Author Archives: Greg Wees

A is A

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Whatever happened to the age of reason?

Perhaps it never really took hold. It seems that more than ever, the world abounds in mumbo-jumbo. Supermarket horoscope scrolls, I’m told, sell in the millions every month. The “psychic” reading people are making truckloads of cash. There’s a guy on TV — he draws millions of viewers every week — who can call up your dead loved ones on his psychic hot line to the Great Beyond. We’ve got Jesus hanging out in star-forging nebulas millions of light years across. And the Virgin just last week showed up in a mangled tree stump in New Jersey (no kidding). That’s not to mention Crystal healing, angel sightings, “creationism” (i.e. anti-evolutionism), UFO abductions, homeopathic medicine (I don’t care how many of you homeopathic “physicians” are out there – it’s still hogwash), or Dianetics.

Not much progress since the trial of Socrates, or Galileo, or the Scopes “monkey” trial, or the O.J. trial for that matter.

But what concerns me generally is the decline of reason and logic. Perhaps it’s an offshoot of the societal movement away from secularism toward the new “spiritualism” (translation: hocus pocus in the form of apocalyptic novels, televangelism, “trendy” religions, revivalist freak shows and mercantile “Christian rock” bands). Or maybe the grim harvest of circular post-modern “reasoning” (which posits that everything we think we know is a “social construct” based on “class-based shared belief systems”) has resulted in –you guessed it– the societal conclusion that empiricism is an illusion and that all reality is relative to the observer.

Or it could be the media in general, which in attempting to appear “unbiased” (impossible to do but possible to appear to do) has convinced us all that no matter what the story, there are two sides with absolutely equivalent arguments for or against. So there’s no reason to try to figure out what’s “right” or “wrong” or “legal” because it all depends on your world view and political persuasion.

But no matter the cause, the result is that no one appears to be sure of anything anymore, unless you count the fanatics. As Yeats put it in describing his own era of political chaos:

“The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

And it’s just as true today. There is no safe harbor. Nowadays even the scientific journals aren’t sure of their facts. The New England Journal of Medicine now requests its contributors disclose their financial interests so that readers may discover those which intersect with their research. The “entrepreneurial” scientist, like the now-familiar entrepreneurial politician, cannot be trusted to tell the truth.

Do facts not exist? Can we not at least agree on some facts? Can we say nothing beyond “A is A” without a rebuttal from someone of competing interests or “beliefs”? A while back I wrote a little musing on how we know what we know, concluding that we really know very little, but that dealt mainly with moral philosophy and theoretical science, which are murky areas at best. What I’m talking about here is true empiricism and recorded phenomena.

When we expect a debate to settle a matter, it is fruitfully conducted only upon a foundation of perceived truth, or a set of underlying assumptions that inform the outcome. One of those assumptions is that both parties seek the truth, and that the truth, however contradictory to one’s preconceived notions or personal “stake,” must be acknowledged when it is discovered. For example, we may debate the value or advisability of particular environmental laws. But for the debate to produce a valuable decision for society at large, it must proceed from the assumption, acknowledged by both sides, that the environment should in fact be protected. Otherwise, one may argue for a position under the assumption that the environment is irrelevant to the immediate needs of industry, an assumption which presupposes that no law protecting the earth is defensible if it causes any inconvenience whatsoever to industry.

We may debate whether to go to war, but we should agree that war is the choice of last resort in defense of our borders, and as a non-imperialist society we do not initiate wars for the sake of occupying other countries.

We may debate the legality of an election, but we should agree that our leaders must be lawfully elected.

We may debate how best to protect the country, but we should agree that human and civil rights, which are inherent and not granted by the state, cannot be rescinded by the state.

We may debate how best to manage the government, but we should agree that a government “of the people” serving a free society is not allowed to operate in secret or without the consent of the governed.

