Why I don't teach SIMs

DRAFT

Why I haven't taught, generally, idioms, sayings, proverbs, and the like to my English language students?

Most of the students I have had since beginning this career in 1993, except for the most common sayings, idioms, and metaphors (SIMs), that I and those around me use, need cultural or other referents to decode. Beginning to upper-intermediate students do not encounter or use these flourishes of language. And advanced students don't need to study or learn them with a designated teacher or through formal lessons . . . unless of course during the course of a lesson one encounters a SIM that requires explication, or a lesson's sidebar has one or several to consider to vary the routine (fun), or you want to employ a substantive filler to occupy students in solving a problem by using the language itself as their tool. Advanced students, I believe, through reading and speaking with native and regional speakers, pick up SIMs easily as occasions require. 

To wit: The "subject" doesn't warrant special lesson planning or extended classroom time.

Another but not unimportant reason is that teachers of English have their own lists of most-common idioms, sayings, metaphors. Because it is their own, begotten perhaps of one's generation, geographic location, nationality, social connections, educational level, etc., the list does not match what other English speakers know and use, their most-common ones. Consider two online lessons as illustrations of this phenomenon.

Of the list of idioms Gill will read and exemplify in her video, I am not familiar with three examples in the screenshot introducing her presentation; and although a fourth I understand, I would never use it, nor have I ever encountered it to my recollection. This is not a good batting average (ref. baseball indicating poor performance).

The second example is Lucy's exhaustive lecture, er list. In her video, I got to number six in, or on, the list of 100 before I encountered something I had never heard before. Six was immediately comprehensible, so my argument about avoiding altogether colorful enhancements to communicating is not absolute; but I would wager that by the time she got to 100, there would be more than one SIM I was not familiar with, my being a lifelong student and user of (my) language, admittedly not precisely hers--which is the point.

Artificial intelligence engines produce lists of most common SIMs in whatever variety of English you prompt, and if that would suffice as a lesson, perhaps assign that for homework and compare lists of results in the next classroom meeting. Which begs the question: does one need a teacher and a classroom to have a lesson nowadays, when you can have AI give you a language lesson or be your conversation practice partner--aural, oral, textual, visual--multi-medially at a time most convenient for you?

So how does the conventional teacher cover something problematic and paradoxically easy to get to the bottom of like SIMs? Don't. It is not your job as a language teacher with the majority of students you (will) encounter. And how you help get students to practice and use idioms, sayings, and metaphors is not--in my opinion--to read, explain, give additional examples--then move to the next item on your list. Gill and Lucy are more like talking dictionaries or glossaries limited to visual and auditory channels for passive learning albeit on demand, which one can replay if you missed something the first time round. They are great for recall and as asynchronous resources.

Everyday experience also convinces me that not teaching SIMs in the online or physical classroom is prudent.

I wrote a novel with a title that was part of a saying. It comes from British English, or English English, which I had to research and find because I didn't like the American almost-equivalent of the same idea. I was not familiar with the British version, but because of aptness, plot development, and my continental audience, I chose the British expression for the book's title and not-so-cleverly hidden dramatic moments in the main character's growing awareness of self and other through reflection. The saying came to make sense from the context in which it progressively appeared.

Example two. I have dear friends my age in another country, not our own, and they are highly educated and experienced teaching professionals. I used an expression that I thought every American would know in one of my email messages, and they said they had never heard it before. I looked it up, and it seemed to be quite common. (There are online tools to research such questions.) Could it be that they are thoroughly Ivy League and I am public university  enculturated from the second or third class Far West (of the U. S.)?

Three. I have had years of experience working in international and intercultural organizations outside my own country--beginning in my early twenties. Suffice to say, the object of using English among colleagues and the public in non-native places required carefully communicating--communication that leads to easy comprehension among players, who just might have something to say about your tenure and ability to get along/adapt. Provincial or specialized talk does not fly (easy to decode, right?). To aim for high and ready understand-ability is the aim, not the display of the wonderful twists and turns a language can manage when one speaks with one's native (provincial?) contemporaries. 

I expect disagreement about whether or not to teach sayings, idioms, and metaphors. So be it, if only because a decision about how to teach English as a foreign language of long ago has held its relevance for almost a lifetime. My career is much like the water in a stream that passes under a bridge and disappears into the distance and cannot be called back.

Would that last thought be a way to get around troublesome SIMs and just make meaning plain and simple for most non-native language users? I'll give that some thought and try it out with my remaining, and faithful, students of this language we are actively, and virtually, sharing.

