grew up in the Great Depression era and her husband, my father, whom she met and fell in love with when she was still a teenager, was a Navy man.

My childhood home was their longest place of residence. It was a nice place. Roomy and upper middle-class, with a two car garage. It had a big backyard with a tall oak tree in its south end, whose shade fell on nearly a third the yard’s expanse. At the north end of the yard there were rose bushes. My mother spent a lot of time with those rose bushes, pruning and tending them in her thick gardening gloves, a scarf, and a big straw hat, one of our dogs we had over the years, running around the yard chasing birds and butterflies or sleeping in the shade. She would bring in roses, also lemons and avocados from our trees, and, rarely, sometimes apricots. And for the most part, these were the highlights of her individual, personal, “alone time” life. She took great pleasure in her time in the yard, even as she continued to struggle at being a good mother and spouse in a household that was, even during the best of times, a difficult one to manage and bear. It took me many years to appreciate just what she went through while I was growing up.

When I was still a kid, my mom went back to school. She took courses at the local community college and became a Licensed Vocational Nurse. She did so against the wishes of my father and my own childish complaints. In the end, she went to work taking care of terminally ill children. I won’t here delve into the psychology of her choices. It’s not my place to do so. But I can say that I admire her for what she put herself through even as I feel sad that she felt driven to such a painful place. She would come home sometimes with heartbreak written across her face, and in her home there was more waiting.

Now, these many years later, my father is taking care of her, 24/7, with meager hospice aid. She is bedridden, forbidden to put any weight on the leg she recently broke simply by moving the wrong way. There are only two ways she will be leaving her home, now. She told me again this morning when I called that she thinks it’s almost time, this time. My hope is that I get to see her again one more time, but I am not so selfish as to hope that she will stay with us any longer than she must. It would be better for her to sleep that final sleep and suffer no more than hang on for others’ sake.

My Mother and I by the trusty VW Bug Id one day own.

My Mother and I by the trusty VW Bug I'd one day own.

Over and over, she told me she loves me. Today on the phone, and any time I’ve ever spoken to her. “I’ll always love you. No matter what.” That is what she’s always said. And so I shall always love her. Whatever we’ve been through in our lives, no matter how difficult, she’s been my mom. We forgave each other for our faults and failings a long time ago, now. Now there is nothing left but moving toward the final passage, the final parting. “I hope you’re having a happy Mothers Day, Mom. I love you”, I said. Her voice was fading in and out, but she said, “Oh, honey, thank you. I am. I’m so glad you called”. That’s my mom. I’m so glad I got at least one more Mothers Day to wish her happiness.

Category: Personal  | Tags:  | Comments
Media and Community
Saturday, May 09th, 2009 | Author: Moody

As a member of the forty-something crowd, on the cusp of middle-age, I can say that I have seen a great many changes in the world. For example, I remember the decline and eventual death of the 8-Track cassette with the popular advent of Compact Cassettes and Compact Discs. I also remember the arrival of cable TV. Our neighbors were the first people I knew who had ON TV (along with a big, strange box they needed to access it). The first computer in my house was some variety of an Apple II that did not go “online”. The Internet existed, but not for the folks at home, and there was no Web at all.

The media was a different animal, back then. I delivered the newspaper as a kid, on a bicycle with big canvas bags slung over the handlebars. People received their news from me on their lawn or driveway or front porch. They also watched news broadcasts on the networks, and read, like my parents did, various periodicals. Typically, the nightly news on TV and the daily newspapers went together hand in glove, in a complementary linear fashion. Periodicals, such as Time or Newsweek, created, supplemented or helped drive the larger stories. And although there were always “Letters to the Editor”, the system was effectively closed to the consumer. The media was the authority, the arbiter of what made news. You might petition the media for some reason, but it was not responsible to you.

