tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-635353027713763442024-03-12T17:29:40.638-05:00Opinionated Layman's Input [O-L-I]Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.comBlogger1327125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-70790505820762446082024-03-12T11:55:00.008-05:002024-03-12T17:29:08.549-05:00Woods Drive a Snapshot of Arlington's History<p><i>I am a board member of the Heart of Arlington Neighborhood Association in central Arlington, Texas. I was asked by our board president to write up some information regarding the history of our neighborhood, and this is one of my efforts:</i><br /><br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbV1JnnmbIa3mG4xDjFLnrIY6pmRMeJgGkpIzAblSYoF4dwldQlK9rBm5U4OAzCn9RsGqn5SxsF6KyXYxvUim9pwLscNcU_Ef1M52Lk3IsvXv8m0R352AgGRi0h2OAAUfTdjSjeqacFI1RNtn1K_qwZMKb1Rx6eqAnmjvIt8KzyRdffGAd1K8a1E9ASD4/s312/Billie-EleanorGrace-James.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="311" data-original-width="312" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbV1JnnmbIa3mG4xDjFLnrIY6pmRMeJgGkpIzAblSYoF4dwldQlK9rBm5U4OAzCn9RsGqn5SxsF6KyXYxvUim9pwLscNcU_Ef1M52Lk3IsvXv8m0R352AgGRi0h2OAAUfTdjSjeqacFI1RNtn1K_qwZMKb1Rx6eqAnmjvIt8KzyRdffGAd1K8a1E9ASD4/w320-h319/Billie-EleanorGrace-James.jpg" width="320" /></a><br /><span style="text-align: left;">(In the photo: Long-time next-door neighbors Billie Farrar, Eleanor Grace Martin, and James Martin, at Dallas' Meyerson Symphony Center, circa 1990)</span></div><br /><br /><b>Woods Drive Housed a Generation of Arlington's Merchants</b><br /><br />Arlington used to have a real downtown that was the growing city’s central business district. <div><br /></div><div>Those were the days of the local merchant, before Amazon, before Internet retailing, before Walmart, and before shopping malls. The days of raw entrepreneurship, or what we nostalgically call “mom-and-pop’ and “brick-and-mortar” commerce. </div><div><br /></div><div>The merchants in central business districts also tended to live in clusters. Throughout history, actually, around the world, merchant classes operated economically and socially in relative proximity to each other. And of all the streets in Arlington that have housed this city’s ever-changing roster of civic leaders - streets like West Abram, West Park Row, South Center, Southwood, Meadow Oaks, and Shady Valley - perhaps none has been home to a larger concentration - economic, educational, cultural - than Woods Drive. </div><div><br /></div><div>Woods Drive runs through what was the historic Elm Shadows Farm between Johnson Creek and Center Street. Elm Shadows Farm was the Moore estate, named after the family which subdivided it during the 1950s, although most people now popularly call it “the Goat House”. You can’t miss it, since its current owners have maintained their farmstead exemption by perpetually housing goats, geese, and other barnyard animals on what remains a large property. </div><div><br /></div><div>Although the street is admired for its tall trees, Woods Drive is technically named for the Moore family’s patriarch, Woods Moore. Virginia Lane is named for the Moore's matriarch, and Thomas Place, Patrick Drive, and Michael Court after their three sons. </div><div><br /></div><div>Originally, Woods Drive ran from a cul-de-sac behind the Moore estate to a dead-end where Mill Creek Drive now intersects. As Arlington grew, and the Moore's further developed their farm, Woods Drive was extended in the early 1960s to include a connection with Center Street near Pioneer Parkway. </div><div><br /></div><div>By today’s standards, the houses may not be opulent, but at the time, they were larger than conventional ones and loaded with features we take for granted today. Two-car attached garages, sliding-glass patio doors, at least two living areas, and at least two bathrooms were common amenities of these homes. </div><div><br /></div><div>If that wasn't enticing enough for you, consider who your neighbors were: </div><div><br /></div><div><b>F.M. "Tiddle" and Hazle-Vern Terry</b>. They owned Terry Brothers Pharmacy, which was something of a landmark near Arlington’s iconic mineral well. Their house, built in 1954, is still owned by an heir. For the record, the very first home to be built in Elm Shadows is on Virginia Lane, and only recently changed ownership to a family outside of the original owner’s heirs. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Hayden Johnson</b>. He was related to the Terry’s, and owned an appliance store where the Flying Fish and other restaurants are now located. A subsequent owner of his house was George S. Wright, while he served as dean of UTA’s architecture school. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>J.C. and Lillie “Bill” Watson</b>, co-owners of an upscale chain of fashionable department stores in Arlington, Hurst, and Grand Prairie. Their house, <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2017/10/bill-unique-mrs-watson.html" target="_blank">designed by Mrs. Watson</a> herself, is still owned by an heir, and their former store on Arlington’s West Main Street, with its wavy Mid-Century Modern awning, is now an office building for UTA.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>H.E. and Burney Pearl Caton</b>, owners of both a popular “five-and-dime” retail shop downtown, as well as a company that manufactured decorative clothing ribbon downtown. One of their customers was Macy’s department store in New York City. Heirs of theirs still live on Woods Drive. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>James and Eleanor Grace Martin</b>. James served as a long-time AISD superintendent, during most of the district’s rapid growth, and Martin High School is named in his honor. Eleanor Grace opened her art space above the store owned by their neighbors, the Caton’s. She called it “the Upstairs Gallery” for obvious reasons, and kept the name when she relocated to a house on W. Abram St., as the Caton’s store would be demolished for the construction of Arlington’s original Central Public Library. A Martin heir still lives in the neighborhood, and heirs still run the gallery. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Happy King</b>. He was a long-time builder and developer in Arlington. His company constructed several of the houses in Elm Shadows, and most of what are now called “the Air Force Base streets” clustered around Park Row and Collins Street. One of his downtown projects, at 300 W. Main St., remains mostly intact. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>William “Bill” and Billie Farrar</b>. They first owned B & B Supermarket (for Bill and Billie), at the southeast corner of Park Row and Collins St. Billie eventually went into real estate, becoming a pioneer of the industry in Tarrant County. She was the first Realtor in Arlington to complete a $1 million sale - a farm where Highway 360 and Sublett Road now intersect. Heirs still own her office building on Park Row near Cooper Street. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Catherine Coulter</b>. Okay, so she never owned a business in Arlington, but she’s our neighborhood’s bona-fide celebrity. <a href="https://www.catherinecoulter.com/" target="_blank">She is a famous novelist</a> and long-time resident of the San Francisco Bay area who spent part of her growing-up years with her family on Woods Drive. Her father, Charlie, was an aeronautical engineer and her mother, Betty, was a musician who wrote and published her own educational books for piano. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Lena Hornaday</b>. She owned a popular restaurant, La Tapatia, for 27 years. Hers was widely reputed to be Arlington’s first and, for a while, only Tex-Mex restaurant. She retired in 1974, and a Comet Cleaners now occupies the 2-story building at Division and West streets. Her house is still owned by an heir. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Dan Burkholder</b>. He was a noted jazz musician who conducted bands and orchestras for celebrities such as Bob Hope and Dean Martin. He also taught at UTA, and was a philanthropist to UTA’s music department. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Howard “Gumpy” Moore</b>. He was an heir of Arlington’s fabled Moore Funeral Home family, and namesake of Howard Moore City Park off of Davis Drive, in honor of his long-time chairmanship of Arlington’s parks board. For the record, Moore family heirs also built a house on Patrick Drive, and they were not related to the Moore family which owned the Goat House. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Judge Bill and Barbara Hughes</b>. Bill was a lawyer and a widely-respected Tarrant County judge. Barbara was a longtime public school teacher, and both were prolific philanthropists. Their house is still owned by an heir. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>James and Bea Horsman</b>. It wasn’t downtown, but in a strip shopping center at the northwest corner of Park Row and Collins, where the Horsmans owned an upscale childrens clothing store. After Six Flags Mall opened in 1970, their store began to fade in popularity. Bea eventually worked for Billie Farrar as one of her agency’s Realtors. Their address technically was on Michael Court, but their long side yard ran parallel to Woods Drive. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Dr. Mo-Shing Chen</b>. <a href="https://uta.engineering/magazine/2020/honoring-mo-shing-chen" target="_blank">Dr. Chen</a> was an internationally-renowned electrical engineer who taught at UTA for over 40 years. He began several programs in the electrical engineering department that still exist today, helping to give the department its impressive global reputation. He and his wife, Dr. Flora Chung-Hsia Huang, raised their two daughters on Woods Drive, and both of them are now doctors as well. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Gene Allen</b>. He started a popular 3-store Hallmark greeting card chain in Arlington, with locations on Park Row, Randol Mill Road, and Little Road. His home was designed with a flat roof to give it a West Coast aesthetic. It is two doors down from another flat-roofed house on Woods Drive, designed by and the personal home of <b>Alvin Mikusek</b>, a local architect. </div><div><br /></div><div>And speaking of architecture, it is believed that 2003 Woods Drive was designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West studio in Arizona. As one of America’s most influential architects, Frank Lloyd Wright helped invent and promote the “prairie style” design movement and the long, low ranch style house, which became a favored residential model during the Mid-Century Modern aesthetic, not to mention most of the houses built up and down Woods Drive. </div><div><br /></div><div>The first homes on Woods Drive were constructed in 1954, around its northern cul-de-sac. Ironically, the last home built on Woods Drive, the Watson home, was constructed just up the hill from that cul-de-sac in 1966. Four years after that, Six Flags Mall opened at Division Street and Highway 360, and Arlington’s downtown would never be the same. </div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-91432060104978436092024-01-16T17:22:00.017-06:002024-01-25T20:14:46.022-06:00Leaving Antidepressants Isn't Easy<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEild223ji-6OGerrbFlgmPF8dRAH6AaHFt1U6Hkuh0EDaLNUuLsqqQjtgcpkxDCjjH7sin4xaEDbosWnalIoVMRTUr-dbrsxoTBVB2Mbb8nR_TUS-MTap6J_plNliyfzcFmhfyn6-VJMJ4aumwvCZk9s4Lo5HvigLubrb4oys_jA-Nb_7PFMcONzUtl-7Y/s960/Swarovski-5.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><br /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEild223ji-6OGerrbFlgmPF8dRAH6AaHFt1U6Hkuh0EDaLNUuLsqqQjtgcpkxDCjjH7sin4xaEDbosWnalIoVMRTUr-dbrsxoTBVB2Mbb8nR_TUS-MTap6J_plNliyfzcFmhfyn6-VJMJ4aumwvCZk9s4Lo5HvigLubrb4oys_jA-Nb_7PFMcONzUtl-7Y/s960/Swarovski-5.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNhtbnheNcB2A_XgLcFbMtLMKIuiPmobdLdWfTc3GfNhGgAFD-DDbdJyYhhIvyViqhntwCd3d61VLt2aGmaLF7Ao8aLYd1ZoUPNVvPMkq6XkhjwoMtxEy2KkrNyluc_pmThJnj2LogUBOko_eVlAZPGgH7GDj1IdUunvLCyQgrN82MNbMKlAYtplNgu-8/s550/Swarovski-flaw.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNhtbnheNcB2A_XgLcFbMtLMKIuiPmobdLdWfTc3GfNhGgAFD-DDbdJyYhhIvyViqhntwCd3d61VLt2aGmaLF7Ao8aLYd1ZoUPNVvPMkq6XkhjwoMtxEy2KkrNyluc_pmThJnj2LogUBOko_eVlAZPGgH7GDj1IdUunvLCyQgrN82MNbMKlAYtplNgu-8/s320/Swarovski-flaw.jpg" width="291" /></a></div></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>My crystal Swarovski "Volcano Pyramid" prism with a damaged edge <br />(the puffy-looking shape in the middle - a significant imperfection)</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><br /><p></p><p>Last October, <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2023/10/no-more-depression-meds-for-me.html" target="_blank">I posted about my decision</a> to stop taking my antidepressant prescription medications.</p><p>Several months later, I'm checking back with an update to that post. I don't want to be melodramatic, but I also don't want to minimize the struggles of going without antidepressants. </p><p>The summary version is that I'm not doing as well emotionally as I was when I was still taking my full antidepressant dosages. The only two benefits I can see are that, one; I haven't yet returned to any of my antidepressants since last fall. And two, I've lost more weight, and appear to have plateaued in terms of my weight loss.<br /><br />So, I've lost emotional ground, but I've also lost some physical baggage, meaning my slimmer appearance hides what's going on inside. I'm also finding that as I lose weight, I'm getting more wrinkled, which is making me look older! I used to enjoy looking considerably younger than my years, but now, it seems the inverse is happening. So in terms of aesthetics, my weight loss has become a net neutral. <br /><br />Anyway, the bigger story is inwardly, since I'm struggling more with my depression now than I have in decades.<br /><br />Turns out, in terms of masking my depression and helping me be more productive as a human being, those antidepressants probably were far more effective than I thought they were. The longer I go without them, the less competent I am at adjusting to negative things and surprises. And whereas I used to suspect my antidepressants of sabotaging my joy and peace, I now realize that without antidepressants, I have even less of either joy or peace. I used to scoff at the notion of emotions governing so much of my behavior, but now, I lament how so much of my logic, industriousness, and discipline gets eroded by emotionalism.<br /><br />I've tried to modify my behavior to accommodate my deteriorating emotions. My biggest change: I've stopped most of my news consumption. American politics, Christian nationalism, the Israel - Hamas war, all sorts of racism, and hatred in general have taxed me emotionally. Suddenly, I find I simply can't absorb it all. My fearfulness factor is sky-high.<br /><br />While I used to regularly and verbosely blog here about news items and current events, I no longer can stomach even the most cursory glance at the headlines. I have an acquaintance who is a professional journalist, and he confirmed that disconnecting from the news is a prudent move for me, at least for now.<br /><br />As a person who used to seek out the news, especially looking for stories about which I could blog, that has been the biggest change for me. A dear friend of mine in Dallas used to tease me about "doom-scrolling", since he's long said the news media revels too much in life's horrors and tragedies. Now I realize how even trolling basic headlines has become a form of "doom-scrolling", since the Internet appears to have forced the journalism industry into competing for the most salacious stories. News outlets survive today by trying to generate views and click-throughs, because those are how they calculate online advertising rates. </p><p>I reported back in October that I seem to always be on the verge of crying, and that has only become a more pronounced sensation. Loud and sudden noises also distress me more than ever, while crowds of people - no matter who they are - intimidate me. <br /><br />Apparently my antidepressants were my go-to coping tools. Some things did upset me, but not to the degree they do now. It has been discouraging for me, as supposedly a "person of faith", to realize that after all these years, I apparently don't trust in the God I've claimed to embrace. After all, if I did, would I be so incessantly anxious, even as a chronically clinically depressed person? </p><p>Realizing how desperate I was becoming, I reached out to the senior pastor of the Dallas church in whose choir I used to sing, and we've met a few times for some counseling sessions. Even though our church numbers about six thousand members, we've known each other for quite a while, and I'm grateful he makes time for me. He's not a therapist, but as a theologian, I'm asking him questions about faith that he's answering with candor and grace.<br /><br />It's too early to know how much of a help he's been, but even knowing he's willing to try is itself helpful. I'm not paying him, he knows I'm neither wealthy nor influential, and he's not anti-antidepressants. He attended my father's memorial service so he knows all about my concerns regarding dementia. Nevertheless, he warned me I might still have to go back on antidepressants depending on how things evolve.<br /><br />So obviously, I have no cheerful update here. No philosophical or theological insights. No profound one-liners. This is simply a status update of where I am at this moment, approximately six months after stopping my antidepressants. People ask me if losing all this weight (85 pounds total since the start of Covid) makes me feel more energetic, but no, I feel even more lethargic than ever. You see, I haven't lost weight in a healthy way - it's all been through stress. </p><p>There have been a few days where I almost caved and started taking those "happy pills" again, but - for better or worse - the ominous specter of dementia has proven stronger.<br /></p><p>Even with my problems, there are other people who are living with griefs and pains far worse than mine. My pastor calls these "bitter providences" of God, Who, although He is good, certainly allows plenty of bad things to happen to His followers - even through no fault of their own. </p><p>Saying "things could be worse" may not necessarily be a healthy response to anyone's crisis, but it can be helpful to keep some of these considerations in perspective.<br /></p><p>So for now, I'm staying the course, away from antidepressants. I'm finding that this is not the easier path, but perhaps its benefits will come in the long run.<br /></p><p>_____</p><p><br /></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-60249447759064319642023-10-10T15:52:00.013-05:002024-01-16T17:39:21.242-06:00No More Depression Meds for Me<p> <br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8WDF2tCAx4ggLfqMxK5awSx-KkeH8fKhP1dQpU6awjbeiS8ZWzkZq1NWa8N2D1A7a-1Iua4wb4SVRY6XHLQ9RXYf7x3rghBSKPuoF0akJ7BwMQdSyQZXi8Rgo_MbfgEoPEib-OQ_O6oO-nvQDPjovjPTOnjlRsXILsG01XI5vsNjv99p45V0aU2SqkzE/s1408/Lantana-July23.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1408" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8WDF2tCAx4ggLfqMxK5awSx-KkeH8fKhP1dQpU6awjbeiS8ZWzkZq1NWa8N2D1A7a-1Iua4wb4SVRY6XHLQ9RXYf7x3rghBSKPuoF0akJ7BwMQdSyQZXi8Rgo_MbfgEoPEib-OQ_O6oO-nvQDPjovjPTOnjlRsXILsG01XI5vsNjv99p45V0aU2SqkzE/s320/Lantana-July23.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Lantana in our backyard... just because it's colorful and happy!<br /></span></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Depression denies delight.<br /><br />Nobody likes talking about it. It is often misunderstood, and sometimes exploited. It can be taboo, controversial, and destructive.<br /><br />Some claim it is a figment of one's imagination. Others seem to let it crush their soul. It is impossible to quantify but easy to use as an excuse. Approximately 12% of Americans take antidepressants, and are therefore considered to suffer from some degree of "clinical" depression. And while an antidepressant prescription requires a medical doctor's authorization, no benchmarks exist for determining who really has the medical condition termed "depression", who doesn't, and how bad or mild a person's depression may be.<br /><p></p><p>Back in 2014, <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2014/03/ive-confession-to-make.html" target="_blank">I outed myself on this blog as a person struggling with chronic clinical depression</a>. I was taking at least two medicines commonly prescribed for such a diagnosis. However, my history with antidepressants had begun years earlier when I lived in New York City. While the prescriptions themselves had changed over time, I was taking them daily, year after year - until this past summer.</p><p>I am now clean of those anti-anxiety prescription medications. <br /><br />But that's not because I'm cured. Chronic clinical depression is real for many people, and I remain one of them. And while my depression is characterized by extraordinary anxiety, that actually explains why I've stopped taking my antidepressants.<br /><br />I'm not anti-medicine, or anti-big-pharma, or anti-science. In fact, technically, it is the emerging science related to dementia that convinced me to wean myself off of my antidepressants. Turns out, evidence has begun to accrue regarding a likely link between antidepressant use and one's chances of developing dementia. And since profound memory loss runs in my family, it looms large as something for me to fear, looming even larger than depression.<br /><br />During the past several years, I often wondered how effective my antidepressants had become anyway. I began Googling my way around the Internet, and discovered that other patients - as well as scientists and doctors - were also beginning to express skepticism regarding antidepressants.</p><p>Then I discovered something especially troubling: As science completes more and more research with dementia, the impact long-term antidepressant use has on future memory loss does not appear to be insignificant. Please notice, however, my cautious phrasing of that sentence, because I don't want to be alarmist. You see, from what I've read, the research and its findings are not yet conclusive, and they do not currently appear to be stark enough to bring antidepressant use to a standstill.