Showing posts with label contemplative. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contemplative. Show all posts
12.02.2008
Imagining the Tenth Dimension: A New Way of Thinking about Time and Space
Reality, today's physicists tell us, is created by the vibrations of exquisitely tiny superstrings in ten spatial dimensions. Ten dimensions? Most of us have barely gotten used to the idea that there are four. Using simple geometry and an easygoing writing style, author Rob Bryanton starts with the lower dimensions that we are all familiar with, then uses those concepts to build one layer upon another, ultimately arriving at a way of imagining the tenth dimension.
Imagining the Tenth Dimension Site
Imagining the Tenth Dimension Site
The Story Of Stuff
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
Watch The Story Of Stuff Here
Why Do We Forget Things?
One of the most powerful tools of the human mind is our memory. It is the ultimate teacher within. Learning from our own mistakes is one of the most basic forms of education. A young child gets too close to a stove and burns his hand; he commits it to memory to stay away from a hot stove. But why do we remember certain events and forget others, even if they seem just as important? The ability to remember is a critical tool of survival. We need to remember. The question is: how can we unlock our minds and remember more accurately? The answer is a child-like imagination.
The key to recall is organization. The use of mnemonic techniques helps us to organize our thoughts and file them in logical places within our memory warehouse. As was mentioned earlier, the answer to unlocking our minds and our memories is a child-like imagination. Using vivid visual imagery, we associate words in a series of ridiculous scenarios within our mind's eye. The result is a memory that is organized and methodical. The more we practice these techniques, the more they become second nature to us. The brain is an enormous resource of potential energy. The problem is that most of us don't know how to maximize this potential.
The Wisdom of the Heart from the 14th Dalai Lama
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual and exiled leader of the Tibetan people. Born in northeastern Tibet, he was recognized at the age of 2 as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama. After the suppression of the Tibetan national uprising in 1959, His Holiness escaped to India where he was given political asylum. Dalai Lama is a Mongolian title, which means "Ocean of Wisdom". "Dalai" means "ocean" in Mongolian, and "Lama" (bla ma) is the Tibetan equivalent of the Sanskrit word "guru", and is commonly translated to mean "spiritual teacher". He seems like a pretty awesome dude. Here's some of his wisdom in the form of ten things to remember:
1. Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
2. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
3. Sleep is the best meditation.
4. Spend some time alone every day.
5. We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.
6. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
7. We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human
affection.
8. Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.
9. If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.
10. The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
Wikipedia.com
11.24.2008
8.28.2008
I think I believe in change
I believe in change. I mean…I think I believe in change. As a sentence, it looks so alone. But as I grow up and possibly decide to become a slightly better writer, that sentence could come out as "I trust my belief in the idea of customary evolution." Now, if I drop out of college, and party all of my brain cells to death like innumerable other students at my old school then it may turn out to be a prolonged, beautiful…belch.
Some people retort to my belief that "people don't change, situations do," but I don't think I believe that. As long as we have a problem with ourselves, we will try and change it. From a minor change of thought to a major change of life, we are always subconsciously correcting our problems. I didn't want to be the expelled thirty year old who ended up living with his parents for the rest of his life, because he directly insulted the principal and my friends don't always have to cater to my needs for me to be in a good mood. I just didn't know it, until today. You cannot force and detect change while it's in the process. It happens and it happens a lot.
And, I am a person who's changed a lot. From new situations and new people come new problems. With new problems, comes the need for change. A year ago, the sentence would've been ridden with spelling errors and wouldn't be my actual thoughts – it would be made hastily - to try and please the people I thought were "cool." And, now, slightly more mature and less careless, and at a crossroad of uncertainty such as one many teens are at, the sentence is simply, "I think I believe in change." This, I think I believe.
Some people retort to my belief that "people don't change, situations do," but I don't think I believe that. As long as we have a problem with ourselves, we will try and change it. From a minor change of thought to a major change of life, we are always subconsciously correcting our problems. I didn't want to be the expelled thirty year old who ended up living with his parents for the rest of his life, because he directly insulted the principal and my friends don't always have to cater to my needs for me to be in a good mood. I just didn't know it, until today. You cannot force and detect change while it's in the process. It happens and it happens a lot.
And, I am a person who's changed a lot. From new situations and new people come new problems. With new problems, comes the need for change. A year ago, the sentence would've been ridden with spelling errors and wouldn't be my actual thoughts – it would be made hastily - to try and please the people I thought were "cool." And, now, slightly more mature and less careless, and at a crossroad of uncertainty such as one many teens are at, the sentence is simply, "I think I believe in change." This, I think I believe.
8.27.2008
More proof that guys and girls think totally different when it comes to communication
Current mood: fascinated
Really interesting article about the communication between guys and girls by a linguistics expert:
"Can't We Talk?" (condensed from: You Just Don't Understand)
by Deborah Tannen
A married couple was in a car when the wife turned to her husband and asked, "Would you like to stop for a coffee?"
"No, thanks," he answered truthfully. So they didn't stop.
The result? The wife, who had indeed wanted to stop, became annoyed because she felt her preference had not been considered. The husband, seeing his wife was angry, became frustrated. Why didn't she just say what she wanted?
Unfortunately, he failed to see that his wife was asking the question not to get an instant decision, but to begin a negotiation. And the woman didn't realize that when her husband said no, he was just expressing his preference, not making a ruling. When a man and woman interpret the same interchange in such conflicting ways, it's no wonder they can find themselves leveling angry charges of selfishness and obstinacy at each other.
As a specialist in linguistics, I have studied how the conversational styles of men and women differ. We cannot lump all men or all women into fixed categories. But the seemingly senseless misunderstandings that haunt our relationships can in part be explained by the different conversational rules by which men and women play.
Whenever I write or speak about this subject, people tell me they are relieved to learn that what has caused them trouble - and what they had previously ascribed to personal failings - is, in fact, very common.
Learning about the different though equally valid conversational frequencies men and women are tuned to can help banish the blame and help us truly talk to one another. Here are some of the most common areas of conflict:
Status vs. Support.
Men grow up in a world in which a conversation is often a contest, either to achieve the upper hand or to prevent other people from pushing them around. For women, however, talking is often a way to exchange confirmation and support.
I saw this when my husband and I had jobs in different cities. People frequently made comments like, "That must be rough," and "How do you stand it?" I accepted their sympathy and sometimes even reinforced it, saying, "The worst part is having to pack and unpack al the time."
But my husband often reacted with irritation. Our situation had advantages, he would explain. As academics, we had four-day weekends together, as well as long vacations throughout the year and four months in the summer.
Everything he said was true, but I didn't understand why he chose to say it. He told me that some of the comments implied: "Yours is not a real marriage. I am superior to you because my wife and I have avoided your misfortune." Until then it had not occurred to me there might be an element of one- upmanship.
I now see that my husband was simply approaching the world as many men do: as a place where people try to achieve and maintain status. I, on the other hand, was approaching the world as many women do: as a network of connections seeking support and consensus.
Independence vs. Intimacy.
Since women often think in terms of closeness and support, they struggle to preserve intimacy. Men, concerned with status, tend to focus more on independence. These traits can lead women and men to starkly different views of the same situation.
When Josh's old high-school friend called him at work to say he'd be in town, Josh invited him to stay for the weekend. That evening he told Linda they were having a house guest.
Linda was upset. How could Josh make these plans without discussing them with her beforehand? She would never do that to him. "Why don't you tell your friend you have to check with your wife?" she asked.
Josh replied, "I can't tell my friend, 'I have to ask my wife for permission'!"
To Josh, checking with his wife would mean he was not free to act on his own. It would make him feel like a child or an underling. But Linda actually enjoys telling someone, "I have to check with Josh." It makes her feel good to show that her life is intertwined with her husband's.
Advice vs. Understanding.
Eve had a benign lump removed from her breast. When she confided to her husband, Mark, that she was distressed because the stitches changed the contour of her breast, he answered, "You can always have plastic surgery."
This comment bothered her. "I'm sorry you don't like the way it looks," she protested. "But I'm not having any more surgery!"
Mark was hurt and puzzled. "I don't care about a scar," he replied. "It doesn't bother me at all."
"Then why are you telling me to have plastic surgery?" she asked.
"Because you were upset about the way it looks."
Eve felt like a heel. Mark had been wonderfully supportive throughout her surgery. How could she snap at him now?
The problem stemmed from a difference in approach. To many men a complaint is a challenge to come up with a solution. Mark thought he was reassuring Eve by telling her there was something she could do about her scar. But often women are looking for emotional support, not solutions.
When my mother tells my father she doesn't feel well, he invariably offers to take her to the doctor. Invariably, she is disappointed with his reaction. Like many men, he is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.
Information vs. Feelings.
A cartoon shows a husband opening a newspaper and asking his wife, "Is there anything you'd like to say to me before I start reading the paper?" We know there isn't - but that as soon as the man begins reading, his wife will think of something.
The cartoon is funny because people recognize their own experience in it. What's not funny is that many women are hurt when men don't talk to them at home, and many men are frustrated when they disappoint their partners without knowing why.
Rebecca, who is happily married, told me this is a source of dissatisfaction with her husband, Stuart. When she tells him what she is thinking, he listens silently. When she asks him what is on his mind, he says, "Nothing."
All Rebecca's life she has had practice in verbalizing her feelings with friends and relatives. But Stuart has had practice in keeping his innermost thoughts to himself. To him, like most men, talk is information. He doesn't feel that talk is required at home.
Yet many such men hold center stage in a social setting, telling jokes and stories. They use conversation to claim attention and to entertain. Women can wind up hurt that their husbands tell relative strangers things they have not told them.
To avoid this kind of misunderstanding, both men and women can make adjustments. A woman may observe a man's desire to read the paper without seeing it is a rejection. And a man can understand a woman's desire to talk without feeling it is a manipulative intrusion.
Orders vs. Proposals.
Diana often begins statements with "Let's." She might say "Let's park over there" or "Let's clean up now, before lunch."
This makes Nathan angry. He has deciphered Diana's "Let's" as a command. Like most men, he resists being told what to do. But to Diana, she is making suggestions, not demands. Like most women, she formulates her requests as proposals rather than orders. Her style of talking is a way of getting others to do what she wants - but by winning agreement first.
With certain men, like Nathan, this tactic backfires. If they perceive someone is trying to get them to do something indirectly, they feel manipulated and respond more resentfully than they would to a straightforward request.
Conflict vs. Compromise.
In trying to prevent fights, some women refuse to oppose the will of others openly. But sometimes it's far more effective for a woman to assert herself, even at the risk of conflict.
Dora was frustrated by a series of used cars she drove. It was she who commuted to work, but her husband, Hank, who chose the cars. Hank always went for cars that were "interesting" but in continual need of repair.
After Dora was nearly killed when her brakes failed, they were in the market for yet another used car. Dora wanted to buy a late-model sedan from a friend. Hank fixed his sights on a 15-year-old sports car. She tried to persuade Hank that it made more sense to buy the boring but dependable car, but he would not be swayed.
Previously she would have acceded to his wishes. This time Dora bought the boring but dependable car and steeled herself for Hanks' anger. To her amazement, he spoke not a word of remonstrance. When she later told him what she had expected, he scoffed at her fears and said she should have done what she wanted from the start if she felt that strongly about it.
As Dora discovered, a little conflict won't kill you. At the same time, men who habitually oppose others can adjust their style to opt for less confrontation.
When we don't see style differences for what they are, we sometimes draw unfair conclusions: "You're illogical," "You're self- centered," "You don't care about me." But once we grasp the two characteristic approaches, we stand a better chance of preventing disagreements from spiraling out of control.
Learning the other's ways of talking is a leap across the communication gap between men and women, and a giant step towards genuine understanding.
Really interesting article about the communication between guys and girls by a linguistics expert:
"Can't We Talk?" (condensed from: You Just Don't Understand)
by Deborah Tannen
A married couple was in a car when the wife turned to her husband and asked, "Would you like to stop for a coffee?"
"No, thanks," he answered truthfully. So they didn't stop.
The result? The wife, who had indeed wanted to stop, became annoyed because she felt her preference had not been considered. The husband, seeing his wife was angry, became frustrated. Why didn't she just say what she wanted?
