Tyranny is the deliberate removal of nuance

 

Today's Meme of the Day is inspired by a conversation between comedian Russell Brand and psychologist Jordan Peterson. Billed as a "debate," this conversation is no battle or fight. It seems to me to be more of a spirited conversation between two intelligent people with slightly different views. I enjoyed this excerpt from Russell Brand's Under The Skin Podcast #46 With Jordan Peterson

At 3:10 in the excerpt, Brand raises the issue of how people in the media can misinterpret a speaker's words or intentions. Brand posited that both he and Peterson had been misunderstood at times, and he wanted to attribute this controversy to a lack of nuance in reporting. In turn, the lack of nuance in reporting can be attributed to either editorial direction or the short attention span of the audience, or both. The resulting tendency is for people to force other people into ideological categories (left, right) too quickly. 

Brand had worked with the Maysles brothers on a documentary film. (Interestingly enough, the subject was reportedly Donald Trump.) Brand recalled Maysles' quote during this portion of the conversation. Peterson was not familiar with the quote but took an immediate interest. Peterson remarked, "there's no nuance in ignorance but it's excusable because you just don't know any better. But when it's deliberate, that's a whole different story."

Ignorance, simply being unaware of the facts, is forgivable. Willful ignorance, choosing to remain ignorant in spite of facts, is certainly an offense against the pursuit of truth. deliberately obscuring facts from others keeping them ignorant would be worse still. Tyranny is even more nefarious for its subtlety, leaving facts but removing nuance. 

The lesson is to search for the truth, to ask questions, to trust only what is verified, and to be suspicious of motives until they are plainly exposed. Not coincidentally, these were the principles of the Maysles brothers' pioneering style of documentary filmmaking known as cinema veritas.  

For more information about Albert Maysles and his brother David, feel free to read this New York Times appreciation of their award-winning approach to documentary filmmaking. Albert died in 2015 at the age of 88. His brother and collaborator, David, died in 1987 at the age of 54. PBS published a list of their seven most important films. How many have you seen?

• “Psychiatry in Russia” (1955)
• “Salesman” (1968)
• “Gimme Shelter” (1970)
• “Christo’s Valley Curtain” (1974)
• “Grey Gardens” (1975)
• “When We Were Kings” (1996)
• “Iris” (2014)

Remaining Clear and True to the Pulse of Life, Part III

Welcome to the finale of a three-part meditation on Mark Nepo's "Wrong View," the July 2d entry in his brilliant day-book, The Book of Awakening (1). Our mental well-being depends, Nepo says, on "...how clear and true we remain to the pulse of life...".

What is the "pulse of life?" The poetic phrase captivated me, and I felt the need to explore it more deeply.

• In Part I, we concluded that the Pulse of Life is the quest to commune in Oneness. 
• In Part II, we explored how to remain "clear and true" to this quest for Oneness given the distractions, opportunities, and challenges of our current technological age. 
• Here in Part III, we turn to some ideas for moving toward an age of integration and increased Oneness. 

Since terms like integration and oneness are difficult to translate into how we live on a daily basis without a lot of New Age lingo, we put forward the idea of betterness. Maybe we cannot describe what Oneness will feel like, but we can all recognize betterness in the form of sustained, continuous improvement in our well-being and overall quality of life. This installment then is about using the idea of "betterness" as a means of marking progress toward an ill-defined goal of an age of integration and increased Oneness.  

Remaining Clear and True to the Pulse of Life:

Where do we go from here?

We want ourselves, our children, our friends and family, and our neighbors and co-workers to all experience outstanding well-being: to be healthy, happy, and prosperous. Nepo says that key to this high level of well-being is fidelity to the Pulse of Life--the urge to get better, and ultimately to commune in Oneness with all through unity with the Divine Other. 

This quest is a real problem worthy of study but challenging to describe. The quest is not easy--indeed, it is not meant to be easy. We all struggle, according to our ability. I believe it is possible for everyone, even the most disadvantaged of us, to listen for and move with the Pulse of Life. We can help each other overcome distractions and challenges and leverage our collective strengths to move toward a better state. Ultimately, we are each responsible for our own journey.

 Climbing the ladder
Photograph: Paul Hardy / Corbis

More than the urge to merely survive, the Pulse of Life seems to imply the innate urge to get better, to improve, to move forward on a path to Oneness. We are compelled to push beyond survival as a means to achieving "betterness." The ongoing struggle requires alignment of heart (values), head (plans), and hands (actions) (2). Because enacting our values uses the full spectrum from concepts to implementation, the struggle could be called the "Art-Science of Betterness" (3). 

Continuous improvement in this sense can be described as moving up a ladder from Survival to Stability to Success to Significance (4).  We move up and down the ladder over time, and we probably all know people at each level.

