Evolution's End

¡Hola! Everybody...
Last Sunday morning I heard applause right outside my window. When I looked, I realized I had forgotten all about the NYC marathon and that its path passed right by my block. It was amazing how many New Yorkers were out there exhorting the runners: “You can do!” “You’re looking great!” Others staffed Gatorade/ water tables, and others held up signs inscribed with positive affirmations. Only in New York...

* * *

-=[ Evolution’s End ]=-

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

-- Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

I think people are under a false impression that I don’t watch TV. Actually, I watch tons of TV. My TV is on if I’m home. I watch a lot of garbage too: shit like Bones reruns!

I also think people are under a false sense of security, thinking that if they don’t watch TV that they’re immune to its influence. Nothing could be further from the truth: there’s a “cultural DNA” (memes) and unless you’ve been totally deprived you’re not immune from the larger external forces that shape our culture. From a biological perspective, our neurological systems are like feedback loops and we are shaped by our relationships in ways we have yet to fully explore. I actually think keeping yourself ignorant of what goes on the boob tube is probably not a good strategy.

I mean, we all like to think we’re different, or smarter, or whatever, but we’re not, we’re just like the next person in many respects, just as prone to social pressure as the average Jane. Doubt me? Well, I’m not in the mood to get all that deeply into it, but I’m sure you throw away more shit than you’re conscious of -- whether you want to or not. As a society, we let out a collective fart that’s choking the rest of the world. You consume to a disproportionate level compared to other people in the world. For example, we rationalize purchasing gas-guzzlers because “we have to drive the kids around,” or some such nonsense.

We drive to work when we can take public transportation. We are the target of an onslaught of messages (approximately 80,000 a day) that we’re barely aware of them. And all this shit seeps in. It’s not a matter whether we buy into it or not, but rather, the degree to which we have bought into these messages.

Please don’t intellectualize/ rationalize this fact thereby forcing me to cram it down your throat, ok?

I don’t think the Television Machine is necessarily an evil thing in and of itself. It’s when we become passive observers that it becomes an issue and that’s the aim of marketing -- to make us passive consumers. It’s good for the economy.

When my son was young, I would use TV to mine learning opportunities. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became an opportunity to discuss a whole slew of interesting and relevant adolescent issues. Everything from peer pressure to the “horrors” of what it is to be a teenager in a postmodern world gone slightly mad. LOL

Watching TV, for my son became an opportunity to learn cultural studies and critical theory, except he didn’t know it. The commercials for drugs were the best. You know those commercials where there’s some woman in a filmy sun dress traipsing through a field of flowers (Claritin, maybe)? Then, towards the end of the commercial, there’s like a ten-second rapid-fire sotto voce disclaimer listing all these awful side effects? Like, anal leakage -- what the fuck is anal leakage?!!

I think what I was teaching my son (and myself) was necessary to be an active observer. I was teaching him how to form the correct questions, to be a critical thinker. In this sense, TV was a tool for learning and we were fully aware of what was going on at some larger cultural level and in that way were able to inoculate ourselves (to a degree!) from the mindless push to consume.

I dunno, maybe it’s the Tantric influence of which everything -- even what we consider negative -- can be utilized in the service of waking up. Shit, even fertilizer has its use, right? And isn’t waking up (not to be confused with analyzing, which is merely mental masturbation) -- isn’t waking up what it’s all about. Isn’t waking up evolution’s end?

Love,

Eddie

Redefining Freedom

¡Hola! Everybody...
Looking forward to doing nothing this coming weekend. Do you realize how hard that is?

* * *

-=[ The Freedom to Rape]=-

Greed is good.

Check this out... I came across a similar post a few years ago. I've changed it to suit my purposes, but I think it works:

Rape is a basic and necessary expression of human nature. Sexual assaults have been present in every society since the dawn of time. It is the natural drive of man to reproduce, to compete successfully for advantage in the marketplace of life and evolution. In fact, it is this innate compulsion to reproduce that motivates man to do anything productive and worthwhile in the first place.

It is this competitive drive that motivates man to aspire to greatness. Can you imagine men striving for greatness were they not motivated by their drive to reproduce by any means? Of course not, because the drive to reproduce is at the very core of mankind’s fundamental nature. As long as we disregard childish “God” superstitions and recognize that a man is ultimately responsible only to and for himself, we therefore recognize that any measures that attempt to suppress this natural and intrinsic drive to reproduce by any means are inherently wrong.

To suppress sexual assaults is the perverse anti-human dream of the superstitious rabble. In fact, no human society has successfully eliminated rape, despite innumerable measures designed to curb sexual assaults. If man were only truly free to pursue this integral part of his nature we would walk as the masters of the Earth that we are.

Anyone with a relatively functioning forebrain will immediately see that this is a excruciatingly faulty and dangerous chain of reasoning. Just because the drive to reproduce is inherent in humans, it doesn’t follow that sexual assault and rape stem from that drive and are a part of human nature. Furthermore, the assumption that every society has had sexual assault and none has successfully eliminated rape, doesn’t necessarily mean that sexual assault and rape are good things that should be encouraged; or that there wouldn’t be disastrous and apocalyptic consequences were people given carte blanche to rape.