Email signature thought

For rich and poor, never enough. With equal measures of care to provide essential needs, all thrive. Propose designs and supply what will suffice. Start yesterday. Today we're late to the party.

September 2023 email signature thought.

In the winter of our dismay*

Acting Gandalf? I'm just a guest.

Such a world as this,
slopping 'round in the sty,
to point me's a miss.
Vote for 'nother good guy.

Though we'd have such a one,
what could s/he act'ly do
to make what we made undone?
Fruitless even, ya see, to sue.

Take care this and thy own.
Rely on what little you can.
May small seeds each we've sown
bear fruit for women and man.

No savior but me I see
in this global-all mess.
So to myself I must be
help to us close my own--

Thus model for me 'nd your rest.

_____

* Inspired by misplaced guru status.

All is gossip

The only one who can know what you have done is you. Others will always and forever have partial information and faux-understanding. Let others talk about you. Gives 'em something to do, unless it comes to serious misinformation/-understanding. But even then, you can select which--actual or imagined--needs affirmation or correction.

In addition, do you fully know now or in reflection, perhaps years hence, everything about you and what you have done? This too often is an unrewarding pursuit, for what can you do now about all of that?

We believe we have the knowledge, the insight, the facts of the matter, and so we narrate based on partial info (such is as with any narrative) and subsequently believe that that settles matters related to that which we felt important enough to bother about.

Grasp now at some kind of certainty in this world in order to keep on keeping on, because living under illusions is practical if to a degree not full Truth.

Aristos--DRAFT

1. Each is alone--we imagine we’re not because of connection, but connections are creations in mind: Contortions of real, and other rationalizations we are responsible for and rely upon. Not bad; contortions are useful and comforting, these illusions, images of those _with_ us. We even have beings we can't see and people we know and love not physically present that right now we deem (virtually) here, so we are not alone. But we are.

2. People are essentially good---No. Too many examples. Self interest first, especially taking the forms of survival and "the way we would have it always". If that is and continues, then I’m good, goodness being essential but conditional and--truth--often accidental. Some are inclined to show and enact more or less of  good, defined socially and culturally. And extreme or approximate extremes in goodness exist, such as those wholly compassionate saving someone other at the risk of losing their own life . . . rarer than we imagine.

3. Evil exists. What it is is not clear, but it exists probably because first, self interest. It can and does go to extremes. Perhaps it is some form of I-am-alone, and therefore must do whatever I must or can to ensure me, to make me important, real, of significance in a world where connection is not possible, but I don't know that.

4. Clarity about reality is never achieved, always in the making. Some give up or take easy ways to resolve what is real. Others never give up trying to realize even though this is futile. Still others, most? don’t bother much. Or get so muddled, they go off half- or fully-crazed in opposition to other perceived/believed realities. Those that think they have discovered clarity fight to prove to themselves that they have it. Different realities often fight to the detriment or death of others.

5. People can change and do for umpteen reasons: easy sometimes, hard others, which makes for a necessary flexibility in relations. Sometimes relations are impossible to have, the differences now--after change--versus then--before changing--are so great.

6. People hide who they are. No one can know the other, they are so trapped by their own self preserving imaginings, and those in the smoke others emit about themselves. And the other is always throughout alone and separate--and changeable.

7. Care versus futility: the former makes for society; the latter for evil or something less, such as belief in nothing, thus just getting along and through somehow. The span of care and its focus are variable as is intensity.

8. The individual combination of inclinations, etc., make for the personality and character of a person. Aside from what biology and heredity bestow, a person is who she is and presents that to the other in the world.

9. So you’re free to play in the playground, and I’m glad for your discoveries and happiness, as we all can be glad.

10. But leave me to my private garden with imaginary flowers. I need make-work to get through all of this. I am very busy. My life. No strife. (Back to aristo no. 1.)

Bezoars of the world

 Question. 

"I studied the Portal device from Facebook I received from the [a friend's] daughter, rather an expensive gift. This device is useable when you are a member of Facebook a service I have been led to believe have many negative complaints linked to its use.  What objections do you have, if any by subscribing to Facebook?   I’m inclined to thank [friend's daughter] and return the device as I’m reluctant to joining. Let me know your thoughts."

Response.

Technology is a tool to extend and expand human capabilities. As such these tools can also be used for regressive and ill conceived--sometimes truly evil--purposes. A hammer is designed to help construct; however, we know that one can be used to attack someone other. The same is true for all technologies that so make up our environment that they become implicit, taken-for-granted, no longer noticeable as such--all around us.

