Lack Of Art

Critical Race Theory, and Critical Theory in general doesn't have any art I can think of.  Not poetry, not music, theater, film, painting, sculpture, nor literature.  It may just be that I am not up on such things. I don't think it is mere recency, as both have been around for years, nor is it a bias from unfair comparisons from centuries ago. I am not asking that it produce an equivalent to the high Renaissance.  Existentialism is also recent but does not suffer from the same lack.  there is plenty of interesting theater, poetry, and literature from them, and I think only a little stretch of the concept brings in the visual arts including film.

I suppose you might make a case that successive philosophies since the enlightenment have each produced less art of a durable nature, and Theory is just that much farther down the line, but you would have to go some to convince me that was more than a merely convenient explanation. 

This is a major red flag for the intellectual foundation of a philosophy, that artists in no medium can bring forth anything of interest. The heart of artistic expression is transposition, of reframing or new understanding of one concept and making it manifest in another. If you can find nothing to transpose, it means there is nothing there.

This is unsurprising, as Theory never pretended to be making anything, only analyzing it.  It's right there in the name, Critical Theory. It critiques. It is described as a tool for interrogating everything else. "Interrogate" is supposed to have a more refined meaning than the picture that pops into our head from movies, of guys sitting in a chair under bright light, getting beat up after any bad answer. It's supposed to mean "asking questions." In reality, it's pretty much the sadistic guys with the brass knuckles. You either aren't interrogated at all because you're on their side, or you get the crap beat out of you. 

So we interrogate history with Critical Theory. We look at American education through the prism of Critical Race Theory. We examine music or literature via Theory. But we never make anything with it. Making something requires talent, courage, and effort.  A critical theorist might have any or all of these things.  But they aren't required for the job.

Over-Under

Years ago, when I was making season-long predictions for entire leagues, I would take care to make sure that the projected wins and losses evened out, that a baseball teams that went 92-70 should be counterpredicted by teams that were going to go 70-92. Not that this had to be 1:1 correspondence, but that the totals should get it right.

It was not until years later that I figured out that for bettors, this is not so, and the people with skin in the game understood a simple idea that the rest of us overlooked. The expected over-under of an NFL team is based on average luck for each. Some team might have fewer injuries, an unexpected development in a skill player, or a few key calls go their way, while another might hit the underside of this.  Those should even out over the league.

Yet a very few teams will have a catastrophic occurrence: their starting QB might go down for the season in game 2, or three defensive backs get injured in games 3-6.  They are then in all likelihood going deeply under their projection. Those are high-impact situations. Big negatives because of injury are much more likely that big positives from avoiding injury. Therefore, the projections for an NBA season of 82 games should not average out to 41-41.  The projections should be more along the lines of 44-38 for everyone, even though that doesn't balance in the end. A few teams are going to get clobbered and win 20 fewer games because Anthony Davis or James Harden gets hurt. But in terms of betting, being 20 games below the projection or 1 game below is immaterial. If you bet six teams overall, the other five are likely to gain a game or two and improve their chances of going over the top.

Racism I

I have a few observations which I hope are not simply outraged versions of what everyone else from the center-left to the fringe right is complaining about on the topic. I will put them up over the next few days.  So you don't have to stretch a point and shove in the idea you have been waiting for a spot to unload. Like a good volleyball teammate, I might be able to give you an even better set for you to spike.  And if not, you can put it in at the end, cursing me for not pointing out the obvious. I try to give you things that you might not see elsewhere.

Powerline, via Maggie's, has a discussion of the anti-racism position of a prestigious and expensive Upper East Side Manhattan all-girls' elementary school. What conservatives almost grasp but do not quite get a handle on is that fierce discussions of what types of prejudice are categorically, absolutely, don't-come-anywhere-near-this forbidden are also a quiet announcement of what types of prejudice are okay. It's almost an apophatic approach to cultural politeness. If they tell you that there is a million-dollar fine for shooting bears out of season but don't mention deer, wolves, coyotes, etc, that tells you quite clearly that you can bang away at the latter with minimal consequences.

