Wonderful. I appreciate the phenomenological description of a truly skeptical disposition, and each segment of your essay. Thank you for laying arguments out in such a "measured" manner!
I am skeptical of things that are not fun. Poetry should be fun. Science should be fun. God should be fun. Astrology should be fun. I feel compassion and concern for street musicians in walmart parking lots who may be experiencing homelessness... but I also admit that it is totally fun to stop and give them a listen and put some dollars into their case. That is fun. It's fun to hear acoustic Allmand Brothers cover songs in a paved parking lot when I am not prepared for such a thing.
A few weeks ago I decided to do one fun thing per day. Like a box that I check off each day. This is how I ended up signing up for your newsletter. Of course I have heard of you and read your pieces in newspapers but now I am here. I've signed up for the whole enchillada (I think)(not sure if there is more to sign up for or not). I appreciate how you weave fun into the horoscopes .....You do a great job. I just wanted to let you know .
One more side note: when I used to read your section in the newspaper I was never sure if it was astrology or not...it always seemed like political poetry from some angel sneaking into Gods desk to write when God was out to lunch or something. I thought "who does horoscopes like that? Does God know someone is at his/her/their desk writing ...gasp....horoscopes?"
My experience is that people who have problems with astrology, or belief/no belief in God, either want to be credited for knowing the truest truth, the most truthy truth, with sketches and ridicule and passionate pushiness; or they are people who have their lives under control just enough that they are rattled, threatened, and frightened if asked to contemplate life through a different lens. I mean no criticism of either, this just an observation. My spiritual practice asks me for curiosity, love, patience, and gratitude. Not always easy with the former, so I have learned to laugh kindly with (sometimes at) them about our differences. The latter just need more hugs, and to know that you'll protect them from harm if you at all can do so, and I let them take the lead because I don't have to be right. Yes I'm bragging about that. It's been a long effin journey.
It sounds like the astrophysicist I reacted to recently. I remember the sixties talking about the cult of personality and personality has stories that rely on assumptions. The way I see these times is we are all part of the problem and part of the solution all jumbled up in our parts. I would love to get those all sorted into their categories and proper lived experiences so we can see how truly magical we all are.
The older I get, the less I know, and at this point I'm getting pretty damn old (by my reckoning, at least). It is such a relief to have certainty fall by the wayside, and yet at the same time, healthy skepticism is not such a comfortable hangout zone either. Perhaps it's most accurate to say I am discomforted by others' fundamentalist beliefs, be they in science, religion, politics, or spirituality. For me, witnessing someone ensconced in a full-bodied confidence in their own beliefs, interpretations, and opinions without a minimum of 20% wiggle room to admit "and I may not be right about this" is a curiosity much like driving past an accident scene. I'm curious, but not enough to stop the car and witness the carnage firsthand. All of my red flags flutter in the breeze and I keep on driving, wondering about humans so enamored by the sound of their own voice that they leave no room to doubt themselves. Oh, and put two or more of these humans together to organize a movement, and you sow the seeds of something very bad.
I love all of this. As well as having loved your writing (and thinking, of course) for a very long while. Your 80/20 practice is pretty much what I do as well. I'm a big fan of uncertainty. As well as different processes for making/acquiring knowledge. One thing that comes to mind is the problem we face with the common sense understanding of what science is. I'm always dismayed when people who have been educated in science (which doesn't necessarily make them scientists though we may treat them as such, e.g. physicians and engineers) express profoundly unscientific things such as anti-vaccination opinions, racist or sexist opinions, etc. - people whom one would think should "know better". Something that helps me to understand this seeming contradiction is Jonathan Mark's take on science in his "Why I Am Not a Scientist: Anthropology and Modern Knowledge. "University of California Press, 2009.
He makes an excellent and, i think, super important point about the different between science and science's "products." (p. 22)
"Science is a method, a way to knowledge, a path to enlightenment. Facts are great, but they don’t constitute science; they are merely its many endpoints. Science is how we get facts, not the facts themselves. You can know a lot of them yet still be ignorant or unscientific.
"This raises a fundamental question about science education. If science is a process of knowledge production, then is science education best expressed as teaching students the process or as teaching them the knowledge itself? If we focus on teaching students the accumulated knowledge, the facts of science, then we are not actually teaching them science. Rather, we are teaching them science’s products, and indeed we are misleading them by substituting the teaching of scientific facts, as if it were the teaching of science itself."
Once i read and pondered his work, it was like the murky skies cleared. Everywhere we look we see this confusion being performed - mass media, movies, literature, news, my son's freaking grade 10 science class!! Science, is one way (albeit a pretty important way) of producing knowledge. And there are other ways. Apropos of all you write about astrology and other ways of knowing.
Nice work, Rob. That 20% allows for all the mystery that stirs our hearts and imagination.