Many books have been written, read, forgotten, and rewritten on the subject of attaining happiness. The uncertainty of life guarantees that there will never be one and only one path to attain universal bliss. Happiness, Self-actualization, Significance, Oneness, Betterness. There are as many paths as there are journeyers. I write to acknowledge the universal quest, to suggest one possible path, and to encourage others who are on the same journey. 

I realize this whole thing sounds rather esoteric to this point. I'd like to make my concept of betterness more plain through employing the 4 Cs of: 

Compassion, Communication, Cooperation, and Communion

 
We remain clear and true to the pulse of life and move toward an integrated age of increased Oneness by developing competence in four critical aspects of character which I call the 4 Cs. The remainder of this post is a description of the Four Cs essential to Betterness.

• Compassion, 
• Communication, 
• Cooperation, and 
• Communion

Wojtek Kwiatkowski Photography

Compassion

The Dali Lama has defined compassion as love in action. Feeling love is not enough. Love is a verb. To live well, one must DO love. How are you showing compassion in the world? How are you living out your love in community with others? What happens when you see ugly behavior, or when you yourself do not show compassion?

“The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one of two things: either love, or a call for love.” 

                                                          --Marianne Williamson

Every human act can be seen as either an act of love, or a plea for love. If we see the world as flowing over with love, we treat ourselves and all others with fairness, dignity, and respect. The lack of love explains a lot of rude and selfish behavior in the world. Without compassion, people may feel insignificant or forgotten, and they may lose hope. 

Show love. Be a beacon of compassion in a lost world. 

Wojtek Kwiatkowski Photography

Communication

Compassion sets the stage for life, but how does one put compassion into motion? With apologies to Matt Groening, I believe that

"Communication is the cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems." 

What sort of problems are we talking about? Poverty, ignorance, disease, famine, war? Yes! Peace follows from justice. Where there is injustice, there will be unrest. How can we get better by using communication?

We must put values first. We must be clear about our values--about what really matters--to ourselves and to the people closest to us. In conflict, we must find the common values and use those as a foundation. No discussion of what to do about a problem should occur until after there is group consensus on shared values. Lacking consensus, friction is inevitable.

People can rationalize almost anything, even seemingly contradictory things. Flexibility and the ability to compromise in some things are essential interpersonal skills. The only way to avoid constant conflict on one extreme, or a complete lack of progress on the other, is to be Value Focused (5) in your orientation. Put values first as a compass when deciding which way to go for you and yours.

Effective communication requires (a) Clear thought, (b) Open channels, and (c) Attentive receptor. Commit to improving your own communication skills and you will enable others to communicate more effectively as well.

Wojtek Kwiatkowski Photography

Cooperation

Competition is healthy. Constructive criticism is beneficial. In the spirit of mutual benefit, we need to consider the role of cooperation in terms of helping the less fortunate or the differently-abled.

When people feel hopeless, the cause is imbalance. Even the perception of imbalance can induce despair. Thinking people and leaders need to consider the vital importance of a balance of power and the role of cooperation in achieving increased betterness. 

The world's shifting economic center of gravity is depicted in the map above. Black dots represent movement of the center of gravity from its 1980 mid-Atlantic position to the present. Red dots are forward projections to 2049. The point is that nothing stays the same. Every living thing changes and so every collection of living things also evolves, adapts, changes. Since nothing stays the same, we must learn to cooperate. Help one another. Take the good with the bad. Feel the joy or the pain of the moment fully, and then let it dissipate before it blocks out the the experiences awaiting to unfold in the next moment.

Wojtek Kwiatkowski Photography

Communion

The pulse of life? It begins with the recognition that all living things change. All things are connected. If we keep an open mind, we can see that some changes we can influence, but most of the time we must simply struggle to maintain balance in the midst of constant change of life all around us. Balance is maintained best when we keep our focus on the central values.

Everything is connected. We are, quite literally, stardust. With apologies to the '70s rock group, America, I borrowed and re-purposed a snippet of lyric from their classic tune, "A Horse with No Name (6)."

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings...

Communion is not limited to people and Creator. Communion in relation to the Pulse of Life

The Art-Science of Betterness includes improved communion with "rocks and plants and birds and things." There was a time in my life when I would have attacked such a phrase as "flaky." But consider the following: After the Big Bang, the basic building blocks of all light, matter, and anti-matter flew outward. The material building blocks of all things gradually cooling and coalescing into simple atoms and molecules. The minerals, flora, fauna, and all things we see today, both natural and man-made, are composed of atoms, molecules, and compounds created from energy that existed before time began.

