ThomStratton.com

And people wonder why I have a love/hate relationship with technology. (And by “people wonder” I mean no one at all has ever asked me this, but I need some rhetorical construct to get this post going, so we’ll pretend there are people out there who actually devote brain cycles to trying to figure me out.)

Technology is great when it works, nearly debilitating when it does not. Take my mp3 player (please!). I like to listen to audio books on my commute. When the technology works I don’t have to worry about anything other than getting the headphones into my ears and turning on the player. It remembers where I left off and picks up from there.

Except when it doesn’t. Suddenly that little feature seems to have disappeared. The last several times I’ve turned on my player it seems to have forgotten I was even listening to an audio book and takes me to the middle of my menus structure. I have to find my way back into the right file (there are four for this particular book), then fast-forward to where I was. When I wasn’t aware there was going to be a problem this was difficult–I’d just have to aurally scan the book hoping to hear something that sounded recent. Now that I know there’s a problem I’m making it a point to remember the time-elapsed point before I shut it off. But scanning to a particular spot in a seven-hour file is still more time consuming than I like.

I encountered a similar problem with my ebook software on my laptop while reading my neice’s novel. I went back to check something in an early chapter and suddenly realized I didn’t know how to get back to where I’d left off. Fortunately I remembered what chapter I was on (luckily) and was able to get back relatively quickly.

In both cases, had I a physical book I could have found my spot instantly (bookmark), or even if I’d lost my place, I could still have found it within a few seconds.

Fortunately at this point in my life when technology fails it’s an inconvenience. Or, to quote one of my favorite lines from Jurassic Park, “Yes, John, but when Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down the pirates don’t eat the tourists.” There is very little of real importance that would be lost if my technology stopped working. No lives would be at stake, at the very least.

But this is also why I am highly reluctant to place my life too much in the hands of technology. I’ve spent too long in IT to trust the infalibility of IT departments. I’ve spent too long fighting my technology to want to depend on it too much. It’s convenient, certainly. It allows me to do some fairly amazing things, yes. But bet my life on it? I will not. At least not knowingly.

Think differently. Many of us aspire to it. Fewer try it. Most are unwilling to take too great of risks to do it. But then there is this coach. He always kicks the on-sides kick. He never punts. His teams train for it. And they make it work.

I do have to wonder how much of their success comes from the fact that no one else dares rework their strategies to cope with this one team. They probably don’t want to waste a lot of practice time learning how to deal with the on-sides kick, as they’ll only face it from this team. But still…if this team always does it, it’s their own fault if they’re not prepared for it.

I must admit to a certain level of irritation with liberals who are always accusing conservatives as being “anti-science”. Besides the implication that conservatives want to return to living in caves (and who, pray tell, is more likely to be adopting the “paleo-diet?”), it’s grossly inaccurate. Quite frankly, the liberals’ mantra of “The science is settled” is as much or more “anti-science” as the conservative reluctance to swallow liberal policies supposedly based on “settled science”, but filtered and extrapolated through liberal ideologies.

Why would I say that? Because if you will think back to your high school science classes, what is at the heart of the scientific method? Questioning. Doubting. If you think that X may have an impact on Y, how are you supposed to set up your experiment? Beginning with a null hypothesis: “X has no impact on Y.” Whatever you may suspect, the first step in science is to assume you are wrong. You then conduct your experiment, collect your data, analyze that data, and see if that data supports or rejects that null hypothesis.

Then you publish your findings. Other scientists are supposed to poke holes in your methodologies and your interpretations of the data. They attempt to duplicate your results, then publish their results. Slowly–glacially, in some cases–a body of knowledge will be built that will support or refute a particular hypothesis. The results of numerous related studies may point strongly in a certain direction, and science may accept that as the most probable answer, but the science is nearly never settled. It is always open to new data and new studies.

That’s not to say that particular theories can’t be strong enough to take action upon. Some of it may even be something to take political action on. But that is where we inevitably run into trouble. Political ideologies are not science. They are world views; they are opinions. And as much as we may not like it, proving one ideology superior to another is not something science can help us with. When it comes to ideology we become adept at seizing only on that data that supports our position and ignoring anything to the contrary.

The other problem with taking political action based on supposed scientific theory is that most of us never actually get to see the actual science upon which the political issue is based. We’re getting our science fed to us by journalists who not only may not understand the science themselves, but are trying to put it as simply as possible for as many people to understand as they can.

