In response to the pursuit of knowledge

Vietnam and foliage-killing chemicals is a hard example. (I think America was mostly in the war in fear of communism as a world power, not as much to save lives.) So I will comment on your question:

Is it the duty of a scientist to pursue truth, or knowledge? Or should they attempt to avoid the potential harm that could come from their endeavors?

You mentioned that we have a choice of whether to use the chemical or not. We also had a choice of whether or not to develop the chemical in the first place. I support scientific research (or I wouldn't have a job right now...), but I think it's limits should be explored. I enjoy hearing the tiniest details of biology that are being explored at my place of work, but what does it really mean? It seems to mean that we will know more, in case we can use this knowledge to do good (in the case of my research institution). Do you think there is a limit?

Maybe we are pouring millions of dollars into research that will primarily only aide the wealthier classes who can afford the treatment for a disease or cancer that perhaps primarily occurs in people over 60. I wonder if it would have been better to put that money into eradicating something like malaria, which kills all ages of people, oftentimes people who cannot afford treatment, and have not lead as high quality of lives because of that. I am trying to figure out if this situation means we currently have a limit on the amount of knowledge we need for disease A in an effort to focus the getting of knowledge on disease B. My point is that we do need and want a lot of scientific knowledge and I think it could be spent on better things than chemicals that kill foliage in wars.

So maybe it is not what is good, but constantly trying to figure out what is better?
The other problem is that we can think these things as much as we want, but in reality there are complex politics and disparities that get in the way of ever applying any answer we come up with. In light of that, why does good matter?

because it made me smile.

This is much more simple then the past few posts, but hey. Simple can be great sometimes. Lauren sent this video to me, and I felt it should be shared.

An ode of sorts to friends.

figuring out what Good is - in response to Lauren

This is a cool place to start. I agree that the destruction of Vietnam foliage by chemicals is bad. However, there are a lot of caveats there.

What if that action saved hundreds of thousands of lives? Would that still be bad? Would it be acceptable? Would it be good?

What if that action saved one life? What would that be?

Basically, can we say that if it saves X number of lives, then it would be a good think to do?
This is an example of the "paradox of the heap" I think.

Also, is the creation of those chemical inherently a bad action? Or is it the application of them that is bad? To take that back to Cat's Cradle: do we blame the scientists, who are so far removed from the "human element" that they do not understand the implications of what they are doing, or do we blame the actors that put those inventions to use? Who is more stupid: Felix Hoenikker for creating Ice-9? Or his children for having the chance to destroy it and not doing so?

I would say that it is the application of the substance that is bad. I don't think the creation, in itself, is inherently bad. Although it may have the potential to be catastrophic, humans still have the choice of whether or not to use it.

This is a really difficult argument though. You could almost continue in this fashion forever.

One of the things I just read in The Argumentative Indian is about duty vs. consequence in the debate between Krishna and Arjuna presented in the Bhagavad Gita: "A tussle between two contrary moral positions--Krishna's emphasis on doing one's duty, on one side, and Arjuna's focus on avoiding bad consequences (and generating good ones) on the other."
It seems we could apply this directly to Cats Cradle. Is it the duty of a scientist to pursue truth, or knowledge? Or should they attempt to avoid the potential harm that could come from their endeavors?

Has the bolder moved at all? Or has it just become more complicated

peace

My train was delayed for four hours, blog time

In many ways I went to India looking for an answer. Any answer. Any absolute. I was trying to link ecstasy with the absolute, with good. I had all faith in the true self.

What I found is best quoted by Alan Bloom:

Such experience is a condition of investigating the question, "What is man?," in relation to his highest aspirations as opposed to his low and common needs. A liberal education means precisely helping students to pose this question to themselves, to become aware that the answer is neither obvious nor simply unavailable, and that there is no serious life in which this question is not a continuous concern. Despite all efforts to pervert it...the question that every young person asks, "Who am I?," the powerful urge to follow the Delphie command, "Know thyself," which is born in each of us, means in the first place "What is man?" And in our chronic lack of certainty, this comes down to knowing the alternative answers and thinking about them.

to paraphrase: No body knows what the hell is going on, or why, but we have some pretty good ideas about it, and if you want to contribute to society, lets keep thinking about it.

