Musings on 'Socialism'

Socialism is spoken as though it were a dirty word in the US, and this sentiment is spreading northward into Canadian territory as well. I'm not sure quite why that is, really. This is a continent that has a very large percentage of Christians (of various stripes). Christian institutions, on the whole, seem to advocate socialism, in a sense, in that they often organize charities and emphasize helping those in need. In the bible, you come across stuff like this all the time:

Proverbs 31:9 (New International Version)
Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.

So where's the political disconnect? I will confess to being largely ignorant on the topic, but it seems to come to light mostly with the public healthcare issue. The have-nots want it, and the haves don't want it. And before it gets seriously considered, before too long, someone spits out the dirty s-word and all thought on the topic ceases. The problem is that just like other public institutions such as road infrastructure and schools, policemen, firemen, television, and many other things, public healthcare helps everyone and it helps the population as a whole.

Yes, there's the issue of how to make healthcare work, what exactly the nuts n bolts of such a system would be, but people have a hard time thinking about it because the word 'socialism' pops up and people's brains shut down. I live in a country that has public healthcare and I'm glad we have it. Could it be better? Sure. How? That's a difficult question. Would I give it up completely? Not easily. Does this make me biased? I suppose it well could, but even so, we're also still a capitalist country. Just, we seem to choose tenets of the socialist philosophy that enrich our lives, and the tenets of capitalism that help us excel as well. I think the key is balance. I don't think 'socialism' should be a show-stopping word, and I don't think 'capitalism' should be, either.

A quick note on counting

I must not be eating enough junk food, because my chocolate bar took me by surprise today. How do they get away with calling it a '3 Musketeers' when there are only two musketeers in there?

Interesting note: it says on the package, "35% less fat than the average leading chocolate brands." Well, yeah. Put Aramis back in there and let's see where we're at.

Socializing and the Internet

Lots of people say that your online friends aren't as important as your real life friends, but I wonder sometimes about that. For me, my real life friends are typically more important, by virtue of I have known them longer and so we share a greater history together. This doesn't mean my friends have a seniority order of importance, but it is generally the case. Many of my real life friends are people I've known since high school - I reached adulthood with these people. I've been to their weddings, and I'm watching their families grow together. It's not about the order of meeting people - it's about the bonds we make. It just happens that the longer people know each other, the more opportunities they get to create those bonds.

That said, I spend an awful lot of time with some people online, to the point where, if we knew each other in real life, it would be the equivalent of practically living together. I may never, say, sit on the same couch as them, but I still spend a large portion of my waking day with them, close to every day. There's a point to be made that not being able to share real life experiences with them doesn't make them less important, as friends go.

There are friends I've met in real life and now keep contact with them solely via the internet. There are friends I've met online only, as well. I consider each of these people to be my friends and barely register the difference between 'online' and 'offline' friends. It would be nice to see each of these people face to face, either again or for the first time, but realistically, in many cases, this just can't happen. I am grateful that I have the internet to help me keep in contact with them at all. Should I prioritize them less because of these limitations? Some people argue yes, but I am just not convinced.

One Person

Quiet, serene, in a little corner of the world
Lies a pool of water so calm and clear
A mirror, displaying the splendors of the sky
A window to a paradise below

One wave, one simple little ripple
The calm can endure and overcome
Another and the mirror breaks
And the world below goes into hiding

O! The despair! Splendor destroyed, dashed!
The garbled ruination of golden promise
Patches of skylight, shreds of dreams
Reminders of what was had and lost

But lo, all it takes is one sure hand
A guide to lift chins, set sights high again
Or to take one below, beneath the waves
To see clearly that the treasure holds strong

One person to obscure
One person to reveal
Take the guiding hand
And leave the waves behind

Calais, Zetes and Chione

Last night, in LotRO, my Lore-master character earned her pet eagle. I am allowed to name these pets pretty much whatever I want, but naming pets can be difficult. I like short, easy to pronounce names, and my one attempt at naming a pet with Sindarin nomenclature (befitting Middle-Earth) fell flat, and I ended up renaming that pet. In LotRO, there are also special amulets that change the appearance of your pet, in effect giving you another pet (cosmetically). Each appearance of a pet can be named individually, and it turns out that I had access to two amulets that change my eagle's appearance, so I had to think of 3 names for my new pet(s). Traditionally, my pets that share a species also share the first letter of their names (because I'm dorky that way), but for my eagle, I wanted to do something a little different. I ended up naming them after figures from classical Greek mythology. My eagles' names are Calais, Zetes and Chione.

Calais and Zetes were twin brothers who travelled with Jason and the Argonauts. They rescued Phineas from the harpies and were rewarded with wings. When these brothers met an untimely death, they were transformed into birds. I thought these would be cool names to give my eagles. Then I found out I could make myself another amulet, so I had to think of a third eagle name. After some digging around, I found out Calais and Zetes had two sisters: Cleopatra and Chione. Cleopatra is a name that has been done to death, so I read up on Chione, and it turns out she has a bird-related story also. Chione was beautiful - so beautiful, in fact, that two gods came and, er, canoodled with her in the same night. She ended up giving birth to twins as a result. Anyways, she preferred her beauty to that of the goddess Artemis, and was summarily put to death, at which point she was transformed into a hawk, which, while not an eagle, is still a pretty cool bird.

These stories - especially Chione's story - really make me wonder about the ancient Greeks. On one hand, their civilization was a time of huge breakthroughs in rational thought, but on the other hand, people were making up stories like this and other people were believing them. I sometimes wonder if there were some secret society that had some kind of contest going with prizes for the most ludicrous story that people actually believed.

Democracy

This is how things should work.

