Messages in the Film Gravity??

by Gary Berg-Cross

This weekend I saw the 3D action-thriller movie Gravity. It's filled with visual wonder but I think offers more than that. On the surface it proves an

out there feeling of the vastness of space topic punctuated with the claustrophobic feeling of  living in a space suit.  It is quite grounded in the science of space and the engineering of our efforts there, but I liked as well the implications and the perhaps some implied view of the fragility of the human condition. 

When my head stopped spinning from the  closely observed and etchingly realistic experiences of spinning in space I groked the meaning of the title for the first time. It's Gravity and not Zero Gravity.

Part of the message seemed to me that complex things (see posting on Collapse of Complex Societies) are too heavy and fall down in chain reaction type events – it’s the human condition in the strangeness of what modern tech can place us in. "I hate space" is the simple line as our heroine tries to cope with a spiraling series of oxygen deficits and hasty repairs and systems that break down in chain reaction.

In the movie our space constructs are destroyed by our own debris and it’s a bumpy ride being tethered together and the direction of things is down.  There is some parallel to the film 2001 in some scenes such as getting into a space station while in a space suit, but the neatest relations is a connection to evolution. Indeed we are treated to both evolution and something like a reverse evolution in that we start in the air and fall to ground.  Well actually we fall to the sea and have to emerge onto land again as did our ancestors.  

If the message of 2001 is about transcendence and emergence, this movie has something in the opposite direction. Maybe we need something simpler we can understand (Look the dials are in Chinese so we need our wits and “eenie meenie mo"  chances to survive.) 

But our time is ticking by till the next Meltdown, I mean space-debris shower happens.

 'You have to sip, not gulp,' says the George Clooney character, as you realize you're holding your own breath.'  

Yep, we are all holding are breath watching this movie, but maybe as a passenger of our complex times too.

It's a mix of  complexity, unintended consequences and natural forces like gravity that bring things crashing to earth.  Time perhaps for us to sip and not gulp on the topic of the challenge of modern complexity and multiple levels - in orbit and down on earth.

Humanist’s Hippocratic Oath

by Gary Berg-Cross

Following the mortgage meltdown that prompted the current crisis were those theoretical constructs known as financial models Emanuel Derman and Paul Wlmott had an article that appeared in Bloomberg Business week called “The Modelers' Hippocratic Oath”

In the article they listed the oath and I thought it might be of interest and amusing to the Secular and Humanist community and adapted it slightly as a more pragmatic. Of course we have many obvious principles in the various Humanist Manifesto's but the oath is a bit more general and might be thought of as aimed at some thinking behind the principles as well as communication about such principles.

Humanist’s Hippocratic Oath

~ I will remember that I didn't make the physical or social world, and they don’t exist to make my musings and opinions look good.

~ Though I will use my knowledge and experience to boldly write about important issues, I will not be overly impressed by my attempts.

~ I will never sacrifice reality for elegant language and simplifications without explaining why I have done so.

~ Nor will I give the people who use my idea false comfort about their completeness and accuracy. Instead, I will endeavor to make explicit my assumptions and oversights.

~ I understand (and hope) that if done well my work may eventually have significant effects on my community, society and its economy, many of them beyond my comprehension.

 

And of course, "First do no harm."

 

 

Images

 

Hippocratic Oath: http://the-hippocratic-oath.soft32download.com/screenshot/

 

Do no harm: http://www.meandmydiabetes.com/2011/09/14/ron-rosedale-neurodegenerative-disease-hormones-and-diet/

 

 

 

Looking at Political Rhetoric Ahead with the Aid of a Look Back at Decider Era Language

By Gary Berg-Cross

There are quite a few decisions ahead we face as a nation, but the end of the year is also a time to look back.  Well, at first blush we see in the rear view mirror a very political, ideological and shallow belief driven year.  Looking ahead at some of looming, large conversations it seems that there is plenty to anticipate. But  as a nation we have gone from a 2 year campaign to a permanent campaign mode that makes compromise and balanced decisions difficult.  With ideological belief ridding harshly on pragmatic approaches we are likely to slink into that finger-pointing style for some time. 

That seems a poor environment for decisions so perhaps a look back provides some perspective on what might get when we auto pilot on  politics, ideology and God-given beliefs.  We don’t have to go back too far.  We can look at George W. Bush’s (ghost team written) presidential autobiography Decision Points for some idea of what emerges from such an atmosphere.

