The End of Reading?

I’m reading a book relating to my history. It’s 500+ pages long, demands at least a freshman-college reading vocabulary and proceeds with an assumption that the reader already has a basic grasp of the people and culture being elaborated upon. In other words, it’s tough going: I find I need to reread passages, compare what’s being said to what others have said, and I have to manage distractions if I’m to concentrate and comprehend.

Reading and writing fluency brought us out of the dark ages. It opened the door to a civilization in which new ideas could be shared; invention, innovation, social sciences, health science, and the philosophies and theologies were all opened to the literate public. It wasn’t always pretty, mind you, since literacy is on a more/less, not a yes/no axis. Literacy that allows individuals to engage in complex issues like mathematics, physics, chemistry, as well as theology, philosophy, and related social disciplines results from hard work and disciplined engagement.

You’d think that general literacy would be both cumulative and progressive, but that’s not a given. Various studies have concluded that literacy in the USA, for instance, has been waning in recent generations, and that when artificial intelligence reaches its inevitable maturity, it will no longer be knowledge supported by literacy that will guide our decisions and opinions. Picking and choosing among expedient, quick, undemanding alternatives will replace judgments made in the light of human compassion, empathy, love, the qualities that make the human experience of living worthwhile.

I’ve been struck by research into the pleasure/reward science that demonstrates how stimulation of the pleasure circuits in the brain so easily becomes super addictive in very little time. Rats were given a pleasure stimulus via electrodes every time they pressed a lever. Pressing that lever repeatedly displaced everything else: sex, drink, food. Had they not been removed from the experiment, the rats would have starved to death. Similar experiments with human volunteers have produced similar results.

We have a foretaste of AI as a “Skinner Box” in the social media’s ability to keep us scrolling, chasing that pleasure reward that can only be found by endlessly flipping through posts. Like the experimental rat, what is missed—while the focus is on chasing pleasure—can be critical. No young person is likely to read and study A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking if it competes for time with the effortless browsing on Tik-Tok.

The internet is full of ads for software that turns text into speech, so that reading is no longer necessary; you can listen to the text being read aloud while you cook dinner, drive to work, assemble whatzits in a factory. But understanding the text requires the same level of literacy whether it’s read by you, or to you. That plus the obvious problem of no opportunity to underline, reread, check with references renders the text to speech idea absurd… while adding another chapter to the decline-of-literacy story.

Mennonite Preacher Anslo and Wife - Rembrandt van Rijn

To read T.D. Regehr’s Mennonites in Canada: 1939-1970 cover to cover will require about 15 hours of concentrated reading. (I read material like this at about 250 words-per-minute on average.) I’ve already learned something about my heritage after reading the first 30 pages; could I have done without these few epiphanies? Of course. We have choices galore, and I could possibly have chosen to read, read, read about astronomy. Or I could have spent the 15 hours watching sports and sports commentary on streaming  TV or feeding toonie after toonie into the VLT at the local bar. Not much literacy required there.

NAICA

gg.epp41@gmail.com

Our Gold and Silver Days

 

AI generated image

Celtic Thunder does a deeply nostalgic song whose chorus goes something like: “Sing me the songs of our gold and silver days, days filled with innocence and light. Not a penny to our name, we were happy just the same, in our gold and silver days.” (2024 5 Million Community Video Final 720P (Horizontal)).

The “good old days” sensibility can be illustrated in any number of ways. An illogical argument that a dollar could buy so much more “then,” than it does “now” seems like a “good old thing,” for instance… if we neglect inflation.

It may well be a non-negotiable characteristic of being human, namely that we end up comparing our present to our past unfavourably. Aging provides an obvious case in point. We pick out certain features of our past and give them a “gold and silver” sheen, then compare them to the worst of our present.

There are those among us who understand the difference between an objective understanding of the past and nostalgia. We call them historians, and their work allows them to see the earth and all life on it engaged in a constantly evolving process. Unfortunately, most of us are too bound up in the frenzy of daily life to allow for that kind of attention to the “hows and whys” of our being and doing. So our analyses of what’s good and what’s bad in the world are simple, subjective.

