Category Archives: Musings

Doing Good, ‘Slowly, Gently, Little by Little’

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

Four years ago today, Pope Francis was elected to serve as the 266th Pope. So far he has proven to be one of the most popular and inspirational people to hold that sacred post.

Just a few weeks after ascending to the Papacy, Pope Francis said at Mass:

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! “Father, the atheists?” Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. “But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!” But do good: we will meet one another there.

do good
Sound advice, here. (Image: “do good,” by potential past, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

I love all of that, from the principle that the redeeming work of Christ was sufficient to redeem everyone — even those who don’t accept it — to the point that we can make the world better and more peaceful the more we (as Scripture says) persist in doing good.

I hope this week that we all make the most of any opportunities we have to do good! And as always I wish you and yours the very best.

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Cyrano de Bergerac, Science Fiction Author

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

That title is not a joke.

Before we get to it, let me admit my ignorance: I did not know, until I started looking for this week’s quote, that Cyrano de Bergerac — the real-life de Bergerac — was one of the earliest science fiction authors.

Today is Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac’s birthday (6 March 1619 – 28 July 1655), and it turns out he was not just a character in a story who helped his friend woo the woman he really loved. That was made up by Edmond Rostand, whereas in real life de Bergerac was a French soldier, a playwright, and — as it turns out — a science fiction novelist.

He actually wrote two science fiction novels, both of which were published posthumously: L’Autre Monde: ou les États et Empires de la Lune (The Other World: or the States and Empires of the Moon, 1657), and Les États et Empires du Soleil (The States and Empires of the Sun, 1662). The first was published as the “Comical History” of the States and Empires of the Moon, thanks to being renamed by Henry Le Bret, de Bergerac’s friend, who also excised material he considered objectionable.

But let’s get to the quotes….

This bit in L’Autre Monde may come across as comical to us, until we consider that de Bergerac wrote it over 300 years before the Apollo program made the Moon’s nature more familiar to more people:

“I think the Moon is a world like this one, and the Earth is its moon.”

My friends greeted this with a burst of laughter. “And maybe,” I told them, “someone on the Moon is even now making fun of someone else who says that our globe is a world.”

I read some foreshadowing of H.G. Wells in there, as I think of how The War of the Worlds opens. We know so much now about our Solar system that we did not know then. (And as one whose forthcoming debut novel concerns the early days of a lunar colony, I confess a bit of jealousy: it might have made my own writing easier if I hadn’t had to try so hard to make the fiction part live up to some real science.)

But de Bergerac did not limit his imagination just to the Moon. Consider that he wrote this in the 1650s:

I think the planets are worlds revolving around the sun and that the fixed stars are also suns that have planets revolving around them. We can’t see those worlds from here because they are so small and because the light they reflect cannot reach us. How can one honestly think that such spacious globes are only large, deserted fields? And that our world was made to lord it over all of them just because a dozen or so vain wretches like us happen to be crawling around on it? Do people really think that because the sun gives us light every day and year, it was made only to keep us from bumping into walls? No, no, this visible god gives light to man by accident, as a king’s torch accidentally shines upon a working man or burglar passing in the street.


A representation of the Copernican model of the Solar System. (Image: “Harmonia macrocosmica …,” by Andreas Cellarius, 1661, from Wikimedia Commons.)

What would de Bergerac have made of our efforts to peer into the depths of space, by which we have found dozens of exoplanets — planets orbiting distant stars? I think he would be pleased, and perhaps a little disappointed that we had not yet found ways to reach them.

I think de Bergerac’s literary achievement is all the more impressive when we put him and his novels in relation to other science and literary luminaries:

  • Copernicus (1473-1543): formulated the heliocentric view of the Solar system
  • Galileo (1564-1642): confirmed by observation the Copernican view
  • Johannes Kepler (1571-1630): in addition to formulating the laws of orbital mechanics, also wrote in 1608 what some consider the very first work of science fiction, Somnium (The Dream), published in 1634
  • Francis Godwin (1562-1633): Anglican bishop, wrote The Man in the Moone, published in 1638
  • de Bergerac (1619-1655): The Other World: or the States and Empires of the Moon, 1657; and The States and Empires of the Sun, 1662
  • Voltaire (1694-1778): in addition to his philosophical works, wrote a short story about an alien visitor to the Earth, Micromégas, 1752
  • Mary Shelley (1797-1851): Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818
  • Jules Verne (1828-1905): From the Earth to the Moon, 1865

I had been under the impression that Frankenstein was the first science fiction novel, and had no idea that so many authors had explored the notion of space travel two centuries before Verne’s classic was published. Maybe you knew all that, and knew that Cyrano de Bergerac was more than just a character in a story. I’m glad I know it now, and probably shouldn’t have been surprised to learn just how far back science fiction started — just as authors today extrapolate from the findings of current science, why shouldn’t authors have done so 350 years ago?