Now, reread the paragraph but this time replace every occurrence of the words “sexual assault” with the words “free markets,” and replace every occurrence of the word “rape” with “capitalism,” and every occurrence of the word “reproduce” with “acquire wealth.” It is now word-for-word the position of economic neoconservative types. You will find this same line of thought in the teabagger diatribes against universal healthcare, for example.

Well, boys and girls: what have we learned? First, my aim here is not to equate capitalism with rape (which upon reflection is not a stretch). Rather, my aim is to point out fallacious reasoning. Certain things might (or might not) be inherently part of human nature or cannot be completely eliminated, but that isn’t a sufficient condition for a logically cohesive argument that they should be encouraged. If you want to argue that they should be encouraged, you must give other reasons.

The only other reason I seem to get is the unthinking and reactionary response of “Communism doesn’t work,” which displays an ignorance of the enormous and diverse body of economic and ethical thought that is not neoconservative.

Love,

Eddie

Critical Thinking: Questions 101

* * *

-=[ Questions ]=-

You see things that are and say 'Why?'
But I dream things that never were and say "Why not?
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

I have learned that questions are the very substance of who we are and what we do. I have learned that almost everything we do, every decision we make, is a response to an inner question. It’s unfortunate, I often think, that “Questions 101” is not a regular feature in our classrooms. But then again, does the status quo really want to create critical and questioning human beings?

One of my favorite sci-fi novels, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, deals with this very issue of questions. In it a massive supercomputer is designed to give the ultimate, the absolute answer, an answer that would explain “God, life, the universe, and everything.” But the computer takes seven and a half million years to come to an answer, and by that time, everybody has forgotten the question. LOL So, nobody remembers the ultimate question, but the ultimate answer is: 42.

This is amazing! Finally! The Answer! So wonderful is the answer that immediately a contest is held to see if anyone can come up with “The Question.” Many profound questions are submitted, but the final winner is: “How many roads must a man walk down?”

Reflecting about “God, life, the universe, and everything” is pretty much what my life has been about -- the unexamined life, in my book, is an unworthy one. Of course, the answer may be not as clever as “42.” Perhaps the answers deal with matter, life, mind, and spirit, and the underlying evolutionary currents that seems to unite them all in a pattern that connects. The “Web with no Weaver,” as the integral philosopher, Ken Wilber, puts it.

For some time now, I have tried to embody this spirit of questioning. I guess part of my personal mission is to prod others to question, to look for the unasked questions and to try to understand who decides what questions will be asked and why. I think that’s part of my motivation -- I want people to ask, to question, to investigate their lives. If I were to die today, I would like to believe that I made some difference in the lives of the people I touch. I would want people to say something along the lines of, “He was a crazy motherfucker, but he cared, and he touched my life (or some private parts ::wink::) in a special way.” Or something like that.

In this crazy world all we can be sure of is the punch line to this grand Cosmic Joke we call life -- death. In the midst of all this uncertainty, we grope for meaning or something that gives us a foundation of sorts. Sometimes this clinging is the core of our pain, sometimes having no meaning in one’s life is a key component to pain. So then, this is my meaning -- my mission: to rattle the cage a wee bit, to ask the unasked question and to ask you, dear reader and friend:

Why not?

My endeavor is to be part of a an ongoing process where the curious, the apathetic, the wounded and fragmented, the lonely and the happy can meet to create meaning together. Where we can all come together and tell our stories without censure and to ask the questions that need asking and then support each other somehow when the answers are too harsh or too painful to bear.

I remember a time when that was called community…

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Independence]

¡Hola! Everybody...
It’s summer, I live in the greatest city in the world, and I’m single... Life is good!

I hope you take even a little time today to reflect on what it means to be a citizen in a representative democracy. Hint: It's more than yelling "We're no. 1!" Happy 4th of July...

* * *

-=[ Power, Questions & Democracy ]=-

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
-- Hanna Arendt

As in Emile Zola’s parable, our society resembles passengers on a runaway train, asleep or oblivious to the fact that the conductor and engineer have killed themselves.

No. You will not find yet another blind "rah rah rah" 4th of July post here. Instead, what I hope you will find here is an indictment of a nation plagued with a collective resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality. All compounded by a blind adherence to dogmatism and an dangerous intolerance toward ambiguity.

And it is threatening to kill whatever freedoms we can still claim. All while you're grilling and commiserating with your fellow compatriots.

In order to have a democracy, there has to be a vibrant, critically thinking populace. An important component of thinking critically -- I would say the most important component -- is the ability to form questions. I have written about the importance of questions in the past. Almost every act we take is an answer to a question. Sometimes we forget the questions, obsessing as we do on answers, and our thoughts and actions take on a mindless (uncritical?) quality. In my experience, questions have always been about power. Asking them enabled me to overcome the many challenges I faced as a young man -- especially challenges regarding where I “belonged” (or didn’t). This link between questions and power is at the heart of our democracy -- or what is left of it.

With the market controlling almost every aspect of our society, globalism shrinks our world, our power as citizens of a democracy will come from our ability and willingness to ask the right questions. To question our government, our educational system, our communities, ourselves. And by questioning I don’t mean merely questioning, but learning to look for and ask the unasked question. Inquiry is more than asking the obvious (often too simple) questions that come with yes or no answers. The art of the question is a process of discovery, asking, re-asking, synthesizing, and evaluating until we have come to an of uncovering of the truth. Or at least something approximating it.