And so we come to the downside of a “gold and silver” assessment of the past, evidenced in how easily we conclude that “it’s getting worse and worse,” and someone, or some ones, are to blame. And the obvious targets must be the institutions we can name: World Health Organization, NATO, the Liberal, Democratic or Conservative Party, the Muslim religion, Carney, the pope or the ones we can’t name like the Deep State, Antifa, the  Woke, or whatever new conspiracy theory is floated on social media.

Mind you, The Calgary Stampede is now on, a reenactment of a bygone age complete with costuming. For some, there’s pleasure in the spectacle of men and women doing competitively what were work-a-day activities in “the good old days.” None of the spectacles there are reminiscent of my olden days, and I’m more bound to see the entire show as a celebration of conquest, most like the spectacle of the Roman gladiatorial arena. It could be argued that this is not dissimilar to Professional Sports, where the zero-sum, victor vs. vanquished event whets something desirable in us. Seems it’s normal in human nature to live in the competitive world vicariously, if not literally.[i]

I guess this is a plea to all of us to balance our nostalgia with our knowledge of history, of the world, of our communities and of ourselves.

The most ubiquitous of words found in nostalgia might be home. I learned in an Art Aesthetics class long ago why it is that landscapes with high mountains and dark clouds, with a lighted cottage with smoke drifting up lazily find such appeal. Home is about safety, comfort, predictability and love. So nostalgically wished for in eras of rapid social change.  

 

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[i][i] Vicariously means “experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another.” – Merriam-Webster.  Sports watching allows an observer to celebrate a victory to which he made no contribution. 

Have we elected a liberal Liberal?

 

Mark Carney continues to enjoy majority approval in the Canadian public. He’s got a great smile and projects an amiable presence. His governorship of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England probably taught him that people respond well to even arbitrary decisiveness if it comes with a demeanour that projects wisdom and good will. Doctors and nurses pass or fail on bedside manner more than on their credentials, I’m told.

Our Prime Minister heads a Liberal government, but I’ve become less certain that he thinks and acts liberally by the common definitions of that word. Liberal Arts Education for instance, aspires to produce citizens who are broadly knowledgeable, tolerant of differences, competent readers, dialoguers, and community minded (as opposed to the current drive to make education more focused on specific, employment areas of engagement… Science, technology, engineering and mathematics: STEM.) Not surprising given the breakneck pace at which technology is advancing.

Here are a few of the areas in which Carney’s choices make me wonder about his liberality:

1.      His stated support for the US actions in Iran,

2.      His push to double Canada’s military capability,

3.      His appeasement of Alberta separatism by adding another pipeline,

4.      His reduction of environmental assessments in favour of industrial expediency,

5.      His costly drive to make Canada an AI leader.

I can’t predict whether Carney’s decidedly financial/industrial focus will improve life in Canada. To me, it feels like Canada is currently operating as a corporation with Carney as CEO. And I think back to great Liberal prime ministers like Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau who focused more on peace making and individual human rights and citizen welfare than we’re seeing today. And I look back at a Conservative prime minister in William Lyon Mackenzie King, who made it possible for over 20,000 refugees from Soviet tyranny to resettle in Canada.  

Being a pacifist, I obviously am appalled that we’re escalating our debt to have a dozen submarines, thirty or so jet fighters, at a cost that would build thousands of homes. The most we can do in this area, China, Russia, the USA could turn to rubble in a weekend. The USA’s “Peace through Strength” ideal has proven so often to fail: Vietnam, Afghanistan and now Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. Peace through friendship, dialogue and justice is the true liberal outlook.

We are a democracy. One citizen, one vote is a consequence of the liberalization of governance and, as far as I know, the best defense against tyranny. Unfortunately our contribution to our democracy too often ends at the voting booth, where we choose parties, not people mostly. I’m going to write to Carney stating my concerns about the five points. My letter will go into a big basket where with AI’s help, it will be sorted as relevant or irrelevant and via AI again, a letter will be generated to thank me for my concerns and that the Prime Minister takes my concerns very seriously. But I’ll send it anyway. A million such protests would make a difference. 

AFTERWORD: Estimated cost of 12 submarines, $24,000,000,000 (24 billion) to purchase and an equal amount to operate for their lifetime. Gripen jets have been sold for $90,000,000 (90 million each flyaway cost) so total purchase package equals $26,550,000,000 which at ca. $300,000 per home building cost, would build 88,500 homes. The per capita cost to Canadians is $663.75 for an investment that brings no profit, but requires immense cost in maintenance and operating after purchase. Not to mention interest on the borrowed billions. 