My dad is fond of saying, “Learn something new every day.” Maybe this can qualify as your “something new” for today. But even if it doesn’t, I hope you learn something new today, and all this week!

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The High Honor of Cultural Appropriation

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I recently learned that last year a columnist claimed that, “You should only be allowed to enjoy the culture of your own race.”* Even if that was meant to be a joke, I thought I’d put the proverbial stake in the ground here, with something I’ve said verbally and on the Book of Faces (where everyone, including me, spouts off about everything): Cultural appropriation is the highest form of societal flattery.

That is to say, so far as cultural “appropriation” is a real phenomenon, we appropriate what we appreciate.

If your culture is being appropriated — if elements of your culture are being borrowed and copied and used by others — it is only because people find value in them. No one appropriates cultural elements that have no appeal.

Culture
This way to the culture…. (Image: “Culture,” by Scott Beale, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

Life is too short to spend very much time eating foods we dislike or wearing clothes that don’t suit us or participating in activities we loathe. We feast on foods we love, no matter what the people looked like who originated them. We wear clothing that helps us feel comfortable and look good (so far as that’s possible, for some of us), no matter what language the people spoke who first wove the cloth or designed the patterns. We take part in games and rituals and enjoy music and drama that we find uplifting, that speak to us, that give us pleasure in company or alone, regardless of what patch of earth was home to the people who first made up those pastimes or told those stories.

I hope you take pride in your culture, and defend it fiercely from misuse or misappropriation. Certainly some cultural copying is intended to criticize or mock, but that’s the exception, not the norm. (And in a society of free people who value free speech, even that is a valid form of expression.)

But it remains that imitation, as it is said, is the highest form of flattery. In personal terms, we emulate people we admire. We say we want to be like them, and sometimes we go so far as to pattern our lives after theirs, although some of them may not appreciate the attention they get. So it is with cultural appropriation.

If elements of your culture are being appropriated, then, it’s because they are valuable — and valued.

___
*From a HuffPo piece that I’m not sure was meant to be serious or absurdist. (Whatever it was, it needed to be edited before it was posted.)

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Writing is a Risk

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

Today is author Richard Matheson’s birthday (20 February 1926 – 23 June 2013), but the quote I’m going to focus on doesn’t come from any of his famous works. Matheson is probably best known as the author of the vampire novel I Am Legend, which not only made it onto the big screen itself but was the inspiration for one of the most iconic zombie movies of all time, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. In addition, Matheson wrote for movies and television, where one of his leading works was the Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”

In 1994, Matheson was interviewed in The New York Times, in which he said:

Life is a risk; so is writing. You have to love it.

The “life is a risk” part is pretty straightforward. Life is risky, and it’s important to acknowledge that, perhaps especially in this day of legislative and regulatory efforts to eliminate the riskiness of our day-to-day existence.

But how is writing a risk?

Risky?
It’s dangerous out there…. (Image: “Risky?,” by Pig Monkey, on Flickr, under Creative Commons.)

In the abstract, writing is not risky in terms of danger to life or limb. Not all risk is physical. A case could be made that writing itself, the act of writing, is no risk at all; but those who have faced persecution over things they wrote would surely disagree.

For most of us, the risk is not so dire. When we write, we privately face the uncertainty of whether our words will be adequate to express the fullness of our thoughts, and uncertainty is part of risk.

The risk increases when we dare release what we’ve written into the world. Whether we’ve posted something for free on a message board or blog, or offered something for sale in some way, we run the risks of being rejected, being misunderstood, perhaps even being vilified for the thoughts we’ve articulated and the way we’ve stated them.

