Recently, I have once again become immersed in the golf. For those who have experienced this immersion no further explanation is required, for those who have not I will try to briefly explain. Golf is hard to define in general. I once read that "golf is to sports what bagpipes are to music". I think that's pretty accurate. You have to immediately be drawn to it or not. There aren't a lot of people who truly enjoy golf who don't also have a tendency towards obsession. It is impossible to perfect and damn near impossible to be good enough not to constantly embarrass yourself in trying to play it. Even the best players hit awful shots occasionally, the explanation following the awful shot is usually a good basis for knowing if that particular player really is a good player. Good players shrug it off as just being part of the game; bad players make excuses or fume over it so much that they ruin the next four shots trying to make up for it.
I quit playing for several years as I had too many other things going to give it the time necessary to play to my level of expectation. When I started back I vowed to give it my best effort to get to my optimal playing level. I am still in that process a year later. I have seen continous improvement followed by periods of poor playing while I make new changes I think are necessary to improve. It is literally two steps forward followed by one backwards and has been for some time now. This process have involved a lot of time at the driving range. Where I play now also has free range priveleges as a part of the package so all that is required for improvement is my time and effort. I see a lot of progress but also realize there is a lot of room still for improvement. I suspect that never really ends. At some point we have to accept the result as a fair trade for the time put into achieving it but I am not quite there yet.
It dawned on me recently that golf steals your dignity one shot at a time. Anyone who has played the game understands that statement. It is the cold shank of a wedge when you have been hitting it flawlessly for most of the round or the violent pull hook of a driver sailing high, far, and out of bounds when you have been hitting it down the middle all day. The fraction of a second timing or rhythm between an excellent shot and one that is wildly offline is actually very small. Everyone who plays knows that but convincing yourself that you haven't completely forgotten how to hit the ball after such a shot takes a lot of mental fortitude. Your mind instantly assesses all the possibilities as to why you just hit a terrible shot and tells you to overcorrect the next one. Sometimes it is as simple as a loss of concentration for just a split second but the wildness of the resulting error makes this hard to accept.
Yesterday morning I went to the course to practice and get in a round. It was windy and rainy here so I knew it wouldn't be very crowded. The range was almost abandoned. I have been working on changing my grip and have not completely adusted to the new one so the occasional pull or shank is more common at the moment. It was drizzling rain and very windy but I was determined to get some repitition with my wedges as they seem to be affected by this change more than anything else.
I always have some new wrinkle to try and this day I was working on posture and balance. I was getting some confidence and feeling good about my accuracy and consistency when an especially big gust of wind blew across the range and almost blew the hat off my head. I caught it before it took off across the range but in the same motion I saw my pull cart with an umbrella attached to it catch the wind and take off rolling away. The umbrella is new and quite large so I had actually thought about this happening and made sure to clip it in place with the small bungy on the handle wrapped around a catch on its holder. This gust was strong enough so that the cord didn't hold and as I was chasing the pullcart the umbrella came loose and sailed away.
The umbrella is a 48" umbrella, big enough to keep me and the pullcart dry when it is raining. It also happens that a 48" umbrella achieves launch velocity with a big gust of wind. Unencumbered by the weight of the pullcart the umbrella gained speed so that now I was obliged to quit trotting and go at an all out sprint to try to keep up. As the gust died it hit the ground but now begin a slow bounce and roll end over end with the prevailing wind still blowing it. It wasn't a gust now, just the steady south to west wind that had been blowing all morning.
Unfortunately, this slow roll was equal in speed to my all out sprint with a 52 degree wedge in hand. I thought about ditching the wedge but decided I might could use its length to hook the umbrella if I could just get close enough. The driving range where I play remotely parallels a four lane highway. Fortunately, the designers moved the tees some 150 yards away from highway to keep any but the most monstrous of bad shots from going into the highway. To my horror my top speed seemed to keep me some 15 yards behind the umbrella but I was not gaining and I knew I couldn't keep this pace up for long. In my mind I could see the umbrella bounding up and blocking the windshield of a car and creating a multi-car pileup. The thought of having to explain this horrifying spectacle later was the only thing that kept me running.
As we neared the highway I realized I wasn't going to catch the umbrella unless it hit something to stop it or slow it down. Glancing back at oncoming traffic I recognized there was a break in it so I could continue my mad pursuit at least across two lanes. There was a little ditch in the median with water in it so I thought it might also slow down the tumbling umbrella but no such luck, it managed to land perfectly on its round top and bound up right off the water like it wasn't there. I on the other hand, don't have a perfectly round bottom, so I had to plough through the water and hope I didn't step in a hole.