Even if they are careful about it (and far too many journalists are extremely lazy science writers), they still have no control over how you interpret their words. They may carefully state that “Study A has shown a correlation between X and Y”, but for far too many people it’s been a long time since high school science, and much of what they learned they forgot after the test. They tend to forget that “correlation” is not the same thing as “causation”.

But far too often the reporters themselves get it wrong, and write their articles as though correlation means causation. Worse yet, headline writers love to go for the most sensational twist they can get from the text (and reporters almost never write their own headlines). I’ll confess: I get much of my news from headlines. I’ll bet you do, too. Because most of the time we don’t really care to know the details. We read the headline to decide whether to read the article, but do we question the headline itself?

So even assuming the average American understands science, how often do we really get accurate science news? How often do we make political policy decisions based on a shaky framework of distilled science? Nearly always, I’ll venture.

Then, of course, there is the continual evaluation of science based on political or religious ideology. Regardless of your views, that is inherently bad science. Especially when it leads to assumptions about your political opponents based on bad science (or no science). For example, the liberal tenet leading this post about a particular group being “anti-science”, whatever that means. Last I checked, the GOP wasn’t composed entirely of Amish people. On the contrary, a recent Yale professor’s research showed that the Tea Party, a group much maligned for their lack of sophistication, actually know their science pretty well. (Never mind that the Tea Party did not form because of science issues in government, but around fiscal issues and the balance between individual and governmental control.)

The article goes on to point out that it’s those leaning left have the best grasp of science, though it does not say by how much. Religion, on the other hand, showed only a weak negative correlation. Though the article doesn’t give specific data, the impression given is that you’re going to find significant variations in scientific understanding on both sides of the aisle–enough that we really have no business making claims about anyone’s scientific understanding based solely on their politics or their religion.

Indeed, a recent editorial by Mischa Fisher in The Atlantic raises some interesting points for those who consider themselves “pro-science”. When science encounters politics the “conventional wisdom” simply does not hold up:

Matters are more nuanced—or just plain favorable to Republicans—when it comes to the business of actually governing. Comparing the two parties’ proposed funding levels for the major scientific research agencies doesn’t lend itself well to narratives about who’s “pro” or “anti” science. For every cheap shot a Republican member of Congress like Senator Tom Coburn has taken at National Science Foundation grants (see the unfairly maligned robo-squirrel), there are areas where Obama has undercut American leadership in basic science by favoring loan guarantees and industrial subsidies to the alternative-energy industry at the expense of science elsewhere.

We’ve seen this in his proposed cuts to high-energy physics, nuclear physics, planetary science, and other areas of research. Even in the much-maligned “Tea Party-dominated” House of Representatives, the GOP budget proposals provided more funding for the NSF than those of the Senate Democrats for the current 2013 fiscal year.

The editoral goes on to call for those who are pro-science to stop the name-calling and over-simplification and work together. Political expediency, Fisher warns, will usually leave science out in the cold (or at least out of the budget). We need to band together to make sure science continues to be a priority if the US is to retain its edge, let alone its leadership.

To which I add an enthusiastic “Hear, hear!”

But at the very least, let’s not be so quick to judge one another. Yes, I’m a conservative (but don’t consider myself Republican). But I suspect you’ll find many of my opinions on science and science-based policy are not what many liberals claim. For example, while I don’t believe the science on global warming is as settled as some people like to think, I’m not against taking steps to curb emissions, cut pollution, and use our natural resources more responsibly. Since we don’t really understand nature and climate as well as we like to think, I’d prefer to err on the side of “let’s not interfere any more than necessary”.

I believe that God created the universe, the earth, and man, but tend to view the biblical accounts as dramatic simplifications. I believe God works through natural means to the point that it could be difficult to tell the difference between divine intervention and random mutation. (There’s a reason for that, but that’s another post for another time.) Whether man evolved from apes or whether man-like apes were allowed to develop to the point that creating man was not an impossible leap I really don’t know, and I really don’t care. That’s not what my religion is about, and I’ll worry about the unimportant details later.

Whether this all occurred naturally, or whether God has the power to make everything appear like it could have occurred naturally is really not that important. For all that science has discovered, they have not disproven God, only defined and clarified the minimum expectations on what God must be capable of. The more we learn, the more interesting God becomes. And God himself encourages us to learn as much a we can.