Unfortunately, he failed to see that his wife was asking the question not to get an instant decision, but to begin a negotiation. And the woman didn't realize that when her husband said no, he was just expressing his preference, not making a ruling. When a man and woman interpret the same interchange in such conflicting ways, it's no wonder they can find themselves leveling angry charges of selfishness and obstinacy at each other.
As a specialist in linguistics, I have studied how the conversational styles of men and women differ. We cannot lump all men or all women into fixed categories. But the seemingly senseless misunderstandings that haunt our relationships can in part be explained by the different conversational rules by which men and women play.
Whenever I write or speak about this subject, people tell me they are relieved to learn that what has caused them trouble - and what they had previously ascribed to personal failings - is, in fact, very common.
Learning about the different though equally valid conversational frequencies men and women are tuned to can help banish the blame and help us truly talk to one another. Here are some of the most common areas of conflict:
Status vs. Support.
Men grow up in a world in which a conversation is often a contest, either to achieve the upper hand or to prevent other people from pushing them around. For women, however, talking is often a way to exchange confirmation and support.
I saw this when my husband and I had jobs in different cities. People frequently made comments like, "That must be rough," and "How do you stand it?" I accepted their sympathy and sometimes even reinforced it, saying, "The worst part is having to pack and unpack al the time."
But my husband often reacted with irritation. Our situation had advantages, he would explain. As academics, we had four-day weekends together, as well as long vacations throughout the year and four months in the summer.
Everything he said was true, but I didn't understand why he chose to say it. He told me that some of the comments implied: "Yours is not a real marriage. I am superior to you because my wife and I have avoided your misfortune." Until then it had not occurred to me there might be an element of one- upmanship.
I now see that my husband was simply approaching the world as many men do: as a place where people try to achieve and maintain status. I, on the other hand, was approaching the world as many women do: as a network of connections seeking support and consensus.
Independence vs. Intimacy.
Since women often think in terms of closeness and support, they struggle to preserve intimacy. Men, concerned with status, tend to focus more on independence. These traits can lead women and men to starkly different views of the same situation.
When Josh's old high-school friend called him at work to say he'd be in town, Josh invited him to stay for the weekend. That evening he told Linda they were having a house guest.
Linda was upset. How could Josh make these plans without discussing them with her beforehand? She would never do that to him. "Why don't you tell your friend you have to check with your wife?" she asked.
Josh replied, "I can't tell my friend, 'I have to ask my wife for permission'!"
To Josh, checking with his wife would mean he was not free to act on his own. It would make him feel like a child or an underling. But Linda actually enjoys telling someone, "I have to check with Josh." It makes her feel good to show that her life is intertwined with her husband's.
Advice vs. Understanding.
Eve had a benign lump removed from her breast. When she confided to her husband, Mark, that she was distressed because the stitches changed the contour of her breast, he answered, "You can always have plastic surgery."
This comment bothered her. "I'm sorry you don't like the way it looks," she protested. "But I'm not having any more surgery!"
Mark was hurt and puzzled. "I don't care about a scar," he replied. "It doesn't bother me at all."
"Then why are you telling me to have plastic surgery?" she asked.
"Because you were upset about the way it looks."
Eve felt like a heel. Mark had been wonderfully supportive throughout her surgery. How could she snap at him now?
The problem stemmed from a difference in approach. To many men a complaint is a challenge to come up with a solution. Mark thought he was reassuring Eve by telling her there was something she could do about her scar. But often women are looking for emotional support, not solutions.
When my mother tells my father she doesn't feel well, he invariably offers to take her to the doctor. Invariably, she is disappointed with his reaction. Like many men, he is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.
Information vs. Feelings.
A cartoon shows a husband opening a newspaper and asking his wife, "Is there anything you'd like to say to me before I start reading the paper?" We know there isn't - but that as soon as the man begins reading, his wife will think of something.
The cartoon is funny because people recognize their own experience in it. What's not funny is that many women are hurt when men don't talk to them at home, and many men are frustrated when they disappoint their partners without knowing why.
Rebecca, who is happily married, told me this is a source of dissatisfaction with her husband, Stuart. When she tells him what she is thinking, he listens silently. When she asks him what is on his mind, he says, "Nothing."
All Rebecca's life she has had practice in verbalizing her feelings with friends and relatives. But Stuart has had practice in keeping his innermost thoughts to himself. To him, like most men, talk is information. He doesn't feel that talk is required at home.
Yet many such men hold center stage in a social setting, telling jokes and stories. They use conversation to claim attention and to entertain. Women can wind up hurt that their husbands tell relative strangers things they have not told them.
To avoid this kind of misunderstanding, both men and women can make adjustments. A woman may observe a man's desire to read the paper without seeing it is a rejection. And a man can understand a woman's desire to talk without feeling it is a manipulative intrusion.
Orders vs. Proposals.
Diana often begins statements with "Let's." She might say "Let's park over there" or "Let's clean up now, before lunch."
This makes Nathan angry. He has deciphered Diana's "Let's" as a command. Like most men, he resists being told what to do. But to Diana, she is making suggestions, not demands. Like most women, she formulates her requests as proposals rather than orders. Her style of talking is a way of getting others to do what she wants - but by winning agreement first.
With certain men, like Nathan, this tactic backfires. If they perceive someone is trying to get them to do something indirectly, they feel manipulated and respond more resentfully than they would to a straightforward request.
Conflict vs. Compromise.
In trying to prevent fights, some women refuse to oppose the will of others openly. But sometimes it's far more effective for a woman to assert herself, even at the risk of conflict.
Dora was frustrated by a series of used cars she drove. It was she who commuted to work, but her husband, Hank, who chose the cars. Hank always went for cars that were "interesting" but in continual need of repair.
After Dora was nearly killed when her brakes failed, they were in the market for yet another used car. Dora wanted to buy a late-model sedan from a friend. Hank fixed his sights on a 15-year-old sports car. She tried to persuade Hank that it made more sense to buy the boring but dependable car, but he would not be swayed.
Previously she would have acceded to his wishes. This time Dora bought the boring but dependable car and steeled herself for Hanks' anger. To her amazement, he spoke not a word of remonstrance. When she later told him what she had expected, he scoffed at her fears and said she should have done what she wanted from the start if she felt that strongly about it.
As Dora discovered, a little conflict won't kill you. At the same time, men who habitually oppose others can adjust their style to opt for less confrontation.
When we don't see style differences for what they are, we sometimes draw unfair conclusions: "You're illogical," "You're self- centered," "You don't care about me." But once we grasp the two characteristic approaches, we stand a better chance of preventing disagreements from spiraling out of control.
Learning the other's ways of talking is a leap across the communication gap between men and women, and a giant step towards genuine understanding.
8.19.2008
Earth? Environmentalism is all about humankind.
Biofuel laws, recycling, cleanup acts - presumably, environmentalism is all about saving the environment, yes? However, Jamais Cascio of How Can You Save The World offers a different point of view.
The Earth is a hunk of rock. Humans can do very little in endangering its existence, aside from blowing it in half with all our nukes or letting it get swallowed by a black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider.
The Earth cares very little to what we'll do to the environment. Whatever happens, the planet will go on, it will recover, and it will make new life long after we've messed up the environment so much that we can't live in it ourselves.
From that point of view, we can see how environmentalism isn't about the environment - it's about humans. The point of environmentalism is to preserve the current state of the environment, because once it shifts too much, then it's us that's in danger, and not necessarily the Earth.
Basically, that's the whole gist of Cascio's point, which is a sentiment I've long held for myself. So remember to recycle. You're saving the human race. You can read Cascio's entire view on the matter by following the source link below.
[Via How You Can Save The World]
The Earth is a hunk of rock. Humans can do very little in endangering its existence, aside from blowing it in half with all our nukes or letting it get swallowed by a black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider.
The Earth cares very little to what we'll do to the environment. Whatever happens, the planet will go on, it will recover, and it will make new life long after we've messed up the environment so much that we can't live in it ourselves.
From that point of view, we can see how environmentalism isn't about the environment - it's about humans. The point of environmentalism is to preserve the current state of the environment, because once it shifts too much, then it's us that's in danger, and not necessarily the Earth.
Basically, that's the whole gist of Cascio's point, which is a sentiment I've long held for myself. So remember to recycle. You're saving the human race. You can read Cascio's entire view on the matter by following the source link below.
[Via How You Can Save The World]
8.07.2008
What Makes People Tick?
October 2nd, 2007 in Communication, Featured
Four Rules to Understand What Makes People Tick
Breaking down human behavior into rules might seem like a gross simplification. But even with the complexities, it is easy to fall into the same mistakes. I'd argue that many heated fights, lost sales and broken hearts are caused by a few critical errors. If you make the wrong assumptions, you've lost before you begin. By keeping in mind these rules, you can avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Rule One: People Mostly Care About Themselves
People aren't thinking about you. A damaging myth to buy into is believing the amount of time you think of yourself compares to the amount of time others think of you. In reality they are nowhere close. Take a look at this chart:
I've used this example before but I believe it deserves repeating. Take a look at the different slices of this chart. The biggest is the time you spend thinking about yourself. The second is the time spent thinking about relationships, but how they affect you. What does Julie think of me? Will my boss give me a raise or fire me? Do my friends respect me or just tolerate me?
Only a tiny sliver is devoted to empathy. Empathy is the rare occasion where you think through the perspective of another person. When I've discussed these ideas previously, many people argue I'm being far too generous with my chart. In reality that sliver is probably even smaller.
This means that you occupy only a tiny percentage of a persons thoughts. Waiting for people to invite you, becoming embarrassed at a minor faux-pas or emphasizing what others think of you come from failing to use this rule. Almost all people are far too self-absorbed to notice.
Rule Two: People are Motivated by Selfish Altruism
To say all behavior is strictly selfish would be misleading. It fails to account for acts of charity, ethics and why people don't just cheat, swindle and lie all the time. Selfish altruism is a broader category that covers why people do nice things as a way to get what they want.
By studying primates, researchers noticed four main categories of selfish altruism. I believe they are the same categories we use, even if slightly more sophisticated:
1. Dominance - Some primates will give help as a way of asserting dominance in the group. It is as if they are saying, "Look at how powerful I am that I can give some of my resources to help you."
2. Reciprocity - You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. The idea is that I do a favor for you with the assumption it will be returned one day. If the cost to me is less than the benefit towards you, I might help you even if I can't predict an immediate payback.
3. Trade - If we both have something the other person wants, we have a reason to interact. While reciprocity is vague on the details of a payback, trade is direct.
4. Familial - It makes sense, from an evolutionary perspective, to help those who might share your genes.
By looking through this lens of selfish altruism, you can better make decisions. Viewing people as completely uncaring or selfish is incomplete. But expecting people to think of you constantly and do nice things for free is dangerous.
Rule Three: People Don't Think Much
I believe we drastically overestimate what we do intentionally. Subconscious patterns, environmental stimulus and programmed reflexes occur frequently, even if we later take credit for them.
The conscious mind is a relatively new addition to the human operating system. And it's been designed to cleverly take credit for a lot of decisions it doesn't really make. If someone asks you to be unbiased in making a decision, it is probably best to just laugh.
The implication of this is that appealing entirely to thoughts won't work. Since a bulk of decision making is made in the background, you need to target that background if you want to be influential. You don't need to be manipulative, just smart enough to recognize that snap judgments mean a lot and your communication is more than just words.
Rule Four: Conformity is the Norm
You become your environment. Uniqueness and individuality tend to warp to fit the people around you. This is true of other people as it is for yourself. It means you should be careful who you pick as friends, partners and colleagues.
This is why I believe it is important to keep a varied social group. When you interact with people from completely different backgrounds, beliefs and behaviors on a regular basis you are more likely to see different perspectives. This also means you have more control in picking who you want to be.
Applying the Four Rules
Here are some applications of these rules you might want to consider:
* What layers are you communicating with? If people are selfish, self-absorbed and fail to think much, just working on the words you use isn't enough. Everything about you is communicating something, and unless you get that message straight, the most persuasive argument won't win anyone over.
* Give reminders. Although some people are meticulously organized, most aren't. Give people the reminders they need so you don't get left out unintentionally.
* What's your social value? This isn't your worth as a person, but what you have to offer in terms of other peoples needs and wants. It is easy to get depressed about human issues, if you don't see the calculations behind it. Improve the value you offer and you can access the selfish altruism in us all.