<br /><br />Of course, I am not a scientist, nor a doctor. I am not a clinician, a mental or emotional therapist, or a person with any vested financial interest in any individual, company or entity that is. I'm aware that science evolves. There are valid reasons why medicine is called a "practice". Big pharma has been accused of greedily foisting prescription antidepressants onto gullible patients and their doctors, but I can't deny that for a while, it seemed as though my prescriptions did provide some sort of help. </p><p>And I'll admit, I weaned myself off of my antidepressants without consulting my primary care doctor (I haven't seen a psychiatrist or therapist for years). But when I did tell him, close to the end of my weaning process, he wasn't alarmed. He listened to my rationale and agreed that antidepressants can lose their efficacy over time. He also acknowledged that the growing body of evidence regarding dementia is concerning. So he didn't try and talk me out of my decision. </p><p>I've been completely off of my antidepressants for three months now. And just to prove I'm not endorsing any similar actions by anybody else taking what I call "happy pills", I'm not going to detail what medications I was taking. Or how I weaned myself off of them. </p><p>But I have to admit (or boast!): I've lost over 20 pounds since starting the process. I think I look the best I have in years, if vanity counts for anything. Considering how much weight I'd acquired at the height of my antidepressant use, I enjoy looking into mirrors now and not seeing some obese person staring back at me in dismay. </p><p>I'm still not thin, but I'm not trying to be thin. I didn't do this to lose weight, although losing weight has been a nice bonus.</p><p>And for the record: I haven't been exercising more, or making any concerted effort to lose weight. Quite simply, my appetite seems to have changed the longer I've been without "happy pills". From my research, I've learned that this type of weight loss can happen to folks who come off of antidepressants. Today, I do not crave food, although salty foods can still seem to beg for more! I'm not as tempted by sweets as I used to be. I find it bizarre to approach mealtimes now with a bland acknowledgement that my body basically needs some nourishment.</p><p>So, bottom line: What are the pros and cons of what I've done?<br /><br /><b>PROS:</b><br /></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Possible reduction of future dementia risk - or at least, I'm no longer contributing to that risk. For me, this alone is major, and worth more than all the pros and cons to follow. Yes, I still may end up developing dementia, but at least I'm trying to avoid it.</li><li>Weight loss and a better appreciation for my own physical appearance, which is encouraging. I know looks aren't everything, and I don't want to be vain, but it certainly seems counter-productive for antidepressants to prevent weight loss, thereby compounding things for people who've been prescribed them in the first place!</li><li>Relatively improved diet, since I'm not strongly craving junk food like I used to.</li><li>I have far less vertigo than I did before, especially when standing. It really had gotten annoying. Vertigo can be a side effect of antidepressants.</li></ul><br /><b>CONS:</b><br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>More fitful sleep. I've lost about an hour of sleep a night, what sleep I get isn't high-quality, and I never feel refreshed when I get up in the morning.<br /></li><li>My energy level seems lower than before (and I can't remember when it was ever very high!). Maybe because my body is adjusting to having less food to process, thanks to my diminished appetite.<br /></li><li>Conversely, my inertia level is higher, and inertia - or disillusionment, apathy, lethargy, lack of ambition, or whatever it is - has unfortunately been a deepening hallmark of my depression journey. </li><li>Often I feel as though I'm about to burst into tears. This has never been a regular issue before. I haven't had a crying episode yet, because I fight them, but it is not a sensation that inspires confidence.</li><li>I'm no less anxious than I was when I was taking "happy pills". More proof that I'm not cured.<br /></li><li>My temper is noticeably stronger, while my patience is noticeably weaker.</li><li>I still get dizzy, especially when standing (yes, in addition to the vertigo). Dizziness has long been a side effect of my antidepressant use, but my research says it can also be a side effect of going OFF of antidepressants!<br /></li><li>Occasionally I get painful cramping in my abdomen, which can be a side effect of stopping antidepressants. Nausea can also be a side effect of leaving antidepressants, but fortunately, I haven't had that.</li></ul><p></p><p><br />Maybe you've read this far and are wondering what role psychotherapy - either with a PhD/MD, a psychologist, or a certified psychotherapist - has played in my treatment.</p><p>I attended psychotherapy for a number of years, both in New York and here in Texas, with a variety of credentialed providers. Perhaps they worked for a time, but finally, my last psychotherapist was the one who called it off.<br /><br />"Why do you keep coming to see me?" he asked bluntly during what turned out to be my last session. "I ask you all these questions, and you always give great answers. I don't think psychotherapy is doing you any good anymore." </p><p>So that was that.</p><p>Again - not that my journey with chronic clinical depression is typical, or replicable. I'm just journaling about it here, chronicling what it's been like for me thus far. Besides, since my overall functionality has not improved, and there is no definitive proof I've genuinely decreased my risk for dementia, maybe all I'm really doing is bragging about losing so much weight!</p><p>However, if you are a person who is taking antidepressants, maybe what you've read here rings a bell with you. And if so, I recommend that you talk with your doctor.<br /><br />You may have something to lose, too!<br /><br />_____<br /><br /><i>Check out <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2024/01/leaving-antidepressants-isnt-easy.html" target="_blank">my update here</a>.</i></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-17167940374815347762023-07-25T09:04:00.005-05:002023-07-25T10:52:23.326-05:00Token Help for Un-Fare Jumpers<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #7f6000;">_________________________</span></p><div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #7f6000;"><br /></span></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://wtop.com/tracking-metro-24-7/2023/07/metro-rolls-out-new-higher-faregates-in-attempt-to-curb-gate-jumpers/?fbclid=IwAR1VK9h9Rvn6ejjPBFJqNEDidIt7rP5qOGF30nlsFurkcp6ZBhzVrMwJiQo" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNYtZCpuajkJh0u_40ePZSdmHq5ZKilo0-gQXjHCnJpHthRZtDm8ekulI8kTSSuzHf9XU-XWyA4PGIxFQ9moRm7yDnMmbaXsqEjOK4uJ-uybzvxvHTZBVnOkDemKCaRzwZ1gDnvtA0sHZH4shbIGEi2dw7cOJjMcWBrCAgKGCN48ou8lc4lQV3iMB6unY/w400-h266/Jump-the-orange-line.png" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://wtop.com/tracking-metro-24-7/2023/07/metro-rolls-out-new-higher-faregates-in-attempt-to-curb-gate-jumpers/?fbclid=IwAR1VK9h9Rvn6ejjPBFJqNEDidIt7rP5qOGF30nlsFurkcp6ZBhzVrMwJiQo" target="_blank">How convenient - they've even provided orange lines <br />to show turnstile-jumpers the height they need to clear while jumping.</a></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>One of my friends who relies on mass transit in the DC area regularly sends me updates on the joys of not owning a car in our nation's capital.<br /><br />What he avoids in car repairs, insurance, and traffic gridlock he makes up for in transit delays, reductions in service, and rising fares with what is supposed to be an economical, efficient way to get around!<br /><br />Now <a href="https://wtop.com/tracking-metro-24-7/2023/07/metro-rolls-out-new-higher-faregates-in-attempt-to-curb-gate-jumpers/?fbclid=IwAR1VK9h9Rvn6ejjPBFJqNEDidIt7rP5qOGF30nlsFurkcp6ZBhzVrMwJiQo" target="_blank">DC's transit professionals are trying to foil fare-beaters</a> - or what we New Yorkers call "turnstile jumpers". And yes, transit riders need to pay their fare share (pun intended). Some selfish urbanites figure their income taxes already pay for mass transit, so why should they be responsible for shelling out even more at every point of use? But they fail to recognize the reasons:<br /><br />- Because per-use paying riders help to provide more money to balance transit budgets;<div>- Fares add an element of fairness regarding taxpayers who never ride mass transit vs. those who do;</div><div>- And per-ride fares require non-taxpayers (like tourists) to pay at least a token amount - pun intended again! - for the ride that is being subsidized by local taxpayers.<br /><br />NEVERTHELESS...
How much of the rising costs in transit ridership are associated with all of the tinkering, technology, and implementation of newer and newer turnstiles? Turnstiles that in a few days, fare-evaders will have figured out how to exploit. I remember when NYC's MTA installed the first of their tall turnstile fare-jumper-foiler things back in the 1990s. I think it was a matter of hours before local news crews were filming kids leaping over and through them - fantastic feats of agility, considering how low many subway ceilings are. Even using the turnstile guards - the very equipment newly-installed as an ostensibly preventative measure - as leverage for their jumps! I mean, it was like the Olympic track & field competitions were being held in some stations. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm looking at the orange lines on those plexiglass guards of DC's new turnstiles, and I figure any kid with strong hands could easily - EASILY! - jump over them by using a quick push off of those guards as leverage. I mean - just LOOKING at it, evading it seems so easy. Do transit officials have zero amount of physical dexterity themselves, and no imagination? They've even brightly marked out the top of the guard so fare-jumpers know where to look as they sail through the air. Sheesh...
<br /><br />Meanwhile, who pays for all of these ever-newer turnstiles (that don't work as intended)? TRANSIT RIDERS, of course! What dysfunction. This is why conservatives dislike government, and unions. Both governments and unions - which comprise the machinery behind all transit agencies in the Northeast - become entities unto themselves. Their focus turns inward; they forget that they're supposed to be serving the public, not creating their own little empires. And they regularly display stunning lacks of logic. It's not the bureaucracy itself that is at fault - plenty of large corporations have quagmires of bureaucracies themselves - but private industry has the inherent competition of capitalism to better enforce logical strategies and weed out inferior ideas. Governments and unions don't have competition.<br /><br />In a way, I sympathize with the folks who don't want to pay their fair fare. The costs associated with transit ridership only go up, while service rarely does. And along the way, goofy stuff gets perpetrated on whomever gets left holding the bag - namely, taxpayers. </div><div><br /></div><div>Granted, most fare-jumpers are themselves acting selfishly and being belligerent; they're not concerned with macro or micro-economics. But at some point, mass transit advocates need to realize that the more money they spend trying to defeat people who don't want to pay, the more they're increasing costs for people who pay because they have better moral fiber.<br /><br />_____</div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-1176119970178388052023-06-20T11:18:00.021-05:002023-07-25T10:07:04.420-05:00History Chronicled With Religious Architecture<p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #7f6000;">_________________________</span></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #7f6000;"><br /></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAh0WWP0h5UFTfOn19Qxr1y5G4M0yRlrNBa3zFAZvQO_zFQMOUHT8jnESskeiXsc5Hnzvzq-RiPHe2IIiUDsh7_wGGJ76JKZsor1gHi6SFyYvZPWmkdYjDep0hdhljeE6tiSPVzIPCN8lN4-p1F2l9wGjhOyL7MaNgQZrqXSPm1cPkfpkCE_eSGPQm/s724/Pulpit-Passau-Bavaria.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="724" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAh0WWP0h5UFTfOn19Qxr1y5G4M0yRlrNBa3zFAZvQO_zFQMOUHT8jnESskeiXsc5Hnzvzq-RiPHe2IIiUDsh7_wGGJ76JKZsor1gHi6SFyYvZPWmkdYjDep0hdhljeE6tiSPVzIPCN8lN4-p1F2l9wGjhOyL7MaNgQZrqXSPm1cPkfpkCE_eSGPQm/w400-h292/Pulpit-Passau-Bavaria.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>St. Stephen's Catholic Cathedral; Passau, Bavaria, Germany<br />Photo credit: my friend Mary Bryant McCourt, May 2023</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br />For all my preacher friends: How's this for a church pulpit? <div><br />Preachers speaking from such an opulent elevated platform needn't worry about their sermon getting boring - because if it does, congregants can just let their minds wander over all that gold leaf! </div><div><br /></div><div>I only hope the theology preached from it is more valuable than its gilded ornamentation. I mean, seriously! I'd never have guessed this audaciously decorated tableau was a historic German church. I'd have guessed France, or maybe even Russia, but not the country that has given us the austere, clean-lined BMW and Mercedes-Benz brands.<br /><br />As an architecture student in college, we studied many religious structures because throughout history, they often represented the pinnacle of their respective society's ideologies and abilities. The sociological cynic would categorize religion as a form of folkloric storytelling, or cultural assimilation, or moral dogma, or a primitive way of explaining how people groups interpreted their natural environment. But some cultures - generally the ones with more sophisticated religions - eventually came to dominate entire regions of the world, and have played significant roles in developing construction methodologies and aesthetic principles that we still incorporate today in our built environment.<br /><br />Up until the Industrial Revolution, whether in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, or Europe, religious structures such as this one were lavished with a panoply of human resources to inform their own culture - and their enemies - who and what their society represented (whether everyone believed the same thing or not). Religious structures were literally the brick-and-mortar of their community.<br /><br />Ever since the Industrial Revolution - which brought unprecedented wealth to our planet - the amount of resources we spend on our religious buildings has paled by comparison. Hardly any society today expends the type of effort - in money and labor - that used to be spent on religious structures. Many reasons exist for this, such as: </div><div>- a continued splintering of various sects from the larger body of beliefs (particularly within Islam and Christianity), meaning religious groups are smaller and less willing to share resources;</div><div>- few monarchies and political dynasties powerful enough to force subjects into religious submission</div><div>- changing aesthetic tastes (such as severe Modern and Post-Modern minimalism within Judaism);</div><div>- advanced construction technologies that can actually lower overall costs by making formerly prohibitive designs relatively accessible (and therefore, less remarkable);</div><div>- a lack of interest by most religious leaders and their adherents today to create monolithic memorials to their faith and deity, and/or a preference to spend money in different ways;</div><div>- and yes, the drastically-lower reliance people across the globe have on religion and deities. These days, we have easy access to so many devices, ideas, and other influences to help us feel more self-actualized. Religion, which almost universally involves a certain level of adherence to a thought structure we have not created ourselves, seems so antiquated and bothersome to many people.<br /><br />Whether they're religious or not, very few societies now use buildings as their main source of pride and identity anyway (with the possible exception of <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2010/01/not-too-long-ago-title-worlds-tallest.html" target="_blank">Persian Gulf states</a> and <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2011/07/oppressive-glee-in-beijings-koolhaas.html" target="_blank">China,</a> homes to some of the most audacious new buildings on our planet). <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2010/02/church-without-congregation.html" target="_blank">I've written before</a> about my Mom's childhood church in Maine, once the beacon of her coastal village, now rotting away atop a hill with millions of dollars worth of stained glass windows disintegrating in place, no services or any public use for over 15 years now. </div><div><br /></div><div>We all are aware of how much society is changing, and one of the values in architecture is that it helps tell us where we've been, and maybe even what we're missing today despite all our "progress".<br /><br /><b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEmh3X11YoGl0u6y69eDCtbhboJaaug1wloIDztePFqgSemsAu81KwX13VwAgXWpJqePfBsTdy9qhGZxNOykNYkFByV5269ztyAQZn4E2f-Mfw4H1pTVsIOw9RI4KoGhFOt1HZ1o3qhBYsz_wgLC1pkIp2omEqdgbu4fnfbo0_bgk1gT0J7DKPE0hMG4E/s491/coral-ridge-pulpit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="491" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEmh3X11YoGl0u6y69eDCtbhboJaaug1wloIDztePFqgSemsAu81KwX13VwAgXWpJqePfBsTdy9qhGZxNOykNYkFByV5269ztyAQZn4E2f-Mfw4H1pTVsIOw9RI4KoGhFOt1HZ1o3qhBYsz_wgLC1pkIp2omEqdgbu4fnfbo0_bgk1gT0J7DKPE0hMG4E/s320/coral-ridge-pulpit.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />PS</b> - <i>when I checked out my blog on my smartphone, and saw Mary's photo, the pulpit, resized for a smaller screen, looked more like a snake's head, or maybe one of those ceremonial Chinese dragons. That jagged-edged canopy and wrap-around stairway - Yikes! Now I can't help but see it as fearsome - awe of a negative sort. It reminds me of the dramatic pulpit and canopy of a much newer church, a rare example of extravagant contemporary evangelical Christian architecture: Coral Ridge Presbyterian in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. I've never been in person, but from the videos and photos I've seen, their black snake-like canopy over the pulpit seems straight out of the Garden of Eden - in a bad way.<br /></i><br />_____</div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-82405876052209439432023-04-08T14:18:00.021-05:002023-07-25T10:07:52.557-05:00Tennessee's Gun Battle Shows Who's Wrong<p> </p><p>As if last week's shooting <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2023/03/guns-self-and-modeling-civility.html" target="_blank">at Nashville's Covenant School</a> wasn't bad enough, this week, politics subverted humanity on both sides of the aisle in Tennessee's legislature. <br /><br />Here we had on the left some folks screaming stale gun legislation rhetoric, and on the right, we had folks voting them out of the legislature for using a bullhorn in their chants.<br /><br />Bad form all around. Grandstanding, exploiting fear, and tossing racism into the mix just to stir the pot even more. It's an embarrassment for Tennessee, and for everybody who's taken sides in this charade of governance. </p><p>No, seeking to incite or thwart elected officials on the literal floor of any statehouse through incivility and crass disruption is not democracy, it is chaos. Doesn't matter if it's Republicans doing it to the US Capitol, or Democrats at Tennessee's, although at least Tennessee's chaos wasn't violent. Propriety is still relevant, regardless of your age or the issue. Sure, censure the legislators who participated in the obstruction of legislative affairs, but kick them out of the offices to which they've been duly elected? For yelling through a bullhorn? How can that not look anything less than malevolent? <br /><br />By now, we Americans should recognize that politics and legislation are NOT the places where we will find sustainable, fair solutions for everything. And yelling louder (even metaphorically) to make it so... doesn't. Especially if you want to enforce variant degrees of "morality", from a left-wing or right-wing perspective - you still can't legislate it. Look at the colossal failure of Prohibition. Yet we groom our politicians to be noticed and essential, the leaders and enforcers of our particular worldview. And the media - we've got bad media actors on both sides of the political aisle - is more than happy to help politicians duke it out in the public square.<br /><br />Respectfully negotiating an issue between sides is difficult, boring, often time-consuming, and thin on headlines and meme-able photos. Staging a crisis creates far more immediate, provocative digital content. </p><p>I suspect when it comes to the specific topic of gun-involved violence, politicians actually prefer to pick fights among themselves because they probably already know... shucks, there are no laws to stop gun-involved violence. In our country, that horse bolted long ago. Even if all assault rifles were completely banned starting right now, there would be about <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joewalsh/2021/03/25/us-has-at-least-20-million-assault-rifles-a-ban-wouldnt-reduce-that-number/?sh=678d86ad4978" target="_blank">TWENTY million of them </a>in circulation just in the USA. And folks who oppose banning them have a valid point: How many assault rifles have been used in gun violence? A fraction of a percentage of the total number out there.</p><p>That doesn't mean we don't have a problem with gun-involved violence in America. And it doesn't mean that laws preventing the future purchases of more assault rifles are a bad idea. Why do so many Americans think they need to own an assault rifle in the first place? Many surveys indicate that assault rifle owners like the raw power embodied by such weaponry, even if they never plan on killing anybody. Which, if you follow that logic, also means assault rifles aren't necessary to normal, everyday American life. Which begs the question: Why do so many gun owners get so anxious and angry when the topic of gun control comes around? Some gun owners say they fear martial law, but when they say that, the irony is lost on them that other Americans fear gun owners!</p><p>As for the folks who are guaranteed to scream (literally) for more gun control after a gun-involved violent incident, their reliance on their pet brand of politics to protect them is as illogically placed as it is for right-wingers and their politics. For all the gun-control advocates out there, I'd simply ask you to consider the staggering gun-involved violence statistics for cities like Chicago, which already has a lot of gun laws on the books. Laws don't stop the violence. The simple fact of the matter is that if somebody wants to shoot somebody else, they're gonna do it. And that's why focusing on guns misses the mark. Pun intended.<br /><br />Nevertheless, the media can't bring itself to let society even try to pivot away from conflict. No matter their flavor of partisanship, it's in the media's interests to keep badgering society into believing politicians can fix things. And sure enough, those politicians, to stay in office, have to look like they can, and are. </p><p>But they aren't, and they can't. Not everything. Especially not people who want to kill other people.