Gaging the gap in traffic on the two lanes going the other direction I realized I was once again going to get lucky enough to have a gap for me and my runaway umbrella to get across. By this time I had been running for close to 200 yards and had gained only a yard or two on the umbrella so I was thinking of giving up and letting it careen over into the golf course on the other side of the road. Then I noticed there was a speed limit sign on the other side that might slow it down a little if it happened to hit it so I continued to sprint across the other two lanes of traffic. As luck would have it the umbrella did hit the sign but once again managed to do so with the rounded top so that it only momentarily diverted its direction and I gained only a couple of more yards. By this point I was all but out of breathe and had determined it was a lost cause.
Just when I was ready to concede defeat the umbrella tines caught some taller weeds on a tumble and stopped dead still. I could see the fabric straining with the wind as it tried in vain to dislodge itself from the weeds but in a few more steps I was on it and able to grab its handle. I stood there with my hands on my knees trying not to throw up my breakfast and catch my breathe for quite a few minutes before I could start to go back across the highway.
The only other person on the range either didn't see the whole incident or he had the extraordinary good manners to act like he didn't. I slowly trudged back across the road to continue my practice, utterly devoid of any dignity I might have possessed a few minutes before. On the way back across I spotted one solitary driving range ball in the median of the four lane. For just a second I could feel the helpless horror of the person who struck it and watched its flight hopelessly offline and heading into highway traffic at full speed. Golf is pretty much a graveyard of dignity for anyone who participates in one way or another. Maybe that makes us better people in some way.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Illogic
I often listen to church services on the radio if I am travelling on Sunday. It is literally amazing to me that people can confuse a Sunday sermon with factual or even useful information. A lot of evangelists are quite good at public speaking. Some of those in the south have elevated it to an art form. The screamers and the ranting hellfire types have a rhythm they use that is very dramatic but it is the cryers are most captivating. A grown man who can make his voice break on command is a talented individual. One that can to this while begging strangers to repent or face eternal damnation is probably a Baptist but most definitely someone who has worked hard at his craft. I wonder where they go to practice that particular voice-cracking emotional pleading. Over time, I am sure it becomes easier, but I wonder where they practice it in the beginning of their career before it becomes second nature.
Beyond the entertainment value there isn't much to recommend anyone listen to these sermons in the way of logic. I like to follow along just to see how far beyond reason the discussion will go. I am often surprised as there seems to be no limit to the lengths they will go to try to convince their listeners that there is some reason attached to what they are preaching. There is a well known tenet of basic logical argument that suggests it is not useful to take written words out of the context they were written under and use it as a basis for argument. Evangelist turn this argument on it's ear so often that most people no longer even recognize they are doing it.
Evangelists first insist that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. This is a basic premise falls apart with the fact that the Bible contradicts itself with great frequency but I will leave that to a later post and concentrate on what the Bible is, instead of what evangelists tend to try to convince everyone else it is. It is a series of books written by various men over a very long period of time. These men lived in different kingdoms at different times under very different circumstances. This is not controversial or questionable; it is recognized as fact by the evangelist themselves. These books were at a much later period in history organized into one larger book, widely known as the Bible. There is a long and interesting process by which this occurred but I will leave that for later as well; the point being that the men who wrote these books had no idea the other books that they would be combined with to form the Bible existed for the simple reason that they often were written much, much later.
In evangelist circles it is universally accepted that it is logical to pull a verse from the beginning of one book of the Bible and verify it or back it up with a verse from a wholly other book. Let's look at that for a moment. No one would attempt to make a logical argument from any other series of books by blatantly taking things out of context in this manner. It is bad enough to willy nilly pick sentences semi-randomly from wholly different chapters of a book and string them together as if they are a cohesive thought. It is simply unheard of for someone outside of organized religion to take random sentences from many different books on many different subjects and string them together in an effort to accomplish anything resembling a logical argument.
I have brought this up with people I know when discussing religion. I have yet to receive a reasonable answer as to why religious followers allow evangelists this abuse of context. Listening to these sermons with an ear to what books they are quoting from along with a general understanding of when these books were written shines a wholly different light on the usual Sunday sermon. It's hard to imagine a more ludicrous way to make a point but it is one that is attempted every Sunday morning all across our country. One might as well pull random lines from Alice in Wonderland and combine them with a couple of sentences from Huckleberry Finn and the lyrics of Pink Floyd to prove that there is life on Mars.
