Déjà vu, all over again (or Thanks for the memory, Yogi)

Most of you don't know who Yogi Berra is, and that's OK. He was a part of my childhood. Every kid who grew up in America during my time, grew up with baseball. I was never a big fan, but there are times I still think of hot, muggy, summer nights at the ball park. That's a memory worth preserving ... but that's a subject for another time.

Anyhow, the title of this blog is one of Yogi's famous lines. A lot of people thought he was a little slow, but still a nice guy. I think he was a little ahead of the rest of us, and still a nice guy. I wonder if it matters which it was. I doubt it.

You know, it's weird when you get that déjà vu feeling. We've all had them, that's for sure. Usually, they sneak up on you when you least expect it, and suddenly you're overwhelmed by that feeling that you've been here before and done this before, and heard these exact words before ... it's like reality gets into a strange kind of time loop. It scares some folks, or so I've been told, but I've always found those situations exhilarating somehow. Well, I did, that is, until I realized my whole life is turning into one big déjà vu.

Just recently, an old internet-who-stepped-out-into-real-life friend stopped by for a visit. Since I'm back to where I started when Uncle Sam sent me overseas during my dodging-the-war-in-Vietnam days. Through more twists-of-fate than most people are allowed, I ended up doing liaison on the German-German border. I was sitting there in the Fulda Gap just waiting for "the balloon to go up" marking the onslaught of the savage Russian hordes who were just chomping at the bit a mere five miles as the crow flies from where I called home.

Yep, that was me at the End of the (so-called) Free World, keeping the world safe for democracy, ensuring that you could all sleep well at night. I was there. I did that. And, to this day, I wonder what I was doing.

We all knew the drill back then: when those Russian missiles full of nuclear warheads were screaming in to kill us, well, just hide under your desk at school and then, once the big dust cleared, walk quickly (don't run) home, and take a buddy with you, someone who would have had to take a bus to get to his or her own home. It didn't matter if you liked them or not. The fate of the world was at stake, and everybody has to do his part, you know.

And then, well, there I was, staring Ivan and his evil cohorts in the face, just wondering when they were going to take advantage of the slightest lapse in our vigilance and come thundering over the border with their thousands of tanks. They were just salivating, waiting for the order to attack ... at least that what was I was told. I spent a lot of time out on that border, I can assure you, and not once did I see a bit being chomped nor anyone salivating. I did see a lot of sad-sacks like myself being forced to pull duty somewhere they never thought they'd be. And every once in a while, one of them would escape and we'd have to debrief them, and well, their lives weren't going all that well and they were looking for something better, so they risked life and limb to go for it. I wanted something better too, but in comparison I was too much of a coward to risk life and limb for it. I just wasn't getting that life-and-limb thing.

Ivan wasn't coming, not if he could help it. And neither was Klaus or Dieter or Hans or whatever their parents had named them. They were sitting out their duty and the end of their world just hoping that Paul Bunyan wasn't going to get frisky, like I was hoping that none of them were getting the itch to conquer either. Turns out, they weren't. Little foot soldiers like we were (and that we had 100% in common) don't want to conquer anything. We'd rather be at home, or with our friends, or having a beer, or looking for a date, or just avoiding hassle. Anything would have been better than what we were doing, but we were under orders. Big brains somewhere knew a whole lot better than we did what was good for us.

Well, that's what they wanted us to believe, but I didn't believe it then ... and from what I was able to gather, neither did Ivan, nor Klaus, nor Dieter, nor Hans. To quote my idol, Bob, we were "Only a Pawn in Their Game".

That Cold-War thing was a big deal. A lot of people invested a lot of time, energy, and other resources, not to mention money in keeping that illusion going, to get us to buy into the fear and uncertainty, to get us to live in abject fear of total annihilation, so that other people, most definitely unrelated to any of us normal mortals, could gain a helluva lot of power and make one whole helluva lot of money. Down here, on the ground, there were millions of ignorant, exploited, drones who were working their butts off in hopes of a better life while up there, in ephemeral spheres, a small number of spoiled elites were ensuring that we drones kept our noses to the grindstone so that their lives which were immeasurably better already could be even more immeasurably better, or something like that.