<br /><br />That's what's getting lost in all of this grandstanding. Why are some Americans bent on killing people? Other countries have similar ratios of guns to population, but they don't have this murderous violence. Is the way we're running our society to blame? Let's take the Covenant shooting as an example. While gun-control advocates have made it all about guns and laws, shouldn't we be having a hard conversation about being respectful of people who are different from us? And people with whom we disagree? <br /><br />And what about bullying? I was severely bullied in junior high, both emotionally and physically. Those scars have run deep in my life ever since. And many schoolyard bullies turn into adults who bully, and bullying takes all sorts of forms, from taunting fellow legislators with bullhorns (in Nashville) and death threats (in DC), to levying supermajorities against elected officials, to teasing people who struggle with the transgender zeitgeist. And maybe I'm wrong to see bullying as a likely culprit behind the Nashville (alleged) shooter's motives, but it doesn't sound like the person reveled in respect throughout their life. </p><p>Bullying in school, and at the workplace, and on social media are huge problems that few people seem interested in genuinely addressing. Maybe because lots of people own guns and they like the swagger guns can give them... and maybe that swagger has a bullying component to it? Like "I'm better than you, I'm stronger than you, I'm more protected than you, and I can prove it." But do we ignore bullying at our collective and individual peril, since it seems to crop up a lot in the backstories of gun-involved violence? </p><p>So, might harping over gun laws be distracting society from far more pertinent issues?<br /><br />And there's more. Because it's not just politicians and the media, unfortunately, who are to blame here. Can you see it? Neither politicians nor the media exist in a vacuum. They exist as extensions of... all of the rest of us. Those of us who consume the media we prefer, and who vote for the people who get elected. Who parent the kids who bully. Who want to think they're more virtuous than their neighbors. Who want others to defer to them.</p><p>Because in the grand scheme of things, in a democratic republic, with even our media creating content in a consumer-driven marketplace, we all share in the problem. Whether we want to admit it or not.<br /><br />_____</p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-4612058352924428042023-03-31T10:23:00.017-05:002023-07-25T10:08:52.777-05:00America's Epidemic of Selfish Victims<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeeEA6HUtqUDRBiTSluc6JBPH8vrZzIy9hZ2w0CtSAoBPM007i17pi9fTqj2htO2rSay79ThLJcAx9z_rAxsfpwwh80g4mseNYQr6x3pDMHGdrO8N4hvDqj7R5kGrNxV038EViO-deg4SNnkAwf0S6SgS6uv-KsCmWmHBRWMb3ecys0x_G3t2cn_R/s687/Our-Backyard-from-Landrums.jpg.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="503" data-original-width="687" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeeEA6HUtqUDRBiTSluc6JBPH8vrZzIy9hZ2w0CtSAoBPM007i17pi9fTqj2htO2rSay79ThLJcAx9z_rAxsfpwwh80g4mseNYQr6x3pDMHGdrO8N4hvDqj7R5kGrNxV038EViO-deg4SNnkAwf0S6SgS6uv-KsCmWmHBRWMb3ecys0x_G3t2cn_R/w400-h293/Our-Backyard-from-Landrums.jpg.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Are Mom and I "victims" of explosive population growth in Arlington, Texas? We've lost half of our backyard to a flood-prone creek, including about 8 mature trees, our back fence, a concrete walking path, a greenhouse, an in-ground irrigation system, and this concrete box, which used to be a fishpond. It's all gone due to flooding and erosion. So we're victims, right?</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p>America's infatuation with victimhood needs to stop.</p><p>Trans people claim to be victims. Donald Trump claims to be a victim. People do all sorts of things from a sense of entitlement because they've been victimized.</p><p>The Black reparations debate is degenerating into a mockery of racism - just look at the ridiculous dollar amounts some Californians are publicly floating. Those numbers aren't for reparations, they're for racist revenge.</p><p>And technically, before Blacks get their reparations, what about women (regardless of their race or ethnicity) who were disenfranchised in the New World even before Blacks were?<br /><br />Some teenagers say Covid victimized them by stealing their tender youth. They couldn't go to school (can you hear the irony - most kids hate attending school in the first place), they couldn't go to the mall, they couldn't see their friends. Their parents worked from home, depriving kids of their sacred privacy. As if adults were reveling in all of the Covid drama at their kids' expense.<br /><br />Victims of bullying, sexual harassment, predatory lenders, rude employees, rude customers, bad drivers, rogue cops, rogue companies, human traffickers, shootings, stabbings, emotional trauma, divorce, adultery... And if you want to get really political, these types of victimhood are also a thing on Google searches: Victims of communism, capitalism, imperialism, eugenics, groupthink, and the death penalty. There are "victims of NordicTrack", the exercise company. Victims of religion. Victims of circumstance. Oh, the humanity... we have victims, victims, all over the country.<br /><br />Yes, relatively bad things do happen all the time to relatively innocent people. Life seems to be more unfair to some people than to others. But nowadays, it seems people feel entitled to not having bad things happen to them. After all, that's the attitude they exhibit when bad things do happen: "Hey, wait! I don't deserve this. So I'm a victim, and I demand restitution."<br /><br />Not only do we dislike things that are unfair. We no longer think we should have to accept anything we perceive to be unfair. And we certainly don't want to forgive anybody for slights we think they've made against us. We want to be compensated in some way.</p><p>I suspect this victim complex represents an infatuation with the self that goes beyond basic self-preservation. It's a mindset that says I'm not just equal to you, but I'm more important than you. We're taught that saying "I'm BETTER than you" is impolite, so we've actually twisted self-centeredness to claim a compelling aura of "importance". </p><p>It's a clever trick. "Importance" is better than "better", because being "better" requires a quantifiable measurement of some value. </p><p>Meanwhile, "importance" doesn't imply that what makes us important can be measured, merely that importance should be conveyed on the principle of some claim of harm. In other words, "importance" can more specifically imply a need for an offender (whether an individual or society) to construct special mechanisms of deference. "Importance" can indeed be something important, or it could simply be claimed by somebody, regardless of whether society as a whole, based on conventional metrics, has deemed you to be of importance. Hence, the victim complex. </p><p>"I'm a victim, so I'm important, and I demand justice, because justice is important." </p><p>Yes, justice is important, but what is "justice"? And what makes your victimhood more important than somebody else's victimhood? <br /></p><p>Take me, for instance. I'm a White male, so immediately, many folks in our country view me as an oppressor, and a creator of victims. Simply because of my gender and skin color. This is presumed without any consideration of my personhood in the context of my thoughts, beliefs, when I was born, and what I desire for my fellow human beings. But do you realize I could claim victimhood for myself?</p><p>The last church I attended, for over 20 years, is a Presbyterian church. Early, early Presbyterians were persecuted in Scotland. One of my maternal ancestors was sent to America from Scotland by the notorious British warmonger Oliver Cromwell because he would not bow to the Church of England. So in a way, my family history and personal Presbyterianism make me a victim of England.</p><p>The only church I've ever joined as a member was a Baptist church, the historic Calvary Baptist, in New York City. But did you know that in colonial America, Baptists were persecuted? Rhode Island was formed as a state for persecuted Baptists. Persecution of Baptists continued in America even after our Revolutionary War. Did you know that? The persecution was committed mostly by adherents to the Church of England and Puritans, with Baptists and Quakers most often victimized. So in a way, my Baptist heritage makes me a victim of early colonists. </p><p>My paternal ancestry is Finnish. Within Scandinavia, Finland has historically been considered of least importance, with what for centuries was its relatively poor economy and vast rural, inaccessible landscape. My late aunt told me that Finns who came to America and worked as servants for Manhattan's elite were usually the lowest-paid, hired only for the lowliest jobs, and were hardly ever allowed to serve at table or parties. So in a way, my Finnish heritage makes me a victim of 20th Century Manhattan society.</p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2uwMhv6VoLWO97_3pEJVHLcg3bEDpZMJOLRtFVGZQmlqprkgdciKROkF9fYxpcBmmC6zf9yJLnjjYRljVlkD_eFRxT3bBZ0XoWEtDnhS1JOSr_CR0PSypkvRiuP4vDerXexb9OaWKvrkK8kyaeE4qrSlbSLRpyor3uFOeurksa8BQeVDGMKZyPwCp/s1965/Finnish-Spoons.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="My half of the Finnish spoons from Viipuri" border="0" data-original-height="1397" data-original-width="1965" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2uwMhv6VoLWO97_3pEJVHLcg3bEDpZMJOLRtFVGZQmlqprkgdciKROkF9fYxpcBmmC6zf9yJLnjjYRljVlkD_eFRxT3bBZ0XoWEtDnhS1JOSr_CR0PSypkvRiuP4vDerXexb9OaWKvrkK8kyaeE4qrSlbSLRpyor3uFOeurksa8BQeVDGMKZyPwCp/w320-h228/Finnish-Spoons.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>My half of the silver spoons my paternal great-aunt saved from their home in Viipuri, Finland. <br />My brother and his family have the other half.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Oh, and my Finnish heritage makes me a victim of Russian aggression. Back at the beginning of the Second World War, everybody was too preoccupied with Hitler to notice Russia's invasion of Finland in what Finns call the "Winter War". My paternal grandfather's hometown used to be Viipuri, Finland, but that city no longer exists. When the Russians invaded, they changed the city's name to Vyborg, and literally took over every privately-owned house and gave them to Russians. My ancestors had only several hours notice to flee, and they left everything - except some silver spoons which they could easily pack as they fled. Not much of an inheritance, some might say. So I'm a victim of Russian imperialism.<p></p><p>I've never owned land. Even after the ratification of the US Constitution, I would not have been allowed to vote, since only landowners (who were men, and White) could vote. Not all of my American ancestors owned land. So I'm a victim of America's old voting laws.</p><p>I was bullied constantly in junior high. I'm a victim of the Arlington Independent School District.<br /><br />Women in Times Square used to ask me for the time when I'd walk by. I'm a victim of female empowerment. (I literally used to look at my wristwatch and tell them what time of day it was, in answer to their query, and they'd look at me like I was some kind of weirdo - until a friend finally told me they were prostitutes asking if I "had the time" for sex!)<br /><br />I'm bald, which most people consider to be unflattering. I wear glasses. I'm not ripped or fit. Yikes - I'm a victim of society's standards for attractiveness.</p><p>As far as I can figure, the only people in the United States today who can't claim any victim status are handsome, well-groomed, heterosexual, White, male, married (to a woman), healthy, land-owning Episcopalians whose ancestors have all also been all of the same. </p><p>Which, of course, is an absurd notion, right? My point is this: There are all sorts of ways we could claim victimhood, from the way other drivers endanger us on freeways, to the way burglars force us to cower behind locked doors, to the ways politicians of any stripe incessantly foment fear and discord so they can stay in office.<br /><br />Victimhood happens all the time. To everybody. So in reality, victimhood itself isn't necessarily grounds for recompense. Hey - life is not fair. It never has been. All sorts of negative situations impact all sorts of people. Human history is replete with unfairness, inequity, and injustice.</p><p>Does that mean we shouldn't strive for fairness, equity, and justice? Of course not. But we have to be wise and discerning in how we evaluate our reality, and advocate for all we consider to be good, beneficial, helpful, and kind.</p><p>It's called "loving our neighbor", if you are Christian, or Jewish. Or it's called the "golden rule": Treating other people the way we want other people to treat us.</p><p>Not with revenge. Not with fury. Not even with selfishness.</p><p>And just because we might be a victim of something, the justice we may seek for ourselves itself needs to be representative of fairness. We can't presume making a victim out of somebody else can somehow even whatever scores we're trying to keep. Two wrongs never make a right, do they?</p><p>This is is hard, especially since our society has decided emotionalism merits more consideration than facts, logic, and respect for others. It's now OK to make modern villains out of history's transgressors. It's now OK to take viscerally the things we've decided are unfair. This isn't to say that we shouldn't advocate for what we think is right. But there are positive and negative ways of doing that.<br /><br />Remember, your life isn't just about you. My life isn't just about me. We each live in a context of time and place that has been created through thousands of years of other peoples' mistakes, virtues, inventions, egos, aspirations, crimes, hatred, and beliefs. </p><p>Some people have won wars over other people. Some people have exercised political power over other people. Even today, some people are wealthier than others. Some people are more educated than others. No society in history has ever had pure equality. We can legislate for equality, we can fight wars and rage and rant, but there is no perfect society. Every generation produces yet another crop of selfish people. And it seems that the more history we humans accrue, we're seeing more and more victims.</p><p>And it's particularly bizarre that in America - of all places - with the world's wealthiest and most powerful economy, with no nation physically attacking us, both conservative and liberal pundits rage about being victims.</p><p>Perhaps never before in history have "victims" been so spoiled.</p><p>_____ </p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-91458775623333089322023-03-28T10:46:00.024-05:002023-04-05T10:35:25.962-05:00Violence, the Self, and Modeling Civility<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/nation-world/shooting-at-nashville-private-school/507-1cd3dec3-09c3-4126-b48a-07e4f2d67034" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="893" data-original-width="1447" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAY8g7o6qu6UG2-wlGosZvUElS5U3LqAbTSSMiqN8l0B3ppEZXZqLb5pwzMxFsy2v5GS8ifMFfQhcPv7Idcn4scoGL0uFwAgb6OIGEecgSIG95IkyF1DR-bVp8Qgtu_WkptFogK8maRrCPCMjlbwGkhKt_3oBO6IJEPXu4pnLlcklUN20Ci4YfOkSu/w400-h247/Covenant_School.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>Another day, another school shooting. In America, anyway.<br /><br />Yesterday's happened to be in Nashville, at a private Christian school run by a church pastored by somebody I know. The Rev. Chad Scruggs used to be a pastor at "my" church in Dallas, Park Cities Presbyterian, before he went to become the pastor at Nashville's Covenant Presbyterian. Scruggs' only daughter was one of the victims in yesterday's tragedy.</p><p>And yes, even though America's schoolplace shootings are now commonplace, they're each still tragedies. We had a student here in Arlington, Texas, shot to death outside one of our high schools just a couple of weeks ago, making international headlines. The day after that, a Dallas high school had a non-lethal shooting. Then, for the third day in a row, it was Denver. Sometimes I wonder if they're not copycat events.</p><p>Most Americans have come to process gun-related school violence from the perspective of their political mindset. This means there are basically two schools of thought - to pardon the pun - and they both stem from our bifurcated political narratives. Either the shootings are happening because we don't have stronger "anti-gun" laws, or the shootings are happening because we don't have stronger mental health protocols. The problem with both political perspectives is that they don't really explain why America, of all the world's "advanced" countries, has such a unique problem when it comes to schools, guns, and violence.</p><p>As far as more gun laws go, don't we already have a lot of gun laws? And still, aren't most of the guns used in school violence purchased legally? I admit I don't understand why any civilian needs an assault rifle, but still, it's estimated 15 million legally-bought assault rifles are in American homes. So even though each mass shooting is a tragedy, statistically speaking, it's a severely small percentage of gun owners who abuse their weapons in such a heinous way. Penalizing the 99.99% of owners who have no desire to kill anybody with their guns remains a proposition that's hard to argue on the grounds of fairness.</p><p>Especially since street violence, committed to a far greater degree with illegal guns, rages uncontrollably despite the presence of gun laws.<br /><br />It's almost impossible to legislate morality, either for gun use, or other things... like mental health, and sexuality.<br /><br />Mental health has become a talking point for gun-rights activists, but how do we go about legislating mental health matters? We Americans do seem to lag other developed countries in this area, and part of that might be explained by our country's unique perspectives on personal freedoms. We're a nation that has particularly struggled with both abusing and protecting rights and power, which may explain why few of us (no matter our politics) embrace the idea of society and/or government meddling into why we are the way we are.</p><p>The United States is home to the world's most diverse population. How do we codify mental health standards in the light of such pluralism?</p><p>Simply consider yesterday's "alleged" shooter: a trans person. Right there, we're faced with an issue upon which our society at large cannot agree: Is a person's gender related to their anatomy or not? It's a polarizing topic rife with emotion, opinion, and rhetoric - even without guns.<br /><br />Alternatively, consider the reality that of all the trans people in America - experts debate the numbers, but the higher estimate is <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303578" target="_blank">less than half a million</a> - this is the first mass shooting involving a shooter who self-identified as trans, meaning we don't have an epidemic of shooters being motivated because of their gender identity. Chances are, even though we don't have official conclusions from this shooter's personal writings, a motive centered more on being bullied makes for a logical conclusion. And being bullied in school is a problem that has been proven to exist in other mass shootings. Even the killing at Lamar High School here in Arlington a couple of weeks ago is believed to have been sparked by bullying.<br /><br />And it's not a stretch to imagine that, no matter your opinions on the trans movement, we should all be able to understand how being bullied over your gender and/or sexuality can be one of the most personal and searing of dehumanizing events.</p><p>So, in this case, should biological traditionalists simply cave and let trans people do whatever they feel like doing so they don't want to shoot up their childhood school? Or does part of being a responsible human being involve helping the people we love be accountable for their whole selves - their mind, emotions, and their body? Especially if they're being bullied?</p><p>Oh. I used that word. And it's a word that involves a lot more emotion than many of us apparently know what to do with: "Love". </p><p>What is love, anyway? That's a question with which our entire planet grapples, no matter one's skin color, ethnicity, nationality, education, or political affiliation. And it's a question I can't answer to everybody's satisfaction. Nor can you.</p><p>But I suspect the fact we can't answer that question universally plays a significant role in why America has so much gun-involved school violence. At its core, love involves respect for others, at least on a basic, intrinsic level of humanity. We can - and should - "love" people without even having an organic affection for them. </p><p>Instead, it's become vogue in America to be proud of what - and who - we hate. Which could be a key for why we're so unhappy, suspicious, resentful, and anxious as a society.<br /><br />It would explain why there is so much animosity in our culture. We've become so self-centered - a manifestation of love for self that trumps our concern for others - that we convince ourselves our comfort and identity aren't just equal to everybody else's, but MORE important, MORE valuable, and MORE valid.</p><p>And why schools, specifically? Maybe because schools are the one place where nearly all of us first experienced a lack of love and a profusion of selfishness from others. Schools are where most of us can first remember being wounded emotionally, at least by people who weren't family. Schools also symbolize socialization, inculturation, and "normalization" - three things our selfish souls likely reject, at least subconsciously.</p><p>Somewhere along the way, we've gone from at least paying lip service to what used to be cultural norms to openly defying them - making our defiance of old norms the new cultural norm. And this is being done even by the culture that used to be dominant, the old White conservatives. It could be what's fueling the MAGA crowd, as well as the wokesters, even though they each view themselves as opposites. It's what trans activists believe gives their cause legitimacy, especially as heteros tend to take a mocking tone towards them. It's a lack of respect for other people, a lack of consideration, and an indifference to how different people process their view of reality.</p><p>Oddly enough, while some folks complain that they don't have enough freedom in our country, the very ways they voice their presumed oppression flies in the face of those complaints. Try advocating for any anti-majority view in China, or Russia, or India, or many African countries, for example. Here in America, we have all gotten so SPOILED by our freedoms that we can't even see them. And that goes not just for the folks who think they're being marginalized, but also for the MAGA folks who think freedoms are being taken away from them.<br /><br />Freedoms aren't exactly "disappearing" in America, but change is happening. And what's changing is the way we're choosing to interact with others. </p><p>Social media probably plays a huge role in all of this. There are no more gatekeepers guarding (or guiding, or manipulating) our public discourse. Anybody with a smartphone can say whatever they want, however they want, to ever-broadening audiences. We like to think that's "free speech", but in reality, it's just cheap speech. Wise people know we aren't "free" to say whatever we want however we want. But our pop culture does not value wisdom, it values charisma. And especially charisma that affirms the self.