It would be a lot more comical if there weren't a lot of people who walk out of those meetings every Sunday convinced that they know what is best for the rest of us based on the sermon they just heard and many more just like it. Remember, these are the same people who want to control what we teach our children in school based upon this same extreme illogic. I would suggest that we would seriously consider medication for someone who sincerely believed they could prove life on Mars by the route I outlined above. Contrast this reaction with the fact that we continue to allow those who believe in an angry Christian god based on similar illogical arguments to suggest that the rules and laws of our society simply must be based upon the books of the Bible.
Beyond the entertainment value there isn't much to recommend anyone listen to these sermons in the way of logic. I like to follow along just to see how far beyond reason the discussion will go. I am often surprised as there seems to be no limit to the lengths they will go to try to convince their listeners that there is some reason attached to what they are preaching. There is a well known tenet of basic logical argument that suggests it is not useful to take written words out of the context they were written under and use it as a basis for argument. Evangelist turn this argument on it's ear so often that most people no longer even recognize they are doing it.
Evangelists first insist that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. This is a basic premise falls apart with the fact that the Bible contradicts itself with great frequency but I will leave that to a later post and concentrate on what the Bible is, instead of what evangelists tend to try to convince everyone else it is. It is a series of books written by various men over a very long period of time. These men lived in different kingdoms at different times under very different circumstances. This is not controversial or questionable; it is recognized as fact by the evangelist themselves. These books were at a much later period in history organized into one larger book, widely known as the Bible. There is a long and interesting process by which this occurred but I will leave that for later as well; the point being that the men who wrote these books had no idea the other books that they would be combined with to form the Bible existed for the simple reason that they often were written much, much later.
In evangelist circles it is universally accepted that it is logical to pull a verse from the beginning of one book of the Bible and verify it or back it up with a verse from a wholly other book. Let's look at that for a moment. No one would attempt to make a logical argument from any other series of books by blatantly taking things out of context in this manner. It is bad enough to willy nilly pick sentences semi-randomly from wholly different chapters of a book and string them together as if they are a cohesive thought. It is simply unheard of for someone outside of organized religion to take random sentences from many different books on many different subjects and string them together in an effort to accomplish anything resembling a logical argument.
I have brought this up with people I know when discussing religion. I have yet to receive a reasonable answer as to why religious followers allow evangelists this abuse of context. Listening to these sermons with an ear to what books they are quoting from along with a general understanding of when these books were written shines a wholly different light on the usual Sunday sermon. It's hard to imagine a more ludicrous way to make a point but it is one that is attempted every Sunday morning all across our country. One might as well pull random lines from Alice in Wonderland and combine them with a couple of sentences from Huckleberry Finn and the lyrics of Pink Floyd to prove that there is life on Mars.
It would be a lot more comical if there weren't a lot of people who walk out of those meetings every Sunday convinced that they know what is best for the rest of us based on the sermon they just heard and many more just like it. Remember, these are the same people who want to control what we teach our children in school based upon this same extreme illogic. I would suggest that we would seriously consider medication for someone who sincerely believed they could prove life on Mars by the route I outlined above. Contrast this reaction with the fact that we continue to allow those who believe in an angry Christian god based on similar illogical arguments to suggest that the rules and laws of our society simply must be based upon the books of the Bible.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
winter
Winter is coming no matter how much I try to resist. The days are getting shorter, the nights cooler, and the leaves are starting to blanket my yard. Since most of my yard is rocks, ivy, and trees it lays in a thick layer of leaves for much of the winter. Far be it from me to interfere with nature's plan by trying to do away with them. I don't care for winter and would much prefer warm weather all the year. I've never been one of those who suggests that the change of seasons is necessary to be happy.
Winter always brings a kind of vague restlessness and discontent in my life. I don't really think it is the lack of sunshine because we usually have plenty of sunshine here in the south even in winter. It probably has more to do with the lack of vitality. Seeing the world wither and go into extended hibernation always makes me wonder if I am sufficiently utilizing my time; prioritizing so that the things that are important outweigh those that are not in my level of attention. The answer is almost always no. It is so easy to get swept up into the immediacy of those things that are only marginally important so that they become overwhelmingly so.