Patient Explanation

There is a tone of patient explanation, especially within the church, when political issues are being presented from a liberal perspective.  Two years ago we listened to an explanation about gay marriage that our position wasn't loving, and Jesus was about being loving. The Chesterton training in me rose up and asked (to myself) "Could it not be that you are the one being unloving?  Where does your assurance come from that it is I?" This last year it has been about race, with the reminder that we should be listening to black people - not to mention listening to Goodwhites - about racial issues in the church, the implication being that "You might all be very nice people, but we have thought about this a lot and once we explain some simple things to you you will begin to see that we are right. So let's all study this from that perspective." This is the foundation of the claims that such-and-such a view perpetuates the status quo and white dominance in the church, to take one example. See, you didn't think of that, did you? But we've been thinking about it for years, so it's obvious us to us now. You either have to agree with us or you're perpetuating white power structures.  Not that you mean to. But now you should get it that this is the way it really is. 

Because what else can telling people that they should be listening mean? I can't see another possibility when people are being told to listen.

It is rather insulting to suggest that I haven't thought about these things as much as you have, even if it is delivered in the kind, we're-all-in-this-together tone of kindergarten teachers. I may have thought about it a great deal more.  In fact, I suspect there are pieces of this where I have thought through, or read those who have, to a point of clarity - of seeing that the various opinions and general points-of-view actually coalesce around some central ideas in ways that are unrecognised or even denied. For example, framing everything in terms of power/status/influence might not be a correct Jesus POV, but a materialist or even Marxist one. (To assert that it's going to be about power anyway is simply a restatement that this is indeed your POV.)

Secondly, it is accusing me, personally of bad motives for my ideas. The possibility that they may be correct is sidestepped under the assurance that the views are somehow convenient for me too hold for less-attractive reasons. But once such possibilities are on the table, the table can be turned. If my position is held for bad reasons, we may now look at yours.  What psychological benefit, material gain, additional power, or increased status are on the line for you?  Do you really want to go there? If not, then you should retract your accusation against me that I somehow benefit from these positions.  I may or may not. You can't know.

Hungarian HighSchool Science Project

I can't find that I have posted this before, which surprises me. The Atomic Bomb Considered as Hungarian High School Science Project . Siskind did not expect to come to such a strongly genetic answer to the intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews, but got there from the data.

Rethinking Abortion Boundaries

I started out not thinking much about the issue at all.  This is very common, as it is physically unpleasant to think about as well as socially unpleasant in many circumstances. It leads to poll results that are logically at odds with each other, such as considerable support for both "Abortion should be illegal except in the case of rape, incest, or life of the mother," and "Abortion is a matter that should be private between a woman and her doctor." It's not so much that people are stupid - some are, of course - but more that they have queasy feelings about a lot of aspects of the question and are looking for quick escapes in discussion. I did have something of a default to an essay I had read that the issue was largely philosophical: wherever life begins, at that point abortion should be forbidden.  It sounded neat and tidy. (It's not.)

Men and women have very similar opinions on the subject. The idea that only women should be deciding is based largely on the bubble that some pro-choice women live in, believing that because all their friends are pro-choice, most women are as well.  It ain't so.

When I tagged along with the Jesus people I went very much pro-life, and being an intense sort, immediately went to a strict "life begins at conception" attitude. I have never been far different since then, but I did modify somewhat.  At first I wondered if implantation would be a better line to draw. As the information came out that heartbeat and brainwaves in the fetus begin at 5-6 weeks, I leaned toward that.  I preferred the point of conception as a line, but felt less inclined to insist on that. But as I became more aware of genetics as the enormous determinant of many human attributes, I drifted back toward conception as the key point.  You are you quite hugely at that point.

The question of "when life begins" I eventually discarded. The fetus is living at the time of conception. It's not dead, it's not inanimate. Another question about humanness might rise up, but "life" proved a non-question. When the science was vague, Catholics had a vague standard of "quickening" as the beginning of life.  But as we all learned more in the early 19th C, it decided that conception was the true point. I just threw that in for people who have heard that the RCC was not always so strict about life beginning at conception, trying to show that this is a new and perhaps suspect religious idea. That idea is based on some facts, but is not true.