</p><p>Okay. We still don't know specifics about why yesterday's school shooter did what they did - and no, I'm not being hateful by not referring to them by their "preferred pronoun" (I will concede* to using conciliatory pluralism to acknowledge the person's confusion). However, I believe it is safe to say that the shooter viewed themself as more important than the people they killed. That's basically what any murder is. It's why extreme self-centeredness is considered a mental problem, and why murder is a huge crime in virtually every civilized culture. We can disagree amongst ourselves all day long, but a responsible human being disagrees respectfully, patiently, and constructively. We can't simply act as though our life is worth more than another person's.</p><p>That's a fact.</p><p>Some of us, by our personality, will happily accept that fact. Most of us will at least begrudgingly accept that fact because we're taught it, or we've become convinced that it's the best way to survive this life we're living. It's the folks who don't accept it who are the problem folks.</p><p>And some of them are the ones who end up making the headlines.<br /><br />Maybe the rest of us should work harder, day in and day out, at modeling civility ourselves. Maybe more of us need to show that while it's not easy, it's in all of our best interests. </p><p>It will require some self-denial on our part, but then again, little worthwhile in life is very easy, or cheap, or free.</p><p>Seven more families in Tennessee now know the cost.</p><p>_____<br /><br />* <i>Within the zeitgeist of trans-sexualism, part of being respectful involves, I think, a certain level of angst acknowledgment. Briefly put, I'm more interested in conveying a broader truth about what sexuality is, instead of dogmatically insisting on pronoun purity that tends to obscure the overall point. So I'm OK with allowing a catch-all they/them instead of a specific gender pronoun in these cases. </i></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-67083458933479501462023-02-17T09:57:00.007-06:002023-02-17T09:57:52.112-06:00Fox Used Trump to Out-Fox Viewers?<div><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #7f6000;">_________________________<br /></span> </p></div>Can we finally admit that extremists on both sides of our political spectrum are playing the voting public as pawns?<br /><br /><a href="https://www.mediaite.com/tv/tucker-carlson-called-trump-a-demonic-force-and-a-destroyer-on-day-of-capitol-riot-per-newly-released-text/" target="_blank">Newly-released evidence</a> in a key lawsuit about Trumpist conspiracy theories appears to paint several popular Fox News personalities as duplicitous hacks, parroting one theme to egg on viewers while personally believing something completely different.<div><br /></div><div>As shameful as that may be, what's more disconcerting is how willingly people who aren't supposed to put their hope and faith in governments have sold themselves out to partisan political gurus - ON BOTH SIDES of the political aisle, but in this case, the far-right side. On the left, we have Christians embracing hateful wokeism in order to present their own version of sanctimony within their sphere of influence.</div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile, folks like me who've worked very hard to hold on to the rational, beneficent, respectful middle ground, are hoping that the turmoil rocking our country will be enough to remind all of us that none of us are in control, and that truth isn't necessarily what we want it to be. As I see it, that's not New Age pantheism, that's age-old Biblical reality.</div><div><br /></div><div>Or if you don't want to accept that, at least you need to consider the ecumenical Golden Rule.</div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-37862126562800094972023-01-24T17:04:00.002-06:002023-01-24T20:02:05.544-06:00Prudish Cops Don't Score Big By Sex Trap <div>Here it is, blazing atop most of our local north Texas news websites this afternoon:<br /><br />"<a href="https://www.fox4news.com/news/frisco-southlake-prostitution-sting-lewisville-marcus-coach-youth-pastor-46-arrested" target="_blank">Lewisville coach, youth pastor among 46 arrested in prostitution sting</a>"<div><br /></div><div>On the one hand, this makes for the type of salacious headline that scores easy money for our media machine. </div><div><br /></div><div>Nevertheless, while I do not endorse prostitution, I'm not really big on arresting people who seek it. We all can mostly agree that there are morality issues here. However, people looking to buy sex, and people using their bodies for paid sex, aren't necessarily an imminent threat to our society. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is mostly making criminals out of people who used the Internet to do something most men don't have the guts to do, but about which they fantasize. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not excusing extramarital sex, or the botched pursuit of it. I simply don't see a direct connection here between prostitution and "human trafficking" - that big politically-correct catch-phrase that I thought relates to holding victims against their will, and forcing them to participate in an economic activity for which they are not fairly compensated. What do I mean? Well, when these men responded to the fake advertisement, were they led to believe the woman they were meeting was being forced to do this against her will? Because if that's so, it would be really bad. However, were they merely led to believe this would be mutually beneficial - meaning the woman would keep the financial part of the transaction? There are moral problems with that, but it's hardly worth having cops set a trap.<br /><br />Don't misunderstand me: For cops to try and shut down known brothels is one thing. For cops to try and thwart actual captors of human beings who force them into sexual servitude also is good. However, to just advertise prostitution online and then arrest whomever shows up mostly serves as justification for prudish law enforcement to make fun of libidinous men.</div><div><br /></div><div>In this article, one of the cops said these guys are "the scourge of the earth", but isn't he talking about the people who force women into this activity? Men who are just looking to pay for sex may be creating a market for prostitutes, but they're not forcing women into prostitution.<br /><br />Besides, how does this particular trap work against trafficking? No information on actual sex traffickers is gleaned from it, no sex trafficking ring is broken (because it didn't exist in the first place), and no women are rescued.<br /><br />Now, for this to have been a virtuous exercise, what should have happened is for the cops not to arrest the guys who showed up, but to give them the business card of a professional marriage counselor or something like that. As it is, it's far enough outside the scope of human trafficking, it's hollow sanctimonious posturing for cops to presume they're helping to solve the problem.<br /><br />_____</div></div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-49129372438942832612022-12-19T11:37:00.126-06:002023-04-24T10:37:52.069-05:00Trending From Church, Which I'm Doing Too<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9OffvVXIhd_v6DBNJ0SuUhN1L5-OL7LaInNzOyAiD0pLzfz-GFtON1J_zGVCnICqhnT_Bba1JsQ55rONpSKeIPthJRa7L4XKESYTFOWUljsMiCnSr0Lg61tnNNRt3crXk5Cr30QMEj4D3fLM2B6EApLrqoDgp9nglrkIBzBPvHD5sfz1_972bfrb/s2048/Golgatha1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL9OffvVXIhd_v6DBNJ0SuUhN1L5-OL7LaInNzOyAiD0pLzfz-GFtON1J_zGVCnICqhnT_Bba1JsQ55rONpSKeIPthJRa7L4XKESYTFOWUljsMiCnSr0Lg61tnNNRt3crXk5Cr30QMEj4D3fLM2B6EApLrqoDgp9nglrkIBzBPvHD5sfz1_972bfrb/w400-h300/Golgatha1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The sanctuary of Brooklyn Baptist Church, which used to be<br />Golgotha Finnish Congregational Church<br />(which I attended as an infant - my first church)<br />in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood. <br />The <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2016/07/back-in-1970s-my-aunt-enrolled-in_26.html" target="_blank">remaining Finns</a> sold their building to the Baptists,<br />a <a href="https://brooklynbaptist.org/" target="_blank">multi-cultural evangelical congregation</a>, <br />in the late 1980s.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="text-align: center;">______________________</p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: center;">For it is not an enemy who taunts me—
<br /> then I could bear it;<br />it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me—
<br /> then I could hide from him.<br />But it is you, a man, my equal,
<br /> my companion, my familiar friend.<br />We used to take sweet counsel together;
<br /> within God's house we walked in the throng.<br />- <i><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2055%3A12-14&version=ESV" target="_blank">Psalm 55:12-14 ESV</a></i></p><p><br /></p><p>Christianity continues to dominate American culture. Yet religious practices here, such as church attendance, are in decline.</p><p>Some researchers misread data gleaned from church attendance statistics and inaccurately state that America is becoming less "Christian". What's really happening, however, probably points to more of an honest admission by Americans regarding the priority they place on acting out their faith.</p><p>Yes, many Americans no longer attend church. And technically, I'm one of them. I watch the video feed from "my" church online, but frankly, I admit I have no desire to return to in-person worship. And it's not because of Covid, or doctrinal issues, or how hard it is to find a parking space on Sunday mornings in the hipster Dallas neighborhood where "my" church is located. </p><p>Mom and I both had stopped attending in-person church before the pandemic ever hit. Her reason is mostly her age, and her increasingly limited mobility. My reason is completely different, but I wonder how common a reason it may be.</p><p>More and more Americans appear to be comfortable in not just dropping church attendance, but being unaffiliated with church, period. By now, that trend should surprise nobody, since it's been going on for decades. <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx" target="_blank">People have stopped going to church for all sorts of reasons, and it doesn't look like many of us plan on returning anytime soon</a>.</p><p>Nevertheless, look around you: Here we are, the Monday before Christmas, and how many homes in your neighborhood boast Christmas decorations? You likely know the folks on your block who attend church regularly, and those who don't. And I'll guess that the folks who never attend church have the same amount of decorations as those who do.</p><p>So while church attendance has been the big data point researchers have been watching, does it really point to any significant decline in levels of America's cultural Christianity? That's always been a fairly shallow concept anyway, right? How theologically-sound have been the measures of how "Christian" America was, and is? </p><p>Every Advent season, for example, some folks complain over the evolution of "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", but in reality, that change indicates more of an inclusion of other celebrations instead of an outright refutation of Christianity. Plurality of faiths among a society like America's, with our strong immigration ethos, should not be conflated with people from Christianity's legacy losing interest in observing it within pews.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><i>(Sidebar #1: Pews, of course, are those long wood benches with built-in backs that "church growth movement" experts pilloried during American Christianity's seeker-sensitive movement, one of the tricks churches began using to try and fill sanctuaries - excuse me, "worship centers" - when America's church attendance decline became noticeable, back in the 1990s.)</i></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>(Sidebar #2: And IF there are fewer and fewer "Christians" honestly celebrating Christmas, why do the remaining Christians blame society at large? Most American Christians are dyed-in-the-wool capitalists, and capitalism is all about bottom-line marketing to the consumer. So why bemoan the folks who are trying to appeal to the broadest constituency with their inclusivity of all December/January religious holidays? As long as Christians aren't penalized for their "Christmas" sentimentality (Christmas is not a Biblical holy day anyway, you know), what's the harm? Christians who fear the fact that fewer and fewer Americans actually observe a religious Christmas should pray about how they can minister better to their lost neighbors, instead of grumbling about terminology that only reflects society.)</i></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">Having fewer and fewer folks in those pews likely isn't a bad thing anyway, because it means that people who only marginally voiced allegiance to Christianity simply have decided to stop their pretenses. Not that everybody remaining in America's churches are "saved" - I believe that, unfortunately, there are folks who attend church still as a pretense for a faith that they want to exercise on their own terms. </p><p>For example, the idolatrous rise of Christian nationalism has taken over much of the religious right, meaning that allegiance to Christ may be falling to allegiance to Americanism. </p><p>Depending on how one defines a "Christian nation", dropping church attendance still doesn't necessarily mean that Christianity itself is experiencing a "<a href="https://www.grid.news/story/politics/2022/12/17/a-mass-exodus-from-christianity-is-underway-in-america-heres-why/" target="_blank">mass exodus</a>", as one Roman Catholic demographer cleverly put it.</p><p>I was raised in the evangelical church. I can trace my life by the Christian churches I've attended:<br /></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Golgotha Finnish Congregational Church; Brooklyn, NY</li><li>Maple Flats Baptist Chapel; Cleveland, NY</li><li>Kenwood Heights Alliance Church; Oneida, NY</li><li><a href="https://www.romealliancechurch.org/" target="_blank">Rome Alliance Church</a>; Rome, NY</li><li>Arlington Alliance Church; Arlington, TX</li><li>East Park Church of the Nazarene; Arlington, TX</li><li><a href="https://wearecentral.org/" target="_blank">Pantego Bible Church</a>; Arlington, TX</li><li><a href="https://firstfreebrooklyn.org/" target="_blank">First Evangelical Free Church;</a> Brooklyn, NY</li><li><a href="https://www.cbcnyc.org/" target="_blank">Calvary Baptist Church</a>; New York, NY <b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(the only church I've ever joined)</span></i></b></li><li><a href="https://www.redeemer817.org/" target="_blank">Arlington Presbyterian Church</a>; Arlington, TX</li><li><a href="https://pcpc.org/" target="_blank">Park Cities Presbyterian Church</a>; Dallas, TX <b><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(my longest affiliation; over 20 years)</span></i></b></li></ol><p></p><p><a href="https://www.crosswalk.com/author/tim-laitinen/" target="_blank">I've written articles for Crosswalk.com</a>, a prominent evangelical website. I served as a leader in the singles ministry at New York City's venerable Calvary Baptist, which was, overall, my best church experience. For about three years, I worked in the financial office at Pantego Bible Church, a sizable non-denominational fellowship now located in Fort Worth, Texas. For over a decade, I sang in the chancel choir at Dallas' wealthy Park Cities Presbyterian. </p><p>Most of my Facebook friends have been acquired over the years through my various church affiliations. My parents met as counselors at an evangelical Christian youth camp near Cape Cod, and my mother graduated from an evangelical college. My brother and sister-in-law met while students at Moody Bible Institute, an evangelical college in Chicago. So I'm definitely a product of America's Christian church culture.</p><p>Yet even I have lost my enthusiasm for the American church. Yes, I still watch Sunday services online, but mostly I do that for my mother, who is a luddite and needs me to get the connection on my laptop computer for her. I have personally become disillusioned with the way American evangelicals "do" church, and have both moved myself out of their circles, and have been forgotten by them.</p><p>I may have a few church-going acquaintances who actively shun me, but mostly, there's simply no more room in American evangelicalism for people like me. <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2014/10/egr-syndrome-tests-church-performance.html" target="_blank">I don't fit the mold</a> they've created for what the typical evangelical church congregant should look like. </p><p>Right off the top, I'm not married, I don't have kids, and I'm not currently employed. Singles have never had an easy task navigating the cliques of conventional church, and the longer we stay single, the harder it becomes to assimilate. Being divorced is marginally OK, especially if you still have kids at home, but being never-married means something is deeply flawed in you. Unless you're making a ton of money from a great job, and can tell others your career simply comes first. Which, um, I can't!<br /><br />I live in my aging mother's aging house and help care for her. Some folks peg me as a "mamma's boy". If my life was a sitcom, I'd be the butt of the jokes.<br /><br />To make matters worse, I am not a Christian nationalist, I have never voted for <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2016/05/dont-endorse-evil-of-two-lessers.html" target="_blank">Donald Trump</a> (or Hillary or Joe, for that matter), and while I believe it's a sin, I don't believe abortion is the <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2016/10/with-trump-evangelicals-say-abortion-is.html" target="_blank">greatest one</a>. I am not an anti-vaxxer, and I've had all my Covid shots. I remain a registered Republican, but I don't vote a straight Republican ticket. My faith is supposed to be in God, <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2016/03/in-whom-do-you-trust-your-vote.html" target="_blank">not politics or governments or laws</a>.<br /><br />Even worse than all that, however, is my battle with <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2014/03/ive-confession-to-make.html" target="_blank">chronic clinical depression</a>, which many Christians mock as a fake illness, a sin, and an excuse for laziness and immaturity.<br /></p><p>I managed to sustain considerable friendliness with many folks at the churches I've attended, but as my life has continued to wear me down emotionally, I've discovered that those friendships only went as far as what other people could understand about me. After that, I suspect my problems were simply too confusing and demanded too much time and attention - time and attention they could more easily spend on people more like themselves. </p><p>Some would accuse me of whining and complaining now, but hey - I'm not complaining as much as I'm parsing out reality. Modern life is complex and extremely time-consuming. Schedules fill up fast. In such a world, streamlining one's friendships to obtain maximum benefit from them makes sense. And I understand that. I can't say I'd handle the trappings - and traps - of modern success any better than anybody I've known.</p><p>In retrospect, I also realize I could have worked harder myself at making those friendships last. I know I'm not outgoing or charismatic. But that means my relationships were not organic enough to develop into friendships on their own, right? Just going to the same doctrinally-sound church while professing hope in the same Biblical Savior proved woefully insufficient as a baseline for sustainable fellowship.<br /><br />It's been a sad realization for me.</p><p>Maybe there's a country-club mentality among modern American Christianity, and maybe that's what's turning off many folks. Us versus them. In versus out. And as American churchgoers increasingly embrace political dogma alongside their churchy preferences, the freedom many conservative religious people feel to wrap the Cross of Christ with the American flag gives them an unBiblical purpose. And what is that purpose, but to market themselves as our country's patriotic remnant. It's the new church schtick, since the specter of eternal damnation doesn't seem to hold as much resonance anymore. Market your church as a defender of traditional family values, keep trying to legislate morality, and draw your battle lines around the vices in our society you can most easily define.</p><p>Maybe church has become a matter of defining what separates us. Whereas Christianity can point to a history of welcoming the disenfranchised - at least, in Christ's day - today, it's mostly about how well a person can assimilate into a moralistic group, and how much sin they can avoid while still having their share of fun. Anything that challenges their expectations and preferences provides sufficient justification for excommunication, or at least social distancing.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>(Sidebar #3: Churchgoing conservatives hate social distancing when they perceive liberals are forcing it. But churchgoers have been doing it for years.)</i></p></blockquote><p>So yes, while I'm not particularly threatened with data analyses that paint dire futures for Christianity in America, I personally can vouch for the data showing church attendance in decline. Some churches do continue to grow, but I suspect such outliers generally reflect church-hopping - some call it "church-shopping" - as socio-religious butterflies flit from one congregation to another, like there are big revolving doors within any given city's church culture. Some people who still want the churchy vibe strive to find the best fit for how they intend to live their lives (but not necessarily how Christ has taught us to live them). Meanwhile, if somebody with as rigorous a churchy background as mine can become so disillusioned with the American church, imagine how easily other folks - with an even more ambivalent view of church attendance - can find it daunting and discouraging.</p><p>As for me, the basics haven't changed: I still believe in God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, His holy Son, Who was born of humble birth to provide salvation for all of us humans who believe that He is the only Way to Heaven. I still believe in the holy "catholic" (small "C", meaning "universal) church, and the communion of saints, as the ancient <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-know-apostles-creed/" target="_blank">Apostles' Creed</a> reads. I even believe that believers should not "forsake the assembling of ourselves together", as <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews%2010%3A25&version=ESV" target="_blank">Hebrews 10:25</a> reads. </p><p>However, are people like me who no longer attend church the only ones who have fallen out of such idealistic descriptions of Christian fellowship? What about the people who remain in their country-club-type churches, in their cliques; never bothering to consider if how they're exercising their churchy paradigm is corrupting the communion of saints by... forsaking assembling with marginalized saints?