Welcome...

An old story which has made a great conversation piece (like a quaint item on a coffee table might in the living room of your host) has been Plato's "parable of the cave." It has been an attempt to understand why many people are so vehement in their rejection of the ideas which philosophers propose.

I think that the whole phenomenon can be better described in a much simpler way. People need to choose a healthy method of reasoning. One can even become "mentally ill" if they choose to reason in a haphazard manner. Generally people decide that they will subscribe to the consensus of the community. Some folks who think of themselves as more refined believe that they should listen to and believe whatever seems to be the consensus of scientists in regards to the area of life they are thinking about. This works fairly well for them 90% of the time. Although it does make me chuckle how such people seem oblivious to the fact that consensuses shift and change over time, and by choosing to find someone else to listen to and believe, they are putting themselves and their lives and judgements at the mercy of a somewhat unreliable process.

Philosophers may believe that they are only trying to convey an idea. But, in fact, they are inviting people to adopt an entirely different way of reasoning. Philosophers are asking people to think independently, look at the world with their own eyes, and draw their conclusions carefully after doing so. This is the barrier for entry if one wants to read a philosopher's work. You, the reader, have to bring to the table your own musings, and your own conclusions, after having thought independently about the issue which is being discussed.

But, people who have anchored themselves to one method or another of reasoning are tenacious in their relationship to that method. They will get angry, indignant, unreasonable all because they fear that if they give up their anchor in the storm, they will be tossed to and fro like a piece of driftwood upon the ocean swells. It's quite a reasonable concern on their part. But they are like children who stick their fingers in their ears and yell "I can't hear you."

I think that philosophers should make it their primary life's goal to help folks to learn how to think and reason in a better fashion. Enough with the endless debates over what historical philosopher a b c or d was saying! Let's roll up our sleeves and get to work with helping others in our society in a very tangible way.

My apologies to anyone who met an impasse while trying to leave me a comment... Unbeknownst to me, my captcha was broken. It should work now, though. It'll query you about a simple mathematical equation. I'll try to set up a feedback form on the website, so folks can let me know if they are experiencing mechanical problems in the future.

Cheers.

Do you know that there's a new computer "brand" that will probably eclipse Microsoft and Apple over the next ten years? It's called Linux. And it actually isn't a brand, it's a project where amateur and professional computer programmers from around the world contribute their work for free. Because no one is on a salary, the end product is also free of both cost, and restrictions. Programmers like Linux in the same way that auto mechanics love old chevrolet and ford cars - they can open it up, look under the hood and see how it runs.

If you're curious about it, and you have a high speed internet connection, and you know how to write a disc image (.iso) to a compact disc, and you know how to set your computer to "boot from" the cd/dvd rom drive, I would recommend that you try out one particularly fun version. This is a version of Linux called "Puppy Linux" - and this particular release comes with very cool animations and transparencies that are even better than what Windows Vista gives you. You'll see it's still a bit unstable... kind of like Windows '98 was... but it's fun to take a look at anyway.

(This compact disc gives you a chance to "test drive" linux. Booting it up certainly won't change anything on your computer, so it's completely safe. The maker of puppy linux - Barry Kauler - actually recommends that you run it either from the cd, or from a usb memory stick - if you have a spare one of those around, you can install it to that, and it will run very quickly)

North american men, why are you scared of affection? I'll tell you why I think it is... it's because of a prejudice against men which women have. Women have a stereotype about men which originates from folklore passed among them over the years when they talk about us. It often isn't prettty what they have to say about us. There have been many loud voices in the feminist movement who have insisted on denigrating and scorning and demeaning men, and male affection. Many men these days are raised by single mothers, who unwittingly create the very kind of man who they dislike, by raising their boys to conform to the stereotypes which they have about men. I know one woman, for instance, who recently finished her divorce proceedings, and has been sending her boys to martial arts classes because that's what she thinks men need, in order to protect themselves. It's quite shocking, actually.

In our society, the first decade of a child's life is spent with these immersive physical interactions - they are held and caressed by their parents, they wriggle around with their siblings and friends. The next ten years is spent insisting the child unlearn all that. When a boy hits puberty, he is told that his desire to touch other people has this odd connotation. All of a sudden, it's called "sexual attraction" - and except in very few situations, if he has this desire to touch someone, people say it reflects poorly on his character. Children throughout our country are accustomed to calling this kind of touching they do with caring adults "love". Young children will see it as personal rejection if an adult refuses to pick them up and hold them. Children still adore cuddling with their parents and caregivers into their elementary school years. When the indoctrination into the adult ritual of "sexuality" starts, a boy going into his teenage years begins to conflate affection with sexual attraction. At the end of his teens, the boy will usually have learned to spurn the act of giving and receiving affection - it's seen as too socially hazardous to risk your affections being misinterpreted by others. Thus young males become brash, and distant and cold. They won't even see this attitude in themselves; they think that they are being conscientious in that they are avoiding any problems associated with people misreading their expressions and body language.