[Via Four Rules To Understand What Makes People Tick]
Four Rules to Understand What Makes People Tick
Breaking down human behavior into rules might seem like a gross simplification. But even with the complexities, it is easy to fall into the same mistakes. I'd argue that many heated fights, lost sales and broken hearts are caused by a few critical errors. If you make the wrong assumptions, you've lost before you begin. By keeping in mind these rules, you can avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Rule One: People Mostly Care About Themselves
People aren't thinking about you. A damaging myth to buy into is believing the amount of time you think of yourself compares to the amount of time others think of you. In reality they are nowhere close. Take a look at this chart:
I've used this example before but I believe it deserves repeating. Take a look at the different slices of this chart. The biggest is the time you spend thinking about yourself. The second is the time spent thinking about relationships, but how they affect you. What does Julie think of me? Will my boss give me a raise or fire me? Do my friends respect me or just tolerate me?
Only a tiny sliver is devoted to empathy. Empathy is the rare occasion where you think through the perspective of another person. When I've discussed these ideas previously, many people argue I'm being far too generous with my chart. In reality that sliver is probably even smaller.
This means that you occupy only a tiny percentage of a persons thoughts. Waiting for people to invite you, becoming embarrassed at a minor faux-pas or emphasizing what others think of you come from failing to use this rule. Almost all people are far too self-absorbed to notice.
Rule Two: People are Motivated by Selfish Altruism
To say all behavior is strictly selfish would be misleading. It fails to account for acts of charity, ethics and why people don't just cheat, swindle and lie all the time. Selfish altruism is a broader category that covers why people do nice things as a way to get what they want.
By studying primates, researchers noticed four main categories of selfish altruism. I believe they are the same categories we use, even if slightly more sophisticated:
1. Dominance - Some primates will give help as a way of asserting dominance in the group. It is as if they are saying, "Look at how powerful I am that I can give some of my resources to help you."
2. Reciprocity - You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. The idea is that I do a favor for you with the assumption it will be returned one day. If the cost to me is less than the benefit towards you, I might help you even if I can't predict an immediate payback.
3. Trade - If we both have something the other person wants, we have a reason to interact. While reciprocity is vague on the details of a payback, trade is direct.
4. Familial - It makes sense, from an evolutionary perspective, to help those who might share your genes.
By looking through this lens of selfish altruism, you can better make decisions. Viewing people as completely uncaring or selfish is incomplete. But expecting people to think of you constantly and do nice things for free is dangerous.
Rule Three: People Don't Think Much
I believe we drastically overestimate what we do intentionally. Subconscious patterns, environmental stimulus and programmed reflexes occur frequently, even if we later take credit for them.
The conscious mind is a relatively new addition to the human operating system. And it's been designed to cleverly take credit for a lot of decisions it doesn't really make. If someone asks you to be unbiased in making a decision, it is probably best to just laugh.
The implication of this is that appealing entirely to thoughts won't work. Since a bulk of decision making is made in the background, you need to target that background if you want to be influential. You don't need to be manipulative, just smart enough to recognize that snap judgments mean a lot and your communication is more than just words.
Rule Four: Conformity is the Norm
You become your environment. Uniqueness and individuality tend to warp to fit the people around you. This is true of other people as it is for yourself. It means you should be careful who you pick as friends, partners and colleagues.
This is why I believe it is important to keep a varied social group. When you interact with people from completely different backgrounds, beliefs and behaviors on a regular basis you are more likely to see different perspectives. This also means you have more control in picking who you want to be.
Applying the Four Rules
Here are some applications of these rules you might want to consider:
* What layers are you communicating with? If people are selfish, self-absorbed and fail to think much, just working on the words you use isn't enough. Everything about you is communicating something, and unless you get that message straight, the most persuasive argument won't win anyone over.
* Give reminders. Although some people are meticulously organized, most aren't. Give people the reminders they need so you don't get left out unintentionally.
* What's your social value? This isn't your worth as a person, but what you have to offer in terms of other peoples needs and wants. It is easy to get depressed about human issues, if you don't see the calculations behind it. Improve the value you offer and you can access the selfish altruism in us all.
[Via Four Rules To Understand What Makes People Tick]
8.04.2008
Philosophy and maybe the proof of God’s existence?
Can't remember where I read this but its interesting non-the-less.
One of the most far-reaching consequences of the rationalism of the Enlightenment was the undermining of basic Christian faith among the educated classes. The effect was unintended because the project of many Enlightenment philosophers was to prove the existence of God using reason: Descartes and Leibniz assumed that God's existence could be rationally proved, indeed God was a necessary part of their philosophy.
There are many traditional "proofs" for the existence of God, and we will look at three of them: The argument from design, the ontological argument and the cosmological argument.
Traditional "proofs" of God's Existence
1) The argument from Design.
If you found a clock and examined the mechanism within it, you would probably think that this intricate mechanism was not the outcome of mere chance, that it had been designed.
Now look at the universe; is it possible that such an intricate mechanism, from the orbits of planets round the sun to the cells in your fingernails could all have happened by chance? Surely, this enormously complex mechanism has been designed, and the being that designed it must be God.
2) The ontological argument
God is the perfect being. As He is most perfect, He must have all perfections. If God lacked existence He would not be perfect, as He is perfect he must exist.
3) The cosmological argument (God as "First cause")
Everything that exists has a cause. However, there must at some time have been a cause prior to all other causes. This 'prime mover' or first cause is necessary to explain existence. This first cause is God.
Pascal's Wager
The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62) put forward an argument that would appeal to agnostics. (An agnostic is someone who believes that it is impossible to prove God's existence.)
His argument goes something like this: God either exists or he does not. If we believe in God and he exists, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. If we believe in God and he does not exist then at worst all we have forgone is a few sinful pleasures.
If we do not believe in God and he does exist we may enjoy a few sinful pleasures, but we may face eternal damnation. If we do not believe in God and he does not exist then our sins will not be punished.
Would any rational gambler think that the experience of a few sinful pleasures is worth the risk of eternal damnation?
Kant
Kant attempted to show how philosophy could prove the existence of God. Unfortunately, for him his previous work showed that we could not know reality directly as thing-in-itself. What is real in itself is beyond our experience. Even if God exists, we can not know God as he really is.
For Kant the Christian could have faith in God, and this faith would be consonant with reason and the categorical imperative. Given that human beings have the autonomy to create moral values, it would not be irrational to believe in a God who gives purpose to the moral realm.
Hegel
Hegel thought that the God of religion was an intuition of Absolute Spirit or Geist. Hegel's Geist is not like the transcendent (outside of our consciousness) God of traditional Christianity. For Hegel God is immanent and when we have understood that history is the process of Geist coming to know itself it appears that we are all part of Geist, or God.
Feuerbach and Marx
For Feuerbach and Marx religion is seen as the projection of the human essence onto an ideal: God does not make man. Rather "God" is the invention of human consciousness. Marx also sees that religion is part of an ideological view that encourages the oppressed to accept their fate. As he says: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions."
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) agreed with Kant that the existence of God could not be proven by reason. However Kierkegaard did not think that it was rational to believe in God, rather one should have faith in God even if this seems to reason to be absurd. To put it another way reason has no place in faith. God is beyond reason.
Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist.
Nietzsche: The Death of God
"Have you not heard the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly, 'I seek God!, I seek God!' ... Why, did he get lost? Said one. Did he lose his way like a child? Said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Or emigrated?... The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"'Whither is God'? He cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers...'"
"...the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they to were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. 'I came too early,' he said then; 'my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering -it has not yet reached the ears of man."
In these passages Nietzsche is showing the inevitable unfolding anthropocentrism (lit. putting man at the centre of the world) implicit in philosophy since Kant. If we view our existence through human categories, then our concept of God is itself a human creation.
Nietzsche is not simply asserting his atheism; he is suggesting that once we are aware that the concept of God is our own creation we can no longer base our religious and moral beliefs on any notion of a divine external reality.
In the period that Nietzsche was writing, the death of God was just beginning. Western thought was starting to face the prospect of a radical change in its orientation, and it wasn't quite ready to own up to it yet.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche represent opposite reactions to the inability of rationality to give a rock solid theoretical proof of God's existence. Kierkegaard calls for us to embrace God even if it seems an absurdity, while Nietzsche says it is time for us to create a new mode of being, with human creativity at its centre.
The atheist existentialist Sartre accepted God's death and much of his writing is attempt to look at the human condition in a world that is without a prime mover who could have provided a basis and structure for the understanding of being.
The twentieth century
Anglo American analytic philosophers of the twentieth century have tended to agree that philosophy may help us clarify religious concepts, without giving us a secure foundation for religious belief.
Many people claim to have had a religious experience, to have experienced the divine directly. This experience is direct and is of a different quality to sensory experience or intellectual discovery, and therefore outside of the scope of philosophy.
The view that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved by philosophy has not stopped developments in modern theology. Theologians are attempting to balance the anthropocentric view of God presented by philosophers since the Enlightenment with the need to provide a spiritual path and a guide to an ethical and meaningful way of life.
One of the most far-reaching consequences of the rationalism of the Enlightenment was the undermining of basic Christian faith among the educated classes. The effect was unintended because the project of many Enlightenment philosophers was to prove the existence of God using reason: Descartes and Leibniz assumed that God's existence could be rationally proved, indeed God was a necessary part of their philosophy.
There are many traditional "proofs" for the existence of God, and we will look at three of them: The argument from design, the ontological argument and the cosmological argument.
Traditional "proofs" of God's Existence
1) The argument from Design.
If you found a clock and examined the mechanism within it, you would probably think that this intricate mechanism was not the outcome of mere chance, that it had been designed.
Now look at the universe; is it possible that such an intricate mechanism, from the orbits of planets round the sun to the cells in your fingernails could all have happened by chance? Surely, this enormously complex mechanism has been designed, and the being that designed it must be God.
2) The ontological argument
God is the perfect being. As He is most perfect, He must have all perfections. If God lacked existence He would not be perfect, as He is perfect he must exist.
3) The cosmological argument (God as "First cause")
Everything that exists has a cause. However, there must at some time have been a cause prior to all other causes. This 'prime mover' or first cause is necessary to explain existence. This first cause is God.
Pascal's Wager
The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62) put forward an argument that would appeal to agnostics. (An agnostic is someone who believes that it is impossible to prove God's existence.)
His argument goes something like this: God either exists or he does not. If we believe in God and he exists, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. If we believe in God and he does not exist then at worst all we have forgone is a few sinful pleasures.
If we do not believe in God and he does exist we may enjoy a few sinful pleasures, but we may face eternal damnation. If we do not believe in God and he does not exist then our sins will not be punished.
Would any rational gambler think that the experience of a few sinful pleasures is worth the risk of eternal damnation?
Kant
Kant attempted to show how philosophy could prove the existence of God. Unfortunately, for him his previous work showed that we could not know reality directly as thing-in-itself. What is real in itself is beyond our experience. Even if God exists, we can not know God as he really is.
For Kant the Christian could have faith in God, and this faith would be consonant with reason and the categorical imperative. Given that human beings have the autonomy to create moral values, it would not be irrational to believe in a God who gives purpose to the moral realm.
Hegel
Hegel thought that the God of religion was an intuition of Absolute Spirit or Geist. Hegel's Geist is not like the transcendent (outside of our consciousness) God of traditional Christianity. For Hegel God is immanent and when we have understood that history is the process of Geist coming to know itself it appears that we are all part of Geist, or God.
Feuerbach and Marx
For Feuerbach and Marx religion is seen as the projection of the human essence onto an ideal: God does not make man. Rather "God" is the invention of human consciousness. Marx also sees that religion is part of an ideological view that encourages the oppressed to accept their fate. As he says: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions."
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) agreed with Kant that the existence of God could not be proven by reason. However Kierkegaard did not think that it was rational to believe in God, rather one should have faith in God even if this seems to reason to be absurd. To put it another way reason has no place in faith. God is beyond reason.
Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist.
Nietzsche: The Death of God
"Have you not heard the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly, 'I seek God!, I seek God!' ... Why, did he get lost? Said one. Did he lose his way like a child? Said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Or emigrated?... The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"'Whither is God'? He cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers...'"
"...the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they to were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. 'I came too early,' he said then; 'my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering -it has not yet reached the ears of man."