One thing I know for sure: none of it had anything to do with freedom, democracy, the will of a people, or any of those high-falutin' ideals we get beaten about our heads and shoulders. Ideals are just a red herring. In the end, it's mostly about money and power, but not for those who don't have it, rather for those who do (and they always want more).

So, I took my friend out to Point Alpha, the Cold-War Memorial site nearby, where they still have an actual compound that was used by the troops on the border and where you can see in real life what lengths both sides went to in order to keep alive that illusion that something great was at stake.

For my part, it was, and is, nice to be able to share a part of my life with another human being. I like taking people out to the border so that they can see the physicalities of what was going on back then. There is a little museum out there as well, so you can see pictures and artifacts and models and listen to real-life testimonies of people who experienced all that, back then, when the world was clearly divided into black and white, us and them, friend and foe. And while you're walking around, telling your friend what you were doing then and how and why, you suddenly realize that it's over 40 years later and at bottom, not a damn thing has changed at all.

Suddenly, you're overwhelmed: it's déjà vu all over again.

Again, the old heroes push their way into your head. Dylan, a classic if there ever was one, "With God on our Side", near the end, sings:

I've learned to hate the Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side

What the hell are we doing? NATO's piling in as many troops around Russia as is possible, though there is no (just like there wasn't then) any clear, reasonable indication that Russia wants anything more than to be left alone ... or be given a seat at the table, but apparently we'll be having none of that. The USA alone has more than 1,000 military bases overseas, and apparently it's not enough. And they've got themselves trying to stare down the Chinese in the South China Sea, and just what they're doing in and around Syria is anybody's guess, but one thing is for sure: the Russians aren't going to have any say in anything if Uncle Sam has anything to say about it.

And there I was: staring at the fence, trying to formulate a coherent thought, and it had slithered its way, unseen and unsuspected, into my ill-prepared consciousness: not a damn thing has changed no matter how much water has flown under the bridge of history.

None of this inspires confidence in my view of human beings and their ability to learn. None of this comforts me when I have trouble sleeping at night. There aren't any facts involved now, just like there weren't any then. It serves some interests to have this full-blown, heavily armed, and propaganda-rich animosity towards the Russians so the long-gone, almost-forgotten, Cold War has been heated up again. What's for dinner tonight, dear? Left-overs.

Things were, in many regards, simpler in Yogi's days. But, truth be told, they weren't much different. That's kind of sad, when you stop to think about it.

Think about it.

RE: Brussels. It happened again, and we're still surprised

My heart aches every time innocent people are ripped out of life because evildoers do what they do. I weep for every family who suffers because someone, some group, some ideology thinks they can get what they want by harming others. How perverse can you get.

But, perverse is also thinking that we -- you and me -- are guiltless. We're not, no matter how much we want to be. Why? Because we allow those who have every interest at heart but our own to decide what is right and what is wrong.

What just happened in Brussels is a tragedy, no doubt about it. What it preventable? No. Could we have done something about it? No. Can we do anything in the future to prevent such tragedies? No, but we can do a lot to reduce the likelihood that we are victims of terror.

Terror is terror because it comes unexpectedly, violently, without warning, overwhelmingly. It shocks us to our core. Otherwise, it wouldn't be terror, would it?

The media love to tell us how terrible it all is. Politicians are the first to rant and rave and rail against the pain. But, in the end, those who cause it should be the last to condemn it.

A little story, a blast from the past: when I decided to stay in Germany after my tour of duty, the country was firmly in the grip of terrorists; that is, zealots who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted, regardless of what it cost. In those days (the 70s), the hounds of Hell were domestic, home-grown; our own (the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Red Army Faction) ... their color was different, to be sure, but their rhetoric and their love of violence was the same as we find today with Daesh. Change the colors, change the words, but you can't change the message, and you can't change the mindlessness. While I was studying at a near-by German university, every week a bomb exploded, a car blew up, sometimes with casualties sometimes not, but with wanton disregard for innocent life. And what did we do? Nothing. Because it was the right thing to do.

