Chat anonymity

It's too bad that the internet chat and discussion rooms have to be anonymous (although I understand the need).  So often they cause more depression because of some of the people on them.  Otherwise they would be ideal for lonely and housebound people.

I know I have to watch myself, so I appreciate the problem, and the standard discipline of throwing people off a board actually in my opinion makes things worse as it is probably the person with the most serious problem who ends up getting tossed overboard.  Of course the process is needed to remove spammers and con artists, so I am of split mind and just don't know.

One thing I remind myself: the behavior of a person when they are anonymous tells you more about them than when their personal face is up front.

Skepticism

To take an old joke from Oscar Wilde, skepticism is like society; it is downplayed by those who aren't for one reason or another, usually an inability or unwillingness to think honestly.

Oil replacement hype

Here we see a persistent problem not just on the internet but indeed all of the world's press -- how do you know what to believe and what to disregard.  People have many reasons to lie -- hype to raise money perhaps most common, but wishful thinking and pious fraud (frauds to "save souls" are seen by many as being acceptable behavior) ranks right up there.

I don't know about these stories; I tend to take technology at face value but usually it turns out to be hype.  This is why the conspiracy theories about evil giant oil companies suppressing new technology are around -- people get the wrong impression from the hype that replacing oil is easy.

Enlightenment

Musings About Enlightenment 06/19/05

I think that much that parades itself as "being in touch with oneself," or "being in harmony with the universe," and so on, is air-headed. The concept of enlightenment as the end product of Buddha-hood probably is the same. To have "answers" come to one sitting under the Bod-ha tree, as the myth reports, is not credible to me.

We all have moments of realization – of mental lucidity, and sitting quietly as we mull problems increases the chances we will find answers. However, a conversion on the way to Damascus is to be seriously questioned. We should never fool ourselves into thinking that we, too, do not have the ability to be carried away with ourselves.

Ignorance is one thing. We all are ignorant about most things and unfortunately tend to hide this from ourselves. We are all children trying to figure out the thunder and thinking we know. The desire to know leads to the desire for enlightenment, but one does not achieve enlightenment without removing desire. (I don’t practice Zen. That paradox is enough for me).

I do have faith in reason. “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal.” What is there in reason not to put faith in? Where we get in trouble is not when we are rational, but when we are not. I and almost everyone I know can see the syllogism, and has no difficulty agreeing that the conclusion “follows.” Where does this ability come from?

Oh, sure, the ability does give us a certain advantage over species who cannot reason things out, so if ability to reason is available, we can understand that natural selection would favor individuals who have it. However, that doesn’t explain where it comes from. I figure it comes from our spirit.

Testimonial Evidence is Worthless (almost)

I don't trust my senses, and it follows I don't trust the claims of others based on what they have seen or heard.  Indeed, it is even worse since I see such claims as hearsay, although politeness generally prevents me saying as much.  Still, I know how people can elaborate.

There is just simply no way around this problem that I can see.  The claim, for example, of the presence of witnesses to some outlandish event does not increase credibility but actively reduces it.

Is it possible, then, to say we know something -- anything at all -- since all our knowledge of the outside world comes to us through our senses (highly manipulated and censored, I might add, by our subconscious minds working to keep our conscious minds from having too much to handle).

All I can say is that I don't think there is anything I can say I "know," and I think people who claim otherwise are delusional.  All we can say is that we think with varying degrees of certainty, based mainly on how we perceive probabilities, that some things are probably true and others probably not.

The only exception I would make to that is where what we conclude is based on logic rather than on experience, and even then we are dependent on the principles of logic being true.  For example, I strongly doubt the existence of the Christian God, based on what my senses tell me about suffering in the world and the behavior of the members of that religion, and am persuaded logically this is the case based on the self-referential contradictions claims about this god lead to.

Karma is not supernatural or mysterious

There is nothing mysterious about karma.

Doing harm to others is like gambling; you may "win" short run, but in the long run you always lose.  The world is just simply built that way.

What happened to National Geographic?

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON TV

A comment about the "reality" show where venomous snakes were shown (more like exploited) being handled by religious believers.

When I was a kid we subscribed to the National Geographic, and I remember learning a lot about geography and more important about the different people around the world.  It was presented in a slick first person way that a high schooler could enjoy, and emphasized, at least as far as I could tell, the truth in a non-commercial clearly written way with lots of informative pictures and maps.

I gave up on it in college.  Maybe I outgrew it.

Recently (since I don't now live in the states we can get it on satellite), I checked out its TV channel a few times.  They have gone cheap and crass aiming for a low-class audience based on people watching, hoping someone will get killed and they can see it.  I guess that is what draws the TV audience they want -- idiots that can be easily influenced by advertising.

Sad, such an old institution has gone that way. 