And so on…

I must honestly say that I do not believe such debates take place at the higher levels of this society. Interests – and interest groups – are too entrenched. Power bases are too powerful. Battle lines are too firmly drawn, and the casualty of truth is regarded by patriots on both sides as an “acceptable loss.”

Truth may be beauty, and beauty truth, but to today’s “winners,” winning is all that matters.

Just ask O.J.

Guest Writer

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I visit a few Web sites now and then, though not many really, and when I do the first thing I look for is the comments or “feedback” area. I don’t know why, but I’m generally more interested in what the masses have to say than in the polished, generic blather of the professional media. Maybe that’s why my favorite part of the newspaper is the letters to the editor. Give me plain folks’ point of view any day.

Anyway, in preparation for an upcoming trip, I was looking at airline and airport ratings sites and came across a bonanza of stream-of-consciousness rants like the following gem.

(When I read this, I couldn’t help wishing I could meet the person who apparently spent an hour or so chronicling his experience at ATL so faithfully — and for what? Simply for the benefit of strangers who may benefit from getting the straight poop on this oft-maligned Delta hub.)

Note especially the delightful juxtaposition of the first sentence’s sentiment with the rest of the post. Note also paragraph 6, which is a single sentence. It’s as if the structure of the sentence is sympathizing with his “seemingly endless,” aesthetically horrifying imprisonment between flights while baking in the rays of the setting sun.

From Airports – Passenger Opinion Forum
at Skytrax.com
by Jeffrey D. Sarver
“I am someone who is not too fussy about airports generally. Only one, St Louis, arouses my ire and I don’t fly through that nightmare of an airport anymore. I am hesitant to place Atlanta’s Hartsfied International in the same low box as STL but I think I shall have to.

ATL has some positive attributes which aren’t negligible however. It is efficient (in good weather anyway). Signage is excellent and the trains between the six terminals run frequently. The trek to the escalators leading down to the trains can be a long way from the gates and connections should never be less than an hour or the odds of missing the flights are high.

The airport employees, check-in, information, concessions and cleaning crews, are just about the nicest, most helpful, easy-going and humorous airport personnel I’ve ever encountered anywhere in the world. They are down-to-earth and human, a bit offhand sometimes but good-natured, generally. I have yet to encounter a phony, or non-caring attitude at Hartsfield, once past the TSA government people that is, and they are usually pleasant enough in their invasive jobs.

It is also a clean airport, though that has little effect on the overall atmosphere, see below.

The aforementioned atmosphere is the great down side to Hartsfield. It is without question the most visually depressing conglomeration of buildings I’ve ever had to spend long boring hours inside of awaiting connections. I can only compare it to a sort of civilian prison sentence of a 2 or 3 hours. Externally the 5 branch terminals resemble enormous cargo facilities with few windows, built of a grey metallic material and “decorated” with a sort of orangish metallic panel that looks like a set background for the ‘Alien’ movies.

Within, windows are at a premium and natural light is almost non- existent, except at sunset when the sun blazes into the few western windows and slowly bakes any waiting passengers on that side of the terminals, hence the scarcity of windows I suppose, though every Florida airport I use is riddled with plate glass so Hartsfield really has no excuse for entrapping the thousands of incessantly streaming hordes through its very long, seemingly endless in fact, terminals with their low ceilings and hideous and cheap-looking fluorescent lighting.

At night it resembles the lobby of a very cheap hotel in the Bronx (which I’ve seen in Martin Scorcese movies and such). The shops are mostly tawdry and expensive, the food facilities laughable, nothing but “junk” food in the entire airport, though one could go to the “atrium” (the main terminal prior to security) for some sort of “southeastern” kweezeen I’m told, but then security must be dealt with again so that that restaurant is unfeasible for the connecting passenger with 3 hours to kill, as I usually find myself having to do.

The gate seating is falling apart and uncomfortable and insufficient for all the passengers at any given time. I will do everything possible to avoid ATL in the future simply because it is such a lowering experience, rather like an enormous basement, cheap acoustic ceiling tiles and all. What adds to the general sense of degradation is the ubiquitous blasting televisions with endless CNN Airport junk blaring at one all the time.