In these passages Nietzsche is showing the inevitable unfolding anthropocentrism (lit. putting man at the centre of the world) implicit in philosophy since Kant. If we view our existence through human categories, then our concept of God is itself a human creation.
Nietzsche is not simply asserting his atheism; he is suggesting that once we are aware that the concept of God is our own creation we can no longer base our religious and moral beliefs on any notion of a divine external reality.
In the period that Nietzsche was writing, the death of God was just beginning. Western thought was starting to face the prospect of a radical change in its orientation, and it wasn't quite ready to own up to it yet.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche represent opposite reactions to the inability of rationality to give a rock solid theoretical proof of God's existence. Kierkegaard calls for us to embrace God even if it seems an absurdity, while Nietzsche says it is time for us to create a new mode of being, with human creativity at its centre.
The atheist existentialist Sartre accepted God's death and much of his writing is attempt to look at the human condition in a world that is without a prime mover who could have provided a basis and structure for the understanding of being.
The twentieth century
Anglo American analytic philosophers of the twentieth century have tended to agree that philosophy may help us clarify religious concepts, without giving us a secure foundation for religious belief.
Many people claim to have had a religious experience, to have experienced the divine directly. This experience is direct and is of a different quality to sensory experience or intellectual discovery, and therefore outside of the scope of philosophy.
The view that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved by philosophy has not stopped developments in modern theology. Theologians are attempting to balance the anthropocentric view of God presented by philosophers since the Enlightenment with the need to provide a spiritual path and a guide to an ethical and meaningful way of life.
7.31.2008
Some Moral/Ethical Dilemmas: Totally Messed Up Scenarios
The following is a list of some moral dilemmas, mostly adapted from Moral Reasoning, by Victor Grassian (Prentice Hall, 1981, 1992), with a couple additions. The question to consider with all of these is why they are dilemmas. Some, however, may not seem to be dilemmas at all. Discussion of the dilemmas can be found at http://www.friesian.com/dilemma.htm
1. The Overcrowded Lifeboat
In 1842, a ship struck an iceberg and more than 30 survivors were crowded into a lifeboat intended to hold 7. As a storm threatened, it became obvious that the lifeboat would have to be lightened if anyone were to survive. The captain reasoned that the right thing to do in this situation was to force some individuals to go over the side and drown. Such an action, he reasoned, was not unjust to those thrown overboard, for they would have drowned anyway. If he did nothing, however, he would be responsible for the deaths of those whom he could have saved. Some people opposed the captain's decision. They claimed that if nothing were done and everyone died as a result, no one would be responsible for these deaths. On the other hand, if the captain attempted to save some, he could do so only by killing others and their deaths would be his responsibility; this would be worse than doing nothing and letting all die. The captain rejected this reasoning. Since the only possibility for rescue required great efforts of rowing, the captain decided that the weakest would have to be sacrificed. In this situation it would be absurd, he thought, to decide by drawing lots who should be thrown overboard. As it turned out, after days of hard rowing, the survivors were rescued and the captain was tried for his action. If you had been on the jury, how would you have decided?
2. A Father's Agonizing Choice
You are an inmate in a concentration camp. A sadistic guard is about to hang your son who tried to escape and wants you to pull the chair from underneath him. He says that if you don't he will not only kill your son but some other innocent inmate as well. You don't have any doubt that he means what he says. What should you do?
3. Sophie's Choice, not in Grassian.
In the novel Sophie's Choice, by William Styron (Vintage Books, 1976 -- the 1982 movie starred Meryl Streep & Kevin Kline), a Polish woman, Sophie Zawistowska, is arrested by the Nazis and sent to the Auschwitz death camp. On arrival, she is "honored" for not being a Jew by being allowed a choice: One of her children will be spared the gas chamber if she chooses which one. In an agony of indecision, as both children are being taken away, she suddenly does choose. They can take her daughter, who is younger and smaller. Sophie hopes that her older and stronger son will be better able to survive, but she loses track of him and never does learn of his fate. Did she do the right thing? Years later, haunted by the guilt of having chosen between her children, Sophie commits suicide. Should she have felt guilty?
4. The Fat Man and the Impending Doom, with parts cut out in the 2nd edition; they seem to have gotten removed to avoid unintentionally humorous overtones.
A fat man leading a group of people out of a cave on a coast is stuck in the mouth of that cave. In a short time high tide will be upon them, and unless he is unstuck, they will all be drowned except the fat man, whose head is out of the cave. [But, fortunately, or unfortunately, someone has with him a stick of dynamite.] There seems no way to get the fat man loose without using [that] dynamite which will inevitably kill him; but if they do not use it everyone will drown. What should they do?
Since the fat man is said to be "leading" the group, he is responsible for their predicament and reasonably should volunteer to be blown up. The dilemma becomes more acute if we substitute a pregnant woman for the fat man. She would have been urged by the others to go first out of the cave.
5. The Costly Underwater Tunnel, compare: 112 men were killed during the construction of Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border (the "official" number was 98, but others had died from causes more difficult to identify -- or easier to ignore -- like by carbon monoxide poisoning): The first was a surveyor, J.G. Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1922, and the last was his son, Patrick Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1935 -- 13 years to the day after his father. The working conditions in the summer down in the canyon involved temperatures hitting highs of 119o, with lows of no less than 95o (familiar numbers to those who have visited the cities of Needles, Blythe, or Yuma in the summer). In 1931, about the time that Hoover Dam, a federal project (with private contractors), was begun, the Empire State Building, a private project, was completed. Although the rule of thumb had been that one man would die for every story built in a skyscraper, which would have meant 120 dead for the Empire State Building, in fact only 5 men died in the whole project. By comparison, in the earlier (1908-1913) building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct by William Mulholland (d.1935), it was also the case that only 5 men died (though when Mulholland's St. Francis Dam, in Francisquito Canyon, collapsed in 1928, it killed over 500 people). The Golden Gate Bridge cost 14 lives (or 11 -- the rule of thumb there was one life for each $1,000,000 of the project, with the bridge costing $35,000.000 -- workers who fell and were caught by nets joined the "Half-Way to Hell Club"). The Alaska oil pipeline, built in the 1970's, cost 31 lives. The Tunnel under the English Channel, built in the early 1990's, cost 11 lives. When the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was being planned, the prediction was that 15 workers would die, but none did. Similarly, though much earlier (1927-1941), no one died during the carving of Mt. Rushmore (though workers may have died later from the effects of breathing dust from the carved rock -- this used to be a serious problem for miners, before they began flushing drill points with water). Even with such progress over time, the John Hancock Building in Chicago (1970) cost 109 lives, or, indeed, about one per floor, as predicted for the Empire State Building -- perhaps the infamous wind of Chicago made for more hazardous conditions. While it is usually ordinary workers who suffer in construction accidents, it isn't always, as was the case with the Brooklyn Bridge, whose designer, John Augustus Roebling, died in a ferry accident in 1869 while surveying the site. His son, Washington Roebling, suffered such a severe case of the bends, working in a pressurized caisson in 1872, that he supervised the rest of the construction crippled in bed, sending instructions through his wife, until the bridge was completed in 1883. Overall, 27 died on the Brooklyn Bridge, 3 from the bends (though, as with Hoover Dam, this may not count them all). It was many years before it was known what to do about this condition. Workers were still suffering from the bends when the Holland Tunnel was built in the 1920's. The chief engineer of the tunnel, Clifford Milburn Holland, died suddenly in 1924, aged 41, of "exhaustion." The tunnel, opened in 1927, was then named after him.
Railroad Safety
year billions of
passenger
miles fatalities
per billion
passenger
miles
1890 11.8 24.2
1900 16.0 15.5
1910 32.3 10.0
total deaths of employees,
1890-1917: 230,000
1920 47.4 4.8
1930 26.9 2.3
1939 22.7 1.8
1943 87.9 3.2
deaths increase during
World War II with the
temporary return of
obsolete equipment
1950 31.8 0.6
1970 10.8 0.07
The first tunnel under the Hudson, for the Pennsylvania Railroad, was begun in 1874; but construction was abandoned because of deaths, restarted, and not completed until 1908. All such bridges and tunnels eliminate the need for ferry boats. Even in recent years, ferry sinkings and accidents are common, and they still sometimes result in the deaths of hundreds of people at a time. Even New York's famous Staten Island Ferry is not immune. On October 15, 2003, the pilot on one of the Ferry's ships passed out (he was diabetic), and it crashed into a pier at Staten Island. Eleven people were killed and 71 were injured, some with severed limbs. I had just ridden the Ferry that summer, and I noticed that many people stand right on the edge of the vessel as it approaches the dock. That was not a place to be in the accident. The captain of the ferry, who was not at his required station, in the pilot house, at the time of the accident, subsequently committed suicide. In the table we see the rate of fatalities on American railroads over time. The 230,000 deaths between 1890 and 1917 averages out to about 8500 per year. This seems excessive and appalling, but we might compare it with recent traffic fatalities, which have been above 40,000 per year for every since since 1962, except for 1992. Between 1966 and 1974, deaths were actually above 50,000 a year. This constant absolute rate of fatalities nevertheless reflects improvement, since the population of the country has grown greatly during the period, and the vehicle miles travelled have increased from 805,000 in 1963 to 2,880,000 in 2003. So the rate of fatalities has fallen significantly. Meanwhile, railroad fatalities have become rare. Part of that is the circumstance that the number of railroad employees has fallen from some 2 million in 1920 to only 177,000 in 2004. A train that used to require a large crew (including multiple brakemen) now may only be driven by two.
An underwater tunnel is being constructed despite an almost certain loss of several lives [actually, all but certain]. Presumably the expected loss is a calculated cost that society is prepared to pay for having the tunnel ["society" doesn't make any such calculation]. At a critical moment when a fitting must be lowered into place, a workman is trapped in a section of the partly laid tunnel. If it is lowered, it will surely crush the trapped workman to death. Yet, if it is not and a time consuming rescue of the workman is attempted, the tunnel will have to be abandoned and the whole project begun anew. Two workmen have already died in the project as a result of anticipated and unavoidable conditions in the building of the tunnel. What should be done? Was it a mistake to begin the tunnel in the first place? But don't we take such risks all the time?
We can get some clarity about this example by asking what the police would do if they are informed that the work foreman has authorized the deliberate crushing of a worker.
6. Jean Valjean's Conscience, with some comments; see the 1998 movie, Les Miserables, with Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, and Geoffrey Rush.
In Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the hero, Jean Valjean, is an ex-convict, living illegally under an assumed name and wanted for a robbery he committed many years ago. [Actually, no -- he is only wanted for breaking parole.] Although he will be returned to the galleys -- probably [in fact, actually] for life -- if he is caught, he is a good man who does not deserve to be punished. He has established himself in a town, becoming mayor and a public benefactor. One day, Jean learns that another man, a vagabond, has been arrested for a minor crime and identified as Jean Valjean. Jean is first tempted to remain quiet, reasoning to himself that since he had nothing to do with the false identification of this hapless vagabond, he has no obligation to save him. Perhaps this man's false identification, Jean reflects, is "an act of Providence meant to save me." Upon reflection, however, Jean judges such reasoning "monstrous and hypocritical." He now feels certain that it is his duty to reveal his identity, regardless of the disastrous personal consequences. His resolve is disturbed, however, as he reflects on the irreparable harm his return to the galleys will mean to so many people who depend upon him for their livelihood -- especially troubling in the case of a helpless woman and her small child to whom he feels a special obligation. He now reproaches himself for being too selfish, for thinking only of his own conscience and not of others. The right thing to do, he now claims to himself, is to remain quiet, to continue making money and using it to help others. The vagabond, he comforts himself, is not a worthy person, anyway. Still unconvinced and tormented by the need to decide, Jean goes to the trial and confesses. Did he do the right thing?
7. A Callous Passerby
Roger Smith, a quite competent swimmer, is out for a leisurely stroll. During the course of his walk he passes by a deserted pier from which a teenage boy who apparently cannot swim has fallen into the water. The boy is screaming for help. Smith recognizes that there is absolutely no danger to himself if he jumps in to save the boy; he could easily succeed if he tried. Nevertheless, he chooses to ignore the boy's cries. The water is cold and he is afraid of catching a cold -- he doesn't want to get his good clothes wet either. "Why should I inconvenience myself for this kid," Smith says to himself, and passes on. Does Smith have a moral obligation to save the boy? If so, should he have a legal obligation ["Good Samaritan" laws] as well?