So we may not usually face bodily risk, but if our thoughts are personal to us, meaningful to us, the risk we perceive is real even though not tangible.

Yet we persist. Possibly we do so because we believe in what we’ve said; possibly because we think whatever reward we might receive is worth the risk of failure; possibly because we’re driven to do it for reasons we can’t articulate. But doing it out of love makes it easier to persist for very long.

Sometimes I wonder if I love it enough.

___
P.S. It’s good for those of us who write to concede that reading is also a risk. Feel like taking a small risk? As I’ve said before, Quality Education won’t magically transform your life, but I’m confident you can find some worth in it.

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The Problem of Not Caring

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I get the impression that we, as a society, have grown increasingly thin-skinned: Everybody seems so touchy these days, so sensitive to the smallest offense.

I wonder if maybe the problem is not so much that we’re offended (or offensive) as that we don’t really care about one another. We do more than just choose sides over divisive issues; we draw battle lines, dig trenches, and build fortifications around our positions so that it seems we “care” more about the issues than we do about our fellow human beings. Like troops steeling ourselves for battle, we cease for a time even to think of our opponents as human.

We are quick not only to take offense but to show it — to advertise the fact that we are offended. And there is no shortage of people ready to ally themselves with us against the offender, to try them in the court of public opinion and hang them in electronic effigy, as if a chorus of shrill, shouting voices is somehow more coherent and convincing than our single, small voice would be if we stepped toward the offender and offered, in private or to a very limited audience, an explanation of what grieved us.

Easily Offended
Should every Internet-connected computer have a sign on it like this? (Image: “Easily Offended,” by Derek Bruff, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

I admit: Sometimes I suffer from the affliction of not caring. Not caring about particular issues, but worse, not caring very much about the people who care about those issues.

I think that if I did (or do) care about you and have a connection with you, I should offer my grievance between the two of us — or in a small group if that would bolster my courage — rather than airing it to the world.* By broadcasting my offense, in effect I broadcast that I care little for you and do not wish to relate to you on a personal level.

That is, if I do or say something that offends you and you address the issue with me, what I do about it then will be related to how much I care about you: about your perceptions, about your feelings, about you as a person.

If I care about you a lot, I will find a way without compromising my principles to apologize, attempt to make amends, and try to modify my behavior so I don’t offend you in the future. If I care about you only a little, I might apologize — possibly insincerely, I admit** — but I’m unlikely to make amends or to change my behavior. If I don’t care about you at all, I won’t apologize nor will I see any need to make recompense or act any differently.

But how much I care may be affected by whether you have addressed the issue with me privately or castigated me in public. The way in which you approach me will demonstrate whether you care about me; is it any wonder that I might reflect that back at you? The worse I feel I’ve been treated, the less I am likely to care about those mistreating me and the higher and stronger I will build my side of the wall between us.

Or, to put it another way: If what I do or say offends you and I know it and continue to do it anyway with no attempt at bridging the gap between us, the message is that I care not a whit for you. I am secure behind my battlements, ready to toss insults and taunts and other, less savory things at those who assail me.

The reverse is also true: If what you do offends me and you persist in it knowing it offends me, then no matter how you dress it up in your “right” to do whatever, the message I receive is that you care nothing for me and others like me whom you offend.

That is our right, of course. We have no obligation to care for one another, but the world might be a better place if we did.

___
*In this regard, the way Jesus taught his disciples to deal with each other one-on-one first was one of the wisest pieces of advice he ever gave.
**A teacher of mine once said, “… I apologize, but this apology is in no way sincere.”

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Zombie Blog Post: Always and Never — Best Efforts and Expectations

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(Nothing horrific here: a “zombie” post only in the sense of coming back from the electronic dead.)

Here again I’m reprising an old blog post that I particularly like. It was published on this date in 2012 on the old NCSU-IES blog.*

I wrote the post in response to two items on another blog, in which Dr. Bret L. Simmons waxed eloquent on things we should “always” or “never” do to be successful leaders. I’m usually not a fan of absolute statements like that, but I found some good things, as you’ll see:

I encourage you to read both lists — Dr. Simmons on “Always” and Dr. Simmons on “Never” — because I’m just going to comment on a few parts.

One item from the “always” list that really resonates with me is, “Always show up on time, well prepared, and give your best effort.”