Meditation can get us from the everyday mundane to enlightenment's heights, and the methods suggested for practice can also function as ends in themselves, to wit pleasurable states of peace and harmony without ever arriving at any heights.

However, identification with and idealization of one's meditation teacher and any procedural purity s/he preaches can lead us off the path of self evolution to discordant and ill- or misguided states such as hero worship, proselytizing, and polarizing, if not inhuman, acts and rhetoric.  

A film or photo or piece of art can evoke emotions and action-effects, bringing amusement or tears of joy in some cases and in others action for a better, more beautiful/just/compassionate/etc., world. These artifacts can also feed, that is support in some way, the unstable and disturb the sensitively consciousness--people like me.

Facebook and related technologies work the same way. Obsession with the latest posts or messages or images as well as taking  me-centered photos have led to psychological aberrations and ignorance of physical realities, or lack of appreciation of the power of same.

"She died falling off the cliff as she was taking her picture to share on Instagram."

Yikes, talk about (self-)abuse of technology.

However, keeping up with the grand-kids or calling cheap to someone on the other side of the world, these enhancements to our experience of the world shine in a true and good light. What's to complain about?

A lot, but these concerns fall outside of the technology/tool discussion for individual/collective good. We live in a sociopolitical world, and we can weigh, for example, what media companies will do in a less-than-enlightened way with the data we surrender to them, this in the face of the fact that one voice will not be heard if you opt out.

In return for "intended social good," these companies do for their own and not their client-customer's good. What today's mega-company CEOs and their hired minions do because it was "just my job" and "it was just there for the taking," well, you can decide for yourself. You will have to work to get enough information to make a good decision for yourself. Or, if you don't care about the Zuckerbergs and bezoars of the world, you have your decision.

This device you've been given can improve and expand our communications across distances. Whatsapp, for example, is easier and faster and better than relying on email and Facetime, or the phone. But you will be lining the pockets of the new masters of the world, the do-(almost)nothing-for-others, the likes of which include Zuckerberg and Bezos. So consider the pros and cons to the degree that you need to, and make the choice you are comfortable with.*

On the other hand, at least for me, I would not want the damn thing to watch me or listen to my political rants. The white bigots, or God forbid, the serious theists might come calling.

_____
* For a start to a complicated issue I have made overly simplistic, see https://www.forbes.com/sites/prakashdolsak/2020/12/16/different-styles-of-philanthropy-mackenzie-scott-and-jeff-bezos/?sh=54403eab50da

You will annoy, and yet

"He is a good creature, and more sensible than any one would imagine," said Dorothea, inconsiderately.
"You mean that he appears silly."
"No, no," said Dorothea, recollecting herself, and laying her hand on her sister's a moment, "but he does not talk equally well on all subjects."
"I should think none but disagreeable people do," said Celia, in her usual purring way. "They must be very dreadful to live with. Only think! at breakfast, and always."*

Summary of Celia's contribution: Disagreeable people are those that talk equally well on all subjects. and such people are dreadful to live with, especially at breakfast, and always.

Drilling down: To talk equally well on all subjects means--is knowledgeable, very, and/or speaks convincingly as if s/he is knowledgeable, albeit annoying virtually (as in "in truth") always.

For who would communicate "what they know": You will annoy.

Guide to map (biased): Ask questions. Pronounce sparingly, and only if asked overtly or tacitly.

Alternatively, Do the homework and pounce; start or finish the fray.

On the other hand, Dorothea: Regardless of appearances and limits in knowledge and ways of expression, her beau is a good person. You have to know him [the person]. 

Guide to revised map (also biased): A little understanding, a little patience, a little license, a little forgiveness, a little live-and-let-live, a little . . . what should we call it?

Meta guide to maps: Withdraw or engage. To withdraw is clear. But engage? how?  (Why is another question.)

Engage with the best that you know--and as most openly and effectively as you can till words end, even if not all yours are those agreed upon as sufficient to proceed.

Thus it is clichés all the way up and down beginning with: Choose your frays.

_____
* _Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life_, George Eliot.
** One answer appears previously and rationalizes this blog.

What do you know—about us?

That, when it is over, we shall meet again where there is no marriage, where there is nothing gross, where love perfect and immortal reigns and passion is forgotten. There that we love each other will make no heart sore, not even hers whom here, perhaps, we have wronged; there will be no jealousies, since each and all, themselves happy in their own way and according to their own destinies, will rejoice in the happiness of others. There, too, our life will be one life, our work one work, our thought one thought—nothing more shall separate us at all in that place where there is no change or shadow of turning. Therefore," and she clasped her hands and looked upwards, her face shining like a saint’s, although the tears ran down it, "therefore, ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’
_Stella Fregelius, A Tale of Three Destinies_ By H. Rider Haggard

Would we have existence homogenized thus? 