People were dying, violence was being wrought, but no one, and I mean no one ... neither the populace at large not the politicians in power ... thought of curtailing rights, instituting massive surrveilance, or creating extra-judicial gray zones to fight against the insanity. All of those are standard fare today. Why? Because we've lost sight of the goal: a free and open society which embraces values that are worth standing up, and even dying for. No, today, we've become cowards and victims of our own making.

It doesn't matter whether terror strikes in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, London, Athens, or anywhere else. Terrorists can only terrorize if we allow ourselves to succumb to fear. When we do, they win. It is that simple. In that moment in which we allow the power that be to curtail our rights, restrict our freedoms, impose their own will, we have lost the struggle for humanity. It is that simple.

It's not about safety or security or surveillance or anything like that at all. Either we have values we believe in and are willing to die for or we can merely choose whom we would like to be our masters and enslavers.

I find it particularly interesting that those who profess to have the strongest faith -- evangelicals and fundamentalists -- who are the first to call for more restrictions, more protection, more repression, more whatever, to save or protect their already petty lives. If you cannot live in the face of death -- the fate of every single living organism on earth -- you haven't really lived and chances are you never will.

So don't make life miserable for the rest of us. We live and we die; everything that lives, eventually dies. Just because your own belief makes small of this fact is no reason to cry for the protection of another because you personally are afraid.

I choose freedom. I choose life. I choose a world that allows me to be me and you to be you. I choose being over fear. I choose going down with my head up rather than cowering with my head down.

You can choose more police, more military, more violence, more killing, more aggression ... that's your choice, but do know that I will fight you every step of the way. I am willing to die knowing that I lived, in freedom, rather than dying never knowing that I lived.

The case of the classified data

Recently, and not for the first time, conservative heads were exploding because emails from/to Hillary Clinton were discovered that contained classified information. Some things simply make me chuckle.

First, a disclaimer: I could care less that Hillary Clinton is involved. I'm not convinced she's presidential material (her husband proved he wasn't) and she hasn't really ever accomplished anything that makes me think she could handle the job in a respectful and humanly decent manner. (The last US President who managed that was Jimmy Carter, but we all know how his administration has been spun. End of digression.) So, this isn't about her, it's all about the accusation, and I don't care who's making it.

At the beginning of my working career, I ended up being an intelligence analyst at the edge of the Free World (5 km as the crow flies from the Iron Curtain) at the height of the Cold War. I wore civilian clothes and was primarily charged with gathering intelligence from any and all sources, even exploiting my contacts, whenever and wherever possible. In a sense, I was the "spy who was out in the cold". An important part of my "job" was conducting "liaison" with local national agencies in order to gather, what I was told was highly sensitive information that was vital for the national security of the US of A. Fair enough.

At least once a week, my partner and I would travel out to the railroad crossing point between East and West to get the word on what was slipping over and across the border. The border police were great guys: friendly, helpful, always positive, appreciative of the fact that we could speak the local language, and they were generous. They went through every train that came out of the Eastern Zone and gathered up all the newspapers, for example, that the travellers left behind (litter-leavers know have no national allegiance). We dutifully took these back to our office, where the miraculous happened.

Our "product", so to speak, were "intelligence reports": the more you submitted, the higher you were rated, and we were no slackers, I can assure you. Out came the "form" (everything in the military has a form), the key data was filled in (in triplicate, of course), and the newspapers were simply attached. Everything, however, that left our office was, by policy, classified SECRET. And so, the form was stamped SECRET at the top and bottom of every page, and each and every page of the attachments (i.e., the newspapers) were stamped SECRET as well. This was all bundled together into a double-enveloped package, stamped appropriately, then paper-taped across every edge of tape and on every seam before being taken up to the mailroom for sending to our "customer", the translation detachment at our next-higher echelon of authority. There, once received, droves of translators translated every single headline and word and stamped every page they produced with SECRET on top and bottom of the page. And the translations were reworked as well into "reports" all of which were classified at least SECRET, though those reports in which the analysts believed to see something "important" were classified at higher levels. It would take a total of about 40 years for our newspapers to eventually be unclassified, but in the interim, the national security of the USA would not be compromised.