I find that the better I prepare the better I’m able to give my best effort; however, all too often, I disappoint myself. The outcome doesn’t match my expectation, so I suspect the effort wasn’t really my best. But I’m reminded of Dr. W. Edwards Deming‘s frequent challenges to his audiences that anyone who was not putting forth best efforts should stand and be recognized. No one did, of course, because so long as we’re sincere the effort we expend will be the best we can bring at that time and place. Best efforts don’t guarantee the best results.

I also find that my attempts to show up on time and prepared influence my expectations, such that I expect others to also show up the same way. Unfortunately, we have a phenomenon around here called “Cary Time,” in which chronological starting time is more a suggestion than a requirement (or, for fans of either Ghostbusters or Pirates of the Caribbean, it’s more a guideline than a rule). This brings up another item from the “always” list — “Always expect the best but prepare for the worst” — which fits well with one from the “never” list: “Never apologize for having reasonable expectations of other people.”

Dr. Simmons also recommends, “Never make excuses when you fail to meet the reasonable expectations of others,” which along with the previous item presupposes that we agree on the reasonableness of those expectations. We might differ in our idea of what a “reasonable” expectation is, and I suppose I might be guilty of having higher-than-reasonable expectations. Perhaps I should apologize for that, but I’m not going to — instead I’ll try to apply another of Dr. Simmons’s recommendations: “Always maintain perspective.”

Which seems a reasonable point to close. I don’t know how much value there is in long lists of things to “always” or “never” do, or even in blog posts about such lists, except that they may help us think about things a little differently and take stock of how we’re doing.

We’re doing our best, and I hope we’re doing well.

Perpetual
Always? Never? When is it, anyway? (Image: “Perpetual,” by Ghetu Daniel, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

In some ways my blogging today is all of one accord, since my post this morning — Don’t Expect Instant Transformation — also discussed the topic of expectations. I’m gradually learning how to give myself a bit more grace when it comes to tempering my expectations of myself, and trying to put into practice advice I first learned a quarter century ago: not to “let perfect be the enemy of good.”

That’s sound advice for all of us.

___
*Readers who have fought these zombie blog posts before may recall that the old IES blog unfortunately no longer exists.

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Don’t Expect Instant Transformation

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

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. James “Jim” Belasco speak at a conference. Belasco is known for his entertaining and insightful books on business and management, such as Teaching the Elephant to Dance and Flight of the Buffalo. He gave an entertaining talk, or so I recall after looking at my notes over the weekend. I particularly liked this quote I wrote down:

Unfortunately, reading my book … will not result in instant transformation.

I can relate to that.

Open Book Series
What will you get out of a book? (Image: “Open Book Series,” by Kristin Bradley, on Flickr, under Creative Commons.)

That resonates with me because it’s certainly true of Quality Education, the book I revised and released last year. Reading it will not magically transform your life or your thinking, nor will it automatically revitalize any school system — but I’m confident you can find some good things in it.

It will be equally true of the novel I have coming out in a few months, Walking on the Sea of Clouds. It’s a pretty good book, I think — not perfect, not close to being “great” as such things are reckoned, but good enough for what it is. If near-future science fiction is your thing, you’ll find some things to like in it.

I suspect what Dr. Belasco said rings true for a lot of my writer friends. We do what we do and what we can, and put what we’ve done out in the market for you to consider. We hope you’ll like what we have to offer.

But for me, it’s important that you don’t expect too much. Don’t look to me for something that will change your life or revolutionize your world: you’ll be sorely disappointed. All I try to provide is good words, be they stories or songs or whatever: not great words, not matchless words, but good words — for good people, like you.

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We Must Be Strong

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Much of what I observe in our polity today — and over the past several years, frankly — seems calculated to weaken the United States. Sometimes it appears to be for short-term financial or political gain, by people who want to cash in before everything goes Tango Uniform.* Sometimes it appears to be for ideological gain, by people for whom the U.S. represents something terrible.

In contrast, I believe we must not allow ourselves to weaken, to diminish, or especially to disappear. The U.S. must be strong: economically, diplomatically, and most especially militarily. I hold that an enfeebled, chastened, toothless United States would be a prelude to disaster for the world.