Inquiry is more than an act, it is deeply embedded in the values and idea of a democracy. In turn, I define democracy as more than representative government; it is also a system that values equality, justice, and the peculiar idea that every member of a group has something of worth to offer the whole. In this context, a democracy requires a people that pays attention, thinks critically, and analyzes information effectively.

People love to beat up on teachers and schools, or try to lay the blame of our current educational standards to lazy or apathetic parents. This type of thinking (if it can be called as such) is exactly what I am talking about here. In attempting to find the one answer, we miss the forest for the trees. As in all social policy areas, the solutions education calls for are complicated, multifaceted. But we have a society obsessed with answers at the expense of first asking the questions. In that way we assure that nothing of worth gets accomplished.

We teach our children that the answer is all that counts. We test students to death, reinforcing the idea that correctly filling in bubbles on a piece of paper is the same as learning. Our educational system has become an assembly-line factory dedicated to the cause of test preparation while we throw out the guiding philosophy of critical thinking -- that we must discover, ask questions, accumulate evidence, make determinations.

We like to wrap ourselves in the flag on the 4^th of July and crow that “we’re no, 1” but we don’t trust that our young can question the way our communities work, so we disinvest in education and the teaching of civics. Instead, we encourage our young to become mindless consumers so that they can better serve the ideology that the market is the answer to everything. We don’t teach them to question it, we teach them to follow it blindly. Not too much difference between that and fundamentalist blind faith, is it? We urge our children to choose better, but not in the creation of those choices.

This obsession to answer is what plagues our nation, as so many look for confirmations of their biases rather than an actual personal and collective exploration and exchange of ideas. How many times have you witnessed someone cutting-and-pasting a link and use it in lieu of real debate? Oftentimes, these links haven’t been questioned, nor consumed. Textual regurgitations I call them. This is what we teach our young. The fact is that I derive more intellectual pleasure in speaking with young people. Young people are naturally curious beings, full of awe and wonder, but we’re sucking this natural wonder out of them.

Like good educators, good societies understand the limits of absolute knowledge; they don’t try to teach everything there is to know. The best we can do for our children is to cultivate in them the habits of mind of inquiring, critical thinkers. They won’t get their critical thinking skills through rote learning, ideology, or group-think. Answers are not retrieved, they are constructed.

What would happen if Google took a day off?

Someone once asked the great Indian civil rights leader, Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of western society. His response was, "It is a great idea." I feel the same way about the nation I was born in and love. Every year, on the 4th of July, I am sadly reminded of the potential of what we can become. But we will never fully realize our potential as a nation if we stay asleep...

Love,

Eddie

On Education

¡Hola! Everybody...
Almost all my thinking on education owes a huge debt to Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy . If you ever read anything on education, read him. Most of the following is shamelessly glommed from Freire.

* * *

-=[ Critical Thinking ]=-

Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man... It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion.

-- Paulo Freire

Thinking is an action. Critical thinking is a subversive action.

For all aspiring intellectuals, thoughts are the laboratory where one poses questions in the search for answers; it is the intersection where visionary thinking and theory and external action meet. For me education is about freedom, it is the practice of freedom. At the very core of critical thinking lies the longing to know -- to understand how life works. Children are naturally predisposed to be critical thinkers. Children arrive into the world of wonder and language literally consumed with the thirst for knowledge. As any parent can attest, sometimes they are so eager for knowledge that they become relentless -- demanding to know the who, what, when, where, and why of life. In their search for answers, they learn almost instinctively how to think.

It’s unfortunate that this passion for thinking is often stifled by a world that often confuses education for conformity and obedience only. Too often, children are conditioned early on to perceive thinking as dangerous. Tragically, these children cease enjoying the process of thinking and learn instead to fear and loathe the thinking mind. Whether in homes that teach by way of punishment that to obey is more valuable than self-awareness, or in schools where independent thinking is not acceptable behavior, most of our children are forced to suppress the memory of thinking as a passionate and pleasurable activity.

By the time children pass into adolescence and adulthood, they have come to dread thinking. Those who have escaped the dread of thinking will instead fall prey to the assumption that thinking will not be necessary; that all is needed is to retain information and to regurgitate it at the appropriate moments. Those that enter higher education similarly find themselves confronted by a world where independent thinking isn’t encouraged. Fortunately, there are some classrooms in which individual professors work to educate as a practice of freedom. In these settings, thinking, and more importantly critical thinking, is what matters.

While thinking is natural (organic), critical thinking isn’t and students do not become critical thinkers through osmosis. First, they must embrace and experience the joy and power of thinking itself. Critical pedagogy (pedagogy being the science of education) is a teaching strategy whose aims are to restore or empower students’ will to think and to become fully self-actualized. The main focus of critical pedagogy is to enable students to think critically. For me, critical thinking is the ability to see both sides of an issue, of being open to new evidence that challenges previously held notions, of being able to reason and to demand that claims be backed by evidence, and being able to deduce and to infer conclusions from available facts, solving problems, etc.

Simply put, critical thinking involves first discovering the who, what, where, when, and how of things and then using that knowledge in a way that empowers you to make the determination of what matters most. This ability to establish what is important is essential to the practice of critical thinking. Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with the aim to improve it.