</p><p>"Oh, those marginalized people can attend church with us, but they will need to rise up to our pseudo-religious standards. We shouldn't have to work harder to include them, or figure out why they're not as fun to be around."<br /></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><i>(Sidebar #4: If just about everybody in a congregation feels that way, it's kinda like the <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2014/03/social-disconnect-from-queens-to.html" target="_blank">Kitty Genovese tragedy</a> in 1960s New York City, when a woman screamed for help during an attack in the middle of the night. Basically, although they heard her screams in their upscale Queens neighborhood, her neighbors figured "somebody else" would come to her aid - which meant that in reality, nobody did, and her corpse was found later).</i></p></blockquote><p>Some folks find basic Biblical faith to be extremely exclusionary. Which, theologically, it is. And for those people who simply find the Gospel itself offensive, their abandonment of the church is sad, but not surprising. Meanwhile, haven't many churches today made a different form of exclusiveness so popular amongst themselves? </p><p>Some sins are more acceptable than others (gluttony, vanity, coarse joking, and increasingly, alcohol abuse are the wink-wink "bad habits" that can actually win a churchgoer more acceptance). Popularity continues to define church pecking orders. Wealth is an obvious way of doing that, but pick a metric - any metric - within society at large, and you'll find it mimicked either brazenly or discretely in church. We are to love our neighbors as a way of demonstrating our love for God. Churchgoers who prefer mixing in their religiosity and their lifestyles, unfortunately, are simply demonstrating their love only for neighbors who are like themselves.</p><p>And despite everything I've just written, I get that. I really do. As social creatures, all of us tend to do that in most aspects of life. It's a comfort factor, and a safety factor. Unfortunately, doing the same thing in church, like folks do in country clubs, is part of the dumbing-down of church and theology that's been going on for generations now (and not to bash only conservative churches, but liberal ones have been doing it all along, too).</p><p>And - shucks - not finding comfort and safety in church myself, it helps explain why I have no desire to return. Extrapolate that across our country, and the trend explains itself.</p><p>Maybe at one time, there was something special and unique about going to church and being "in fellowship" with other people who claimed to believe in Jesus Christ. When I attended Calvary Baptist, on busy <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2013/10/calvarys-buckle-in-nycs-billionaires.html" target="_blank">57th Street in Midtown Manhattan</a>, we had homeless people attending, along with at least one matronly lady who I'd see arrive in a silver, chauffeur-driven limousine. Plus cultures, skin colors, and ethnicities from literally around the world. </p><p>Calvary's diversity was stunning. There were Sundays where I'd stand on the main floor of its packed sanctuary (literally every Sunday, ushers would be cajoling seated parishioners into making extra room in their already-full pews), surrounded by this panoply of contrasts, all singing the same hymns, and tears would well in my eyes; I'd be overcome realizing how it represented a sample of what Heaven will be like.<br /></p><p>Today, however, church no longer seems special. And that's not God's fault, it's ours.</p><p>_____</p><p><br /><i><b>Monday, February 6, 2023</b><br /><br />By the way, some readers who are familiar with Park Cities Presbyterian and its congregation - one of the world's wealthiest - might casually deduce that my detachment from it stems from personal bitterness at being so economically poor relative to its congregants' affluence. In response to such a presumption, I would first say that I never participated in Park Cities Prez because I was pretentious enough to figure I could fit in with their target audience. I schlepped over there (a 40-minute drive in the best of times) because their corporate worship services were in the classical, traditional style, which I believe best reflect God's glory and holiness (and hey - those church growth experts say preference is the top reason to pick a church, right?). </i></p><p><i>Second, I'm actually grateful to God for the time I got to spend at Park Cities Prez. I learned a lot about money, wealth, and the people who have it. For example, I learned not to begrudge people their wealth; not just because being jealous is wrong, but money really does add heavy complexity to one's life. I also saw that money truly is relative, and God has given His church (the "holy catholic church" :-) plenty of it to do His work. The thing is, in areas where we see funds lacking, it could mean we aren't spending His money properly. <br /><br />But enough about money, and Park Cities. My conclusions about the church in general stem not just from my experiences in Dallas, but from <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2020/07/biting-devouring-and-consuming-one.html" target="_blank">the ways and things I've seen professing evangelicals from across the church spectrum</a> do, be, and embrace.<br /><br />I also have found it curious that since posting this essay in December, the only feedback I've heard (except from one long-time friend at Park Cities) has been from other folks who are disaffected from church. I don't know how to explain that, but it seems to prove my point that churchgoers today are more comfortable without folks like me. If I could be proven wrong, I'd gladly admit it!</i></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-23930444468846214702022-12-07T17:06:00.027-06:002022-12-17T10:15:37.990-06:00Curtains for the Swastika?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNDL93HsgL9UKuzwk4WI6LngwolpljjBhaF74Bkx1sQ59K-TMCR_zAWphS8AKsJmX8tTl8aHZKgjWoRPvxURVRlgwIAvfFcX1_a-bK62dIUzN8FQSNCeNUJYLHZRiXABUBhl9pCPSni5n-W5cu3CJu6DGkTFIiS5K_1S-qggY7U3A_af3oEgmI5dJq/s996/swastika-early1900s.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29644591" border="0" data-original-height="996" data-original-width="976" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNDL93HsgL9UKuzwk4WI6LngwolpljjBhaF74Bkx1sQ59K-TMCR_zAWphS8AKsJmX8tTl8aHZKgjWoRPvxURVRlgwIAvfFcX1_a-bK62dIUzN8FQSNCeNUJYLHZRiXABUBhl9pCPSni5n-W5cu3CJu6DGkTFIiS5K_1S-qggY7U3A_af3oEgmI5dJq/w393-h400/swastika-early1900s.jpg" title="American companies used the swastika in marketing during the early part of the 20th Century, before the rise of Nazi Germany." width="393" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>American companies used the swastika in non-political marketing <br />during the early part of the 20th Century,<br />before the rise of Nazi Germany.<br />I have to say, looking at these images, my first impression<br />as a person educated and inculturated in the West, <br />is that they are all of Nazi propaganda,<br />even though none of them are.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /> <div>Antisemitism can be like a bad virus. There may be periods of time when it appears to hibernate, or stagnate, or otherwise lose its public potency. But history unfortunately seems to prove it's always there. Under the surface. Waiting for seasonal taboos to wear thin, so it can re-emerge.</div><div><br />These days, it's managed to explode onto our public consciousness in the form of celebrity endorsements and social media tirades. And if you're not Jewish yourself, or close friends with Jewish people, maybe it seems like a mild distraction, if anything. <div><br /></div><div>After all, how many of us are literally hateful of Jews? We're beyond that, right? How many of us celebrate the totems of what we call the Holocaust? We know our history, and appreciate that the swastika exists as one of the most instantly-recognizable symbols of bigotry on our planet.<div><div><br /></div><div>Or... does it?<br /><br />Did you know that before Adolph Hitler co-opted the swastika for his evil Nazi party, the symbol had already served for thousands of years as a religious icon across the world? Depending on the culture, it represents various positive themes and virtues, as well as aspects of revered divinity. <br /><br />Not just then, but today as well. </div><div><br /></div><div>In its original Sanskrit, "swastika" means "well-being". In Hinduism, depending on the direction in which the icon is flipped, it can represent either the sun and prosperity, or night and power. Buddhists consider the swastika as the footprint of the Buddha. In Jainism, it represents one of their deities. </div><div><br /></div><div>The swastika can be found in ancient art by Native Americans and even early Christian cultures. For centuries, it innocuously represented good luck across much of Europe.<br /><br />It adorns buildings built before World War II, and was used as a logo for the Boy Scouts.</div><div><br /></div><div>But by then, nefarious winds had already begun to blow for the swastika. Its first usage in politics began in the late 1800s, in Romania and Germany, and it was soon co-opted for antisemitic purposes by fringe far-right groups across Europe. Eventually, during the mid-1930s, Hitler and his Nazi party adopted the swastika as an official logo for white supremacists. </div><div><br /></div><div>(It must be said that while the swastika has a confusing provenance as a symbol, the notion of white supremacy is based on wildly incongruous theories about a supposed Aryan race. Without getting bogged down in the ridiculous hypotheses that have long been debunked about Aryanism, suffice it to say that Germany's infatuation with blue-eyed blondes contrasted deeply with the peoples upon whom the Aryan concept was founded, which ironically included Iranians and Afghans. Indeed, while Hitler himself did have blue eyes, he definitely wasn't blonde.)</div><div><br />Almost overnight, it seems the swastika got forged into a representation of horrific oppression to the point of genocide. And wherever world history has been taught since then, people have come to absorb the swastika unilaterally with this message: It stands for hatred of Jews, as well as minority groups in general, such as Blacks, homosexuals, and Europe's Roma ("gypsy") peoples.</div><div><br /></div><div>When virtually any Westerner sees it today, they instantly know what it represents.<br /><br />But that's us Westerners. What about those folks inhabiting the rest of our planet? They don't reflexively see anything evil when they see a swastika. Should we - shucks, CAN we? - just throw away the other uses that societies, cultures, and religions have had for the swastika throughout our human existence? </div><div><br /></div><div>An increasingly vocal segment of religious freedom advocates say they want to reclaim this logo that means different things to them. They say the swastika should not be held hostage to Hitler and his legacy, however horrific it was. As long as people use it for non-hateful purposes, they should be free to do so.</div><div><br /></div><div>After all, the swastika itself is neither good nor bad. Right? It's just an artistic representation of a concept. Whether that concept is equilibrium, or stasis, or psychic energy, or prosperity, or evil racism. It's how a person uses it that is good or bad. <br /><br />And frankly, a lot of it has to do with one's intent, doesn't it? Why does a particular person use - and even cherish - the swastika? The swastika does not have a soul, but it can reflect the soul of its user. In that regard, it's like anything else. What is a person's heart-felt reason for using anything, whether it's a symbol, or an appliance, or a vote, or a skill? Is the person deploying the item trying to be kind, or respectful, or helpful in the most charitable sense of the term? Or are they trying to foment something bad and evil, like hatefulness?</div><div><br /></div><div>In a way, the swastika illustrates what widespread publicity and media attention can do to anything. Think about it: Hitler came to power during a pivotal time in world history - the establishment and proliferation of mass media, especially utilizing audio and video, not just static media like print and photos. World War Two was the first time a war had been brought to Western audiences (any audience, actually) with then-fledgling tools of sight and sound and moving pictures, in which the swastika was prominently displayed during scenes of outright hatred and violence. </div><div><br /></div><div>And ever since, the media and our Western cultures have continued to repeat and repeat those visceral images without realizing that by doing so, we all were unintentionally stripping the swastika itself of its global history, and creating for it a relatively new legacy as a symbol of evil.</div><div><br /></div><div>After all, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/religion-germany-race-and-ethnicity-europe-2c28b5892381cd4148dfde5bc4fbb004" target="_blank">the religions and worldviews that historically have utilized the swastika</a> were way off the Western world's radar, and by extension, the radar of our media and educational elites. It's not because, as antisemites claim, Jews control our society. It's because our Western world has established itself as the universal prototype among virtually all aspects of conventional living. Woke activists decry the influence Western "civilization" has had across our planet, but this influence has been a <i>fait accompli</i>. It has happened. It is our reality. It doesn't mean everything Western civilization has accomplished is right and perfect and good. But resenting it, complaining about it, denying its existence, and mocking its influence can be just as negative as the negatives one would want to change about it.<br /><br />Societies will continue to evolve, just as Western civilization itself has evolved. But such evolutionary dynamics take time. And sometimes the changes that come along aren't for the better after all.</div><div><br /></div><div>Aesthetically, the swastika is a stark form. It's relatively organic, it's not ethnic, nor is it complicated to make. It's remarkable to consider that ancient societies of various proficiencies across the planet used it simultaneously, but with no apparent formal interconnectedness or replication. It's not particularly beautiful, although some cultures have adorned it with flourishes and other iconography.</div><div><br /></div><div>That basic starkness unfortunately lends itself to Hitler's purposes of intimidation. For example, unlike many more innocuous symbols, the swastika can have a particular, visceral impact on the psyche of people who behold it. Especially if they're Jewish.<br /><br />Hitler was many awful things, but he was also a keen exploiter of manipulation, and his propaganda ministry did a masterful job of co-opting the swastika as an icon and logo. That part is indisputable. Even when I watch re-runs of my favorite sitcom, <i>Hogan's Heroes</i>, and the swastika is spoofed - such as when Colonel Hogan bends a large antenna into a crude swastika - the imagery is chilling to me.<br /><br />By the way, the top four German characters in <i>Hogan's Heroes</i> - Colonel Klink, Sergeant Schultz, General Burkhalter, and Major Hochstetter - were all played by actors who were Jews in real life.<br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD1QWdfRYc6eQzTfg8xuLeIrpnGrU0Tdv4DH04amM8iPQn9v7OJStxgPgXQj3f9zhQwocOgYGdhj6-HJ5-jYWoBRbCvGcLRDb8EvqyJVYqUfoRvZUKlcqv5ce-9q5kvMInqa_rk_uW9jf6-TWYyJzX3P_PhY0luGRa7S1TEsTuuugbI71-OE7Kc1h9/s537/couple-swastika-diwali.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="https://apnews.com/article/religion-germany-race-and-ethnicity-europe-2c28b5892381cd4148dfde5bc4fbb004" border="0" data-original-height="515" data-original-width="537" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD1QWdfRYc6eQzTfg8xuLeIrpnGrU0Tdv4DH04amM8iPQn9v7OJStxgPgXQj3f9zhQwocOgYGdhj6-HJ5-jYWoBRbCvGcLRDb8EvqyJVYqUfoRvZUKlcqv5ce-9q5kvMInqa_rk_uW9jf6-TWYyJzX3P_PhY0luGRa7S1TEsTuuugbI71-OE7Kc1h9/w320-h307/couple-swastika-diwali.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>New Yorkers celebrating Diwali <br />wanted to have this ornament on their condo's door</i>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />None of this, of course, addresses whether people who are not Nazis or antisemites or white supremacists should try and reclaim their interpretation of the swastika.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is there any dispensation of politically-correct leniency here? </div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://apnews.com/article/religion-germany-race-and-ethnicity-europe-2c28b5892381cd4148dfde5bc4fbb004" target="_blank">Recently</a> in Queens, New York, a Hindu doctor and her husband put an ornamental decoration celebrating Diwali on their condo door. And their condo association flew into a panic, because the decoration innocently included a swastika. </div><div><br /></div><div>The couple was offended when they were told to remove it. They expressed frustration that their personal religious freedoms were being curtailed, apparently because Diwali isn't a prominent holiday in New York City. At least, not prominent enough for a building full of diverse neighbors to instantly associate a swastika with Hinduism and their festival of lights. Instead of bigotry.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, normally, I'm a huge proponent of religious freedom. And not just freedom for my Christianity. Sociopolitically, I tolerate the existence of religions other than my own because generally speaking, faith is an integral part of most peoples' worldview and identity. And restricting one person's legitimate religious freedom is theoretically a restriction for all religious freedom. So while I don't know a lot about Hinduism, if the swastika is an integral part of its adherents' worldview and identity, I'd ordinarily default to a position of respecting their right to display their faith's symbols, even if they include the swastika.</div><div><br /></div><div>However... And it's a big "however":<br /><br />Some ways of displaying faith symbols can be more appropriate than others. And when it comes to the swastika, things obviously get complicated today. Altruism is one thing, but cold, hard reality can be another. That's not the fault of religions and traditions which revere the swastika symbol, but it's a reality they have to accept, and a problem with which they have to negotiate. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately for the swastika, and for people groups cherishing it, that particular symbol, in the broader context of global saliency, has been nearly irretrievably corrupted. Not just by Hitler and his Nazis, but by some bigots today who perpetuate it and exploit its ability to resonate among newer generations. And these newer generations aren't just in North America, but in South America, and in Europe, which includes Slavic countries. And Israel, which is located in the Middle East. </div><div><br /></div><div>Geographically speaking, this covers a lot of ground, both literally and figuratively.</div><div><br /></div><div>Don't get me wrong: Displaying the swastika should not be illegal. But people who are respectful of others and want to live amicably within a pluralistic society should want to do what we can to avoid unnecessary conflict, and that includes taking the initiative of NOT displaying symbols that we know will be interpreted negatively by our neighbors.</div><div><br /></div><div>The educational curve to contextualize a swastika in any other purpose than hatred's is simply still too great. Again, not because the swastika itself is evil. But because some people who use it are.</div><div><br />I'm pretty sure that's not the answer people like the couple in Queens want to hear. And perhaps if they lived in Asia, where Jewish history and culture is the least represented demographically, and where the swastika's provenance as a valid religious icon commands far broader public recognition, restricting its usage would be a tougher argument to make. </div><div><br /></div><div>And yeah, for all its multiculturalism, New York City - of all places - is not the ideal test market for redeeming the swastika. Right now, considering all the antisemitism rearing its ugly head across the West, no place within easy reach of the Internet is probably suitable. <br /><br /><div>It's a profoundly bizarre feat bigotry's acolytes have pulled off: the nearly-complete corruption of an ancient design.</div></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Is that fair? No, it isn't. But then again, hate rarely creates equity.</div><div><br /></div><div>_____<br /></div></div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-25372911261254380952022-10-24T10:15:00.006-05:002022-10-25T07:25:27.365-05:00Bad Journalism Exploits and Shifts<p> <br />Examples of trickster journalism continue to rampage across our media landscape. Unfortunately, it's easy to find reasons for why we need to beware of and refute such sensationalistic gossip masquerading as reporting.</p><p>Consider, for example, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/oct/24/ups-worker-suicide-employees-disclose-tragic-conditions?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1" target="_blank">an urgent portrayal of a (former) UPS worker's suicide</a> as being indicative of corporate malfeasance at a dangerous parcel-sorting facility. However, all this Kentucky tragedy literally represents is another type of he-said/she-said claim. It's based only on hearsay from former co-workers with axes to grind. </p><p>Any good journalist should understand that one suicide by a pregnant woman who'd just been fired does not a story of workplace peril make. There may indeed exist any number of workplace safety violations at this facility, but no investigation has yet been made. Shucks, any reporter could go to virtually any large workplace in America and find enough disgruntled employees to craft a narrative of grievances against their employer. That's not journalism, because it's not proof of anything, except the existence of aggrieved workers. It's just exploiting somebody's personal tragedy under the guise of pseudo-news.<br /><br />It generates lots of clicks and views, however, and THAT'S what counts in today's media.