Pre-implantation genetic testing will increasingly be the norm. I had not reconsidered implantation as a dividing line for decades. Perhaps I should bring that one back for examination.

I think it unlikely the SCOTUS will ever overthrow all abortion restrictions entirely.  However, some modification of Roe v Wade that returns some authority to the states is quite possible in the next decade, and because even some abortion advocates think it was badly decided, may be overthrown and some new standard erected. Parental notification, clinic regulation according to medical standards, waiting periods, later abortions and especially partial-birth abortions are going to come back into the public debate.

Plaintive Songs

I heard the cultural historian Armand Leroi talk about the patterns in popular music from 1960-2010, which his team analysed on a mathematical basis to detect where the revolutions came.  It was a BBC special, The Secret Science of Pop Music, apparently not presently available. He sounded quite convincing, but I was only interested in the overview. (The revolutions were in 1964, 1981, and 1991. He makes the case.)

More interesting was his contention that culture does not change as quickly as we are fond of saying it does, citing as examples the recurrence of topics in personal observations and letters in British medical journals for over a hundred years, similar stability in New York Times bestsellers, and common themes in the pop music over those fifty years.  He specifically identified "a single female voice singing for other women about a broken romance."  He said offhand he thought it might go back further.

I would think so.  Not only was the torch song big throughout the 20th C, but we have the following from the 19th C

 

 

And this from the 17th (if not before).  I will speculate offhand as he did, that it goes back further still.

The R-Word as a Social Construct

The word racist is ubiquitous, but the word race is forbidden (expect for check boxes on government forms). There was Saturday Night Live Episode years ago of a psychologist talking with Eddie Murphy about word associations, eventually using nothing but racially-loaded terms like "spearchucker."  Murphy started out affable but grew more irritated, responding with things like "cracker," and "honky." Eventually, when quite angry he said "HONKY honky!!" It was a good illustration that there aren't equivalent words to insult white people with. Except, as I read a few years ago from a black humorist, the word "racist" is as insulting to white people as any previous slur against blacks, as measured by the amount of anger and energy put into defense against it.

Because race is so emotionally-loaded, I have read suggestions that it be avoided altogether in favor of more neutral terms such as ancestry group. I don't think it will do the least bit of good, as you will just be accused of Scientific Racism with quick reference to Nazis, rather than American slavery, but I have no little objection. We are already in a maze of contradictory statements, language-change won't make that much worse or better.

 Can we blame Lewontin for his 1960s declaration that races don't exist and everyone who says they do is racist?  He lent the weight of his white lab coat to that political declaration. He's up there for the nomination.

About twenty years ago the idea came in that race is a social construct, an idea that did not exist until about 500 years ago and the Age of Exploration. That seems calculated to conjure images of slaveships rather than discuss real history. People in Roman times and earlier certainly noticed the different colors of people. Until a hundred years ago, race was an even more restrictive term, referring to the Irish race, or the Slavic. So in some sense, yes, race is somewhat socially defined.  The categories in the US Census have changed every time since 1970, for example.

Yet these are always definitions at the margins. Where we draw the lines are indeed a matter of opinion. Where do the Appalachian Mountains begin? When did Rome fall? What is a socialist? Is that color teal or green? But that does not mean there is no reality deeper in. I know plenty of people of mixed White/Oriental (or Caucasian*/Asian if you prefer) ancestry, but this is new. America has lots of mixes, but even here, there is remarkable continuity. If you look at the junk DNA, without reference to any skin color or facial features, you can tell what continent someone's ancestors lived on before 1500 for thousands of years back. What you say about Afghanis vs Mongols, or North Indians vs South, or border Mexicans vs Oaxacans is interesting - indeed, fascinating and the source of much additional information.  But failing to acknowledge that Scots are genetically distinct from Koreans is just silly. And most of humanity still falls into the hard categories, not the fringe ones.

