Dudley Lynch's Blog for Smart People

Dudley Lynch's Blog for Smart People2009-01-07T01:08:22ZDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.comhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blogXML::Atom::SimpleFeedIn Times Like These, It's Critically Important that We Don’t Leave the Universe Empty-handed. One of Its Rules is that Nothingness Begets NothingnessDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.com2009-01-07T01:08:22Z2009-01-07T01:08:22Z One puzzle has confronted wise people almost from the very first philosophical discussion: Why is there something rather than nothing? In other words, how has so much complexity managed to appear in the world? Complex things like people, for example. You’d think that with the world like it is, chaos would always triumph over order, old stuff would always smother new stuff, complexity would always lose out to ponderous stupidity and inertia. But it doesn’t. And therein lies the reason, mysterious as its workings are, why the best thing we can do for ourselves in almost every instance is simply to try something. Send up an idea. Initiate a movement. And see how the world reacts. Or as I’ve pictured it in my mind a couple of hundred times, throw the life ring out in front of you and swim to it. Amazing as it is, when you offer the world something, as often as not, it takes it and runs with it. In your behalf and to your advantage. Early in my career as a writer and thinker, I decided to be what people in the media still call a free lance. No job, no salary, no safety net. Just you, the marketplace and a world teaming with things to be discovered, explained, portrayed. As a young journalist in the 1970s, my family and I wanted to live in Texas. The challenge was that the big media centers were in New York and Illinois. So, throwing the life ring out in front of things, I got on an airplane. I flew to Manhattan and Chicago and made cold calls all over town. And came home with a brief case full of assignments and new relationships with editors who purchased my work for years afterwards. That's happened to me again and again. It's always best to offer the world something in place of nothing. When things are as dicey and uncertain as they are today, it is understandable to think that this may not be possible. You may think that there are simply no resources, no energy, no opportunity available to you. And that may, in fact, be true. But to allow yourself to assume this, you are cutting yourself off from this mysterious force available in the world that has since the beginning of things, excelled at taking something and making it into something more. The universe really can't make something for you if you haven’t offered it anything. Make the offer, though, and it can be a wonder to behold. It may be just the smallest toehold. And then there may be a little movement here. Or a door you hadn’t noticed before opening there. An ally appearing unexpectedly. An opportunity that exists only because you offered up a reason for it to materialize. I can’t guarantee a good outcome. There will be failures and forays that don’t produce so much as a flutter of progress or possibility. But I can personally attest to this: There is more often something rather than nothing when you offer the universe something to work with. Offer it an idea, an opening, a movement, a plan, a design, a surprise, all matched by a good faith effort and the kind of sensible judgment that pays attention to what’s happening, learns quickly from its mistakes and seizes its opportunities. These are tough times. It’s important that you and I not let the times leave us with nothing. The way forward is to think as diligently as we ever have about what we can give the universe to work with in our behalf. We always need to be scheming to give it something. Posted by Dudley On 25/11/08 At 03:02 PMhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blog/archives/00000022.htmThis Yo!Dolphin! Client Says She Has Hit a Brick Wall And Wants Answers That Cut to the ChaseDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.com2009-01-07T01:08:22Z2009-01-07T01:08:22Z From a Yo!Dolphin! Worldview Survey client in the U.K.: “I have trawled through some of the pages on my worldview survey and was pleased to know I am on the right track. However, I am struggling so much with my life that I desperately need more than just uplifting words. Are you in the businesses of helping someone who has imagination, a big creative spirit and lots of energy but has come upon a massive brick wall? Any feedback would be gratefully received.”—Stymied Sojourner Dear Stymied Sojourner: There’s a lot more to your Yo!Dolphin! report than uplifting words. There are pointed, plain-spoken suggestions for doing something different in your report, too. A lot of suggestions. So keep reading. And here are other observations I often offer to people who feel that their nose has just run smack into an immovable force: 1) Avoid being alone. In most cases, being with others brings its own kind of healing. Choose your companions with care, putting companions who care about you at the top of the list. But you don’t have to bare your soul and your troubles to everyone around you. Simply being with others even in a casual setting can help push back the night. 2) Keep things simple, at least for now. Don’t try to fix everything at once. And don’t spend a lot of time trying to forecast the future. Brick-wall times in our lives are when things come apart. Our first instinct is to attempt to mend them, using what we know, what we have left, what we are comfortable with. What we try may work immediately, but often it doesn’t. Right now, think survival, not perfection. Think one step at a time, not the whole race. 3) Assign a small part of yourself—that is, your conscious, rational, thinking being—to monitor what is being felt as opposed to what is being thought out. So much of what we think we think isn’t thought out at all. This is “felt” information that comes to us from deep in our brain. The “felt” stuff causes us to believe we know all kinds of stuff, even when we are staring at evidence that what we are sure we know is dead wrong! It is entirely possible that the need to challenge some of your “felt” knowledge is a major cause of your brick-wall feelings. Write down your suspicions about feelings that aren’t right, aren’t true, aren’t helpful. 