Most of all, critical thinking is an interactive process demanding participation from all involved. Critical thinking is a way of approaching ideas that aims to understand essential, sometimes hidden truths and not simply the obvious and superficial. Most participants will resist critical thinking. After all, they’ve been taught to be more comfortable with passive learning. But it is this demand for initiative that critical thinking calls for that’s most exciting. It invites students to think passionately and to share ideas in a passionate and open manner. When everyone involved realize that they are responsible for creating a learning community together, learning is at its most meaningful and useful. In such a setting, everyone leaves knowing that critical thinking empowers all of us.

Love,

Eddie

Coming to Terms [Theory of Science]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Something short today. It seems many people just don’t understand some basic definitions. Here’s one...

* * *

-=[ Theory of Science ]=-

Evolution is just a theory. It is not a fact.

::sigh::

Many, many people tell me that we live in a nation of idiots -- an Idiocracy, if you will. As much as I love people, I can’t argue too well against this assertion. Take the denial of the scientific consensus on global warming and the above statement as two prime examples...

The word theory, in its scientific context, does not imply an opinion or an uncertainty. It means, “a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena.” In other words, a theory is an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena.

Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts. A clear distinction needs to be made between facts (things that can be observed and/or measured) and theories (explanations that correlate and interpret the facts.)

In the case of the theory of evolution, the following are some of the phenomena involved. All are facts:

• Life appeared on earth more than two billion years ago;
• Life forms have changed and diversified over life’s history;
• Species are related via common descent from one or a few ancestors;
• Natural selection is a significant factor affecting how species change.

Many other facts are explained by the theory of evolution as well.

The theory of evolution has proved itself in practice. It has useful applications in epidemiology, pest control, drug discovery, and many other areas. It is by far the most influential and important theory of the biomedical sciences.

Besides the theory, there is the fact of evolution, the observation that life has changed greatly over time. The fact of evolution was recognized even before Darwin’s theory, the theory of evolution explains the fact.

If the rationale, “only a theory,” were a valid objection, creationists would be also be issuing disclaimers about the theory of gravity, atomic theory, the germ theory of disease, and the theory of limits (on which calculus is based). The theory of evolution is no less valid than any of these. Even the theory of gravity receives serious challenges. Yet the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is still a fact.

Creationism, a sham science, is neither theory nor fact; it is, if I’m generous, merely an opinion. Since it explains nothing, it is useless. Please note how people of different political persuasions align themselves with theories and facts. Of course, facts are facts, regardless of denial. Creationists refuse to subject their “theories” to peer reviews, because they know they don’t fit the facts. Creation “scientists” are merely biblical fundamentalists who cannot accept anything contrary to their sectarian religious beliefs.

Reagan asserted that facts are stupid things, when in reality facts are stubborn things...

That’s it for today’s lesson...

Love,

Eddie

Escape from Freedom

¡Hola! Everybody...
OK, so DANG! It’s back to being busy again! Sheesh! Why are people so driven in this country?!!

* * *

-=[ The Freedom to Rape]=-

Greed is good.

-- Gordon Gekko

[Note: I haven’t finished the follow-up to yesterday’s post on freedom. I will post that part tomorrow. A blind adherence to the virtues of “free markets” is symptomatic to neoconservative thought. Below, in an essay I adapted from an internet page I came across several years ago, I try to uncover the faulty reasoning behind the dogma]

Rape is a basic and necessary expression of human nature. Sexual assaults have been present in every society since the dawn of time. It is the natural drive of man to reproduce, to compete successfully for advantage in the marketplace of life and evolution. In fact, it is this innate compulsion to reproduce that motivates man to do anything productive and worthwhile in the first place.

It is this competitive drive that motivates man to aspire to greatness. Can you imagine men striving for greatness were they not motivated by their drive to reproduce by any means? Of course not, because the drive to reproduce is at the very core of mankind’s fundamental nature. As long as we disregard childish “God” superstitions and recognize that a man is ultimately responsible only to and for himself, we therefore recognize that any measures that attempt to suppress this natural and intrinsic drive to reproduce by any means are inherently wrong.

To suppress sexual assaults is the perverse anti-human dream of the superstitious rabble. In fact, no human society has successfully eliminated rape, despite innumerable measures designed to curb sexual assaults. If man were only truly free to pursue this integral part of his nature we would walk as the masters of the Earth that we are.

Anyone with a relatively functioning forebrain will see that this is a painfully faulty and dangerous chain of reasoning. Just because the drive to reproduce is inherent in humans, it doesn’t follow that sexual assault and rape stem from that drive and are a part of human nature. Furthermore, that every society has had sexual assault and none has successfully eliminated rape, doesn’t necessarily mean that sexual assault and rape are good things that should be encouraged, or that there wouldn’t be disastrous and apocalyptic consequences were people given carte blanche to rape.

Now, reread the paragraph but this time replace every occurrence of the words “sexual assault” with the words “free markets,” and replace every occurrence of the word “rape” with “capitalism,” and every occurrence of the word “reproduce” with “acquire wealth.” It is now word-for-word the position of economic neoconservative types. You will find this same line of thought in rationales against universal healthcare, for example.