"Against the classical concepts of permanence and identity the realization that all living is a dynamic process of transformation from which no entity escapes now stands backed up by the whole edifice of scientific research and theory. 

"On the ruins of the world of thought dogmatically extolled by nineteenth century minds we witness the reappearance of ancient concepts which were for millennia the foundations of human knowledge. 

"The universe is once more to be understood as an ocean of energies in which two vast complementary tides can be distinguished. Everywhere a dynamic and electrical dualism appears as the foundation upon which all reality stands."

--Astrologer Dane Rudhyar

The Universe is an ocean of mysterious energies. Again borrowing from America, that universal "ocean is a desert with its life underground and a perfect disguise above." The most enlightened among us appreciate that we  "rocks and plants and birds and things" are all swimming in the same Universal ocean trying to move upward and onward toward the original source of love and light. 

Conclusion

A cause of disenfranchisement is selfishness or a lack of compassion. A source of ennui is disconnectedness resulting from poor communication, A feeling of injustice or imbalance comes from a lack of cooperation. Finally a sense of debasement comes form a lack of regular communion with the divine spark.


Remaining clear and true to the pulse of life can be difficult in a technological age. The art and science of betterness is about the values that lead us closer to Oneness. In light of the highly technical and increasingly networked world in which we live, how do we identify and nurture the values that lead us in the best direction?

The way to move onward and upward is to 

express love with compassion, 
communicate love with intention, 
cooperate in the spirit of mutual benefit, and 
spend time in grateful communion.

PEACE!

Notes and attributions: 

(1) My muse and spirit guide for this series of articles is the incomparable Mark Nepo, author of several books but most widely known for his acclaimed Book of Awakening.

(2) The specific reference to heart, head, and hands is attributed to Robert Pirsig. author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

(3) The "art and science of better" is the catchphrase of INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science. The phrase has become something of a buzzword in the Analytics community. My twist to betterness from better is made to focus more on the process rather than the state. Better is a milestone on the journey to Betterness.  

(4) Survival to stability to success to significance is the scale developed by Zig Ziglar and used by many to put Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs in an alliterative form. 

(5) Value-Focused Thinking is the brainchild of Ralph Keeney.

(6) Full lyrics to America's classic tune, "A Horse with No Name" are available HERE

(7) The four beautiful Desert Horse images are from photos by the incomparable Wojtek Kwiatkowski, equine photographer.

Wojtek Kwiatkowski Photography

L.I.N.K.S. that Lure, Intrigue, Nurture, Kindle, or Stimulate, Part 10: Finger Length Ratio and Personality

L.I.N.K.S. that Lure, Intrigue, Nurture, Kindle, or Stimulate, Part 10:

Finger Length Ratio and Personality

This 10th edition of L.I.N.K.S. is inspired by my recent pop psychology post on Finger Length Ratio and Personality which observed that the length of your ring finger was determined before you were even born. That post concluded with the open-ended observation that many other aspects of your appearance and even your personality may be in-born, and thus largely out of your direct control.

Coming as I do from the "Leaders are made, not born" school, the realization that I find the thought that some behavior is inborn a tad unsettling. I wanted to follow-up with some links (10 links, as a matter of fact--in honor of the 10th edition of L.I.N.K.S.!) to additional reading on the subject for those of you curious enough to explore this topic in a bit more detail. I welcome your comments.

Ten annotated L.I.N.K.S.

