Category Archives: Musings

The Author and Politics

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(Another in the continuing series of quotes to start the week.)

This past Saturday, at the ConCarolinas science fiction and fantasy convention, I was part of a panel called “Author and Politics” which was both well-attended and well-run. We agreed on some points, we disagreed on some points, but we did so like grown-ups — respectfully and without rancor.

It was, in the end, quite refreshing.

So when it came to figuring out a good quote to start the week, I thought of this one from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, which I copied out of The Gulag Archipelago many years ago.

Is it not true that professional politicians are boils on the neck of society that prevent it from turning its head and moving its arms? And why shouldn’t engineers have political views? After all, politics is not even a science, but is an empirical area not susceptible to description by any mathematical apparatus; furthermore, it is an area subject to human egotism and blind passion.

That quote has always resonated with me, mostly because of the imagery in the first sentence but also because I was trained as an engineer and still to a small degree think of myself as one. And it hasn’t lost any of its power: certainly we saw in our most recent election plenty of instances of “human egotism and blind passion.”

Republican Elephant & Democratic Donkey - Icons
The parties don’t often see eye to eye, do they? (Image: “Republican Elephant & Democratic Donkey – Icons,” by DonkeyHotey, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

But when I have experiences like the panel on Saturday, and I recall the adage that “all politics are local,” I am a bit more hopeful that if we conduct ourselves well we can avoid (at least in the small circles of our friends) the worst excesses of either side, and chart a course that’s mutually beneficial.

I admit that I may be hopelessly naïve about such things.

After all, I’m The Anti-Candidate, and I approved this message.

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Related Items:
– Listen to “I Think I’ll Run for Congress”, from the album Truths and Lies and Make-Believe
– Listen to “The Anti-Candidate Song”, from the album Distorted Vision

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New Video: Perspective and Self-Improvement

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I’m not big into self-help or self-improvement — a little goes a long way in that regard — and I’m certainly not in any position to be a “guru” to anyone, but in this video I share some thoughts on what kind of perspective helps or hinders our efforts. Plus, I get to unpack another of my favorite quotes from samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi.

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Related Stuff:
– More Musashi, of course, in The Musashi-Heinlein School video
– Not a “self-help” book, but a helpful book: Quality Education: Why It Matters, and How to Structure the System to Sustain It

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Liberty, and Remembering

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(Another in the continuing series of quotes to start the week.)

Memorial Day 2017 happens to fall on the birthday of two key patriots in American history: Patrick Henry (29 May 1736 – 6 June 1799) and President John F. Kennedy (29 May 1917 – 22 November 1963).

Henry is perhaps best known for a 1775 speech he gave at the Second Virginia Convention, in which he famously said

Give me liberty, or give me death!

Today we remember those who made just that sacrifice, “who more than self their country loved,” as “America the Beautiful” puts it, and who, we might imagine, loved liberty “more than life.” The price they paid is beyond reckoning, as is the gift of liberty they bestowed upon each of us.

Kennedy, of course, was a renowned orator and as President took advantage of many opportunities to stir crowds with his speeches. In a speech at Amherst College less than a month before his assassination, Kennedy said:

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.

Though he said it to honor the poet Robert Frost, Kennedy’s sentiment holds true as we honor our fallen warriors … among whom no doubt there were more than a few warrior-poets.


(US Defense Department Image, 26 May 2017.)

May we never, never, forget.

All together now: “To absent friends ….”

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New Video: The Dimensions of Sphericity

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A follow-up to last week’s video about “sphericity” as a metaphor for helping students grow and develop in multiple dimensions. What dimensions might we choose?

Let me know what you think!

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Related Stuff:
– Last week’s Two-Dimensional Characters, and Education video
– The Musashi-Heinlein School video
– And, for good measure, Quality Education: Why It Matters, and How to Structure the System to Sustain It

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Half-Brained Things, Trying to Make the World a Little Better

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(Another in the continuing series of quotes to start the week.)

Today is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930). The creator of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle has been celebrated by fans and writers for decades, so of course starting the week with a quote from him would be appropriate.

To follow on the heels of last week’s entry, L. Frank Baum’s quote about “the betterment of the world”, consider these two 1894 quotes from Doyle. First, an admission that we as human beings may not be all we think we are:

What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.

And second, a bit of his desire to improve some small part of the world simply by being a person of good character:

I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one’s weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can’t all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

Your beliefs don't make you a better person, your behavior does.
(Image: “Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behavior does,” by SoniaT 360., from Flickr under Creative Commons.)

Even though very often I feel both “silly” and “half-brained,” I do hope that I can do more to improve the world than to harm it. I hope you can, too.

Have a great week!

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New Video: Two-Dimensional Characters, and Education

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In writing, we try to make sure our characters are realistic; rather than “flat” and two-dimensional, we want them to be lifelike. So too in education, we want students to grow and mature in multiple dimensions. But is “well-rounded” the best metaphor?

I’d already posted the video to YouTube when I caught an error in it, so this version includes a correction I inserted.

