Pax / Astra series

I am reading Andre Norton's Pax / Astra series.  This series contains 2 novels, written in the 1950's.  The first is The Stars Are Ours and the second one is Star Born.  Descriptions and links are below.  One thing which came to mind is how events in the Star Born novel compares to our involvement with questionable leaders and factions in other countries.  Afghanistan in particular comes to mind.  The novel involves Earth people who go to a planet which is inhabited by multiple intelligent species.  The Earth people initially side with one group who turn out to be bad people.

The Stars Are Ours
Earth in 2500AD is no place for a young man with a dream of freedom. And Dard Nordisis worse off than most. His brother was killed for covert activities as a Free Scientist in a world where science is outlawed and blamed for all evils. Now Dard and his niece are hunted and trying to find his brother's friends before their enemies find them and execute them as well. The stakes are high-- he can be shot down and killed like his brother or escape to the stars in a spaceship that the Free Scientists have built in secret!
Audiobook link

Star Born
When Raf Kurbi's spaceship from Earth burst into unexplored skies of the far planet Astra, it was made welcome by the natives of a once-mighty metropolis. But Kurbi was unaware of three vital things: (1) that Astra already harbored an Earth colony - descended from refugees from the world of the previous century; (2) that these men and women were facing the greatest danger of their existence from a new outburst of the inhuman fiends who had once tyrannized Astra; and (3) that the natives who were buying Kurbi's science know-how were those very fiends - and their intentions were implacably deadly for all humans, whether Earth born or star born! Much of the planet's hopes lie with young Dalgard Nordis and his companion, Sssuri, a telepathic native of this alien world. If they fail, their planet will be subjugated and enslaved by that inhuman race.
Audiobook link

Here is a link to a combined ebook at Amazon.

Humans as unfinished products

I recently read Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works.  I found it to be informative and thought provoking.  One of the thoughts which came to me is that humans are unfinished products.  Our brains are a mix of new and old.  I know that this is not entirely accurate since the old parts have evolved along with the new parts.  But the older parts of the brain have functions and neurochemistry which are still similar to what other animals have.  These brain elements influence and are influenced by the parts which are exclusively human.  As advanced as humans have become, the ways which our brains work are still developing.  The cognitive abilities mix and are sometimes overwritten by the more animalistic neurochemical responses.

I think that a danger with modern humans is that there is too little understanding of how our fairly new brain has some problems with the interactions of the parts.

Don't stop learning or thinking

I saw a talk by a person who was saying to stop learning and start thinking.  The talk was problematic.  Learning and thinking are intricately involved.  My experience and reading indicates to me that excluding either leads people into false perspectives.  Just knowing things without adequate cognitive skills seems to stifle progress.  I have the opinion that some of the industrial and commercial abuses come from not taking cognition far enough.  in those cases, I refer to the cognitive ability to work out enough of the consequences of things.  But emphasizing thinking or rationalizing (not always the same thing) without adequate knowledge is foolish.  There is certainly bad "learning" where people are given false information.  But not looking at what is physically known and actually proven leads to pseudo knowledge.

I have doubts that there really is a true separation between learning and thinking.  But it is clear to me that there are bad learning and bad thinking.  But I think that the quality of both learning and thinking are tied together.

Speaking of bad learning and thinking, Some media are seriously foul.  We have commercials which tout things as fact which were basically made up.  We have "journalists", bloggers and vloggers stating things as fact which have either not been proven or have been proven wrong.  The 10% brain usage is an example  Even a casual study of actual neuroscience or biopsychology shows that the idea that we only use 10% of our brains is a myth.  Yet this is touted as fact  by many sources.

Wealthy Versus the Poor

I attended a group discussion in Second Life today.  The topic was economics.  Some of the attendees seemed to be a bit absolutist about the evilness of wealthy people.  I noted that things are not always that black and white.  Not all wealthy people got wealthy by abusing the poor and some poor people are poor because of their state of mind and other personal faults.  This did not go over well with some.