1. Five Things a Man's Finger Length Says About Him. The ratio of digits' lengths could hint at everything from personality to intellect to physiology to propensity for disease. http://www.livescience.com/49883-finger-length-in-men.html 
2. Finger length ratio can predict aggressive behavior and risk of disease. Researchers continue to study what sparks these hormonal changes and have begun looking at environmental chemical exposure, stress levels and diet during pregnancy. http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/04-finger-length-ratio-can-predict-aggressive-behavior-and-risk-of-disease 
3. Polite, promiscuous... gay? What does your ring finger say about you? The longer your ring finger is is compared to your index finger, the greater chance you will be polite and happy, straight, rich or handsome, with a long penis. But, on the down side, you will have a much higher than average chance of developing prostate cancer. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11424695/Polite-promiscuous...-gay-What-does-your-ring-finger-say-about-you.html 
4. How the length of a woman's fingers reveals her Career: Short index finger hints that she's more likely to be in high-powered role. The idea is that a low 2D:4D ratio is associated with more aggressive behavior. Contrast this with the findings in article #10. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2965316/How-length-woman-s-fingers-reveals-CAREER-Short-index-finger-hints-s-likely-high-powered-role.html 
5. Study: Finger length a tell-tale sign of a cheater? A study of 1,300 men and women in England and the United States found that those with same-length ring and index fingers are more likely to “stay” with a committed partner. Those whose ring fingers are longer than their index fingers may be more likely to “stray,” as the authors of the study put it. http://www.hlntv.com/article/2015/02/06/oxford-study-ring-finger-length-cheater-faithful
6. Can you judge a man by his fingers? Examining the link between relative lengths of index and ring fingers in men and their behavior towards women. Men with short index fingers and long ring fingers are on average nicer towards women. This phenomenon stems from their fetal life, and the hormones these men have been exposed to in their mother's womb. The findings might help explain why these men have more children. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150218122110.htm
7. Personality Isn't Random. A large component of a child's personality in inherited from that child's parents, and siblings tend to have far more in common with each other than two people their age in the general population. This article came close to making a connection between finger length and MBTI. http://washparkprophet.blogspot.com/2013/02/personality-isnt-random.html 
8. Penis Size: It May Be Written in the Length of His Fingers. Long ring fingers are associated with larger penile length in males and enlarged clitorises an shallow vaginas in women. http://healthland.time.com/2011/07/06/penis-size-it-may-be-written-in-the-length-of-his-fingers/
9. Human 2D (index) and 4D (ring) finger lengths and ratios: cross-sectional data on linear growth patterns, sexual dimorphism and lateral asymmetry from 4 to 60 years of age. The study examines how absolute and relative digit lengths vary over a wide range of postnatal ages, and tests whether these variables are influenced by gender, laterality and handedness effects. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2732043/
10. Finger length ratio (2D:4D) correlates with physical aggression in men but not in women. Finger length ratio (2D:4D) is a sexually dimorphic trait. Men have relatively shorter second digits (index fingers) than fourth digits (ring fingers). Smaller, more masculine, digit ratios are thought to be associated with either higher prenatal testosterone levels or greater sensitivity to androgens, or both. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15620791

Incidentally, there is a lot of junk science out there, too, and plenty of bad or misleading links. Here is an example of a link that did not make the list. Anytime I see the word "THIS" or lots of ALL CAPS or exclamation points (!!) in the title of an article, I dismiss the article, the author, and the source.

• Assessing Masculinity / Femininity via various Finger Length and Hand Shape Ratios. Discover your MASCULINITY/FEMININITY hand factor by combining your digit ratio with your hand shape ratios! Ugh, the all-caps, the exclamation points, the bold claims... Smells like click bait. http://www.handresearch.com/diagnostics/finger-length-masculinity-femininity-factor-hands.htm

The Day of the Dude

Today. March 6th, is the day we celebrate The Day of the Dude, for it was on this date in 1998 that one of the best movies of all time (and one of the 5 best Coen brothers movies) was released. I refer, of course, to The Big Lebowski.

Perhaps you will celebrate in one of the following ways (as suggested in The Dudespaper):

1. Get together with like-minded Dudeists, drink white Russians, watch the sacred film, and go bowling.
2. Spend it alone in your private residence by taking a bath with candles and tapes of whale sounds.
3. Go to the beach (or the river, or the lake, or the swimming pool) with some pals and symbolically scatter the ashes of the previous year (suggestion: the ash from some naturally-occurring herbal substance will do).
4. Get dressed up in your robes, shorts, sunglasses and sandals and pass out the Take it Easy Manifesto at your local shopping mall. 
   
5. Organize a full-on Jackie-Treehorn style garden party.
6. Set up a stand in a public area and ordain people into the Church of the Latter-Day Dude. Yes! If you’re ordained as a Dudeist Priest you have that power! You only have to get their name and their email address and email us the list. Or, even better – set up a laptop and a printer and do it for them right there on the website, then give them a free printout of the online certificate. People will definitely dig your style.
   
   
   
7. Drive around while listening to Credence or the movie soundtrack and enjoy the occasional acid flashback.
8. Make some strongly commendable Dudeist art and send scans of them to us for our online gallery.
9. Go for a long walk and don’t answer your phone all day.
10. Get a discussion group together to discuss The Big Lebowski, Great Dudes in History, Dudeist Philosophy, etc.
11. Engage in a natural, zesty enterprise with a willing partner. Then tell each other about yourselves over cocktails and what-have-you.
12. Go to In-N-Out Burger, or make your own.

Here at PhilosFX, we are simply going to offer a gallery of Dude-related art and memes for your perusal, interlaced among links to past posts. 

• Photo of the Dude's appearance at a Westboro Baptist (not) Church (not) counter protest 
  
• One of Todd's first Lebowski posters, Dude Abides
  
• More about my brother Todd's awesome posters and some design development notes 
  
• Story about a local Dudefest, 2012
  
• Information about the world's slowest growing religion
  

The 20th anniversary of this movie's release is only 3 short years away. What sort of creative celebrations do you suppose we could come up with in that amount of time? 