Once widespread adoption of the Web by the populace reached critical mass (circa 1995, with apx. 16 million users then surfing the Web1), the demand for interaction naturally started to become the driving force on the Web. Connectivity on the Internet really means connecting people to other people—their ideas, their shared information. So while the “walled garden” of AOL eventually fell into disrepair because the company couldn’t grok the meaning of the Web to society, newer social networking sites appeared that offered a new and more robust form of open community and communication. Today, with over 1.5 billion users on the Web, more than nine times the number of people who were online in 1995 use Facebook alone. Nor are these people—and I hope you’ll pardon me making such an obvious statement—merely sharing recipes, jokes, and pictures of the family (although they certainly do that). No, like me, millions of people share and discuss the salient news of the world. They leave comments to news agencies as freely as they do to each other, and they expect some form of interaction; they expect, at least, to be heard. They blog and keep up with blogs. They share with various communities online, such as are found at FriendFeed. They tweet throughout the day on Twitter and follow not just friends or celebrities but news aggregators and media analysts.

Today, the near-ubiquity of the Web—enabling users to share massive amounts of information, pretty much anytime and anywhere, with an audience who are, themselves, no longer confined to a single or passive role—means the media cannot continue to operate under their comfortable old M.O. The shift is already well underway. What Steven Walling says of Wikipedia, that “An honest analysis of Wikipedia cannot divorce the content from the software and the community”, is becoming true of the media in general, after a fashion. Or, as Emily Bell, head of digital content at Guardian News and Media, put it in a lecture at the University College Falmouth, “There are two lessons here – one is that the news business is struggling to understand the language of the web, the second is that tools plus users equals content, both are key to the future of journalism” [see also "Emily Bell on The Future of Journalism"].

We are, many of us, de facto journalists now, compulsive fact checkers and news hounds. Armed with multiple means of recording the world around us, we are delivering the news on our virtual bicycles, throwing packets of information and analysis from the information highway right into the laps of our readers (whoever they may be), through their open window on the world. Our future is one of greater and greater connectivity. This is a good thing. It will, in the end, ask us all to be more responsible members of our world-wide community. But it will ask this first of those who are professional journalists now. They will be expected to lead the way, to set the example, to show the old paradigm the door and properly usher their profession into the new way of the world.

. . . . . . . . . .

Update. From a salient Op-Ed piece by Frank Rich, titled “The American Press on Suicide Watch“:

…[T]his self-destructive retreat from innovation is hardly novel in the history of American communications. In the last transformative tech revolution before the Internet — television’s emergence in the late 1940s — the pattern was remarkably similar. The entertainment industry referred to TV as “the monster,” and by 1951, the editor of the industry’s trade paper, Variety, was fearful that the monster would “eventually swallow up practically all of show business.” Movies had killed vaudeville a generation earlier. This new household appliance threatened to strangle radio, movies, the Broadway theater, nightclubs and the circus. And newspapers too: “NBC’s New ‘Today’ Attacked by Papers as Competition” screamed a front-page Variety headline in 1952.

. . . . . . . . . .

Additional resources: “Why comments suck (& ideas on un-sucking them)“; most anything by Jay Rosen;  50 Awesome Online Lectures for Social Media Masters.

Note: 1. Several things came together in 1995 that, collectively, acted as a booster rocket to the Web. A few examples: Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was released and the “Browser Wars” began; the People’s Republic of China made its first connection to the Internet; the last commercial restrictions were lifted when the National Science Foundation ceased its sponsorship of the Internet backbone; Yahoo! and AltaVista were founded; Amazon.com, Inc. launched. [See "History of the Internet".]

Category: Journalism, Meta: Web, Things on the Web  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
Day Off And So Forth
Friday, May 08th, 2009 | Author: Moody

Woke up around 6:50 in the AM to make sure our boy made it to the bus on time. Fixed some instant coffee (-like substance) and sat in bed reading Infinite Jest for awhile. I read before work every morning, which is usually the only time I get to actually sit and read anything not on a screen, so I figured I might as well do so this morning even without having to go to work. I’m almost done with the book; I’m into the 800s. After I read, I took my now-cool-enough-to-drink coffee outside to the balcony with me and I sat in the plastic chair with the metal legs and sipped from my Dia de los Muertos mug while having a smoke. The sky this morning is default daylight blue. No clouds. The promise of a hot day feels obvious. Like, there’s no need for an explicit promise; anyone from the neighbors to the bees could tell you it’s going to be hot today.

Sitting here now, the laptop is warm on my bare legs. A readout in the Menu Bar tells me the CPU is 131°F presently (actually, this temp keeps going up and down a degree or two by the minute).