I don't see the friends I would like to see. I spend too much time struggling with paying bills and buying things that have no real consequence. I now find myself thinking about retirement; not really looking forward to it as much as being beset by the thoughts that it is on the horizon and I have to get ready for it financially. I need to lose some weight. I need to exercise with more regularity. I suppose everyone has a long list of such things on their agenda but it seems they are seldom really accomplished. Mostly, I am continually shocked and surprised by the rapidity at which time passes.
It seems like there used to be more time in the day. I could work all day, work a side job or project at home, and still have plenty of time to spare for loved ones or reading. I thought for a while it was just a difference in energy but I now believe that time has somehow become more compressed and dense with little or no possibility of better partioning it effectively. My days at work are filled with schedules, meetings, and tasks so that I can't seem to finish them all no matter how I struggle. Shortening the length of the day seems like cruel and unusual punishment when added to the mix.
The good news is that winter is usually short here. The bad news is that as much as I want time to pass more slowly; I can't wait for spring and summer.
Winter always brings a kind of vague restlessness and discontent in my life. I don't really think it is the lack of sunshine because we usually have plenty of sunshine here in the south even in winter. It probably has more to do with the lack of vitality. Seeing the world wither and go into extended hibernation always makes me wonder if I am sufficiently utilizing my time; prioritizing so that the things that are important outweigh those that are not in my level of attention. The answer is almost always no. It is so easy to get swept up into the immediacy of those things that are only marginally important so that they become overwhelmingly so.
I don't see the friends I would like to see. I spend too much time struggling with paying bills and buying things that have no real consequence. I now find myself thinking about retirement; not really looking forward to it as much as being beset by the thoughts that it is on the horizon and I have to get ready for it financially. I need to lose some weight. I need to exercise with more regularity. I suppose everyone has a long list of such things on their agenda but it seems they are seldom really accomplished. Mostly, I am continually shocked and surprised by the rapidity at which time passes.
It seems like there used to be more time in the day. I could work all day, work a side job or project at home, and still have plenty of time to spare for loved ones or reading. I thought for a while it was just a difference in energy but I now believe that time has somehow become more compressed and dense with little or no possibility of better partioning it effectively. My days at work are filled with schedules, meetings, and tasks so that I can't seem to finish them all no matter how I struggle. Shortening the length of the day seems like cruel and unusual punishment when added to the mix.
The good news is that winter is usually short here. The bad news is that as much as I want time to pass more slowly; I can't wait for spring and summer.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Lawn Grooming
I live on the side of a mountain. It is a small mountain and I am very close to the foot of the mountain but it is still a mountain. What appeals to me about the house I live in is the view and the relative solitude. There are houses close to me on both sides but from my back deck I have a relative amount of seclusion. I also have no lawn to mow. The slope from the street I live on to my house is relatively steep. There is probably a 35 foot change in elevation from front to back of the property and it is peppered with very old mature trees. Rough bark hickory, black walnut, and osage orange male and female trees give it the appearance that a mountain slope should have with large boulders strewn about the property as well. There is no grass on my property with the exception of some decorative monkey grass that lines the driveway coming down to the house.
There are large A-frame and chalet style houses up and down the street so there is a great mix of architecture and different styles and sizes of houses. There is also a great mix of different personalities to go with the houses. A music teacher/record producer, two professors at a local college, a bartender, a carpenter, a physicist, several engineers, a lawn care entrepreneur, and a lady who runs the local wildflower association. I get along with most of my neighbors, if only on a cursory level as most of them tend to keep to themselves in the neighborhood.
We are fast approaching the end of a long and cold winter punctuated by extremely low temperatures and a few bouts of snow that we normally don't have. In other words, nothing is blooming or growing at all right now. For some reason unknown to reasonable humans my next door neighbor decided this weekend to clean up the leaves around his house. Since my yard and his are absolutely covered with trees with absolutely no lawn underneath this seems rather senseless at best and downright insane at worst. Nevertheless, it is his yard so I believe he has every right to do as he pleases with it. Unfortunately, he has also managed to get the help of the lawncare business owner across the street in this project who I will call Ed to protect the anonymity of all involved. Ed seems to be in the grass business from a couple of different angles from what I can tell; both the grass maintenance business and the grass distribution business. That's my theory anyway, although I have no proof and even less animosity about it.