Yeah, I love it when journalists play the "classified" card. They have no idea what it means. I have some idea and I can tell you that most of what I saw classified were things anybody anywhere with even the slightest amount of interest could have collected for themselves.

But they didn't. Why? Because the "secrets" weren't worth the paper they were written on.

Happy Holidays & Merry Christmas

One of the silliest notions out and about these days is that there's a War on Christmas. It takes a pretty simple mind to think that just because one group of people celebrates one way and other groups celebrate other ways, their way is the best or only acceptable way. This is the kind of thing that turns me off from religion: when it becomes so exclusive and chauvinistic that any other form of belief is not just intolerable, it is downright wrong. And this insistence that I am right and you are wrong is the guarantee for many other people not wanting to celebrate at all.

The month of December (as we call it today) and the time of the winter solstice (which has been recognized by people for practically as long as there have been people) were taken as times for celebration. The ancient Romans celebrated the Saturnalia, the Mayas and Incas had their festivals at this time. At the solstice, the Scandinavians celebrated Juul and the custom was taken over by the English (as in Yule Log), in Poland some still celebrate Gody, in Northwest Pakistan there is Chaomos, and even today the Buddhists celebrate Bodhi Day on the 8th, and Hanukkah was from the 7th to the 14th this year. So belated Happy Bodhi Day to my Buddhist friends and Happy Hanukkah to my Jewish ones.

For those who think that political correctness has taken over, it is only because you have allowed it to. You're not going to go to jail for saying Merry Christmas, and people who are so thin-skinned and easily offended not only need to get over themselves, they need to recognize that any holiday greeting, even the wrong one, is simply intended as a friendly, human gesture. If you think it's any more than that ... if you take it as any less than that ... you've got more problems than most of us can help you with.

Unfortunately, I could not see that the Hindus and Sikhs have a holiday around this time, nor does Islam this (or next year). But, as everyone else has a reason to celebrate and things are going to be closed down on this day or the other, take the time to enjoy it with friends and family, and if you have no one to celebrate, feel free to celebrate with me, at least in spirit, because we probably won't be able to get together.

When there is so much going on in so many different quarters and for so many different reasons, there is nothing wrong with a quick "Happy Holidays" to be inclusive (as long as it's well-intended and heartfelt). It is a busy time of year, as we all know.

What all of these celebrations have in common, however, is that they give special attention to light (of hope, of good faith in the future, and well-being), warmth (at least in the Northern Hemisphere where it is coldest), peace and good-will to others. All of them share this. All of them. To think of "war" at all at this time of year is bizarre, narrow-minded, intolerant, and, well, ignorant. I don't have to share another's belief (or non-belief, for that matter), but the most decent, human thing to do, at minimum, is respect it.

So, Happy Holidays to all, no matter what you're celebrating. And if you have no real reason to celebrate, borrow someone else's or even make up your own, but make it a celebration of peace, joy, and hope. We'll all be the better for it.

Brighter tomorrows

Yes, yes, yes ... there has been a good deal of frustration in the last couple of posts. I'll be the first one to admit that. After all, there's a lot to be frustrated about. If you stop to be honest with yourself, there are a lot of things not working these days. A lot is broken. Some things are on their last legs, and if some changes aren't made soon, I'm afraid a lot of people are going to get hurt. I'm not exaggerating. Dying of starvation, being thrown into poverty, losing everything you have, contracting a fatal disease ... those are all very painful, and it is precisely these things that are not occurring less often. All of them are on the rise.

I can't be the only one who see this. I can't be the only one who can figure out that the trajectory we have put ourselves on is not going to end happily without some changes. And, I can't be the only one who has figured out that some of those changes aren't going to be to my liking, but that doesn't make them any less necessary. So here's the deal:

Decide what it is that you want to give up. Everybody has to give up something. Every change starts with ourselves. We don't get more ... we have to give more, so you have to decide what it is that you want to give. It's not about you. It's never been about you. It's about your friends, your family, your children, your grandchildren. It's about people you never met and people you never will meet.