I’ve not yet dived into the morning’s email. I subscribe to a few science-oriented emails via Google Alerts and ScienceBlogs and the AAAS, and every day I get at least six updates. Sometimes there’s nothing that really grabs me, or something grabs me but is over my head and I can’t therefore really get into what it’s saying even if the headline is intriguing. I wish I could be back at school, studying science and grokking even the nuances, but it’s like they say: if wishes were food, no one would go hungry.

So the reality is that my paycheck went to rent and fuel and necessities, and there’s less than $40 left to last from now until the mid-month paycheck. I’m not even considering the fact that, thanks to an untimely annual fee I didn’t see coming, I’m overdrawn in my secondary account. I console myself with the fact that at least I still have a job. My thoughts go out to those who have lost theirs, or who are still hanging on—after months, now—to some paltry unemployment check while they try to find work like the end of one particular thread in a ginormous bale of knotted strings. I don’t know what we’d do if I lost my job. As precariously perched as we are on the fence between emergent poverty on one side and safety on the other, the idea of being out of work is harrowing and stomach churning. Which is not to say that I am unaware that I am still living better than most people in the world, or that it is not without irony that I am sitting here with a MacBook and writing this post for my personal blog while science-oriented emails sit in my in-box as my partner of eight years sleeps beside me and our boy attends to schoolwork at his school. I mean, I may be worried about putting gas in it, but I have a decent car sitting out there.

So I’m in the strange position of being both under the sword of Damocles and grateful for my riches, wondering simultaneously how I’m going to parcel out my meager funds and what book I’m going to read next. This is, doubtless, a modern problem, the fruit of great wealth floating the boat of the nation like some huge swell so that even the poorest people often have cell phones even as they call a plastic tarp shelter a “godsend”.

And but so I’m thinking that I should probably re-read one of my Walter Kaufmann books, but maybe secondarily to one of the other books I’ve got that I’ve never read and have on my list. Reading takes me away from contemplating my pecuniary troubles while also serving to educate me further or enhance my understanding of the world. I prize anything that will better me, because it’s a worthwhile and never-ending goal that requires constant effort. And let us be clear here what I mean when I say that I want to better myself. I see bettering myself as one sure way to be better for others. I want to better myself so that I am better able to interface with the world, which is, for me, mainly made up of other people and their connections to others and possibly me. Actually, I find all this to be ethically necessitated by the social contract [see here and here; do not overlook Pateman's and Mills' invaluable critiques].

Ah… Well, the groundskeepers are here now. Leaf blowers and string trimmers are furiously abuzz and aggressively a-whine. My partner has pulled a pillow over her head. The tea kettle was heard recently to whistle downstairs. The day’s active phase is ramping up. But as for me, I’m already wanting to get back to the earlier quiet. A day off should have plenty of quiet, even if it’s not possible to keep the chatter down in the brain’s thought pool.

Category: Musings, Personal, Society and Culture  | Tags: , , ,  | Comments
Tree of Æons
Sunday, April 12th, 2009 | Author: Moody

Living Tree of Evolution

Living Tree of Evolution

From so humble a beginning as the blind dance of chemicals may represent, from out of the depths of unconscious ages in life’s Ultima Thule, the Tree of Life arose from the primordial chaos, sui generis, to grow through countless ages, to diversify its fruits, to send tendrils of spiral DNA, winding and raveling, into every niche, every nook and cranny of exploitable space, to thrive even in the face of massive threats to its very existence, to return from setbacks on scales that in their enormity beggar the imagination, to reach in its endless adaptations this age, this milestone, where we—but a part of its neverending, ever wending growth—may gaze upon it and perceive, however dimly, the ground from whence it rose up, while still not finished, and as yet remaining all but blind to the future of its existence.

Let us contemplate today the beauty of the natural world that we have the privilege of experiencing. Let us meditate upon it and consider the experience of living.

I recently read Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the book that transformed the life sciences for all time, and was struck by the beautiful simplicity of the work. Although we have moved well beyond Darwin’s understanding, in doing so we have in fact only refined what he envisioned; he saw truly and incontrovertibly the unshakable basis of how life evolves on our planet. In our refining we have expanded our knowledge of the Tree of Life, and in expanding our knowledge we have deepened our understanding of life itself. The mysteries of life yield, but in their yielding they teach us to love life even more. The science of evolution, and the fruit of the life sciences generally, has only become sweeter and more nourishing since Darwin’s time. We have learned that we are part of a whole undergoing a process that seems inherent in the fabric of existence. It is a process with no ultimate, crowning achievement.

