Good Friday / Maundy Thursday

Though I'm a firm atheist, and I don't believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, my belief in the historicity of Jesus is a little difficult to shake off, and perhaps it is not necessary to do so.  Over the decades, the events in the so-called New Testament, and the personalities of Jesus's disciples seem too fully painted to be mere fictions. 

Though I continue to believe that Jesus was never alive again after he was executed, the horror and the fear of the group in the hours leading up to the crucifixion seem very real.  And if I do believe in the devastation of Jesus's friends and supporters in those pre-crucifiction hours, that should not detract from my qualifications as an atheist.  And atheists need not feel obliged to ridicule 'believers' as the latter ponder the horrors of those two days.  If it were the case that Jesus had not a speck of divinity, the horror of that group would have been all the more real. 

There is no doubt that Jesus was a great leader and teacher, which alone makes his execution a tragedy.  So were the executions of Stephen, Paul, Peter, in fact the deaths of all those first century christian martyrs were tragedies.  Atheists tend to laugh at those who mourn those tragedies; it's somewhat inexplicable.  But not sacrilegious, as we atheists can agree.  I mean, when a friend dies, we comfort his widow and his children; we hardly ever ridicule them saying, well, he wasn't the Messiah; curb your excitement!

I blogged on Bach's Matthew Passion recently.

With The Hands: 3rd World Wisdom

Today I want to head in a new direction.  My readers may not know that, until I was 26, I grew up in a Third World country.  In contrast to the prejudiced views of certain people, these countries were not—and are not—the trash heaps that they're accused of being.  It is rather alarming how large a proportion of journalists in the media are from India, for instance; these countries seem to grow very highly motivated individuals.  But, having grown up in Sri Lanka—just think; being as old as I was, I was very much a Sri Lankan when I arrived here, and still am, to some degree—there are a few patterns of thought that are stuck into my brain, like they're glued on. 

Having a dishwasher at home, for instance, gradually creates patterns of behavior quite different from those in someone who washed their dishes by hand.  Dishwasher people tend to collect dishes inside the dishwasher, until there's enough of a load, and then run the machine, which chugs along without any interference. 

People who have been the designated dish washer (in their dishwasher-less homes) in the past, seem to want to pile up dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, until having to wash them is inevitable, at which point they wash the whole lot, and put them in an enormous draining-rack.

The problem I have with this plan is that they sometimes toss things like bread knives in there, too.  If you've only got one bread knife in the house, (and most homes are this way,) you've put the bread knife out of use until the stuff in the sink has been washed.  This is true of any really large knife. 

To anyone who grew up in the wilds of Colombo (I'm being flippant; Colombo was a bustling city by 1700), this is a crazy way of doing things.  I would—carefully—wipe the knife clean, and put it back near the bread board.  If someone has used it to dig out the last bit of strawberry jam—as you do—well, hold it under the tap (a.k.a. faucet) and then clean it off with a paper towel.  No need to hit it with the enzymes (or hormones, or whatever they put in detergent these days).

Many of the things we own—and love—could serve us well for years, and even decades.  Ten years from now, we could be looking at something we own with fondness, thinking that the successor to that tool (or whatever it is) is nowhere near as well made as the one we have!  Lots of old things are more robust, and made of sturdier materials than their more modern counterparts.  It's common sense, therefore, to be ultra careful with the things we own, and which we enjoy the most.  Clothes.  Shoes.  Furniture.  Pens!  Some of our favorite things are really given a lot of rough use. 

A screwdriver, for instance.  This humble device can give good service for decades if you never let it slip while tightening (or loosening) a screw.   This is especially true of Philips-type screwdrivers. 

Now, it could be argued that, this sort of tool is intended to take rough usage, and once the bit is worn smooth, so that it doesn't work anymore, you just buy a new one.  Ah, but will the tool you buy in ten years be as good as the one you have now?

Shoes are an excellent example.  Sometimes the only problem with a fantastic pair of shoes is that the sole is unevenly worn; perhaps the sole of the left foot is worn down on the outside.  If your town has a shoe repairman (a cobbler), he can easily re-sole that shoe (or the pair of shoes) so that they're as good as, or better than, they were when new.  Sadly, shoe repair is a dying art, so it behooves one to patronize a shoe repairman before they give up the occupation.

I ought to explain the use of the phrase "with the hands"!  When you eat with your fingers—as we did when eating certain foods—you normally wash your hands once you're done.  The phrase  "With the hands" means: while you're washing your hands at the sink, you may as well wash your plate, too!

Arch

 

Trump's Party

The Trump family has decided to infuse new blood into the GOP political machine.  What will happen?  Will they get to paint their headquarters in gold, or go into bankruptcy?  Well, the GOP people must come to its aid.  Jump in with your checkbooks, or go down the drain with the Trumps.

Gene

Well, Kate and I just got back from the funeral service for a recently deceased close friend.  The funeral service was held in a small Evangelical church.  A little into the service, we found ourselves singing a hymn, whose refrain was

Trust and obey,

For there's no other way,

To be happy in Jesus

But to trust and obey.

This remarkable hymn managed to encapsulate all that I find disappointing in Christianity as it is practiced in the US: if you want to be happy with Jesus, you have to switch off the critical parts of your brain.

Much of the congregation consisted of our colleagues, who were college professors.  Some of them, doubtless, are comfortable with Trusting and Obeying, but higher education for many years has been engaged in a battle to fight against all sorts of dogma, which is why the conservatives and the GOP is so determined to get rid of "wokeness", one aspect of which is not Trusting and Obeying.  But is there truly no other way?