4) Take care of yourself from the bottom of the food chain up. That is, look after your Carp nature first, then your Shark nature, and only then your Dolphin natures. If any of these personas of yours feels (there’s those feelings again!) threatened, it will sabotage realities for the personas those “higher up.” Your Carp nature needs stability, family, security, the day-to-day stuff. Be sure it has it. Your Shark nature needs to feel some autonomy, some input into decision-making, a chance to win. Look for ways it can do so. Your higher Dolphin natures need you to heal, once and for all. And stay out of the shark pool. And grow more comfortable with changes in your life and world. But remember: ironically, a bold Dophin first requires a bold Shark and a bold Carp, all in the same brain/mind: yours! 5) Do things. Really do them. In the early stages of dolphin-hood, there is an Achilles heel quality to our thinking. As our brain/mind rushes to embrace an expanded new sense of enlightenment and empowerment, it fools us into thinking that all we need to do to make something true and real is to imagine that it is so. And that can be so very, very destructive. So misleading. So wasteful. So untrue. So personally dangerous. The world is mysterious, yes. The world is amazing, yes. But the world is still the world, and it has its ways and its rules, its priorities and its requirements. You will ignore them to your peril. If you want to walk on fire, you better be dead-sure that you first take the laws of physics into account. 6) Be careful of your gurus. Your personal coaches. Your therapists. Can they be useful? You bet. Can they also hurt you? They can. Use the caveat emptor rule of consumerism: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If your potential professional helper doesn’t appear to be walking the talk, she or he probably can’t help you do it either. So choose with care. Let the Dolphin part of your brain/mind make the choice by asking to see the evidence that the coach, therapist, clergyperson or whomever you are considering as a guide and sounding board seems … well, the best word I can think of is “competent.” People who are going to help you get your act together should pretty much have theirs together. 7) Understand that brick-wall times usually pass quickly, so we need to put them to good use. When you feel that your world has come apart, accept that it probably has. Who you are has once again become an open question. There will be no better time to ask yourself, “Is who I have been who I really want to be?” “Is who I have been who I was aiming to be?” “Is who I have been who I am really intended to be?” At first, such questions can seem impervious to answers. But they’ll come if you keep asking. And if it seems overpowering, remember that all you are doing is asking. You aren’t committing. Not yet. And if you choose not to, not ever. So don’t accept the fear. Embrace the spirit of the inquiry and see where it can lead. 8) You described yourself as “someone who has imagination, a big creative spirit and lots of energy.” Wow! That’s a lot of expectation to lay on a wounded, frightened soul. Let me suggest this: Be content for a while (for how long is your call) at being someone who doesn’t require that her imagination be on duty 24/7. Give it a break. Just be in the moment (I know that as a First Dolphin worldview user you know how to do this!). Forget changing the world, as big creative spirits are always see themselves doing. Find little things you can change now. Changes that can be useful to you. Changes that will bring you some stability, some solace, some leverage. And turn down the energy level. For the moment, run low-key, low voltage. Feel what it is like to let the universe run itself. Then, over time, ramp back up in all these areas to a point where it helps you feel confident, on purpose, ready to resume the journey at the pace and toward the goals you were created to pursue. So what’s the first thing I’d suggest you do: Go eat. Not at home. Go out. Nourish yourself with good food, competently prepared. If you can find someone to share it with, do. If you can’t, then enjoy yourself as your own company. Be sure to do it in an exciting location. Why? Simply to remind yourself that there’s an amazing world out there. And that you are an amazing part of it. It is a world that never ceases to change. Hitting brick walls is merely a remainder that the world is moving on and that we don’t want to be left behind. All best wishes to you! Posted by Dudley On 07/10/08 At 01:13 PMhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blog/archives/00000021.htmComedians, Fools, and News AnchorsDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.com2009-01-07T01:08:22Z2009-01-07T01:08:22Z On Wednesday the 10th of this month Norman Solomon wrote an article for Truthout.org entitled, “The Sickening Praise for The Daily Show.” In it he suggests that the media’s overwhelming praise for Jon Stewart’s “A Daily Show” might really be a tacit form of convoluted self-loathing. He points out that while most journalists consume themselves with examining the emperor’s embroidery Mr. Stewart blatantly goes after the big and relevant issues of the day, speaking naked truth to powers that would otherwise be clothed in lies. In a nation where, in truth, mainstream media neither swings right