Certainly though, among the particulars of its myriad manifestations, consciousness may be seen as a crowning glory. For without consciousness there is nothing.

So, let us today contemplate and meditate upon what it means to be conscious of the Tree of Life as it grows here on earth within the effectively immeasurable space of the universe. I went outside and sat in a lawn chair and gazed out at the blue sky with its diffuse clouds, and I imagined that my sight could penetrate the veil of the visible sky and see into the universe beyond it. I recalled in my imagination that in the tiniest patch of that sky there exist thousands of galaxies, each with billions of stars, and that amongst those stars there are countless planets. Some percentage of those planets will be suited to life, and it is certain that that life will also be evolving in some unique yet ultimately comprehensible manner. Such life as exists in the universe will forever be closed to me, but this is not a loss. What life I know is ample and rich, nearly endless in its expressions. Like infinity in an inch, there is more than enough to take my mind off the miles. So today I think about how the life right here on our little world has come to be.

Today I reclaim the most robust and enduring story: ours, the world’s, life’s story; grounded in real history, truly epic and mind-blowing, yet accessible to us in our conscious grasp of existence. I know of nothing greater or more wonderful.

Recommended viewing: Evolution is REAL Science #1.

Category: Evolution, Musings, Science  | Tags: ,  | Comments
The Hazards of Confronting Believers
Sunday, April 05th, 2009 | Author: Moody

One of the most difficult positions held by atheists—a de facto position following of course from the main proposition of atheism—is that there is no divine aid or comfort to be looked for in difficult times. Religious people are fond of saying that they are “carried through the hard times” by their beliefs, by their deity. They say, over and over, that they don’t know how they’d cope if it wasn’t for “God” being there for them. Some of their stories are quite moving, emotionally and psychologically. That there is not a shred of evidence in them, or despite the fact that they are talking about their own actions based on what they believe and not on any demonstrable intervention on the part of said deity, seems lost to them. Their belief is tantamount to proof for them because they sincerely feel that it is what led to their successfully navigating some difficulty or surviving some hardship. It is difficult to argue with this position.

When an atheist says to a believer that there is no “God”, she or he is saying to the believer that there is no help for life’s worst times, that the person is on his or her own. It is something like a psycho-social replay of the scene in Bambi when Bambi’s father looms over the young deer and says, “Your mother can’t be with you anymore”. Of course, in the movie the young Bambi has no choice but to accept this and then deal, without support, with all that follows. In real life, the believer is under no such obligation to accept what the atheist is saying. The atheist is simply and immediately cast in the role of “Bad Person” or “Mistaken Person”, and the believer distances him or herself in at least a psychological way.

I feel a certain amount of distress over this. more…

Category: Atheism, Ethics, Religion/Spirituality, Society and Culture  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
Where’s the line?
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | Author: Moody

There are bound to be casualties on both sides in the culture wars.  Try as we might to be considerate to those whose feelings and opinions matter to us, we are bound to run into some difficulty that either hurts them or us. If we speak our minds to persons close to us whose position radically differs from ours, we risk making them feel diminishing and alienating them. If we keep our mouths shut and keep our ideas private, we risk feeling passively diminished and alienated.

Ideally, we’d like to be able to be who we are and know that those close to us will accept us. This is especially the wish where family members are concerned. It’s also the type of relationship most likely to expose us to one of the most unfortunate sides of the culture wars. It is the place in our lives where we will probably have to draw strictly defined lines in order to save ourselves and those we care about from long-lasting wounds.

Of course it’s not the only place we will find ourselves drawing such lines. Other relationships (professional or casual) will require us to do so for the sake of civility. But I am mostly concerned here with close interpersonal relationships, especially familial ones, because these are really thorny and fraught with danger.

more…

Category: Atheism, Ethics, Personal, Religion/Spirituality, Society and Culture  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
What if… I believed?
Sunday, March 15th, 2009 | Author: Moody

Every now and again I get a wistful feeling when I hear someone talking about how satisfying her or his spiritual beliefs are. Such people are often very sincere, I know; when you have a belief, it feels like certain knowledge. So the heartfelt expression of their words is filled with that sense of “real” immanence that looks like bliss. I am not above being moved by the sincerity of others. But I am also aware that this sincerity is no measure of reality or factual truth.