*Hah!  Like I have significant Azerbaijani ancestry.

Lack of Leadership - New Definition

It pays to be reading and listening to diverse topics, because you can get ideas back-to-back you would not ordinarily connect.

One writer, one interviewee on a podcast, neither an expert on either Covid from any angle nor on politics. Yet such are our times that everyone discussing recipes, or turkey shoots, or electrical resistance on ham radios finds it necessary to insert their opinion about Trump, or liberals or whatever. One person was clearly angry about the "lack of leadership from the White House" about Covid and went on for a bit about the "chaos." Nothing specific that Trump might have done, other than wear a mask more often, was identified. The other equally deplored the "lack of leadership from the experts, especially CDC," though I couldn't tell whether she wanted them to advocate for more restriction or less from the context. She also went on for another paragraph about the "confusion" over masks and vaccines.  I could look her up and find out where she lands on those issues, but I am not going to bother.  

In both cases there was nothing I could get my hands on of "What do you think they should have done differently?" If I really wanted to be a jerk (but a useful, accurate jerk) about it I could even press on to "...that was actually known at the time and feasible to accomplish?" But I am just telling you that here, behind the scenes. For purposes of understanding the vox populi, I would be content with an answer to the shorter version of the question.

My point is that there isn't an answer, not in most people's heads.  They have feelings. My new definition of Lack of Leadership is "lack of me feeling good about this." If you find yourself nodding and immediately thinking of examples of people of different political persuasion who exemplify this, I ask you to spare a few moments to think of folks from your own side, including one you know intimately.

The Possibility of C19 as a Lab Escape

Alina Chan of the Broad Institute (MIT, Harvard) doesn't think it is likely that Covid is the result of a lab escape.  However, as she thinks it is possible, and when she discoverd some evidence that its structure is not fully consonant with an animal-to-human jump for the virus, she got a lot of attention fast, both positive and negative. The linked article can give you a summary. The short take is that with a novel virus, mutations that improve transmissability are usually the first things one sees, as even small increases in ability to spread are advantageous for the virus. But the early samples of SARS-2 seem to be a little further up the line. Curious.

Her first point is that the division into either-or answers misses a lot. To merely raise the question of origins, even when most of the scientific energy has gone into finding a vaccine or cure, has had people accuse her of being a conspiracy theorist. On the other hand, irresponsible reporters from the skeptic side have put forth her statements as showing that there is great evidence that the disease was a Chinese lab error, or even a bioweapon. She points out there is a continuum.  If the lab was sending lots of researchers out to bat caves, food markets, and remote farms to collect samples and expose themselves to possible mutations, then that would be an entirely natural development of the virus - but it's spread might be largely due to the lab's involvement. Similarly, if they were looking at a sample, focusing on a particular site and tweaking something, just to see what it changes in terms of the organism's behavior, you might accidentally but not maliciously make it slightly more transmissable or more dangerous. That is, it already had the ability to infect humans, but you just made that a little more likely. A further possibility is mixing and matching genes between different viruses. I guess that isn't considered all that odd now. Scares the bejeesus out of me, but maybe it's a mostly safe intervention.

On any of these, it would suggest that the virus existed in some less-harmful form earlier than the currently discovered version.  Think of it as a pre-covid or proto-covid. That would at least be a plausible explanations why this odd data of Covid existing "too early" that occasionally shows up might be so. 

You can see why lots of people would have interest. Even if it was unintentional, all the research was being done responsibly, and this was just an unfortunate accident, the PRC would not want this to be known. Also, if this is a common technique and considered necessary even by researchers unrelated to anything Chinese, they might be unwilling to have this be generally known, because it would invite regulation by governments, which they know in advance is likely to be stupid.  The interview with Chan I listened to was from January, and she and the interviewer both agreed that the possible lab origin theory is not being slammed down without a hearing quite so much anymore, and thought it possible that because the idea might have helped Trump, now that the election is over many scientists might be less-opposed to the investigation.  That's ugly, and unprovable, but fits my prejudices pretty well.

