tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36554007184169302062024-03-12T18:31:10.453-07:00Ars Veritatis'The Art of Truth'Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-24888068102198029142020-04-17T00:45:00.002-07:002023-07-06T09:54:30.851-07:00On Being 50, Almost Dying, and What It Means To Live <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yesterday was my fiftieth birthday. Inevitably, after opening gifts, talking to family, and eating delicious chocolate covered strawberries provided by my wonderful wife, I started pondering some big, weighty questions.<br />
<br />
Strangely, the moment that provides me the most clarity looking back over my life was when, at the age of 21, I almost fell to my death from a six-story rooftop in Paris clad only in my underwear.<br />
<br />
I was living in a 'chambre de bonne' (a simple one-bedroom apartment with a squat toilet in the hall) near Montmatre. The idea was to spend a year living in Paris, train at a top-notch fencing club and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Life was crazy, terrifying, frustrating. I was making almost no money, training all the time, improving my French, and trying to have fun. One night I accidentally locked myself out of my room going to the bathroom wearing a natty pair of boxer shorts and nothing else. After I unsuccessfully attempted to rouse help from the landlord, I figured out that I had left the window to my 8 inch balcony open. To my 21-year-old brain, it seemed that all I needed to do was climb out over the roof, let myself down onto the balcony and all would be well.<br />
<br />
There was a precise moment I figured out that this was a terrible idea. It was when I was scooting on my butt over the shallow incline of the roof, I looked out over the midnight Parisean skyline, and realized (A) just how high I was above the ground, (B) how my underwear had just gotten snagged on a hook designed to keep the roofing tiles in place, and (C) that I might die. The adrenaline kicked in and I began to panic. God knows how, but I unhitched my ass, lowered my legs over the precipice, turned around to face the wall, and lowered myself onto the balcony. I vowed quietly to myself that "this never happened, no one ever need know" and attempted to go about my life as normal.<br />
<br />
But it did happen. I really could have plummeted to my death that night. It would have likely been tragic, newsworthy, and definitely a contender for a <a href="https://darwinawards.com/">Darwin Award</a>. I think of it now because I wonder what is different between that outcome and the one I'm living now.<br />
<br />
The main things that stand out for me are not the most vivid experiences or the moments when I was the most happy. The moments that matter are those when I made a difference in other peoples' lives. Some are negative, where I made mistakes, and caused damage, albeit unintentionally. I think of those with regret and shame and feel a certain longing for the Christian rite of reconciliation, where I could confess my sins and have them be absolved. These moments stick in my craw and serve as a reminder to hold myself accountable and pay attention to the impact I have on other people. <br />
<br />
But there are a few memories, where I was able to make a positive difference in the lives of others.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">These were sometimes grand acts of generosity. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I helped a buddy propose to his girlfriend by setting up a romantic scene on Venice beach for them to happen upon during a Valentine's day walk. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A colleague was sacked in the most disingenuous way on his birthday. I went to the Ralph's across the street, bought him a bottle of Jonnie Walker Blue Label and hastily assembled an impromptu card that read '<a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/51/43/a1/5143a17f31928cf960b4623018985a2b.jpg">Keep Walking</a>'. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I learned that an acquaintance was sleeping in her car, and invited her stay in my apartment for free while she got her life together. We were roommates for two years.</div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
There are a bunch of other times, when smaller actions had an impact: apologizing when I needed to; forgiving people when I could manage to; seeking communication with people that didn't like me; keeping my word when it was inconvenient to do so; trusting the generosity and competence of strangers; holding a stranger's hand when they freaked out on a turbulent plane ride. I dunno. </div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Beyond meeting my wife, falling in love, and having our son, these are the things that mean the most to me.<br />
<br />
If I had died that night, these are the things that would have been lost. These are the moments that mattered. Other moments of pleasure, passion, joy, triumph, fulfillment, or accomplishment will leave no trace when I finally leave. The legacy we leave is the difference we've made. No more, no less. <br />
<br />
It's profoundly moving to think about this now, as a middle aged man arguably just coming into my power, I now have the chance to dedicate the rest of my life to love and support my family, to be of service to others, and to make a difference for them.<br />
<br />
This well-worn quote Bernard Shaw seems apropos:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no 'brief candle' to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to the future generations.</i> </blockquote>If there's a way of living a good life, of having few regrets, and even some pride in I am, these are the things I choose to look to. Going forward, I also know what to do to gather more of them. <br />
<br />
GAB, RWC, 4/16/2020<br />
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<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0Redwood City, CA, USA37.485215200000013 -122.236354837.28367870000001 -122.5590783 37.686751700000016 -121.9136313tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-59131780900692158512020-04-03T00:19:00.001-07:002020-04-06T00:17:56.882-07:00The Faces of My Colleagues<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">On a Zoom this week</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">Face-to-face with colleagues</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">Close up to grit and grace.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">What an honor to see</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">The unvarnished fight</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">In their warriors’ eyes.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">Catching an occasional</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">Glint of lightness</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">In the conversation</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">Moved me most of all.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">Amid this current moment</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">Perhaps I’m not alone</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">To look around</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">At my colleagues</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1c1d; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">And see the heroes there.</span></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-32741354220545109322017-06-22T17:02:00.000-07:002017-06-22T17:02:07.439-07:00Bereft of me<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<i>For Lee Vodra, For Chris Cornell, For all of us.</i><br />
<br />
The only true loss is this loss of a soul,<br />
Where once was a person, there now is a hole.<br />
<br />
Now the only things left are the things of the past,<br />
With a future bereft of your voice or your clasp.<br />
<br />
The spaces you filled in the world with your song,<br />
Now thud dully with silence as we all move along.<br />
<br />
All the things that we have, all the things that we do,<br />
Have no meaning at all, in the absence of you.<br />
<br />
This leaving alone cuts us all like a knife,<br />
The only true loss is this loss of a life.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-48927656360590743512017-05-19T00:24:00.000-07:002020-04-06T00:33:56.799-07:00Don't Be a Troll, Be a Wizard!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="description" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 10px;">
A vision for how scientific knowledge engineering could support data-driven policy development. This is a preliminary high-level strategic document to develop such tools to support efforts such as 314 Action.</div>
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<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
By <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Gully A. Burns</em></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #777777; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">“Trolls were large monsters of limited intellect. <br />They were strong and vicious, <br />but they could not endure sunlight”</span><br />
<em style="box-sizing: border-box; text-align: start;"><a href="http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Trolls" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Trolls</a></em></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Technologically, we live in interesting times. On the one hand, social media technology drives political discourse into polarized shouting matches. Astroturfing bots contort the political landscape by pushing false narratives on Twitter with incendiary, ill-informed talking points. The ease of web-publishing makes it relatively easy to drown out informative scientific work by spreading misinformation in coordinated online media campaigns.</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">But on the other hand, advances in information science drive public engagement in science. Citizen scientist projects permit laypeople to contribute directly to research. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) provide pedagogical support for technically demanding subjects to more communities than ever before. The information infrastructure of science itself is evolving to change and accelerate the path towards discovery.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">These two aspects are sharply opposed, especially when it comes to online discussions of policy. The first approach is based on misinformation, manipulation, provocation, and storytelling. These approaches are generally developed by unscrupulous operators attempting to control a particular public narrative through any means necessary. Let’s call the instigators of such methods ‘Trolls’. The second approach is based on hard work, research, a nuanced view of reality in the service of the pursuit of scientific truth. This less-popular, more long-term (and therefore more powerful) approach requires diligence, honesty, intelligence, and patience. To emphasize the contrast with the formerly-mentioned misbegotten misinformationists, I here propose that we call people pursuing this endeavor ‘Wizards’. Thus, somewhat, in the spirit of pure geekiness, we frame the argument as a perennial war of political storytelling between two factions: wizards and trolls.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Now, the mission statement of the 314 Action nonprofit group, reveals them to be clearly on the Wizards’ team. Their primary goal to empower scientific information to carry further within the process of setting policy, either by electing scientifically-trained politicians or by empowering data-driven policy and scientific research within society.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">My work in scientific knowledge engineering (and, more broadly, in artificial intelligence) directly supports 314 Action’s vision by developing technology to be used to improve access to complex scientific knowledge. Moreover, the people 314 Action are seeking to introduce into public life would be trained to think scientifically and to adopt pragmatic, data-driven methodologies. Put simply, if 314 Action provides the wizards, then we can provide the spells.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">I elaborate further below.</span></span></div>
<h4 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">A Challenge Problem: the Argument over Climate Change</span></span></h4>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Once of the key issues raging in public policy discourse discussions in the United States is climate change. Debate in this area largely centers around the following question:</span></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i>Is the planet warming up because of increased CO2 </i></span><i style="color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">in the atmosphere from human activity and energy use?</i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">This is a contentious question despite a groundswell of public support amongst progressives, combined with a broad consensus over the majority of scientists working in the discipline. Most researchers either explicitly or implicitly agree that this is indeed the case: the global temperature is increasing directly because of increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (most likely caused by human energy use). Broad literature reviews generally confirm this point of view and even large scale organizations that enjoy widespread public trust such as NASA agree full-throatedly that climate change poses a serious threat to humanity as a whole.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">But there is also a powerful counter-movement at play within conservative circles: climate skepticism. Proponents of this position claim that the science is not settled, that potential risks of climate change to humanity are being unnecessary amplified by liberals for political gain and that numerous details in the published account don’t add up. Conservative bloggers attempt to ‘debunk’ published studies with a wide range of counter arguments ranging from honing in on small scale anomalies, personal or broad-based ad-hominim attacks against climate scientists or climate activists and the general use of misinformation to bombard opponents with assertions of facts to simply wear them down and silence them. These argumentation tactics could commonly be described as ‘trolling’ and can quite effective at convincing observers that their arguments are better. Put simply, these tactics work very well.</span></span></div>
<h3 id="trolls-vs-wizards" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 20px;">
Trolls vs. Wizards</h3>
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The important issue here is that the debate being carried out on social media, on the news and in the public eye generally is not based on scientific norms for understanding how phenomena work. Scientific discussions are typically based on <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">abductive reasoning</em>: argument from evidence to the best available explanation. In the blood sport where teams of trolls strive to defeat their opponents by any means necessary, the meagre weapons of abductive reasoning can do little to withstand the assault of scorn, derision, and bullshit (a word that we use here based on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit">a precise technical definition</a>).</div>
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But, knowledge is power. <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Science is, after all, very much like magic.</em> Science is the basis for technology, and try as they might, trolls cannot accomplish anything remotely as powerful. They can sway public opinion, but they cannot cure disease or prevent natural disasters. They cannot send ships into space or understand the mysteries of fluid dynamics in the upper stratosphere.</div>
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We must enable the explanatory power of scientific knowledge to address these counter-arguments as explicitly and powerfully as possible. At present, the scientific community does not possess the necessary power to challenge the trolls. This is was best said by Ben Goldacre in the last chapter of his book ‘<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=rDT9MO0r0UYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks</a>’. He writes:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i>“To anyone who feels their ideas have been challenged by this book or who has been made angry by it - to the people who feature in it, I suppose - I would say this: you win. You really do. I would hope that there might be room for you to reconsider, to change your stance in the light of what might be new information (as I will happily do, if there is ever an opportunity to update this book). But you will not need to because, as we both know, you collectively have almost full spectrum dominance. Your ideas - bogus though they may be - have immense superficial plausibility, they can be expressed rapidly, they are endlessly repeated, and they are believed by enough people for you to make very comfortable livings and to have enormous cultural influence. You win.”</i></span></span></blockquote>
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Personally, I am not comfortable with this easy capitulation. I prefer to take a leaf out of Gandalf’s playbook even when faced with a daunting powerful foe.</div>
<img alt="Gandalf vs. the Balrog" src="https://sciknowengine.github.io/img/ske/Lord-of-the-Rings-Gandalf-and-the-Baalrog.jpg" /><br />