Oh, and before you get carried away, it's not about your political involvement, how you vote, or what shows you watch or what news you listen to. It's about you deciding what you can do to make the world a better place. Not better for you, but better for someone else. If you're not making the world better for someone else, you're not making it better at all.

Holy moley

When you are considered by some to be a cynically optimistic curmudgeon, my last post really isn't all that bad. At least it's not out of character. Which came first, the character or the cynicism will have to remain a chicken-and-egg question. I don't think it much matters.

I know, I know, there are lots of you out there who still have hope for the world, and I can assure you that I'm glad you're there. I doubt you're going to have much effect, bar some unforeseen world-altering event, but as the Germans like to say, hope dies last. What nevertheless amazes me most, I think, is the degree of denial that we humans are capable of.

Think about it for a moment: When you have to pump almost $30 trillion into an economic system just to keep it afloat, just how robust can it be? When you have almost 10 million people dying of starvation alone every year, how effective can business be? When three people own more than 48 countries combined, how fair is that? When it is obvious that we've got huge environmental problems but we insist on business as usual, how smart is that? When we give up freedom after freedom in the name of false security, how do we explain that to our children? When everybody is wrong, how can anyone be right? Yes, these are big-ticket issues and for every one of them there are literally millions of people who deny that any one of them, let alone all of them, is true. And I'm supposed to have hope in a brighter future?

Sorry, no can do. Sorry, my sleep-walking friends, but it's time to wake up. The first step, says Lao Tzu, is the hardest, but it's one everybody can take: drop your opinions. Stop talking, start listening. How hard can that be?

The whole hole

If one opinion is as good as any other, then none of them has any value. Things without value cannot serve as the basis for Values. And so, here we are in a valueless world. How great is that?

In a desperate attempt to salvage something from it all, we've reverted to "worth" as a replacement. After all, the words are very similar in meaning, so the transition hasn't been all that difficult. Unfortunately, the words only appear to be similar in meaning. But what else can we do?

Not much. We are not allowed to have values anymore because the opponents of my values decry them as mere opinions. And everyone who doesn't share my values, well, they're just not worth talking to. (And if you stop for just a second to look at how "values" and "worth" were used in that last sentence, you'd realize how little the two words have to do with one another.) And that's precisely what happens. We no longer talk to ... we only talk at.

Political debate has become nothing more than the repeating of positions until the other either agrees or stops listening. Religious debate has become nothing more than the repeating of tenants of faith until the other agrees or stops listening. Educational debate has become nothing more than repeating of alleged principles until the other agrees or stops listening. In the end, what they share is the fact that there is nothing more than opinion being spouted, and no one is listening.

Perhaps the most effective marketer of all time, Josef Goebbels, is well known for his adage: if you repeat the lie often enough, the people will believe it. And that's where we are, whether we like it or not, and whether we want to admit it or not. Everybody's bought into the same lie: opinions matter.

Here we are at the beginning of the 21st century, and all we have to offer the world are opinions: economies are better than societies; my god is bigger than your god; my students are smarter than yours; my team is better than your team; my clique is cooler than your clique; my ... well, you can fill in the blank.

Almost 2,000,000 years of human history (or roughly 6,000 for you fundamentalists) and that's all we have to show for ourselves. Don't we have reason to be proud?

Deeper in the hole

Opinions are not restricted to just the political sphere. That's where we encounter them quite often, and it is there that it's most apparent that we're dealing with opinions, but, truth be told, they're everywhere ... in every major sphere of life.

Let's take economics. We love to talk about that, don't we? Like I've said so often, we traded in our society for an economy, so all we ever talk about anymore is how much stuff costs? Who's going to pay for that? Why do I have to pay so many taxes? And it's all based on what? Right – opinions. Free markets: opinion. They don't exist; never have. Add one cent of government subsidies to anything and that market is no longer free. Which aspect of our economy is unaffected? None. Who are the biggest advocates of free-market economics? Those who receive the biggest subsidies: banks, defense contractors, private equity speculators ... and more and more the broad masses of people without much of anything, for they've bought into the opinion that if it's free, I have a chance too.

