Why I'm an Optimist

Is the glass half-full or half-empty? We’ve all heard that it depends on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.

But what if the glass is filled just short or just above the half-way mark? In a series of water glass tests, it was found that optimists more frequently over-estimate than pessimists under-estimate the contents. Published research shows that pessimists are more frequently right; they are in better contact with reality.

Critical Thinking

     There is no exception: every independent and peer-reviewed study on changing climate conditions concludes that global warming is for real and humans are responsible for it. Still, Republicans routinely declare that the issue remains debatable and in need of more research.

Statistical evidence indicates that the distribution of condoms is the most successful strategy for preventing the transmission of AIDS in Africa. The recent Bush administration, however, persisted in touting and funding programs encouraging abstinence.

An environmental win all around

Bioswales are big in Portland. (bioswales) Some are built by the city into sidewalks and parking strips, others by businesses in their surface parking lots as part of the permitting process. All of them together beautify the city, save on sewer treatment plants, and purify rainwater before it runs into the rivers.

Will science understand all things?

The relationship of philosophy/religion and modern science continues to be a vexed one.

After recently running into a scientist friend and visiting briefly about that topic, we exchanged letters.

Reagan, the Great Communicator

     Most of our problems go back to Ronald Reagan. I hate to disagree with President Obama, but, then, I believe, he praises the Great Communicator to set the tone of civility and the bipartisanship so lacking in his political opposition.

     Once the Great Communicator had persuaded us that we need only take care of ourselves, then it became clear that we don’t need to support schools. Now we spend more money on locking up prisoners than educating children.

     Once the Great Communicator had convinced us that government is the problem, not the solution, we began to see that we don’t need to regulate banks and corporations. The result: the worst economy since the Great Depression.

     Once the Great Communicator had convinced us that the key to paradise is to get the government off our backs, we decided that there couldn’t be anything to fear about corporations not paying taxes or shipping jobs overseas. Now we have the highest unemployment since the Great Depression.

     Once the Great Communicator had opened our eyes to the “welfare queens” cruising our streets in their Cadillacs, we were sure at last that we don’t need a social safety net. And now the mentally ill roam those same streets and seek refuge from the cold on our buses and in our libraries.

     So, I’ll say it again: most of our problems go back to Ronald Reagan.

Rumsfeld, Lonergan and Einstein

A few years ago, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld made the newspaper’s “zany” column. He stole the prize for garbled speech from his boss, George W., when he had announced, “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

What does that mean?

What is scotosis?

(first posted, 2007)

     The pace was picking up. Every year, more of those massive, stone effigies called moai were levered onto platforms on tiny Easter Island. Every year, according to the belief, people received more protection from the spirits of the ancestors to whom those moai were monuments.

Why politics matters, again

     At a gathering this evening of young people I heard once again the version of politics that almost causes me to howl in pain. The discussion was about the great boon that information technology is to politics. The young people were particularly excited about the gigabytes of data on all of us that are out there in cyberspace. Especially, what churches we go (“Where they believe in creationism? abortion? gay marriage?), where we shop (Costco?  WalMart?  the local grocer?), what purchases we make (Guns? SUVs? ATVs?) what movies we watch on Netflix (Sci-fi? Chase and Crash thrillers? Animated?) and what music we listen to (classical? oldies? hip-hop? country?).

Why politics matters

     I have no stomach for politics. I accept that its aim is compromise and that its result is most often what can be done rather than what needs to be done. But what are we to think about the hurly-burly, the glad-handing, the bread and circuses, and the big bucks that drive the whole show? As one who would have made a poor fan at a contest between the lions and Christians in Rome, I don’t even enjoy politics as a spectator sport.

This confession will surprise some members of my family and many of my friends. Among them it is said that I’m passionate about politics. I cringe when one of them congratulates me and makes me a hero for doing nothing more than thinking reluctantly about the responsibilities of citizenship. Some express a little guilt about their not being “hooked up,” while others make it clear that they couldn’t care less about politics. Politics is a choice, like a pastime or a hobby, and it’s not for them.

Those who live in small houses

      Dee Williams has posted a remarkable video on the thinking behind her “tiny house” project. The video reminded me that when I was 20 I was influenced so much by Thomas Merton that I spent some weekends and vacations at Trappist monasteries. I came to know monks who lived in utter simplicity, the cycles of nature, and the excruciating closeness of working next to and eating with and praying beside people not of their choosing—the ultimate in terms of community. I felt an undertow pulling me into that ocean. The sign over the entrance to the monastery, however, stopped me: Here is where you will die. 

     I have never thought that I wasn’t up to the Trappist program. The glory of people like Merton and Dee Williams is that they are signs of the beauty to be found in Dee’s three prescriptions: gratitude, humility and grace. The danger of monastic life is that without keen discernment, aided by skilled counseling, it can be excuse for dying rather than living. That would have been my fate. Better that the monks became for me a sacrament of how to live fully and well.

    Thanks, Dee, for the message today of gratitude, humility and grace.

On shooting pigeons

 

Chris was twelve he started begging his mom and me to take him to the supermarket to buy a BB gun. After weeks, we relented, and I took him. Once he got it, he begged me to let him aim at the pigeons roosting next door. It was not just a matter of pride in his new possession; Chris wanted to help me carry on a long war with the pigeons. Since their droppings damaged the roof and stained the house paint, I had been putting a pitch-like preparation along the eves to keep them from alighting there. Chris was for a final solution. If it weren't against the law, I probably would have welcomed his plan and offer. As it was, Chris had to settle for shooting pigeons in his father's barn in the country and telling me afterwards what an accurate marksman he was.

A scientific argument against animal research?

    James McWilliams’ argument is not new in the literature of opposition to animal research. Nor is it a scientific argument. How could his claim—animal feelings and cognition are enough like human feelings and cognition to merit the right of animals not to be harmed in biomedical research—be empirically verified, as scientific claims require? That evolution conserves physiological traits across species is, of course, an empirically verifiable fact that McWilliams acknowledges as the basis for biomedical research.