NAICA     gg.epp41@gmail.com

 

 

Do I really want to know?

 

(Image at https://www.bing.com/th/id/OIP.Wx237apHV7Um4GRHSklzGwHaE7?w=193&h=135&c=8&rs=1&qlt=90&o=6&dpr=1.6&pid=3.1&rm=2)

A YouTube podcast I’ve taken to is called The Rest is Science hosted by mathematician Hannah Fry and “content creator” Michael Stevens. In their entertaining one-hour dialogues, they explore questions like, “The Infinity Paradox” or “Would you Kill One Person to Save Five?”

“Who needs to know that stuff?” question naturally comes to mind. Yesterday, I got a lesson on magnetism: what it is, why the earth is a magnet, all served  with a side of migrating birds’ connection to magnetic forces. Some might protest, “Birds will migrate even if the earth’s magnetic polarity switches north to south, makers of compasses will quickly adjust their product to reflect it. All this whether I know it or not.”

There’s some truth in the “Ignorance is Bliss” adage.  We don’t tell children that the world lives on the brink of a horrible nuclear conflagration, do we? Would we even if it were true? And if television was airing an urgent message on a new pandemic and how to protect yourself, would you pay attention only if it didn’t interfere with an important hockey game broadcast? And would you pay more attention if you’d previously learned how the immune system reacts to bacteria and viruses and how science has invented vaccines to raise our bodily defenses, and how they work to achieve that?

Ignorance may provide bliss for the moment; it’s not that good at creating the wisdom that saves lives, or improves living conditions for the you and me (like air conditioners, let’s say). Lack of knowledge leaves us subject to speculation, guessing and conspiracy theories. I spent some time in the Roswell UFO Museum observing how misinformation and half truth could so easily indoctrinate people who lacked knowledge of the universe. [i]

But perhaps I’m sounding overly harsh. Perhaps, The Rest is Science appeals to me because I’ve a thirst for it. Some people are satisfied most by physical activity, some by the arts, some only have time to pursue sources of knowledge because of a demanding schedule of obligations. Most of us are born with wit enough to know that you eat the plum and not the stone, but not enough to follow the complicated conversation that complex knowledge demands.

In any case, if you thrive on new knowledge, try The Rest is Science on YouTube. Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens are easy to like, and knowledgeable as hell Wikipedia.

NAICA

Respond below or to gg.epp41@gmail.com

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[i] See (14 Planets and Moons That Scientists Believe Could Support Life) on the search for alien life. Proxima Centauri B  is 4.2 light-years away, or 9,600,000,000 kilometers. The fastest speed ever achieved by a man-made rocket launched from earth is about 60,000 km/h. At that speed a trip between Proxima Centauri B and planet Earth would take at the very least, 18 years and 7 months, one way. What launched rocket could carry enough life provisions to maintain a crew for 37.2 years? And what plunder could they usefully carry back? And where would they get the enormous energy required to launch them back home?

A Kindly Hand

 

The Good Samaritan

Perhaps I’m missing the logic behind what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine, and now between the USA/Israel and Iran. Is it really only about narcissists caught up in dreams of personal greatness supported by sycophants who hope to catch some of that greatness by harnessing themselves to their coattails? Surely there’s some of that, but it’s much more, obviously,

There’s plenty of conjecture about the deep, existential meaning behind the turmoil being created. I read a defense of the American President’s actions in Venezuela as an act of God’s will; at the same time liberal Christian leaders deplored it as more nearly a manifestation of the Antichrist at work.

More immediately, I’m surprised by the postings on social media that urge Canada to purchase either the US-made F-35A or the Saab Gripen to bolster our defensive capability and align with our allies in providing military potential. The psychology of offering two alternatives to squelch debate on the much more important question of the militarizing of Canada at great expense, that I understand.  

For a small country to match the firepower of much larger neighbours is futile. Should Russia or the USA, China or India decide that they can no longer do without the resources Canada sits on, our military resistance might simply mean that the necessary killing and plundering to achieve the inevitable would be multiplied. Surely prevention of war through skilled and sincere diplomacy is a much cheaper, much more effective defense than a hanger full of muti-million dollar jets, missiles and drones.