nor left but rather has no substance at all, how does the Daily Show get away with reporting the real news? Because it’s a comedy show! In the past you could tell the horrid truth that everyone knew but no one wanted to utter, and if you did it with a “wink, wink, nudge, nudge, witty tongue-in-cheek,” you could become a famous playwright (Google "Shakespeare"). You could sing a little song, do a little dance, tell the truth and put seltzer down your pants. Why? Because comedy frequently provides a rather impervious armor for truth. Consider the fools of the medieval court. They could hurl insults, laugh out loud at the preposterous, bring greed and ignorance into the light of day, poke fun at the nobility, break with convention, speak for the poor, and do a little tumbling all in a day’s work. All you had to do was claim to be stupid and wear a funny hat with bells. Today you can still insult a president of the United States through an act of comedic mimicry and maybe even get a lucrative advertising contract (Google "Frank Caliendo"). And if you report the real news beneath a thin veil of joshin’ and jivin’ then you just might have the best comedy show of the season. But addressing the important issues with straightforward and unbiased investigation on prime time; forget it! Only recently during the many-pronged bailout debacle has the news taken a breather to report a few facts about some really important issues. But for the most part I suspect that the media will soon slip back into its bog of pablum with barely an air bubble to show that it had surfaced. Therefore, since we apparently have a postmodern mediascape where real news has been consigned to the dustbin, where conglomerates control the dispersal of public information and salivate at any opportunity to pull independent sources into the fold, where real journalists have been shackled to a news machine that serves up cold oatmeal with no milk or sugar, where the Fourth Estate is now a business unit that fills the airwaves with Lindsay and Michael and Brittney and Rush, perhaps the best we can do is to designate all news as comedy and insist that all news reporters wear a hat festooned with bells. Maybe then we could get the real news. Posted by Paul On 22/09/08 At 11:20 PMhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blog/archives/00000020.htmWhich Will Come First in the Presidential/Veep Debates, the Chicken or the Egg? Answer: The Lemon JuiceDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.com2009-01-07T01:08:22Z2009-01-07T01:08:22Z With the formal debates between the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates about to begin, what better time to revisit Justin Kruger and David Dunning’s 1999 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Unskilled and Unaware of It”? These Cornell University psychologists asked a group of undergraduates to take a battery of tests, including one to assess their skills of logical reasoning. What the researchers confirmed are probably among the most important findings in the history of the study of the mind. What they found was that: • The more incompetent people are, the more confidence they have in their own competence. • The more incompetent people are, the less competence they have in recognizing competence in others. • Even very competent people tend to overestimate the competence of others. Neurologist Robert Burton makes the Kruger-Dunning article the centerpiece of an article in Salon.com warning that the upcoming debates are going to tell us next to nothing about what we really need and deserve to know about the candidates for the nation’s highest offices. Even though it will likely never happen in a Presidential debate, here is what Burton would like to see happen: • How the candidates respond when they are stumped. In his words, are they evasive, flustered or straightforward in admitting what they don't know or understand? • How they each would respond when shown evidence that they are wrong. Burton wonders, “Is he or she capable of admitting to having made an error? Would he or she be flexible enough to change an opinion?” • How adroit is each candidate’s intellectual grasp of scientific method when it comes to answering “difficult, complex questions about aspects of science such as global warming, stem-cell research or alternative energy sources for which they may not have adequate knowledge”? • How does each candidate explain “faith-based” beliefs that he or she continues to hold that are in conflict with traditional reasoning and scientific method? Burton says that knowing about such qualities of mind are critical in deciding which leaders are most capable of making the best decisions in bad times. Americans’ experience with their current President is much on Burton’s mind as he reflects on the issue of how leaders adjudge their own levels of competence and the competence of others. He writes, “Many of the failures of post-9/11 American policy were caused by or aggravated by the inability of our president to recognize his intellectual limitations (including his choice of advisors), keep an open mind, evaluate evidence such as the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction, and listen to all sides of a complex issue. Perhaps this could have been avoided if Bush had been forced to publicly answer serious multifaceted questions prior to the election.” Kruger and Dunning wrote about a person who held up two Pittsburgh banks in 1995 in broad daylight with no effort to disguise himself. He was quickly arrested after the surveillance tapes were shown on the 11 o’clock news. When the robber saw the tapes, he was incredulous. “But I wore the juice,” he mumbled. He had been under the impression that if he smeared lemon juice on his face, he would be invisible to the cameras. We have had a President for the past eight years who appears to be a strong believer