8. The Last Episode of Seinfeld, not in Grassian.
The cast of Seinfeld, Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer, have a layover in a small New England town. They witness a robbery in broad daylight. The robber has his hand in his pocket, and the victim shouts that the man has a gun. As soon as the robber runs away, a policeman appears on the scene; but instead of pursuing the robber, he arrests Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer for having violated the new "Good Samaritan" law of the town. Since the four of them spent the time of the robbery making fun of the victim, who was fat, their role in the matter doesn't look good, and at their trial everyone who has ever felt wronged by them in the course of the television series testifies against them. They are convicted. Is this just? What were they supposed to do during the robbery? Should they have rushed the robber, just in case he didn't really have a gun?
9. A Poisonous Cup of Coffee, with Jane and Debbie added for the sake of gender equality.
Tom[/Jane], hating his[/her] wife[/husband] and wanting her[/him] dead, puts poison in her[/his] coffee, thereby killing her[/him]. Joe[/Debbie] also hates his[/her] wife[/husband] and would like her[/him] dead. One day, Joe's[/Debbie's] wife[/husband] accidentally puts poison in her[/his] coffee, thinking it's cream. Joe[/Debbie] has the antidote, but he[/she] does not give it to her[/him]. Knowing that he[/she] is the only one who can save her[/him], he[/she] lets her[/him] die. Is Joe's[/Debbie's] failure to act as bad as Tom's[/Jane's] action?
10. The Torture of the Mad Bomber. cf. the use of torture in Clint Eastwood's movie, Dirty Harry (1971), somewhat comically in Sin City (2005), and then in extended, serious, and graffic fashion in Man on Fire (2004). After 9/11/01, we have the case of terrorist suspects who may know of planned operations that could cost the lives of thousands. The otherwise four-square civil libertarian and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz has actually suggested legalized torture to deal with such people. This early complacency about torture seems to have been followed mostly by objections that some kind of torture was used by U.S. forces in Iraq and by U.S. allies (Egypt, Pakistan, etc.).
A madman who has threatened to explode several bombs in crowded areas has been apprehended. Unfortunately, he has already planted the bombs and they are scheduled to go off in a short time. It is possible that hundreds of people may die. The authorities cannot make him divulge the location of the bombs by conventional methods. He refuses to say anything and requests a lawyer to protect his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. In exasperation, some high level official suggests torture. This would be illegal, of course, but the official thinks that it is nevertheless the right thing to do in this desperate situation. Do you agree? If you do, would it also be morally justifiable to torture the mad bomber's innocent wife if that is the only way to make him talk? Why?
In the judicial system of Imperial China, torture was technically illegal but tolerated because no one could be convicted without a confession. Torture could then be used with these provisions: (1) Questioning could only be done in open court. Since torture would then be administered in public, the public should agree, from the evidence, that the suspect is probably guilty. If it appeared that an innocent person was being tortured, a riot might result. The Judge, who was also the Magistrate of his administrative District, would be held responsible for the civil disturbance. (2) Punishment would be mitigated in proportion to any suffering inflicted by torture. And, most importantly, (3) if it turned out that an innocent person was convicted, the punishment he suffered could be imposed on the Judge. This was called , "reversed judgment." I think that this is a fine legal principle -- where with us misbehavior by judges, prosecutors, or police is generally not liable to criminal sanction. A person not even under oath lying to a federal agent is guilty of a crime, but prosecutors can lie in court and the police can lie to suspects with impunity. The Chinese legal system is discussed and illustrated by the Dutch diplomat and scholar Robert van Gulik in his Judge Dee books.
11. The Principle of Psychiatric Confidentiality, cf. the 1997 movie, Devil's Advocate, and the 1993 movie, The Firm, on confidentiality between lawyers and clients.
You are a psychiatrist and your patient has just confided to you that he intends to kill a woman. You're inclined to dismiss the threat as idle, but you aren't sure. Should you report the threat to the police and the woman or should you remain silent as the principle of confidentiality between psychiatrist and patient demands? Should there be a law that compels you to report such threats?
12. The Partiality of Friendship
Jim has the responsibility of filling a position in his firm. His friend Paul has applied and is qualified, but someone else seems even more qualified. Jim wants to give the job to Paul, but he feels guilty, believing that he ought to be impartial. That's the essence of morality, he initially tells himself. This belief is, however, rejected, as Jim resolves that friendship has a moral importance that permits, and perhaps even requires, partiality in some circumstances. So he gives the job to Paul. Was he right?
13. The Value of a Promise, Compare with the role of David Cash in the murder of Sherrice Iverson by Jeremy Strohmeyer. Under Nevada law, Cash was not charged simply for concealing knowledge of Strohmeyer's crime. To be an accessory after the fact, he would have needed to have done something (a wrong of commission) to otherwise help Strohmeyer. Later, when he was admitted to the University of California, there was protest over his moral suitability.
A friend confides to you that he has committed a particular crime and you promise never to tell. Discovering that an innocent person has been accused of the crime, you plead with your friend to give himself up. He refuses and reminds you of your promise. What should you do? In general, under what conditions should promises be broken?
In October 1990, Jeffrey Cain was killed in a road rage shooting in Anchorage, Alaska. When George Kerr informed on the friends who had done the shooting, he said, "I usually wouldn't rat out my friends, but this is just so severe I got to do it." "Just so severe" is the issue. After their conviction, the friends arranged from prison, in a conspiracy including the pregnant sister of one defendant, to have a bomb sent to Kerr's house. Kerr wasn't home, and the bomb killed his father. All the conspirators, including the sister, were convicted of the murder.
14. The Perjured President, not in Grassian. Note that the issue here, although the politics is somewhat dated, is over the use of sexual harrassment laws. The support of the Paula Jones lawsuit by Catherine MacKinnon -- "When Paul Jones sued Bill Clinton, male dominance quaked" -- seemed merely to result in the marginalization of MacKinnon from elite opinion -- her earlier Stalinism and anhedonic political moralism had not been sufficient. Clinton continues to be treated as a serious political influence, appearing extensively in television promotions for California Proposition 87 in the 2006 election. That the proposition failed should cause some enthusiasts to reevaluate Clinton's influence.
A long time Governor of a Southern State is elected President of the United States on a platform that includes strong support for laws against sexual harassment. After he is in office, it comes out that he may have used State Troopers, on duty to protect him as Governor, to pick up women for him. One of the women named in the national press stories as having been brought to the Governor for sex felt defamed because she had actually rebuffed his crude advances, even though he had said that he knew her boss -- she was a State employee. She decides to clear her name by suing the now President for sexual harassment. The Supreme Court allows the suit to proceed against the sitting President. Because the sexual harassment laws have been recently expanded, with the President's agreement, to allow testimony about the history of sexual conduct of the accused harasser, the President is questioned under oath about rumors of an affair with a young White House intern. He strongly denies that any sexual relationship had ever taken place, and professes not to remember if he was even ever alone with the intern. Later, incontrovertible evidence is introduced -- the President's own semen on the intern's dress -- that establishes the existence of the rumored sexual relationship. The President then finally admits only to an ambiguous "improper relationship." So the dilemma is: Is it hypocritical of the President and his supporters to continued to support the sexual harassment and perjury laws if they do not want him to be subject to the ordinary penalties for breaking them? Or, are the political purposes of the President's supporters in keeping him in office more important than this?
Copyright (c) 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
1. The Overcrowded Lifeboat
In 1842, a ship struck an iceberg and more than 30 survivors were crowded into a lifeboat intended to hold 7. As a storm threatened, it became obvious that the lifeboat would have to be lightened if anyone were to survive. The captain reasoned that the right thing to do in this situation was to force some individuals to go over the side and drown. Such an action, he reasoned, was not unjust to those thrown overboard, for they would have drowned anyway. If he did nothing, however, he would be responsible for the deaths of those whom he could have saved. Some people opposed the captain's decision. They claimed that if nothing were done and everyone died as a result, no one would be responsible for these deaths. On the other hand, if the captain attempted to save some, he could do so only by killing others and their deaths would be his responsibility; this would be worse than doing nothing and letting all die. The captain rejected this reasoning. Since the only possibility for rescue required great efforts of rowing, the captain decided that the weakest would have to be sacrificed. In this situation it would be absurd, he thought, to decide by drawing lots who should be thrown overboard. As it turned out, after days of hard rowing, the survivors were rescued and the captain was tried for his action. If you had been on the jury, how would you have decided?
2. A Father's Agonizing Choice
You are an inmate in a concentration camp. A sadistic guard is about to hang your son who tried to escape and wants you to pull the chair from underneath him. He says that if you don't he will not only kill your son but some other innocent inmate as well. You don't have any doubt that he means what he says. What should you do?
3. Sophie's Choice, not in Grassian.
In the novel Sophie's Choice, by William Styron (Vintage Books, 1976 -- the 1982 movie starred Meryl Streep & Kevin Kline), a Polish woman, Sophie Zawistowska, is arrested by the Nazis and sent to the Auschwitz death camp. On arrival, she is "honored" for not being a Jew by being allowed a choice: One of her children will be spared the gas chamber if she chooses which one. In an agony of indecision, as both children are being taken away, she suddenly does choose. They can take her daughter, who is younger and smaller. Sophie hopes that her older and stronger son will be better able to survive, but she loses track of him and never does learn of his fate. Did she do the right thing? Years later, haunted by the guilt of having chosen between her children, Sophie commits suicide. Should she have felt guilty?
4. The Fat Man and the Impending Doom, with parts cut out in the 2nd edition; they seem to have gotten removed to avoid unintentionally humorous overtones.
A fat man leading a group of people out of a cave on a coast is stuck in the mouth of that cave. In a short time high tide will be upon them, and unless he is unstuck, they will all be drowned except the fat man, whose head is out of the cave. [But, fortunately, or unfortunately, someone has with him a stick of dynamite.] There seems no way to get the fat man loose without using [that] dynamite which will inevitably kill him; but if they do not use it everyone will drown. What should they do?
Since the fat man is said to be "leading" the group, he is responsible for their predicament and reasonably should volunteer to be blown up. The dilemma becomes more acute if we substitute a pregnant woman for the fat man. She would have been urged by the others to go first out of the cave.
5. The Costly Underwater Tunnel, compare: 112 men were killed during the construction of Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border (the "official" number was 98, but others had died from causes more difficult to identify -- or easier to ignore -- like by carbon monoxide poisoning): The first was a surveyor, J.G. Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1922, and the last was his son, Patrick Tierney, who drowned on December 20, 1935 -- 13 years to the day after his father. The working conditions in the summer down in the canyon involved temperatures hitting highs of 119o, with lows of no less than 95o (familiar numbers to those who have visited the cities of Needles, Blythe, or Yuma in the summer). In 1931, about the time that Hoover Dam, a federal project (with private contractors), was begun, the Empire State Building, a private project, was completed. Although the rule of thumb had been that one man would die for every story built in a skyscraper, which would have meant 120 dead for the Empire State Building, in fact only 5 men died in the whole project. By comparison, in the earlier (1908-1913) building of the Los Angeles Aqueduct by William Mulholland (d.1935), it was also the case that only 5 men died (though when Mulholland's St. Francis Dam, in Francisquito Canyon, collapsed in 1928, it killed over 500 people). The Golden Gate Bridge cost 14 lives (or 11 -- the rule of thumb there was one life for each $1,000,000 of the project, with the bridge costing $35,000.000 -- workers who fell and were caught by nets joined the "Half-Way to Hell Club"). The Alaska oil pipeline, built in the 1970's, cost 31 lives. The Tunnel under the English Channel, built in the early 1990's, cost 11 lives. When the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was being planned, the prediction was that 15 workers would die, but none did. Similarly, though much earlier (1927-1941), no one died during the carving of Mt. Rushmore (though workers may have died later from the effects of breathing dust from the carved rock -- this used to be a serious problem for miners, before they began flushing drill points with water). Even with such progress over time, the John Hancock Building in Chicago (1970) cost 109 lives, or, indeed, about one per floor, as predicted for the Empire State Building -- perhaps the infamous wind of Chicago made for more hazardous conditions. While it is usually ordinary workers who suffer in construction accidents, it isn't always, as was the case with the Brooklyn Bridge, whose designer, John Augustus Roebling, died in a ferry accident in 1869 while surveying the site. His son, Washington Roebling, suffered such a severe case of the bends, working in a pressurized caisson in 1872, that he supervised the rest of the construction crippled in bed, sending instructions through his wife, until the bridge was completed in 1883. Overall, 27 died on the Brooklyn Bridge, 3 from the bends (though, as with Hoover Dam, this may not count them all). It was many years before it was known what to do about this condition. Workers were still suffering from the bends when the Holland Tunnel was built in the 1920's. The chief engineer of the tunnel, Clifford Milburn Holland, died suddenly in 1924, aged 41, of "exhaustion." The tunnel, opened in 1927, was then named after him.