(from xkcd.com)

Optimization

This is, in my mind, a pretty simple concept, but I think it is one people don't think about. When people make decisions, I have concluded that they always make whatever decision is perceived to be the best course of action at the moment the decision is made. It doesn't matter whether the decision is, ultimately, a good decision or a bad one, but to the person who made the decision, all the factors were weighed in some fashion and a conclusion was reached.

Here is an example: suppose there's a 16-yr old boy who is approached by his friends to go smoke behind the grocery store with them. Depending on a multitude of factors (social acceptance, health, parental control, ethics, money, etc), coupled with an importance he internally places on each of those factors, he may or may not decide to join them. If he has heard a lot of horror stories about cigarette smoke, or he knows someone who suffers their ill effects, he may place high importance in deciding 'no', but on the other hand, perhaps he is desperate for social acceptance - he might then place high importance on 'yes' too. Whether he's consciously thinking of any of this is irrelevant - I argue that the process still happens whether he's cognizant of it or not. Ultimately a decision will be reached, and it will depend on all the factors at that given moment. He may later change his mind, or have regrets about whichever decision he makes, but at the exact instant he arrives at a decision, it is optimal according to his brain, as an accumulation of all his prior experiences, thoughts and feelings.

I like to keep this in mind when people come to conclusions that I think are baffling. I know that there is always more information that goes into any decision than I am, strictly speaking, privy to. I think that if more people understood this concept, then tolerance would increase world-wide. It all ties in with empathy - seeing things from another's perspective. It's just that in this regard, you can't always do that.

If someone does something that you perceive to be sub-optimal, then it may be time to analyze the situation. For example, let's go back to that 16-yr old boy. If I were, say, his mother, and I found out he elected to smoke with his friends, then I would try to discuss this with him why he made that decision. I might not successfully get the truth out of him (either because he doesn't know it himself, or because he decides he'd rather not say, or he's feeling guilty about it, or whatever else), but I would be against his decision and try to tip his mind's scale the other way. I might try to add more weight to the 'no' side of that prior decision, or lessen the weight on the 'yes' side, that he may one day change his mind and quit smoking.

People try to persuade other people all the time this way, either by adding weight to one side, or by taking weight away from the other side. I think in this way, people are pretty decent at working together to optimize in a social sense. Of course, people also try to 'look out for number one', so it's good to have your wits about you when someone is trying to persuade you to make decisions a certain way. Society is also shaped by balancing scales like this - every rule, convention, and custom is a result of a conglomeration of a meeting of these internal scales. It is important that we, as a society, revisit our old decisions when they start to chafe, to see whether there is anything we can add or subtract from the scales of decisions past. This is how slavery was outlawed, this is how women claimed their right to vote, this is how revolutions occur. This is how we grow as people and as a society.

Global Warming

Apparently, Venus used to be a lot like Earth, but now it's around 480°C - hot enough to melt steel. The atmospheric pressure is 92 times Earth's at sea level. All this is because of a runaway greenhouse effect. Theoretically, the same thing could happen here on Earth. Whether it be caused naturally or by human activity, shouldn't we try to prevent this from happening, if it is within our capacity to do so?

(link 1)
(link 2)

Occupations

I often wonder if there's a moral obligation to do the very most you are capable of. If you are a supergenious, are you doing society a disservice if you don't work in the area you are most advanced in? Suppose you have a knack for problem solving, but you spend your time stocking shelves at a grocery store. Now you're depriving someone who has capabilities to do little more than that - say, a young adult making his way through college - of that position. However, doesn't that mean that you're forcing that young man to be more ambitious? Or are you pushing him into welfare? At the same time, you're depriving the world of your mind's potential - suppose you could be spending your time figuring out a way to end poverty, but you're busy putting Eggos in aisle 6. It's like you're creating two problems.

However, suppose you don't want to do that which you are most capable of. Suppose you're not very bright, but you're really, really tall, and would therefore be suited to handing nails to roofers without leaving the ground. Should you have to because that's the most you can offer society? What if you'd really rather lay floors, and you're not half bad at it, either - should you be obligated to spend your life not fulfilling your dreams just because you have a talent or gift in another area?

On speaking in tongues

I read the following today:

Some churches refuse to allow speaking in tongues because it causes fights.

This is fascinating. It suggests that the church believes that speaking in tongues isn't a gift from God (because if it were, who would the church be to impose rules on God?), but something which the potential speakers can control, which suggests a deep-rooted belief that speaking in tongues is nothing but an act.

This is a neurological study of what happens in the brain when the person is speaking in tongues. The findings in it suggest that people can learn to lose control of themselves, on command. This explains how it gets easier for people to speak in tongues as a conscious decision, and it even explains how, as the first article says, it is possible for churches to teach their members how. This article mentions that the activity is associated with the frontal lobe of the brain, also coincidentally the part of the brain associated with speech (link).

So, while it looks real, and might even seem real to the person doing it, speaking in tongues involves a conscious order to do so. There is also a social motivation to do so which has nothing to do with God and everything to do with selfishness.

From an atheist's perspective, this is all fascinating, because if you don't believe in God, then you don't believe that speaking in tongues is a gift from God. From that perspective, it's all an act. However, it's an act that takes some skill, which you can learn to do. It's an act that can fool even the actor.

So do these tongue-speakers learn how to do this consciously, or subconsciously? The idea behind speaking in tongues is to surrender control of yourself to God, but if God is all in your head, and control of yourself is all in your head, do you subconsciously learn to lose control of yourself, assuming that God will take the wheel? Or do you do it to fool the masses? Do you fool the masses by acting, or by displaying this skill?