When it came out Decision Points  was described by a NYTs review as:

 “a book that is part spin, part mea culpa, part family scrapbook, part self-conscious effort to (re)shape his political legacy…. Certainly it’s the most casual of presidential memoirs: how many works in the genre start as a sort of evangelical, 12-step confession (‘Could I continue to grow closer to the Almighty or was alcohol becoming my god?’),”

Eliot Weinberger’s writing in the London Review of Books pointed out how the book blurred distinction between fiction and non-fiction.

That is to say, the parts that are not outright lies – particularly the accounts of Hurricane Katrina and the lead-up to the Iraq War – are the sunnier halves of half-truths.

Obama is certainly not George W. and likely more thought and data for decisions, but he is dealing in part with neo-con and rigid belief factions that advised us into “problems.”  It is sobering to think about how many Bush legacies, discussed in that book as if Bush was heroically dealing with each one, still have to be dealt with by Obama. The list includes:

• Recession and debt following the financial crisis of 2008
• Terrorist attacks,
• Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and controlling the military,
• Middle East conflicts, emerging democracies & aid,
• drones,
• Various domestic issues (including Medical reform, Social Security reform, Education and Immigration reform),
• Federal response to disaster (Sandy etc.) and
• Political strategy

What ever book Obama writes it will probably provide more insight into these and reflect a different backward glance than W’s last days in office (from Wikipedia):

"I reflected on everything we were facing. Over the past few weeks we had seen the failure of America's two largest mortgage entities, the bankruptcy of a major investment bank, the sale of another, the nationalization of the world's largest insurance company, and now the most drastic intervention in the free market since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. At the same time, Russia had invaded and occupied Georgia, Hurricane Ike had hit Texas, and America was fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was one ugly way to end the presidency."

Ugly yes, but as Eliot Weinberger wrote in the London Review of Books:

“Bush is the lone hero of every page of Decision Points. We hear very little substantial thinking but are offered instead some detached voice sounding forceful, in command, and often peeved at “the inadequacies of his subordinates”. 

 

Now with a permanent campaign abroad in the land we don’t have to wait for a book to hear spin, combined with mea culpas and self-conscious effort to (shape political legacies (think John Boehner).   So perhaps we can be fore-warned and not have to wait for a future Obama book.  Instead someone else is likely to spin the next few years events to their purpose in a George W decision making style voice:

‘What the hell is happening?’ I asked during an NSC meeting in late April. ‘Why isn’t anybody stopping these looters?’

‘By the time Colin gets to the White House for the meeting, this had better be fixed.’

‘We need to find out what he knows,’ I directed the team. ‘What are our options?’

‘Damn right,’ I said.

‘Where the hell is Ashcroft?’ I asked.

‘Go,’ I said. ‘This is the right thing to do.’

‘We’re going to stay confident and patient, cool and steady,’ I said.

‘Damn it, we can do more than one thing at a time,’ I told the national security team.

As I told my advisers, ‘I didn’t take this job to play small ball.’

‘This is a good start, but it’s not enough,’ I told him. ‘Go back to the drawing board and think even bigger.’

‘We don’t have 24 hours,’ I snapped. ‘We’ve waited too long already.’

‘What the hell is going on?’ I asked Hank. ‘I thought we were going to get a deal.’

‘That’s it?’ I snapped.

It’s complaint and bravado without substance and you can substitute freely to imagine the events that will be reported around the fiscal curb, for example. (“we don’t have 2 hours and what the hell is going on?”)  It’s the new normal and I’m already afraid we’ll be hearing this empty leadership style language in the 2014 campaign. In Texas, noted the NY Times, the 2014 Campaigns  Have Already Begun – “The Campaigns Are Dead, Long Live the Campaigns”. .And the rhetoric has plenty of fodder to throw at us. 

‘That’s it?’ I’ve snapped just thinking about what our political-interest-media hybrid system has become.

Image Credits

Bush Cartoon: http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/cartoons/68807

Bush on Katrian: http://jezebel.com/5680772/bush-says-kanyes-katrina-outburst-was-worst-moment-of-his-presidency

Jeb: http://blog.4president.org/2012/jeb-bush/

 
George P. Bush: http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2014-statewide-elections/what-if-bush-leapfrogged-other-texas-republican

Myth Supplants Reality & Fantasy Displaces Common Sense

By Gary Berg-Cross

Allan Sloan wrote recently about the 5 Myths of the Great Financial Meltdown. His list covered:

1: The government should have done nothing

2: The government bailed out shareholders

3: The Volcker Rule will save us

4: Taxpayers are off the hook for future failures. And

5: It's the government's fault.