How long could it be that we would reside in this loving bliss before we would remember life as it was with places to go and people to meet? films to experience with tears of laughter or those of grief? meals to savor and satiate, giving us full stomachs to boast over with guiltless smiles at our overindulgence? 

Would we not miss changes and differences and spice and variety?

I know this about me among us. I would find suspended animation a suspect state if it offered residing just so forever and ever. 

Subtract the human from me to embrace me thus, so that I could not move or live in awareness without longing, without contrast to show what is good and true and beautiful, without the bliss of living moment to moment in passionate pursuit . . . and have that interruption that brings the light of how good it was and can be again and again with but will and choice and action.

However, I'd do without the death part. (It is only human, no? to contradict oneself, or deny the inevitable.)

Your self-importance is equal to

This opinion piece has been posted all round the place. 

An Open Letter to the Legion of Lamentation*
By: E.P. Unum
July 13, 2020

I got a copy seemingly authored by this guy.

Here is my byte, which I can easily defend based on his(?) words.** But I won't bother, today.

98 per cent bullshit. No discussion with this guy, and ignorant of key points and deeper analysis of subjects that he pretends to know something about. Just another America-is-the-greatest blowhard shooting his mouth off. A shotgun blast any particle of which requires more information, more context, more thought, and more understanding.

Rip, you can Rest In Peace and crawl back into your cave. The fact that you believe anyone is interested in what you think/believe is just the least of the chains that your entitled culture (take a sip of your elitist beverage) has bound you up in and from which some of us are thankful we are still able to see for what they—the chains—are and escape to higher and better ideas and action. Set yourself free of us now that you have had your say and shut up and listen more carefully to others, or just go ahead and let others live as we let you. Your self-importance is equal, and no more, to that of mine and that of other citizens.

Respectfully yours . . .

___

* https://liberalsarenuts.com/2020/07/29/an-open-letter-to-the-legion-of-lamentation/. BYW, this site is full of stuff the above can be used to describe.

** "Being offended isn’t a mark of virtue; it’s a sign that you’re a big, blubbering baby who will throw a tantrum if you can’t get your way. Wagging fingers and shouting obscenities at me is just plain disrespectful, and might get you a punch in the nose." Now, who comes first to mind who can justifiably be described this way? If the author's answer is the same as mine, which I don't believe to be the case, then we have two of them at least.

Addendum to previous post

We rarely understand what people mean until we ask them. Moreover, they may not know themselves what they mean until they’re asked. This is why, on subjects of any depth and complexity, the dialogue, rather than the sermon, is the model for intellectual engagement. The sermon may preach humility, but only the dialogue puts it into practice. For only the dialogue embodies what Emerson called “the secret of the true scholar,” which is that “[e]very man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.” What the true scholar learns is not just “some point” on which he had been ignorant. He learns from that particular instruction the larger lesson of his own ongoing dependency on others, [and] the limits of his own experience.*

I believe the previous post was an attempt to say just this and about that subject. I am a prisoner of my own experience, and without dialogue, a conversation attempting to go somewhere, why should I be the one to initiate by broadcasting. Some have seen through my sermons or lectures and taken up a point or two and commented, or they have asked for the background, what I meant, etc.

But because of my insignificant voice, I have brought myself up short and said, "Stop it. In form and content you are discouraging people from their rightful place in the world and in your life. Stop disrespecting others. Be quiet. Listen. Ask questions. And so I shall try, harder."

Thus my dialogues appear here and elsewhere.

Of course this blog is a performative contradiction . . . except no one reads this blog. It's just about sorting me out so that I can get straight on some things. Audience of one, no apologies.

_____
* From "The American Scholar: Low Definition In Higher Education - Lyell Asher". 2016. Theamericanscholar.Org. Accessed December 28 2016. https://theamericanscholar.org/low-definition-in-higher-education/#.WGNhSvkrLIV.

I don't believe*

Higgs boson

"Do you think that beyond the edge of the cosmos or the other side of the smallest particle or wave, there we'll discover what many believe is there but has no name, no concept, no evidence thus far other than the absence of all sens-I-able things?"

"Isn't this to say that the micro- and macro- material universes have their ground in non-materiality--see, we don't even have the words."