Railroad Safety
year billions of
passenger
miles fatalities
per billion
passenger
miles
1890 11.8 24.2
1900 16.0 15.5
1910 32.3 10.0
total deaths of employees,
1890-1917: 230,000
1920 47.4 4.8
1930 26.9 2.3
1939 22.7 1.8
1943 87.9 3.2
deaths increase during
World War II with the
temporary return of
obsolete equipment
1950 31.8 0.6
1970 10.8 0.07
The first tunnel under the Hudson, for the Pennsylvania Railroad, was begun in 1874; but construction was abandoned because of deaths, restarted, and not completed until 1908. All such bridges and tunnels eliminate the need for ferry boats. Even in recent years, ferry sinkings and accidents are common, and they still sometimes result in the deaths of hundreds of people at a time. Even New York's famous Staten Island Ferry is not immune. On October 15, 2003, the pilot on one of the Ferry's ships passed out (he was diabetic), and it crashed into a pier at Staten Island. Eleven people were killed and 71 were injured, some with severed limbs. I had just ridden the Ferry that summer, and I noticed that many people stand right on the edge of the vessel as it approaches the dock. That was not a place to be in the accident. The captain of the ferry, who was not at his required station, in the pilot house, at the time of the accident, subsequently committed suicide. In the table we see the rate of fatalities on American railroads over time. The 230,000 deaths between 1890 and 1917 averages out to about 8500 per year. This seems excessive and appalling, but we might compare it with recent traffic fatalities, which have been above 40,000 per year for every since since 1962, except for 1992. Between 1966 and 1974, deaths were actually above 50,000 a year. This constant absolute rate of fatalities nevertheless reflects improvement, since the population of the country has grown greatly during the period, and the vehicle miles travelled have increased from 805,000 in 1963 to 2,880,000 in 2003. So the rate of fatalities has fallen significantly. Meanwhile, railroad fatalities have become rare. Part of that is the circumstance that the number of railroad employees has fallen from some 2 million in 1920 to only 177,000 in 2004. A train that used to require a large crew (including multiple brakemen) now may only be driven by two.
An underwater tunnel is being constructed despite an almost certain loss of several lives [actually, all but certain]. Presumably the expected loss is a calculated cost that society is prepared to pay for having the tunnel ["society" doesn't make any such calculation]. At a critical moment when a fitting must be lowered into place, a workman is trapped in a section of the partly laid tunnel. If it is lowered, it will surely crush the trapped workman to death. Yet, if it is not and a time consuming rescue of the workman is attempted, the tunnel will have to be abandoned and the whole project begun anew. Two workmen have already died in the project as a result of anticipated and unavoidable conditions in the building of the tunnel. What should be done? Was it a mistake to begin the tunnel in the first place? But don't we take such risks all the time?
We can get some clarity about this example by asking what the police would do if they are informed that the work foreman has authorized the deliberate crushing of a worker.
6. Jean Valjean's Conscience, with some comments; see the 1998 movie, Les Miserables, with Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, and Geoffrey Rush.
In Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the hero, Jean Valjean, is an ex-convict, living illegally under an assumed name and wanted for a robbery he committed many years ago. [Actually, no -- he is only wanted for breaking parole.] Although he will be returned to the galleys -- probably [in fact, actually] for life -- if he is caught, he is a good man who does not deserve to be punished. He has established himself in a town, becoming mayor and a public benefactor. One day, Jean learns that another man, a vagabond, has been arrested for a minor crime and identified as Jean Valjean. Jean is first tempted to remain quiet, reasoning to himself that since he had nothing to do with the false identification of this hapless vagabond, he has no obligation to save him. Perhaps this man's false identification, Jean reflects, is "an act of Providence meant to save me." Upon reflection, however, Jean judges such reasoning "monstrous and hypocritical." He now feels certain that it is his duty to reveal his identity, regardless of the disastrous personal consequences. His resolve is disturbed, however, as he reflects on the irreparable harm his return to the galleys will mean to so many people who depend upon him for their livelihood -- especially troubling in the case of a helpless woman and her small child to whom he feels a special obligation. He now reproaches himself for being too selfish, for thinking only of his own conscience and not of others. The right thing to do, he now claims to himself, is to remain quiet, to continue making money and using it to help others. The vagabond, he comforts himself, is not a worthy person, anyway. Still unconvinced and tormented by the need to decide, Jean goes to the trial and confesses. Did he do the right thing?
7. A Callous Passerby
Roger Smith, a quite competent swimmer, is out for a leisurely stroll. During the course of his walk he passes by a deserted pier from which a teenage boy who apparently cannot swim has fallen into the water. The boy is screaming for help. Smith recognizes that there is absolutely no danger to himself if he jumps in to save the boy; he could easily succeed if he tried. Nevertheless, he chooses to ignore the boy's cries. The water is cold and he is afraid of catching a cold -- he doesn't want to get his good clothes wet either. "Why should I inconvenience myself for this kid," Smith says to himself, and passes on. Does Smith have a moral obligation to save the boy? If so, should he have a legal obligation ["Good Samaritan" laws] as well?
8. The Last Episode of Seinfeld, not in Grassian.
The cast of Seinfeld, Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer, have a layover in a small New England town. They witness a robbery in broad daylight. The robber has his hand in his pocket, and the victim shouts that the man has a gun. As soon as the robber runs away, a policeman appears on the scene; but instead of pursuing the robber, he arrests Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer for having violated the new "Good Samaritan" law of the town. Since the four of them spent the time of the robbery making fun of the victim, who was fat, their role in the matter doesn't look good, and at their trial everyone who has ever felt wronged by them in the course of the television series testifies against them. They are convicted. Is this just? What were they supposed to do during the robbery? Should they have rushed the robber, just in case he didn't really have a gun?
9. A Poisonous Cup of Coffee, with Jane and Debbie added for the sake of gender equality.
Tom[/Jane], hating his[/her] wife[/husband] and wanting her[/him] dead, puts poison in her[/his] coffee, thereby killing her[/him]. Joe[/Debbie] also hates his[/her] wife[/husband] and would like her[/him] dead. One day, Joe's[/Debbie's] wife[/husband] accidentally puts poison in her[/his] coffee, thinking it's cream. Joe[/Debbie] has the antidote, but he[/she] does not give it to her[/him]. Knowing that he[/she] is the only one who can save her[/him], he[/she] lets her[/him] die. Is Joe's[/Debbie's] failure to act as bad as Tom's[/Jane's] action?
10. The Torture of the Mad Bomber. cf. the use of torture in Clint Eastwood's movie, Dirty Harry (1971), somewhat comically in Sin City (2005), and then in extended, serious, and graffic fashion in Man on Fire (2004). After 9/11/01, we have the case of terrorist suspects who may know of planned operations that could cost the lives of thousands. The otherwise four-square civil libertarian and Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz has actually suggested legalized torture to deal with such people. This early complacency about torture seems to have been followed mostly by objections that some kind of torture was used by U.S. forces in Iraq and by U.S. allies (Egypt, Pakistan, etc.).
A madman who has threatened to explode several bombs in crowded areas has been apprehended. Unfortunately, he has already planted the bombs and they are scheduled to go off in a short time. It is possible that hundreds of people may die. The authorities cannot make him divulge the location of the bombs by conventional methods. He refuses to say anything and requests a lawyer to protect his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. In exasperation, some high level official suggests torture. This would be illegal, of course, but the official thinks that it is nevertheless the right thing to do in this desperate situation. Do you agree? If you do, would it also be morally justifiable to torture the mad bomber's innocent wife if that is the only way to make him talk? Why?
In the judicial system of Imperial China, torture was technically illegal but tolerated because no one could be convicted without a confession. Torture could then be used with these provisions: (1) Questioning could only be done in open court. Since torture would then be administered in public, the public should agree, from the evidence, that the suspect is probably guilty. If it appeared that an innocent person was being tortured, a riot might result. The Judge, who was also the Magistrate of his administrative District, would be held responsible for the civil disturbance. (2) Punishment would be mitigated in proportion to any suffering inflicted by torture. And, most importantly, (3) if it turned out that an innocent person was convicted, the punishment he suffered could be imposed on the Judge. This was called , "reversed judgment." I think that this is a fine legal principle -- where with us misbehavior by judges, prosecutors, or police is generally not liable to criminal sanction. A person not even under oath lying to a federal agent is guilty of a crime, but prosecutors can lie in court and the police can lie to suspects with impunity. The Chinese legal system is discussed and illustrated by the Dutch diplomat and scholar Robert van Gulik in his Judge Dee books.
11. The Principle of Psychiatric Confidentiality, cf. the 1997 movie, Devil's Advocate, and the 1993 movie, The Firm, on confidentiality between lawyers and clients.
You are a psychiatrist and your patient has just confided to you that he intends to kill a woman. You're inclined to dismiss the threat as idle, but you aren't sure. Should you report the threat to the police and the woman or should you remain silent as the principle of confidentiality between psychiatrist and patient demands? Should there be a law that compels you to report such threats?
12. The Partiality of Friendship
Jim has the responsibility of filling a position in his firm. His friend Paul has applied and is qualified, but someone else seems even more qualified. Jim wants to give the job to Paul, but he feels guilty, believing that he ought to be impartial. That's the essence of morality, he initially tells himself. This belief is, however, rejected, as Jim resolves that friendship has a moral importance that permits, and perhaps even requires, partiality in some circumstances. So he gives the job to Paul. Was he right?
13. The Value of a Promise, Compare with the role of David Cash in the murder of Sherrice Iverson by Jeremy Strohmeyer. Under Nevada law, Cash was not charged simply for concealing knowledge of Strohmeyer's crime. To be an accessory after the fact, he would have needed to have done something (a wrong of commission) to otherwise help Strohmeyer. Later, when he was admitted to the University of California, there was protest over his moral suitability.
A friend confides to you that he has committed a particular crime and you promise never to tell. Discovering that an innocent person has been accused of the crime, you plead with your friend to give himself up. He refuses and reminds you of your promise. What should you do? In general, under what conditions should promises be broken?
In October 1990, Jeffrey Cain was killed in a road rage shooting in Anchorage, Alaska. When George Kerr informed on the friends who had done the shooting, he said, "I usually wouldn't rat out my friends, but this is just so severe I got to do it." "Just so severe" is the issue. After their conviction, the friends arranged from prison, in a conspiracy including the pregnant sister of one defendant, to have a bomb sent to Kerr's house. Kerr wasn't home, and the bomb killed his father. All the conspirators, including the sister, were convicted of the murder.
14. The Perjured President, not in Grassian. Note that the issue here, although the politics is somewhat dated, is over the use of sexual harrassment laws. The support of the Paula Jones lawsuit by Catherine MacKinnon -- "When Paul Jones sued Bill Clinton, male dominance quaked" -- seemed merely to result in the marginalization of MacKinnon from elite opinion -- her earlier Stalinism and anhedonic political moralism had not been sufficient. Clinton continues to be treated as a serious political influence, appearing extensively in television promotions for California Proposition 87 in the 2006 election. That the proposition failed should cause some enthusiasts to reevaluate Clinton's influence.