Ed is a gasoline engine enthusiast of the first order. He has a wide variety of cars and trucks, from classic Chevy's to Mercedes, Fords, and a couple of large moving vans that he has retrofitted for his lawn care business. Several years ago he acquired a small antique mini-bike that he is fond of riding around the neighborhood in the summertime; usually somewhere around 2 AM. The extreme steepness of my neighbors driveway must be a good challenge for Ed and his mini-bike because it seems to be one of his favorite places to ride at that hour. I don't know if Ed is making deliveries at that hour or just having fun but it is not unusual to be awakened by his jaunts up and down the neighbors driveway at very early morning hours. Naturally, the dogs I have in the back yard are offended by both the hour and the ear piercing staccato blasts of the mini-bike so they make sure I am aware of it just in case I might possibly be able to sleep through it otherwise.
Ed also has quite an array of leaf blowers, mowers, saws, edgers, and two stroke engines of different types. The one thing they all seem to have in common is a lot of horsepower and minimal muffler capabilities. Ed exercises them regularly. I suppose it is good sense to do so in the long run but it does little to recommend our neighborhood for low decibel levels when this is going on. This weekend he decided to use a couple of his most powerful backpack leaf blowers and one of his mulchers to clear my neighbors yard of leaves. Since the yard is not navigable for the mower this consisted of blowing all the leaves into the driveway and then mulching them with the mower there.
I don't think it would make sense, but I could see someone waiting until the end of winter and then cleaning all the leaves up if there was grass underneath. However, when the only thing underneath is rocks and ivy it seems hard to grasp why anyone would attempt such a thing. Since every square inch of what is a good 3/4 acre slope is covered with leaves it basically meant two days of the deafening roar of leaf blowers broken up only by the roar of a loud oversized mower in mulching mode every 30 minutes or so.
The good news is that most of the leaves next door are gone. The bad news is that I am now partially deaf and my dogs are hoarse from barking.
There are large A-frame and chalet style houses up and down the street so there is a great mix of architecture and different styles and sizes of houses. There is also a great mix of different personalities to go with the houses. A music teacher/record producer, two professors at a local college, a bartender, a carpenter, a physicist, several engineers, a lawn care entrepreneur, and a lady who runs the local wildflower association. I get along with most of my neighbors, if only on a cursory level as most of them tend to keep to themselves in the neighborhood.
We are fast approaching the end of a long and cold winter punctuated by extremely low temperatures and a few bouts of snow that we normally don't have. In other words, nothing is blooming or growing at all right now. For some reason unknown to reasonable humans my next door neighbor decided this weekend to clean up the leaves around his house. Since my yard and his are absolutely covered with trees with absolutely no lawn underneath this seems rather senseless at best and downright insane at worst. Nevertheless, it is his yard so I believe he has every right to do as he pleases with it. Unfortunately, he has also managed to get the help of the lawncare business owner across the street in this project who I will call Ed to protect the anonymity of all involved. Ed seems to be in the grass business from a couple of different angles from what I can tell; both the grass maintenance business and the grass distribution business. That's my theory anyway, although I have no proof and even less animosity about it.
Ed is a gasoline engine enthusiast of the first order. He has a wide variety of cars and trucks, from classic Chevy's to Mercedes, Fords, and a couple of large moving vans that he has retrofitted for his lawn care business. Several years ago he acquired a small antique mini-bike that he is fond of riding around the neighborhood in the summertime; usually somewhere around 2 AM. The extreme steepness of my neighbors driveway must be a good challenge for Ed and his mini-bike because it seems to be one of his favorite places to ride at that hour. I don't know if Ed is making deliveries at that hour or just having fun but it is not unusual to be awakened by his jaunts up and down the neighbors driveway at very early morning hours. Naturally, the dogs I have in the back yard are offended by both the hour and the ear piercing staccato blasts of the mini-bike so they make sure I am aware of it just in case I might possibly be able to sleep through it otherwise.
Ed also has quite an array of leaf blowers, mowers, saws, edgers, and two stroke engines of different types. The one thing they all seem to have in common is a lot of horsepower and minimal muffler capabilities. Ed exercises them regularly. I suppose it is good sense to do so in the long run but it does little to recommend our neighborhood for low decibel levels when this is going on. This weekend he decided to use a couple of his most powerful backpack leaf blowers and one of his mulchers to clear my neighbors yard of leaves. Since the yard is not navigable for the mower this consisted of blowing all the leaves into the driveway and then mulching them with the mower there.