Artist Anthropic Interpretation of God

Artist's Anthropic Interpretation of 'God'

A child can very sincerely pray to Santa Claus to give them some special, achingly desired gift. His or her belief in Santa Claus is utterly genuine, and the faith that Santa will hear his or her prayer is absolute. But we know that there is no fat, jolly, white-bearded old man with apple cheeks and a twinkle always in his eye. We know that it’s us, the adults, the parents, who will provide whatever gifts we can reasonably provide.

Yet there is something so moving about a child’s sincerity. Their mistaken belief (that there is a Santa) can lead us to long for the days when we (if ever we) believed in that benevolent, altruistic old man. It is of course akin to the belief in Providence, under whatever name we choose or grew up with. I hear people talk about how their “relationship” with their deity fulfills them, nurtures them, makes their lives better, makes them better as people and sees them through the hard times. And how could one not want that?

If I believed, though, my world would have to be totally different. You cannot un-see the things you’ve seen; cannot unlearn your life’s education by experience. If I believed, I would have to be someone else. And the thing is, I used to be someone else. I used to believe. I was brought up in a basically Catholic household and, like most children, I accepted things my parents told me were just simply true. I asked the kinds of questions kids ask, and I got the kinds of answers kids get, including the “Well, son, God works in ways we don’t always understand” type of answer. And this might have been enough to keep me keeping on with my family’s religion. To paraphrase what the Bard wrote: I could have been bounded in a nutshell, and counted myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I had bad dreams. Those bad dreams were not just dreams, of course; they were bad experiences that shook my whole little world to the core and broke its foundations.

For some people, this is exactly what brings them to a religion. If I believed, I’d cite those horrors as being high among my reasons for my belief. Really, though, those horrible experiences were simply what unmoored me and set me adrift. I can point to them now and say that they are, collectively, the straw that broke the camel’s back, but the things that led to my atheism were spread out over a much longer period and perhaps were rooted in the days before so many terrible experiences had come to pass.

If I believed now, it would have to be in an entirely unfathomable deity beyond any hope of interaction. If I believed now, I would no more accept Jesus than I would Vishnu or Mithras or Mohamed. If I believed now, I might actually hold all the New Age stuff in even more contempt.

Those wistful feelings I have… I understand them in myself. It is not that being an atheist is somehow inherently lonely. Atheists have the same world believers have. Atheists have families and friends and social lives just like anybody else. What atheists lack is a delusional, childlike buffer against the realities of the world. And sometimes it feels like that’s a real loss. When someone else can take up a rosary or join hands with their friends and pray that things get better, I can only look on and shake my head. Only action in this world gets results. As has been demonstrated time and again, prayer has no effect whatsoever on the odds, the statistics, the real world outcomes of events. There is no Santa Claus.

Augustine with his mother, Monica

Augustine with his mother, Monica

Tertullian

Tertullian

If I believed, my beliefs would have to take the real world into consideration. My deity would hear no prayers. My deity would be essentially amoral and unconcerned with what we do. My deity would be beyond good and evil. My deity would effectively act (if that word could be considered applicable) as if it didn’t exist at all. But I don’t believe. Nor am I a fool. There is no reason to believe in that which effectively doesn’t exist. Let the Tertullians of the world say, “Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est“. Let the Augustines practice their rhetoric. And let them leave me in peace. I have put away childish things, and I have turned away the “innocent” comfort and the tortured apologia.

Sometimes I suffer a wistful feeling, and that’s only natural. Life is unapologetically difficult sometimes, just as it is beautiful at others times without asking for credit.

Category: Atheism, Personal, Religion/Spirituality  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
Humanitarium
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 | Author: Moody

hu•man•i•tar•i•um noun 1a. a place in which the whole of our humanity may be viewed in a loving and compassionate manner. 1b. humanity as so viewed: with feelings of love he beheld all lives as one humanitarium.

Life is a Garden as Galaxies are Flowers

Life is a Garden as Galaxies are Flowers

One removes one’s shoes before entering, for here no artificial sole shall tread. The bare feet shall feel only the grass, the dirt, the concrete, the hard scrabble, the sand, the asphalt; the bare feet shall feel only the world as it is upon entering. Once inside, there are couches to recline on, so that one may gaze up and around at the space above. It is empty space, at first. This is important.