America's schools and gross ignorance

AMERICA'S SCHOOLS

I saw a headline in several web pages today that said that a quarter of Americans don't know that the earth circles the sun and that half don't believe in evolution.  The second part of that does not surprise me, considering the religious primitivism (i.e., snake handlers dying of snake bites -- also in today's news) found throughout the States.

That first part though kinda astounded me.

Thinking about it I guess that's probably about right.  I think back on my high school class and about a quarter of them were more than functionally illiterate but flat-out illiterate, after spending most of their waking hours in schoolrooms since they were six.

The thing about primary and secondary education in the states is that it serves to educate the elite and to baby-sit the others, so the parents can have jobs.  Teachers naturally gravitate to the smarter harder working students and try to ignore the others, or at least keep the disturbances they cause to a minimum, and think, rightly, that trying to get them to learn something is so contrary to the anti-intellectual culture of not just their peers but their families and neighborhoods, that there is no point.

So America produces the best doctors and engineers and lawyers and artists and designers and architects and even educators, in the meantime leaving a huge chunk uneducated and perfectly happy with themselves being that way.

The only thing that gets me is that in a democracy those people are encouraged to vote, and where a political machine is in place, in a close election, they do vote.

Impeaching U.S. Presidents

IMPEACHING U.S. PRESIDENTS

Thinking about the past attempts to impeach a U.S. President and I conclude that this clause in the U.S. Constitution is not just outdated and bad and a source of trouble but never was any good.

What are "high crimes and misdemeanors."  I presume way back a couple centuries ago that meant something, but I doubt, since no President has ever actually been convicted (Nixon resigned, admirably I think so that the government could function even though he might not have been convicted and it is hard to see where the charges fit the Constitution anyway).  So the definition has never had a proper court test to my knowledge and is almost meaningless.

Presidents who have the opposition party in control of the House constantly have to deal with impeachment any more, something intolerable, with someone calling for hearings all the time.  American partisan politics is getting worse and worse and already just stinks.

To have effective government you must have a President who can do things "on the edge."

Flappy Bird takedown

FLAPPY BIRD TAKEDOWN

I see the new official line now is that the owner took Flappy Bird down because it is "too addictive."  To be sure it is but that is the first time I've seen that as a reason for taking down a game (something so easy to learn should not, we think, be so hard to win -- hence the addiction as it hurts our egos).

My first reaction was that the Vietnamese authorities advised him to take it down out of their concern for the welfare of the human race.

By the way, I always thought he should have been called "Floppy Bird," since it is obvious he can't fly.

Hillary Clinton and her husband's sexual offenses

HILLARY CLINTON AND HER HUSBAND'S SEXUAL OFFENSES

I see that a prominent Republican has said the party should avoid bringing up Clinton's sex scandal should Hillary be the Democrat's nominee for President.  That would be good advice.

Let me first say that, while I would agree that a man or woman's sexual behavior has little to do with their ability to serve effectively in public office, and while I thought the impeachment effort was just politics, I nevertheless was very much offended by Clinton's behavior.  It was just a gross ego trip by a man in power demeaning an ambitious but silly girl unable to keep her mouth shut (in more ways than one).

Follow that by the public, carefully coached, lie on TV, "I did not have sex with that woman" accompanied by emphatic gestures.  Then when it became clear that this was a lie the hypocritical effort to say that what happened was not really "sex."  Disgusting performance -- so much so that no matter how great a President Clinton may in history be judged, he will never be seen as a great man.

Now we have his wife a likely nominee for President.  Her performance during the episode seems to me to have been acceptable, whether or not she was aware of his womanizing.  Women, especially those married to public figures, need to be seen to be loyal and to support him, and to keep their problems private.

There are other things in her career that are fair targets, but not this one. 

Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve

 
Adam and Eve have always puzzled me a little.

1. They were perfect.

2. It was only through the eating of the forbidden fruit and the subsequent curse that they came under sin – that is, became imperfect.

3. Perfect beings do not do imperfect things.

4. In short, if they really were perfect, they could not have been tempted to eat the forbidden fruit until after they had eaten it.

All the talk about free will does nothing to help this illogical story. Perfect beings don't do imperfect things. They are not even tempted to.

McDonalds Coming to Vietnam

I see McDonald's is opening a "restaurant" in Ho Chi Minh City.  I do hope they leave the clown behind.

One of the things I like about Vietnam is of course the food (this is what everyone says about Vietnamese food because it is true), and one of the features of Vietnamese food is that it uses meat sparingly and more as a condiment and not as an unhealthy plop of meat and fat.

Of course one can get excellent hamburgers in Vietnam.  They aren't cheap, but not outrageous either unless from one of the snob hotels.  They are prepared as one asks, (not mass done with frozen patties) with toasted bun and sliced onion and really good fresh tomatoes and "salad" (the Vietnamese word for lettuce), and you can add ketchup, hot sauce, mustard and mayo and relish to taste (as well as a few more Asian things).  It doesn't come buried in that stuff they call "dressing" that seems designed to hide the absence of reality.