Chan has also had colleagues tell her to her face that she is just attention-seeking. That seems unprofessional.  I thought she was pretty convincing she has not liked the attention she has gotten from this, from many sides, and has wondered how life would have been different if she had never gone on this project. She is originally Canadian, brought up in Singapore, and is pleasant but I don't think she scares easily. Her stated goal is to learn of the origins because she is curious, and we need to know about origins if we are entering a pandemic world where one of these shows up every five to ten years.

If there is only a 5% chance it's true, it's worth looking into, right to the bottom.

Changing Assumptions

I can't source the study, as it was referred to rather darkly as one that had attracted heat, but with the promise that more is coming over the next few years, but I will explain it because it says something about the changes in my assumptions over the years. 

The study was in cognitive genomics, so you might already guess where the controversies might arise. In the last two decades there has been enormous work done discovering Mendelian Disorders, single-gene mutations that have deleterious effects. A researcher looking at larger genomic data noticed something odd.  There were occasional people with a Mendelian disorder related to IQ who nonetheless had average IQ scores. Pulling them out for further studies, along with their parents and siblings, he found that they had two parents of 130+ IQ, with siblings clustering around that higher range rather than the national average. The children had IQs two standard deviation below their parents, which in ordinary circumstances would result in children with deficits, requiring special attention at school. But with these parents...

My assumption 35+ years ago would have been that it was the good educational environment of those parents - reading to the child, proper nutrition and attention, better schools. That would still be the assumption of many people, and news stories about such research would leap to that conclusion as well.  In fact, you can get into some trouble if you reach any other conclusion. Ask Charles Murray about that. 

But among those who are studying this more closely, the idea of mutational load , more commonly associated with studies of immune diseases, is quietly coming into favor. The researcher anticipated that and dug deeper. The assumption that those IQ 130+ parents consistently provided good, nurturing environments was not entirely solid. As soon as we say that out load we all recognise that of course that was a terrible assumption.  We have a prejudice in that direction, but once held up to the light we all think of specific examples of contentious divorces, alcohol or drug abuse, entire irresponsibility of high-IQ* individuals, or terrible circumstances involving accidents or tragedies that send a child to another place to be brought up. 

The researcher thought this was powerful evidence that the lack of negative mutational load was somewhat protective, even against serious cognitive deficits. Apparently he has gotten some pushback at his own university from "other departments" - hmm, I have a short list what those might be - about the implications of this, so he is waiting until he has more results before inviting that amount of misery on himself.

My assumption has reversed. I am in no way a researcher or an expert in anything near this field, though I know well more than average. When I heard about the Mendelian Disorders related to IQ still resulting in average intelligence, I now think "What else is happening genetically?"

*See, this is why "smart" means something else, that has some overlap with IQ but is not synonymous.

Emerald Ash Borer

The Emerald Ash Borer has been threatening to establish in NH for the past decade. I first became aware of the invasive beetle while walking on a back road in the southwestern portion of the state, noticing odd purple boxes well up in the trees.  I learned they were there for detection, and as yet, none had been found in NH.

When it first showed up, it was not in some border town, but well into central NH in a state park.  Meaning that it had arrived on someone's firewood from another state. It is the very typical human attitude to regard small chances as zero chance - especially when it will cost you a few bucks to buy firewood near the park here. We have a dozen excuses.  We are sure we won't be doing any harm. And then we do.

I saw the damage they do to the ash, called "blonding" over near my son's house today.  He and his neighbors are suddenly going to have to take out a dozen trees, and we don't know how extensive this is. I took one look at the result and said "that tree's not going to make it." I saw more - none of them will make it, you can see on sight. There are efforts to slow the spread in the hopes of identifying some solution in time, but thus far the loss of most North American species of ash looks inevitable. I like ashes and will be sad to see them go. I had two large ones at my first house. They are very good firewood, splitting easily and even usable green in a pinch. Ash wood wet and ash wood dry, a king shall warm his slippers by. Ash is used for baseball bats, for flooring, for canoe paddles.