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Countering the troll ‘full spectrum dominance’ will require the development of transformative approaches to remove barriers that laypeople experience in understanding complex scientific concepts. We will need to make the work more inclusive and more democratic. We may need to transform the way scientists work and the way science is taught. This will require impeccability, creativity, honesty, and courage.</div>
<h3 id="information-science-wizardry" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 20px;">
Information Science Wizardry</h3>
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So, here are some observations and strategies to consider going forward.</div>
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<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Modern information technology is changing many aspects of scientific work, creating new opportunities and paradigms. Amongst these methods include:<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">The scalability and speed of ‘big data’ systems allows easy analysis of very large data sets</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Deep learning and modern machine-learning methods provide groundbreaking AI performance in tasks like Data mining, Natural Language Processing, Image Classification and Document Processing.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">In particular, deep reinforcement learning permits robots and automated systems to win games and learn complex behaviors</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Forecasting methods provide powerful new methods of generating predictions based on data.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Social Media research permits us to track and understand some of the impact of misinformation in society.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Science information infrastructure is beginning to provide systems for reproducibility, scalability and increased rigor such as Workflows, Ontologies, Information Integration systems.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">A key capabilty is tracking the provenance of knowledge: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">What is the evidence that supports our argument that a given claim is true?</em>. This is an area of continuing, active research.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Creative methods for data visualization are becoming more common and more powerful.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Within the climate change debate, previous attempts where scientists have adopted ‘trollish’ methods failed spectacularly.<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">When researchers in England attempted to convert their scientific perspective into a political strategy, leaks of their emails that revealed their attempts to construct a robust and compelling poitical argument involved ham-fisted attempts to silence critics and steer the conversation. ‘Climategate’ ensued, doing real and lasting harm both to the climate change debate and also to the credibility of academics as a whole.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">More recently, attempts to create an expedient, powerful, simple talking point was the often-quoted ‘climate consensus’ figure. This was the product of a 2014 paper that boldly states: <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">“Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW (anthropogenic global warming), 97.2% endorsed the consensus”</em> <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/pdf" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">(ref: Cook et al 2014)</a>. Unfortunately, even a simple review of this study’s own data, reveals vulnerabilities in the study that are easily revealed, see this blog post: <a href="http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">‘a climate falsehood you can check yourself’</a>. Attempting to use the dark arts of spin when creating a scientifically-driven policy argument is a bad idea.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">We cannot and should not attempt to play these people at their own game. We will lose.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">At the 2017 White House Correspondents Dinner, Hasan Minhaj said “We’re living in this strange time, when <span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box;">trust is more important than truth</em></span>”. (<a href="https://youtu.be/Of6PLJbMnxE?t=12m45s" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">video</a>). We have to find ways to establish trustworthiness with people who currently don’t believe the research and choose instead to grasp, easy-to-understand, wrong answers.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Currently, the most accessible repository of the world’s scientific knowledge is the scientific literature. This provides a valuable resource for knowledge engineering work and building models of what is reported in the literature can provide insight into the underlying subject and influence public opinion.<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">This was the general idea of the Cook <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">et al.</em> 2014 consensus study but they did not dig deeply enough into the science.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">What if we could take this further and use machine reading methods to extract and organize the evidence reported in the 12,000 papers they examined?</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">What if we could illustrate this evidence and showcase the scientific argument in precise detail?</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Perhaps we could help tailor our view of the politics to more closely align with the scientific evidence, rather than only using the scientific evidence to bolster a preconceived underlying political position.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">There are other related efforts attempting to render aspects of public life more fact-based and data-driven. This provides a working community of data-providers, developers and end-users as well as possible frameworks for increasing the scope and impact of technology in multiple areas.<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.force11.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">The FORCE11 group (‘Future Of Research Communication and E-Scholarship)</a> is a wide-ranging academic / industry community with a broad mandate to bring about the transformation of scientific communication.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="http://solutionsjournalism.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">‘Solutions Journalism’</a> provides a powerful appraoch to communicating uncomfortable issues to the public. By surveying how problems are being solved and then framing discussions of difficult subjects, propopents of this approach have shown that members of the public are more engaged and receptive to reporting when framed in this way. Such an approach could work well for how we communicate the application of scientific methods to policy.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Steve Ballmer, the ex-CEO of Microsoft, has financed and driven <a href="https://usafacts.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">‘USA Facts’</a>, a website that examines the financial ‘score card’ of the United States as if it were a business. A recent Freakonomics podcast (<a href="http://freakonomics.com/podcast/hoopers-hoopers-hoopers/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">‘Hoopers! Hoopers! Hoopers!’</a>) showcased this interesting project and dealt briefly with the subject of outcomes and how one might measure them. This is the purview of the social sciences and likely requires some expertise from within the field of education theory or psychology to really</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">A number of non-profits have similar missions: <a href="https://data4america.org/about/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">‘Data 4 America’</a> is one such organization.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">The public are very receptive to scientific content when it is presented in a compelling and interesting way.<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Organizations such as the Technology Entertainment Design conference (http://www.ted.com/) are massively popular and provide an excellent template for packaging and presenting complex and compelling scientific ideas.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Blogs such as framework Radiolab, Science Friday and Freakanomics regularly describe new scientific developments in a public forum with great results.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">MOOCs (such as <a href="https://www.coursera.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Coursera</a>) and online courses provide a wide range of course material to teach complex subjects. ‘Science Driven Public Policy’ could be a subject that we could develop and teach.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Citizen science projects (such as <a href="https://www.galaxyzoo.org/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Galaxy Zoo</a> and <a href="https://fold.it/portal/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">FoldIt</a>) permit members of the public to directly contribute to the scientific endeavor. This is interesting, fun, educational and could be a vehicle for engagement for science-driven policy.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Academics typically present their ideas as powerpoint slides, but animation and storytelling methods could better illustrate their work to the public. An excellent example of this technique is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9R6jgE7SQ" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">this video</a> by Pindex describing the Dunning Kruger effect (and narrated by Stephen Fry).</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">It is important to note that metaphor and analogy are crucial tools that help translate complex scientific ideas into commonsense language. Finding the right framework for this messaging is an important aspect of this communication.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">We must recognize that this is an <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">adversarial situation</em> where our opponents will use literally every rhetorical trick to counter a scientifically-defined viewpoint. We must counter the trolls directly by understanding, unpacking and attacking their arguments. We should do so explicitly, ruthlessly and with as much transparency and authority as possible.<ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">A terrific example of how the trolls work is the PragerU, right wing ‘educational’ website. Consider <a href="https://www.facebook.com/prageru/videos/1355076144535238/?fref=mentions" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">this anti-climate change video</a> which attempts to debunk the Cook et al 2014 consensus paper. Some of the arguments are nonsensical (including an absurd apparent attempt to appeal to an antivaccination argument), but some carry a little more weight. The production of the video and carries the listener through the logic of the argument well, making emphatic statements that boldy bullshit the listener to serve their underlying argument. To counter this, we should analyze, deconstruct and refute their argument, perhaps in the same format but with a great deal of underlying support from data and established existing research.</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">The work of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Argumentation-Schemes-Douglas-Walton/dp/0521723744" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Walton <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">et al.</em> 2013</a> on <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">Argumentation Schemes</em> provide a fascinating theoretical framework for formalizing how arguments are put together. This is an approach widely used in developing AI-support tools for legal argumentation, but could well be applied here.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;">Finally, Computational Social Network Sciences is a powerful emerging field of AI research, that can provide insight in the emerging online world of politics. Colleages such <a href="http://www.emilio.ferrara.name/press-coverage/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Emilio Ferrara</a> and <a href="http://www.isi.edu/integration/people/lerman/index.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">Kristina Lerman</a> study how people interact with policy through social media, social bots and each other. Understanding the dynamics of these interactions could be crucially valuable in developing effective technological strategies.</li>
</ol>
<h3 id="what-can-we-do" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 20px;">
What can we do?</h3>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Our goal would be to enable the use of innovative, cutting edge, AI research within the context of policy development. Our strategy for doing this would be by developing methods to leverage and utilize scientific expertise and knowledge in politcally-relevant situations. If we could also better understand the rhetorical positions of identifiably-anti-scientific positions within public discourse. If we understand our adversaries, then we can defeat them more easily.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
An initial pilot effort could be to re-examine the scientific literature described in the Cook et al. 2014 consensus study by developing detailed semantic models of the data being cited in those papers. Our job is to explore and explain the science to the public: exploring, explaining and educating through accurate reporting of the abudictive reasoning used to understand what is going on. We may explicitly contrast our approach to that of non-scientific arguments being made but always from the point of view of educating people to think scientifically, and never engaging in a polemic, fruitless discussion. If a climate-skeptic cites counterevidence, we will attempt to understand it rationally and scientifically. After all, as scientists we want people to poke holes in our models and find their flaws. Here, we would welcome such things with politeness and appreciation.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 10px;">
Multiple challenges threaten this plan:</div>
<ol style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 0px;">
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Scientific work is complex, difficult to understand and challenging to execute.</span> In order to be able to execute their work well at all, scientists perform technical feats that are difficult to record accurately, let alone reproduce. Work in the field of semantic E-Science (including ontological modeling and workflow development) make it possible to reproduce even very complex data analytics, given the additional time and effort required to model them.</div>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">There is a lot of knowledge to work through.</span> curating information from the literature is a slow and laborious process (especially since scientific arguments do not tolerate errors well). Developing methods of automation of the curation task may speed up how representations can be populated. Needless to say, this is an area of active research and might form the basis of a focused study on the climate change literature.</div>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Communicating complex scientific ideas is difficult.</span> The popular science media community provides a vehicle to do this through magazines, podcasts, books, television and other media. Relying on these traditional methods can only go so far. Data visualization methods can provide a far more compelling and exhaustive view of a complex subject. <a href="https://vimeo.com/128373915" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #337ab7; text-decoration-line: none;" target="_blank">This astonishing representation of the casulties of WWII</a> is an example of a series of data visualizations that tell a compelling story in a linear fashion. We may need to examine new, non-linear methods to explain and explore the complexities of the subject of climate change.</div>
</li>
<li style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px;">
<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;">Engaging people in this endeavor requires us to go beyond simple research.</span> For this work to have an impact, we will require outreach and involvement far beyond the simple development of novel technology.</div>
</li>
</ol>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This post really has three purposes. Firstly, to frame the challenge as a conflict against a well-funded and powerful adversary. Secondly, to pitch the idea of developing scientific knowledge technology to ‘wizardly’ advocacy groups. Finally, to propose an initial pilot study. This vision document seeks only to present a picture of how to do this in broad strokes in a single, simple domain: clarifying and solidifying the climate change debate. From these humble beginnings, we we would ultimately seek to provide better access to research for policy makers wanting to incorporate existing research from any given field into their platform.</span> </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-8053138482951085842017-01-28T13:49:00.004-08:002020-04-08T13:16:16.635-07:00American Evil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