"If You're Not Outraged...You're Not Paying Attention!"
Our national symbol, making its voice heard. (Image: “‘If You’re Not Outraged…You’re Not Paying Attention!’,” by Kenny P., on Flickr, under Creative Commons.)

Why? Because for all our faults, for all our failings, for all our missteps and miscalculations, we have done more than any other nation in history to protect and preserve the weak by virtue of our strength. The way I see it, in terms of the sheer power at our disposal, we have wielded our strength more judiciously and with less outright malice than pretty much anyone.

If you believe otherwise, I will not attempt to dissuade you in this brief missive. But I will not let your negativity become my prophecy or your perception become my reality. I will not let reports of our decadence and decay or predictions of our doom and decline dash my hope in a better future, or my belief that our systems are the best systems under which people can be free to live and produce and thrive.

We must be strong. I would rather we could demonstrate our strength in ways that build rather than break, heal rather than harm, and even when — not if, in this imperfect world — we need to use our strength to defend ourselves and those we treasure, I would prefer that we do so swiftly, cleanly, with as much restraint as possible. But we must be strong in the first place.

We are not perfect, and we will make mistakes. In spite of our imperfections, however, we are in general a shining example of what is good in the world: freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom of association. If we are to remain so — both free, and an exemplar of the best that freedom conveys — we must remain strong.

___
*A technical term.

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Up or Down

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

Today is President Ronald Reagan’s birthday (6 February 1911 – 5 June 2004). Before serving as President, Reagan served as Governor of California; and before he was Governor, he delivered a speech called “A Time for Choosing” that thrust him into the political spotlight.

This section of the speech seems to relate as much or more to us today as it did to his audience then:

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down — up to man’s age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

I like that a lot. Not left or right, not progressive or conservative, but up or down.

Arrows up down
Which direction shall we go?. (Image: “Arrows up down,” by Counse, on Flickr, under Creative Commons.)

Reagan gave that speech on 27 October 1964. I don’t know if my parents watched it on television; I certainly don’t remember, since I was just over four months old at the time. But it resonates with me, and I remain committed to moving “up” — toward greater freedom within the bounds of the law, rather than down toward more constraints on our lives.

Who’s with me?

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How I Want to Relate to You

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A while back I was thinking about our tendency to generalize: to take specific instances and apply them broadly. Our ability to make such mental associations may help us make sense of the world, so long as the associations make sense, but sometimes they fail to represent the whole (or even a large part of the whole). In particular, our generalizations often fail when we observe the actions or hear the words of specific people and act as if they apply to an entire cohort of people.

I don’t want to do that to you. I’d prefer it if you didn’t do that to me, either.

I want to relate to you on the basis of your individuality, your own unique nature, and whatever we might find we have in common.

  • Perhaps we have in common a shared experience in school or work or recreation.
  • Perhaps we have in common a shared appreciation for music or some other art.
  • Perhaps we have in common a shared belief in the founding principles of the United States.
  • Perhaps we have in common a shared faith, or a similar enough faith that the differences are not as important as the similarities.
  • Perhaps we have in common something more basic, more primal, like geography or heritage or history.
  • Perhaps the only thing we have in common is our shared humanity. Perhaps that could be enough.

Jackie Treehorns (The House on the Rock)
Surely we have something in common; if nothing else, maybe we can relate to one another based on a mutual appreciation of something simple, like a book. (Image: “Jackie Treehorns (The House on the Rock),” by Justin Kern, on Flickr under Creative Commons.)

I want to relate to you on the basis of who you are as a person — an individual, whole, complete person. And I would like you to consider who I am as a person, rather than any particular association I may represent.

If you permit me, I will try to overcome negative associations you may have. I will try not to come at you only from the perspective of my political viewpoint, my creed, my race, my sex, and so forth — I will not deny them, but neither will I flaunt them. Likewise, I don’t want to relate to you solely on the basis of your political viewpoint, your particular creed, your race, your sex, or anything of the sort. Our politics, our races, etc., are parts of us, but not the sum total of who we are. I am not my politics, you are not your race, and so forth, unless one of us insists on treating the other in that way. I do not so insist.

In other words, I don’t want to relate to you only as a representative of any group, or sect, or party, or biological construct. So, if we can, let’s just meet as two people, and look for something — maybe for anything — that can unite us.

And then, if we can, let’s move forward.

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