</p><p>Then, here near downtown Dallas, there was a guy who killed two hospital workers - a nurse, and a social worker - at Methodist Hospital last week. The ("alleged") killer was on parole and was granted permission to visit the mother of his child as she gave birth that day. He ended up accusing her of infidelity, hit her over her head multiple times in her room, and threatened to kill her and himself before the day was out. Then he murdered the next two people to enter her room, the nurse and the social worker, who were caught completely unaware. </p><p>Now <a href="https://www.fox4news.com/news/healthcare-workers-raise-concerns-about-safety-after-shooting-kills-2-nurses-at-dallas-hospital" target="_blank">some hospital staff are complaining to the media</a> about their perceptions of bad security and how poorly Methodist officials run the hospital. But again, that is not good reporting. It's merely using hollow allegations to exploit another tragedy. Emotions run high after a co-worker is killed, and it's disingenuous to simply record what people say while they're in shock and unable to reasonably process what just happened. </p><p>Granted, in Dallas' hospital tragedy, the shooter's long rap sheet should have prevented him from having access to any public place. Shucks, the mother of his child should have known better and refused to sleep with him in the first place. And sure, maybe Methodist officials run a loose ship, allegedly similar to UPS in Kentucky. But simply chronicling grievances and stitching them into a fabrication of grander misbehavior by management is not responsible journalism. </p><p>Even if lots of people want to think it is.</p><p>Another problem here, of course, is that both the media and individual citizens want to hold organizations responsible for the bad decisions and behaviors people make. But that's not always how life works, is it? We are all individual, uniquely responsible people who, ultimately, must take accountability for the decisions we make, and the behavior we commit. <br /><br />That is a wildly unpopular notion, and it won't generate nearly the same volume of clicks and eyeballs. It's not salacious, there are a lot fewer victims, and facts require a lot more work to uncover (on the clock - which could get expensive!). Besides, facts generally aren't as capable of stoking emotional responses as innuendo and hyperbole.</p><p>True, other factors may come into play as we devise our decisions and make actions that impact ourselves and others. And it does seem that the larger an organization, the weaker that organization's sense of obligation regarding workplace safety and similar issues. Yet increasingly, our society wants to minimize personal responsibility so we can BLAME other people - especially big, faceless organizations like corporations, governments, political parties, bureaucrats, even social media companies and journalism companies - for the behavior of individuals. Even the behavior we end up committing ourselves.</p><p>Doing so helps us feel so much better about ourselves, doesn't it?</p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-48478307509637083362022-09-01T18:53:00.002-05:002022-09-02T07:58:30.822-05:00What Makes Racist Imagery Racist <div>On one side of my local FOX news website, I see this headline: "Texas State Board of Education votes to delay social studies curriculum update after complaints (over things like Critical Race Theory)". <br /><br />Then I see this headline: "<a href="https://www.fox4news.com/news/dallas-police-department-challenge-coin?fbclid=IwAR066mwTsLbFC_EeumLyLDemL8YjsU2coe0Cxil9979zphfuLZf5BWpIZg4" target="_blank">Dallas Police Department investigating 'racist' challenge coin rendering</a> (by a white officer)". <br /><br />This is so frustrating. As long as white (and I de-capitalize the adjective "white" here because this cop allegedly displayed such disgusting bigotry) police officers apparently feel comfortable joking about racism on their job - especially after the angst and anti-cop violence following the Floyd fiasco - we're going to have other people fearfully arguing over racism and how it's taught in public classrooms.<br /><br />Hey White people: It's up to US to prove that we're not going to tolerate racism! Good grief, this is ridiculous. I'm no sanctimonious non-bigot, and I struggle against denigrating people who aren't like me. Most of us do, don't we, no matter our race? But those of us who are mature about this actually try to work for peace and understanding. We don't find humor or respect in belligerently mocking other people. </div><div><br /></div><div>It could be argued that, taken individually, none of these emblems on the proposed "challenge coin" are inherently, unilaterally racist (click on the link above if you want to see the artwork in question; I don't want to post the image on my blog). For example, there are a lot of blinged-out cars in south Dallas, especially with enormous wheels. I don't think Black people are the only ones who drive them. Teeth grilles? Guns? Money? A drug house? The name of a shopping center that doesn't have some sort of nostalgic reference to rocks, a meadow, or a body of water in it? These aren't necessarily Black-specific, or perceived as denigrating Blacks. <br /><br />The Pillsbury Doughboy has been co-opted by the "gangsta" culture as a slang term for a fat man, or a drug dealer, because dough is a slang term for money, and cocaine is white. "Doughboy" is also the name of a prominent rapper. Unfortunately, the Pillsbury brand itself is merely collateral damage.</div><div><br /></div><div>So why am I labeling this cop's "coin" as racist? Because taken in the aggregate, these icons all have something in common: Negative stereotypes often associated with not just south Dallas in general, but Black people specifically. If we still need instruction on how to identify racism, then I guess this is a good object lesson. If you're not upholding virtue and morality when referencing somebody, particularly somebody who is noticeably different from you, and especially particularly if you're a person in authority (like a cop, for goodness sake), and you are doing it to denigrate a group of people at their expense, that is at the very least bias. If you're doing it to a group of people who are of a different race than you, it's racist. </div><div><br /></div><div>And it's wrong.</div><div><br /></div><div>And BTW, I'm preaching to myself here, too. 😉</div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-35629362905548335642022-07-13T09:25:00.006-05:002022-07-13T09:41:24.791-05:00Uvalde Tragedy Spreads in Media Scoop Hubris<p><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #7f6000; font-size: 14px;">_________________________<br /></span> </p>The <i>Austin American-Statesman</i> newspaper represents an unrepentant swagger I've so frequently derided among our American media.<div><br /></div><div>Posting the video from Uvalde's school tragedy so soon, before victims' families could see its footage privately if they wished, was utterly unnecessary. Yet it's typical of the smug, elitist diminution of propriety that mainstream media outlets increasingly foist across our technology-infused information landscape.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://www.statesman.com/story/opinion/columns/2022/07/12/uvalde-shooting-video-austin-american-statesman-editor-investigation-publish/65371937007/?fbclid=IwAR0YmY4kx7zLSLbbwHfJGxJoeBpKOzbV6UTBd6pNwOoOoFRSF1GCdXcted8" target="_blank">Their editors posted a pompous rationale</a> for publishing that video, yet they ignore the grief so many Texans are experiencing by their actions. It's not the fact that they posted the video, it's their timing. But no, they had to "break the story" first. They didn't care who got hurt in the process. They scored a scoop, and in their minds, that's what counts.</div><div><br /></div><div>There weren't even any crucial new facts revealed in the video - nothing the public at large needs to know to protect ourselves. It's mostly salacious voyeurism at this point, so who among us needs to see it so soon? The fact that their editors, as proven by their hollow rhetoric in defending their decision, don't see their own faults helps explain why the American public continues to rate journalism as one of the least-trustworthy professions in the country.</div><div><br /></div><div>As for myself, I've seen clips from the video as they've been replayed on televised news accounts, but I have zero interest in looking at any more of it. Uvalde's school massacre was a tragedy when it happened, and things have continued to devolve from there. Such misery all the way around.</div><div><br /></div><div>May God have mercy on the families of Uvalde's victims - the <i>Austin American-Statesman</i> sure didn't.</div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-20836956712455202812022-06-28T08:28:00.031-05:002022-06-29T10:05:15.930-05:00Grading the Media: T for Tropes or F for Facts? <div>I've seen several reports recently where the mainstream media/journalism industry has been grading itself.<br /><br />Generally, within these reports, the negative perspective many news consumers (you and me) have of the media/journalism industry is dutifully recognized. However - and not surprisingly - journalists give themselves higher marks than they give the public they're ostensibly serving. They can't bear to fault themselves for these negative perspectives many of us news consumers hold of them.<br /><br />Although multiple studies have found that few Americans "trust" the news media anymore, reporters insist with straight faces that they present important facts. So why won't news consumers trust journalists? Especially mainstream ones?</div><div><br /></div><div>Some of the problem originates with journalism schools, which for decades now have quietly operated under the noble duty of grooming legions of reporters, broadcasters - and now digital correspondents - to advocate for the underdog, the marginalized, and the oppressed. Does that surprise you? Well, you're not the only one! I've even seen a couple of studies recently in which journalists have been apparently stunned to learn that many Americans expect our news media to report the news regardless of how it affects minorities, poor people, or any other special interest group.<br /><br />In other words, journalists don't see themselves as having the same job description the general public has for them. Which is a good recipe for miscommunication, right? </div><div><br /></div><div>Now, maybe having a group of people trying to teach the public to be empathetic isn't a bad thing. Reminding all of us that genuine differences exist between ourselves, and we need to be respectful and kind and helpful to others: Who can argue against that? Yet it mostly helps to explain why there's a growing disconnect between media and consumers. If they want a morality lesson, most consumers will turn to their religious leaders (or worse, their favored politicians). We turn to journalists for a listing of the day's events.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, when it comes to what we define as news, things get even more complicated.</div><div><br /></div><div>Generally, "news" can be defined as something that is extraordinary. Ordinary, everyday events may impact our lives, but in the news industry, ordinary events don't sell advertising space. And the extraordinary is usually extreme, right? However, with our media presenting so many extremes, have we all internalized those extremes as being more common than they really are? Has it warped our perception of literal reality? It goes back to something I noticed recently about <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2022/06/when-rarity-is-nft-not-fiduciarily.html" target="_blank">the emerging awareness of how rare non-fungible tokens</a> can actually imperil their own value. The constant pursuit of the marginal, the fringe, the rare, or the uncommon actually makes the marginal - in the aggregate - more common in terms of dulling an audience's perception of it. Has the media - both from the left and right of the political spectrum - done the same thing with "news"?<br /><br />Then there's the problem of bias. It's extremely difficult to find any news outlet that isn't biased. Some left-wing and right-wing outlets don't even bother to hide their biases, and often, they let those biases over-rule literal facts. And again, there's this issue of complexity. Very little in life is as simple as we'd like it to be. Unfortunately, within this vacuum of grays, facts can get twisted into "spin", to support the overall perspective of the person or organization marketing the facts to their consumers. Forget the altruistic idealization of facts being neither right nor wrong; any good reporter knows that data is malleable relative to the overall product being sold. The more aggressive journalists are in marketing their overall product, the greater the risks of facts fading from black and white into gray. Hey, right-wingers have their tropes, and so do left-wingers, and tropes have to be fed. <br /><br />And frankly, in this day and age, that's how many news consumers apparently want it.<br /><br />Americans have come to love idolizing politics. Religion used to be "the opiate of the masses", but today, politics are the opiate. Political rhetoric gives a quick high. Politics provide an easy way to try and make sense of an increasingly complex, confusing, and frightening world. There have been far more perilous times in world history, but today, the Internet and social media have combined to bombard all of us with sensationalistic information from every corner of the planet. And a lot of that information is inaccurate, or outright false. Trouble is, many people can't be bothered to parse out fact from fiction. Many people are comfortable accepting information that solidifies their perceptions of reality. Very few of us enjoy having our sensibilities and values challenged. We don't seek information that destabilizes what we've already decided is right or wrong.<br /><br />It's almost ethnocentric for any of us, no matter our political posture, to view our world today as being more dangerous or dreadful than it's ever been before. So what about the Plague, or the Inquisition, or the Dark Ages, or the Holocaust, for example. Sure, bad things are happening all around us - and depending who we are, even to us - but hasn't the human experience on this planet always been that way? Instead, Internet technology gives us the impression that crises imperil us like never before, and we are on the precipice of oblivion. Maybe we are, and maybe we aren't, but simply having to struggle with so much readily-available, demoralizing information isn't the best way to know for sure. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, Internet technology can broadcast anything of any legitimacy instantly. It can give voice to any opinion (even mine, here), which means it's easier than ever for any crackpot with sufficient charisma to capture attention and build a following. Truth isn't necessary these days. Only the ability to convince. And people who are scared, angry, lustful, prideful, hateful, and jealous tend to be suckers for biases and tropes. Whether we want to admit it or not, we all grapple with self-preservation, which includes our ardent advocacy of what we believe, embrace, value, and desire. Even journalists - people who've intentionally gone into the information business because they get to impact a broader audience - do this.<br /><br />Nobody goes to journalism school with plans for a career creating ledgers of statistics. No, journalism schools teach students how to capture attentions, spin details, and convince, and manipulate emotions. Hey - I took two college journalism classes. And my take-away was that how information is PACKAGED can be more important than the information itself. Trouble is - partisans on both sides of the political aisle seem OK with this strategy. Few Americans actually are willing to break out of their preferred partisan cocoons and consider broader narratives that complicate what their chosen heroes are saying. And reporters fall into the same trap.<br /><br />Blaming consumers for not trusting the broader journalism industry is mostly a smokescreen for avoiding this reality. If I could grade the media I once studied in college, I'd give it an "F" - but not for providing facts in an unbiased light.</div>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-33206924019912194342022-06-15T08:18:00.009-05:002022-06-15T16:01:42.597-05:00When Rarity Is NFT: Not Fiduciarily Trustworthy<p><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">_________________________</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px;">
</span><span style="font-family: arial;">Non-fungible tokens. Sounds like a disease riders could get from dirty subway tokens in NYC - back when those coin-like payment discs were used. But today's hipsters wouldn't know about subway tokens. They know all about NFT's, though. And rarity is what non-fungible tokens are all about. Except... </span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.studyfinds.org/rare-nfts-lose-value/?fbclid=IwAR1vMVmOXiZI_1TPftmjme_Bg2cl-IGFn823BUhLJ8PndJOZK3RoLbbZNrc" style="background-color: white; white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_blank">a recent study suggests</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that rarity can actually reduce value. "Demand for rarity is self-defeating... the big question now is whether we can observe this effect in other categories, too.” - </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #050505; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jordan Suchow</i></span></p><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto"><span style="font-family: arial;">Which, actually, shouldn’t be too surprising, right? Consider this principle when generally applied, for example, to most of the news stories our media creates. Much of what we commonly consider “news” is what we consider to be rare. Things that don’t happen every day, people who aren’t like other people, etc. What captures the imagination for a moment - that's what purveyors of news (from the mainstream media to extremist news outlets) are selling their consumers. Unfortunately, this push for the extreme may be building within the minds of consumers an ever-rising threshold of what is considered worthwhile. In the media’s case, this means they have a constantly evolving quest to find what their audience will consider to be rare or extraordinary. Which maybe helps explain one reason we have the unhappy, angry society we have today?
Pushing the boundaries of the unusual ("rare") is bound to distort what we consider "normal", don't you think?</span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3605" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGWxRAID-oual4Utv2NHxAOGSRnLQBiiaqKDMmvyKliPiBsJm5-_FwFXHwmkjbIuCI18sFREYLjqUA2AMMqFL-gQ2s-Fga7AG_mQXMskCsN2WZMGLEpQcs92rmww9v59vuSyQIhvvJapmEbk021SwMqtdzeAEFoB8IeHx5Q0PCY4FcCu0mJxJolsEX/s320/subway-tokens.jpg" width="266" /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">And yes... I thought I had a couple - and I do! Original, genuine NYC MTA subway/bus tokens from around 1993. Well, two are from '93; the one with the ribbon through its diamond-shaped hole was a commemorative token from 1979 in honor of the subway's 75th anniversary.</span>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-78478596116198531942022-06-14T10:14:00.004-05:002022-06-15T08:29:23.113-05:00Zero Merit to White Supremacy<p><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">_________________________</span></p><p><brok -="" a="" also="" america.="" america="" and="" anti-semites="" any="" are="" aren="" bestest="" better.="" btw="" but="" can="" caucasian.="" christ="" clear:="" create="" data-lexical-node-type="text" different="" don="" ever.="" expect="" first="" for="" had="" have="" he="" idea="" ignorant="" in="" intrinsically="" is="" jesus="" jewish="" just="" legitimacy="" merit.="" moral="" most="" north="" not="" nothing="" of="" oh="" on="" only="" opinions="" or="" out="" people="" pure="" quot="" race="" re="" reclaim="" s="" smartest="" so="" some="" special.="" supremacy="" t="" text="" that="" the="" there.="" there="" to="" today="" topics="" type="" utterly="" variety="" ve="" version="" we="" weren="" white="" whites="" with="" without=""><br />OK, just so we're clear: White supremacy is ignorant and utterly without merit. Whites weren't the first people in North America. Whites aren't the only race of people to create the America we've had, and that we have today, so there's nothing for Whites to "<a href="https://www.fox4news.com/news/7-patriot-front-members-from-texas-among-those-planning-to-riot-in-idaho-police-say?fbclid=IwAR0Zt3aFoxlsEe2lVErKIKjeZCtlJ7RjcEbE795VbEcE6fQ3cS27AM4MKHM" target="_blank">reclaim</a>". Whites aren't the smartest, most moral, most bestest people ever. We aren't pure or special. Oh - and Jesus Christ is not Caucasian. He's also Jewish, BTW, for the anti-semites out there. </brok></p><p><span data-lexical-editor-key="ekiiu" data-lexical-node-json="{"detail":0,"format":0,"mode":"normal","style":"","text":"OK, just so we're clear: White supremacy is ignorant and utterly without merit. Whites weren't the first people in North America. Whites aren't the only race of people to create the America we've had, and that we have today, so there's nothing for Whites to \"reclaim\". Whites aren't the smartest, most moral, most bestest people ever. We aren't pure or special. Oh - and Jesus Christ is not Caucasian. He's also Jewish, BTW, for the anti-semites out there. We can have different opinions on a variety of topics, but don't expect any legitimacy with the idea that some people are intrinsically better.","type":"text","version":1}" data-lexical-node-type="text">We can have different opinions on a variety of topics, but don't expect any legitimacy with the idea that some people are intrinsically better.</span></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-12150716922462849932022-03-19T10:41:00.007-05:002022-06-15T08:29:42.812-05:00Empire-Building More Than a Whitey Thing<p><i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><span style="color: #7f6000;">_________________________</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
Right now, we're hearing a lot of talk about "empire-building". But here's the thing about "empire-building": It's not just White Europeans who did it (and are doing it today in Ukraine).</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2021/10/chris-columbus-and-messy-history.html" target="_blank">Aztec and especially Inca peoples</a> here in the Western Hemisphere were brutal empire-builders before Europeans ever arrived. Some Native American tribes in what are now the United States and Canada did it. The African continent continues to be roiled by indigenous tribal empire-building, which the mainstream media flatly ignores. China and Japan were voracious empire-builders across Asia, and Hong Kong remains an infamous victim of it. Religions have engaged in empire-building as well, such as Christianity and Islam.</span></p><p><span face="Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some empires were smaller than others, some lasted longer than others, but it's all what makes our human history, both globally, and in our communities and neighborhoods no matter where we live. It's complicated, hardly pretty, and rarely humane.
Not to excuse what's currently happening in Ukraine, of course. In fact, quite the opposite: Putin and Russia should know from history that respecting the rule of law enacted by a relatively democratic society is a reciprocal duty of sovereign nations. Barbarism no longer is acceptable.