But at the end of it all, the points of contention between the prominant ideologies are somewhat minor in the over-all umbrella of Science. There just happen to be a few politically charged issues here and there that get blown out of proportion. I don’t see Dems and GOPs debating whether light is a particle or a wave, or moves at a constant, insurmountable speed. I don’t see either side questioning whether it’s at least possible to live on Mars. No one filibustered molecular bonding in the Senate in recent memory. No one questions whether or not we should be researching new drugs or medical technologies. We all agree that volcanoes and earthquakes occur, and that we should probably take precautions to minimize the loss of life when they do.

And we should all take great relief in the notion that science is never settled. There is always more to be discovered. Let’s quit fighting each other and get on with it already.

Dreams are one of the most fascinating aspects of life that we’ll never remember. It’s like going through the 60’s every night. Unfortunately for me just because I don’t remember my dreams doesn’t mean I don’t still feel some residual emotions from them afterward.

I awoke from a dream this morning that quickly faded from memory as usual, but left me feeling ill-at-ease, a little bit depressed. What little I remember of it regarded an acquaintance of mine from several years ago. In the dream her husband had died. That’s all I remember. But hours later it’s still haunting me a little. It’s not a good way to start a morning.

Truly good dreams are rare any more–at least as far as I can remember. At best they seem to be neutral, every-day life sort of dreams. The ones most memorable (which usually means that I remember having a dream at all) seem to be anxiety dreams. The most common one is where I’m called in to help put on a musical or a play. Most of the time its one I’ve done before, but this time it’s a part I’ve never played. And we’re going straight to performance with no chance to rehearse, teach me the stage blocking, or anything. We’re just going for it, and it’s up to me to not only remember the lines for a part I’ve not done, but figure out where I need to go.

To my subconcious’ credit, I spend much of the dream convincing myself I can do it. But inevitably the curtain rises and anxiety hits me full on. I tend to wake myself up at that point, because I just don’t want to deal with it any more.

Why don’t I have as many good dreams? Perhaps I do, but since they’re good, they’re also not memorable. Certainly I’d have no reason to wake up from them, and I remember most the dreams I wake up from. But I certainly don’t seem to be awakened from good dreams. It’s not fair. I could use a positive kick to the day. But at best my alarm pulls me out of something dull.

Does this mean I’m just a dull, negative person? Do more cheerful, outgoing people have good dreams? Or are people cheerful and outgoing because they have good dreams? If so, I want a refund.

I’d complain to my senator, but the last thing we need is a government takeover of our dreams.

Over the weekend we attended a fundraiser dinner which featured a keynote speaker. I was more than a bit appalled at the lack of courtesy exhibited by many of the attendees. I can somewhat understand that people would keep talking when the emcee would cut in with an announcement. The room was loud enough that they might not have even been able to hear her start talking.

But during the keynote speaker’s presentation I could hear quite a few people talking loudly in the back, as if they felt they needed to compete with the speaker. Small children were running up and down the aisle, squealing loudly as they ran, their parents following close behind. At first I thought they were taking their noisy kids out, but no, before long they’d be back again, headed the other direction, over and over again.

I felt terrible for the speaker having to talk over these people. I felt terrible for the organization who had sponsored him to come speak. Considering we were supposedly all there to support the organization, it was irritating to see the lack of support and respect from some of these people.

This was not an isolated incident. A few months ago our kids’ elementary school held a back-t0-school night to inform us all on what was going on at the school this year. As the principal was talking a great number of adults in the back were also talking, and with not even a token attempt to do so quietly. I could barely hear the principal at all.

What happened? When did we stop teaching and/or expecting audience etiquette? I was taught at an early age how to behave during public speeches, performances and the like. Evidently quite a few were not. We’ve become desensitized by out technology. Are we spending so much time interacting with screens that we forget how to interact with real people?

When everything is digital and viewable on screens smaller than your palm it becomes very easy to regard all situations as if everything were separated by that “fourth wall” that keeps the viewer ignorant of the wider world. We need not worry about talking during a YouTube video. They can’t hear us. We walk around in public places yelling into our cellphones, and the only time we take it outside is if the signal is bad.

Give us live music or a public speaker and we evidently have no idea how to behave. If something needs to be said, we say it now–and loudly. Forget whispering, we’ve forgotten even how to use our “inside voices”. Someone else is trying to listen to the speaker? Heh. Sucks to be them, heh heh. It’s all about me and what I want. And right now I want to talk. It’s been at least five minutes since I’ve heard the duclet sound of my own voice, and oh, I miss it so.

I have no idea how to turn this annoying trend around. But if the parents don’t set the example the kids certainly won’t learn.