At a time like this, it’s helpful to review the military history of Costa Rica. A small American country in a continent where the mighty USA is determined to revive the Monroe Doctrine,  making the USA the real and only America, with the remainder of the two continents its backyard, so to speak. Costa Rica abolished its standing military in 1949, the rationale being that its sovereignty vis e vis the USA could never be guaranteed militarily in any case. Also, Latin American countries had experienced the usurping of militaries by dictators as forces of oppression. Funding was diverted to domestic life enhancement; the country has found no reason to reverse the abolition decision of 1949.

Please read a short history of that choice at Why Did Costa Rica Really Abolish Its Military?

I’m loathe to raise this point, but surely the three deist religions need to re-examine themselves in the light of their own, often expressed role in peacemaking. We’re not experiencing an extension of the Crusades, per se, but  the mindsets fueling the Iran/Israel/USA War right now would probably not be happening except for the preconceptions built in by Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions, each of which appear to have created and recreated the same God/Allah in their own image. Each of which have found ways to justify their positions in the current conflict embedded in their holy books.

Perhaps trying to explain wars logically is a fool’s errand. I can’t accede to the view that “as long as human nature exists, conflict will happen.” I’ve lived long enough to have experienced the empathetic, the sympathetic, the magnanimous generosity in human nature when language, culture or religious considerations are not inserted as being the essence of the moment. So I wrote a poem:

A KINDLY HAND

I was not then— nor ever was—

expectant that a kindly hand

would reach for me from up above

to rescue me from this or that

and set me down on firmer ground

 

But yet I sent a frightened prayer

from where I lay ‘mongst rocks and thorns

in a foreign ditch where few passed by ...

All hope seemed vain as darkness fell

that god or man would hear my cry.

 

I wept in fear and agony

and slept, and woke and slept again

but when the moon arose I saw

a figure hovering over me ...

I feared the reaper had appeared.

 

But no, a turbaned head now spoke

“As-Salaa-Alaikum,” was what it said

I answered him as I’d been told

“Wa Alaikum salam wa rahmatullah.”

He grunted, nodded, turned away.

 

I heard him groan to move the rocks

that kept me prisoner, tightly bound,

Unwound his turban, bandaged me

and voiced a sing-song melody

whose tone was all I understood.

 

He gathered sticks and built a fire

that spread a glow like summer sun

He sat me up, sat down by me,

We shared some Halvah, heavenly

and held communion, silently.

 

And I am now, will ever be

expectant that a kindly hand

will reach for me—not from above—

to rescue me from this or that

and set me down on solid ground.  

NAICA

gg.epp41@gmail.com

 

On Fingernails, Nipples and Who Cares

There are matters that we carry through life without ever questioning them, like, for instance, why do we have fingernails? Despite their questionable usefulness, they live on untouched by logic, experience or argument. They just are. It just doesn’t matter enough to urge us to contemplate them... existentially, that is.

When, if ever, was the last time you looked at those strange, almost bone-like tips to your fingers and wondered, “Why are they there?” Some of us may assume them to be simply an odd consequence of millions of years of evolution that somehow determined that land creatures survived best if their appendages had protective tips: hooves, claws, pads, toenails.

Fingernails are not critical for survival since we ceased to be hunters/gatherers when our defenses rested on the capability in our brains, limbs, torsos and appendages. Uses for fingernails have been devised of course, as in playing the harp or guitar, or nose-picking, but more generally they’re vestigial nuisances, like appendixes (appendices?) or men’s nipples. Dirt depositories.

Many of us grew up assuming that fingernails were simply a part of the essential human body, intelligently designed by an omniscient creator. Perhaps the design included fingernails because the creator foresaw the harp and the guitar. This reasoning (if we ever actually considered it) doesn’t really help to explain men’s nipples.

Others of us who went to school long enough to be challenged to think about such matters settled for a compromise: God created the life we’re living, and Darwin explained how he did it. (Note the “he” pronoun for God; shouldn’t it be he/she or… they?? I’m so confused!)

It’s snowing today, at least where I am. I know how snow develops from moisture in the atmosphere and that gravity causes it to fall to earth. Meteorologists know both that and weather phenomena to the point where they can predict when and where it will fall. John Doe has lived through 60 Saskatchewan winters and knows that a shovel is needed, and roads can be icy, and really, does he need to know much more?