By the way, this applies not just in the former Soviet Union, but also here among American political extremists.</span></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-42057097085758720222022-01-27T15:49:00.025-06:002022-01-29T09:25:40.578-06:00Covid Deniers, Science, and Doubt Benefits<p> </p><p>Might Americans be increasingly turning their backs on science?</p><p>As anti-vaxx propaganda refuses to fade away, and as vaccine hesitancy continues to plague our country's Covid fight, some media and political wonks have begun to wonder out loud if our country's longtime allegiance to science is on the wane.</p><p>After all, how else can we explain the refusal by upwards of 40% of our population to willingly take a shot that could bring this pandemic to heel? <br /><br />Here in America, a considerable portion of our industrial and political might has been built on science. The airplane. Telecommunications. The Internet. Medicine, including Big Pharma. Most of the construction methodologies of the past two centuries. Space travel. These are all areas of modern life that American science has mastered, if not literally invented.</p><p>But now, after the Covid has permeated this modern universe with shock waves that sound more like stone age echos, the fact that many otherwise sophisticated folks continue to decry Covid vaccines seems to suggest that suddenly, science is suspect.</p><p>One of the loudest anti-vaxxers is a liberal Democrat from an American political dynasty. Even some noted scientists have been joining the anti-vaxx cacophany. It's been a bizarre revolt against what even right-winger Donald Trump sees as a big win for American innovation: A vaccine in human arms in less than a year after the pandemic began!</p><p>Trump has his many detractors, but nobody should deny him that achievement on his watch. Yet some of his most ardent fans literally "boo" him when he talks about getting the vaccine himself.</p><p>Bizarre, right?</p><p>To be clear: I personally do not believe Covid vaccines are inherently dangerous. They are not killing anybody. I've had my three shots and I'm just fine. I'm just fine. I'm fine just. Fine just I'm.</p><p>OK, yes, I really am just fine!</p><p>However, I know a number of otherwise thoughtful, logical people who agree that the Covid is dangerous, and even lethal, but they still refuse to get vaccinated.</p><p>These aren't people who believe the vaccines make recipients magnetic, or anything genuinely stupid like that. They mostly seem incredulous that a vaccine developed so rapidly could genuinely be safe. Some of them willingly take other vaccines, but those vaccines have been around for a while, and weren't deployed within a year of their inception. It's all just too implausible for them. The vaccines, and even Covid itself. They seem to be struggling with the whole package, and still shell-shocked with all the havoc that's rocketed across the entire globe in such a relatively short period of time.</p><p>Many more of us struggle with change than will willingly admit it.<br /><br />So is science really being distrusted, or something else?</p><p>Skepticism is nothing new in America. And it's always been somewhat admirable to buck the system. For better or worse, individualism - even stark selfishness - is part of the American ethos. Even the "united" part of our country's official name has been a struggle to maintain. So when our government pays for a vaccine to be developed in a remarkably short period of time, aren't we asking for blow-back from the populace?</p><p>Our government doesn't exactly have a stellar track record with anybody when it comes to absolute honesty and fairness. So maybe it's the government, and not science, that Covid deniers most suspect.</p><p>And these days, a lot of angst and contention likely can be attributed to a general Western weariness of information overload, and social media fatigue. Never before in human existence has so much unvetted news material been so widely available to so many people. Communication technology is proving to be not just a tool for good, but a weapon for destruction, as it can seem to lend an air of legitimacy to not just provable facts, but any sort of drivel or contentiousness from any hack with a computer or smartphone.</p><p>When people get scared, they tend to default towards what they've previously been conditioned to believe, whether it's true or not. And although many Covid deniers claim not to be scared, the shrill tone of their defiance betrays a greater likelihood that they really are.</p><p>Skepticism isn't necessarily wrong, but unfortunately, a lot of people are skeptical of the wrong things. And sometimes even neutral facts can be manipulated by people with axes to grind and political points to score. And I'm not just talking about how governments around the world have reacted to the Covid. I'm simply pointing out that just because a person doesn't want a Covid vaccine, they should not automatically be accused of being anti-science. </p><p>After all, consider some of the other stuff with which science has been recently been tinkering, and which many in the media and political spheres have twisted to suit their preferences:<br /><br /><b>Transgenderism: </b> <i>After millennia of our planet having two genders - and only two genders - and understanding that we are either one or the other, suddenly, we're being told it's OK to simply switch between them? "Not so fast", many of us respond. People who misconstrue scientific data on this subject to justify "trans rights" are actually abusing science to machinate a new reality. Meanwhile, as hard as it was for traditionalists back in Gloria Steinem's day, she and her fellow feminists did get it right: Gender isn't based on emotions. It's not that people who are struggling with their sexual identity today should be marginalized, but sexual identity simply isn't as complex as some folks seem intent on making it. </i> </p><p><b>Global Warming:</b> <i>Remember when we were told our ozone layer had a hole in it, and that chlorofluorocarbons were the culprit? So industries around the world set out to change their chemical formulas and products to eliminate much of the artificially-produced chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere, and voila! The ozone layer's hole fixed itself. But now, we're being told there is global warming, and it's being caused by pollutants created by humankind's activities. It wasn't just the chlorofluorocarbons after all. And OK, maybe it wasn't. But nobody can prove our planet is on an inexorable warming trajectory. After all, we've only been accurately recording temperatures for a century or so. What kinds of fluctuations in our planet's temperatures are normal, and what kinds aren't? And how do we know for sure? And what about that Ice Age we learned about in elementary school? Apparently our planet warmed considerably after that, before humankind started driving cars and running air conditioners. So why should we now panic about global warming when we don't really know how much of it - if any of it - is really happening? How long have the polar ice caps been melting - and refreezing, and melting, and refreezing, in cycles? And while global warming may impact species diversity, who says the number of species alive today is worse than it was before all the species died off over the preceding millennia, but whose extinction didn't spell disaster for humankind (because after all, we're still here)? I don't know of anybody who opposes having a cleaner environment. So let's work on that, and stop squawking like Chicken Little.</i></p><p><b>Electric Vehicles: </b> <i>It's one thing to refute global warming simply because one fears the demise of Big Oil. But if you listen carefully, you'll notice that Big Oil isn't too upset about the push for electric vehicles. And why might that be? Perhaps one big reason is that electric vehicles - EVs as they're called - will still need Big Oil! That's because we barely generate enough electricity for global demand as it is. Imagine if millions of car batteries will need to be charged every night all over the country! Solar and wind might power some of that re-charging, but petroleum products will be the primary fuel upon which electricity providers will be relying. Which makes the whole EV craze a fallacy, right? Making matters more duplicitous, the engines in EVs cost a lot more than internal combustion engines, so no wonder auto makers are pushing for them. But aside from being hip conversation pieces, EVs could do more harm than help to our planet in the long run. And we haven't even started talking about the human rights abuses already being made in the dangerous mining of rare earth metals necessary for EV batteries.</i></p><p>Instead of science, today's zeitgeists of transgenderism, global warming, and electric vehicles rely more on trendy posturing and political fervor than legitimately-parsed data for their prominent places on the public stage. So when Covid came along, an already skeptical public - who aren't even necessarily Republicans, or White, or suburban - may simply have lacked the emotional bandwidth to take on more burdens, conflicts, and change.</p><p>Not to say that denying Covid science is good, or logical. However, we can't broadly accuse the people who participate in it as being ignorant - which is the implication, isn't it? Of all that it could be, vaccine denial might be nothing more than folks saying science has already let itself be over-politicized too much on other topics, so why should the Covid be any different?</p><p>Scientists could use this time in history as a wake-up call for how they allow the data they collect to be used and explained. "Clinical proof" needs to be evaluated apart from politics, since many science-related topics have become fodder for partisan bickering. In a way, it's unfortunate that the Covid hit at a unique time in history when many people had yet to learn how easy it is to spread hysterics over social media, and how hard it is to figure out what is true and what isn't online. Particularly in America, folks have already been more distrustful and less considerate of each other as politics have become defining totems of our personal identities. So it wasn't so much that people want to disbelieve science, as much as some folks have become too used to letting their emotions dictate their actions. And a pandemic can be an emotional experience.</p><p>So if we're parsing blame, let's be fair.</p><p>Both America's media industry and political industry (and yes, American politics is a bare-knuckle for-profit industry, not an altruistic panoply of ideologies) are based on stratification. Identifying and cultivating their preferred customer base through scare tactics and over-generalizations have become their <i>modus operandi</i>. And each relies on the other for marketing purposes. So in a way, it's not surprising how ordinary Americans have responded to the Covid, since their sources of information have been hijacked by their political totems.</p><p>But aren't there better ways to process this experience?</p><p>For example, let's appreciate the importance of respecting others, especially those with whom we have disagreements. It's hardly fun, yet we should be willing to evaluate facts we might find uncomfortable. We can't let our personal opinions become facts in and of themselves. And while voting is important, democracy and majority-rule doesn't decide what is an opinion, and what is fact.</p><p>And whether it's the media, politicians, or us ordinary civilians: Let's not be so greedy with benefits of the doubt - give some to others, especially when they're looking to achieve something for an overall good. Be patient, and don't forget that other people often have to be patient with us.</p><p>In other words, do unto others as we'd have them do unto us. </p><p>Now, where have I heard that before...?</p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-6909084297197351562021-11-11T07:45:00.005-06:002021-11-11T07:50:47.093-06:00Controlling Surges of Selfishness<p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></span> <br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p><span style="color: #7f6000;">_________________________</span></p><p> </p><p>One of the hardest parts of life to learn is that we can't have it all. Life isn't built to accommodate everything that each and every one of us wants for ourselves, because many of these things actually conflict with each other, and between each of us, in one or more ways. We're selfish, and selfishness is hard to manage.<br /><br />For example, in the wake of Houston's horrific crowd surge at last weekend's rap concert, I'm reading and hearing of survivors saying there was nobody "controlling" the audience. Victims have already filed several lawsuits against the rapper and concert producers, faulting them for not exercising "control" over the crowd. But what "control" did such folks want anyway? They seem to have enjoyed those massive mosh pits and flinging themselves into a musical frenzy, losing themselves to the moment. They only bemoan the lack of "control" because something conflicted with the fun they wanted to have.<br /><br />We simply can't have it both ways. Believe me, although I've never been to a rap concert, I speak from experience!</p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-62897162874213471662021-10-29T11:43:00.013-05:002021-11-11T07:37:07.654-06:00Supply Chains Rip Paper Ones this Xmas<p><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #073763;"><b><span style="font-family: verdana;">OLI Snippets</span></b></span></i></span> <br /><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(from my short posts on social media)</span></i></p><p><span style="color: #7f6000;">_________________________</span></p><p><span style="color: #7f6000;"> </span></p><p>Instead of paper chains of colored paper this holiday season, it's supply chains, right?<br /><br />As the build-up to this year's Christmas buying season intensifies, we hear more and more about supply-chain woes. Will consumers be able to buy what they want to buy for Christmas? Will all those ships at anchor in the Pacific Ocean be able to dock and get off-loaded? Who will drive all the trucks and deliver everything?<br /><br />Well, of all the topics on which I pontificate, international shipping happens to be one in which I have some experience from my days as a freight forwarder in NYC. And here are some unfortunate facts that Americans aren't being told by the mainstream media: </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCvdENx3N3BFixmTcga9kx5vRjh_MV0nOhh_VildEKqnwa_dNJej2tnifDhogCe3riIzcBJJYRHprE5tVbUDxH_ahvgnqqk9uB2vsEw1WMx9I9aAWJ8N9uhUu6Ubpn8Vrd5cZg9xG4yiU/s499/manhattan_3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="499" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCvdENx3N3BFixmTcga9kx5vRjh_MV0nOhh_VildEKqnwa_dNJej2tnifDhogCe3riIzcBJJYRHprE5tVbUDxH_ahvgnqqk9uB2vsEw1WMx9I9aAWJ8N9uhUu6Ubpn8Vrd5cZg9xG4yiU/w400-h268/manhattan_3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">One of the benefits of being employed in NYC's shipping industry<br />was that my employer had perks from the Port Authority.<br />When a client was visiting from Brazil, I took her on a ride in a<br />Port Authority helicopter, and we were granted<br />the rare opportunity of flying across Manhattan Island,<br />something no commercial aircraft is permitted to do,<br />at least at low altitude.<br />Here, we are directly over Park Avenue, looking south.<br /></span></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><br />1. Truckers are in short supply because techies have been pushing trucking companies to go driverless. Tesla, Amazon, and Google are among the companies trying to make computers run our delivery industry. So why should people consider truck driving as a long-term career if their employers are trying to get rid of them long-term?
<br /><br />2. Americans love cheap stuff. We don't understand that American workers are expensive, relative to more desperate workers in Majority World (formerly called "Third World") countries who work for pennies on the dollar with inferior benefits. China has also leveraged prison/slave labor which few human-rights-loving Americans are willing to decry. We haven't considered the long-term ramifications of off-shoring our industrial might. Now that many key components of everyday products are no longer made in the contiguous 48 states, we have to rely on other countries. For that, we can't blame anybody else but ourselves.
<br /><br />3. Environmentalists in America don't understand that the factories they've forced to close here have simply popped up in Majority World countries, creating fierce environmental problems for people we may never see or know. Meanwhile, we have stringent environmental laws here that could, in the aggregate, likely create less pollution if factories were allowed to open here. This has also contributed to the off-shoring conundrum.
<br /><br />4. Amazon and other just-in-time delivery companies have created an untenable appetite for immediacy and frivolous consumption in America. What delivery drivers we do have end up spending their time driving from house to house, instead of from port to railhead to warehouse to store. Remember "stores"? Those used to be a key component in our shipping system. In terms of energy and labor resources, what we've created for ourselves is a wasteful scenario.
<br /><br />Even in the early 1990s, ships from Asia were coming into the United States fully-loaded with goods from China and Vietnam, causing congestion all the time at West Coast ports. Those same ships were leaving the US mostly EMPTY. Back then, those of us left in America's once-mighty shipping industry knew what that was going to mean for our country. But no; consumers just wanted cheap stuff, no matter where it came from. </p><p>Blame Covid if you want, but this has been coming for some time.</p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-25953049930604702812021-10-20T10:28:00.012-05:002021-10-23T08:30:21.887-05:00Meritocracy Means Be a Better Person<p> <br />Whom would you hire? </p><p>It's not a trick question. At least, it didn't used to be. If you were looking for somebody to fill an open position, would you look for the applicant who has the most qualifications for that job? Or would you prefer someone who has average qualifications - but isn't a man, and isn't White?</p><p>These days, the hiring process has become fraught with complications regarding race and gender. To a certain extent, considering the degree to which White men used to constitute the working class, expanding today's opportunities to applicants of various other characteristics is right and good. Outside of specific religious-centric jobs (particularly in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), gender hardly matters for employment purposes. And race doesn't matter for any job.</p><p>What should matter are one's qualifications: The merits applicants possess. <br /></p><p>Yet the more high-paying and high-profile a job becomes, the answer to who gets hired holds increasingly more sociopolitical baggage. You see, as our society has come to grips with what "equality" means - and as different people have come to define equality differently - the concept of "merit" has become for some an unnecessary distinction. For them, merit represents a lingering racist or sexist impediment to economic access. </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0FxTKZMxDkZMWsY-kDowpbNoj5HnTX0tx8eUZqS95bq4PNHKVkZYN-14XLmgL9HWJZqYj7usdJmZVah4dyCnAimM-aRzmph6Kp7GMmRjWlng0IaC35sSTgfPbdPNIP-tql7TsduchKT0/s2232/Fred-dandy.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2232" data-original-width="864" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0FxTKZMxDkZMWsY-kDowpbNoj5HnTX0tx8eUZqS95bq4PNHKVkZYN-14XLmgL9HWJZqYj7usdJmZVah4dyCnAimM-aRzmph6Kp7GMmRjWlng0IaC35sSTgfPbdPNIP-tql7TsduchKT0/s320/Fred-dandy.jpg" width="124" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The dandy White male<br />can longer count his<br />race and gender<br />as meritorious.<br />That's a good thing,<br />right?</span></i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Some progressives suspect that conventional standards of merit are still used to deny rewards to those who've traditionally been denied them. In the past, for example, women and non-Whites have not received the degree of access generally afforded White men to educational tools* that build skill sets that qualify people for the best jobs. And since a primary way participants in a capitalist economic system secure rewards for themselves is through employment, metrics that are seen as impediments to better employment need to be discarded if they can be determined to be race-based. <br /><p></p><p>And frankly, most of us would agree with that, right? Race-based and gender-based saboteurs of employment access need to be eliminated to provide as much parity to our work-and-reward paradigm. This isn't just for the sake of fairness, and respect for others. Even if you're a selfish person, you should be able to recognize that the more people can participate profitably in capitalism, the better the economic prospects are for everybody. So that means an individual's ability to build their personal merits for employment needs to be as open as possible. Right?<br /></p><p>Unfortunately, <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22673605/upper-middle-class-meritocracy-matthew-stewart" target="_blank">some folks don't think so</a>. For them, the fact that White men still tend to populate the best jobs stands as stark testament that the system continues to be rigged against everyone else. Never mind that trends today show a broad erosion of White male dominance. Some academics, journalists, and politicians believe such erosions haven't been eroding fast enough. So they've begun questioning whether merit-based hiring, wages, raises, and other rewards really are beneficial to our society.</p><p>After all, if you remove "merit" from your hiring guidelines, you can open up jobs to a lot more people.</p><p>But aren't there valid reasons for keeping training, experience, and competency as important job considerations? <br /></p><p>"Meritocracy" is the term describing a society that generally rewards people according to their talents, abilities, and proficiencies. In other words, the people with the best skills for a job generally get that job - or, at least, are supposed to get that job. And the better the job, the better the salary, and all the things that salary can buy.</p><p>It's how capitalism operates, as well as everything that contributes to it - our educational system, our recreational pursuits, our governance and laws, how we pick romantic partners, how we raise our children, and how we defend ourselves. And yes, where we live - and how we live - depends largely on our merits. Do everything right, check off all the key boxes, acquire successive assets and resources, and you will succeed... at least in terms of how our society broadly defines success. Shucks, the career ladder doesn't climb itself.</p><p>Is it a perfect system? No, at least not in terms how we operate it. Some of us value the wrong things, or value the right things disproportionately. But is that meritocracy's fault, or the fault of people who abuse it? <br /></p><p>Elites among academia and journalism believe that merit is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/oct/19/the-myth-of-meritocracy-who-really-gets-what-they-deserve" target="_blank">over-rated</a>, and even "<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/a-belief-in-meritocracy-is-not-only-false-its-bad-for-you" target="_blank">bad</a>" for us. However, these extremist views are themselves dangerous, because they fail to acknowledge the fundamental flaws in throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Decrying meritocracy is yet another knee-jerk reaction to issues, trends, and data points that are currently in flux, but still seen to primarily give the best results to White men. <br /><br />Can you see the irony? Here they are, many of them White, many of them men, many of them already Ivy League educated, working in prestigious university and journalism jobs... jobs for which they had to compete based on - you guessed it, "merit" - saying that the system by which they've acquired a seat at the table doesn't work. </p><p>So are their own lives proof that their ivory tower theory really is out of touch with reality? Is merit really so bad and dangerous? And if it is, why are they perpetrating it with their own personal careers?<br /></p><p>Let me be clear: I can hardly declare that Western societies are purged of racism, sexism, and other negative "ism's" that create unfortunate and unfair power imbalances in our world. And to the extent that our employment markets themselves still need some work, then OK - maybe non-Whites and women still find themselves striving a bit harder to prove themselves these days.</p><p>But does that mean merit is wrong? After all, plenty of White men hold lowly, low-paying jobs without power and prestige. And merit stands as a far better metric for advancement than oligarchies, in which a society's wealth is held and guarded by a tenacious few, regardless of whether they're earning it. Merit means - at least theoretically - that anybody with the drive, ambition, and access to the proper resources can rise to the top. If our society is still in the process of distributing those proper resources, why stifle those with drive and ambition like just about any other system would?<br /></p><p>Then there's this. My brother is fond of asking the joke, "What do you call a person who graduates medical school dead last in their class?" The answer, regrettably, is "doctor", isn't it? </p><p>But given the choice, how many progressives would choose to be operated on by somebody with marginal medical skills, rather than somebody who is at or near the top of the meritorious medical ladder?</p><p>Some classical music pundits have been chattering recently about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/arts/music/blind-auditions-orchestras-race.html" target="_blank">watering-down requirements</a> for new musicians as they're auditioned for open seats in prestigious symphonies and orchestras. To make this primarily White industry more diverse, they think skin color should trump musical ability when it comes to... demonstrating musical ability. But who would pay money to hear average musicians of any skin color struggle with Bach or Shostakovich? And isn't showcasing the race of prospective symphony members rather demeaning? You mean some people don't have to be good enough musically to score a gig; they have to exploit their skin color instead?<br /></p><p>What about Black audiences of music that isn't classical? Wouldn't they howl in protest if an average White person was engaged to perform soul music or the blues? "She sings the blues pretty good for a White woman" isn't exactly high praise, is it? I would imagine most White blues singers don't want their skin color to "color" their reputation, so why should Black musicians be any different? Perpetuating different standards for different races risks perpetuating racism itself.<br /></p><p>So let's take race out of this, shall we? When boarding an airplane, how many of us would willingly let the airline staff the cockpit with trainees? Who do you want designing the bridges you cross and the skyscrapers you visit? Engineers who are well-qualified, right?<br /></p><p>Merit still means something. It doesn't mean racism, sexism, or oppression. It means somebody has not only barely met the requirements by the skin of their teeth, they have either met them with talent to spare, or they've decisively exceeded them. That is not a bad thing. In fact, that's how society progresses, because meritocracy clarifies problems to be solved, and encourages competencies to solve them. Becoming better than good at something creates a process that helps create wealth, whereas being only adequate barely sustains wealth. Not exactly a key to success - if success is what we're supposed to be spreading.