I don't think it would make sense, but I could see someone waiting until the end of winter and then cleaning all the leaves up if there was grass underneath. However, when the only thing underneath is rocks and ivy it seems hard to grasp why anyone would attempt such a thing. Since every square inch of what is a good 3/4 acre slope is covered with leaves it basically meant two days of the deafening roar of leaf blowers broken up only by the roar of a loud oversized mower in mulching mode every 30 minutes or so.
The good news is that most of the leaves next door are gone. The bad news is that I am now partially deaf and my dogs are hoarse from barking.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Autodidactic Musing
Some years ago I discovered a new term. The term is autodidact. There is a basic definition of an autodidact that suggests autodidacts are simply self taught. I suppose there is some truth to that definition but it only begins to scratch the surface of what separates autodidacts from other people. Stumbling on the term as I did, I immediately self diagnosed myself as an autodidact and it has stayed in the back of my mind since, occasionally brought up for contemplation and study and then carefully placed back in my subconscious.
The subconscious is a complex mechanism. In one of my forays into eastern philosophy I came upon a formal description of the most efficient usage of the subconscious and realized it was something I have always done; not in so many steps but it was a process I have tapped into for much of my life. The description suggested that the subconscious mind is good at organizing or collating information. I picture it as a continuously cycling automatic organizational tool; something like a mental rock polishing machine. Rock polishing machines simply rotate and let the rocks continously and randomly rotate against themselves, eventually smoothing and polishing everything into extremely smooth shapes. I visualize my subconscious mind doing this same thing in reverse; so that the edges are sharpened and honed instead of worn down. The infinite cycling of three dimensional concepts leads to ever more interesting ways that they fit together. The process is that I often discover an interesting concept and put it into my subconscious for future reference. More often than not it later reappears suddenly in quite a different form; interlocked perfectly with other concepts that lead in a new direction.
Several concepts emerged this morning in one thought: Wisdom is the difference between what people are taught and what they learn. With some people this is a relatively small difference. With others it is a vast chasm. I am reading a very interesting book on the error of how humans comprehend risk but it triggered this thought more or less out of the blue. It would be pleasant to claim some superior reasoning as the source of this idea but the truth is that it is a product of random study of ideas that interest me.
I did not choose to be an autodidact. That should be obvious from the fact that I didn't know the term existed until a few years ago. The point is that for reasons I don't completely understand I was compelled to be an autodidact. From an early age I resisted being told how things work in favor of figuring it out on my own. One process irritated me and the other invigorated me. To this day I find my mind wandering when explanations get too detailed unless it is something I am completely immersed in as an immediate necessity. I would like to claim this is because of my preference for learning on my own the but the truth is that it probably has more to do with being very stubborn.
As a part of the thought I had this morning it occurred to me that our society today strongly encourages formal education and discourages autodidactic learning. In general terms the more formal education one receives the higher on the social and economic scale one goes. While there are outliers and exceptions to this basic theory, it holds true for the most part. Unfortunately, this process also tends to favor mediocrity and a lack of innovation over the type of contemplation and convergence of concepts that lead to true breakthroughs in understanding.
The good news is that some within the formal education system are starting to grasp the autodidact concept. These people are pushing for learning systems that favor this type of learning. I would suggest that there are many different levels and types of autodidact, as the term is most accurate as a description of a generic learning process with many different variants. Perhaps we will get to the point where we understand the only way to maximize learning is to allow each individual to choose their own path and process for learning. People who study what interests them tend to continously expand their interests. If wisdom is the difference between what people are taught and what they learn, formalizing a learning process is its opposite.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Pain
The days when nothing hurt on my body are long past. Sometimes I wonder if they ever existed at all. Maybe I was once under the illusion that I was pain free when in actuality my body was masking it with anticipation and excitement for the moment. The reality is that the only pain free moments I have now are when I am involved in the present to the point that I don't notice the pain my body is experiencing.
A lifetime of living actively has a tendency to leave marks. One of my older rather crusty co-workers explained this succinctly some years ago. He came in one Monday limping noticeably and grimacing in pain. I asked him what was wrong and he just glared at me and said, "I'm just old." This struck me as humorous and I laughed with him about it. He pointed his finger at me for emphasis and said, "Getting old is not for pussies… You'll find that out one day." Truth be told I knew what he was talking about then as I was just turning fifty and starting to be reminded of all the accidents I had already incurred.
I started out life rather accident prone and have only modified this tendency in the immediate recent past. Ligaments in ankles that were regularly torn playing basketball were aggravated by falling off of a hay truck and having the load of hay bales land on top of me. Trying to jump my bicycle off of a ramp that collapsed from a combination of my extremely ambitious courage and extremely poor construction techniques led to a lifetime of headaches that still remind me of the original Evel Kneval movie. Motorcycle wrecks, car wrecks, fights, and general drunken rowdy behavior added to the list.