It’s important because one must be reminded that first there was nothing, nothingness, not-even-nothing. This emptiness represents (re-presents) the unconsciousness that came before life found conscious awareness.

The first sign of anything is a vague blur of darkness moving in darkness. Images flicker in near-infrared across the void, hardly to be perceived, more to be felt, groped at by the mind as it attempts to make sense of what it feels it’s almost seeing. There is a dim perception, a half-notion, that the movement is becoming more purposeful. Geometric structures seem to float by, losing themselves in clouds of obscurity before leaving a solid impression.

But slowly, steadily, points of light become known. One is thrilled by them, welcomes them, wants them to grow brighter, feels lighter as they slowly do just that. And as they do, they take on patterns. Or, rather, the mind begins to connect the dots, begins to see structure and form develop out of their initially haphazard appearances.

These structures are familiar to us nowadays. They are galaxies, galaxy clusters, nebulae and nurseries. Yet they are not these things. They are human beings seen from a far enough remove that seldom can an individual be made out. They are societies, peoples, tribes and kingdoms and countries.

They are beautiful.

But as this universe of humanity evolves there are scenes that also give fright. Stellar conflagrations on a massive scale: galaxies colliding with galaxies; great stars bursting and disappearing; waves of stars fading almost as soon as they have thrown their first light. Unlike the universe above, the human universe is more chaotic and events move more quickly. Also, all human stars or the remains of human stars eventually make their way to the center of the human universe. For there resides the great annihilator. All that is born is destined to eventually arrive there and disappear down the insatiable throat of the supermassive black hole: death. That is our end.

But it is known that no information can be destroyed. And as any one is pulled inexorably into the final spiral of existence, there is that which escapes (for however long, no one knows). Memories, letters, books, artwork, photographs, music, histories; we see them shed into the greater universe. There is always that which remains. And from those whose brilliance shone for a time, brighter than a billion others, others seem to gain in brightness.

One gazes at these scenes and is filled with wonder. Where terrible struggles, endured and perdured, seem in their gravity to be ineluctable tragedies beyond hope of any good outcome, yet there comes afterward a time of new building, new structuring, new activity. One sees that humanity goes on.

All that space in which humanity’s light stands out… How could it be that we would mistake it for naught? Bounded by laws yet almost boundless in potential… How could it be that we would think it pointless? As we gaze up and around at the great stage of human existence, see how we struggled into light and see how we struggle to stay alight, we see another facet of our own, personal, existence. In the dim, unknowable past there was a moment when first some ancestor of ours realized, for the very first time, that she or he existed. That sense was the most profound happening, surely. One can imagine her looking down at her own hands and flexing her fingers, turning her palm up, turning her palm down, and processing the realization that there she was, herself, alive.

In the humanitarium, these romantic thoughts may bear real fruit. Life is a struggle for existence. Life is so brief. Yet it is replete with possibilities to realize that it all matters, as much as we can make it matter. And to realize this for oneself is, in any healthy mind, the harbinger of that clarion call to help others toward that same realization. (How could one sleep unaware, child of the mountains or no?) What need must be fulfilled for us to admit that in our short lives there is nothing better or more important than bettering life for all—that it is the most worthy goal? Just look at all those stars! Look at us. See that, even rounded with a sleep, it is a beautiful pageant. Even in its sadness and tragedy, its foolishness and failures, there is an enduring, perduring, center of meaning that each successive generation lends its voices to for good or ill. Something so remarkable, so astounding as the fact that we are alive and able to see ourselves and this universe… How could I not want with all of me to give my joy to others?

And after one has arisen and walked back along the way, put back on one’s shoes and listened to the near-silent click of the doors as they close, it often occurs to one that there is no way (and no desire) to look at humanity the same way again. We are all a part of a dance that transcends us and makes us. When we are gone, it will be done, save that it likely would be carried on elsewhere by some others we know not. But there is only one humanity, and we are it.

It’s true that the analogy only goes so far, but as far as it goes it’s a good one for me. What do you think?

Category: Humanism, Musings, Personal  | Tags: , ,  | Comments
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