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.