A long time Governor of a Southern State is elected President of the United States on a platform that includes strong support for laws against sexual harassment. After he is in office, it comes out that he may have used State Troopers, on duty to protect him as Governor, to pick up women for him. One of the women named in the national press stories as having been brought to the Governor for sex felt defamed because she had actually rebuffed his crude advances, even though he had said that he knew her boss -- she was a State employee. She decides to clear her name by suing the now President for sexual harassment. The Supreme Court allows the suit to proceed against the sitting President. Because the sexual harassment laws have been recently expanded, with the President's agreement, to allow testimony about the history of sexual conduct of the accused harasser, the President is questioned under oath about rumors of an affair with a young White House intern. He strongly denies that any sexual relationship had ever taken place, and professes not to remember if he was even ever alone with the intern. Later, incontrovertible evidence is introduced -- the President's own semen on the intern's dress -- that establishes the existence of the rumored sexual relationship. The President then finally admits only to an ambiguous "improper relationship." So the dilemma is: Is it hypocritical of the President and his supporters to continued to support the sexual harassment and perjury laws if they do not want him to be subject to the ordinary penalties for breaking them? Or, are the political purposes of the President's supporters in keeping him in office more important than this?
Copyright (c) 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved
6.13.2008
Sometimes something small can be huge
Current mood: hopeful
We don't always know how our actions will affect other people. We do know, however, that our actions will have some sort of an effect and, if we've made good choices, hopefully a positive one. This is a huge responsibility, but it is also a wonderful opportunity. One small, seemingly insignificant act on the part of one person can make a huge difference in the life of another. It may even save the other's life. Seriously.
We don't always know how our actions will affect other people. We do know, however, that our actions will have some sort of an effect and, if we've made good choices, hopefully a positive one. This is a huge responsibility, but it is also a wonderful opportunity. One small, seemingly insignificant act on the part of one person can make a huge difference in the life of another. It may even save the other's life. Seriously.
6.08.2008
Dalai Lama’s 18 rules for living
Current mood: contemplative
At the start of the new millennium the Dalai Lama apparently issued eighteen rules for living. Thought i'd post the here because I found them interesting.
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
1. Respect for self
2. Respect for others
3. Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
At the start of the new millennium the Dalai Lama apparently issued eighteen rules for living. Thought i'd post the here because I found them interesting.
1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
3. Follow the three Rs:
1. Respect for self
2. Respect for others
3. Responsibility for all your actions.
4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
8. Spend some time alone every day.
9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
11. Live a good, honourable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
13. In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
15. Be gentle with the earth.
16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
6.05.2008
People Are Scared
Current mood: blah
I think people are scared. Based on the actions I've witnessed in both other people and in myself, this is what I believe.
Under the normal social restrictions connected to societal normality's, I think fear dictates our behavior. This fear is over sensitized; Resulting in behavioral doubts and/or worries and consequentially prevents us from reaching our true potential and true purpose in life.
This realization has formed a want in me to follow my own personal truth. I will conquer my fears and, during my efforts, I will encourage others to follow the same path. The path based on truth.
I think people are scared. Based on the actions I've witnessed in both other people and in myself, this is what I believe.
Under the normal social restrictions connected to societal normality's, I think fear dictates our behavior. This fear is over sensitized; Resulting in behavioral doubts and/or worries and consequentially prevents us from reaching our true potential and true purpose in life.
This realization has formed a want in me to follow my own personal truth. I will conquer my fears and, during my efforts, I will encourage others to follow the same path. The path based on truth.
5.12.2008
Bruce Lee on Life
Current mood: calm
I read this online and found it really interesting, and I think Bruce Lee was badass so check it out.
If you haven't been living under a rock for the last 30 years I'm pretty sure you know who Bruce Lee was. :)
If you have, then you may be interested to know that Lee was a very famous martial artist and actor who sparked the first big interest of Chinese martial arts in the West in the 60's and 70's.
But besides being an awesome fighter and iconic figure Lee also had some very useful things to say about life.
Here are 7 of my favorite fundamentals from Bruce Lee.
1. What are you really thinking about today?
"As you think, so shall you become."
Perhaps the most basic statement of how we work. Think about what you are thinking today. What do those thoughts say about you? About your life? And how well do they really match your plans for your life and your image of yourself?
It's easy to forget about this simple statement in everyday life. It's easy to be quite incongruent with what you think on an ordinary day compared to how you view yourself and your goals. A simple external reminder such as a post-it with this quote can be helpful to keep you and your thoughts on the right track. An brilliant and beautiful expansion on this thought can be found in James Allen's As a man thinketh (that can be downloaded for free here).
2. Simplify.
"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."
"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done."
If you want to improve your life then it's tempting to want to add more. One problem with this may be that you don't really have the time or energy to do more though. And so your efforts to improve become short-lived.
Adding more and more just creates more stress and anxiety. Removing clutter and activities, tasks and thoughts that are not so important frees up time and energy for you to do more of what you really want to do. And as the clutter in your outer world decreases the clutter in your inner world also has a tendency to decrease. This has the added benefit of making it easier to actually enjoy whatever you are doing even more while you are doing it.
Adding more thoughts and thinking things over for the 111:th time may create a sense of security. It's also a good way to procrastinate and to avoid taking that leap you know you should take. And the more you think, the harder it gets to act. Perhaps because you want to keep that comforting sense of security and avoid the risk of wrecking that feeling.
Thinking has its place. It can help you plan a somewhat realistic route to your goal and help you avoid future pitfalls. Overthinking is however just a habit that will help you waste a lot of time. It's more useful to replace that habit with the habit of just doing it.
3. Learn about yourself in interactions.
"To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person."
The one person that is the hardest to get to really know may be yourself. Studying yourself while you are alone may result in some insights. But it's also likely to produce a lot of made up thought loops and doubts in your mind. A good way to really learn more about yourself is study yourself in interactions with other people. How people react and act in these interaction can over time teach you a lot. And what you think and how you react can perhaps teach you even more.
What you see, feel and hear in other people may be a reflection of you. The things you learn by thinking this way may not always be pleasant, but they can be enlightening. They help you to see yourself and also how you may be fooling yourself. And these powerful insights can be very valuable for your personal growth. So, in interactions with others, try asking yourself: what is reflected?
4. Do not divide.
"Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against."
This is a very useful and powerful thought. It is also one that obviously is hard to live by. Why? I believe it's because the ego loves to divide and find ways to "add more" to itself. It want's to feel better than someone else. Or more clever. Or prettier. Or cooler. Or wiser.
How can you overcome this way of thinking and feeling?
To me it seems to boil down to not identifying so much with your thoughts or feelings. That doesn't mean that you stop thinking or feeling. It just means that you realize – and remember in your everyday life – that the thoughts and emotions are just things flowing through you.
You are not them though.
You are the consciousness observing them.
When you realize and remember this it enables you to control the thoughts and feelings instead of the other way around. It also enables you to not take your thoughts too seriously and actually laugh at them or ignore them when you feel that your ego is acting out. When you are not being so identified these things you become more inclined to include things, thoughts and people instead of excluding them. This creates a lot of inner and outer freedom and stillness. Instead of fear, a need to divide your world and a search for conflicts.
To learn more about this I would recommend Eckhart Tolle's books and signing up for the 10 free and excellent webcasts - available both in video and audio form – that he's doing with Oprah right now.
5. Avoid a dependency on validation from others.
"I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine."
"Showing off is the fool's idea of glory."
The ego wants to add because it thinks it's not enough. One way of doing that is by craving validation from others. We want to feel smart, pretty, successful and so on. And the validation makes you feel good for a while. But soon you need a new fix.
And the problem with being dependent on validation from other people is that you let other people control how you feel. This creates a rollercoaster of emotion in your life.
To find more emotional stability and to take control of how you feel you need to get your validation from to a more consistent source. Yourself. You can replace the expectations and validation of others by setting your own expectations and by validating yourself.
And so you validate yourself by thinking about how awesome you are. You don't sell yourself short. You appreciate how far you have come and the positive things you have done. You appreciate your own value in the world. You set goals and you achieve those goals. This builds confidence in yourself and in your abilities. These things will help you to build a habit of inner validation.
Now, showing off. Why do we do that? To get validation from others. However, this need for validation often shines through and that is why a thing like bragging seldom works. Instead of seeing the cool and successful person you are trying to project people just see the insecure and needy person looking for validation. And your bragging falls flat.
6. Be proactive.
"To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities."
It's easy to get locked into a reactive mindset. You just follow along with whatever is happening. You do what the people around you do. You react to whatever is going on.
And so you get lost in your circumstances. This way of thinking doesn't feel too good. You tend to feel powerless and like you are just drifting along.
A more useful and pleasurable way of living is to be proactive. As Bruce says: to create opportunities despite the circumstances around you. This feels better and provides better results. But on the other hand it's also more difficult. It's easier to just drift along in the reactive stream of life. And if you want to be proactive then you may have to take the lead quite often. And that can be scary.
Still, living proactively is so much more rewarding and exciting.
7. Be you.
"Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it."
Just being yourself is a hard thing to do. You may do it sometimes. And other times you may forget or fall back into old thought patterns. Or you may imitate someone else.
And that comes through too. And it may work.
But I believe that being the real you will work better. Because there the genuine you is shining through. Without incongruency, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness. It's you to 100%. It's you with not only your words but you with your voice tonality and body language – which some say is over 90% of communication - on the same wavelength as your words. It's you coming through on all channels of communication.
So I'm not saying: "yeah man, you should just be yourself because it's the right thing to do etc." I'm saying that I think being your authentic self – the one where you do little dividing, the one that needs little validation from others, the one where your ego is not running the show and trying to get something from someone – will give you better results and more satisfaction in your day to day life because you are in alignment with yourself. And because people really like genuine and people really like authenticity.
I read this online and found it really interesting, and I think Bruce Lee was badass so check it out.
If you haven't been living under a rock for the last 30 years I'm pretty sure you know who Bruce Lee was. :)
If you have, then you may be interested to know that Lee was a very famous martial artist and actor who sparked the first big interest of Chinese martial arts in the West in the 60's and 70's.
But besides being an awesome fighter and iconic figure Lee also had some very useful things to say about life.
Here are 7 of my favorite fundamentals from Bruce Lee.
1. What are you really thinking about today?
"As you think, so shall you become."
Perhaps the most basic statement of how we work. Think about what you are thinking today. What do those thoughts say about you? About your life? And how well do they really match your plans for your life and your image of yourself?
It's easy to forget about this simple statement in everyday life. It's easy to be quite incongruent with what you think on an ordinary day compared to how you view yourself and your goals. A simple external reminder such as a post-it with this quote can be helpful to keep you and your thoughts on the right track. An brilliant and beautiful expansion on this thought can be found in James Allen's As a man thinketh (that can be downloaded for free here).
2. Simplify.
"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."
"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done."
If you want to improve your life then it's tempting to want to add more. One problem with this may be that you don't really have the time or energy to do more though. And so your efforts to improve become short-lived.
Adding more and more just creates more stress and anxiety. Removing clutter and activities, tasks and thoughts that are not so important frees up time and energy for you to do more of what you really want to do. And as the clutter in your outer world decreases the clutter in your inner world also has a tendency to decrease. This has the added benefit of making it easier to actually enjoy whatever you are doing even more while you are doing it.
Adding more thoughts and thinking things over for the 111:th time may create a sense of security. It's also a good way to procrastinate and to avoid taking that leap you know you should take. And the more you think, the harder it gets to act. Perhaps because you want to keep that comforting sense of security and avoid the risk of wrecking that feeling.
Thinking has its place. It can help you plan a somewhat realistic route to your goal and help you avoid future pitfalls. Overthinking is however just a habit that will help you waste a lot of time. It's more useful to replace that habit with the habit of just doing it.
3. Learn about yourself in interactions.
"To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person."
The one person that is the hardest to get to really know may be yourself. Studying yourself while you are alone may result in some insights. But it's also likely to produce a lot of made up thought loops and doubts in your mind. A good way to really learn more about yourself is study yourself in interactions with other people. How people react and act in these interaction can over time teach you a lot. And what you think and how you react can perhaps teach you even more.
What you see, feel and hear in other people may be a reflection of you. The things you learn by thinking this way may not always be pleasant, but they can be enlightening. They help you to see yourself and also how you may be fooling yourself. And these powerful insights can be very valuable for your personal growth. So, in interactions with others, try asking yourself: what is reflected?
4. Do not divide.
"Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against."
This is a very useful and powerful thought. It is also one that obviously is hard to live by. Why? I believe it's because the ego loves to divide and find ways to "add more" to itself. It want's to feel better than someone else. Or more clever. Or prettier. Or cooler. Or wiser.
How can you overcome this way of thinking and feeling?