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Great Advice from Feynman

This is wonderful advice, all the more poignant for coming from Richard P. Feynman.  Some of you are cautious about whose advice you take—only to be expected after so much gaslighting—so read up about Richard Feynman.  He was brought up in Brooklyn, and eventually found himself working at the Manhattan Project.  He cracked the safe in which the reports of the several research groups were kept, left a note saying "Guess who?" and locked up the safe again. 

He wrote a 3- volume work that encapsulated all his notes, called The Feynman Lectures on Physics. 

To get back to the advice in the photo, his main trust (to young people) is:  find what you like to do, and really get into it. 

There is a message here for parents.  The kid who finds something she is enthralled by in their core curriculum is very fortunate.  You have to hedge your bets by providing a wide variety of activities for your kid. 

If your family is suspicious of higher education, your child can learn to downplay it.   It seems as though being well-educated is something a person should be proud of; and indeed he or she ought to be proud of it.  But in these times, a person can often be more effective as "an influencer," but not a cheap commercial influencer who has a huge following on social media, for the sake of getting rewards from companies; but to encourage people to think in rational ways, that science isn't bad, that vaccination is usually good; that politicians don't always do as much as they claim to do.  And maybe he or she (your child) could be a better influencer if her or his academic credentials are down-played.

Regrettably, once a youth gets into college, getting more and more qualified often depends on focusing on less and less, until people with the highest qualifications often know just a huge amount about a very narrow number of things.  This does not have to be the way it is.  Richard Feynman himself knew a huge number of things; he was widely read, he certainly knew how to crack a safe.  When he was alive (he might still be alive, but I think I remember hearing that he had died) people in society respected educated people.  People with wide knowledge and experience (that doesn't automatically come with a college degree; you have to go out and get that sort of knowledge and experience) were respected.  But we didn't know how resentful certain sectors of society were, and how suspicious of, college-learned people.  Bank loan officers, people with whom farmers had to do business, were often college educated, and these people did not usually have the customer's interests at heart; it was no wonder that many people thought of educated folk as ripoff artists. 

Well, we could be, I suppose.  When I looked in the eyes of certain of my students, I could see a certain question taking shape: "do we need to know all this, just to rip a few people off?"  I had been thinking how helpful they could be, with the additional information.  But some of them were focused more on knowing just how little they could get away with.  Being other-directed is something one absorbs from one's parents.  Unfortunately, some parents would just as soon their kids did not learn to be too altruistic. 

Arch

Thinking About Immigration

The problems with immigration are closely tied to our attitudes towards social welfare.

Politically, people's attitudes towards social welfare are numerous, ranging from "We don't need any sort of welfare at all.  Each man for himself!"  to  "Everyone should be provided with the basic necessities of life."  Those who haven't thought about this sort of issue might be shocked, but instead of 'everyone' if we were to say 'children', bearing in mind that even penniless families can have children, it takes on a different color.  Imagine a young couple, where the man was the breadwinner, and the woman was a homemaker, and then a mother; they get divorced, and now the woman must get child care while she looks for a job, or works.  Our perspective must change from: "I don't think I'll ever need the state to take care of me!" to: "There certainly are people who may need help from the community."

It isn't a huge leap to make the assumption that everyone believes that every citizen has to be taken care of, to some degree.  We are a nation that takes care of its citizens.

Some of us believe that we ought to take care of even non-citizens who live here.  It may be that (1) we give non citizens certain basic services to keep everyone safe.  (2) We give the kids of noncitizens certain services out of sheer humanity.  (3) Sometimes it is too burdensome to insist that our social service providers should verify citizenship of every individual before services are given.  And so on.

Well, once we establish the principle that we're a nation that looks after its citizens, or even its residents, it becomes clear that allowing open immigration is impossibly difficult; we would be taking on a great expense when we admit people through our borders.  Presence here has to be understood as a membership in all sorts of services.

Why not deny all immigration?  This sounds good in theory, but each of us has some categories of wannabe immigrants who we feel should be allowed in.  The question is how to do it in a fair and consistent way.

Transitioning Caution

There's a lot of evidence to believe that those who work in the area of guiding young people through the process of gender transitioning—getting ready for a sex change—have been a little too enthusiastic in advocating for it. Often, these strongly pro-transition advocates are reported to not offer more options to the young people they're counseling.  Bear in mind that the youngsters who come to be counseled concerning their gender dysphoria—discomfort with their assigned gender—often have other psychological burdens than just unhappiness with their gender.  But too often, the professionals who are assigned to counsel them are (reportedly) too focused on the route of gender transitioning.  This trend is confirmed by a substantial number of cases in which, the transitioned individuals request reversal of the process: de-transitioning.

I am not an expert; I have just been unhappy with presenting very young children with the option to transition gender.  Kids often don't know their own minds, and other psychological problems they're facing complicate and interfere with the situation. I don't think writing about gender transition can be left to the experts. 

Political conservatives have opposed any gender transition for a long time.  For that reason, anyone who raises concerns about the ethics of gender transition are often accused—by pro-transition people—as being politically motivated conservatives.  No, I'm not raising a GO SLOW flag here because I'm a Christian conservative, or Tea Party-type Republican; I just think there are far too many people who want to support and affirm the interest in a youth who is merely interested in gender options, to follow through with actually transitioning.  Transitioning is difficult and painful, but detransitioning is even more painful.  This is far too delicate a problem to allow politics to interfere with it. 

Please read up on the matter yourselves:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/opinion/transgender-children-gender-dysphoria.html