The why and the how of things is that with which scientists, historians, philosophers, agronomists, etc., etc., grapple. But each in our own way, we do plenty of that as well. “Why is my left foot so itchy every night?” Or “What did I do to contract this itch in my left foot?” Quite possibly, the hypochondriacs among us may wonder, “What if it’s cancer and I lose my foot; what kind of future would that leave me?” Mostly we just scratch it, yawn and go to sleep.

Two things: 1) You can’t relive, can’t even revisit the past and 2) you can’t “test pilot” the future to see if you’ll like it. You can, however, find well-being, even happiness to the extent that your health and means allow it, even if you’re flummoxed by the meaning of your life or why your sweater is chafing the nipples you absolutely never needed.

For now, some of us choose to wonder less about the whys and the hows of the big questions. Instead, we clip our nails regularly and clean them as necessary, neither evolutionists nor creationists exempted.

               Some of us paint them.

NAICA  gg.epp41@gmail.com

 

 

I'm So Bored

 

Mennonite Preacher Anslo and Wife - Rembrandt van Rijn

Have you ever wondered what could be going on in the mind of a cow lying placidly in a pasture, and apparently contentedly chewing the cud balls she stored up in her morning feed. Or that lone horse in the pasture you drive by on your way to and from work who—standing on three legs as resting horses do—could be a lonely, living statue ... day after day after day. Surely absolute, unmitigated boredom is the lot of the domesticated animal species we imprison for our pleasure and nourishment.

            I’m intrigued by the creation myth in the first chapters of Genesis, primarily because it’s an  attempt to visualize what could make us so different from all other living things. Consciousness—or the knowledge of good and evil as Genesis calls it—is imagined to have been a choice fraught with such danger that the creator predicts that “if you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

            Scribes gathering and composing the text of Genesis 1-4 could see the fruit of this choice all around them; it was written during a time of bloody wars of conquest and revenge. Later, Charles Darwin would discover that it wasn’t choice, but natural selection and survival of the fittest that resulted in one species of life developing this knowledge of good and evil, this wonderful, yet dangerous, consciousness that gave humans a god-likeness when compared to all else that lives.

            Consciousness makes boredom not only possible but probable, I think. Because conscious minds can imagine, predict, analyze and plan, humans can visualise unlimited possibilities, a visualization which in turn incites a hunger for variety, for change, for unending newness.

            A knowledge of good and evil implies a moral consciousness, or conscience, a sensitivity about what’s right and what’s wrong to do. Unfortunately, our hunger for newness tends to override our moral judgment. Take killing devices: stick to sword to crossbow to rifles to explosives to nuclear weapons. Were we guided by a morality prohibiting the taking of life, laying down the stick would have ended the sequence in its infancy. If you eat of it, you shall surely die begins to feel like a prediction with merit when we consider the wickedness by which so many relieve their boredom. 

            I’m a Christian because even the flawed and sometimes perverted gospel of Jesus’ teaching answers the problem predicted in Genesis; namely that the core of righteousness will in the end be found NOT to have been the unflinching preoccupation with self-preservation, but the striving for the health of the species. Love your neighbour as yourself; greater love hath no man than that he should lay down his life for his friend; how can one love God whom he has not seen, if he cannot love his brother whom he can.

            The great gift of consciousness will either kill us or set us free.

            Andrew Moore wrote that “Bio-optimists, then and now, see a bright future if we can use technology to enhance our “moral sense and our capacity for social responsibility.” The “if” in Moore’s assessment parallels the debate between God and the Serpent in Genesis about whether eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil will mean mankind’s demise or a glowing, heavenly future.           

            Surely the gospel also seeks to “enhance moral sense and [the] capacity for social responsibility.” [1] It doesn’t, of course, propose technology as the medium to get us there.

            Although the placid cow and the tripod horse may never feel the frustration of boredom, I’m pretty sure I will never want to change places with either (although even three legs might allow me to chuck my cane). Were the three-legged horse to be suddenly endowed with human consciousness, he might well declare, “I’m so bored,” then jump the fence, break into the nearest bar, drink a pail of beer, go out and harass every pretty filly in town… ‘nough said.  

                                                                                                        

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[1] The future of our species. Will there be a sustainable evolution of humanity in the twenty-first century? - PMC