Or, what about religion? We've got at least two related religions running around claiming sole access to the truth: Christianity and Islam. In both cases, however, it is just one variety of the religion that dominates the discussion, namely the fundamentalists. What gets me is that they both claim the same source for their rightness: the Big Guy Himself. What are the claims then really based on: opinion, what one has chosen to believe.

Or, education? We don't even teach facts anymore. No one learns to write, to express thoughts, to think critically, to debate ... why? Because it's all politically incorrect. Since when has political anything been the determiner of what we need to learn in order to be conscientious citizens? Oh, I almost forgot: citizens are members of a society, and we don't have a society anymore, just an economy, and how educated do you have to be in order to consume? Consumers shouldn't be too smart, they might not buy my stuff.

We're a lot farther down the hole than we like to admit, aren't we?

Down the hole

And therein lies the rub, as Bill once wrote. We can't and don't know what's right, because we can no longer agree. And we can't agree for the simple reason that we can't talk with one another anymore. We love talking at others, but there's as good as no more talking to. We can't discuss and debate anymore, because we no longer acknowledge that the other person has anything worth listening to. Everybody's entitled to their opinion, and makes none of them right, and none of them wrong. Everybody has one, and those folks who agree with mine are the good guys and everyone else is a bad guy. Isn't that how it works?

If we're honest, that's precisely how it works. When I was growing up – and I realize that was a long time ago – we thought that opinions were the result of thinking, not a replacement for it. But that's changed. I'll give Fox News one thing: they call themselves a news channel but they admit they aren't one; they have clearly defined hours when they broadcast news and everything else is opinion. No, the vast majority of their listeners/watchers/fans don't know the difference, but at least they have made it known.

You can't argue with opinions. They aren't based on anything. They are merely individual (or prescribed) interpretations of a personal selection of facts. We still use words like "truth" and "justice", but they don't really mean anything. "Truth" has come to mean "agrees with me"; "justice" more or less means "got what I think s/he deserved". And that's it. Our entire social and political debate has been reduced to little more than he-said-she-said. I find that just a little more than sad.

Beside the hole

For those of you who have been suffering through these "hole" posts (not post holes ... please note the difference), you have to be asking yourself about this time, just where is all of this leading. All I can say is that that is a another excellent question. Nevertheless, I'm going to try and answer it, and to do so, I'm going to make use of two very popular words ... at least popular these days ... for the simple reason that they will be used in a sense much closer to their original intent than is thought of today.

What have we got? Fundamentally, our beliefs drive our opinions, regardless of the facts; what is more, the facts, in and of themselves, are of little value, they just are. On the one hand, then, we have those who believe in the stability of their beliefs, that their beliefs are the right beliefs, that the reason anything functions as well as it does is because of how they believe. We'll call these folks "conservatives"; that is, those who think that things should pretty much stay the way they are. On the other hand, we have those who believe that just because a lot of folks believe something doesn't necessarily make it right; there could be different things to believe at different times or in different places. We'll call these people "relativists". (Gotcha, didn't I? Admit it, you thought I was going to write something very different.)

What's wrong with this picture? What should be wrong with it, you may be asking. It looks just fine to me. Well, if we stop and reflect for just a moment, why should there be only two positions to take on this: conservatism and relativism? Why isn't there another, if not other, way(s) of looking at all of this? Well, there is. And it's what we're going to call, for lack of a better word, realism. Yes, it's just that simple to redefine somebody else's words. We should never forget that language is just that: language, a way of expressing our understanding of reality. And, in deference to the master, George Carlin, I might add we can't say things in our own words, just in those words that everyone else uses as well.

So, there we have it: conservatives, relativists, and realists. How do we know who's right? Can we know what's right? How do we decide what's right? Those are the pressing questions for the moment. The short answer is: we don't.

Back to the hole

Facts in and of themselves are just that, facts. Opinions, even informed opinions, are just opinions. They don't tell us what is good, bad or indifferent. They really don't tell us anything (other than what is or how something thinks about something). But, in the end, they're really not all that helpful. Why?

At bottom, what makes a difference is really only that which matters, that which has meaning. But meaning for whom? How do we determine what something means. This is a much more difficult question, believe me. It may even be the most difficult question of all. Why? Because when all is said and done, we find meaning in those things that we believe.