At around the 6m 50s mark in <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/emergency-elections-podcast-what-a-week/">a podcast from FiveThirtyEight</a> leading up to the 2016 Presidential Election, Nate Silver said the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I’m not sure what words to use but there’s something profoundly evil about the Trump campaign at this point… and the people he attracts to it… and I think that’s the right word to use”</blockquote>
Trump and his cronies are so utterly and obviously machiavellian, incompetent, dishonest, cruel, cowardly and self serving as to almost be the sort of caricature we might see in a bad movie.<br />
<br />
And yet he has been elected by a fair democratic process. He has been elected by normal, ‘good people’. By voters with good intentions willing to overlook and justify almost anything to grant themselves permission to support an ideology based only on preserving power and self interest for themselves in some way.<br />
<br />
Evangelicals overlook his clear moral failings. Military men overlook his lack of strategic common sense. Conservatives overlook his lack of ideological credentials. Working class people overlook his abusive and obnoxious wealth. Racists and misogynists derive validation from his rhetoric. People are drawn to his charisma, and his sheer brazen bluster, mistaking it for strength and courage.<br />
<br />
And there’s the Alt-Right; the idealists, the true-believers (if ever such a motley band of opportunists could ever be called ‘true’). In front of the camera, these guys talk about <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3K1pGN-O8I">their right-wing cultural identity and rail against immigration, the establishment, and political correctness with a cute nod and a wink</a>. But behind closed doors, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/richard-spencer-speech-npi/508379/">they just <i>love</i> to throw around Nazi salutes, use Nazi expressions like ‘Lügenpresse’, and self-identify as ‘conquerers’</a>. Given that Steve Bannon (<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2015-steve-bannon/">‘The Most Dangerous Political Operative in America’</a>) is now the main strategy advisor for the White House and that the motto that best captures his political mindset is “Honey Badger doesn’t give a shit”, its clear that their policies are simply belligerent, crazy, harmful, unfair, and ill-thought-through.<br />
<br />
To my mind, if you voted for Trump, you’re in one of three groups. The first group are those people who have been played for a sucker and actually bought into the lies and hyperbola. The second group are people who understand full well what he is doing and are willing to ignore his failings for their self interest. The third group are those who are true believers in his inhuman, post-truth ideology as an appropriate means to an end.<br />
<br />
If you’re part of the first and second groups, likely you hold in your heart some version of <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/01/24/510567860/strangers-in-their-own-land-the-deep-story-of-trump-supporters">the ‘deep story’ described beautifully by Arlie Rothschilde in her book ‘Strangers in their own land’</a>. You might feel that you have been left out and forgotten by the progressive elites who let undeserving minorities thrive whilst ignoring the needs of good, patriotic Americans. You may have squared your decision by arguing that Hillary’s policy positions were going to do more harm than those of Trump, Pence, Reibus and Bannon.<br />
<br />
Like all the good people who paid money to <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwiVpP7az-XRAhXmlFQKHb0JA7UQtwIIIzAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DcBUeipXFisQ&usg=AFQjCNFWGHudkGSfVRrJFmAyX3UVJt7rjA&sig2=AZ_2wAkJ3VpN0woAQK5CQA&bvm=bv.145822982,d.cGw">the Trump University scam</a>, you’re being played.<br />
<br />
Chances are, in the style of the current divisive rhetoric that passes for civil discourse, you likely counter serious questions with pithy, off-the-shelf answers that simplify and belittle the conversation. You probably reduce important weighty issues to one-line counter-arguments because it appeals to your sense of patriotism and makes sense in conservative echo-chambers. Its not your fault, you’re being fed propaganda by the newsdesks of Breitbart, Fox, and other misinformationists. At some point though, you’ll notice how the blatant manipulation, lying and bullying impacts us all and realize how this was never what you signed up for.<br />
<br />
If you’re in the third group, you are pulling the levers and pressing the buttons of the vast right-wing bullshit machine. You drive so many unethical dealings with so little willingness to ever do the right thing at any level that I now realize that this is a concerted, thought-out strategy.<br />
<br />
It is no accident.<br />
<br />
This is what I call 'American Evil'.<br />
<br />
‘American Evil’ gave us slavery and the need to have a civil war to abolish it. It gave us segregation and Jim Crow in the south before the showmanship of the civil rights movement was able to force things to change. It gives us 30,000+ gun deaths a year through misinformation and the dark arts of political lobbying. It gave us the sub prime mortgage crash with no consequences to the assholes that caused it. This what gave us the utterly absurd SNAFU of the second Gulf War, our disastrous occupation of Iraq and the subsequent rise of ISIS there.<br />
<br />
American Evil is the process striving to preserve power through any means necessary. It is the notion of tough expediency and the need to make money above all other things. It doesn’t recognize it’s own failings. It thrives on belief, authority and loyalty. It demands that you stand during the national anthem and it calls you a terrorist if you say your life matters.<br />
<br />
A frankly incredible documentary from VICE news (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdVl3WvgJ50&feature=youtu.be&t=58m36s">‘A House Divided’</a>) gives rare insight into the toxic, polemic environment that gave rise to the Tea Party, pervasive Republican obstructionism and Trump. In an interview with the legendary conservative pundit, Frank Luntz, the documentary recorded the following extraordinary exchange:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
VICE: Washington is now Toxic and it seems to be galvinized into inactivity. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Frank Luntz: That’s not the way politics used to be. Now they don’t know each other. There’s a segment of the Republican Party that would rather blow everything up than try to fix it; and they believe that they’re acting on principle. But principle is not the be-all-and-end-all. It is a blood sport. It is how much damage can I do to you. How much can I destroy your reputation. How can I hurt you so much so that not only are you destroyed but your dead relatives in the old country can feel it. <b>We fucked up. We killed the goose that laid the golden egg. We fucked it up.</b> Nobody’s listening. Nobody’s learning. It’s all just one big gabfest. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
V: If it’s toxic and it can’t be fixed, where does American politics go from here? </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
FL: That’s why I’m telling people I’m going to New Zealand. I’m going to buy fifteen acres somewhere and I’ll sell off fourteen, so if you want to buy an acre, let me know. I’m not kidding. I’m going in December.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
V: Wow. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
FL: At some point, the economy just stops functioning. The Greeks did not survive. The Romans did not survive. The French did not survive. The British did not survive. <b>Why should we think the American empire will survive? I don’t know and I, unfortunately, will probably still be alive (I wish I wasn’t) when this whole thing comes tumbling down.</b></blockquote>
If Frank Lutz is right, there will be consequences for all of this; possibly long lasting impact on our civil rights; our economic prosperity; our effectiveness as a society to solve the problems we face and our reputation throughout the world. Echoing Romans 6:23 (“The wages of sin are death”), our communal future rests in the hands of good people, those people who voted for Trump and have not yet realized the likely consequence of their actions on the country, its citizens and its future.<br />
<br />
I pray that those people start to see Donald Trump’s true nature soon. I pray that they realized that the course he is driving us towards is disastrous and horrifying. If you are one of those people, I pray that you turn back to the dignified and powerful promise of what American Freedom actually stands for and join us in the fight against, quite literally, the forces of evil.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-86017192470550874932015-12-21T00:09:00.004-08:002021-12-13T09:04:46.885-08:00 The Greatest Trick The Devil Ever Pulled<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A fictional character in a movie once said: “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgSL3hY5iPE">the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist</a>”. Perhaps this is true, but I think certainly that, at the very least, the state of our national debate about guns runs a close second.<br />
<br />
The Devil’s work is inherently based on convincing lots of good people to take actions that directly or indirectly cause suffering. He does this subtly, with lies and deceptions, with simplistic arguments that are usually too good to be true, with ideologies and propaganda. He does this by playing on our rawest emotions, on our anger, and our fear, our righteousness and our indignation.<br />
<br />
Now, let’s be clear. I’m an atheist. I don’t think the Devil is actually real, in the same way that electrons, black holes or mitochondria are real. I think of the Devil as a helpful metaphorical construct. It presupposes that all the ‘evil’ in the world is created by an intelligent, malicious, despicable adversary. I think that the Devil is real in the way that market forces, the rule of law or the right to bear arms is real: a way of looking at the world with consequences. What makes it interesting are the consequences of looking at the world in that way.<br />
<br />
We all have evil thoughts, desires or reactions. Why not imagine for a moment that, when we have those thoughts, they are coming from an external source, from some form of dark intelligence? If we realized that the person behind those thoughts was someone who didn’t have our best interests at heart, then that might make them easier to ignore, condemn and turn away from. If that were possible, might we not become stronger, less prone to succumbing to temptation, anger, malice or cruelty? Might we not become better people?<br />
<br />
Inevitably, any discussion of Good, Evil and the Devil might well descend into a religious or moral argument about scripture or culturally-scoped definitions of what good and evil are. I’d like to simply invoke the presence of suffering as a direct consequence of the presence of evil. From minor things (such as racist comments) through to criminality, drug abuse, deadly violence, suicide, murder, terrorism, global warming, war, and even the ultimate depths of horror of which mankind is capable, like genocide, the key aspect of evil is that it causes suffering. How do we where evil is lurking? Find the suffering, and it's probably close by.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FUdrd0Mg_4">A brilliant commercial about racism</a> in Australia shows several situations where white people interact with Aborigines and a man softly whispers to them “<i>What do you think she’s up to?</i>”, “<i>Don’t make eye contact</i>”, or “<i>Go on, it’s only a joke</i>” to trigger nasty little moments of discrimination. This is the Devil in our thoughts; conventionally sitting on our collective shoulders to lead us into temptation and treat our fellow man cruelly. The commercial’s message is about racism, but the image of the whispering man: disheveled, seedy and sounding oh-so-reasonable in his small, shitty way provides us with a working image of one aspect of the adversary at play.<br />
<br />
If we build on this image and imagine too that the Devil is slippery, deceptive and insidious. I think that there is a diabolical irony to the machinations of evil. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment">Milgram’s classic study in obedience</a> describe how people can be coerced into performing truly awful things in a closed setting by enforcing people’s obedience. In this famous psychology experiment, test subjects thought that they were issuing painful, dangerous electric shocks to actors pretending to take a test so that they would be ‘shocked’ when they made mistakes. The actors would fake screams in response to the supposed punishments meted out by the test subjects who were themselves under scrutiny to see how far they could be made to push the severity of the punishment through instructions, encouragement or simple orders to do so. A <a href="http://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-look-at-milgrams-shocking-obedience-study">recent book reexamined Milgram’s original findings</a> to show that our common interpretation of his results are wrong: simply ordering someone to do something awful from a position of authority rarely worked. However, a high percentage of subjects would go further <i>if they were told there was a higher purpose to their actions</i>. The people willing to do more damage were not simply drones following instructions, but zealots doing what needed to be done for a just cause.<br />
<br />
At least partially, this is how the Devil works. True believers can be more easily persuaded to cruelty, darkness and atrocity. He tricks people irrespective of faith, political persuasion, nationality or culture. He cultivates our desires, reactions, judgments, hatreds, and fears. He gives us a suitably lofty ideal to believe in and pursue, blind to the human suffering lurking in the consequences of our actions, and then sits back and laughs as we tear each other apart. He terrifies and horrifies us, turning some people into monsters so that we then see monsters everywhere.<br />
<br />
The idea that the Devil has a sick sense of humor is worth considering too. Consider a recent news story where <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9Qgm86c19Y">a woman was captured on camera</a> berating a group of Muslim men in a San Francisco park saying:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“You are very deceived by Satan. Your mind has been taken over... brainwashed... and you have nothing but hate.”</blockquote>
Her speech is sanctimonious, righteous and pious but her actions embody pure xenophobia, religious prejudice and violence (she throws a cup of coffee at one of the men). Clearly, she is doing the Devils work, and her religious convictions render her blind to the contradiction between what she was saying and doing. If you are a Christian, you sincerely believe in God and the Devil, but you don’t think the Devil is directly trying to trick you into being an asshole as a matter of principle, you might want to rethink your approach. This is the sort of sneaky, backhanded slipperiness your enemy is up to.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, in our modern, interconnected, information-based world, the lies that lead into darkness can amplified endlessly without effort by politics, by the chitter-chatter of the news cycle and of course, by social media. A clear example of the scale and destructive potential of this amplification can be most clearly seen in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0">the story of Justine Sacco</a>, who posted a thoughtless tweet about AIDS shortly before boarding an 11-hour flight to South Africa and by the time she landed, <i>millions of people actively hated her</i>. The viciousness and scale of the public shaming she received was extreme. Describing how this process played out in a NYT article, Ron Jonson wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate our desire for approval, and that is what led to her undoing. Her tormentors were instantly congratulated as they took Sacco down, bit by bit, and so they continued to do so.</blockquote>
Where did all this celebration of her downfall come from? Collectively, from a bunch of otherwise well-meaning, ‘good’ people, doing the Devil’s work with gusto.<br />
<br />
So, if we put this together: (A) everyone has thoughts, feelings and drives that have us do things with negative, ‘evil’, consequences. (B) It’s easier somehow to ignore or dismiss these consequences if we have an ideological position on ‘how the ends justifies the means’ or if we’re simply unaware, oblivious or unconcerned with those consequences. (C) The amplification provided by mass media means an immense momentum can be derived from popular opinion across huge numbers of people.<br />
<br />
If you take these elements and then throw in the hellish, ridiculous clusterfuck that is gun violence in the United States then you have the Devil, dancing a jig and cackling madly on a ripe harvest of 30,000 butchered souls <i>every single year</i>.<br />
<br />