When I was little I would always play with LEGOs, letting my imagination run wild within the confines of a small box. The thing I enjoyed the most was creating the perfect replica: following the instructions verbatim to have every nub in the right spot. I liked that, because in the end you got something that was really cool and all you had to do was be smart enough to follow the directions (plus it is really cool feeling to think visually like that).

I thought that that translated over to real life as well: people, most people, were following some sort of directions on how to live an excellent life. All you have to do is connect the dots and you will be ready to go. It took me a long time to realize that doesn't happen. This past month was perhaps the final nail in that coffin. It happened when I visited my Mom at her office--a place I hadn't been for many years. Instead of having the tint of people who knew what they were doing, it looked more like what it is: people just making a living. I thought everyone had some grand plan, some grand idea that was driving their life...nope. Not so much. And that's OK.

I didn't find any absolute in India. In fact, India might be the worst place in the world to find absolutes. Maybe that made it the best place to go. We have been looking for absolutes for over 4000 years, who the hell am I to assume I have found one.

From before to after India my vocabulary has changed. Before, it was:

awe, wonder, being in the moment, ecstasy, absolute, idealistic, spirituality, soul, altruism, true-self, glocalism, emotions, psychology, shamanism, awareness, good, why?, ego

awareness, good, awe, ego and why? made the transition
Now it is:

base, grounded, process, rational vs. ecstatic, pragmatism, self-righteousness, entitlement, philosophy, history, logic, interconnections, awareness, good, awe, why?, truth, ego, image, projecting

I'm excited to see where it goes. Now that you guys are trying to get me to read fiction, I think you should read some non fiction. Especially The Closing of the American Mind. I would love to chat about this.

pyar

a guy who meets the people who produce the things he owns

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99311943

figuring out what Good is

I have been thinking a lot about machines and products. it was something that really struck me in India- every street has a clothes washer who does a great service for very little money and they also end up being a public eye for the street. There are all these small service jobs that end up providing interaction and additional public eye. Here, we have large metal machines in our basements. Once we get those, we need to learn how to use them, we have additional appliances- irons, etc. and additional products- softeners, scented stuff. All of these things only have to do with the room they are in and the clothes that remain clean on our bodies. There is no community involved. The only interaction is when the delivery man brings them from the store to your house.

These are all the same things progressives have been thinking around- being closer to our food, paying correct prices for our goods. We realized that someone is being exploited, so we though, well, there should be fair wages and we should know through what chain the trading happens- and we have the wonderful fair trade movement. I would like to point out that it is entirely different from the foodie movement though, which brings in the local economy. Living in Seattle, the housing market crisis didn't mean to me what it does to parts of the Midwest- because my local economy is thriving from a continuing technology boom.

Is it better to buy a product fair-trade from half-way across the world or a local product? Since it is likely that there is already a company in that half-way across the world country producing a good very cheaply, then giving someone there fair wages seems good. So then we are back to the question, what do we do now?

I am willing to buy products made in the USA, but I would much rather see products made in my state. We have cheap goods with little money going to the worker or even producer. Part of the money that stays in our country is how much it costs to ship this stuff everywhere, the other part (which I imagine is a little less than half considering how most retail mark-up is 50%- does anyone know a good website that shows this?) goes to large companies and large advertising systems. Now we have growing unemployment and people are scrambling to think of how to make jobs for people.

As an attempt to answer your question Kai, I personally feel that local cottage industry is good. (In a related note: buy Ren Zimm bags, tehehe) I am pretty sure that making chemicals that kill all the foliage in Vietnam is bad. Can we start there?

Other topics:
Richard Florida's "Creative Class" concept
Philanthrocapitalism
Does conscious private enterprise do better than public and non-profit institutions?

I'm reading Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions right now and this reminded me a little of our conversation. If you haven't already read it, Kilgore Trout is a science fiction writer riding with a trucker in this part.