in a version of “the lemon juice effect.” Because the upcoming debates will be conducted the way these debates are usually conducted—in controlled conditions that have been rehearsed to a fare-thee-well—we can have little confidence that we won’t get another President with the same susceptibilities. Because whatever happens in these debates, we won’t be able to take a very good measure of the candidates’ thinking abilities when they must confront complex situations for which they don’t know the answers. But then would it really matter if we all did get a genuine look at the candidates’ competency level at handling the kinds of issues that Presidents of the United States must handle. Dr. Burton isn’t sanguine. That’s because we nearly all will bring such strong feelings about the candidates to the debates. Again and again, Dr. Burton points out, feelings trump reason. (That is, "felt knowledge" triumphs "reasoned knowledge."). Because of the way our minds work, we all tend to rub lemon juice on our candidate’s face. It is not a situation calculated to build confidence in our ability to select as President the person best equipped to keep lemon juice—and egg—off the nation’s face. For Justin Kruger and David Dunning’s article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, go here: <a href="http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf"> Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments</a> For Robert Burton’s article in Salon.com, go here: <a href="http://www.salon.com/env/mind_reader/2008/09/22/voter_choice/index.html">My candidate, myself</a> Posted by Dudley On 22/09/08 At 09:25 AMhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blog/archives/00000019.htmThe Only Real Mystery in the American Presidential Campaign Is Who’s Going to Win. Otherwise, the Whole Campaign Makes for a Great Fish StoryDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.com2009-01-07T01:08:22Z2009-01-07T01:08:22Z In the tumultuous wake of the GOP Convention in America and the startling veep candidate selection that could put the likes of Alaska’s No. 1 hockey mom within one aging heartbeat of the so-called “most powerful job in the world,” we’ve had more than one of our readers remark among the lines of this Colorado non-hockey-mom: “I honestly can't still understand how they [the Republicans] get away with so much. I think I spent most of the night [watching Gov. Palin speak and the run-up activities] just shaking my head at the bravado and BS.” But then, as we reminded this concerned Colorado mother and community organizer, who was an Obama supporter at the Democratic convention, she really shouldn’t have been surprised at either the behaviors or content of the GOP Convention (or the Democratic Convention either, for that matter) or a lot of the other developments in this showcase of political marathons. Much of the story line is actually as predictable as hurricanes in warm summer waters. That's because one of the most real things in the world is the way nature works. And people are part of nature. And people’s beliefs are a part of nature. And people’s beliefs, especially in the aggregate, are hugely more predicable than most people believe. In terms of the Yo!Dolphin! Worldview Survey™ model, which we at Brain Technologies believe to have few peers in its ability to explain “the inner ecology” of people, the dynamics driving the Republican Party and the McCain campaign’s strategy can be explained quite simply as shark belief users skillfully manipulating Carp belief users. In an as yet unreleased book, my colleague, Paul Kordis, and I have prepared extensive descriptions of the American Carp belief structure’s internal dialogue—the one that the user of this worldview turns to, moment by moment, day in and day out, to explain the world to her/himself. Here’s some of that self-referential inner American Carp dialogue from our unpublished work: “I don’t go in for a lot of highfalutin talk about airy-fairy social causes or the like. I simply do my share to eradicate the obvious evils that are plaguing our families, our jobs, our schools and our neighborhoods. “I am against abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, atheism, high-and-mighty science and the separation of church and state. “I think our religious values should be taught in school and kids should be made to behave accordingly. I think that criminals should be afraid of the law and that harsh punishment is the only deterrent to crime. “I’m not afraid of laws that invade people’s privacy because I have nothing to hide and these laws keep me safe from people who do. I think sex offenders are the worst people in the world and that more people than you could imagine worship Satan in secret and that these people all too often infiltrate every level of the secular world to spread their poison. The media is especially in the hands of bleeding liberals and hardened atheists. The minds of our children are being turned against us and it is our responsibility to do what it takes to keep them in line and on the right path, even if we have to administer harsh punishment. “I also believe that the poor and the outcast have become so because of their impurity, non-belief and unrighteousness. Their sin has driven them from the creator and their earthly pain is the result, plain and simple. Therefore, those who have achieved authority, power and success are examples of the divine favor due to those who have kept the word of the prophets and followed the path outlines in our holy texts. They are just in their judgment of others, as am I. We are the righteous and the pious and have every right to incriminate against the sinner. We all have our place in creation; we should follow the commands of those above us and those beneath us should likewise follow our direction and moral authority. “In the same sense my country is favored by