Well, boys and girls: what have we learned? First, my aim here is not to equate capitalism with rape (which would make for great fodder for future blogs). Rather, my thrust is to point out fallacious reasoning. Certain things might be inherently part of human nature or cannot be completely eliminated, but that isn’t a sufficient condition for a logically cohesive argument that they should be encouraged. If you want to argue that they should be encouraged, you must give other reasons.

The only other reason I seem to get is the unthinking and reactionary response of “Communism doesn’t work,” which displays an ignorance of the enormous and diverse body of economic and ethical thought that is not neoconservative.

Love,

Eddie

Freedom

¡Hola! Everybody...
It’s summer, I live in the greatest city in the world, and I’m single... Life is good!

* * *

-=[ Power, Questions & Democracy ]=-

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

-- Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

You will not find any youth bashing in this post. When I look at a young person, I see the reflection of a society. We eat our young and lament, all the while using them as scapegoats for all that is wrong with the world. I don’t see “problem” children, I see problem adults. I do not see problem children, I see problem societies. No. You will not find yet another rant against our children here. Instead, what I hope you will find here is an indictment of a society plagued with a collective resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality. All compounded by a blind adherence to dogmatism and an dangerous intolerance toward ambiguity.

As in Emile Zola’s parable, our society resembles passengers on a runaway train, asleep or oblivious to the fact that the conductor and engineer have killed themselves.

I have written about the importance of questions in the past. Almost every act we take is an answer to a question. Sometimes we forget the questions, obsessing as we do on answers, and our actions take on a mindless (unquestioning?) quality. In my life, questions have always been about power. Asking them enabled me to overcome the many challenges I faced as a young man -- especially challenges regarding where I “belonged” (or didn’t). This link between questions and power is at the heart of our democracy -- or what is left of it.

With the market permeating almost every aspect of our society, and consumerism grows, and neoliberal policies shrink our world, our power as citizens of a democracy will come from our ability and willingness to ask the right questions. To question our government, our educational system, our communities, ourselves. And by questioning I don’t mean merely questioning, but learning to look for and ask the unasked question. Inquiry is more than asking the obvious (often all too simple) questions that come with yes or no answers. It is a process of discovery, asking, re-asking, synthesizing, and evaluating until we have come to an of uncovering the truth. Or at least something approximating it.

Inquiry is more than an act, it is deeply embedded in the values and idea of a democracy. In turn, I define democracy as more than representative government; it is also a system that values equality, justice, and the peculiar idea that every member of a group has something of worth to offer the whole. In this context, a democracy requires a citizenry that pays attention, thinks critically, and analyzes information effectively.

People love to beat up on teachers and schools, or try to lay the blame of our current educational standards to lazy or apathetic parents. This type of thinking (or lack thereof) is exactly what I am talking about here. In attempting to find the one answer, we miss the forest for the trees. As in all social policy areas, solutions for education are complicated, multifaceted. But we have a society obsessed with answers at the expense of first asking the questions. In that way we assure that nothing of worth gets accomplished.

We teach our children that the answer is all that counts. We test students to death, reinforcing the idea that correctly filling in bubbles is the same as learning. Our educational system has become an assembly-line factory dedicated to the cause of test preparation while we throw out the guiding philosophy of critical thinking -- that we must discover, ask questions, accumulate evidence, make determinations.

We like to wrap ourselves in the flag on the 4^th of July and crow that “we’re no, 1” but we don’t trust that our young can question the way our communities work, so we disinvest in education and the teaching of civics.

Instead, we teach our young to become mindless consumers so that they can better serve the ideology that the market is the answer to everything. We don’t teach them to question it, we teach them to follow it blindly. Not too much difference between that and fundamentalist blind faith, is it? We teach our children to choose better, but not in the creation of those choices.

This obsession to answer is what plagues our society, as so many look for confirmations of their biases than actual personal and collective exploration and exchange of ideas. How many times have you witnessed someone cutting-and-pasting a link or a whole webpage and use it in lieu of real debate? Oftentimes, these links haven’t been questioned, nor consumed. Textual regurgitations I call them. This is what we teach our young. In fact, I find more pleasure in speaking with young people for they are naturally curious beings, full of awe and wonder, but we’re sucking this natural wonder out of them.

Like good educators, good societies understand the limits of absolute knowledge; they don’t try to teach everything there is to know. The best we can do for our children is to cultivate in them the habits of mind of inquiring, critical thinkers. They won’t get their critical thinking skills through rote teaching, ideology, or groupthink, no matter how well they can use Google. Answers are not retrieved, they are constructed.

What would happen if Google took a day off?

Love,

Eddie

The Stupid Question...

¡Hola! Everybody...
There’s much to write about these days. For example, there is a clarification in order re: the latest GOP misdirection: the Puerto Rican Defense League (now known as Latino Justice). I should write that the SCOTUS did not “overturn” Justice Sotomayor, or that the test in the Ritchie case actually does not measure one’s firefighting ability. there is a long overdue post on the real discussion of universal health coverage -- and it seems that all the “compromise” going on will most likely result in a monstrosity of public policy.

But I’m tired and most people really don’t give a good goddamn anyway... and we will continue to get less for more.

* * *

-=[ Questions 101 ]=-

“You see things that are and say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’”

-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

I was taught that the only stupid question is the one you don't ask.

