Out of the hole

Well, is it? I mean, is it comforting that we can get along without numbers, statistics, quantitative data ... proof? You see, as long as we were talking about anecdotal evidence (that's what my experience is) and the situation is "good" (and we aren't going to debate what that means, at least not at the moment), we tend not to care. It's not an issue. But what if it's a different situation and the notion of "good" is not as obvious?

Let's take government funding ... for anything actually. Is that "good"? Well – and this was my experience at the conference – all of sudden, opinions started going in all kinds of directions. You will notice, please, that we're no longer talking about "experience" (that was something we shared), rather we're talking about "opinions" (something that, at best, groups of people share). But, since were back out of the rabbit hole, how about we ask ourselves just what an "opinion" is. It's really not something we think about everyday, even though they tend to play a truly significant part in our lives.

IMNSHO, there are two fundamental types of opinions. The first is "the result of giving thought to a particular topic or issue". We think about things. We look around. We examine evidence. We look at various perspectives (notice I didn't say "the other side" of an issue ... there is invariably more than just two sides to any issue). We come to a conclusion. That is, we have an opinion. Some folks like to call these "informed opinions". They are, in a word, the result of thought. The second type we can characterize as "a replacement for thought". We just think things are a particular way and say so. There's really no thinking involved. We don't bother looking around. There's no examination of the facts or evidence. We know the answer before we start. That is, we have an opinion. Sound familiar?

"Everybody's entitled to their opinion." Have you ever said that? Have you ever meant it? Is that something you agree with? If you don't, you take the risk of being run out of town on a rail, don't you? But, it's quite clear, without even delving into the subject very deep at all, that not all opinions are created equal. So now what?

In the hole

You need to bear with me for a moment. We're going to jump back out of the rabbit hole ... or dive in deeper, I'm not quite I remember which way we're supposed to be going. Well, let's face it. I'm anything but alone in this regard. You don't have to look very far to figure that out.

I was recently at a conference attended by a large number of some of the most well-intended people I had met in a long time. Educators, for the most part, but others who were smack in the middle of real life and economic and policy issues ... people who were doing their damnedest to solve some serious problems. What struck me, however, is how enthralled they were by numbers. Now, don't get me wrong, I think statistics most certainly have their place, and that quantitative studies and investigations can be revealing (if understood properly). But do the numbers show us the truth, or what's right or which way to go next? In other words, can something be right without there being numbers to back it up?

I think so, but I also saw that I was in a very small minority in that group. My experience is that people who are curious, inquisitive, and interested appear to learn more faster than people who are less so. I have found that people who tend to like to read are more often curious, inquisitive and interested folks. That's just my experience, but it is an experience that has repeated itself repeatedly on two different continents in a dozen different cultures.

No, I don't have numbers and statistical correlations to back it up, but is this one of the places I need to? I don't think so, because, in the end, I think we all generally agree that knowing there are curious, inquisitive and interested people is a good thing, that having such people around is a good thing. So, it would seem that as long as it's good, we don't need all that quantitative backup. That's comforting, isn't it?

More paradox

It's not getting easier. There are a lot of things we just have backwards. It's a favorite theme of mine, and I don't have to work hard to find examples or evidence. I was even asked by a good friend if I had perhaps been discussing inverse relationships with March Hare? As I told him: we are in fact well acquainted, but he's got his world, and I'm stuck with this one. Or is it the other way around?

Really, you ask. Yes, really. How about this: an article in the Guardian showed rather clearly that the more conservative an American is, the more likely they are probably willing to say they think President Obama is a Muslim and not American, even though they "know" he's not and he is. There was no correlation to level of education, only to ideology. Paradox? I think so. Or, who's the biggest exporter of cars in the US? Right, BMW ... who else would it be? Or which car built in the US is the most "American" car (that is containing the highest number of American-made parts)? Of course, Toyota. All of this is so obvious, I don't know why I have to keep saying it.

My point is that not everything we say is what we know, not everything we believe is what we want to believe, and not everything that makes sense is really always sensible. Welcome to life in the modern world. Oh, it's nice to make fun of Mr. Carroll and his Hare. It's nice to think that it was all such a nice children's story ... so entertaining ... so not real. But is it?

It's really something that has been going on for quite some time, but we are also frustrated by the fact that we don't always see that things are getting better. We would like them to, of course, but reality isn't always what we would like it to be. Sometimes, it's just the opposite. In fact, it's really time to start asking yourself, on which side of the mirror you really are.