The driver said he used to be a hunter and a fisherman, long ago. It broke his heart when he imagined what the marshes and meadows had been like one a hundred years before. "And when you think of the shit that most of these factories make- wash day products, catfood, pop-"

.....

He had a point. The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.


[Kilgore talks about not being much of a conservationist for a while, citing that the Creator of the Universe regularly destroys things with natural disasters.]


They rode in silence for a while, and then the driver made another good point. He said he knew that his truck was turning the atmosphere into poison gas, and that the planet was being turned into pavement so his truck could go anywhere. "So I'm committing suicide," he said.
"Don't worry about it," said Trout.
"My brother is even worse," the driver went on. "He works in a factory that makes chemicals for killing plants and trees in Vietnam. Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes. The chemicals he mentioned were intended to kill all the foliage, so it would be harder for communists to hide from airplanes.
"Don't worry about it," said Trout.
"In the long run, he's committing suicide," said the driver. "Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way."

.....

"Good point," said Trout.
"I can't tell if you're serious or not," said the driver.
"I won't know myself until I found out whether life is serious or not," said Trout. "It's dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn't necessarily mean it's serious, too."

.....

"At least it's olives," said the driver.
"What?" said Trout.
"Lots worse things we could be hauling than olives."
"Right," said Trout. He had forgotten that the main thing they were doing was moving seventy-eight thousand pounds of olives to Tulsa, Oklahoma.



I am also not sure that there is a reason to take life seriously, but that is at odds with how frustrated I am about our consumer based economy. I recently had this conversation with a guy in the MN airport and we both didn't know how to respond to: what can we do now, where can we go from here?

culture shock at home

I am sitting in the MN airport at the cafe "Natural Meadow Bakery and Café". Most of the airport staff is Ethiopian and the two times I have been through the airport they have been very nice people. A man in a big ol' red WI sweatshirt came and sat down with his son. He had ordered an egg breakfast for himself and meant to add on a couple of eggs for his kid. The server brought only one plate over to him and his son. He wondered where the rest of his order was and asked the woman. She explained that she added 2 eggs into the plate. He was frustrated because he and his kid don't eat off the same plate. What a ludicrous idea.

She asked what she could do and he says, well, 2 eggs and bacon. She asks if he wants another order, but he grows really frustrated that he would have to pay for this mistake. She did not perceive it as a mistake. While he was complaining, he also asked if there was any different toast. He is not accustomed to sour dough (which was actually pretty good for an airport place), although it was clearly written on the menu when he ordered. The country bumpkin man was getting a taste of the city, of an international airport, and an international point of view. I was getting really annoyed. And then, this nice gentleman a few seats away said that he was about to miss his flight and had not received his food yet, so the kid was welcome to his egg breakfast, even his unopened orange juice. The father thankfully accepted and everyone was satisfied.

About 5 minutes later the staff brought over another breakfast (a free one) to make up for the mistake. The man grunted that he did not want it because he was going to have to pay for it and it was her mistake. He told her he did not want them, that she was right here when the other gentleman gave them his breakfast. What insolence! Trying to make up for the supposed mistake, how dare they now.

This was the first time I had culture shock coming back to the Midwest. I suppose the Midwest part was for other reasons, because it was not necessarily a Midwestern action for the father to treat her that way. I personally wished we shared plates more often. Less waste, more interaction- it sounds good to me.

Willkommen? Swaagatam? Bruchim habayim/ Bruchot habaot?

So, me and brian thought it would be nice--as we spread out around the globe--to set up a blog where we could all still contemplate, ruminate, deliberate and in general, stay-in-touch(ate).

Because, honestly, we miss you guys. So...any thoughts?

kai

Immigrant: Things to think about

Madison self righteousness

Entitlement (of school, housing, food, life, etc.)

Advertising--effects on the psyche, ethics of, take people out of the advertisement--what is different

The Buddha as the greatest psychologist of all

Chaos theory--hooked up to psychology (ability of the mind to produce physical effects?), biology

History of the Taliban, h o t arabian peninsula

Diff/where of shiites, sunis

Safety/Security as a bad thing

Changing Education--grades vs. learning

Students now vs. then