the Almighty and is fated to reign supreme among the other nations. Our wars are pure and right, our forms of government and economic activity are by far the best in the world. We have discovered the true path in all things and other nations must be made to be like us if they are to avoid our wrath and the just punishment for their transgressions. There are many enemies in the world who hate us and envy our righteousness, our freedom and our possessions. But our leaders will crush them and our military power, therefore, must be unequaled. There are also many among us who would destroy us from within. Therefore, our national and local authorities will root them out and punish them and thwart them from their evil plans. And if this means that we must give up some of our liberties then the price is worth it. Our security is more important than our freedom and our obedience is more important than our dissent. “Evil will continue to threaten our faith and our existence until the Almighty reappears, along with the holy prophets and the departed faithful, and takes the throne of this world, destroying the parasites among us and establishing the kingdom of righteousness on earth. Until that time our war against evil is perpetual and is our destiny and our responsibility. We cannot relent and we cannot compromise but must stand firm in our might and our principles, among which are our faith not only in spiritual matters but in governmental and economic matters as well. “I don’t know a lot about the big dealings going on with money. I just know that we have a right to prosperity because it is our due as a loyal, hard working and law-abiding people. Besides, this country should be built on trade, on people buying things from each other and making the nation strong and prosperous. The most worthy are the most successful, and I aim to be one of those people some day, so it doesn’t hurt if I buy myself and my family a few things now and then. We deserve a piece of the good life this country has to offer and if I have to borrow a few dollars I know that I can trust those who lend money to me to handle all of the details. I pay my bills and I know that providence will provide if I live a good life. “If we choose people in authority who support our beliefs and values then it will benefit us all and makes all of us prosperous. Those are well off buy the things that the rest of us provide and eventually we all benefit. Without them, we wouldn’t have jobs or the other good things in life. Therefore, we should praise their success and do what we can to contribute to it. Prosperity flows from our way of life to everyone’s benefit and must not be hindered. The only people who really suffer are the leaches who don’t want to take personal responsibility. “In the same sense our environment is given to us to use as we wish to establish our dominion over it and to mine its riches as the reward for our virtue and our obedience. Creation is abundant and we cannot begin to take away from what has been provided for us. But, if the unrighteous and unbelievers possess lands and resources that are valuable to us then it is our duty to use them for our own purposes, for the sake of our government, our economy and our faith.” You can feel the fear and resentment of the Carp worldview user throughout this description, and it is the American Carp worldview user’s fear and resentment that the American Shark worldview users are so skillfully manipulating—again!—in the 2008 American Presidential election. What’s the antidote for those who seek a saner, more factually based, more humane and more hopeful, more competent and most complex America? The political strategists on both sides of the great voter divide have it right. The battle is one of the diehard Carp and Shark worldview users versus all the rest. Can enough votes from gradually awakening Carp users and disaffected and concerned Shark users be combined with the First Dolphin, Prime Dolphin and Deep See-Change Dolphin worldview users' votes to win the day on November 5 in the quest for control of the American Electoral College? This time around, our prognosticative skills are no better than anyone else’s. Our prediction is either Obama or McCain by a hair. It makes for fascinating political theater. If only the outcome were not so important, for America and the remainder of the world. Posted by Dudley On 06/09/08 At 01:24 PMhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blog/archives/00000018.htmThe Irony of Virtuous EvilDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.com2009-01-07T01:08:22Z2009-01-07T01:08:22Z First published in 1952 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, Reinhold Niebuhr’s book entitled The Irony of American History is again available in a new edition from the University of Chicago Press. You might think, "That’s nice. But how can a book written in 1952 be relevant now?" And that would be a very appropriate question. So my reply is, "The Olympics." Which itself might bring up a host of other questions and, therefore, requires an extended explanation – While attending the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games this summer President Bush made some fairly remarkable pronouncements. He was being interviewed on television by Bob Costas and Bob asked him how he felt about the recent military confrontation between Russia and Georgia. Part of the conversation, as quoted on whitehouse.gov, proceeded as follows: COSTAS: Moving away from China for just a second. During the Opening Ceremony we saw you conferring with Vladimir Putin. THE PRESIDENT: Yes. COSTAS: We now know you were talking about the conflict that had erupted that day… THE PRESIDENT: That's true. COSTAS: …between Russia and Georgia. Now, Georgia is a former Soviet republic that is sympathetic to the West… THE PRESIDENT: Yes. COSTAS: …and that is attempting to embody