We have to set a new trend, people. This is unacceptable. Single mothers need to really be conscientous to find their children good male role models. All of us men need to be smiling at kids we pass on the street. The secret, I believe, is to make sure the next generation feels secure in accepting affection from men, and giving affection to men. Boys will then grow up and see the way forward for themselves in their own adult lives - when they have seen this kind of affection modeled.

Ok, I think I'm going to lose some of my timidity here, and begin to lay out my heart and the details of lots of models which I have put together over the years about things. I realize that most USAer folks who read my words will misconstrue them. Because the premises behind many of my models is so far outside the box, they won't know how to make heads or tails of what I'm saying. However, this blog is not really written for a general audience anyway, and the real people I'm trying to reach here with my words are the folks who have put some time previously into looking at the world around them and pondering it - dispensing with preconceptions, and looking at things with a fresh perspective.

Hmmm...

It seems to me that there are two types of people in this world. There are those who love to muse about things, and those who spend their lives posturing and trying to get ahead for themselves. 95% of folks are in the second group. They learn to put on different airs which would seem to be meet for the situation. And they are struggling like salmon who swim upstream, to make their way for themselves in life. There are very few people who have sat down and thought deeply about all the different issues in life for themselves. People who muse a lot are very few and far between. A person who has thought deeply about life will recognize where the solutions are to the problems he or she sees around him. He will understand how trends take shape in small groups of people and large groups of folks, and he will work to push constructive trends whenever he gets a chance. This type of person cares deeply about other people. Unfortunately, because the posturers in our world are the larger group of folks, they tend to form consensuses about things among themselves, and they then tend to view the thinkers as being odd, because their premises with which they are building their models are always somewhat "outside the box," as it were. Deep thinking folks in the usa are really quite the objects of scorn, although because we are immersed in our society, we often become oblivious to this.

Another commonality among us deep thinking folks is that we tend to be very enamored with the idea of expressing affection through touch. Anybody who has run through all the models on that social custom sees the very profound value in it. Children in our society are always touching and caressing and being caressed. It's considered fundamentally important for young children to receive this kind of physical affection. However, adults in north america tend to get very weird attitudes about touch. There is lots of anxiety about what is termed "sexual attraction" (in quotes because I question the premises behind "sexual attraction", and really the entire context around that subject). In fact, more often than not, males in our society tend to completely conflate affection with sexual attraction, and then because of the problematic nature of sexual attraction as it shows on a person's face in different situations, they then proceed to push affection out of their lives altogether. Rejecting the custom of giving and receiving affection tends to make males in our society cold and distant.

No one is as troubled by this trepidation that our society has when it comes to expressing affection, as us deep-thinking folks. Because we are socially progressive in our outlook, and because caring deeply about those around us is so central to our way of life, many of us will tend to mix in that sexual attraction subtext with our affection which we show to other adults around us - especially younger adults. And those of us who are younger tend to be unnerved by that, because of what our society has taught us about such things. The upshot of this, is that younger thinkers are put off from hooking up with those who have more years behind them. And where young people ought to get mentorship - they instead embark on a long and lonely plod through life - among shallow posturers who can never appreciate them for who they are.

There is a whole vast sea of needy people out there who need our help. However, if we thinkers cannot even succeed in hooking up with eachother, we will never have the stamina or the resources to be able to help the needy masses.

explanation: I know some who are casually reading this essay will miss the context of what I'm saying here, because in your opinion the erudite of society are in the halls of universities completing their phds... or are doing some very important scientific research on this matter or that one. I am not referring to those people. I don't think of such folks as "deep thinking" people - even though they have a vast and wordy vocabulary that I'm sure would daunt any of us, when we tried to read their papers. For the most part, traditional intellectuals stay within the frameworks of the ideas of those around them. They are simply reiterating a point made by someone else at some other time. Those folks who I'm addressing in this piece, I believe will recognize who they are.

Sometimes I'm fascinated at how little a society looks in the mirror to see itself as it actually is. Stereotypes and prejudices occur only in moments of lack of clarity about the society one lives in. There are very profound differences in the culture of the West Coast cities, versus the inland areas of small towns and rural life in north america. I remember seeing this same cultural divide when I visited Queensland Australia for a month with a highschool class science trip many years ago. There is animosity from the city people towards the country people, and there is suspicion and scorn from the country people towards the city people.