The tree has been important culturally, in myth and legend. Now it looks like it is going away.

A Lot of Ruin In A University

Adam Smith observed that there "is a lot of ruin in a nation," meaning that once an institution is in place, it has inertia, continuity, a lot of hidden strengths before it finally falls. It does fall eventually, following the rule that Milton Friedman laid down that "things that cannot go on forever, won't." Yet they do hang on remarkably long, don't they?  I have been hearing since the 1980s that the deficit and national debt will send America under eventually, and I do believe this is true.  I am not intending in any way to suggest this is wrong.  When that day comes, all of us will say "I told you so" and feel smug even as we are scrambling to find wood to burn. But we only believe that intermittently, else we would have stormed Washington in a real riot years before this one, violently kicking out not only the slightly-more-offending Democrats, but Donald Trump and his trillion dollar payouts.  In fact, kicking out anyone back to...I don't know, Calvin Coolidge? But we haven't, so perhaps we only 20% believed it.  Enough to be arrogant, not enough to take action.

Universities are on the ropes.  They have been held aloft financially by government largess for what? 20 years, 40 years, 60 years? This is unsustainable, and state legislatures, which have significant conservative elements even in liberal states, will not continue to fund this idiocy at State U much longer, not this bite-the-hand-that-feeds-them attitude toward America and the free market and business and capitalism. 

Except they have, since 1980 anyway, as I will relate shortly.

There have been predictions of the collapse of higher education, increasing in the last few years. Every year, these institutions deliver a less-valuable product at a slightly-higher price. It adds up (and also subtracts down, if you take my meaning). We are now a credential society rather than a meritocracy. Many schools on the margin have taken devastating blows from Covid. There will be continued uh.... consolidation going forward. 

Yet as with a nation, so too with a college. The current system will hang on for a long while, because some schools have such an enormous cushion that they can do just about anything, and the principal of previous alumni gifts, increasing even at low returns, plus rent-seeking from government programs, added to parents' money in search of prestige and advantage, added to the real academic benefit that still manages to work its way through, will stretch out the lifespan another year, another decade, another...century?  Yes, maybe.  The others will go under and only people directly connected will care. 

So long as credentialism rules are there are government subsidies, something like the present system will survive. It is under pressure and it will change, but don't expect to see a different world anytime soon, however many people come up with bright ideas how to fix everything.There will therefore be no pressure to stop moving left and enforcing that on others. There will be fewer positions and more people to stab you in the back.

An anecdote: My stepfather became a trustee of New Hampshire College of Accounting and Commerce in the late 1960s. My high-falutin' liberal arts friends and I looked down on this as a mere business college and called NHCAC "Cac." I did pipe down after my mother married the guy in 1966.  I was obnoxious, but not crazy. (Spoiler alert:  It became New Hampshire College and then Southern NH University, one of the largest online colleges in the world. Yeah, that one you see the TV ads for.) He later became CEO of a very solid, cautious mutual fund, David L Babson.  He was on the NH State Republican Committee in the 60s and 70s. Archetype country-club conservative. I was liberal, but not quite communist.  I learned in the early 80s that multiple professors in the Human Services wing were open Marxists.  I sat down and described this to him, figuring that I was his inside source, telling him information that was being hidden from the board. He shrugged.  He knew.  That was how those departments ran.  You couldn't get top professors who weren't Marxists. He wanted NHC to be a top college.

Well, knock me over with a feather. All that only to note how far back this goes, even with conservatives supposedly at the helm.

Spinning

A very young man of our acquaintance has taken up spinning.  Not in the cloth handiwork sense, but in the turning round and round until one falls over, preferably face upward and looking at a summer sky version of spinning. He hit his head, which of course caused parental concern. Parents can put up with a lot of weird or dumb stuff, so long as it doesn't involve hitting your head hard on an unforgiving surface.  In this case, I was always on grass where my mother was not watching, while he was trying this hobby out on a floor, in moderately close proximity to an observant mother. He has Aspergery loading on both sides of the family, BTW, with strong examples of using this superpower for good. We are already deeply fond of him here.