Now, I am not wealthy.  I was once quite poor.  My poverty was due to a combination of inadequate education, bad social conditioning and a lack of focus.  When in that level of poverty, I saw a variety of people who were poor for a variety of reasons.  I knew of nobody who was poor purely because of abuse by the wealthy.  There were some cases where bad decisions by the better off did affect some of them.  But the reasons for their and my poverty were mostly a complex mixture of things.  I eventually stabilized my life and worked up to a middle class income.  But it took a lot of changes on my part.

I once had some access to the lives of the wealthy.  This was through some of the sons and daughters of wealthy parents.  Some of the parents were away a lot. The offspring would have parties and other events at the mansions when the parents were away.  I had a chance to see some aspects of the wealthy which showed me that the sources of wealth are at least as complex as the sources of poverty.  It is true that some wealthy people have done really bad things and others have a mixed record.  It is also true that there are wealthy people who are quite negligent.  Even too many of the people who made their wealth by hard work and who try to treat all people respectfully do not do things as well as they should.  For instance, once father made his wealth in some kind of environmental business which I do not recall.  The son and daughter both claimed that the father cared for the environment.  Yet there was no solar panels at the house and they had multiple large vehicles.

The point is that discussions about how to get people out of "poverty" need to include a discussion of the various contributing factors and not simply lay blame on one side or the other.  That is not to say that we should not place blame where it is due.  But we need more honesty in the conversations.

Music Appreciation

I love music. I listen to music most of the time. I like a wide range of genres. Although not so much into country and rap, I have those genres in my collection as well. Although I have my musical preferences, I don't knock any music. If people like it, it's OK by me. There are just 2 areas where I sometimes have issues.

Although I have no issues with musical styles, I sometimes have issues with lyrics. For instance, I have a large heavy metal collection. But some bands' lyrics are too negative. Violent and hateful lyrics are a turn-off for me. That's not to say that some of the negative lyrics don't always fit. They sometimes do. There are real issues in the world and some musicians attempt to portray them in various ways. I'm OK with that. I do like provocative and progressive lyrics. But I also like light weight lyrics. I don't think that lyrics have to mean much.  In general, I tend to treat vocals as instruments.  So I tend not to focus so much on what is being said.  But I try to at least know what the general focus is.  I tend to not want to support people, including musicians, who promote violence, hatred, racism, sexism, supernaturalism or eccessive emphasis on drugs. Some say that I take what people say too seriously.  But I think that lyrics are more important than some people think.  Songs tend to be repeated. Over time, lyrics are sometimes incorporaterd into people's thoughts.

I have problems with sound invasion.  Most people are respectful of others enough to adjust their volumes to levels which do no become invasive to neighbors. Although I make no judgement on musical styles, everyone has preferences. Plus people who play music or TV so loud that neighbors hear them disregard the point that others may be listening to something else. I will admit that some music sound great loud.  But living near people, like in apartments, requires respect for neighbors.

Devil's in the details

With all the US budget issues, I thought it was interesting to discover that a government department spent $630,000 for purchasing Facebook fans from click farms.  The department stopped the practice after its inspector general criticized the expenditure.  This came from an 01.05.14 Associated Press article about 'click farms'.

Word misuse

A pet peeve of mine is how words are used.  I dislike misuse of words.  Now, there are a lot of cases where it does not matter much, such as disc for some types of computer storage devises.  But some words misused in political, misleading and uninformed ways are frustrating to me.  I do not like how left and right became political words.  I dislike how politicians use words in ways to confuse or mislead the public.  Companies and advertisers do the latter as well.  Truth, facts, reality, science are words which I believe should be more carefully used.  Belief is confused with truth.  Hearsay is confused with facts. Ideas are misrepresented as theories.  Things are called science which have little or no use of the scientific method.  This all came to me when I was searching the web about realism.  Early on, I came across an international perspective called realism.  The proponents use the word because they believe that they are basing their views on what is really happening in the world.  But they move away from realism as they make policy suggestions based purely on their perception of current conditions.  They skip over psychological and sociological factors.  I was surprised to discover the term racial realism and that scientific racism is still in use.  These terms relate to biased attempts to show how science and reality "prove" biological inferiority of specific races.  But the beginning bias of most of the proponents of these views is that they are racists to begin with.  From there, they assemble only the data which they believe supports their views.  They ignore or discount the evidence which contradicts them.  They also exclude psychological, sociological and historical factors.  Then we also have religionists who misuse words such as facts, truth and science.