Wonderful. I appreciate the phenomenological description of a truly skeptical disposition, and each segment of your essay. Thank you for laying arguments out in such a "measured" manner!
Thank you Rob
I am skeptical of things that are not fun. Poetry should be fun. Science should be fun. God should be fun. Astrology should be fun. I feel compassion and concern for street musicians in walmart parking lots who may be experiencing homelessness... but I also admit that it is totally fun to stop and give them a listen and put some dollars into their case. That is fun. It's fun to hear acoustic Allmand Brothers cover songs in a paved parking lot when I am not prepared for such a thing.
A few weeks ago I decided to do one fun thing per day. Like a box that I check off each day. This is how I ended up signing up for your newsletter. Of course I have heard of you and read your pieces in newspapers but now I am here. I've signed up for the whole enchillada (I think)(not sure if there is more to sign up for or not). I appreciate how you weave fun into the horoscopes .....You do a great job. I just wanted to let you know .
One more side note: when I used to read your section in the newspaper I was never sure if it was astrology or not...it always seemed like political poetry from some angel sneaking into Gods desk to write when God was out to lunch or something. I thought "who does horoscopes like that? Does God know someone is at his/her/their desk writing ...gasp....horoscopes?"
My experience is that people who have problems with astrology, or belief/no belief in God, either want to be credited for knowing the truest truth, the most truthy truth, with sketches and ridicule and passionate pushiness; or they are people who have their lives under control just enough that they are rattled, threatened, and frightened if asked to contemplate life through a different lens. I mean no criticism of either, this just an observation. My spiritual practice asks me for curiosity, love, patience, and gratitude. Not always easy with the former, so I have learned to laugh kindly with (sometimes at) them about our differences. The latter just need more hugs, and to know that you'll protect them from harm if you at all can do so, and I let them take the lead because I don't have to be right. Yes I'm bragging about that. It's been a long effin journey.
It sounds like the astrophysicist I reacted to recently. I remember the sixties talking about the cult of personality and personality has stories that rely on assumptions. The way I see these times is we are all part of the problem and part of the solution all jumbled up in our parts. I would love to get those all sorted into their categories and proper lived experiences so we can see how truly magical we all are.
The older I get, the less I know, and at this point I'm getting pretty damn old (by my reckoning, at least). It is such a relief to have certainty fall by the wayside, and yet at the same time, healthy skepticism is not such a comfortable hangout zone either. Perhaps it's most accurate to say I am discomforted by others' fundamentalist beliefs, be they in science, religion, politics, or spirituality. For me, witnessing someone ensconced in a full-bodied confidence in their own beliefs, interpretations, and opinions without a minimum of 20% wiggle room to admit "and I may not be right about this" is a curiosity much like driving past an accident scene. I'm curious, but not enough to stop the car and witness the carnage firsthand. All of my red flags flutter in the breeze and I keep on driving, wondering about humans so enamored by the sound of their own voice that they leave no room to doubt themselves. Oh, and put two or more of these humans together to organize a movement, and you sow the seeds of something very bad.
I love all of this. As well as having loved your writing (and thinking, of course) for a very long while. Your 80/20 practice is pretty much what I do as well. I'm a big fan of uncertainty. As well as different processes for making/acquiring knowledge. One thing that comes to mind is the problem we face with the common sense understanding of what science is. I'm always dismayed when people who have been educated in science (which doesn't necessarily make them scientists though we may treat them as such, e.g. physicians and engineers) express profoundly unscientific things such as anti-vaccination opinions, racist or sexist opinions, etc. - people whom one would think should "know better". Something that helps me to understand this seeming contradiction is Jonathan Mark's take on science in his "Why I Am Not a Scientist: Anthropology and Modern Knowledge. "University of California Press, 2009.
He makes an excellent and, i think, super important point about the different between science and science's "products." (p. 22)
"Science is a method, a way to knowledge, a path to enlightenment. Facts are great, but they don’t constitute science; they are merely its many endpoints. Science is how we get facts, not the facts themselves. You can know a lot of them yet still be ignorant or unscientific.
"This raises a fundamental question about science education. If science is a process of knowledge production, then is science education best expressed as teaching students the process or as teaching them the knowledge itself? If we focus on teaching students the accumulated knowledge, the facts of science, then we are not actually teaching them science. Rather, we are teaching them science’s products, and indeed we are misleading them by substituting the teaching of scientific facts, as if it were the teaching of science itself."
Once i read and pondered his work, it was like the murky skies cleared. Everywhere we look we see this confusion being performed - mass media, movies, literature, news, my son's freaking grade 10 science class!! Science, is one way (albeit a pretty important way) of producing knowledge. And there are other ways. Apropos of all you write about astrology and other ways of knowing.