I had forgotten this, but I recall doing this a lot.  I have never seen it tied to autism spectrum kids, but it seems similar to other stereotypic movements, like rocking.  These are usually designated as "purposeless." This is untrue.  They feel cool, and are way cheaper than drugs and wear off in less than a minute. I regarded kids (I'm sorry, I meant "boys" - I don't recall this being a female problem) that were huffing gasoline or airplane glue as unthoughtful crowd-followers. You can regulate your dosage of spinning and falling on grass easily. I would advocate just sending him outside, but there is a pond and lots of rocks, so maybe not quite yet.

Opposite Game

Britain did something interesting in trying to assess racism.  It tried to look hard at data. We know what the result was: Britain is no longer a racist society, though it is a society that has racism. I don't know of any recent comprehensive report on America, but I have read a fair bit of the data, and my general impression is that something similar could be said here. 

Most of the racial conversation coming off the left, and some from the right and other points of the compass will make reference to needing to have an honest conversation about race. When that phrase is used, I can usually identify within ten seconds that the opposite is more true.  The speaker is seeking to avoid, not have, an honest conversation about race. This can most readily be assessed by looking at the misrepresentation of the positions of their opposition. If you cannot state your opponent's view accurately, then you are lying either to yourself or to us.

There is a more extreme version of this in the Middle East. There are a thousand oppressed peoples in the world that one could feel hurt for and resolve to help them out in some way. The Palestinians are not anywhere near the top of that list by any objective measure.  Therefore, anyone focusing on them as central victims is not trying to reduce oppression, but trying to avoid reducing oppression, by putting resources in unimportant areas. 

A good reminder to oneself is always Perhaps the opposite is also true.

Eyewitness Vs Dictation

Fundamentalists treat the scriptures as if the words were dictated by God directly to the ears of a chosen scribe, who recorded them exactly. If you pay attention, there are in fact sections of Isaiah that are like this, and other sections of various books. It's usually pretty easy to tell, because God says explicitly "write down these words" or some such.

But most sections fall better into the category of "eyewitness account." If you look at Mark 1:5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. I don't think the entire population of Jerusalem or the Judean countryside went out to see John the Baptist.  I'm betting a few people stayed behind. Just a guess. It was a figure of speech from an eyewitness.  "Oh, everyone was going out to listen to John in those days.  He was all anyone could talk about for the whole year." My faith is not harmed in the slightest by this.

Nor is anyone else's.  If you go look at fundamentalist studies of Mark, they breeze right by this - as they should. Yet in other sections they will insist that accounts are to be taken literally, as if God had dictated word for word. 

Allowing this much flexibility, in and of itself, opens the door to close examination of every other verse, and Lord knows that people will come up with wild interpretations on their own. Yet there is no other choice. We are told to trust in the Holy Spirit and that there is no private interpretation, so some others must be consulted. That's about it.  Yet that is an enormous amount.

All Things Must Pass

 I looked at a lot of things and settled on this. Fun nostalgia for me.

I find it touching that they carry Dhani, who is not actually very good (from my observation here and in other places during this concert. He is better than I am, but that's damning with faint praise). I understand he is creative and talented, just not technically proficient.

Terrance Laird Again

He is very good, and getting better. I am betting he takes over the NCAA record this year, as you will notice that in this race he actually had a slow start.

Temptation

In modern Christianity, especially at the denominational, seminary, and publication level, those advocating for social justice point to the abolition of slavery as the great victory of the church for justice in society. It's hard to argue with that. It was a battle largely fought and won by Christians, with William Wilberforce of England and the Quakers, Congregationalists, and many Methodists in America being the most frequent mentions.  Students willing to go deeper can find Catholics dating back to the 2nd C speaking against the practice, though more as something to be discouraged among Christians than made illegal.  Ideas like that were gradually introduced later. Abolition seems an unarguable good, even if it is not the only possible good in the world.