Hey, nobody’s perfect.

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Related Stuff:
– As mentioned, The Musashi-Heinlein School video
– A lot of this derives from what I wrote in Quality Education: Why It Matters, and How to Structure the System to Sustain It

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Imagination, Daydreams, and ‘the Betterment of the World’

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(Another in the continuing “Monday Morning Insight” series of quotes to start the week.)

Today is L. Frank Baum’s birthday (15 May 1856 – 6 May 1919), and it won’t surprise anyone familiar with his novel The Wizard of Oz to find that he had something to say about imagination. In 1917, in the introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz, he wrote (emphasis added):

Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization.


(Image: “Daydreams,” by Thomas Couture, from Wikimedia Commons.)

If you didn’t know, Baum’s imagination wasn’t limited to the Oz novels (of which he wrote over a dozen). He wrote over fifty novels in total, including additional fantasy novels, plus short stories, poems, scripts, and other things. And if we follow his example, and that of other creative people we admire, we won’t limit our imaginations nearly as much as we usually do.

I hope this week you can let yourself daydream a little! See what you can imagine, and what you can create, to make your part of the world a little better.

Have a great week!

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Writing Revitalizes

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(Another in the continuing “Monday Morning Insight” series of quotes to start the week.)

Yesterday we held our first meeting of the Research Triangle chapter of The Writers Coffeehouse. I wasn’t sure how many people to expect, and said I’d be happy with a half-dozen, but we ended up with eleven people total! So, I’m pretty pleased by that for a first showing, and that most people indicated they were interested in coming to future meetings.

Just Write
(Image: “Just Write,” by Sean MacEntee, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

In honor of the first meeting going so well, here’s a quote from a master of the writing art, Ray Bradbury, offered without commentary because I have a blazing headache:

And what, you ask, does writing teach us?

First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation.

So while our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all.

Have a great week!

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New Video: The Verbs in the Preamble

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A critical look at the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution: what it says, what it doesn’t say, and what (in a way) it could imply:

This one runs a bit longer than I generally produce for Between the Black & the White, so if you’re in a hurry you can scroll to about the 5:38 point and watch about 2-1/2 minutes to get what’s probably the most insightful part.

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Other Videos:
– Since it’s Star Wars day, here’s “Tauntauns to Glory
– The prior episode I mention in this video is the public speaking tip, The Value of Inflection
– Find more on my YouTube channel

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Healthy Thinking, and Virtue

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(Another in the continuing “Monday Morning Insight” series of quotes to start the week.)

We have a trifecta of quotes today, from the prolific British essayist and poet Joseph Addison (1 May 1672 – 17 June 1719). Addison was a contributor to his friend Richard Steele’s 1709 journal The Tatler, then in 1711 he and Steele founded The Spectator. Addison contributed the majority of the brief essays in The Spectator.

In addition to his essays, Addison’s play Cato, a Tragedy became very well-known both in England and in the Colonies, where it remained popular for many years after Addison’s death. When Nathan Hale said before his execution, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” he was paraphrasing from Act IV, scene iv:

How beautiful is death, when earn’d by virtue!
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
That we can die but once to serve our country!

It’s interesting to me that the sentiment from Addison’s play was later used by Hale, but that’s not the primary quote I’d like to focus on this morning.

Virtue
(Image: “Virtue,” by torroid, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

The focal quote is concerned with developing virtue, and comes from issue 147 of The Tatler. Addison wrote,

Reading is to the mind, what exercise is to the body. As by the one, health is preserved, strengthened, and invigorated: by the other, virtue (which is the health of the mind) is kept alive, cherished, and confirmed.

As someone who tries to write things he hopes will be read — even little blog posts like this one — I appreciate that idea of reading as mental exercise that improves “the health of the mind.” One might argue whether or not Addison was correct in identifying that health with virtue, but I come down on Addison’s side on that. Why? Because a modicum of virtue is necessary to success, especially in a complex society where we must work together with other people to succeed in any endeavor. Without some measure of virtue, we are unlikely (for instance) to show ourselves to be trustworthy or reliable enough for others to work with us. The kind of virtue we need to develop begins and indeed resides in our own healthy-thinking heads.

And that leads to considering another quote in which Addison mentions virtue. This one, from The Spectator Number 243 (8 December 1711), seems to capture some unfortunate tendencies in our political discourse today:

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.

Does it not seem, in our current Internet-and-social-media-age, that many people are quick to discount any contrary opinion about any available subject, and in so doing to heap scorn and derision upon the other side? Do they not seem to discount even the possibility of virtue in people on the opposite side? To borrow from Addison in describing the fragmentation of our polity, it seems to me that we live in an age of uncharitable stupidity, and I hope we grow out of it.

This week, then, I will take care to be more charitable and try to be less stupid, by reminding myself that my side (of whatever argument) does not have a monopoly on virtue and that “friendly opposition” in our internal politics is not only possible, but preferable. Anybody else up to that challenge?

Have a great week!

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