According to <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf">this report</a> from the CDC for 2013: across the whole US, there were 21,175 suicides, 11,208 homicides and 505 accidental deaths by firearm discharge in that year. There were a total of 2,596,993 deaths from all causes, so roughly 1.3% of all fatalities in 2013 were caused by guns. This is a little less than the number of people who died in motor vehicle accidents in the same timeframe (35,369). Consider also that in 2013, <a href="http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html">the number of people with non-fatal injuries from firearms was 84,258</a>, and these injuries were likely to be extremely serious with a lifelong impact. Another tragic aspect of firearm violence is that it disproportionately impacts young people, spiking around age 20–24 so that when those lives are snuffed out, all of the good that they could have ever accomplished is extinguished too.<br />
<br />
Now, since we’re talking about the Devil here, a key aspect of the human cost of the unique mayhem that gun violence inflicts upon us is that someone <i>is pulling the trigger to take a life</i>. These are not impersonal medical tragedies or natural disasters but individual human beings acting as killers to destroy people’s lives. What act could bring the Devil greater joy than that? Not only are the souls of the killed flocking to his door, the damned souls of the killers await their judgement when the time comes.<br />
<br />
And if we attempt to trace the suffering of bereavement, loss and tragedy that inevitably follows gun violence, the greatest evil present in the conversation is how disconnected the conversation is from the issues at hand. We aren’t talking about practical measures or treating the issues intelligently. We’re lambasting each other, personalizing the conversation, ceding too much power to invested parties with a clear conflict of interest (the NRA) and making this about culture wars between liberals and conservatives, the constitution, government tyranny, a strangely structured definition of ‘freedom’.<br />
<br />
There’s so much obfuscation, confusion, powerlessness, rancor, and inaction, I just know that the Devil is behind it all. People demonize and ridicule people on the other side of the conversation; disingenuous arguments are made based on biased advocacy positions with no grounding in logic or data; overly-simplistic arguments are wrapped in illogical appeals to patriotism to justify them and finally, some people make enormous amounts of money from the sale of guns with no regard of the dangers to public health that ensue.<br />
<br />
I think that the way forward is to better understand the opposing side’s point of view. The two different ways of looking at the problem are based on the different reaction we all have when we think of being faced with an attacker armed with a firearm.<br />
<br />
Gun rights advocates think practically in terms of the tactical requirement needed to defend yourself in this situation. You need to be able to stop whoever is trying to kill you and the best way to do that is to shoot them first. The only way you could possibly do that is if you own and carry a gun yourself. Gun rights advocates argue that they need to able to own and carry guns freely for that purpose and strongly resist any legislative efforts to prevent them owning or carrying these weapons. Rather than calling these people ‘gun rights advocates’, let’s call them ‘<b><i>tacticians</i></b>’.<br />
<br />
On the other side, gun control advocates think practically in terms of the sociological and strategic conditions of preventing your attacker from obtaining a gun in the first place. It should be difficult for dangerous people to own weapons and oversight needs to be put in place to prevent that from happening. Naturally, gun control advocates strongly push legislation that should supposedly prevent people from owning or carrying guns, and this puts them at odds with tacticians. Rather than calling these people ‘gun control advocates’, let’s call them ‘<b><i>strategists</i></b>’.<br />
<br />
The sheer horror of the presupposition of what anyone might do in a live shooter situation drives the fundamental, primal contradiction at the heart of this discussion and paralyzes any practical approaches to solving the problem. Simply put, tacticians and strategists tend to be drawn into intractable arguments because the consequences of being wrong is that people die (and of course, we all feel that our viewpoint is the best way of stopping that from happening).<br />
<br />
So, let’s push the agenda in a different way. Let’s leave the Devil to argue about ideology, the dangerous stupidity of our opponents, and all the other tired, old tropes that lead us endlessly nowhere. Let’s instead talk about practical ways to reduce sufferering.<br />
<br />
<i>How do we stop people from dying?</i><br />
<br />
Perhaps we should have the tacticians talk to police organizations, the FBI, martial arts schools, trauma specialists, and EMT doctors to figure out the best ways to help people protect themselves, and to train people effectively at doing so. This sort of engagement could also help us keep an eye on people for erratic or self destructive behavior, raising red flags if there is any cause for concern. Similarly we could then have the strategists talk to mental health professionals, epidemiologists, criminologists, yet more trauma specialists and EMT doctors to figure out how to prevent truly dangerous people from being able to obtain and use firearms. Most importantly,<i> let’s have the tacticians and the strategists talk to each other</i> and come up with both tactical and strategic measures that can reduce gun violence. Forget everything else. Just stop the killing.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGIaEP49wyc">Imagine how furious the Devil would be</a> if we slowed the flood of death, murder and suicide into hell from gun violence? He’d probably try to take steps to prevent this from happening. He might send out corrupt agents to spread incendiary lies and misinformation to set us against one another. He might make the image of being able to kill for justifiable reasons attractive in popular media. He might come up with dodgy pseudo-religious arguments that justify violence by a tortured reinterpretation of scripture .<br />
<br />
Oh no, wait, that’s actually what he’s doing right now.<br />
<br />
So, naturally, you could dismiss this argument simply because, well, I’m an atheist and I don’t really believe any of this stuff anyway. You might say: “<i>You might not believe in the Devil, but he certainly believes in you</i>”. It’s true, I don’t believe in the literal truth of the Devil’s existence, but my view is that we should use the idealogical constructs of religious faith as effective moral weapons and <i>strive to reduce suffering as our primary goal</i>.<br />
<br />
I also think that the Devil has been running a terrific counter-espionage campaign. He’s convinced everyone that he’s easy to spot: he’s got horns and fangs, he’s debauched, and carries a clear malevolence that is easily recognized. I know that if he was real, he wouldn’t look this way. He’d be handsome, rakish, charming, convincing, rich and sexy as hell. He’d convince you do all sorts of thing that would cause suffering in others and then <i>persuade you that you were on the side of the angels all the while</i>. The Devil works in mysterious ways and t<i>he only barometer we should trust is the tell-tale scent of the presence of evil: </i><u><i>suffering</i></u>. If we focus on that, and don’t allow ourselves to be distracted by the Devil’s lies, we should be able to actually solve the problem of gun violence in America.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-78667232025535892522015-12-07T10:09:00.001-08:002015-12-07T10:09:38.394-08:00On Fighting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
“Americans love to fight,” declared George Patton in his speech to the third army in 1944; it’s clear to me now that although this assertion might well be true in general, most Americans have no real idea <i>how</i> to fight. Many people mistake raw aggression for martial prowess. They don’t realize that this sort of bluster shouted loudly and naively in the media-driven, over-opinionated echo chamber of US politics weakens our capability to form effective military strategy, fight, and defeat our enemies.<br /><br />We are at war with the atrocity-embracing terrorist warriors of the Islamic State. Now, more than ever, we need to understand what is involved in fighting, and also to understand what the consequences of fighting are. With full disclosure, my thoughts on this matter are not derived from any military experience but from fencing and martial arts; I’m not a soldier, have never served and have only handled a firearm three times in my life. I think there is an important difference between fighting to defeat someone and fighting to kill them (and, thank God, I’ve never known the latter).<br /><br />In conflicts between animals of the same species, the act of fighting is a small subset of aggressive behaviors that serve to establish dominance in social relationships. Most of the time, situations involving aggressive behavior consists of threats, chest-beating, bullying, and intimidation: schoolyard antics that establish dominance but usually don’t lead to anything serious. This is typically what people think passes for being a badass but is not necessarily anything to do with actually being good at fighting per se. When most people think about any sort of conflict that could possibly involve violence, they might offer such pearls of wisdom as ‘We need to show them who’s boss’, ‘We’re going to fuck you up’, or possibly ‘Don’t mess with Texas’ (my favorite).<br /><br /><i>This is how most people think fighting is done.</i><br /><br />And although this may be enough reason for silverback gorillas to go at it, just establishing some sense of national dominance should not be the reason we send our soldiers to war. Given its costs and dangers, I would hope that the underlying reasons of why we fight would be more evolved, humanitarian, and practical than that (but I could well be wrong).<br /><br />Beyond that, anyone adopting a blusterous, over-confident, hyper-aggressive approach in a fight typically puts themselves at a tactical disadvantage. Tactics in a combat setting <i>always</i> involves deception and misdirection. Brute force and overwhelming power has its place, but skill, sneakiness, and intelligence are more effective (just read Sun Tzu’s <i>The Art of War</i> to see how ancient Chinese military geniuses approach this whole question). Fundamentally, discipline, capability, courage, deception, and skill are the determining factors that make good fighters.<br /><br />Also, <i>it pays to take your adversary seriously</i>. There’s a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yD_c1pnQ6k">great scene</a> in HBO’s <i>The Pacific</i> when Sgt. John Basilone confronts his soldiers for saying that they just want to get out there and ‘slap a Jap’. He screams, “You can call them anything you want but never ever fail to respect their desire to put you and your buddies into an early grave!” Know your adversary and you will be better able to defeat them.<br /><br />Furthermore, if you can find a way to treat your adversary with humanity and respect then you may avoid paying the grave cost of losing that humanity. In his chilling but brilliant book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Killing"><i>On Killing</i></a>, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman carefully elaborates how warfare causes moral injury and PTSD to combatants as natural individual consequences of fighting and killing. At length, he describes how some groups resort to the deliberate use of the ‘Dark Power of Atrocity’ as a means of fighting: the use of reprisals, targeting civilians, terrorism, carpet bombing of cities, and sexual violence such as systemic rape. Grossman writes:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are many benefits reaped by those who tap the dark power of atrocity. Those who engage in a policy of atrocity usually strike a bargain that exchanges their future for a brief gain in the present. Though brief, that gain is nonetheless real and powerful. … One of the most obvious and blatant benefits of atrocity is that it quite simply scares the hell out of people. The raw horror and savagery of those who murder and abuse cause people to flee, hide, and defend themselves feebly, and often their victims respond with mute passivity…</blockquote>
In a following passage, Grossman then goes on to say:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
Once a group undergoes the process of bonding and empowerment through atrocity, then its members are entrapped in it, as it turns every other force that is aware of their nature against them.</blockquote>
In simple practical terms, a groups that adopts atrocity in its methodology will create enemies that will never surrender or submit to them. When faced with an adversary like that, the only recourse you have is to fight tooth-and-nail to the death. Also, in so doing, the degree to which you then embrace atrocity and inhumanity to fight your enemy is then the degree to which you will be trapped by the same dark power. To quote Nietzsche: “Battle not with monsters, lest you become a monster. And if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”<br /><br />Another movie, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o55UrRbni50"><i>The Boxer</i></a>, beautifully illustrates the difference between a fighter and a killer. This is the story of Danny Flynn, a boxer wrapped up in the politics of IRA-controlled Belfast. His character contrasts with that of Harry, an IRA commander responsible for the fight against the English and the Unionists. The main difference between the two men is that Danny simply fights without rancor or murderous intent, Harry fights to kill and destroy his enemies. Of the two men, Harry is far more damaged, more inhuman, and less likely to function well in a time of peace. The horror of war lives and breathes in Harry; he embraces it; he likes it; he uses it.<br /><br />We should be wary of becoming like Harry when we fight.<br /><br />So, in the current fight with IS, we face a calculating, barbaric enemy whose main goal is to terrorize us. To fight them well, we must pursue a military strategy that defeats their soldiers (by killing them, capturing them, or causing them to surrender) and undermines the narrative through which they gather supporters. We must also avoid the dark trap of using their own barbarity against them. The cost of that path is too great and will only lead to a greater spiral of death in the next monstrous enemy rising from ISIS’s defeated remnants.<br /><br />So then, what are we really fighting for? I’m not sure if have a good answer for that question. I do know that we need to fight well with intelligence, cunning, and humanity to win.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-74432086386199749772014-06-13T00:32:00.002-07:002014-06-13T01:19:17.368-07:00The intimate embrace of failure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There's a commercial for Nike, featuring Michael Jordan, called '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc&feature=kp">Failure</a>' in which he talks about how many shots he's missed, how many games he lost, how many times he's been trusted to make the game winning shot and missed. It's contradictory and thought provoking. Why would this guy, of all people, be talking about <i>failure</i>? Michael Jordan? Failure? Really?<br />
<br />
The point is that he was not afraid to try things that he might fail at. By striving to do things that were hard and often beyond his ability; by trying and failing and trying and failing and trying and failing then maybe, one day, things would change. He embraced failure as a necessary part of the process and as the great man says <i>'that is why I succeed'</i>.<br />
<br />
This expresses the most valuable lesson I've learned so far since starting training at Paradiso Crossfit (PCF) and it's a lesson that translates to <i>every other part of my life</i>. It's simply this: if you can find a way to consistently and safely work at the things that you are bad at, you will inevitably improve. PCF provides an incredibly powerful environment for this simple lesson to thrive in, since the coaches and staff there continuously invite you to participate in the crazy adventure of your own physicality: your strength, speed, stamina, agility, balance, coordination, <i>etc. </i>Every piece of it comes up somewhere in class and each and every point of weakness and failure provides a possibility to grow.<br />
<br />
For me, this year, the month of March was a dramatic crazy time. I'm a biomedical data scientist and my attempts to apply for funding were all being rejected. I genuinely did not know if I was going to have a job in six months time and the consistent failure was eating into my self confidence.<br />
<br />
This was also the time of year when the Crossfit community competes in a world-wide fitness tournament: the Crossfit Open. Anyone can enter. The organizers post one workout per week for five weeks. Everyone does the workout and must either film themselves doing it or have an affiliated judge score their effort, submitting their scores to the global website to be tallied up and compared. At PCF, one of the members is a really talented film editor called <a href="http://vimeo.com/cmason">Charlie Mason</a> who shot and spliced together awesome music videos of our community putting ourselves through this process (available at Vimeo here: <a href="http://vimeo.com/87962058">14.1</a>, <a href="http://vimeo.com/88806719">14.2</a>, <a href="http://vimeo.com/89658927">14.3</a>, <a href="http://vimeo.com/89874254">14.4</a> and <a href="http://vimeo.com/90565518">14.5</a>). They're beautiful. Check them out. <br />