many Western values. But just as you need China, you need Russia strategically around the globe. You’ve got to walk a fine line. What did you say to Putin? THE PRESIDENT: I said this violence is unacceptable… I not only said it to Vladimir Putin, I've said it to the President of the country, Dmitriy Medvedev. And my administration has been engaged with both sides in this, trying to get a cease-fire, and saying that the status quo ante for all troops should be August 6th. And, look, I expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia and that we strongly condemn bombing outside of South Ossetia. It was just interesting to me that here we are trying to promote peace and harmony and we're witnessing a conflict take place. COSTAS: Right, no Olympic truce in this case. THE PRESIDENT: There wasn't. And I was very firm with Vladimir Putin... he and I have got a good relationship… just like I was firm with the Russian President. And hopefully this will get resolved peacefully. There needs to be an international mediation there for the South Ossetia issue. Earlier in Washington, according to AFP.com, President Bush warned Russia to end its conflict in Georgia, claiming that Russia might be attempting to overthrow Georgia’s government. He also strongly urged Moscow to accept a Europe-backed peace plan that included a pulling back of all military forces. He asserted: Russia's government must respect Georgia's territorial integrity and sovereignty. The Russian government must reverse the course it appears to be on and accept this peace agreement as a first step toward resolving this conflict….Russia's actions this week have raised serious questions about its intentions in Georgia and the region. These actions have substantially damaged Russia's standing in the world. "Hmmm," you might say, "That sounds a lot like what’s been going on in Iraq for nearly six years… and how the world feels about it." "How ironic," Niebuhr might exclaim. You see, Niebuhr’s book was a bit of a prescient warning. Niebuhr suggested that no matter what altruistic and noble and righteous motives we attribute to our actions, we very likely have some selfish and unwholesome motives lurking underneath. Therefore, we must be very, very careful when we choose to exercise power. He even more strongly cautions us against: "…Those who are ready to cover every ambiguity of good and evil in our actions by the frantic insistence that any measure taken in a good cause must be unequivocally virtuous." p. 5 Claiming that the power of human self-deception is apparently endless Niebuhr goes on to quote John Adams: "Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws. Our passions, ambitions, avarice, love and resentment, etc., possess so much metaphysical subtlety and so much overpowering eloquence that they insinuate themselves into the understanding and the conscience and convert both to their party." p. 21 And then Niebuhr observes: "For the fact is that every nation is caught in the moral paradox of refusing to go to war unless it can be proved that the national interest is imperiled, and of continuing in the war only by proving that something much more than national interest is at stake." p. 36 And according to Niebuhr, America from its beginning has been in possession of a messianic consciousness and a messianic dream, that is, we were chosen by the creator to lead the world from barbarism and night into the shining dawn of a New Jerusalem. So once again he warns us: "But the American experience represents a particularly unique and ironic refutation of the illusion in all such dreams. The illusion about the possibility of managing historical destiny from any particular standpoint in history… miscalculations about both the power and the wisdom of the managers and of the weakness and the manageability of… [that] which is to be managed. "Consistent with the… hope of redeeming history, the American Messianic dream is vague about the political or other power which would be required to subject all recalcitrant wills to the one will which is informed by the true vision…. "Today the success of America in world politics depends upon its ability to establish community with many nations, despite the hazards created by pride of power on the one hand and the envy of the weak on the other. This success requires a modest awareness of the contingent elements in the values and ideals of our devotion, even when they appear to us to be universally valid; and a generous appreciation of the valid elements in the practices and institutions of other nations though they deviate from our own. In other words, our success in world politics necessitates a disavowal of the pretentious elements in our original dream, and a recognition of the values and virtues which enter into history in unpredictable ways…" p. 72, 79 Therefore, according to Niebuhr, we must avoid at all cost substituting a more grievous error for the error that we are challenging. And one of the errors we may impose through substitution is the notion that an immoral behavior committed by someone who is considered good becomes moral. And by the same token an identical behavior when committed by someone who is considered evil remains immutably immoral. In other words, the act itself is viewed completely differently depending on whether the actor is first seen as good or evil. Obviously our current administration sees itself as chosen of God and as being his moral agent. It also sees those who would oppose this moral agency as evil doers. Therefore, the behavior of this administration is considered to be quite different from that of the evil doers even if it is, in fact, exactly the same. And through the same manipulation any irony regarding the pot calling the kettle black is lost. President Bush seems quite fond of quoting the Bible, especially the passage that admonishes us to clear the log from our