Why? An excellent question…

It’s a question I have been plagued by since as far back as I can remember. I’ve learned to ask other questions -- sometimes looking in the dark for newer questions, or questions not asked. I am a born skeptic, a doubter, a trouble maker by nature -- “un mas que jodes, un travesio.” At various times in my life I have been deemed unfit to live among the free and a bit deranged, to boot.

But along the way I have learned that questions are the very substance of who we are and what we do. I have learned that almost everything we do, every decision we make, is a response to an inner question. It’s unfortunate, I often think, that “Questions 101” is not a regular feature in our classrooms. But then again, does the status quo really want to nurture questioning in our young?

One of my favorite books, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, deals with this issue of questions. In it a massive supercomputer is designed to give the ultimate, the absolute answer, an answer that would explain “God, life, the universe, and everything.” But the computer takes seven and a half million years to do this, and by the time the computer delivers the answer, everybody has forgotten the question! So, nobody remembers the ultimate question, but the ultimate answer is: 42 (what?).

This is amazing! Finally! The Answer! So wonderful is the answer that immediately a contest is held to see if anyone can come up with “The Question.” Many profound questions are submitted, but the final winner is: How many roads must a man walk down?

Reflecting about “spirituality, life, the universe, and everything” is pretty much what my life has been about -- the unexamined life, in my book, is an unworthy one. Of course, the answer may be not as clever as “42.” Perhaps the answers deal with matter, life, mind, and spirit, and the underlying evolutionary currents that seems to unite them all in a pattern that connects. The “Web with no Weaver,” as one of my favorite philosophers, Ken Wilber, likes to put it.

For some time now, I have tried to embody this spirit of questioning. I guess part of my personal mission is to prod others to question, to look for the unasked questions and to try to understand who decides what questions will be asked and why. I think that’s part of my motivation for posting my rants -- I want people to ask, to question, to investigate their lives. If I were to to die today, I would like to believe that I made some difference in the lives of the people I touch. I would want people to say, “He was a crazy motherfucker, but he cared, and he made me think (or “He hurt my ass.” LOL!).” Or something like that.

In this crazy world all we can be sure of is the punch line to this grand Cosmic Joke we call life -- death. In the midst of all this uncertainty, we grope for meaning or something that gives us a foundation of sorts. Sometimes this clinging is the core of our pain, sometimes having no meaning in one’s life is a key component to pain. So then, this is my meaning -- my mission: to rattle the cage a wee bit, to ask the unasked question and to ask you, dear reader and friend:

Why not?

We -- the curious, the apathetic, the wounded, the lonely and the happy -- are all somehow compelled to mass in order to create meaning together. We huddle together and tell our stories by the fire to ward off the dark. But in order to avoid the Kool-Aid we must dare to ask the questions that need asking and support each other somehow when the answers are harsh or painful.

I remember a time when that was called community...

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [Education]

¡Hola! Everybody...
I’m running late... looking forward to seeing those who will be making today’s picnic. For details, click here.

I love James Baldwin and if you ever get a chance, pick up some of his non-fiction. It’s some of the most powerful socio-political writing around... The following is an excerpt.

* * *

-=[ The Paradox of Education ]=-

A Talk to Teachers, by James Baldwin

Delivered October 16, 1963, as “The Negro Child -- His Self-Image”; originally published in The Saturday Review, December 21, 1963, reprinted in The Price of the Ticket, Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985, Saint Martins 1985.

Since I am talking to schoolteachers and I am not a teacher myself, and in some ways am fairly easily intimidated, I beg you to let me leave that and go back to what I think to be the entire purpose of education in the first place. It would seem to me that when a child is born, if I’m the child’s parent, it is my obligation and my high duty to civilize that child. Man is a social animal. He cannot exist without a society. A society, in turn, depends on certain things which everyone within that society takes for granted. Now the crucial paradox which confronts us here is that the whole process of education occurs within a social framework and is designed to perpetuate the aims of society. Thus, for example, the boys and girls who were born during the era of the Third Reich, when educated to the purposes of the Third Reich, became barbarians. The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity. But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around. What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society. If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish. The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it – at no matter what risk. This is the only hope society has. This is the only way societies change.

* * *

Love,

Eddie

Evolution's End

¡Hola! Everybody...
A repost... Here’s to a great week.

* * *

-=[ Evolution’s End ]=-

“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”

-- Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

I think people are under a false impression that I don’t watch TV. Actually, I watch tons of TV. My TV is on if I’m home. I watch a lot of garbage too: shit like Miami Vice reruns!

I also think people are under a false sense of security, thinking that if the don’t watch TV that they’re excluded from its influence. Nothing could be further from the truth: there’s a “cultural DNA” (memes) and unless you’ve been totally deprived you’re not immune from the larger external forces that shape our culture. I actually think keeping yourself ignorant of what goes on the boob tube is probably not a good strategy.

I mean, we all like to think we’re different, or smarter, or immune, but we’re not, we’re just like the next person in many respects, just as prone to social pressure as the average Jane. Doubt me? Well, I'm not in the mood to get all that deeply into it, but I’m sure you throw away more shit than you’re conscious of -- whether you want to or not. As a society, we let out a collective fart that’s choking the rest of the world. You consume to a disproportionate level compared to other people in the world. For example, we rationalize purchasing gas-guzzlers because “we have to drive the kids around,” or some such nonsense.