Ladder falls, ladder collapses, scaffold collapses, and a near fatal electrocution further added to my resume of body damage. All of these things catch up to you if you are lucky enough to live long enough. Some days are worse than others but pain is a constant companion these days. I suspect it is the same for most everyone and don't dwell on it as a negative. It's as natural as breathing and something I have come to accept as a part of my life like taxes and other minor irritations.
Still… I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be without it. Did I ever know the answer to that question?
A lifetime of living actively has a tendency to leave marks. One of my older rather crusty co-workers explained this succinctly some years ago. He came in one Monday limping noticeably and grimacing in pain. I asked him what was wrong and he just glared at me and said, "I'm just old." This struck me as humorous and I laughed with him about it. He pointed his finger at me for emphasis and said, "Getting old is not for pussies… You'll find that out one day." Truth be told I knew what he was talking about then as I was just turning fifty and starting to be reminded of all the accidents I had already incurred.
I started out life rather accident prone and have only modified this tendency in the immediate recent past. Ligaments in ankles that were regularly torn playing basketball were aggravated by falling off of a hay truck and having the load of hay bales land on top of me. Trying to jump my bicycle off of a ramp that collapsed from a combination of my extremely ambitious courage and extremely poor construction techniques led to a lifetime of headaches that still remind me of the original Evel Kneval movie. Motorcycle wrecks, car wrecks, fights, and general drunken rowdy behavior added to the list.
Ladder falls, ladder collapses, scaffold collapses, and a near fatal electrocution further added to my resume of body damage. All of these things catch up to you if you are lucky enough to live long enough. Some days are worse than others but pain is a constant companion these days. I suspect it is the same for most everyone and don't dwell on it as a negative. It's as natural as breathing and something I have come to accept as a part of my life like taxes and other minor irritations.
Still… I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be without it. Did I ever know the answer to that question?
Friday, January 3, 2014
Undefined
God.
That one word has such an effect on me that it is hard to describe. I hear it uttered in anger or frustration and completely understand the context. I hear it uttered in sincere acquiescent reverence and feel a sense of embarrassment for the person saying it. I have a very hard time defining where I stand on the religious spectrum because there are a lot of things I am simply not sure about. I strongly believe that the first step in any learning process it the simple admission that you don't know. I have taken that approach throughout my life with ever subject I have seriously studied. Agnostic seems a pretty good description of where I stand but it also implies something to most people that simply is not true in my case. It implies that I am have no opinion about religion in general and am simply waiting for someone or something to convince me. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I have spent quite a bit of time trying to sort through the veracity of organized religion of many different types and descriptions. The one thing I find universally true is that religion is man's attempt to understand things he doesn't understand. While this is actually quite admirable in some ways the history of organized religion is actually the history of power struggles and tribal hatred carried to illogical extremes. Religion is admirable when it attempts to define ethical treatment of our fellow human beings. Unfortunately, this always winds up a secondary pursuit as those who run organized religions invariably lean towards apocalyptic power struggles instead.
As a student of history of all types I find it fascinating that the three major western religions all have the same source. One would think this would lead all the Abrahamic religions to have common cause and foster cooperative works designed to improve life for all humans. The fact that this is not the case should give discerning people pause. The fact that these three groups have regularly slaughtered each other and all non-believers should be enough to convince everyone that something is fatally flawed within each. I understand how most people come to their religious beliefs. I was raised as a Southern Baptist; well... at least my mother attempted to raise me as one. The fact is that most people who define themselves as religious are raised in a religious household. They may start out as Baptist and wind up Presbyterian but few people are raised in non-religious households and wind up organized religion members.
I find it harder to understand how someone could stay in a religion without questioning its veracity. Very early on I saw incongruities in what I was taught at Bible School that simply didn't make sense. The more questions I asked the less answers I got. Some things have to be taken on faith. This is all very well and good until you understand the definition of faith. Faith is simply firm belief in something that can't be proven. If it has some basis in fact there would be little need to have faith to begin with. You could simply prove it by the scientific methods we use to verify every other belief we hold to be true. I suspect faith was invented by the very first person ever confronted with someone attempting to use a scientific methodology to question the veracity of what they were saying. This also explains why a lack of faith is seen as a form of sin in most religions. In any other field outside of religion admonition that it is wrong to ask questions is properly defined as coercion or brainwashing.