A lot of sense

A friend of mine once reminded me that common sense was the least common of all senses. I can't say I disagree, but does that mean we live in a senseless world. I certainly hope not, and I don't think we do. There's a lot of sense around. Just think:

Every day, about 25,000 people die from hunger-related causes, about two-thirds of these are children.
About 925 million people worldwide don't get enough to eat.
More than a third of all deaths in low-income countries are children under 15.
About 1 in 3 workers worldwide is either unemployed or poor.
Almost a quarter of the world's population lives in poverty.
The poverty rate in the United States grew for the 4th consecutive year last year.
But, the income of the richest 10% of the world's population is about 9 times that of the poorest 10%, and it's rising.
The richest 1% of the world's population own 40% of all global assets.
The richest 3 people possess more financial assets than the poorest 48 countries combined.

It makes you wonder ... well, it makes me wonder, I can assure you. It would seem that there's more than enough to go around, but apparently some people don't want it to. Go figure.

Yeah, there's a lot of sense around, but it's not common, it's mostly nonsense.

Paradox

There are a lot of people besides me who have trouble coming to terms with life in the modern ... or post-modern ... or post-capitalist ... or post-something-or-other ... world we live in. It's hard to keep up with the labeling, that's for sure, but one things the world isn't, and that's post-paradox.

I don't know about you, but obvious contradictions in thought ... and that's what a paradox is, isn't it ... tend to confuse me. OK, I'm easily confused. It's a talent almost, but there are just a lot of things that don't make sense to me and I haven't found anyone to really explain them. Here are a few that I encountered last week:

Lowering taxes will raise revenues ...
Working harder will save time ...
Spending is saving in the long run ...
Helping the rich get richer is the best way to help the poor ...
Restricting access to healthcare makes for a healthier society ...
Waging war is the most effective means of achieving peace ...
Bailing out banks was necessary to preserve a free market ...
Printing money is a move against inflation ...
Lowering requirements will raise academic access ...

OK, I could go on, but I think you get the point. Who thinks this stuff up? But more importantly, why do so many folks take this nonsense seriously?

Well, since I've been into old-fashioned, slowly (or quickly) becoming archaic, words as of late, all I can say to all of this is, I'm flabbergasted.

Labor-saving

When I was growing up, I was continually fascinated by all the labor-saving devices and gadgets coming out: new vacuum cleaners, electric can-openers, snazzy mops ... you know, that kind of thing. It was only later that I realized that all of these were being made for my mom and housework, and I never really got it, because she never had a moment to herself. How did that work?

We've never really gotten out of that mode ... at least as far as the propagation of the idea is concerned. It used to be household gadgets, now its robots and automated production, and the like. Somebody decided bigger is better and we've upped the ante considerably. Let's face it, robots are more efficient, they don't complain, they don't get sick, they are willing, compliant ... well, slaves, actually, but they do cost a bit to get, but they're apparently worth the effort and investment. There's money to be made with labor-saving devices.

The money saved isn't because the things we then get to buy are cheaper. I don't know many people just socking away their paychecks because of how low the prices are on everything. In fact, there are a lot of people ... too many, in my book ... not socking anything away at all because they spend most of their time looking for a new sock. Theirs is getting a bit threadbare, if you get my drift. It turns out that the labor that was saved, was theirs.

Collophone February

The muses from last month:

The Shins, Oh, Inverted World;
Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues;
The Flatlanders, Wheels of Fortune;
Indigo Girls, Poseiden and the Bitter Bug;
The Hooblers, I Hate Folk Singers;
Tracy Chapman, Collection;
Kacey Anderson, The Reckoning;
Dave Mason, Alone Together;
Fred Eaglesmith, 50 Odd Dollars;
Arthur Dodge & the Horsefeathers, Nervous Habit;
Bob Dylan, Nashville Skyline.

Those are my long-tail recommendations for February. Not your usual fare, but all come highly recommended. Enjoy.

Now for all you pedants out there, I'm sure you are wondering about the title of this entry. You won't find that word in the dictionary. I made it up. Yes, I took the liberty and just made it up. That's how language works, if you want it to.

For those of you who may be compiling a dictionary: the collo- part is from "collection" and the -phone part is, well, obvious. Therefore, it is a collection of music that is listened to for a particular purpose, such as marking assignments, writing blogs, or watching sunrises/sets (depending on your inclination).

An example: say, you're marking papers and pacing yourself with some tunes. You'd like to let your students know what was moving you while you were marking, so you want to give them the list. Instead of entitling the list something like "This is the Music I was Listening to while Marking Your Papers", you could use something much more efficient like "Collophone: Assignment 1".

It's a labor-saver, I know. You're welcome.

The tune of life

Why is country music, alt country, pseudo-country, and wanna-be country music so sad? I know that one comedian after another, Southern or not, have taken jabs at it, from my woman done left me to she killed my dog, too ... and there's lots of whisky drenching it all. When you listen a little closer, you side with her anyway: he didn't deserve the woman or the dog and nobody knows how he affords the booze.