There are differences in body language you see in people who have been raised in a windswept humid city, when you compare them to those folks who were raised on the sunny plains. Self-consciousness (ie shyness) is expressed differently in these different environments. Thoughtfulness also produces different types of body language.

The thing that I find most fascinating about this cultural divide is the fact that it seems in different locations there are customary ways in which self-consciousness is expressed by a large segment of society. If anyone is at wit's end that day, she or he knows that she can go out about her business, and if she shows her shyness and confusion in a particular fashion, it will be accepted as normal for a person having a bad day, or for someone who is feeling stressed out. The odd thing is, that the customary shyness routine becomes really viewed with sincere suspicion when that person moves to the other climate. And even those who consider themselves to be social progressives are vulnerable to the prejudice towards this very foreign kind of body language. When I was growing up in a west coast city, I remember always being aware of this cloud of suspicion around people who tended to stare a little bit too long off into the distance. Where I live now in the rocky mountains, I have discovered the matching prejudice. Here, the suspicion surrounds people with faltering speech patterns, or who blink too much. These behaviors are quite normal body language within the context of the society where a person was raised. But a cloud of suspicion will follow the hapless soul everywhere he goes if he or she demonstrates these kinds of patterns of body language when living within that different society elsewhere on the continent.

These differences in body language have to do with the fact that when the humidity goes up, and the wind blows, the eyes are prompted to blink more frequently. And this leads thoughtfulness to often be expressed on the west coast by a body language of gazing off into the distance and blinking. On the plains and in the rocky mountains, where it is drier, thoughtfulness is expressed with a gaze which has a lot less eye motion.

It's definitely a culture shock to move to a place which is different from where you were raised. Changing around all of one's body language routines to match with the tastes and social expectations of a new community is no small feat. And then, of course, when you return to the place of your birth, you face suspicion if you cannot immediately shift gears back into the kind of body language which is appropriate for that other climate.

So here I continue my weblog soliloquy. Hmmm...

To touch base with what I was writing about earlier, soon after I wrote that piece about excellence not being appreciated in the usa... I realized that problem is within the context of a larger problem - one where mediocrity is not given a place where it can do good and benefit the world. It seems that novices and beginners in all endeavors in the usa get very little appreciation and help from others. They get no guidance. I have really been interested in Canada recently. And one thing that I see up there which I really admire, is that there are constructs in place to help people who are mediocre at music, at writing, at film, or at other kinds of things. The parameters that novices are given to work within allows their work to go on to really have a good effect on society.

On another topic, I was at a formal party tonight and it was an interesting opportunity to muse about how I and all my peers who are entering middle age are doing in our lives. How are we influencing the world? What pathway are we on?

I have a suggestion for my peers and for everybody really... It's very important as one goes through life, to have mused deeply enough about how the world works to understand the value in ideas, and to understand how trends are set, and how they spin into motion. Too many people, as Henry David Thoreau said "...live lives of quiet desperation." Interestingly enough in this hyper modern era, it's just as true as it was in his era of the 1850s. And the problem seems to be that people don't take the time to muse deeply enough. They don't reach out and suck the marrow out of life, in this way. People try desperately to get ahead by conforming to one social form or another. Stop, people. Sit down and think for awhile. If a person has a broad enough perspective on things, she or he will make every action something that is calculated to better the lot of the people around her. That person will laugh with joy when there is something in the humour which represents a good trend which will lead people to see the world more clearly, and be able to live more deftly.

I have been fascinated with the movement around tourist towns. I live in one myself - a ski/college town in the Rocky mountains. It's a wonderful place to live. The ethic of adult play, the importance of being warm and friendly towards travelers, and the ethic of helping the young work together to produce a marvelous zeitgeist for the community.

How did the tourist town movement get started? It seems to have been the "act locally, think globally crowd" who were artists and craftspeople that decided to move to small rural communities and begin to remake them. These towns often have all the wonderful amenities of the big cities - performing arts, ethnic restaurants, and other stuff, along with the warmth and friendliness of a town, where you can walk down the street and often run into people you know.

The metaphor that comes to mind is seeing a child being born. The rural areas of north america have been an excellent uterus. People in rural communities have very high social and ethical standards. They have an ethic of friendliness, of opennness, and of smiling at your neighbors (including children) who you pass by on the street.

So, I muse to myself, "where can we start an even bigger and more glorious social happening?" Well, it seems to me that Canada would be an even more magnificent uterus, so to speak, for a baby of a new kind of community.