Instead of just renaming Hartsfield they should tear it down and start over completely.”

Niobrara Nights

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You may have noticed that I let the whole month of September go by without a word.

Not without reason. Like Eliot’s April, I find September the cruelest month. By September I’ve about had it with the Plains version of summer–a sort of relentless boiling–but no, summer will not pass. Around mid-September you start to think it should begin cooling down, but it doesn’t. It just keeps on, in the 90s or better, every day. And the rains stop. No rain. Just hot, humid, sweltering dog days.

And here’s the clincher – they close the pools in August. Early August. So no relief there. We went all the way to Niobrara in September just to get to a pool that was open.
And it was delightful.

niobr2bMy wife’s father and stepmother, in a flash of brilliance and spending, purchased a massive chunk of land in the Niobrara river valley a few years ago. Then (and this was a years-long ordeal worthy of Hercules, or at least his contractor) they plopped a big house down on top of a ridge overlooking the river itself. It’s a wonder. After driving all day from our city, ever deeper into farm territory and then, in the valley itself, ranch territory, then up a never-ending gravel drive to the lonely ridge, you find it (unless it’s dark – then you drive right by it). It sits alone on the ridge, with no other sign of civilization in sight.

Beyond the ridge is the valley and the river.

The first time we visited was a bit odd. The three of us just piled in the car and drove up there one hot August day. It was as if we were visiting a three-masted schooner in the middle of a squall. Because they had built on the high point of the ridge, they got the full fury of the ranging wind. And that night was outrageously windy. You had to yell at someone just a few feet away — and I’m talking about inside the house. We had to crack the windows (no air conditioning), so the wind came in whistling and flapping the blinds all night. And yes, it was hot.

But they got the air conditioning in (a necessity in this place, not a luxury), and about a month ago they had the deck put on. The deck! We came up in early September with some friends, planning a mild weekend in the country. We arrived at night–I was in horrible shape. It had been a crushing day. I had been crushed. But when we arrived, we grabbed a cold beer and we went out on the deck. And the sky exploded.

I imagine there are people in the city, plenty of them, even in my city of the Plains, who have never seen the galaxy they live in. I myself had not seen it for some time, given that I, like most, spend my days locked in a straight-ahead stare at responsibility, tasks and the specter of tomorrow. Oh, you’ll step out on the patio at night and detect a few stars in the glare–look, I think that’s the Big Dipper! But in the dark of that lonely valley, we walked out on that deck and looked up, and we didn’t go back in until bedtime.

The stars, the stardust, the Milky Way, and Mars himself–they all were there for us, stretched across that impossibly wide and cloudless black bowl, to gaze on and to get to know again.

How wonderful to feel infinitely small and large again.

100,000 Years

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When I was a kid I found a book that changed my life, as they say. It was by some crazy Frenchman named Robert Charroux and was titled 100,000 years of Man’s Unknown History. In the book, the author finesses a great deal of odd and incongruent archeological evidence to support his thesis, which is startlingly thought-provoking:  that well before our benchmark era for the beginning of civilization (roughly 4,000 BC), there were multiple highly developed civilizations that rose, flourished, and died away with nary a trace.

The method of their destruction and the reason we can find no trace (or, according to the author, almost no trace) of them? You guessed it – nuclear annihilation.

Time itself provides this fertile compost from which fantastic theories grow. When you think about it, it is mind-boggling that we have existed here on earth pretty much in the same form as we are now (and therefore with similar mental faculties) for some 100,000 years. Yet we have direct knowledge of our activities during only the last 5,000 or so. So only 5% of our collective history as modern man is known to us.