The details in the article are worth reading, but I was particularly struck a compelling framing line that I could identify with in his analysis:

I find myself getting increasingly angry and frustrated watching myth supplant reality about what happened, and seeing fantasy displace common sense when it comes to fixing the problems that got us in this mess .

Some manifestations are because of ideological and political stances. We see fantasy and unsound thinking in the climate change debate and warming as conspiracy of scientists, who are the most reality grounded of us. We will hear more myth, like “death panels” in likely discussion the Affordable Health Care act. As Chris Mooney notes it seems at times the political right lives in a different reality that pushed serious, critical thinking to the back of the bus. You can see this for yourself by going to the Main page of Conservapedia. When I was writing this blog the following were the very mythic, anti-freethinking news stories featured:

Liberals have destroyed the perceived value of a college degree with their worst college majors: "Undervalued and overpriced, the beleaguered bachelor's degree is losing its edge as the hallmark of an educated, readily employable American." [9]

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The myth of neutrality.[10] Which side are you on?

Remind Wikipedia that their neutral point of view policy (NPOV) is a farce and they might as well confess they are liberals! See: Bias in Wikipedia

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Pastor Carl Gallups declares his anti-atheism and anti-evolution book is doing well around the world.VIDEO

Is there more bad news on its way for global atheism and global evolutionism? You know where to go to find the latest news detailing the decline of atheism and evolutionism![11][12][13] It is such a glorious time to be a Christian creationist.[14][15]

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Also, food related stocks with large international footprints are largely doing well in the Great Recession.[18][19] No matter how incompetent Barack Obama and secular European leaders are, people still need to eat!

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Much to the dismay of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Obama and "The Lord of the Fries" (Barack Obama), there are fast food restaurants serving big sugary drinks whose stocks are doing well in the Great Recession.[20]

Obese atheists and obese evolutionists of the world, stop driving up the price of fast food stocks! Also, a leading creationist organization declares, "Blaming gluttony on evolution seems very self-serving."[21] You thought you could blame your obesity and gluttony on "evolution". Think again! Start hitting the gym for 60 minutes a day evolutionist slackers![22][23][24] And give your body one day of rest a week.[25][26]

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Want to read part of the Conservapedia entry on Climate Change? Here is a snippet:

Ideologues insist that the world's top scientists have reached a "consensus" that most of the warming which land-based weather stations have recorded in the last century is due to human activity. The basis for this claim is a set of reports published by the IPCC, an agency of the United Nations. The assumption is that the government-appointed representatives who run the IPCC would be completely objective and neutral, and would place finding and revealing the truth ahead of any nationalistic interests.

A lot of money is spent publicizing each side's position in the debate:

"Newsweek purports to take readers inside the world of “Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine” without mentioning that the global-warming alarmists are even better funded, in some cases with government support

Myths replacing reality is a perennial worrisome topic to Freethinkers and the above is a large dose. Some of the WASH speaker’s have addressed the myth-reality battle directly. Rob Boston’s Talk on “The Christian Nation Myth” covered many aspects of this arguing that we have to

strongly oppose the Christian establishment myth and its associated principles, which exclude many people who now it can claim, are not true Americans. We are still struggling with our pluralism and the claim that non-believers that don't have America’s best interest at heart.

Another historical myth family has bothered my is the oversimplified stories about Western and American Exceptionalism such as Niall Ferguson’s book Civilization: The West and the Rest or the Reagan-like belief that “God has granted America a special role in human history.”.

Such Myths are potent in part because they cobble together reassuring ideas that we want to believe in. We just need enough support to get above a very low threshold of our version of “proof” that serves a confirmatory bias.

WallBuilders is an organization, for example, that shows a healthy dose of confirmatory bias towards the proposition of:

"presenting America's forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built – a foundation which, in recent years, has been seriously attacked and undermined. In accord with what was so accurately stated by George Washington, we believe that "the propitious [favorable] smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation which disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained."

Myths persist in part because considering the alternative, skeptical view is threatening. Then again, critical thinking, as opposed to the intuitive, feel-good version is hard work. Real historic understanding takes time and energy for evidentiary analysis and most of us routinely rely on short cuts that seem like common sense but are often don’t stand up to rational analysis..

Rational analysis for the masses, alas, remains an unfulfilled Enlightenment goal..