No matter. Apparently it speaks to a lot of people. There must be a lot of folks who shouldn't own dogs. A lot of guys anyhow. And a lot of women who know they shouldn't have pets either.

One of the reasons I think about this is because a lot of Germans I know tend to like it. I'm not sure how many of them understand the lyrics, but I'm also not sure that's what's important anyway. I think they like it because if any instrument can cry, it's got to be a steel guitar. Oh, sure, it can be silly, faux happy, but behind it is a simple melancholy that is as much a part of life as birth or death.

I don't think we listen to instruments enough. We get into songs and forget who – what – is getting them to our ears. I really don't care what you music you listen to ... it's not the style that really matters. Find out which instrument is speaking to you, and you'll have a friend forever.

Music reaches deep. Deeper than we may like to admit. Of course, you have to stop just having it on in the background. Take a moment ... just listen.

The long tail

Let's face it, Americans are highly competitive, almost ... no, to a fault. There are only winners and losers. If you don't win, you lose. Ties are like kissing your sister and the silver medal is just the one who lost gold. Too bad. I don't think most of them know how much they are missing because of this one, small quirk of thought.

A world that only has winners and losers is just another type of monoculture, that ... well, American agriculture appears to love so much as well. No, dear friends, sustainability only comes through diversity, as tough as it is to accept. It's not all about who wins, it's about who has something to contribute. And that's one of the only reasons I like modern technology.

Huh? Wha'? Whazzat? Yeah, technology. For all the evils of the Internet that too many governments think they have to get under control, the widespread, cheap access to technology has allowed us to find all the losers who aren't. Yep. For you business freaks, it's called the long tail.

Being there may be more important than being promoted. Oh sure, I suppose there are enough talented artists ... especially musicians ... who big labels pick up and squeeze dry. But, truth be told, they have never really interested me all that much. While most of my friends were hip on the Beatles and the rebels were pushing the Stones, I was a Kinks man. Go figure.

I'm not going on a promotional tour here ... don't get excited, but there's a lot more exciting stuff off the beaten track than there is out there in the mainstream. You have to want to look. You have to want to go through some dry spells, but swimming in the hidden swimming hole was always more fun than being out there with everybody else in the lake.

Surprised endings

It struck me a couple of days ago how many things have ended. I mean, there have been a lot of bright people making these claims. It's not like Joe Shit, the rag man and his cronies down at the Dingy Bar & Grill have been talking this up. OK, I did overhear at the local McDonald's the other morning that it was time to stop something or other, but those guys didn't think anything oughta end. Sure, they wanted the government out of their lives, but as long as they kept the social security checks coming, just how bad could they be?

That's part of the problem, I think. Everybody wants something to stop, but whatever it is, it shouldn't be theirs. Well, there are some things that, while they may not have absolutely come to an end, are really close to just going away. On the other hand, when we hear about "ends", we think about what's going away, but that's only one of the meanings, isn't it?

Ends are what means lead to, aren't they? And when that's the case, you can go back and read the posting from last time, and it's a whole different thing. Of course, you have to add the question marks yourself and decide where we should be heading.

The end of ends

The end of history,
the end of education,
the end of reason,
the end of capitalism,
the end of freedom,
the end of fear,
the end of hope,
the end of my rope.
The end of philosophy,
the end of literature,
the end of art,
the end of fairness,
the end of kindness,
the end of truth,
the end of wrong,
the end of the song.
The end of hate,
the end of love,
the end of everything,
The words may bend but
have they found their end,
this is the end of ends,
for nothing ever ends.

Stuff it

Believe it or not, I could hear the tongues clucking, and even wagging, after reading my last post. Don't I have anything better to do that worry about a little trash along the highway? Sure I do, and I would certainly like to have the opportunity to devote my full worry-attention to it, but there is a fairly good number of people out there who are screwing up my schedule.

I don't think that places should necessarily be clean enough that you can eat off the floor. Nor do I believe that there isn't a certain bohemian charm to a certain level of chaos. And I'd be the last person to think that everyone should be as prussianly tidy as me. But what's the point? I don't get it. I have tried, I really have, but I don't understand the fascination with littering. Apparently a lot of people do it, too (at least judging by the roadside). So, I wonder, then, just what does it look like in their homes? Do they just drop empty boxes and wrappers on the floor? And if they don't do it there, why do they do it somewhere else?

The point I'm trying to make is that the mere fact that you do it says something about you that speaks louder than anything you may think you're saying otherwise. Actions always speak louder than words. Not just sometimes, always.