<br />
Now here's the deal. I'm a beginner at this stuff, but because the coaches suggested that I 'have a go', I signed up and completed each open event. I even appear at various moments in Charlie's videos. I'm the old guy at the back, who looks like he's about to die. I was ranked 68,782 in the worldwide competition and I can't say that I did particularly well in any of the events. The first (<a href="http://vimeo.com/87962058">14.1</a>) was particularly frustrating since it involved so-called 'double unders' (which is like using a jump rope, but passing the rope <i>twice </i>under your feet for each repetition, see <a href="http://www.paradisocrossfit.com/exercises-and-progressions/double-unders/">here</a> for a demo video). I couldn't do this at all. It sucked. My score was really, really low and I just hated the experience of trying and missing, trying and missing, trying and missing. Argh.<br />
<br />
So, I resolved to fix it. Every time I went to the gym for the next month, I'd have to pay an 'exit toll' of 30 double unders to leave. I told the coaches about my plan and they held me to it, checking in and supporting me, asking me how it was going and providing great advice about technique and form. After about a month, I got the knack for it and managed to string together 30 in a row. This was enough and I decided to try working on other things after class.<br />
<br />
Fast forward to the class we just finished tonight: <i>I did seventy four double-unders in sixty seconds</i>. The feeling of doing this now feels natural, comfortable, fun even. There's a sort of swirling comfort when you hit the rhythm of the rope whizzing around you and you dance in its whipping movement. This small success was a product of my earlier failure, of my coaches' request for me to give it a try, of my willingness to do something that was going to be difficult and to see how it went, and of course, the translation of all of this into regular practice to actually address the issue. To some extent, this happens in every class; in every effort expended honestly trying and failing to do something. The openings for success arise only in having an intimate, up-close-and-personal view of our failures. We need to embrace them. <br />
<br />
Double-unders and jump ropes aside, the important ramifications of this have echoed within my career. I think that my attitude and approach at work have changed to match a Crossfit-like approach to working on my weaknesses and reassessing how much I permit other people to determine my destiny. In May, we managed to secure some funding for work that I would not have attempted to put forward had I not been afraid to fail. I can't credit PCF for every aspect of this small success, but I would say that there was an underlying moment in its inception when I said to myself '<i>I got this, I'll take this on</i>' that was pure Crossfit and a direct product of my training, my coaches, my community and my gym.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-32860164980893844182014-03-25T00:04:00.002-07:002014-03-26T22:46:40.692-07:00This piece of life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Who am I, this piece of life?<br />
This scrap of broken dreams and joy.<br />
This struggling, juggling, swearing, bewaring;<br />
Having-loved-so-hard-it-now-scares-me-to-try.<br />
<br />
Who am I, this piece of life?<br />
This shard of a glimmering shattered crown,<br />
This fighting, delighting, tussling, muscling,<br />
Not-giving-in-till-I-get-put-in-the-ground.<br />
<br />
Who am I, this piece of life?<br />
This cloud of ephemeral, swirling mist,<br />
This shouting and doubting, moping and hoping,<br />
Wait-what-did-you-say-that-I-almost-missed?<br />
<br />
These questions and answers I throw all around,<br />
Are meaningless noises made of nothing but sound.<br />
In moments like these, they are all that I hear,<br />
But then I remember, your calm voice so clear:<br />
<br />
"Who you are, you piece of life,<br />
You beautiful bundle of fears, care and doubt<br />
You crazing, amazing, living and giving,<br />
Big-hearted-guy-that-we-all-care-about"</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-48906142566799868852014-01-26T14:13:00.000-08:002014-01-26T15:09:10.984-08:00The Rise<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Beginning in ashes,<br />
Amid smoke and flame,<br />
We crouch, weighed down<br />
And pinned to the ground<br />
By our hurt, broken hopes and our shame <br />
<br />
It is then, when we find<br />
Amid ashes and dust,<br />
Small good things still smoldering<br />
Deserving of shouldering<br />
By effort and work and our trust.<br />
<br />
Let us stand, let us rise<br />
Amid others' contempt.<br />
Grow our wings in the rising<br />
Our brightness now shining <br />
Resurrected just by the attempt.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Note: this poem is dedicated to <a href="http://www.paradisocrossfit.com/derrick-johnsons-bio/">Derrick Johnson</a>, the specialist Olympic Weightlifting coach at Paradiso Crossfit and who signs his online posts with the hashtag #PhxRises. </i></blockquote>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-33065673078713004662013-11-01T20:37:00.004-07:002013-11-01T21:15:28.719-07:00To run in darkness is to touch the night<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
To run in darkness is to touch the night.<br />
<br />
Quiet bodies moving lithely,<br />
Cushioned and smoothed: Reebok on asphalt,<br />
In an unlit LA driveway,<br />
As a down-to-the-street-and-back<br />
Piece of this evening's workout. <br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And here, in this safe little patch of shadow, </div>
<div>
I think of what it must have been like </div>
<div>
To run in the dark a long time ago. </div>
<div>
With lives, perhaps, dependent on</div>
<div>
Your hard, striding effort and breath hammering.</div>
<div>
Feet slipping, enemies closing.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
To run in darkness is to touch the night.</div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-11636901269772426042013-09-06T19:34:00.001-07:002013-09-06T20:42:00.726-07:00An Athletic Rebirth<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I resigned from my old gym a few weeks ago. They wouldn't let me do it over the phone but made me come in an fill out a form, obviously making the process as cumbersome and irritatingly slow as they could. So, in the part of the form where they asked for 'any other' comments, I wrote the following:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I started doing Crossfit & realized that the entire business model of traditional gyms is based not on getting me stronger and fitter but on selling me stuff (classes, but more like personal trainer sessions and suchlike). Crossfit trains and treats me like I'm an athlete, not a consumer."</i>- Gully Burns (8/10/13) </blockquote>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uLJhUDBRTuk/UiqA_HmaGkI/AAAAAAAABP4/g9zy0i0Qdvw/s1600/gymGoodbye.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uLJhUDBRTuk/UiqA_HmaGkI/AAAAAAAABP4/g9zy0i0Qdvw/s400/gymGoodbye.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
I had started training at <a href="http://www.paradisocrossfit.com/">Paradiso Crossfit</a> (PCF) about three months earlier. When I started, I was immediately struck by how extraordinarily difficult everything looked. I'd walk in for our orientation classes just as the final normal group workouts were wrapping up and just kept on repeating to myself '<i>Erm, that looks hard</i>' when I saw the athletes work (especially when they were pulling stuff like this: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OfiXfVZLLWk" target="_blank">Paradiso Crossfit 'Fran' January 9, 2012</a>). The trainers literally seemed to have a different relationship to gravity than me. Watching one of the senior coaches (Zeb) demonstrating a move called 'box jumps', I swear he seemed to be floating up on some kind of hidden wire rather than just jumping up and down.<br />
<br />
Now, previous to this. I had torn the lateral meniscus in my left knee doing kickboxing in 2006. I was on crutches for a solid six months, all told (now <i>that </i>was interesting), had it repaired surgically (pretty groundbreaking stuff, surgically speaking) and then couldn't bend the knee beyond 90 degrees for a very long time. I worked through rehab and then practiced yoga very carefully and precisely for years. I had qualified as a yoga instructor and was busy practicing one of the more traditional, athletic styles (Ashtanga Vinyasa). My perspective was: "I'm in my forties, I need to be really, really careful. Let's leave the hard stuff to the younger crowd and work out how to stay mobile and healthy". But even in yoga class, I just found that the people teaching had some other set of priorities going on than helping me. I had <a href="http://ars-veritatis.blogspot.com/2012/06/walled-gardens_09.html" target="_blank">a particularly horrible experience in a teacher training course</a> that I was taking and was left feeling pretty disgusted with the whole lurid, pseudospiritual, over-sexualized activity of what modern yoga seems to be.<br />
<br />
Moreover, I never thought that I'd be able to squat deeply again, let alone do any weightlifting, let alone sprint or run or drive myself athletically. Previously to my injury, I had fenced competitively for just under 20 years, and had thrived in a competitive sporting environment that relied mainly on skill and technique over pure fitness, stamina or strength. I had reconciled myself to thinking that my days of competitive training were done. The lifestyle component of PCF's fitness training is entitled 'Everything is everything' and presents the question: "<a href="http://library.crossfit.com/free/pdf/CFJ-trial.pdf" target="_blank">What is Fitness</a>" to newcomers like me. I was struck by the answer that it could be stated simply as '<b>the ability to do physical work</b>' and an extension of this is that <b>health </b>can be thought of as <b>the ability to do physical work over the course of your life</b>.<br />
<br />
Now that resonated strongly. It's not necessarily about being the strongest, the hottest (yeah, good luck with <i>that</i>, matey), the most flexible or the most agile. Its simply about being able to do physical work and to be able to keep doing that work over all the many years to come. For me also, <b><i>not getting injured</i></b> is a crucial part of that too and I think that Crossfit athletes could really learn a thing or two by studying yoga with all of its introspection, its self-study, precision, patience and its focus on compassion for oneself, (but that's a post for another day).<br />
<br />
Finally, I was struck by the generosity and consideration that my fellow crossfitters have for each other. I remember that some of the personal trainers in my old gym were pretty rude and standoffish to me, probably because I wasn't paying them at the time. At PCF last week, a couple of the gym's stars were training at the same time as a bunch of us taking a group class. I don't know who they were, but it was pretty clear that they were considered minor celebrities in the gym (or maybe they were just a couple of advanced practitioners doing their normal thing; I don't know). Halfway through the workout when I was waddling around carrying a pair of heavy kettlebells and basically just trying to put one foot in front of the other, I almost ran into one of them. He immediately apologized and stepped aside seeing how I wasn't really in any state to even just walk in a straight line. In my old gym, I expect I'd have gotten a nasty look or a snotty comment at least. Not so at PCF.<br />
<br />
So now, beyond all my previous imaginings, I'm in an environment that allows me to train physically beyond anything I'd have previously imagined. I'm able to do so intelligently and almost entirely free of any ego-driven silliness. The people training and teaching there are friendly, supportive, genuine and don't see me as a customer to be sold stuff but an <i>athlete. </i>This<i> </i>is a transformative, elevated and powerful conversation to participate in. Even more so, because my athleticism is really nothing particularly special, at least it isn't <i>yet</i>. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-43027958617620742982013-03-02T15:29:00.000-08:002013-03-03T13:19:48.129-08:00I see you<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yesterday, two women told me,<br />
<i>'I see you',</i><br />
In unrelated conversational moments of candor,<br />
Amid the intensity of discussions,<br />
About work or about love.<br />
A colleague and a friend,<br />
Both brilliant,<br />
Two separate well-placed bodyblows<br />
To the act that I carry<br />
That no-one knows me or sees me;<br />
No-one loves me;<br />
And no-one cares.<br />
<br />
A takedown, sleeper, blitzkrieg move,<br />
Came waiting at a light,<br />
This morning on my way to work.<br />
I spied and honked a friend<br />
I hadn't seen in months.<br />
She rushed me, from the street,<br />
Through the passenger window<br />
And stretched across the seat,<br />
To kiss me, <i>mwah</i>, against my cheek.<br />
<br />
So that later now, as I walk to lunch,<br />
With drafts to read and check,<br />
Across this parking lot,<br />
I stop, winded and reeling,<br />
As something inside tears and breaks,<br />
An iceberg cracking<br />
In this act that I carry<br />
That no-one knows me or sees me;<br />
No-one loves me;<br />
And no-one cares.<br />
<br />
And thinking of my friends,<br />
Who know I have this thing, this act;<br />
I think that I should stop<br />
And write this down right now<br />
Before I forget and start to think<br />
That no-one knows me or sees me;<br />
No-one loves me;<br />
And no-one cares.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-37871864084907513262013-02-12T01:19:00.005-08:002013-02-12T10:25:32.537-08:00Whirr of wings <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>for Zori</i><br />
<br />
The whirr of wings you live within<br />
Its feisty, rapid, quickfire hymn<br />
Of questions here and answers there<br />
Ideas, plucked dancing from the air.<br />
Are you quite safe amid this pace?<br />
That drives you with such frantic grace?<br />
<br />
Do hummingbirds, I wonder, think<br />
As they consume their weight in drink<br />
Of nectar each and every day<br />
Do any of them stop and say?<br />
"I should slow down and rest and wait,<br />
or all this stress will seal my fate.<br />
<br />
"My heart can only beat so fast.<br />
I cannot stay. It cannot last.<br />
But still I love the whirling dance<br />
Of movement, flight and speed's romance."<br />
Do any of them stop with care<br />
to pause still fluttering in the air?<br />
<br />
Of course not. Such a thing would be<br />
A tragic waste, a travesty.<br />
To pose the question is absurd.<br />
Just keep on whirring, hummingbird.<br />
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-41768850276908399162013-01-20T13:15:00.001-08:002020-04-16T20:49:24.094-07:00The Harry Potter School of Heroism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<!--StartFragment-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="text-indent: 0in;">An iconic line from ‘Batman, the Dark
Knight Rises’ embodies a sentiment so cruel and abusive that it shook me. The
line is “</span><i style="text-indent: 0in;">You have my permission to die</i><span style="text-indent: 0in;">”, first triumphantly spoken by Bane
after snapping Batman’s spine in single combat as a monologue revealing his dastardly plans for Gotham. This was
glorious stuff, a key moment in the story where Bane stands with complete power
over his adversary, choosing his words carefully to inflict as much despair as
he can on his helpless victim. This is a man devoid of humanity, a monster
worth fighting, a Bad Guy.</span><br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
Now, this wasn’t the thing that
bothered me. The thing that made me stop and think ‘hold on a second there’ was
when the tables were turned. When, on the steps of City Hall, Batman (now
recovered from his spinal injury) fights Bane <i>mano-a-mano</i>, and wholly defeats him. Standing over his wheezing,
pathetic-looking body, Batman re-echoes Bane’s words: “<i>You now have my
permission to die</i>”. This phrase has become a <a href="http://memegenerator.net/Bane-Permission-To-Die">meme</a>, echoed by anyone seeking a quick laugh at the melodrama of its overblown callousness. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
Thinking a little deeper, I’d say that this was the moment Batman
lost. He lost by becoming as cruel and heartless as his enemy. Naturally, the logic is that Bane deserved it, he was
simply getting his just desserts. Payback’s a bitch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
Another line, this time from
Nietzsche, springs to mind: <span style="text-indent: 0in;"><i>“Battle not with monsters, lest you
become a monster.”</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
The theme of ‘good but badass’ heroes is
ridiculously common in action movies. Tough, ruthless men and women: warriors, mercenaries,
soldiers, cops, spies, bodyguards, commandos, ninja, assassins and hitmen are
frequently portrayed as heroes. The distinguishing feature they possess are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgmO32IdwuE">a very particular set of skills</a> that usually come down to the ability to kill people (and
to look sexy doing it). They are Good Guys. They kill Bad Guys.