<br /></p><p>So beware: The next time you hear somebody grousing about our meritocracy, consider whether they may actually be jealous of folks who have more money, a better education, or a nicer home. Are they paying lip service to the virtue of diversity while using it as a smokescreen for envy? Might they also be risking a disservice to everybody who isn't White, or a man? Nobody wants to say non-Whites and women are intrinsically inferior because they can't make up for lost time, but isn't that an implication? Equality is one thing, and a noble goal; however, the continuum of attaining equality's rewards operates apart from status for all of us, which makes it like a photo or a video of something that doesn't depict all surrounding context. Remember, plenty of White men aren't fully vested in our meritocracy even now.</p><p>Still, don't you want to be the one deciding how far you even want to go, no matter who you are? Without merit, however, practically anybody can qualify, and how fair is that when it comes to the effort required to gain skills? Eliminating a meritocracy doesn't mean jobs won't require skills. But it does mean there will likely be fewer skilled workers, because the incentive will be gone.<br /><br />Of course, maybe as a good-will gesture, all the folks who deride meritocracy could make a start by giving up their own hard-won jobs and positions - after all, those apparently were obtained corruptly (through meritocracy).<br /></p><p>But wouldn't the better option be this: To be a better person instead? </p><p>Not simply a statistic. <br /></p><p>_____<br /><br />*<i><b>Then there's this: </b></i> From the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, about <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/college-university-fall-higher-education-men-women-enrollment-admissions-back-to-school-11630948233?st=8il0uebem3xdam8&mod=ffoct22" target="_blank">the historic disparity between men and women graduating college these days</a> - with graduation rates for men lagging far behind those for women.<br /></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-34380729097026380502021-10-11T11:22:00.022-05:002021-10-13T08:09:51.873-05:00Chris Columbus and Messy History<p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWACxg2isWSm7cl1jsHXKPvkLNdh9Zx6vKmDC3oxDsyCkWbMBYUQFdX1h_hyphenhyphen7g4NMyIN5ncdbRQ12UOtvmklBJW_IwAe9QzuAZ0lVsCO4CuWvMrUTFcxckqSR3yEXLyPbryDcYVgV0Eyc/s439/Columbus_Statue_SyracuseNY.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="439" data-original-width="435" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWACxg2isWSm7cl1jsHXKPvkLNdh9Zx6vKmDC3oxDsyCkWbMBYUQFdX1h_hyphenhyphen7g4NMyIN5ncdbRQ12UOtvmklBJW_IwAe9QzuAZ0lVsCO4CuWvMrUTFcxckqSR3yEXLyPbryDcYVgV0Eyc/s320/Columbus_Statue_SyracuseNY.jpg" width="317" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>Columbus Statue in Syracuse, New York.</b> Photo by Wil Snodgrass<br /><i>Many statues of Columbus attract protests these days, and this one is no exception. For those who dislike this particular statue, I agree that it seems to take delight in portraying Native Americans - of which there were many in Upstate New York - as subservient to Columbus. In this case, wouldn't removing the figure of Columbus and leaving the plinth with the chiefs in headdress be appropriate for the statue's location? It's sited not near any of Christopher's beachheads, but in the foreground of the Onondaga County Courthouse. The Onondaga people were charter members of the Iroquois Confederacy</i></span><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">, key allies against the British during the Revolutionary War. Alternatively, then, the statue could remain intact and be interpreted as a link between Colonists and Native Americans united against a common enemy. At any rate, the point is that messy history means simplistic conclusions may not be accurate.</span><br /></i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <p></p><p>History is messy.</p><p>Of all the things I learned in school growing up, that's one thing I didn't learn. And you probably didn't either. We were spoon-fed pre-packaged parcels of chock-a-block history lessons, with Colonial America in one box, European history in another box, and Texas history in a huge box (here in Texas, all 7th graders are taught how absolutely indebted the world is to the Lone Star State!). </p><p>World history often gets broken up and tossed into various other boxes like geography and social studies.</p><p>When I got to college, I had a history professor who announced that his job was to re-teach us history. Public school so corrupts our understanding of the world around us, he said, that it's a wonder our modern society isn't even more twisted than it already is. While it is true that people who don't know history are doomed to repeat it, the vast majority of us have never been taught how individual bits of history correspond to the whole.</p><p>And increasingly, when Columbus Day rolls around every year, we're confronted with that unfortunate reality.</p><p>Not because "Indigenous Peoples Day" deserves to replace unfettered adulation of the White guy who "discovered" the "New" World. But because even folks who champion the Western Hemisphere's "indigenous people" don't realize that the civilizations Columbus mocked and tortured weren't really all that civilized to begin with, either.</p><p>The more I learn about Christopher Columbus, the more convinced I am that he wasn't just a product of his time. He was deeply ethnocentric, incredibly vainglorious, and wildly racist. His writings, even watered down by all the caveats his modern defenders posit, stand as sad testament to his disdain for just about everybody he encountered over here. Let's just go ahead and admit it.</p><p>The thing is, we can't stop there. When I was in junior high, I took Spanish classes, and I learned about the Mayans, the Incas, and the Aztecs. And while they were remarkably advanced cultures for Central and South America, they were not civilized. No "indigenous people" champion today would want to live in any of those cultures.</p><p>Mayans, for example, believed in human sacrifices. They fought vicious wars amongst themselves. They were also ignorant regarding basic ecology - they caused epic deforestation that endangered their society. For all the people today who complain about diseases Europeans brought to the Western Hemisphere, let's remember that there are many ways to die, and our indigenous peoples were already facing perils of their own making.<br /></p><p>The Incas were colonizers - the dreaded "C" word that horrifies progressives today. Through crude diplomacy and brutal warfare, they amassed a huge empire along the western coast of South America. If Columbus hadn't shown up, who knows how much of the continent would have fallen under their control. For all the people today who complain about imperialistic European colonizers, their posturing is mostly frustration that Whites tended to be more capable at it than indigenous societies like the Incas.</p><p>Aztec culture was based on warfare. Their religion and economy depended on it. Warfare was how the Aztecs survived - by expanding their empire - and how they pacified their deities. The Aztecs had no standing army per say; every man was part of their army.</p><p>Don't believe me? Do your own research. It's not hard - I learned about their warfare when I was in the 7th grade. But I learned it in the "Spanish Class" box, and I was not encouraged to compare the facts about ancient people groups in the Western Hemisphere to what happened on our side of this planet after Europeans arrived. I suspect many people who revile Columbus weren't, either.</p><p>And what of the Native Americans here in the United States? Think about it for a minute: Why do we have the term "braves" in our lexicon today? It's not because of white supremacy. Native Americans tended to be quite fierce. They scalped their enemies long before Europeans began docking their ships along the Atlantic Coast. Not every tribe possessed such brutality, but generally speaking, the conquest of their world attributed as beginning with Columbus was just an extension of the warfare that was their existence before Europeans set foot on these shores.</p><p>There was no placid, bucolic "kumbaya" utopia going on here before Columbus. In fact, there was no real government, and no rule of law. Societies here were ruled by autocrats and perpetuated by warfare. So, how was that so different than what Columbus introduced, you might ask? Maybe not a lot - except that Columbus was an emissary of a government that was governed to a certain extent by laws. </p><p>The rule of law is not natural to humanity - it was invented by the Greeks. White Europeans (oh no!). Ever heard of Aristotle? He's the guy generally credited with formalizing the philosophy of authority by civil code rather than individual power.</p><p>While the rule of law may have been wholly ignored during Columbus' explorations, the concept's evolution made its way to the "New" World not by osmosis, but after the European conquest of this hemisphere. Was it pretty, and neat and clean, and pure? Of course not. It was ugly. People did bad things. All kinds of really bad, awful things. And yes, you and I are living with the messy consequences today of those messy things.</p><p>But how does denying reality of this hemisphere before, during, and after Columbus help clean up the messes from history?</p><p>Sure, let Christopher's dirty laundry hang out in the fresh air of freedom for all to see. Should we celebrate him because of how he acted? No, but is there anything in his sheer passion for discovery that is at all meaningful and relevant to our progress today?<br /></p><p>And at the same time, let's not canonize indigenous peoples. Did they deserve to be treated the way Columbus treated them? No, but was the world in which they lived deserving of preservation? Again, the answer would be a resounding "NO", right? At least, if you value the rule of law and human rights. Those things may have been absent from the <i>Nina</i>, the <i>Pinta</i>, and the <i>Santa Maria</i>, but they did follow. Eventually.</p><p>Would values like the rule of law and human rights have eventually come to the Western Hemisphere had Europeans not? We don't know, and how can we speculate? Perhaps Asians would have found the western coast of our hemisphere, but remember, the indigenous folks who were already here had come from Asia across the Bering Strait, right? Might nomads from the "West" have trickled down through North America over the centuries by land, bringing concepts like the rule of law and human rights with them? Maybe, and maybe they'd have met the same warrior tribes that the Pilgrims and other colonists encountered on the East Coast.</p><p>Suffice it to say that the history we're supposedly acknowledging today is messy. Very messy. But making villains out of each other, and Italians, and indigenous peoples today misses that point. What would be so wrong with using this day as a reminder that none of us is perfect? That daily life is made up of six billion people making mistakes and (hopefully) learning from them?</p><p>Maybe you don't appreciate what we have today, compared with what ancient civilizations had - or didn't. That's the bigger problem with folks who grouse about Columbus, isn't it? Would you want to risk being alive today in any of the ancient cultures Columbus' arrival helped extinguish? </p><p>Maybe Columbus isn't the person who should have a day named after him (or an uber-liberal university in New York City *cough* *cough*). But if we're going to start naming holidays after people groups, what's so special about folks who slaughtered each other because they were the more dominant?</p><p>Isn't that what you dislike about the Europeans? Or are you just upset that Europeans had more lethal weapons?</p><p>What happens when we don't learn from history?<br /></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63535302771376344.post-15723922126863538632021-09-10T16:37:00.017-05:002021-09-10T21:46:25.765-05:00Conspiracy Theories Don't Flatter Their Buffs<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD5UVuSKD18M_fk1nJpGu39RVUBYp9I32J33YrWZY6frtmCOYYeLakqATEywLYM0jF52kww6J4UpYYl6xTJWrFcglU3gHaJvsRZY6HP3fXyTwJtsdKUpuAQVrpDkjvLRzDlg9CV-kVHvw/s499/manhattan_1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="499" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD5UVuSKD18M_fk1nJpGu39RVUBYp9I32J33YrWZY6frtmCOYYeLakqATEywLYM0jF52kww6J4UpYYl6xTJWrFcglU3gHaJvsRZY6HP3fXyTwJtsdKUpuAQVrpDkjvLRzDlg9CV-kVHvw/w400-h268/manhattan_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">I took this photo from a Port Authority helicopter in the early 1990s</span></i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p><br />My theory of conspiracy theories is this.</p><p>On the one hand, conspiracy theories are not new. While today, in September 2021, we grapple with mob hysteria, outlandish accusations of deep state machinations, and "fake news" regarding the Covid pandemic, Covid vaccines, face masks, and "freedoms", this all merely constitutes a contemporary manifestation of something humans have been doing for ages.</p><p>And what is that? What is old and familiar about today's conspiracy theories? Basically, that lots of people usually have a hard time reconciling bizarre, complex, and cataclysmic events against our expectations of what life is supposed to be like. Here in the West, with our relatively comfortable lives, such events as a 9-11 or a pandemic seem not just indecipherable, but unfair. We stand to lose both lives and livelihoods to something that is utterly beyond our control, but we like to think our sophisticated lifestyles should inoculate us from such events and risks.</p><p>But to be fair, it's not just our cushy lifestyles that predispose us to conspiracy theories. Impoverished people <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20200528-bill-gates-conspiracy-theories-echo-through-africa" target="_blank">across the world</a> are not immune to <a href="https://www.unicef.org/montenegro/en/stories/43-citizens-believe-conspiracy-theory-regarding-concealment-information-about-vaccines" target="_blank">denying the obvious</a> and <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25920982/" target="_blank">replacing facts</a> with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/world/africa/tanzania-president-magufuli-dead.html" target="_blank">alternative narratives</a>. Many humans, regardless of their income, education, or culture, when faced with an external trauma of immense proportions, concoct explanations for themselves that they fervently hope will make their brain and their emotions survive the physical and emotional fallout from that cataclysmic event.</p><p>For example, if I were to drive through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas today, I'm certain I'd find tourists wandering the real-life site of <a href="https://www.jfk.org/" target="_blank">President John F. Kennedy's assassination</a>. And almost as certainly, I'd see some folks hawking their conspiracy theories about his death. They wield hand-held signs around the plaza, or clutch leaflets they'll eagerly discuss with inquisitive passersby, because nearly 60 years after the fact, people from around the world still doubt the official narrative of the popular president's death.<br /></p><p>After 9-11, <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2011/09/facing-fact-of-911.html" target="_blank">some Americans simply couldn't believe</a> what had happened was the result of religious militants harboring seething hatred towards us. So they scanned the photos and videos from those attacks for possible clues to suggest the day's awful events were perpetrated by our government's "deep state". <a href="https://o-l-i.blogspot.com/2010/03/9-11-conspiracy-wonks-need-reality.html" target="_blank">For those people</a>, who themselves likely already harbored their own distrust of government and the mass media, it was easier to presume Americans could pull off such a disaster, rather than Islamic fundamentalists. Never mind that the commandeered airplanes were all owned by private companies (why not simply use government planes), the World Trade Center was (and continues to be) managed by a profit-driven private company (it isn't a government-run complex, as many claim), and the Pentagon was <a href="https://history.defense.gov/Portals/70/Documents/pentagon/Pentagon9-11.pdf" target="_blank">hit right where renovations to reinforce it</a> were ongoing - something any true deep-stater would surely have known.<br /></p><p>With JFK and 9-11, of course, the conspiracy theorists come across as bizarre entertainment from goofy clones of Cliff Clavin, the blowhard know-it-all from TV's "Cheers". But with the Covid, what's bizarre is that conspiracy theorists willingly risk their own personal health to deny what expert specialists in the fields of contagions, epidemics, medicine, and biology say is actually happening.</p><p>What has also evolved within many Western societies, thanks to the proliferation of instant news, opinions, and prognostications of all types across many social media platforms, is a far more robust distrust of information, governments, and power structures than has existed in recent memory. And yes, the massive multiplication of government surveillance and so-called "security" measures following 9-11 has disquieted even folks not otherwise disposed to conspiracy theories.</p><p>Complicating matters has been the growing popularity of "smug citizenry", and the glee some people derive from denigrating authority structures. Smug citizens write-off as gullible other people who do not scorn the mainstream media, whereas to scoff at what the media reports is supposedly a sign of intelligence. Granted, it doesn't help that much of the mainstream media industry is unabashedly biased towards liberal perspectives, which does nothing for conservatives but undermine confidence in their product. And the news industry today is a true industry, with a product packaged for specific consumers, and marketed to sustain repeat and consistent buy-in from those consumers. This is true both for media companies on the left side of the political aisle, as well as the right side. Which means to get a fairly clear picture of what's really going on in our world, ordinary people have to know how to balance the information they consume relative to its source's intentions and loyalties. That can take some work, and most people simply can't be bothered to expend the energy. Besides, these days, many folks tend to value entertainment more than intellect, and gratification more than discipline. It's a scenario into which partisan rhetoric of any stripe easily lends itself, more to the flattery of affirmation than the tediousness of responsibility.<br /></p><p>Meanwhile, conspiracy theorists have convinced themselves that they are personally better able to deduce what is happening in our world than the people who are actually players in areas like medicine, science, and even politics. Ironically, though, not all conspiracy wonks are armchair quarterbacks. We can't forget that people who have expert credentials are still human beings, which means they're not immune from the disaffection plaguing civilians. Playing into this maelstrom of gossipy intrigue, social media today gives conspiracy theorists access to disaffected doctors, scientists, and politicians who share their distrust of authority figures and bureaucratic elites. </p><p>Misguided emotion often drives conspiracy theorists, and facts are only true when they support emotional feelings. And it feels good to conspiracy theorists when they can "debunk" mainstream experts with clever one-liners, social media memes, and retorts that only address snippets of a broader narrative. We also tend to gravitate towards rove mavericks because we're taught there's a certain charisma and romance in not following the herd (which may be one reason why anti-vaxxers deride the notion of "herd immunity").<br /></p><p>Speaking of emotions, isn't fear the root of any conspiracy theory? And what is fear, but a challenge to one's intrinsic sense of being? Yet while fear for one's personal well-being can be the root instigator of conspiratorial narratives, suspicions about others can quickly hijack that narrative, often betraying one's own weaknesses and unfounded biases. </p><p>The broader context surrounding a cataclysmic event also plays a role. For example, JFK was killed during a particularly stressful period during the tense Cold War between America and the Soviet Union. During the early years of the AIDS crisis, both in the United States and in Africa, deep-seated animosity against Whites among Blacks <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4265931/" target="_blank">lent unsubstantiated credence to claims</a> that the disease was a population-control tactic by Whites. </p><p>Unfortunately, today's prevalence of social media amplifies all the dissonant noises that give rise to conspiracy theories. Then comes the Covid from China, a country of which many Westerners were already wary. Although Westerners (not just Americans ) seem to delight in complaining about their respective governments, we all know that China epitomizes hyper-authoritarian control over science, the media, and information in general, so who knew what to believe about the pandemic's characteristics? Perhaps if the pandemic had started in Europe, or even in Africa, the deep skepticism many people still harbor against it wouldn't be so intransigent. </p><p>Then, too, there's this whole thing about "freedom" that animates many Covid deniers and the anti-vaxx crowd. The irony here is that when political and religious conservatives - the core demographic in the "freedom" camp - advocate against abortion, they say the rights of the mother to decide the fate of her unborn child should fade in favor of the unborn child, who otherwise has no voice in the choice. Yet when it comes to refusing the Covid vaccine, those same religious conservatives say they have the right to act with impunity even if they put the overall well-being of the general population at risk. In the minds of anti-vaxxers - whose belief system is based on a mix of hyperbole, emotion, rhetoric by disaffected researchers, obfuscation of scientific facts, and plain old fear of the unknown - they have the right both to tell pregnant women that freedom of "choice" is wrong, while at the same time claiming they have a choice over whether they can continue to jeopardize society's progress towards herd immunity. </p><p><i>(For the record, I believe that pregnant mothers should defer to the rights of the unborn child inside of them and not pursue an abortion. I also maintain that Covid vaccine mandates are not helpful, and to avoid them, anti-vaxxers need to put the good of all over the desire of the individual. These are parallel views that do not contradict each other. "Public good" is a valid - <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/197us11" target="_blank">even Constitutional</a> - reason to do something like get the Covid vaccine, and the logic of such a fact should eliminate threats to force people to get the shots.)</i></p><p>Without naming names, at least one doctor and one scientist who, during significant portions of their respective careers, were certified by their peers as competent professionals did indeed, with the onset of the Covid and its vaccines, contradict the generally accepted medical and scientific narratives of the pandemic. Their refutations were widely celebrated among Covid and vaccine skeptics as being the valid words of experts. However, these two prominent people have each been grappling recently with severe personal crises regarding loved ones. So it is quite possible that the emotional upheaval each of these "experts" were enduring privately skewed their public appraisal of the facts and distorted their reactions to the profundity of the Covid. Which simply goes to show that just because somebody - no matter who it is - speaks something in the public square that corroborates the way you want to perceive reality, that doesn't mean your reality is actually validated. It just means that somebody else shares your opinion. That's one of the dangers of democracy, isn't it? A whole lot of people - important people, even - can all still be wrong about something.</p><p>Including me, right? I could be wrong about all of this. And how do I know I'm not? For one thing, as a person who tries to place Jesus Christ as the focal point of his life, I do not believe that God sets up shadow governments or "deep state" authorities. He tells us to respect and pray for our leaders, but how could we do that if we don't know who they are? Virtually all conspiracy theories depend on somebody having authority over us in a capacity we cannot determine. However, nowhere in the Bible does God ever suggest that the people He places in authority over us are unknown to us. Whether it be a monarch, a president, a judge, or a tribal chief, we can identify who is "leading" us. Why? Because nobody is in authority over us who has not been given that authority by God.<br /></p><p>And for the rest of y'all who do not profess faith in Jesus Christ, you too have a very easy check on conspiracy theories: the courts! If something sounds too "deep state" to you, or if you suspect your government is lying to you, file a claim. Pursue a hearing. In virtually all Western democracies, you have that right (and if you don't have the money yourself, pool your resources with others who are as skeptical as you are). There's nothing wrong, per say, with skepticism, or with pursuing truth. Just don't scoff at the truth when you find it and - oops! - it doesn't jive with what you want to believe. When the ardent right-wingers of Arizona desperately wanted to prove that Donald Trump had won the election in 2020, and they pursued a strenuous re-count of ballots in that state, I figured it would be a good way for them to learn the truth. And while their audacious attempt to prove their claims failed, at least the truth came out - that Trump had indeed lost in Arizona - whether they wanted to believe it or not.</p><p>The point here is that sometimes, major things happen in our society that are utterly life-changing. The more mature, logical, and pragmatic we are, the less we'll allow emotions to control our responses, especially after the initial shock wears off, and more facts about what is happening come to light. For example, it frankly made more sense to be wary of the Covid vaccine back in January and February of this year. But it doesn't make any sense now, in September. Millions of us have been vaccinated and we're alive and doing just fine. Yes, a number of "breakthrough" cases have occurred, but they likely wouldn't have if the rest of y'all weren't consumed with false narratives about the vaccines, delaying the critical point of herd immunity. There will always be people who won't be able to take a vaccine because of their personal health situations, and that's why the rest of us need to step up to the plate and roll up our sleeves.</p><p>And when it comes to 9-11, the twentieth anniversary of which we observe tomorrow, don't fall for the outlandish claims that our own government perpetrated such an atrocity. Perhaps some of our foreign policies contributed to the Islamist extremism that perpetrated the terrorism, and perhaps some intelligence failures created gaps in our border security and information flow that the terrorists were able to exploit against us.</p><p>But like I've said before, if you want to believe that your own government hates you that much, then might that say something more negative about you and your grasp on reality than it does the government you so vehemently distrust? You also dishonor the people who are working hard to protect us and provide care to us and humanity at large. For believers in Christ, such accusations against people in authority can amount to violating the <a href="https://www.ligonier.org/learn/devotionals/the-ninth-commandment" target="_blank">Ninth Commandment</a>, because you are in effect bearing false witness against them.<br /><br />Please think about why you want to believe alternative narratives before you give any credence to them.</p><p>It's not that truth can be stranger than fiction. It's that fiction really is... fiction.</p><p>____<br /></p>Tim Laitinenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07659772910035894952noreply@blogger.com0