Part of being a literate people is knowing when and when not to use words.  I fear that some groups of people are becoming less literate in this context.  They know a lot of words but not how to use them wisely.

Idealistic realist

Like many philosophies, there are various definitions of realism, some of which conflict.  Over the years, I have experimented with different definitions of my perspective.  I have attempted to find a term which does not have contradictory definitions.  The latter has been found to be elusive.  So I chose realism because the basic definitions fit.  It is true that there are branches of 'realism' which conflict.  But it seems the most basic starting point from which to expand.    Here are the definitions which fits my approach.

APPLICABLE DEFINITIONS
1. REALIST
A. a person who is aware of and accepts the physical universe, events, etc., as they are.
B. a person who tends to view or represent things as they really are.
2. REALISM
A. Interest in or concern for the actual or real.
B. The tendency to view or represent things as they really are.
C. The foundations for abstracts and speculations are based as much as possible on honest and factual information.

Some articles indicate opposing views between realism and idealism.  Indeed, I believe that some idealism is unrealistic, especially idealist believes which exclude or ignore the facts.  But I have the opinion, founded is realism, that having ideals, things to strive for but which do not currently exist,  can be useful to development.

So I could also define myself as a realistic idealist or maybe an idealistic realist.  The main point is to have a foundation in the real, known existence and work out from there.  My ideas are continuing to develop.

Moderate religionists

I had an interesting experience with a Muslim taxi driver.  I had a flat tire on my Catrike.  It was caused by a pinch which resulted in 2 holes close to each other. Patches were not working. I decided to accept the expense of a taxi to my apartment for a spare tire and back. The taxi came in about 15 minutes. The trike would not fit in his van so it was going to be an expensive round trip. We initially talked about exercise. I asked if he used a gym. He said that he tried a gym but found that he was too unused to the openness of our culture. He did not seem to blame our culture. Rather he was not able to handle the amount of flesh visible in the gym. He indicated that he would use the treadmill a lot to hide his hardon. So he got a home gym.  He even said that his wife made some videos to motivate his workout. I decided to not ask about the content of the videos. It was clear that he came from a culture where women were required to wear more clothes than required here. But he was not expressing anything negative about our dress here. It was more about his limitations. We talked a while about exercise, bicycles and motorcycles. He seemed fairly moderate. Yet it also became clear that he was a practicing Muslim. Although I do not recall the context, he noted a couple of times about some of the ways which he managed to do the 5 daily prayers. Yet he was clearly a more modernized Muslim. But I did not want to find out his reaction to my nonbelief. For one, I needed his help. But it would also have seemed out of context. I certainly did not want to negatively affect his progress toward modernity.

Divide

The coworker noted in my previous post is quite convinced that his beliefs are based an true unchangeable truth, although his knowledge of both what his religious texts say and of their origins is more limited than he thinks.

House Speaker Boehner  had recently said that Republicans should have no more than superficial conversations with their kids.  He is concerned about the changed views which some of his fellow Republicans took in response to perspectives of their kids.  This is part of a trend on several areas where attempts are being made to create or maintain social divides.  In this case, it has to do with old school biases being maintained by avoiding conversations with the next generation.  It's like Boehner is acknowledging the pattern of newer generations being more socially progressive than older generations.  Boehner does not want this to affect the "grand old party".

How does this relate to the coworker.  Boehner and some other people in power are like the coworker in that they have views which are considered so absolute that no evidence will change them.

This is happening on multiple fronts and I fear will lead to growing and more widespread conflicts in some areas.