The First Day of Christmas? Part IV

Welcome to Part IV, the final installment in the series about the First Day of Christmas.

What, Christmas on January 11th, you say? I deliberately waited until the third Sunday after Christmas to post this final installment inspired by the song, Twelve Days of Christmas. This series of posts has been my stab at a definitive answer to these four perennial questions:

What is the first day of Christmas? December 26

What do we mean by the Christmas Season? Let's call it Dec 6 through January 6

Thinking about the song and all the gifts on each of those days, how many presents arrive in all? A whopping 364! 

And speaking of gifts, is there any significance behind the seemingly random gift choices? 

We tackled the third question in Part III of the series. Missed it? Get caught up HERE.

And now, 

wrapping things up 

with Part IV:

You know the famous song and have sung (or heard it sung) it many times at Christmas.

On the twelfth day of Christmas

my true love gave to me:

Twelve Drummers Drumming

Eleven Pipers Piping

Ten Lords a-Leaping

Nine Ladies Dancing

Eight Maids a-Milking

Seven Swans a-Swimming

Six Geese a-Laying

Five Golden Rings

Four Calling Birds

Three French Hens

Two Turtle Doves and

a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Read more: HERE

Where did all these wacky gift ideas come from? I mean, if I wanted to demonstrate my true love in the same way, my lady would need a barn for all the cows, swans, geese, birds, hens, doves, and partridges. (Some sources state that the five rings are not jewelry but ring-necked birds, such as the Ring-necked Pheasant. Great--even more birds!) Not to mention a very large house and food budget for all the drummers, pipers, lords, ladies, and maids. Why not sweaters, pajamas, and music CDs?

Perhaps you have heard the popular explanation that the gifts are actually part of a shadow catechism--that parents used the song to teach their children about the Bible during a time of religious persecution. A common version of that story looks like this:

The songs gifts are hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith. The "true love" mentioned in the song doesn't refer to an earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself. The "me" who receives the presents refers to every baptized person.
The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
2 Turtle Doves = The Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
4 Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
5 Golden Rings = The first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace.
6 Geese A-laying = the six days of creation
7 Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments
8 Maids A-milking = the eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords A-leaping = the ten commandments
11 Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles
12 Drummers Drumming = the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

We do not know the author of the interpretation, nor do we know if the story comes before the lyric or after. Read more HERE
There may be a bit of truth to the idea that this song is a shadow catechism. Jews, Masons, slaves and spies have all devised ways of sending hidden messages in plain sight of persecutors. Christians have not been persecuted in Europe since the end of the Roman Empire. There were no practical reasons for Christians to use a shadow catechism after the Edict of Milan in 313. That said, the idea of linking each of the twelve gifts to the Bible has a precedent.

The song as we know it today appeared in its earliest known printed version in the 1780 children's book Mirth Without Mischief. The song is apparently much older than this printed version, but we do not currently know how much older. What we do know is that the structure of the song is similar to one called A New Dial.

Again, from Snopes

It is possible that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" has been confused with (or is a transformation of) a song called "A New Dial" (also known as "In Those Twelve Days"), which dates to at least 1625 and assigns religious meanings to each of the twelve days of Christmas (but not for the purposes of teaching a catechism).

Snopes denies that the lyrics to A New Dial were intended to teach a catechism, but that is a matter of opinion, not fact. I think it's entirely possible that A New Dial was indeed used to teach the Bible. Furthermore, it is remotely possible that the structure of twelve things recited in a question-and-answer format goes all the way back to a time when Christians were persecuted. We simply don't know.

Here is a snippet of A New Dial. It sounds like a catechism to me.

What are they that are but one?
We have one God alone
In heaven above sits on His throne.


What are they which are but two?
Two testaments, the old and new,
We do acknowledge to be true.


What are they which are but three?
Three persons in the Trinity
Which make one God in unity.

... and so on, through the number twelve. Read more HERE or in the Table below. 

My side-by-side comparison of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" with its apparent predecessor, "A New Dial" reveals some similarities and some differences. Note that half (5 of 12) of the items are the same (=) and the other half (7 of 12) are different (X). 