A friend of mine recently linked to a post from an online magazine taking “liberal Mormons” to task. It’s since been taken down and apologized for, and I never actually read it myself. Considering the effect it was having on others I saw no reason to subject myself to it. But one positive that came from it is a discussion about what being a liberal Mormon means in the first place. My contribution to the discussion was expressing my discomfort with labels in the first place, as they tend to divide and create opposition rather than encourage unity.

Since then my friend has posted a lengthy, thoughtful post of her own explaining what being a liberal Mormon means to her. It’s worth reading, though not necessarily for her attempts to define her terminology. What she provides (as do some of the links to other posts on the topic) is useful insight into those who feel like they are on the outskirts of the Mormon community–often because they feel they’ve been pushed there.

I know a little of what she speaks, though I won’t claim to have experienced anything close to what she and others experience. Me and my family are both vegans and health conscious, and Mormons love to eat. Everything we do for some reason has to involve food. That in itself doesn’t make us uncomfortable or feel unwanted. We’ll go to activities simply to socialize. We’ll bring our own food. It’s not a big deal.

What makes us uncomfortable some times is just how uncomfortable it makes everyone else. Some simply apologize for not knowing or remembering to providing something we can eat. We appreciate that, and the thought does count. We don’t expect others to go out of their way for us. But others seem to hear challenges that we never expressed. I can say, “I’m a vegan,” and they’ll hear, “I’m a vegan and I think you should stop eating meat or you’ll go to hell.” They immediately go into defensive mode, making it clear they could never stop eating meat. Some even figuratively reach for their scriptures and start pulling out verses that they feel justifies their meat consumption (while completely overlooking the verses that justify at least limited meat consumption).

That, too, doesn’t really bother me that much. People are people, and some feel threatened by anything that contradicts their own choices–especially when it’s something they’ve never really thought through before. They don’t seem to realize that they’re attacking my beliefs, while I never required them to defend their own. If it’s possible to be a moderate vegan, I just might be one (and trust me, there are plenty of vegans out there who would drive me with pitchforks and torches into the wilderness for not being more militant about it).

Unfortunately there are also those who, without realizing what they’re doing, imply that we are somehow ruining our kids and their lives (this may very well be true, but more likely because I’m their father than because of veganism), or that we don’t love them enough to give them treats (at least that’s the assumption; they don’t know what kinds of treats we make or they’d be jealous). Again, I suspect they’re really just trying to justify their own choices rather than attack ours, but it can be harder not to take it as a personal insult when you drag my kids into it and question my parenting.

So I can certainly understand that members of the LDS community can be even nastier when it comes to more visible, controversial issues, like same-gender attraction, priesthood for women, and so on. It’s not hard to imagine members saying and doing incredibly hurtful things in the name of their religion as they see it, completely failing to notice, let alone heed, the charge by our leaders to treat everyone with dignity and respect, and to offer support and love instead of criticism. It’s sad, unfortunate, and frustrating, but our religion is a vehicle for improvement, not an instant “extreme makover”, and you’ll find we have our share of jerks, bigots and hippocrits like any group.

That’s why we all need Christ’s atonement–both those who offend and those who fail to forgive those who have offended. We’re all going to fall short in some way.

But in reading the accounts of my friend and some of the others she links to, it does seem that there are far too many “unforced errors” in the LDS community. We could all use some work in being more tolerant, patient, and supportive of one another’s quirks, shortcomings and sins. Those who are striving to live the gospel the best they can in spite of obstacles both external and internal need our love and support, not our shunning and torment. We cannot consider ourselves disciples of Christ and behave in such a way. A teen struggling with same-gender attraction has at least as difficult a road as a teen struggling with opposite-gender attraction. We wouldn’t go out of our way to make it more difficult for the latter, so why would we for the former?

It may be true that some of the members “on the fringes” are there as much by their choice as by the choices of others. I know I’m not the most social of Mormons, and I frankly don’t care that much if I don’t have a many good friends in the church. That’s just who I am, and I realize that attitude puts me at risk. It will be harder for others to notice if I start to drift. I accept that as a consequence of my choices and temperment.

But while we don’t want to drive people away by being too concerned about those on the fringes, we don’t want to ignore them out of the community, either. Our recent General Conference contained many pleas for those drifting away or on the edges to come closer in. There was also many a charge to us all (including those on the fringes) to go bring each other closer in. We don’t have to agree with each other. We don’t have to feign common interests. We just have to care.

At the very least we need to not drive each other farther away. The church has been compared to a hospital for the sick–and we are all indeed sick with one spiritual ailment or another. We don’t see hospitals where the people with pneumonia try to drive away the people with heart disease. We don’t see the cancer patients persecuting the kidney patients. We don’t see those with emphysema exalting themselves up as being somehow superior to those who suffered from hypertension.