Sometimes in a spectacular fashion that elicits cheers and applause from movie-goers.
This could be a beheading, a knife through the crown of the skull or perhaps an
explosive detonated within their adversary’s body just after the bad guy
realizes what is about to happen. The image of ‘a good guy with a gun’ is
glorified and eulogized, enshrined in legend and admired by lots of people,
copied by some in their choice of profession or their own self image.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
Shakespeare’s bloodiest play, Titus
Andronicus, is an object lesson about cycles of violence and vengeance: an eye
for an eye, a rape for a death, a mutilation here, a little cannibalism there.
One must admit that the bard went a little berserk at the end there, but the
underlying theme is pretty clear. Payback is a bitch and an uncaring, undiscerning one at that. Violence inflicted on your enemies will in turn evolve into violence
inflicted on you and the moral arguments you might try to use to continue
justifying retribution become ever weaker as you continue. Moreover, the
situation perennially escalates, becoming more entrenched as you progress. Once
you start with vengeance, you will find it harder to stop. This is the tragedy that gets played out again and again in places like Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Algeria, Belfast, and even on the streets of my home: Los Angeles<span style="text-indent: 0in;">. Men fight and men die based on the same tired, empty, cycles of revenge and retribution.</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span><span style="text-indent: 0in;">If these people have heroes, they are as the ancient Greeks
imagined them: Hector and Achilles, cutting through swathes of enemies to wade
in their blood, gloriously terrible and beyond the scope of lesser men. To me,
these people aren’t heroes, but bullies, driven by ego and a need to dominate
and overpower others. </span><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Consider, an alternative school of heroism, where evil
can be confronted by intelligence, force (if necessary) but always by humanity,
decency and goodness. Consider Harry Potter.</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
There’s a moment in HP7 when Harry is
fending off the evil machinations of the dastardly Draco Malfoy. They’re flying
around the Room of Requirement and someone starts a fire which traps and
threatens to engulf Malfoy. Harry then places his own life in danger to rescue Draco,
just simply because it’s the right thing to do. At a later stage, when
Voldemort has supposedly killed Harry, Malfoy’s mother examines his body to
find he’s still alive and she lies about it to Voldemort. Why? <i>Because he had saved the life of her son</i>.<br />
<br />
This embodies the sentiment expressed by Abraham Lincoln when he said: <i>“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”</i>. By steadfastly
holding on to his decency, even in the face of all manner of provoking circumstances, Harry provides an exit route from this steadily spiraling cycle of violence, as similarly demonstrated by Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. <br />
<br />
<span style="text-indent: 0in;">An important aspect of the notion of
heroism is that it presents idealized people who we admire and aspire to
emulate. I wonder how many professional murderers chose their profession because
of James Bond, the Godfather, Scarface, American Sniper or maybe even Batman.</span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0in;">We need to choose our heroes wisely. I
choose Harry Potter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoteLevel1CxSpLast" style="margin-left: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: 0in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-321588028348083312013-01-08T02:47:00.000-08:002013-01-20T14:09:41.790-08:00The Barbarism of Fear<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Weapons are funny things. I'm a pretty seasoned competitive fencer, or rather, I used to be. Nowadays, when I show up at a good club for a bout or two and can expected to be trounced by <i>everyone</i>, but in my day, I wasn't half bad. I was a pretty good foilist: 75th in England in 1995. I trained with Olympians and even beat one of them once in serious competition (it was his first bout of the day and I'm pretty sure he was half asleep). So, I knew and still know how to fight with swords. I watched swordfighting movies with a high body count and would be generally more concerned about the techniques being used than the actual events being depicted. I loved Akira Kurosawa's classic 'Seven Samurai' or Robert Mitchum's 'American Yakuza' and 'The Princess Bride' remains one of my favorite movies of all time.<br />
<br />
I wonder how I'd feel if my interest in swordplay was linked in the public mindset to the Rwandan genocide, so that people associated me with the brutal members of the Interahamwe, who killed close to a million people in Rwanda in 1994. After all, they largely used machetes which could be considered to be a little like swords at a pinch. Naturally, the connection would be a little ludicrous and grossly unfair.<br />
<br />
I think that this may be the way that some gun owners feel when they are associated with the atrocities of mass shootings. Even if you might disagree with the comparison, I think <i>they feel unfairly judged.</i> Like me, they have an interest in perfecting their skill at using their weapons. Like me, they might even romanticize the martial art itself. Like me, the idea of actually using a 'live version' of their weapons on real people might horrify them. There are a great many gun owners who would never, ever kill anyone, except in the most extreme of circumstances. It's an interesting fact that the majority of US infantrymen in WWII would not fire their weapons at the enemy; to the chagrin of their commanders, but also as a loud testament to the natural goodness of humanity. Training programs in the army put paid to that pretty quickly so that soldiers in Vietnam were much more likely to kill when facing a real person (and suffer the associated psychological trauma into the bargain).<br />
<br />
The crucial distinction about weapons arises from a person's underlying intention.<br />
<br />
There are people who learn to use swords and other weapons in martial arts classes with a focus on self defense. This could include sticks, knives or other 'realistic' approaches to using and defending against weapons (including unnarmed techniques). The intention here is to hurt, injure, blind or even kill your opponent. Similarly, there are gun owners who obtained their weapons for 'self defense', to protect themselves and their families. When someone has that intention, I feel that they transition into a new state of being; you become someone capable of killing. <br />
<br />
The much-overused phrase: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" is true, but if you bought a gun with the intention of firing it a human being (for whatever reason) then you might well just be one of those people who kill people. It may even be the case that the process of holding a gun in your hand, of firing it at a target that looks like a bad guy crouching and waiting to strike, of enjoying action movies that depict bad-ass heroes kill bad guys makes someone more likely to be one of those people that kill people.<br />
<br />
I practiced martial arts (including Krav Maga and Jeet Kune Do) for several years, it seemed like a natural progression from fencing and I liked it. I was good at it and still am (up to a point). I remember though, watching the movie 'United 93' about the 9/11 hijackings, how my body felt during the film. As I saw the action on screen, I started to internally visualize choke holds, takedowns and elbow strikes that I would have tried to use, had I been there. It was intensely vivid and visceral. In my mind, I would have fought, gouged and strangled and my body and brainstem was happy to help. At that moment, I confess, I was quite capable of being a killer. If I had been trained to use firearms, I'd probably have been planning of how I'd shoot them instead of choke them. Guns simply make it much easier to translate this sort of murderous intent directly into action, reality and death.<br />
<br />
Barry MacGuigan, the great irish featherweight, grew up in Northern Ireland amid the murderous violence of the troubles. He used to say 'Leave the fighting to MacGuigan' as a counter to the rhetoric being slung about between Protestants and Catholics. He was the inspiration for the 1997 movie 'The Boxer' starring Daniel Day Lewis where the main contrast between protagonists drew a bright line between the men who fought with their fists to win and men who fought with guns to kill.<br />
<br />
There are times, I suppose, when we might need to fight, tooth and bloody murderous nail, for survival. I hope never to be placed in such a predicament. If I was, I hope to acquit myself with the same level of courage shown by Victoria Soto, Jon Blunk, Matt McQuinn, Alex Teves, or Brian Murphy (heroes from Newton, Aurora and Wisconsin). To have to ponder such a situation is to have to consider a truly horrifying choice. <i>Must we all train ourselves to become killers in order to survive? </i><br />
<br />
<i>This is barbarism</i>. I feel that we have to ask these questions about why we have become so afraid of one another. Why are we willing to become killers? Are we that afraid of each other? Do we really need to be able to kill our opponents in order to feel safe? Or to feel powerful? Or relevant? At the heart of this question is a deep seated fear of other people in our society (or even of society as a whole) and addressing that issue directly is what we need to do.<br />
<br />
Posting gun-owners' addresses online absolutely will not help, neither will asserting that 'genuine monsters' live amongst us, neither will spouting nationalistic rhetoric with accompanying conspiracy theories and threats of violence. Finding effective methods to reduce gun violence in the long term would be a smart thing to do (and the research shows that rates of gun violence tend to correlate with the availability of guns). I think that finding some courage to act with restraint and consideration towards people who scare us might just make a much bigger difference in the long run. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-3202826512060551782012-12-02T10:53:00.000-08:002012-12-02T10:53:09.326-08:00West Coast Vibe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The grey is grounding,<br />
After all, it <i>is</i> December.<br />
Standing here <br />
In workout clothes<br />
On the beach in Santa Monica<br />
And not freezing.<br />
I look out over the Pacific<br />
Amid the beach's paraphernalia <br />
Restrained from exuberance<br />
By the light drizzle.<br />
I watch the Ferris wheel,<br />
Bright and gaudy<br />
Unmistakably childish<br />
With a west-coast <br />
Commitment to<br />
A non-serious vibe.<br />
<br />
I think a little of <br />
An English grey<br />
A little harder than this:<br />
Slick, hard pavements<br />
Wet and cold after the rain,<br />
<br />
And I smile.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-59706317632355747282012-07-27T22:24:00.001-07:002012-07-28T14:22:51.019-07:00Stationary Glide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">When the wind catches,<br />
Their outstretched wings,<br />
Birds glide,<br />
suspended in space.<br />
I'd guess, they laugh<br />
to themselves<br />
As the rush of air<br />
Buoys them and holds them,<br />
Propels them and frees them.<br />
<br />
When my own breathing<br />
Catches<br />
A hidden edge<br />
Of balance,<br />
And lifts me<br />
Muscle by muscle,<br />
Bone by bone,<br />
To a hold<br />
Previously unreachable<br />
I chuckle inwardly.<br />
Not quite as graceful<br />
As a gliding gull,<br />
But hey.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-47967778889795567822012-06-21T13:33:00.000-07:002018-02-26T21:47:41.243-08:00The eyes on the wire<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<i>Oh like a bird on the wire, <br />
Like a drunk in a midnight choir <br />
I have tried in my way to be free.</i><br />
<br />
'Bird on the wire'<br />
Leonard Cohen<br />
<br />
I was driving from work in the early evening, waiting at a red light in the grim no-mans-land of the space beneath a freeway in Los Angeles and just glimpsed a view of a pathetic, saddening sight. A struggling, misshapen, bundle of feathers, flapped uselessly as it dangled trying to escape from a wirelink fence. I sat, a little horrified, not sure what I was seeing and the light turned green and I drove off. <br />
<br />
It was a crow, it's legs somehow entangled and bloody on the wire. Trapped, dangling, helpless, waiting to die. <br />
<br />
In the space of thirty seconds, I turned the car around and started looking for a place to park so that I could find some way to help. I had to park illegally and jaywalk to return to the spot. As I walked up to try to figure out what to do, another car pulled up and a guy hopped out with precisely the same thought on his mind as me. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u-mcf6E757c/T-J68YWANuI/AAAAAAAAAw4/QVFGuwrEU8M/s1600/4413271.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="2" height="242" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u-mcf6E757c/T-J68YWANuI/AAAAAAAAAw4/QVFGuwrEU8M/s320/4413271.jpeg" width="320" /></a>It was a moment of immediate recognition, cooperation and shared humanity. We started trying to figure out what we could do. The crow had some sort of plastic twine wrapped around it's legs that had snagged. It was ten feet up and neither of us could reach it on our own. The only cutting implement we had was a plastic knife. The other man made a cradle with his hands that I stepped into and we started trying to cut the crow free. <br />
<br />
Naturally, the plastic knife was completely useless and I had to try to be careful to avoid hurting the crow, avoid being pecked and scratched by the barbs of the wire. I'm not exactly a dainty, little thing: I weigh a solid 180lb and as I was dithering trying to cut the twine, my new friend was finding it hard to keep hold. We took a break to reexamine our options. It was then that we noticed a whole murder of other crows, circling and screeching. They could see what we were doing. They probably thought we were trying to kill or eat their friend and they making a lot of noise. Their caw-cawing probably meant "You bastards! Leave him alone!"<br />