"A New Dial" (also known as "In Those Twelve Days"), which dates to at least 1625 and assigns religious meanings to each of the twelve days of Christmas.		"The Twelve Days of Christmas" was presented in its earliest known printed version in the 1780 children's book, Mirth Without Mischief. It seems similar to the much older verse.
What are they that are but one?		The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
We have one God alone	x
In heaven above sits on His throne.
What are they which are but two?		2 Turtle Doves = The Old and New Testaments
Two testaments, the old and new,	=
We do acknowledge to be true.
What are they which are but three?		3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
Three persons in the Trinity	x
Which make one God in unity.
What are they which are but four		4 Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
Four sweet Evangelists there are,	=
Christ's birth, life, death which do declare.
What are they which are but five?		5 Golden Rings = The first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace.
Five senses, like five kings, maintain	x
In every man a several reign.
What are they which are but six?		6 Geese A-laying = the six days of creation
Six days to labor is not wrong,	=
For God himself did work so long.
What are they which are but seven?		7 Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments
Seven liberal arts hath God sent down	x
With divine skill man's soul to crown.
What are they which are but eight?		8 Maids A-milking = the eight beatitudes
Eight Beatitudes are there given	=
Use them right and go to heaven.
What are they which are but nine?		9 Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
Nine Muses, like the heaven's nine spheres,	x
With sacred tunes entice our ears.
What are they which are but ten?		10 Lords A-leaping = the ten commandments
Ten statutes God to Moses gave	=
Which, kept or broke, do spill or save.
What are they which are but eleven?		11 Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles
Eleven thousand virgins did partake	x
And suffered death for Jesus' sake.
What are they which are but twelve?		12 Drummers Drumming = the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed
Twelve are attending on God's son;	x
Twelve make our creed. The Dial's done.

After looking at a side-by-side comparison of "A New Dial" and "The Twelve Days of Christmas," I see some similarities but still have a lot of questions. Let's just say that Christians at some point in history for whatever motive simply wanted to have a verse to talk or sing about the Bible. And let's just say that the structure of call and response with twelve items was popular enough to be passed along orally for years and years. We still don't know:

• When was the descriptive interpretation of The Twelve Days of Christmas written (i.e., 10 Lords A-leaping = the ten commandments)? Was the description really a contemporary sub-text to the lyric? Or was it written much later? If later, as I suspect, then idea that the song was a shadow catechism collapses.
• If A New Dial is truly the predecessor of The Twelve Days of Christmas, why do the "stories" differ in detail over 50% of the time? 
• Even if we accept the premise that a shadow catechism dating from before the Edict of Milan morphed from A New Dial to The Twelve Days of Christmas, and further accept that 10 Lords A-leaping = the ten commandments, we still have no explanation--no clue whatsoever--for Lords A-leaping. Why Lords A-leaping? Why not nice sweaters? We simply do not know.  

Let's chalk it up to creative license!

Speaking of gift ideas that seem strange to us today, did you ever wonder why the magi gave Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh? These valuable items were standard gifts to honor a king or deity in the ancient world: gold as a precious metal, frankincense as perfume or incense, and myrrh as anointing oil. Read more HERE

This brings us to the end of our four-part exploration into the First Day of Christmas. I hope you have enjoyed this series. 

Recapping:

• December 26 is the First Day of Christmas. The Twelve Days of Christmas conclude on Epiphany.  
• The "Official" Christmas Season for shopping and decorating purposes begins on Saint Nicholas Day and ends on Epiphany. I propose the term Christmastide, be modified to include the period of Advent, Christmas Day, and the Liturgical Christmas Season 
• The total number of gifts given by the singer's true love is 364--enough gifts for one per day from the first day of Christmas on December 26th to the following Christmas Eve.  
• The gifts have no hidden meaning relating to the catechism and rumors to that effect are unsubstantiated. The gifts seem random but they are no more bizarre than the original gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 

I hope that you will remember the main ideas from these four posts when Christmas comes around again. When will you start thinking about Christmas? When will those thought be put into action? How will you build anticipation for the day of Jesus' birth? How will you celebrate the occasion? How will you taper off from that high point and carry the lessons forward, sharing them with others?

Don't Sneak

I consider myself a man's man, willing and able to do what needs to be done. But there are some stories that are guaranteed to render me helpless--and make me cry like a 5-year old boy whose puppy just disappeared.


I suppose there is some deep-seated explanation for "the trigger" and its inevitable, emotional  response. In 50-odd years of walking this earth, I have yet to discover the reasons for this drama, and move them into my conscience for closer examination.


All I know is that I have watched "Remember the Titans" three times, and three times I have been reduced to a blubbering idiot.

And now, this story told on NPR's StoryCorps in which a man tells his adult daughter the touching story about a surprising bit of advice his father had given him years ago, when he was a teenager.

On the surface, the two stories--Remember the Titans and Don't Sneak--may seem to be completely unrelated. But I invite you to follow the link, check out the story with an open mind, listen to the recording if you have the time, and see for yourself what you think.

Don't Sneak: a Dad's Unexpected Advice to His Gay Son in the '50s

Patrick Haggerty dresses in drag in 1959. As a teen,
Haggerty learned from his father never to "sneak" around his identity.