We’re all sick, and science has proven our chances of recovery increase with a strong support group. It doesn’t matter what the person in the next bed is there for. Cheer each other up. Help each other through the pain. Laugh, share memories, share tears–whatever it takes. In the end we all need healing well beyond our ability to provide for ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do our part. It certainly does mean we shouldn’t exacerbate each other’s maladies.

So while my friend’s definition of what it is to be a liberal Mormon may cause me concern, the important thing is that she still  considers herself Mormon. She wants to be part of the community. The last thing she needs is for me to focus in on and aggrevate where we don’t see eye to eye. I should be trying to find ways to let her know “Hey, I’m glad you’re here. You can always sit with me.”

To my friend let me just say this: Thank you for your contributions in a difficult world. That post was probably not easy to write, but I’m glad you did. It wasn’t easy to read, but I’m glad I did. I’m probably not as successful as I might think, but I’m trying not to be one of those members who make you reluctant to call yourself a Mormon.

I’m only an introduction and a chapter into a book that is so far telling me everything I already knew but putting it together in a manner that is blowing my mind. That book is “Program or Be Programmed”, by Douglas Rushkoff and Leland Purvis. Consider these statements from the introduction:

A society that looked at the Internet as a path toward highly articulated connections and new methods of creating meaning is instead finding itself disconnected, denied deep thinking, and drained of enduring values.

…

The big, unrecognized news here is about a whole lot more than multitasking, pirated MP3s, or superfast computers at the investment houses shortcutting our stock trades. It is that thinking itself is no longer–at least no longer exclusively–a personal activity. It’s something happening in a new, networked fashion. But the cybernetic organism, so far, is more like a cybernetic mob than new collective human brain. People are being reduced to externally configurable nervous systems, while computers are free to network and think in more advanced ways then we ever will.

The key phrase here is “externally configurable”. Subconciously, and quite unintentionally (most of the time), our technology is programming us, not just the other way around. It may not be going as far as programming us on what to think, but we are certainly being programmed on how to think. Technology was originally designed to take over the more mundane chores for us. Sure, we could calculate the square root of a number or run statistical analysis on a group of data, but computers could do that for us, leaving us free to work on more complicated things.

The trouble is that computers have become very good at doing our outsourced thinking for us, while we are forgetting how to do much of what we once knew. Today my kids are taught to skip straight to the computer. Sure, they’ll know the answer, but will they really understand what that answer means? Can we really attain a higher level of thinking and critical analysis without progressing through the basic foundations ourselves first?

Rushkoff goes on to offer 10 commands for reversing the trend toward technology controlling us instead of the other way around. So far (one chapter) he’s spot on. I’ve been around long enough to remember the beginnings of the Internet as a mass consumer tool. And I’ve forgotten much of what it was originally like.

I had nearly forgotten that once I controlled my email and not the other way around. It used to cost by the minute to get online. Email browsers were designed to dial in to a private network (AOL, CompuServe, etc), upload any outgoing email you’d written off-line, download any new email for you, and then disconnect. Which was good, because not only did it cost money, but it tied up the phone, and if I stayed online for too long I’d have someone pounding on my door. True browsing and chatting was reserved for late night hours when no one else would need the phone.

Today my email is always on, and if I see something come in while I’m working I drop everything to go see what it is. But in case email is too easy to ignore and someone can’t wait for a response, there’s also Instant Messaging to keep track of. Most of us are in a constant state of distraction trying to monitor all our channels and still get our work done.

And yet, argues Rushkoff, the old way was better. We knew an instant response was not expected. We had time to think about what we’d read in our last email and come up with a good response before we answered. The conversation was slower, and therefore more thoughtful, more substantive. Now? Well, let’s just say “shoot first and ask questions later” has become standard operating procedure.

My company offers a day-long class on how to write effective emails, wherein the underlying concept behind it all is essentially to slow down and think about what you’re going to say and how best to say it before you write.

Anyway, I’m only one chapter in, as I said, and this book is already smacking me upside the head. I’m starting to rue buying this an audiobook, because a) it’s difficult to go back and review specific, poignant lines, and b) it’s hard to quote from what you can’t see. There are some real doozies I’d love to be able to show you. The print book, of course, is about twice as much as the audio book, and even the ebook is not much cheaper.

But I may break down and get it anyway. So far this book has got my attention. This stuff is important.