<br />
We looked at each other, hopping up to try again. This time, I tossed the knife away and just tried to pull the wire apart with my hands. My friend kept it together, holding me steady. As I came close, the crow on the wire stopped moving, his black eyes focussed on me in a moment of realization. I swear that I saw something glimmer in his eyes at that moment: a sort of desperate hope, perhaps even the recognition of me as a friend. <br />
<br />
The twine gave way, and I scratched my hand across the barbs of the fence. The crow fell in a bundle of bones and feathers, but the sudden movement returned him to his element. He unfurled his wings and transformed in an instant from a clumsy, broken thing to the majestic shape of a bird in flight. He swooped away from us effortlessly, rising to join his brethren in the sky. <br />
<br />
My new friend gently lowered me to the ground. We looked at each other and smiled. I held out my hand. "I'm Gully" I said. We shook. "I'm Bruce", he replied. I think I said something like "Very well done, sir" and with that we got in our cars and went our separate ways. <br />
<br />
There we were: two complete strangers, coming together without any forethought in a moment of crisis to help. Neither of us could have managed on our own, we needed each other. We both knew precisely what we were doing and why we were there without bullshit, without ego, without any need beyond the fierce urgency of saving a life, hanging helpless from a wire. <br />
<br />
It is this urgency that we have lost. We rarely see the sheer, bloody, inviolable miracle of looking into another creature's eyes and seeing a thinking being there. We rarely have our interactions be simple expressions of love and support, strength and courage. We sully the miracle of our lives with petty fears and concerns, with our defense mechanisms for our vulnerable egos, with our fantasies for things we see in movies or on TV, with our arguments to diminish other people and elevate ourselves. <br />
<br />
But there are rare and real moments of pure clarity that provide the antidote. They are what matter and strangely enough, attempting to construct them artifically almost never results in their authentic expression. Better to live true, be kind, and be ready for them when they appear. I hope that I will be able to.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-41218015498239271102012-06-09T01:47:00.000-07:002012-06-10T12:52:41.292-07:00Walled GardensLast year, I signed up to a 300-hour teacher training apprenticeship program in a new up-and-coming school in Santa Monica. I should not have, I had nothing like the sufficient time available in my schedule but I knew a number of the teachers at the school personally and the owner charmed me. He promised that he would do everything he could to make my experience really fantastic. I had the impression that there were things I could learn with this man - his wit, his sense of humor, his laid-back approach to the practice. It all spoke to me of places in life that I, with enough instruction or patience, could one day arrive. It spoke to me a place that I did not inhabit, a walled garden, a sanctuary. I wanted to live there. <br />
<br />
Fast-forward a year and the final, guillotining communication from him that severed my contact with this studio echoes with condemnation of me as a person.<br />
<blockquote><i>"I am sure you are angry ... it is your anger that prevented me from discussing the <strike>[DELETED]</strike> matter with you and kept me from quickly responding to your demands. You scare me and you have for a long time."<br />
</i></blockquote>Here, the walled garden was now protecting its serenity, through force. <br />
<br />
When I was still in the program back in February, I was going through a rough time. I had met someone at the studio who I had developed strong feelings for. Those feelings were not reciprocated, however, and there followed several weeks where the woman I liked was not attending class. I sent her texts: "Am I the reason you're not coming to class?". "No, no, I'm having roommate issues" came the replies. Something was wrong and I wasn't sure what. I finally came to the realization "No, no, <i>you</i> are the reason she's not coming to class, <i>(you stupid douchebag)</i>" and I immediately left the program, informing her voicemail that I was going and it was now OK for her to return. <br />
<br />
During this time, I felt pretty low. The feeling of rejection surrounding the entire experience was traumatizing. I wanted to talk to the owner of the studio about this and maybe ask for a partial refund of the money I had spent to sign up. No dice. He was slow returning my emails or calls. After 6 weeks of waiting, I got angry and told him so. It all degraded even further from there. I wrote a strongly negative review for the studio online and the owner posted a number of quite hurtful, dismissive rebuttals and then sent his final email to me (partially quoted above). He said nastier things in this mail, some of which were deliberately intended to be hurtful, coercive, threatening even. I was quite careful not to make my communications personal (either private or public), but even then, he obviously interpreted the whole event as an attack on him. <br />
<br />
I think back on this interaction and furrow my eyes in perplexed confusion. As a business owner, his handling of my participation took a perfectly straightforward situation requiring a little humanity and turned it into something really nasty. Some of the things he did were things I consider both egregious and unethical.<br />
<br />
Why would someone apparently committed to the pursuit of yoga treat one of his customers so badly? He seemed genuinely frightened of the 'negative energy' that I had suddenly introduced into his world. I think that he felt that he was fighting for his livelihood against someone who he couldn't empathize with or understand. <br />
<br />
All of his actions were geared towards excluding my 'issues' from his life. He initially ignored my requests for communication. When I posted my review, he tried to have it taken down. He then attempted to silence me by discrediting me and then his final communication has the tone of an act of violence: an emphatic rejection of me as a person. Naturally, this had a strong impact on me. I thought that perhaps that it might have had a traumatizing impact on him too, but no, he only really cared about the negative 'one-star' Yelp review I posted about his studio online. When I published this post, I also took down the review since now, it's time to move on. <br />
<br />
As he wrote in his email to me, <i>I scare him</i>. Perhaps the purpose of yoga is to make people happy, and it's natural to attempt to preserve a space of happiness around ourselves. It's natural to attempt to avoid negativity, and to shy away from people with issues. We hang out with people we like, we avoid people we don't. It's simple, right?<br />
<br />
Well, no. To paraphrase some Sanskrit (and hopefully do justice to millennia of ancient wisdom), yogic philosophy describes the four essential causes of suffering as egotism (<i>asmita</i>), desire (<i>raga</i>), revulsion (<i>dvesha</i>) and our own fear of dying (<i>abhinivesha</i>). These can all be bundled together so that each is a different expression of the same underlying root: a misperception of reality (<i>avidya</i>). Dvesha is related to this fear of negativity. The act of pushing away and ignoring the things that we recoil from prevents us from engaging powerfully with them. One might say even, that it is the basis of hate, of non-acceptance, of cruelty. <br />
<br />
How do we learn to mistreat people? We start by distancing ourselves from them. <br />
<br />
It seems that we think of 'happiness' as an idyllic walled garden: peaceful, tranquil, and full of gorgeous, happy, perfect people who never cause problems. Here, negativity can feel a little like <a href="http://ars-veritatis.blogspot.com/2010/07/surreal-encounter-over-real-food.html">a smelly homeless man mumbling quietly to himself in a corner</a>. Most people just stay the hell away from him. Some people want to tidy him up a little and maybe make him a little more palatable for everyone by giving him some new clothes and a bath perhaps. Some people want to chuck him out, make sure he doesn't ever come back and attempt to eradicate any trace that he was ever there. Now, that's <i>dvesha</i> in a nutshell. <br />
<br />
A little compassion goes a long way. Negativity is usually based on some sort of unresolved trauma. Even aggressive, argumentative, upsetting negativity is worthy of an ear just to listen to. In fact, people who are upset often only want to be heard and understood. Some of the most profound moments of communication I've had in my life were with people who were angry and shouting. When I was able to hear what they were <i>actually</i> trying to tell me, the whole situation usually transformed in a heartbeat. Sadly, that has not always been possible and, God Knows, I've been on the other side of that situation, saying how I feel, trying to be heard, but using a tone or a timbre that frames the conversation in a way that prevents the other person from hearing me. I'm sure that this is what happened with my experiences at the studio. <br />
<br />
The defenses of these little walled gardens of human perfection are cold, hard and sharp. <br />
<br />
Even now, I value my negativity, my shadow, my 'issues'. It serves as a barometer to gauge people's resilience. If someone can't handle a little honesty about a sticky point of conversation or the authentic expression of an emotion, what sort of person are they going to become when genuinely difficult situations arise? What will they do to protect their own little piece of perfection?<br />
<br />
Life is as it is, negative and positive. For me, yoga is somehow to seek a sense of equanimity that treats the negative with the same respect and attention as the positive and <i>isn't afraid of it</i>. My personal challenge is certainly to understand the impact that my negativity has on others and be responsible for that impact (in some contexts though, I still assert that it's not unreasonable to expect a little courage, humanity and compassion from the people around you, especially in the context of something so personal as yoga). Having said that, there is a trend in the emerging multimillion dollar self-help and self-improvement industry towards the complete eradication of negativity. We are encouraged to try to build some version of the pristine, perfect, personal walled garden. These are now being sold as services, practices, tapes, books, courses, gurus (and yoga teacher trainings) as possible vehicles for you to transform your life into something beautiful, a place where you can strive to be perfect and happy: a walled garden all for yourself.<br />
<br />
All I can say now, is 'Buyer beware'. <br />
<blockquote><i>"Don't try to transform yourself. <br />
Move into yourself. <br />
Move into your human unsuccess. <br />
Perfection rapes the soul."<br />
<br />
- Marion Woodman quoted in Stephen Cope 'Yoga and the search for the true self'" </i> </blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-32690246529111871112012-06-02T20:16:00.000-07:002012-06-02T20:16:44.559-07:00I am a point massI am a point mass<br />
Swept up in the flow of folk<br />
Conducted by boys in blue.<br />
<br />
Do drops of water have take off their shoes, I wonder?<br />
Do they become strangely uneasy when others move faster than they.<br />
Do they make idle conversation, loitering in tide pools?<br />
<br />
I am a point mass,<br />
One amongst many,<br />
To be shuffled and sorted and guided.<br />
I regain my humanity only when I arrive.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-25501901835010432152012-05-20T13:38:00.001-07:002014-08-14T10:15:36.335-07:00Love, Sex toys and Gucci couture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One particularly awful date a couple of years ago tattooed itself into my soul. My date spent the evening describing how several other men (who had also shown an interest in her) made her feel. She used an interesting analogy to explain what was going on to me: one man she had been seeing was like a 'warm cuddly sweater', but she was looking for a guy like a 'Gucci dress'. I suspect this was all a not-so-subtle attempt to explain how she was not even slightly interested in me. She never got around to telling me what kind of fashion accessory she saw me as. By that time, I was too disgusted and angry to care. <br />
<br />
To me, this seemed the quintessence of why dating in Los Angeles sucks. I'm not a bloody handbag, I'm a <i>person</i>. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification">'Objectification'</a> may be thought of the process by which a person is made into a thing.<br />
<br />
The philosopher Martha Nussbaum has argued that something is objectified if certain criteria are present. These include <i>instrumentality</i> (if the thing is treated as a tool for one's own purposes); <i>denial of autonomy</i> (if the thing is treated as if lacking in agency or self-determination); <i>fungibility</i> (if the thing is treated as if interchangeable); <i>denial of subjectivity</i> (if the thing is treated as if there is no need to show concern for the 'object's' feelings and experiences). Note that one of the categories is <i>violability</i> (if the thing is treated as if permissible to damage or destroy) which, when applied to people is widely considered unacceptable. All of the other criteria, however, are habitually and routinely applied by people on each other within the context of dating. <br />
<br />
When men do this, it's generally based on treating women as sexual objects and is justifiably recognized as denigrating, dehumanizing and exploitative. When women do this, its usually related to finding a sugar-daddy or a protector. At their worst, men seek women as sex toys; and apparently, women are looking for Gucci couture. I think that these are just the worst, most obvious examples, but the underlying attitude is absolutely pervasive, widely accepted and wildly destructive to everyone touched by it. <br />
<br />