Here is the quote that really stuck me to the wall. The father realizes that his son Patrick is, as might have been said back in the late '50's, a little light in the loafers. And this is how this father deals with the issue:

"Now, I'm gonna tell you something today, and you might not know what to think of it now, but you're gonna remember when you're a full-grown man: Don't sneak. Because if you sneak, like you did today, it means you think you're doing the wrong thing. And if you run around spending your whole life thinking that you're doing the wrong thing, then you'll ruin your immortal soul."

Here is an amateur attempt at self-diagnosis. I seem to have a soft spot for stories about the strong father-figure (dad, coach, teacher) who accepts and encourages an insecure young man who desperately wants to do achieve something authentic, bold, and great.

Real

Authenticity. 

To thine own self be true.

Know yourself and seek self-improvement.

Don't sneak.

What Does It Mean to Be Human?

Recently, I wrote about five related words describing human existence: alive, conscious, sentient, sapient, and awake. As a result, I offered the following functional definitions of these five words. The definitions are repeated here with light editing as indicated:

• alive: having a heartbeat and emitting brainwaves, i.e., neither dead nor unfeeling. In human existence, there are degrees of aliveness ranging from barely to fully alive. Aliveness is manifest in the physical world, in the body. 
• conscious: aware of one's surroundings; responsive, i.e., neither asleep nor comatose. In human existence, there are degrees of consciousness ranging from barely to fully conscious. Consciousness is manifest in the physical and mental world, in the body and all the sensory organs, especially in the brain. 
• sentient: alert; having the power of perception by the senses; aware of one's place in the Universe, i.e., neither lost nor confused. In human existence, there are degrees of sentience ranging from barely to fully sentient. Sentience is manifest in the physical, material, and cosmic domains, and as a construct in the brain of the observer. Sentience requires an awareness of self that is not required in previous states, i.e., one may be conscious yet not self-aware. 
• sapient: having or showing great wisdom or sound judgment; i.e., neither ignorant nor incompetent. the actions of the hands align with the plans of the head and the values of the heart. Sapience manifests in the social world. Sapience, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. External observation validates one's degree of sapience. 
• awake: a fully functioning body, mind, and spirit; clear; at One with the Universe, i.e., neither conflicted nor distracted. In human existence, there are degrees of awakeness ranging from barely to fully awake. Full awakeness requires no external validation--it simply "is." Awakeness is manifest in the metaphysical world, when hands, heads, and hearts align in harmony. 

Are you awake?

Now let's really have some fun and use these definitions to dig a little deeper. Can we use our five-term lexicon describing levels of human existence to compare and contrast mankind with other forms of life--five entities in existence, if you will? Let's make the comparison with humans and other animals, other forms of life such as plants, and with entities that stretch our imaginations a bit, such as robots, and even rocks.

Man--in particular, an armed man in provocative tribal war paint

• Mankind. All people may be created of equal value, but we are not all equally "-abled" or gifted. Some of us are born faster, stronger, or smarter than others. Opportunities are not evenly distributed. In addition to genetic variety, luck or chance also plays a role.
• People experience the 5 terms on a sliding scale from low to high. Why is that? Why are we not all perceiving the same things? Are these variations in how and what we perceive part of what defines humanity?
• We have different skills, knowledge, abilities and other traits that have been developed by education and experiences gathered from birth over time. In addition to what nature imbues, the experiences of nurture also shape our outcomes--and those of our fellow humans.
• All other things being equal, we achieve varying degrees of  happiness and success in life. Why is that? In addition to our "born-in" attributes and all of our deliberate developmental choices, individuals are also subject to life-altering randomness.  

The within-species variation is great. For the sake of our comparison of various entities using the 5-term lexicon, we'll compare the theoretically "typical" human against the typical examples of the other entities. 

Monkey appears to be lost in thought

• Monkey. The animal kingdom contains many species besides homo sapiens. Bonobos, chimpanzees, and orangutans share about 99% of the human genome, making these primates our closest human relatives. Just as with humans, there is much within-species variation between individual primates. The variation occurs in appearance, aptitudes, and behaviors. Monkeys are primates, but unlike apes they have tails and tend to look and act more like four-legged creatures. For this study we'll think about our more distant relative, the monkey. Mmmmm, I think I see a pattern developing here...

Marigold, could have been any plant, but this one fits the alliteration scheme

• Marigold. Biology--the study of life--includes two main subsets: fauna, represented by the human and the chimpanzee discussed above, and flora--the plant kingdom. Though we don't typically think of plants as thinking or feeling, we do know that they have common biological functions such as ingestion, respiration, digestion, excretion, and reproduction, and that these functions occur over a life-cycle. Naturally, plants recognize and respond to sunlight, as well as the absence of the sun's life-giving rays. There have also been studies that suggest plants respond to music, and even to positive or negative emotional energy. 