own eye before criticizing the speck in another’s. Perhaps even this irony is lost as he admonishes Putin and Medvedev to respect another country’s sovereignty, and the opinion of the rest of the world, because he himself is trying so very hard to promote peace and harmony. Perhaps it even becomes a divine comedy that Dante in his more ambitious moments would applaud. Posted by Paul On 05/09/08 At 02:49 PMhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blog/archives/00000017.htmNudging Again and the “What if?” PropositionDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.com2009-01-07T01:08:22Z2009-01-07T01:08:22Z In his 2007 book Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken notes that there are currently over one million organizations, most operating at the grass-roots level, dedicated to making things better for people and the planet on which we live. He notes that these organizations have a very similar core message, whether they are focused on reviving the environment or instituting social justice, and that message is the need to treat each other and our world in a way that is congruent with a set of commonly held ethics. He also notes that, far from the minority of ineffectual and ragtag extremist groups they are often touted to be, these groups are growing in their effectiveness and represent a growing majority of people who hold opinions on these issues. In fact, he suggests that these organizations represent the largest social movement in the history of the world. But most people are unaware of this fact. On a different note, Sanjay Gupta recently wrote an article for Time Magazine pointing out that dieters may double their weight loss by writing down the food they eat on a daily diary. Why? Because it keeps them from fooling themselves and potentially from fooling others. So what do these two messages have in common? First, let’s look at one more item. Wikipedia states, “There are two principles that any definition of democracy include. The first principle is that all members of the society have equal access to power and the second that all members enjoy universally recognized freedoms and liberties.” Americans, of course, live in a republic, which means we elect officials to make the important decisions for us and power is anything but equally shared and our liberties are hardly universally recognized. Be that as it may, we continue to go about our daily lives as if we lived in a democracy. Now, what do all three of these ideas have in common? What they have in common is the notion of a false social norm. Remember that one? I won’t fully repeat a previous blog but suffice it to say that a false social norm is an idea that people believe most other people believe, when in fact they do not. So when I say, “Most people prefer the color blue,” when in fact they prefer green, I am stating a false social norm. And if you nod your head and smile in agreement you are accepting a false social norm, at least on the outside. So why is this important? After all, most people believe some things that aren’t true and most people don’t like to argue. So what? Well this is what—when people think that an opinion is held by the majority they are less likely to speak their own mind if they hold a differing opinion, and more likely to either keep quiet or pretend to agree. And if people’s real opinions about important issues don’t get expressed, then people won’t realize that most other people might agree with them and a false reality gets created that doesn’t fix things that need fixing in the real world and most likely will harm everyone in the long run. However, if real social norms are made explicit, then people can make good decisions based upon their agreements and deal with the minor number of disagreements they might have at a later time. Therefore, a food diary creates a true account. (See how I cleverly slipped this in here?) And families that share their diaries get an even greater benefit because they tend to eat less when other people explicitly know what they eat. This is a true social norm versus a false social norm. And there is a social norm for social and environmental change, a really big one, but most people don’t know it yet. So what if we knew how most other people really felt? Would it change our behavior? Would it cause us to really look at the facts to see what is really going on and to do something about them? Perhaps. But what if the information were easier to find, like a food diary? What if, say, we could see the federal budget without spin, commentary, or boilerplate? What if it were on a daily ticker in the corner of our computer screens? What if we saw our carbon footprint, our military capability, or our educational standards compared to those of other countries on a daily basis? How about our healthcare costs and the quality of care we receive and how many people receive it and how long it takes, or the treatment of our troops, or our standing in the eyes of the world, or our energy consumption, or our national debt, or our average household debt, or what the real average salary is and how long people really work and how many jobs they hold and how many people have to work in a household to make ends meet? Wouldn’t that make things a bit easier to assess? And what if we had a democracy where we were able to vote on all of these things? What if we could vote on whether or not to go to war? What if we could vote on how the federal budget is spent and how much we are taxed? What if we could vote on all of the really important stuff? What if the “smart crowd” phenomenon could take hold on a national level? What if our commonly held ethic was a dedication to finding and disseminating the real truth? And what if we really had something to say about what is done about it when the truth is revealed? That, I think, would truly be a democracy. And we might just start