To me it seems to boil down to not identifying so much with your thoughts or feelings. That doesn't mean that you stop thinking or feeling. It just means that you realize – and remember in your everyday life – that the thoughts and emotions are just things flowing through you.
You are not them though.
You are the consciousness observing them.
When you realize and remember this it enables you to control the thoughts and feelings instead of the other way around. It also enables you to not take your thoughts too seriously and actually laugh at them or ignore them when you feel that your ego is acting out. When you are not being so identified these things you become more inclined to include things, thoughts and people instead of excluding them. This creates a lot of inner and outer freedom and stillness. Instead of fear, a need to divide your world and a search for conflicts.
To learn more about this I would recommend Eckhart Tolle's books and signing up for the 10 free and excellent webcasts - available both in video and audio form – that he's doing with Oprah right now.
5. Avoid a dependency on validation from others.
"I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine."
"Showing off is the fool's idea of glory."
The ego wants to add because it thinks it's not enough. One way of doing that is by craving validation from others. We want to feel smart, pretty, successful and so on. And the validation makes you feel good for a while. But soon you need a new fix.
And the problem with being dependent on validation from other people is that you let other people control how you feel. This creates a rollercoaster of emotion in your life.
To find more emotional stability and to take control of how you feel you need to get your validation from to a more consistent source. Yourself. You can replace the expectations and validation of others by setting your own expectations and by validating yourself.
And so you validate yourself by thinking about how awesome you are. You don't sell yourself short. You appreciate how far you have come and the positive things you have done. You appreciate your own value in the world. You set goals and you achieve those goals. This builds confidence in yourself and in your abilities. These things will help you to build a habit of inner validation.
Now, showing off. Why do we do that? To get validation from others. However, this need for validation often shines through and that is why a thing like bragging seldom works. Instead of seeing the cool and successful person you are trying to project people just see the insecure and needy person looking for validation. And your bragging falls flat.
6. Be proactive.
"To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities."
It's easy to get locked into a reactive mindset. You just follow along with whatever is happening. You do what the people around you do. You react to whatever is going on.
And so you get lost in your circumstances. This way of thinking doesn't feel too good. You tend to feel powerless and like you are just drifting along.
A more useful and pleasurable way of living is to be proactive. As Bruce says: to create opportunities despite the circumstances around you. This feels better and provides better results. But on the other hand it's also more difficult. It's easier to just drift along in the reactive stream of life. And if you want to be proactive then you may have to take the lead quite often. And that can be scary.
Still, living proactively is so much more rewarding and exciting.
7. Be you.
"Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it."
Just being yourself is a hard thing to do. You may do it sometimes. And other times you may forget or fall back into old thought patterns. Or you may imitate someone else.
And that comes through too. And it may work.
But I believe that being the real you will work better. Because there the genuine you is shining through. Without incongruency, mixed messages or perhaps a sort of phoniness. It's you to 100%. It's you with not only your words but you with your voice tonality and body language – which some say is over 90% of communication - on the same wavelength as your words. It's you coming through on all channels of communication.
So I'm not saying: "yeah man, you should just be yourself because it's the right thing to do etc." I'm saying that I think being your authentic self – the one where you do little dividing, the one that needs little validation from others, the one where your ego is not running the show and trying to get something from someone – will give you better results and more satisfaction in your day to day life because you are in alignment with yourself. And because people really like genuine and people really like authenticity.
4.15.2008
A good line.
Current mood: calm
"Over time I've realized that you can only understand life backwards but you have to live it forwards." I don't remember where I heard that but I think it's pretty profound.
"Over time I've realized that you can only understand life backwards but you have to live it forwards." I don't remember where I heard that but I think it's pretty profound.
4.10.2008
Admitting your own Personal Suck
Current mood: enlightened
I just realized something the other day. It always bugged me and I couldn't quite explain what it was. Some seemingly random (lucky?) people have become really good at identifying their weaknesses and developing the compensatory psychic muscle needed to shore up their vulnerabilities. Forget stuff? Write stuff down. Get easily distracted? Set a timer. Burdened with pointless interruptions? Leave the office. Find the erroneous code in your system and eliminate the bugs. Find the quickest, minimalist, most elegant solution that could possibly work. Can it really be that simple? Sure, to an outsider looking in, it's all "no duh" stuff, right? I mean, why would anyone need to be reminded that things can be written down on cards and kept organized? Well, to be honest… A lot of us need a unexpected amount of reminding. Seriously. How do some people stay skinny so easy? How can some people draw anything they see? Why are some people math whizzes? How can some people be so funny with little or no effort? If you ask these questions to any of those people with those skills you yearn for, you'll probably end up the same answer every time: "I dunno. It's just how I am." And so the rest of us generously proportioned, uncreative, math-retarded, not-funny people stare and stew like the loser in the old Charles Atlas ad. "Why can't I have that?" Because, you can't just turn it on and instantaneously become what you wish you were. It takes reflection, consideration, reiteration, and a personal dedication to facing the stuff at which you suck. And everyone sucks at something. You totally suck at something. Don't let it discourage you. Interestingly enough, I found an interesting article online that talked about how the application of two totally opposite ideas can have the same effect on a problem. Think about this:
"Outline: Plan everything you're going to write, scene by scene, all the way through to the end. Do your research while you're outlining, so by the time you start writing the actual story, you're already living in that world. With a detailed enough outline, the actual writing becomes a matter of choosing the right words to describe what you've already decided to tell. You can concentrate on style and let the plot take care of itself, because you've already done that part."
"Don't outline: Don't plan ahead at all. Feel the lure of the blank page. Trust your instincts and dive into the story, and don't look back until you're done."
(http://sfwa.org/writing/strategies.html)
It's not about one being smart and the other dumb. It's about understanding what's really significant and helping a given person solve a given problem. Your brain and its behavior isn't some kit you can put together from a page of plans. You're always thinking, obsessing, and changing as you go through your day. There's more than one path, and, dimes to donuts, you'll sooner or later end up losing it if you try to find just one. I guess I'm saying I like the idea that once you've started owning up your "individual suck," you can sample from an endless list of options of tricks that may or may not help you make your life better. As long as you don't lose any fingers and can still get most of your work done on time, where's the damage in experimenting? Try something. Then try the opposite. Then try the orthogonal. Every bit that falls short teaches you a little something that might come in handy some day. As they say, mistakes can be a buddhist gift.
The only damage you'll find more difficult to repair comes from the doors you've decided to close forever. Try patching your own "individual suck" with crazy, ridiculous, incredibly obvious solutions. You'll learn where your problems are and eventually you'll probably have a pretty good idea where the solutions are hiding too.
Onwards…
I just realized something the other day. It always bugged me and I couldn't quite explain what it was. Some seemingly random (lucky?) people have become really good at identifying their weaknesses and developing the compensatory psychic muscle needed to shore up their vulnerabilities. Forget stuff? Write stuff down. Get easily distracted? Set a timer. Burdened with pointless interruptions? Leave the office. Find the erroneous code in your system and eliminate the bugs. Find the quickest, minimalist, most elegant solution that could possibly work. Can it really be that simple? Sure, to an outsider looking in, it's all "no duh" stuff, right? I mean, why would anyone need to be reminded that things can be written down on cards and kept organized? Well, to be honest… A lot of us need a unexpected amount of reminding. Seriously. How do some people stay skinny so easy? How can some people draw anything they see? Why are some people math whizzes? How can some people be so funny with little or no effort? If you ask these questions to any of those people with those skills you yearn for, you'll probably end up the same answer every time: "I dunno. It's just how I am." And so the rest of us generously proportioned, uncreative, math-retarded, not-funny people stare and stew like the loser in the old Charles Atlas ad. "Why can't I have that?" Because, you can't just turn it on and instantaneously become what you wish you were. It takes reflection, consideration, reiteration, and a personal dedication to facing the stuff at which you suck. And everyone sucks at something. You totally suck at something. Don't let it discourage you. Interestingly enough, I found an interesting article online that talked about how the application of two totally opposite ideas can have the same effect on a problem. Think about this:
"Outline: Plan everything you're going to write, scene by scene, all the way through to the end. Do your research while you're outlining, so by the time you start writing the actual story, you're already living in that world. With a detailed enough outline, the actual writing becomes a matter of choosing the right words to describe what you've already decided to tell. You can concentrate on style and let the plot take care of itself, because you've already done that part."
"Don't outline: Don't plan ahead at all. Feel the lure of the blank page. Trust your instincts and dive into the story, and don't look back until you're done."
(http://sfwa.org/writing/strategies.html)
It's not about one being smart and the other dumb. It's about understanding what's really significant and helping a given person solve a given problem. Your brain and its behavior isn't some kit you can put together from a page of plans. You're always thinking, obsessing, and changing as you go through your day. There's more than one path, and, dimes to donuts, you'll sooner or later end up losing it if you try to find just one. I guess I'm saying I like the idea that once you've started owning up your "individual suck," you can sample from an endless list of options of tricks that may or may not help you make your life better. As long as you don't lose any fingers and can still get most of your work done on time, where's the damage in experimenting? Try something. Then try the opposite. Then try the orthogonal. Every bit that falls short teaches you a little something that might come in handy some day. As they say, mistakes can be a buddhist gift.
The only damage you'll find more difficult to repair comes from the doors you've decided to close forever. Try patching your own "individual suck" with crazy, ridiculous, incredibly obvious solutions. You'll learn where your problems are and eventually you'll probably have a pretty good idea where the solutions are hiding too.
Onwards…
4.01.2008
Stop whining....
Current mood: annoyed
I guess I'll write - since it's on my mind today - that I'm realizing how much it pays to stop and pay attention whenever you hear yourself mentally whining.
Nobody likes a whiner, even when it's yourself. So it makes sense to be attentive to amount of which your internal monologue is becoming personally insufferable. As with body odor and not flossing, chances are good that others have already noticed things about you before you have, so - you know - congratulations on making it to the party.
Furthermore, and possibly more importantly, that whining should be telling you something. Whining is the white smoke in your tail pipe that means you're wasting mental oil. It means you're unconsciously allocating cycles to something that you cannot, would not, or should not be wasting your time thinking about. Otherwise, why would it be bothering you, right? You'd be either free of it or done with it.
Once you pinpoint where that whine's coming from, that's the perfect opportunity to decide what the hell the hang-up is. Because if it's worth whining and droning about, it's worth deciding what obstacle (barrier?) in either the "real world" or your own brain is keeping something from happening.
And once you figure out that obstacle, there's more than enough methods that exist to help you accomplish what you need to get passed it all in a way that's sane and sensible. But you can't finish a task you don't fully understand, so allow yourself the personal comfort of unpacking the problem behind the problem.
Put automotive-wise? Compulsively adding a new bottle of oil every other day doesn't repair your smoke problem: it feeds it. As an alternative, use the smoke as a warning that it's about time to trace the cracks in your engine.
As for me? Ya… Now I'm feeling a little better and a little less whiny.
Onwards…
I guess I'll write - since it's on my mind today - that I'm realizing how much it pays to stop and pay attention whenever you hear yourself mentally whining.
Nobody likes a whiner, even when it's yourself. So it makes sense to be attentive to amount of which your internal monologue is becoming personally insufferable. As with body odor and not flossing, chances are good that others have already noticed things about you before you have, so - you know - congratulations on making it to the party.
Furthermore, and possibly more importantly, that whining should be telling you something. Whining is the white smoke in your tail pipe that means you're wasting mental oil. It means you're unconsciously allocating cycles to something that you cannot, would not, or should not be wasting your time thinking about. Otherwise, why would it be bothering you, right? You'd be either free of it or done with it.
Once you pinpoint where that whine's coming from, that's the perfect opportunity to decide what the hell the hang-up is. Because if it's worth whining and droning about, it's worth deciding what obstacle (barrier?) in either the "real world" or your own brain is keeping something from happening.
And once you figure out that obstacle, there's more than enough methods that exist to help you accomplish what you need to get passed it all in a way that's sane and sensible. But you can't finish a task you don't fully understand, so allow yourself the personal comfort of unpacking the problem behind the problem.
Put automotive-wise? Compulsively adding a new bottle of oil every other day doesn't repair your smoke problem: it feeds it. As an alternative, use the smoke as a warning that it's about time to trace the cracks in your engine.
As for me? Ya… Now I'm feeling a little better and a little less whiny.
Onwards…
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