We drive to work when we can take public transportation. We are the target of so many messages -- about 80,000 a day -- that we’re barely aware of them. And all this shit seeps in. It’s not a matter whether we buy into it or not, but rather, the degree to which we have bought into these messages.

Please don’t intellectualize/ rationalize this fact thereby forcing me to cram it down your throat, ok?

I don’t think the Television is necessarily an evil thing in and of itself. It’s when we become passive observers that it becomes an issue and that’s the aim of marketing -- to make us passive consumers. It’s good for the economy.

When my son was young, I would use TV as learning opportunities. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became an opportunity to discuss a whole slew of interesting and relevant adolescent issues. Everything from peer pressure to the “horrors” of what it is to be a teenager in a postmodern world gone slightly mad. LOL

Watching TV, for my son became an opportunity to learn cultural studies and critical theory, except he didn’t know it! The drug commercials were the best. You know those commercials where there’s some woman in a filmy sun dress traipsing through a field of flowers (Claritin, maybe)? Then, towards the end of the commercial, there’s like a ten-second rapid-fire sotto voce disclaimer listing all these awful side effects? Like, anal leakage -- what the fuck is anal leakage?!?!

I think what I was teaching my son (and myself) was to be active observer. I was teaching him how to form the correct questions, to be a critical thinker. In this sense, TV was a tool for learning and we were fully aware of what was going on at some larger cultural level and in that way were able to inoculate ourselves -- to a degree! -- from the mindless push to consume.

I dunno, maybe it’s the influence of Tantric practice in which everything -- even what we consider negative -- can be utilized in the service of waking up. Shit, even fertilizer has its use, right? And isn’t waking up (not to be confused with analyzing, which is merely mental masturbation) -- isn’t waking up what it’s all about.

Love,

Eddie

Intellectual Etiquette

¡Hola! Everybody...
So, if a single mother finds herself in a bad way (after being fired by, let us say Citigroup) and applies for welfare, she's ridiculed, called immoral, and she definitely has a cap on what monetary assistance she can expect. Why is it, then, that when a Wall St. CEO or corporate entity suckles on the public teat, we are not applying the same standards?

::blank stare::

I am gone all day...

* * *

-=[Intellectual Etiquette ]=-

“Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.”

-- African proverb

I have several posts almost ready to roll on white racism. I will not suffer fools easily. Fools like those who refuse to read what I write and react rather than think. Fools such as the woman who came to my blog read the term white racism and ran screaming that I was a bigot. Go to her blog. I would dare say you could probably sharpen a thin pencil with her anal sphincter.

Good riddance!

Or the other fools who react in anger because they don’t bother to understand. One guy, beside himself at the notion of white privilege, asked in a belligerent tone that I furnish some material from peer-reviewed journals and when I gave him a link to a blog I wrote in which I synthesized material from a slew of academic journals, he refused.

Good riddance!

Or the dumb twat who took a cursory look at the same material and suggested that my sources were slanted, failing to notice that I had included tons of research from what I call racial conservatives. In fact, the whole post was dedicated to a logical dismantling of their flawed methodology. I think she also stated that facts don’t matter

::listens to strains of the Twilight Zone theme song::

Good riddance!

I’m very meticulous about my reading material. When I post here, I can guarantee you that I have taken the time not only to research the material, but that I have constructed a logical argument. This is not mere personal opinion. Knowledge and opinion are not synonymous. In fact, the vast majority of opinion is worthless. If that sounds elitist, then, fuck it, call me an uppity spic -- I am an elitist if being an elitist means having some intellectual standards.

In any case, if you read me, you will note that there is a logical sequence to my writing. That, to me, is the greatest respect I can pay a reader: that I have taken the time and effort to present a coherent and logical message.

In turn, I expect for my readers, if they’re going to engage me, to show me the same respect by attempting to understand what I have written. Some people here have gotten their egos bruised because they have failed to attempt to understand before disagreeing with me. Some people apparently believe they skim my posts and then engage me. People, I hate to break this to you, but there is no Santa Claus and you cannot agree with something you have failed to understand!

Yup, life sucks. And here? I’m going to hold you to... Standards!

Honestly, I could give a flying fuck if you called me a muthafucka. You’re not that important in my life. You don’t suck my dick, nor do you give me any ass, so if you think imma muthafucka, a bastard, or an asshole, it doesn’t rally matter that much to me.

What?

If you have taken the time, however, to understand what I have written and demonstrate that understanding before you call me a muthafucka, we’re gonna be cool.

Here is what I’m going to propose. It’s called intellectual etiquette and I have adopted these from the book by Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book. If more people observed it, the world would be a better place. For example, we wouldn’t be in the economic mess we’re in today.

First, respect (in my book) means understanding the material in such a way that you could restate the post in as briefly a manner as possible. Secondly you should be able to come to terms with the author by interpreting his key words or phrases. Know the author’s arguments preferably by constructing them out of sequences of his own sentences. Determine which of his problems he has solved and which he has not. Also, note which problems the author knew he failed to solve.

I have skimped on the first two stages of Intellectual Etiquette because the following is most important:

• You cannot say you agree, disagree, or suspend judgment until you can say, “I understand.”
• Avoid disagreeing disputatiously or contentiously (doesn’t always happen, but try)
• Exhibit your recognition of the difference between knowledge and mere personal opinion by presenting clear reasons for any critical judgment you make.