This may sound banal, and to a certain extent it is, but it is nevertheless deep, and not everyone is ready to dive into that deepness. What am I talking about? Let's say, just for the sake of argument, Joan believes in free-market capitalism. How does she interpret the "facts" about starvation in the world? Let's say, for example, that Tom believes in a redistribution of wealth, if necessary, forced. How does he interpret those same facts? Who's "right"?

Yes, here's the rub. What the facts tell us, what they mean, depend, in the end on what we believe, in particular how we believe the world functions, whether money or G-d is at the root of all things, what we believe democracy to be or what we understand when we use the words "freedom" or "liberty" or "government" or "wealth" or any number of other abstract concepts that can't be corralled in fact or statistics or numbers.

No, in the end, it is our beliefs that drive our thinking, our understanding of numbers, our interpretation of reality, our opinions and our knowledge. Everybody can't be right, and everybody can't be wrong. But, the biggest part of our unending discussions don't center around facts, or statistics, or anything, except what we believe ... and we tend to congregate with those who believe the things that we do too.

I only bring this up because while we think we are being oh so convincing in our argumentation, that we are so persuasive in our presentations, in fact we are merely telling others what it is we believe. And the question that immediately presents itself, of course, is why is that what you (or I) believe better than what somebody else believes? Yes, just why should that be?

Over the hole

How do you figure out who's got the best numbers? I know you're not going to like this, but we have to now ask ourselves what do we mean by "best"? Are the best numbers those that most accurately describe the phenomenon in question, or are the best numbers those that we like the most? Good question, I think.

What I've been leading up to over the past few posts is that for as much as we may like numbers and quantitative data and all that objectivity, truth be told, they aren't as objective as we would like. The numbers can't really tell us anything. The numbers are, depending on how we approach them, merely one way of describing whatever it is we are looking at. The numbers aren't just "there", independent of us. There are only numbers there when we choose to count. This is what my conference-attending friends need to remember. And it's what you need to remember, as well, when you read something – including my posts – where numbers and statistics and data are presented.

The question we have to be asking ourselves is: So what?

The Unites States is the richest country in the world (in terms of GDP). About 33% of all workers worldwide are unemployed or poor. The Germans (or Australians) consume the most beer per capita in the world. (It depends on the year ... there seems to be an undocumented competition going on.) Only about 16% of students pursuing a bachelor's degree in the US attending college full-time. The number of young people pursuing a college degree in Germany is about 28% of a given class year, while in the US it is almost 50%.

The response to each and every one of these statements must be the same: So what?

At best, these are facts, even if every one of these facts is a statistic, a number, something objective. But facts are just that: facts. They don't really tell us all that much, do they?

Around the hole

My question is, why is everyone entitled to an opinion? Shouldn't we be saying that everyone is entitled to an informed opinion? How can we tell the difference? I mean, an opinion is an opinion is an opinion, is it not?

One thing we can do is question the opinion-giver as to the reason for that particular opinion. We really should get over our overly sensitive politeness at least enough to determine with the opinion we're being confronted with is informed or uninformed. It makes life easier and is relatively painless (unless the opinion-giver is presented uniformed opinions and feels particularly strong about them ... but we have a word to describe that too: it's called "prejudiced"). And then?

If you've been following the last couple of posts, you may be coming to the slow realization that determining what's worth listening to is a matter of effort, and Lord knows, we moderns aren't all excited about effort. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but living in the modern world just ain't as easy as it looks. Yes, we have to start deciding which back-up evidence is good (or acceptable) or bad; we have to figure out a way to evaluate the evidence and the resulting opinions. (And for those of you who may have lost sight of my train of thought over the last couple of posts, we're now going to come back to the numbers.)

In the absence of any other measure, we tend to think that numbers are somehow "objective". The person with the best quantitative evidence must, of course, have the best opinion. After all figures don't lie, do they? But, as a wise person once noted, all liars figure. No, it's not as easy as we'd like. And there we are, once again ... immediately ... back in that ol' hard-work dilemma. We need to figure out now who's got the best numbers.

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.