There have been other causes taken up by the church with a definite eye toward establishing justice in the societies where they lived.  Educating women, conditions for prisoners, and the centuries of feeding the poor and attempting to provide medical care or comfort to the disabled or dying. But slavery has been the big-ticket item all concerned with justice point to.  

I was saying aloud to a friend that it seems the more recent causes are more ambiguous and difficult to achieve and one of my own cliches occurred to me: When there is a great problem, the first solution picks off the low-hanging fruit and solves, 50, 70, 90% of the problem. After that there is increasing effort for lesser returns. I suddenly wondered if getting involved with Abolitionism was not a Christian opportunity, but the bait, the temptation to turning aside from the Church's main goal.  View in that way, it looks an awful lot like Satan'[s third temptation of Jesus, doesn't it.  Was it that same temptation, offered by the Devil this time to the Church - and we swallowed the hook?  It's a chilling thought that clear ggood could disguise evil in that way.  Except that is what spiritual temptation means, isn't it?  Some desire to do good, as Gandalf feels for possession of the One Ring that carries an addictive poison that is ultimately fatal?

Abolition is ultimately not a mercy or charity issue, nor one that has eternal consequences, after all.

Any idea that is this new I don't offer as any claim that it is true. But I do offer up that it might be true, for your contemplation.

Tattoos in prehistory

Archaeologist Aaron Deter-Wolf (with Lars Krutak) has a book Ancient Ink about the history of tattooing, and a number of related books about tattooing in general in an international and historical perspective.  I heard an interview with him, and he is frustrated that most of the popular "History of Tattooing" sites and essays are inaccurate, perpetuating myths.  I'm not feeling a deep responsibility to mythbust about tattooing narratives, but a few things did interest me, so I will pass them along.

In archeological finds, tattoos are expressive of group or status identities, not individuality. They identified you with a clan or a particular ancestor, with a profession or military unit. The ancestor tattoos were often in places unlikely to be visible to the general public, suggesting that they had a mystical or ceremonial value rather than a demonstrative one. The meanings were negative as often as positive, marking one as a slave, defeated tribe, or criminal. That's quite different than the modern application of decoration for personal expression.  However, I notice that tattoos commemorating deceased relatives are still common. 

Even with improved modern archaeological techniques for detecting tattoos, there are great holes in the data, and we do not know what the practices are of the majority of ancient societies were. However, a generalisation is emerging that more mobile societies were more likely to tattoo themselves. A moments reflection reveals this makes sense.  If you are in one place, you can express your values and that of your clan in buildings and other built structures such as walls or megaliths. But if you are more frequently on the move, you use your body which is portable to express your relationship to the universe, to gods, to ancestors, to tribes.

I wondered in passing whether being more mobile created interest in tattooing and piercing in our own day. Sailors enlisted to "see the world," and were notorious for tattoos, as is the military is in general. But settled modern tribes and individuals also tattoo, so I wouldn't push that too far.

Because palettes of  paints have been found more frequently among the funerary goods of those cultures of known tattooing (or their predecessors and successors, figuring those would be good bets), recent investigators have had a new thought what is up with that. While body paints could be cosmetic, to look better, it is not a new idea that some of them might be ceremonial. But why paints for the dead?  If they needed ceremonial body paint or piercing, then paint them. Yet now that seasonality, and different roles for different times of the year and different ceremonies have come up as possible understandings, paints could have a third meaning, as temporary identifiers of role or status.  Urulu might paint over the winter, not so much to portray a wolf ceremonially, but to be a wolf, to embody a wolf for the tribe. Yet in spring he has to stop that.  He becomes a brewer, a hunter, a fisherman. When they bury him, they figure he might need to become a wolf again in the afterlife, an ancestor working for the good of the tribe.  And he will need the right paint for that. An interesting support for that idea is the strong tendency in many cultures to bury a person with more ceremonial goods that are not associated with death than those goods representative of everyday function (though those occur frequently as well).