If you’re going to criticize and want to be taken seriously, you should adhere to these standards:

• Show where the author is uninformed.
• Show where the author is misinformed.
• Show where the author is illogical.
• Show where the author’s analysis or account is incomplete.

Please note, of these last four, the first three are necessary criteria for disagreement. Failing all of these, you must agree, at least in part, although you may choose to suspend judgment.

If you don’t use your critical faculty, you will lose it, or never really cultivate it. Act the fool and I will treat you in kind.

Love,

Eddie

Questions 101

¡Hola! Everybody,
It’s still cold here! LOL!

I’m experiencing a huge issue with my exec. director who now wants to hold more meetings while expecting more production. It has to stop. We either meet and talk caca, or we do the work. We can’t do both! One of the reasons I'm resposting today is that I have several meetings throughout the day! She's cutting me off at the knees.

SMDH

BTW, I’m going to disclose something though I know I will lose readership and any chance of sex with some of the loveliest women on my list ::grin:: But I can’t take it any more! I’ve been living a lie!

GAWD!! I can't take it anymore!!!

Okay. Ready? Here goes:

AMY WINEHOUSE SUCKS!

There! I said it! Whew!

I can understand Ms. Winehouse playing to her niche market of women who want to hear female angst as expressed through lyrics with throwaway lines such as, “What kind of fuckery is this… ” and titles like “Fuck Me Pumps,” but I find the whole Amy Winehouse phenomenon quite boring. Her interpretations of Jazz standards aren’t all that nuanced and her pipes aren't all that strong. In addition, that singing out the side of her neck thingee? Really bothers me. In fact the only song I can honestly say I enjoyed (however briefly) was that Rehab song. Her second album did very little for me, BTW.

I’ll have to say right out that the only way I would sit through an Amy Winehouse CD would be if there was some sex involved at the end of all that tedium. Yeah, Imma slut and would swear up and down that I love Ms. Winehouse and you were wearing a teddy and looking at me with that “come fuck me” look.

There! I feel sooo much better now!

BTW, I’m not “haten.” In fact, what I most like about Ms. Winehouse is her personal life because I can definitely identify with the obvious insanity.

* * *

"You see things that are and say 'Why?'
But I dream things that never were and say "Why not?" -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Why? That’s an excellent question! It's a question I have been plagued with since as far back as I can remember. I've learned to ask other questions -- sometimes looking in the dark for newer questions, or questions not asked. I am a born skeptic, a doubter, a trouble maker by nature – “un mas que jodes, un travesio.” At various times in my life I have been deemed unfit to live among the free and a bit deranged, to boot.

But along the way I have learned that questions are the very substance of who we are and what we do. I have learned that almost everything we do, every decision we make, is a response to an inner question. It’s unfortunate, I often think, that “Questions 101” is not a regular feature in our classrooms. But then again, does the status quo really want to create critical and questioning human beings?

One of my favorite books, Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, deals with this very issue of questions. In it a massive supercomputer is designed to give the ultimate, the absolute answer, an answer that would explain “God, life, the universe, and everything.” But the computer takes seven and a half million years to do this, and by the time the computer delivers the answer, everybody has forgotten the question! (Yes this highly recommended book can be extremely funny at times). So, nobody remembers the ultimate question, but the ultimate answer is: 42. (what did you expect?)

This is amazing! Finally! The Answer! So wonderful is the answer that immediately a contest is held to see if anyone can come up with “The Question.” Many profound questions are submitted, but the final winner is: How many roads must a man walk down?

Reflecting about “God, life, the universe, and everything” is pretty much what my life has been about -- the unexamined life, in my book, is an unworthy one. Of course, the answer may be not as clever as “42.” Perhaps the answers deal with matter, life, mind, and spirit, and the underlying evolutionary currents that seems to unite them all in a pattern that connects. The “Web with no Weaver,” as one of my favorite philosophers, Ken Wilber likes to put it.

For some time now, I have tried to embody this spirit of questioning. I guess part of my personal mission is to prod others to question, to look for the unasked questions and to try to understand who decides what questions will be asked and why. I think that’s part of my motivation for posting my rants -- I want people to ask, to question, to investigate their lives. If I were to to die today, I would like to believe that I made some difference in the lives of the people I touch. I would want people to say something along the lines of, “he was a crazy motherfucker, but he cared, and he touched my life (or some private parts ::wink::) in a special way.” Or something like that.

In this crazy world all we can be sure of is the punch line to this grand Cosmic Joke we call life -- death. In the midst of all this uncertainty, we grope for meaning or something that gives us a foundation of sorts. Sometimes this clinging is the core of our pain, sometimes having no meaning in one’s life is a key component to pain. So then, this is my meaning -- my mission: to rattle the cage a wee bit, to ask the unasked question and to ask you, dear reader and friend:

Why not?

I hope that I can be part of a process where the curious, the apathetic, the wounded and fragmented, the lonely and the happy can meet to create meaning together. Where we can all come together and tell our stories without censure and to ask the questions that need asking and then support each other somehow when the answers are too harsh or painful to bear.

I remember a time when that was called community...

Love,

Eddie