There are obviously a lot of things that I just don't get. So maybe this is just another one. But I don't think people who get caught doing it should be fined. You shouldn't be able to buy your way out of it. That's become our favorite form of punishment and it is quite obvious that that doesn't work even a little bit. No, they should have to go out and clean up the roadsides: first offence, 10 lbs; second offence, 20 lbs; third strike and you get a couple of kilometers assigned to you that you get to keep clean forever.

The stuff is spreading

One of the things that I've always liked ... no, admired ... about Germany has been its Reinlichkeit. For you non-German speakers, the word means something akin to "cleanliness", but it's more that orderly tidiness of things to which attention is paid, to the orderliness of one's surroundings. This isn't big on some cultural agendas, that's for sure, but though the Germans have often be made fun of for this "compulsion", everyone I've ever spoke to who has visited the place has remarked on it. You just can't help but notice.

And, I can't help but notice that it's slowly, and, I'm afraid, surely being beaten down. That's sad. Now that winter's more or less passed and it's only intermittently raining, I've noticed too many stretches of road on the daily commute that are littered. Now before you get all huffy about another tree-hugger or another pushy pedant, I'll tell you straight up why litter is bad: it's unnecessary. Not only is it unnecessary, it's thoughtless, and above all, it's ignorant.

It's unnecessary because we've come up with a wonderful series of inventions called the wastebasket, the trash bin, the trash receptacle, the dustbin, the garbage can, the dumpster. What is more, they're literally everywhere. So why does the trash have to go out the car window instead of where it belongs? It's thoughtless because it is evidence that whoever is doing it cannot be possibly thinking any further than his or her own bubble-like existence. It's ignorant because it presumes that someone else has nothing better to do than to clean up after some self-centered slob who is simply too lazy to put their stuff where it belongs.

I wish I knew how to get this to stop.

More stuff

When I was about 10 or so, the family went on one of our last vacations, to visit friends of my parents who had recently moved to Florida. I had been there once before, but I was too young to remember, but there are a couple of scraps of memory from my last time there, even if it was some time ago.

I remember we drove to the highest point in the state ... I think it was around 300 feet above sea level, and being from the foothills of Western Pennsylvania, I wasn't all that impressed. Unfortunately, I was just too young to be impressed by flatness. I did have an awareness of the relativity of what amazes or excites us. I'm sure Floridians were really proud of their highest point, just like I was impressed by our highest ridge, even though I knew that somewhere out west, people, both local and visitors, were impressed by real peaks on real mountains.

My brother and his family went to Florida on vacation last year. He told me about it while I was visiting recently. He told me that Florida actually has a mountain now. Hmm, I thought, if Arizona can buy a bridge that's just for show, maybe the Floridians were onto a new tourist idea too. No, he told me, it wasn't a tourist attraction, it was a literal mountain of garbage: it was big and it was long and it stunk. Apparently garbage and heat and humidity are a poor combination for tourist attractions.

Stuff. Too much stuff. Too much packaging. Too many people somewhere there were never a lot of people. Stuff we use, stuff we can't save, stuff we don't want, stuff we can no longer use at all. And in the end, it becomes a mountain where there were never mountains before. I was a bit surprised, though, when my brother told me no one was capitalizing on it in any way. How un-American is that? The highest point in the state was an attraction when I was a kid. I wonder what it is now. Probably just another memory.

Spring is springing

It's that time of year again. How often do we hear that? But it is, nevertheless. One of my favorite times of year, too: spring. Yep, for meteorologists, it has already sprung. For the rest of us, well, we have to wait a couple of weeks, but it's in the air. You may not be able to feel it yet, but I can. The days are getting noticeably longer; it's a bit warmer and wetter; the pace of everyday is starting to pick up; you start getting that feeling that you need to get a few things sorted.

Well, that's how it goes for me at any rate. Spring is the time to clean house, not just literally ... you know, to get rid of that winter grime, to air the place out ... but to make some semblance of a fresh start. This is a good time to think about throwing away all that stuff that has been accumulating, stuff you have no idea why you have or what you're ever going to do with. Most of our stuff in fact.

Let's face it, we in the so-called Industrialized World (and by the way, don't we need to change that label now that we've entered the Information Age?) have way more stuff than we need, and if those I've been talking to lately are being honest, way more than we want. I'm amazed at how much that really is. Oh, I know there are collectors out there. You know, people who can't have enough, keep enough, show off enough. But it's not really helping us, is it? No, too much of what we do really doesn't do a lot for us. For all the information flowing around, for all of it that we have at our fingertips, it is not really helping us all that much. No, we just tend to hang on to a lot of old stuff.

Well, now's the time. Spring is springing, and there's no time like the present to make a fresh start. Chuck out all that old crap, especially the crap in your head. I'm going to. It's time for Spring.