For much of my life I stood in silence when people asked me to pray with them at public functions. I always believed it would be impolite to object so I always stood in silence and tried to be courteous. Having spent so much time studying religion and more importantly how religion affects the world around me, I have determined not to do this anymore. Organized religions are still fostering war, genocide, and mass murder in many areas of our planet. Just because Christians refuse to recognize their faith's part in this doesn't mean it is not true. It is time to break the cycle of ignorance that allows generation after generation of people to blindly follow a belief system that helps cause such destruction. I would not stand by and quietly ignore people praying to Baal or some such ancient god who demanded the blood of children so why should I do the same for the God of Christianity who demands that all accept Jesus or face an eternity in flames?
I don't claim to know with any certainty if there is some undefined greater consciousness, I tend to think there probably is. This makes me an agnostic. Admitting I don't have all the answers is not the same thing as avowing that I don't have any. I am convinced that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are tribally based belief systems that are a net detriment to humanity.
That one word has such an effect on me that it is hard to describe. I hear it uttered in anger or frustration and completely understand the context. I hear it uttered in sincere acquiescent reverence and feel a sense of embarrassment for the person saying it. I have a very hard time defining where I stand on the religious spectrum because there are a lot of things I am simply not sure about. I strongly believe that the first step in any learning process it the simple admission that you don't know. I have taken that approach throughout my life with ever subject I have seriously studied. Agnostic seems a pretty good description of where I stand but it also implies something to most people that simply is not true in my case. It implies that I am have no opinion about religion in general and am simply waiting for someone or something to convince me. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I have spent quite a bit of time trying to sort through the veracity of organized religion of many different types and descriptions. The one thing I find universally true is that religion is man's attempt to understand things he doesn't understand. While this is actually quite admirable in some ways the history of organized religion is actually the history of power struggles and tribal hatred carried to illogical extremes. Religion is admirable when it attempts to define ethical treatment of our fellow human beings. Unfortunately, this always winds up a secondary pursuit as those who run organized religions invariably lean towards apocalyptic power struggles instead.
As a student of history of all types I find it fascinating that the three major western religions all have the same source. One would think this would lead all the Abrahamic religions to have common cause and foster cooperative works designed to improve life for all humans. The fact that this is not the case should give discerning people pause. The fact that these three groups have regularly slaughtered each other and all non-believers should be enough to convince everyone that something is fatally flawed within each. I understand how most people come to their religious beliefs. I was raised as a Southern Baptist; well... at least my mother attempted to raise me as one. The fact is that most people who define themselves as religious are raised in a religious household. They may start out as Baptist and wind up Presbyterian but few people are raised in non-religious households and wind up organized religion members.
I find it harder to understand how someone could stay in a religion without questioning its veracity. Very early on I saw incongruities in what I was taught at Bible School that simply didn't make sense. The more questions I asked the less answers I got. Some things have to be taken on faith. This is all very well and good until you understand the definition of faith. Faith is simply firm belief in something that can't be proven. If it has some basis in fact there would be little need to have faith to begin with. You could simply prove it by the scientific methods we use to verify every other belief we hold to be true. I suspect faith was invented by the very first person ever confronted with someone attempting to use a scientific methodology to question the veracity of what they were saying. This also explains why a lack of faith is seen as a form of sin in most religions. In any other field outside of religion admonition that it is wrong to ask questions is properly defined as coercion or brainwashing.
For much of my life I stood in silence when people asked me to pray with them at public functions. I always believed it would be impolite to object so I always stood in silence and tried to be courteous. Having spent so much time studying religion and more importantly how religion affects the world around me, I have determined not to do this anymore. Organized religions are still fostering war, genocide, and mass murder in many areas of our planet. Just because Christians refuse to recognize their faith's part in this doesn't mean it is not true. It is time to break the cycle of ignorance that allows generation after generation of people to blindly follow a belief system that helps cause such destruction. I would not stand by and quietly ignore people praying to Baal or some such ancient god who demanded the blood of children so why should I do the same for the God of Christianity who demands that all accept Jesus or face an eternity in flames?
I don't claim to know with any certainty if there is some undefined greater consciousness, I tend to think there probably is. This makes me an agnostic. Admitting I don't have all the answers is not the same thing as avowing that I don't have any. I am convinced that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are tribally based belief systems that are a net detriment to humanity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)