What were they all doing for those other 95,000 years? When I look at Egyptian civilization during the Old Kingdom dynasties, circa 2,500 BC – the building of the pyramids, the high art and culture, the library at Alexandria – or the glory of Athens, circa 400 BC – and compare them with later periods such as the Dark Ages or the present Bush era, I’m convinced that we are not on a one-way journey toward greatness in terms of our civilization’s development. No, it kind of waxes and wanes, like most things seem to do. So why not some highly advanced society – an Atlantis – that rose and fell uncounted millennia ago? Who’s to say it didn’t happen, maybe several times? Not me.51+sbDybB3L__SX305_BO1,204,203,200_
But in contemplating this the other day, I had another intriguing thought (to me at least). Suppose we do avoid blowing ourselves up or poisoning the earth and manage to retain our civilization. Suppose we continue the present tradition of good record-keeping meanwhile. Look ahead to 100,000 years from now, and consider the body of knowledge that will have been built. It staggers the mind, especially when you consider what we have accumulated in just the last 5,000 or so. Now consider that the age of real record-keeping is only several hundred years, a period which provides the bulk of our human library. And science itself – it is a mere fledgling of some 200 years. Yet it has catapulted society along in terms of its growth in technology, medicine, social constructs, natural history, philosophy, and such. Imagine its growth over 100,000 years, a period 500 times as long as its current age. Now realize that our ability to create an imperishable and multi-media history of ourselves (audio, video and electronic data) is only 100 years old. Multiply that times 1,000.

And even multiplying does not do the idea justice. Science and technology, unlike civilization and human societies, do indeed progress on a constant upward scale, and its growth is not additive but exponential. That is, much more has happened in the last 20 years than happened in the previous 50 as far as scientific progress, and so on back through the known history of science. What happens when this equation continues for another 1,000 years, or another 10,000?

Given our propensity to do things with science because we can (rather than because we should) – nuclear weapons, gene therapy, cloning, nanotechnology – the question is, do we want to know? Or perhaps more to the point, will we still be human enough to care?

Religion 3

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Peace

Love

Brotherhood

Understanding

Charity

Faith

Humility

Respect

It’s really not very tough to figure out the commonalities of all the religions, at least as espoused. That’s because they are the province of humanity, not religion. This is my belief. I’m not unique in holding it, but like most who do, I’ve come to it in a unique way. My own way.

Amazing, really, the way the three “major” religions share so many precepts and laws. More amazing is that all cultures seem to adopt similar belief systems, when given the time it takes to codify them as a society. When you look at Native American religious traditions, which were bred in complete isolation from Western or Eastern established traditions, you see the same beliefs: Honor your family; respect your parents; love your brother or sister; and of course, pay tribute to the one who made you.

This last is where the divisions lie. Who is your maker? The Sioux tribes had a name for the Creator that was loosely translated by the white men as “The Great Spirit.” This is amusing to Western sensibilities because we can easily view it as a kind of “childish” appellation for a capital-g God. A roughly hewn, prairie-bred, hunter-gatherer monotheism. But recently the term has been clarified to a more distinct meaning: Great Mystery.

Bingo! It is the very act of personifying God, to people like me, that creates the distance between reality and spirituality. That is, to tell me there is an old white man, a “father” figure, with white hair sitting on a cloud up there ready to judge me – that is where you  lose me. My mind won’t let me accept the idea with no facts to substantiate it. Rather than the personification making it “easier” for me to have a “relationship” with God, it simply strikes me as made up.

This has a lot of ramifications, I know. They shoot out in all directions. Once a person concludes that the only way to wrap his mind around the concept of the creator is to acknowledge that there is no single, unassailable concept of a creator, the rest follows in a pretty straightforward manner. To wit, I don’t know that the power that created the universe(s) wants me to worship it; nor do I feel it will be appeased if I chant repetitive phrases at it once a week. Nor should I necessarily eat its flesh and drink its blood, even symbolically. No, I must figure out for myself the proper way to honor the creator, or the creative force, or the Great Mystery.

And I’m working on it.