Objectification tends to be obvious to bystanders watching it happening. Recently, I was standing in the lunch queue at my local sandwich shop and two women standing behind me were describing a friend of theirs who was in the thrall of a particularly exploitative man. This is something we have all seen. It sounded as if she was simply being used by the man she was interested in and both friends were delicately talking about how she didn't want to hear them tell her the truth. We've all been there. The person being used is always the last to realize and the person being used is often strangely complicit in their own exploitation. "They'll only like me if I give them something" or so the logic goes. <br />
<br />
I think people objectify one another (and themselves) <i>all the time</i> in romantic relationships, especially in Los Angeles. If you find yourself asking the question "Do I love this person?" and you rationalize your perspective via a pros-and-cons sort of logic then guess what? You're objectifying the person you're evaluating. That person is now a thing that provides you with something like sex, or money, or romance. It might be framed as someone who makes you feel a certain way, or someone who fulfills a romantic (or sexual) fantasy or caricature. Where are <i>they</i> as a person in this calculation? Why is love so resplendent, so shockingly glorious and beautiful, so selfless and unthinking amid all the cynical calculations? Well, it hinges on the thought of the loved one as someone you treat with the same consideration as you treat yourself, or more. Quite the antithesis of the sorts of selfish calculations I find so sickening. <br />
<br />
So, please, take a moment and see the person sitting across the table from you. The person who has spent hours in front of a mirror or on a treadmill to look their best, and be the specific-type-of-object you currently think you're looking for in a man or a woman. Take a moment, throw all that nonsense aside, be yourself and talk to them as a person. You might find a little moment of transcendent vulnerable beauty shimmering in the darkness. In that discovery, you will make the world a happier, more radiant place for all of us.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-74388991942817183572012-05-02T21:41:00.000-07:002012-05-20T22:51:38.498-07:00The 'Fundamental Virtues'<br />
Flying is one of those interesting contexts when people will usually be happy to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. It can be awkward when you realize that you’re falling into a political discussion with someone whose views are diametrically opposed to yours. I view these situations as an opportunity: a moment in time where it’s genuinely possible to learn something. I was sitting next to an older gentleman on a flight from LA to DC. As we were pulling back from the gate, I noticed the title of the chapter he was reading: “The Battle of Britain” and I immediately saw an opening.<br />
<br />
“My granddad flew Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain”, I said. He looked up, a little baffled and I repeated myself by way of introduction. We started to chat. The book he was reading was a catalog of the seven moments in history. Seven separate events that the authors singled out as signature moments when 'Christian Freedom and Democracy' were preserved from the onrushing invasions of malignant invaders. One chapter was about the Persians at Thermopylae, another about the conversion of the Emperor Augustine, another about Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes, and of course, the Battle of Britain. I had reservations and voiced them. Isn’t that ignoring a whole slice of history? Wasn’t that conveniently forgetting the excesses of the Borgias and the Catholic Church in the days just before the reformation? He fielded my questions with some grace but not much engagement and we left it at that, for the time being. <br />
<br />
Simplicity is appealing when we’re talking about virtue and goodness. Complex things, grey areas, pragmatic issues of contradictions lead to all sorts of issues and so it’s expedient to simplify matters to the simple dichotomy of ‘Good Guys’ and ‘Bad Guys’, or more sinisterly ‘Them’ and ‘Us’. Complexity leads to hemming and hawing, to moralistic relativity and the apparent slippery slope of compromise. Having said that, a simplistic view of what is right and wrong invariably leads to the sort of intractable argument that our political dialogue is currently, ridiculously, engaged in: a clash of core values that leads nowhere. <br />
<br />
I hold the following boldly stated view: there are three fundamental virtues: (A) Compassion, (B) Integrity and (C) Understanding. These are inviolable, sacrosanct, absolute and, for want of a better word, ‘good’. Their inverse: Cruelty, Dishonesty and Ignorance embody what I consider as ‘evil’. The simplicity of this holds me in a strong grasp and interestingly, involves subtle complex pitfalls when applied to other people. Am I being compassionate or understanding towards others if I insist that they adopt my virtues as their own and judge them negatively if they don’t? This is where the complexity and depth lives of any truly moral person: in the consequences of your deeply held views to others. <br />
<br />
In my mind, a Christian who preaches the Bible’s lessons of love and forgiveness only to turn around and say that homosexuality is a sin (and by consequence, any gay man or woman is damned) is a shocking contradiction with real, painful consequences to those people. The act of compassion requires you to <a href="http://charterforcompassion.org/the-charter/">‘dethrone yourself from the center of your world and place another there’</a>, leading inexorably to the golden rule: Do unto others as you have them do unto you. I doubt that any living soul would actually ask for someone else to issue a judgment of eternal damnation on them based on something as arbitrary and unconscious as sexual orientation, but I guess there’s a whole doctrine of sin to worry about. No, I say, let’s keep it simple: focus on Compassion, Integrity and Understanding and everything else will be fine. <br />
<br />
My newly found friend and I started, inevitably, to chat about politics. He is a fiscal conservative, a bit more centrist on social issues and a frequent viewer of Fox News. He doesn’t like Hannity, Limbaugh or Coulter, but still feels that the Fox perspective is fair and balanced. He doesn’t believe the liberal media’s biases and positively loathes the demagogues of the left. He despises Barney Frank and Al Gore and argues passionately about Obama’s budgetary foolishness, about the importance of deregulation and the various ways in which the wealthy shouldn’t be penalized for their success. He and I talk about Health Care and the various sins of the left (from his perspective) and the right (from mine).<br />
<br />
I suddenly realized that something important was happening: that he and I lived through the same events: the town hall meetings in 2009 where so much appalling propaganda was pumped through the airwaves surrounding the Health Care bill (mainly, in my mind, originating from the right wing, but he asserted from the left as well) and we <i>had completely different experiences</i> of those events. We literally were living in different worlds, with different logics and different narratives. There was no possible agreement or consensus between us largely because neither of us was getting the full picture. For whatever reason, whoever is to blame, there was almost no way of making an impartial, well-informed, fact-based evaluation of the issues since everything had been reduced to a polemic ‘them-against-us’ sort of argument. So many of the talking points we see in the public forum are geared to denigrating and dismissing our adversaries; of scoring points and killing off; of ridiculing and disingenuously undermining the others arguments. <br />
<br />
Here was a man who had spent his life in business finances and he was sharing his expertise with me. The least I could do is listen and think carefully about what he was telling me about the tax code. I’ve read in the Economist (a publication with some chops in this area) that the latest wave of regulations in this arena are just too cumbersome and yet, as a good little liberal, I’m offered a moralistic justification for this legislation based on how the ‘banks are bad’. How can I, as a responsible citizen in a democracy, hold the reigns of power and hold my government to account if I have no accurate access to well-informed information? It’s impossible.<br />
<br />
I dread the next few months as we all dissolve into the sepid, vile dialogue of a particularly negative presidential campaign where the three evils of aggression, bullshit and ignorance will reign supreme. I enjoyed my conversation with my new right-wing friend. I learned some things and I hope that he heard me when I said to him: “Don’t demonize the people involved in the conversation but listen to what they have to say”. <br />
<br />
I walked away from the interaction feeling more far strongly that these fundamental virtues are <i>the only things that really matter</I>. On the whole, I could care less and less about a person’s political views. I do care very deeply <i>why</i> they might feel the way they feel. Are they motivated by compassion, honesty and understanding? If not, do they understand why? I will probably become a little strident concerning these virtues during the coming presidential campaign. <br />
<br />
Let us elevate the level of debate, treat our adversaries with consideration and tell the truth. If anyone wants to make the claim that the USA is the greatest democracy in the world, they should be prepared for my comeback: “<i>Show Me</i>”.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-11443720412033679542012-04-25T10:18:00.000-07:002012-04-25T14:54:23.065-07:00The Embrace of IronHere, amid the cold flat solid shapes,<br />
Of plates, and stacks, and grips and bars<br />
Of movement, knowledge, effort and breath<br />
I feel safe, at last.<br />
<br />
Here, judgement lives only in the weight and the strain<br />
The heft and the shift and the breath and release.<br />
The iron's hands embrace my own as I pull and lift and push<br />
Learning through mass and gravity<br />
<br />
It never condescends, it never confuses<br />
It promises nothing other than itself<br />
Exhaustion, strength and peaceUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3655400718416930206.post-9421895874020348342012-02-18T00:16:00.000-08:002012-02-18T00:22:17.895-08:00Riding the bus with the Rose KingTonight, I met the Rose King. A gregarious fellow holding a Big Gulp cup full of roses, fussing away removing petals and, like me, waiting for a bus from Marina del Rey to Santa Monica. He was fussing with them, pulling petals, stripping thorns and just as the bus was about to pull in he handed me one and said 'give this to your girl'.<br />
<br />
"I don't have a girl" I replied.<br />
<br />
"Use this to get one" he shot back. Seeing him standing there, I started to think of a refrain from a poem. I started to try to recite it but the Rose King turned to me and said "no, write it out". So I did.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yv55ydMycXU/Tz9bLtpL2-I/AAAAAAAAArA/-mGl8JqCAxk/s1600/2012-02-18" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yv55ydMycXU/Tz9bLtpL2-I/AAAAAAAAArA/-mGl8JqCAxk/s320/2012-02-18" width="209" /></a><i>Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,</i><br />
<i>The bridal of the earth and sky:</i><br />
<i>The dew shall weep thy fall to night;</i><br />
<i> For thou must die.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>Sweet rose, whose hue angy and brave</i><br />
<i>Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:</i><br />
<i>Thy root is ever in its grave</i><br />
<i> And thou must die.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,</i><br />
<i>A box where sweets compacted lie;</i><br />
<i>My music shows ye have your closes,</i><br />
<i> And all must die.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>Only a sweet and virtuous soul,</i><br />
<i>Like season’d timber, never gives;</i><br />
<i>But though the whole world turn to coal,</i><br />
<i> Then chiefly lives.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>- 'Virtue', George Herbert.</i><br />
<div>
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<div>
I scribbled it on a random sheet of paper and gave it to him, trying to recite it so that he could read over my terrible handwriting. We chatted on the bus, he let me take a picture of him. He's Iranian, with a son over here. He has political asylum, obviously concerned about the whole immigration process since that's what he mostly talked about, but he also explained what he is doing with the roses (in a roundabout kind of way). He said "Sometimes miracles happen" and told me a tale of how a young guy, with a beautiful girl on his arm, one time bought his roses for $100 and then gave them back to him. An act of magnanimity that seemed to reaffirm his faith in the world's goodness. Like everyone here, he has his thing, and his thing is roses. </div>
<div>
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<div>
Currently, I am reading a book about the Middle East: a 1200-page tome called 'The Great War for Civilization" by Robert Fisk. It's a masterpiece about the wars, horrific persecution and disgusting hypcrocrisy that have torn through the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran (and I'm sure we'll get to Lebanon, Syria, Israel as well quite soon, I'm only up to page 200). Rather than read about the torture methods used by the Savak (the Iranian secret police, back in the day) to carve up dissidents, I got to chat to this charming fellow who must have lived through that oppression at some point in his life. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I don't know this man. I don't know what to make of him. Riding a bus at 11pm with a whole bunch of roses, just to give away to strangers. His story sounded a little sad, a little regretful. He's probably poor and even maybe a little desperate. In the way that matters, and with a twinned Persian gregariousness and Angeleno semi-pseudo-spirituality with that simultaneous shabbiness and dignity, he conjures up the last, powerful stanza of the poem as a sweet and (somewhat) virtuous soul. </div>
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Here he is. If you see him, say hi. </div>
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