Machine, in particular, the spectacular Large Hadron Collider

• Machine. A machine is a tool containing one or more parts that uses energy to perform an intended action. People are tool-makers and have made machines since pre-historic times. As machines get more complex, do they reveal human creativity, or is it the other way around? That is, is there a Master Machine who reveals itself through the successive approximation techniques of its human drones?     
• Simple machines include Inclined plane, Wheel and axle, Lever, Pulley, Wedge, Screw. 
• Machines have grown in complexity from the first flint hand-ax to the Large Hadron Collider. 
• Computers have led to robots which in turn have yielded androids. 
• Computers play chess with human Chess Masters and play Jeopardy against champion human Jeopardy contestants. 
• With increasing amounts of "intelligence" coming from non-biological sources, the Singularity seems to be drawing near. How soon will we have computers which can pass the Turing Test? Futurist Ray Kurzweil estimates that the Singularity will happen in the year 2045.

Meteorite: Compressed Stardust

• Meteorite. What is a rock? When is a rock more than it seems? Why do we laugh at the phrase, "Dumber than a box of rocks"? We have descended to the lower end of the intelligence scale and we are now discussing mineral clusters, aka rocks. 

• The Earth spins on its axis and revolves around the sun. The molten core of the Earth swallows up the edges of tectonic plates and spews the excess out through volcanoes along a "ring of fire." We are riding on a rock surfboard skimming across a burning lake of molten iron.

"The surface of the Sun is hot – over 5500 degrees Celsius (which is nearly 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). But if new findings are correct, then the center of our own planet may actually be hotter – over 1,000 degrees hotter than previously thought." --Forbes 

• We think that our life on the surface of Earth is pretty stable but things look much different from the perspective of geological time.Continents drift. Mountains are formed, and mountains erode. Minerals circulate from the center to the surface and back again. But did you know that out of 4,000 minerals known to exist on planet Earth, a great number and a significant quantity have been transported here from outer space? 

"...[C]oncentrations of precious metals such as platinum and rhodium in the rock portion of the Earth today...could not have ended up there by any known internal process, and instead must have been added back, likely by a 'rain' of extraterrestrial debris, such as comets and meteorites."-- Science Daily

Summary.

We have used our five-term lexicon describing levels of human existence to compare and contrast mankind with other forms of life--five entities in existence. We compared humans and other animals, other forms of life such as plants, and with entities that stretch our imaginations a bit, such as robots, and even rocks.The table below is a matrix of the entities in what are assumed to be descending order from top to bottom, and the terms in what are assumed to be increasing order from left to right. Imagine the path from lower left to upper right. Buddha's body was composed of stardust--as is yours!

Table 1. Matrix of Entities and States

The bottom line:

• As a human, I can recognize other humans and distinguish humans from other non-human entities in my environment. What makes me human is the same stuff that allows me to make this basic distinction. But when I try to define that "stuff," I find that the distinctions are not nearly as obvious as I had thought.
• I certainly believe that all other mammals can do the same basic sorting. For example, fish give sharks wide berth, and lions recognize and occasionally obey their human trainers. 
• I assume also that plants have some awareness about themselves in relation to their environment. This awareness is manifest in the Venus Fly Trap, but is less evident (to me) in other plants who lack the ability to move. Yet a plant can distinguish sunlight from darkness, and grow toward the light. A carrot can sense the coming freeze, and pull all its sweet nutrients to its core in an attempt to survive.
• We have created machines capable of sensing and responding to environmental cues. 
• When one considers rocks and minerals one must consider
• the Big Bang distributed all known material and non-material elements into the void of space
• so many of the minerals we have on our little planet have been deposited here from external sources
• the Earth's volcanic activity continues to churn, producing new surface material and consuming material pulled in to the center from the edges of tectonic plates. 
• Tall, jagged mountains wear down to older, rounded ones, and trees somehow grow in the cracks.

The seed from a tree found enough food and water in this crevice to survive.

According to Arthur Koestler, the Universe is composed of fixed rules and flexible strategies. All things are simultaneously whole and part of something else. His so-called holarchy applies to inanimate objects, too, and objects that are created by people or by natural processes. For example, a piece of music that resonates with the human ear is an expression of fixed rules of tone, rhythm, and harmony. Despite fixed rules "governing" music, there exists a near infinite variety of potential original musical compositions. Who am I to deny that the mineral components of a mountain do not yearn to be absorbed, transformed, and ultimately united with the Divine?

In the next installment of What Does It Mean to Be Human, we'll delve into the difference between a brain and a mind. Stay well, and stay tuned!