to effectively address many of the truly pressing issues of our time with willpower and resources sufficient to produce real and productive change. So how about this for a start, let’s have a federal daily diary that is easy to read and easy to get. And then let’s start talking to each other about what we really think and then let’s vote on this stuff. It is, after all, the essence of American democracy. Posted by Paul On 10/08/08 At 11:41 PMhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blog/archives/00000016.htmHow the U.S. Presidential Campaign Looks from the Sweaty Perspective of a Texas Heat WaveDudley Lynchdudley\@braintechnologies.com2009-01-07T01:08:22Z2009-01-07T01:08:22Z Humans and the human condition being what they are, I suppose there are no "unstrange" times. Not in your and my lifetimes. Not in any lifetimes. But these current times are certainly times that give pause. At the moment here in Texas, we are in one of our summer heat waves. It is not (at least thus far) as severe as the worst in my memory. That was in 1980 when our air conditioner seemed to never quit running. When the entire family went to the community swimming pool every afternoon about 2 o’clock because the thought of facing the rest of the afternoon without a period of extreme, ongoing-for-a-time wetness was simply unbearable. We went something like almost 60 days, as I recall, with a daily high exceeding 100 degrees, accompanied of course by Texas’ non-desert-like humidity. But this summer's retched temperature excess, while not yet recording-setting in its longevity, is already feeling both excessive and retched. And it certainly created a vivid tableau for reading economist Paul Krugman's column last week in which he quoted a global warming researcher who has estimated that there is a 5 percent chance that global temperatures will end up rising about 18 degrees Fahrenheit. If that happens, then that will pretty much put a wrap on civilization as we know it. All of which makes the current campaigns for President of the United States seem like travesties when they aren’t coming across as imbecilities. The Democrats are wimps. Cowardly donkeys braying about change while fearing hourly that they may actually be perceived by the electorate as a party that might bring needed changes about. The Republicans are simply not trustworthy on any topic, issue or need. They have been so successful at telling lies that they are incapable of recognizing even the simplest truths. The third party candidates are all clowns of one degree or another, one stripe or another, one sacred cow or another, one silly bias or another. The thing is, the quality of our politicians and the vapidness of our political discourse and the inconsequential nature of our proposed solutions compared to the rising tide of probable Life-threatening calamities that surround us are what we deserve. That is, what is to be expected given each of our own personal inabilities to act very much differently than we have been acting. I truly fear for our future. And I would truly be without hope were it not for a seemingly built-in quality to our neck of the Universe that I tend to think of as the self-righting instinct—or SRI. Systems do, crowds of people do, individuals do at times institute the most remarkable of turnarounds for reasons that are beyond the kin of anyone involved or anyone looking on, currently or in the future. One observation about the SRI is that it is really never “happenstancial.” It is always fueled and fed by circumstances. So it is certainly suicidal as a species, facing what we are facing, to fold our hands this time and sit awaiting and expecting the SRI’s arrival. All around us, there are points needing to be tipped. There are butterfly wings needing to be flapped. There are jeremiads needing to be shouted forth, and there are changes sorely needing to be made or started toward. There’s the prospect of a planet-wide train wreck looming. As my colleague Paul Kordis confirmed for Americans with his monumental Ph.D. dissertation last year at Colorado State University (more than fifteen hundred final pages containing an unrelenting drumbeat of evidence that America as it is now practiced is unsustainable), there’s a bifurcation coming. Travel one road and we’re sure to be going the route of unprecedented pain, ruin and dissolution. Our one, remaining hope is to take the other road. A terribly difficult task when most everyone, including America’s presidential hopefuls, are speeding along the turnpike leading to tomorrow with their eyes so often blithely closed and their sensibilities so often calibrated to their own narrow self-interests. Yet I’m not one to espouse the view that people should sit out elections—and in particular this election—because “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference" between any of the candidates or parties. My reason, though, for supporting the Democratic candidate is probably not a very widespread one. I sense something in the Obama phenomenon. I sense the lurking presence of the SRI. I sense that even Mr. Obama can perceive it, even if he most likely doesn’t understand exactly what it is. That would explain some of his alleged “arrogance” and his ability to view much of the daily abuse of the campaign trail with seeming amusement and/or detachment. Sitting here mulling on all this in this summer’s Texas heat, I suspect that even the more perceptive of the Republicans can sense it. That’s why they have derisively labeled Mr. Obama “The One.” If he isn’t, then America probably isn’t going to have much of a say in what happens to the planet’s travails—or how it happens. The SRI has a lot more choices and places to choose from this time. And we all best hope that it will soon be getting about the choosing. Posted by Dudley On 03/08/08 At 10:43 AMhttp://www.yodolphin.com/blog/archives/00000015.htm