I remember a song from the 1980s which always has brought tears to my eyes. The Dream Academy's "Life in a Northern Town" - the message in that song seems to be a call out to folks south of the border to come north and help out revitalize the communities of the far north.

I just realized today that our society in the usa is one where people are not accustomed to giving thanks to those who produce excellence.

There is a way that the passion of people gets expressed when they find excellent stuff. They generally get passionate about the parameters the artist or maker of the good has set out for herself or himself, which will let her produce that good or service. What's the passion over free music downloading via napster, or pirate bay, or limewire? Well, the passion of people who tout the ideas of Lawrence Lessig when they talk about their love of getting free stuff off of the internet has some roots. It originates in the fact that people have been desperate for good music and good film which the behemoth music and film industries in the usa are not producing. Folks are finally finding quality stuff out there on the internet, and they see that those who produce that kind of good art are choosing to usually make it available for free.

In the same way, people have become passionate about shopping at health food stores, which inundate us with exciting and exotic new kinds of foods, with pretty packaging, and interesting flavors and textures.

Another movement I have seen rise in my lifetime has been the outdoor movement. People are passionate about getting all this cool gear. When I was a kid in the 1970s, the standard for camping equipment was army surplus or things from the Coleman company. But there was one trend setting company who seemed to change all that - the REI cooperative built a new store in seattle in the 1980s, which strove to support upstart equipment manufacturers who had creative ideas, and produced things in smaller quantities.

But these passions that people have about the business strategies of folks do not translate to actual words of appreciation to those who produce excellent things. I have, in recent years, become very fond of the computer manufacturer: Asus... They make high quality computer equipment... but I haven't written them any letters of thanks or appreciation. Their slogan: "Rock Solid, heart touching," while very original and very nice, seems almost kind of odd exactly because "heart touching" implies some sort of human exchange of appreciation between consumers and producers of equipment. And that just doesn't happen in the usa.

So musing about why our society has become so thankless towards people who's work is otherwise very appreciated, I asked myself why. Well, the thing that I've seen in my lifetime has been the wild fandom that surrounded musicians. Fan comes from the word "fanatic" - and those music afficiandos who expressed their appreciation to the artist became seen as a nuisance. I haven't been to a rock concert in a long time. I live in a little tourist town, which doesn't often get itself on the tour map of folks. But as I remember rock concerts from my teen years... the enthusiasm seemed to surround the fact that there was such a big jump in technical quality when people started buying compact discs rather than vinyl records and cassettes. I kind of feel the same thing is true today about young people's enthusiasm for modern film and video games. Even though the quality of the art and storylines is very low... the quality of the technical graphics is just superb. And rock musicians have sought to exploit the passions of their fans, by selling out large stadiums - this is where musicians get most of their money - from performances. Musicians have actively and foolishly encouraged all sorts of out of control fanaticism around their performances, hoping that they will sell more tickets because of it.

So what of fanaticism or fandom? I think that the flames of these passions are fanned intentionally by performers and music marketers. On the other hand, there is certainly a common effect which is completely organic. I was working for a while with a very prestigious musician who had in previous years performed on stage with big name music stars. And I saw an interesting dynamic around her. People who wanted to get to know her would trip over their words and ideas, and somehow wouldn't recognize that they were acting weirdly. When you have placed someone up there on a pedestal in your mind, you tend to think that you can be more childlike around them, I think. One steps back in time to that mode of being a child around parents or caregivers.

Generally, however, expressing appreciation is important. I never get any words of appreciation when I write my ideas in discussion forums on the internet. Usually I get combative people wanting to antagonize or "debate" me. It's quite disheartening. And this phenomenon is one factor in a decision of mine that I will not ever try to make money from publishing my philosophical musings in the usa. People just seem to be too anti-intellectual here. Another big litmus test for me was seeing how Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich came to be perceived by the general public during the 2007-2008 presidential campaign. These are two very erudite wise people... but the mainstream media painted them up as if they were cranks - and that's what people came to see them as. Someday, if I emigrate from the usa, then I might decide to publish a book or two. I just don't see it as being a safe lifestyle to be a writer or speaker who talks about grand new ideas in the usa.

There are areas where I do see more appreciation for what I do... working with children, and singing with a small choral group. And these things have consequently become greater passions of mine - although these things will not be things which help me financially with income.

Expressing warmth, affection, and appreciation to folks who produce excellence in a sea of others who produce mediocrity goes a lot farther to encourage those few to produce more of the same than just passionately supporting the parameters they seem to need to produce their material.