As you can probably can tell from what I have to say about the McDonald's fare I have had in the states (not often, fortunately), I will probably not be a regular customer.

It bothers me that so often science and politics or science and religion, or even all three get mixed up.  This is, in fact, a major weakness of modern elected-official republics.  People try to get their way about issues through politics rather than what works best, expressing biases and ideologies and prejudices through the elective process.  Government is not the place to enforce morals and should be interested not in ideology but in what makes for the best outcomes for the population as a whole.

An example is the environment, and especially the global warming issue.  The environmental extremist ("tree hugger") would shut down modern commerce and industry to preserve some air headed idea of nature, when in fact nature left alone is no utopia.  On the other side of the political fence the political right engages in denial that the environment must be protected and in particular that mankind is causing a steady global warming, of which there is really no scientific doubt, that at best is going to cost billions and displace as many and at worse could lead to runaway warming converting our planet into another Venus (not that that seems likely but it is a possibility so severe that even though the chances are remote it must not be ignored).

Another issue of this sort is abortion.  Many religions, including my own, feel that any taking of life, including that of a fetus, is wrong -- and late in term seriously wrong.  However, the use of the political apparatus to interfere with such personal decisions leads to even worse wrongs.  It is fine to encourage having the baby and to set the right personal example in these things, it is not fine to use the criminal process on what is essentially a political issue.  I find the inability or unwillingness some express to see the point here that it is necessary to criminalize murder but not necessary to criminalize abortion makes all the difference unfortunate.

One final example of how modern political republics so often fail because of their structure -- the constant political interference in the curriculum of secondary and even tertiary education.  Science (especially evolutionary theory but also accurate and not grandiose histories or things like religious myths taught as history) leads to a misinformed and prejudiced public and is in the end harmful to such a culture.

This is one general area, then, among many, where single party states and even autocracies are better.

1984

In the novel “1984,” the lead character O'Brien stubbornly holds onto his perception and his personal "memories" as objective reality in spite of the opposition of those who control him. He ultimately fails, as I guess would happen if brainwashing is persistent enough and has the technology needed.

O'Brien thinks there is an objective reality "out there." Big Brother asserts that what is in O'Brien's head as objective reality is an illusion -- and, indeed, a counter-revolutionary and therefore intolerable illusion. We cannot be allowed to remember as history what we experienced but only what the authorities have decided what history was.

Maybe the authorities are right; that there is no objective reality. Memories can be manipulated: we cannot trues even the evidence of our senses to not be fooled by some illusion or trick. Of course to function we assume there really is an objective reality, and I think there probably is one, but as physics pushes on we come to realize that whatever it is it is a lot further away from our personal existence than we even begin to imagine.

All illusions necessarily have something under them that generates the illusion. When someone asserts something is an illusion, one excellent refutation is to ask for the underlying reality. It may be that the reality is itself just a deeper illusion, one wonders how far that might go.

There are several things that I wonder maybe are illusions, as I can see underlying things that could underly them as causes. Causation is one, another of course is space and time. Then there is mind and there is free will: the modern mechanistic materialist is I think forced to assert that these too are illusions, but what could be the underlying reality? Brain neurons firing away do not demonstrate any way to generate such an illusion.

Vietnam's government

Since this blog intended at first to be mostly about Vietnam, and since there has been precious little about Vietnam in it, I think I will try to correct that a little now.

Vietnam is a free independent republic that tries and generally has good relations with everyone.  There aren't too many countries around like that.  It is mainly socialist, but with an active private market and has shown remarkable growth and prosperity over the last few years, so that living standards and other standards, such as education, health, transport, and so on, have improved markedly.

The biggest difference between Vietnam and most Western states is that it is a single-party state, with only one political party.  Over time this has evolved more and more into a meritocracy, where party membership goes to the educated and those who served well in the military, as well as those willing to do the extra work required.

I personally think this is the closest one can reasonably get to Plato's concept of the ideal state, although the selection is not made in childhood but from among adults.  Government decisions then follow, largely through consensus building.

A bit about Buddhism to a Muslim

I did not start this Blog to promote Buddhism, and make a poor Buddhist anyway. However, I have had some inquiries and I am happy to answer questions as best I can, with the proviso that there are lots of more qualified sources available.

Buddhism is an ancient religion, more ancient than Islam or Christianity. The Buddha coincides in time with Zoroaster and precedes Confucius and Socrates.

Buddhist "scripture" exists. Buddhists are not, however, superstitious. We do not see scripture as magic books that give us magic solutions to all of our questions, nor do we think the invention of humans (language) could possibly be adequate to divine words. We see our scripture as the writings of wise and good men to be respected..

As with any religion, it is impossible to summarize Buddhism, especially with all of its varieties, in a few sentences, although the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Noble Path are sometimes used that way, the idea gives me cold shivers. They can at least serve as a start.