"Oh, dear. Now we've got a problem. No words to talk about what we don't even know is there, God or nothing."

"That's nonsense. There aren't just two options."

"Whadayamean? There are only those two."

"What about some other reality? Like in string theory. They have quantum explanations and then there are string interpretations, but no one has ever seen a string, not that I know anything about it. Except, a theory is a theory based on ideas. Could be the same for the ends of things as we know them."

"You mean a theory other than the so-called theory of God or the theory of nothing."

"Right. And basically we made all this up. God and nothing. Realities we never dreamed of come into our awareness through science every day. Why not something we've never even dreamed of?"

"I guess that's possible. When you look at it, the god most people talk about looks pretty much like a larger people-like person. Pretty much. And he or she has changed costumes over the years."

"If you want to go crazy with this, then a people-made god all powerful and all of that, well, s/he could be in, around, and through, be the very essence of anything and everything. Doesn't sound so much like a god as a condition of the reality we already know. Look at that beetle there. He's god, and the space between him and you is god, and you are god. I am sure this is heresy to someone."

"You can be sure."

"And that leaves us where? I don't think we know, in spite of testimonies to the contrary from reputable voices throughout the ages."

"Something bothers me. Nothing I get. Like no thing, which is hard to imagine, because you can't even label or describe that for there's nothing there, not even nothing. It's a paradox and I can't hold it in my head, no one can in fact. Then there's the assumption that there is a god or spirit on the other side. We can't by definition--because of omini-everything--imagine him, her, it, other."

"But we have tradition and theologians and people like that. People who contemplate and study . . . "

"Yes, and again, everything is a font from them. Don't tell me about books written in chosen languages by chosen peoples and all of that. What about the rest of us? God prefers one group over another? Doesn't sound like god. We are constrained with who we are, where we come from, our traditions, granted, and all manner of physical things and phenomena. You'd have to step outside of all of that to see what was really there, and no one has done that except one, reportedly, and he didn't stick around long enough to tell us much."

"So why do we study the stars and the Higgs boson and keep on going with all of that?"

"To get more questions to answer. If we had no questions, what'd we do with ourselves."

"Questions about?"

"Nothingness or realities beyond all sensory comprehension. Or, that which we can conceive of as immaterial realities embracing and permeating all of that which can be sensed directly."

_____
* I don't believe I wrote this, but it comes from my working-writings file and is in the style of dialogues  I have written frequently. The piece also reflects some of my thinking and the ways I have expressed myself about such things. But all the same, I have some doubt about how well this is constructed and said. I wrote this?

If I am repeating something someone else has written in whole or in part, please excuse AND inform me.

Watch out! or

What to communicate:
Revised: 25.06.20

Is it true, kind, and necessary?

What is true a speaker discerns to be so using the most accurate, if not the best, way of saying it. What is true is the speaker's own, even though that truth is not the Truth--and s/he knows it.

Kind or not is the speaker's intention measured by the recipient.

The speaker intends that the addressed know what is in, or on, the speaker's mind. With such earnestness, the intent is kind in being "helpful" and specifically addressed to the other(s).

How this truth is packaged and transferred may be kind or not depending upon how well the speaker anticipates the recipient's receptivity to that selected for communication.* It may also be kind in terms of whatever the recipient brings to the act of understanding message and intent.

Some niche of care on the speaker's part motivates communication to someone, and likewise on the recipient's part to hear, that is to comprehend (anything) from that speaker.**

However, there is no necessity to communicate anything to anyone except to shout, "Watch out!"*** Or perhaps, "MYOB."****

_____
* Ref. George Herbert Mead.
** Ref. Martin Heidigger.
*** Ref. LLL  philosophical precept first articulated by a Little oL' Lady, forgot her name, and later documented by the Live and Let Live school of omni-acceptance.
**** Mind Your Own Business  (and I'll mind mine). Ref. George Carlin, among many others, but still not many enough.

Legal distinctions of difference--DRAFT

I choose to be the unquestioned and irresponsible master of my hands, during the hours that they labour for me. But those hours past, our relation ceases; and then comes in the same respect for their independence that I myself exact. --Mr. Thornton, manufacturer, from North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, 1854

Times have changed since these words by a fictitious industrial era capitalist in mid-nineteenth century. No doubt such sentiments have been expressed before and after, not just in literature. However, today this older business norm seems to have little relevance.

When off the job, and even before one is hired for a job, one's "character" is surveilled for fit, to wit whether or not there are words, deeds, images and/or affiliations unacceptable; and if any deemed (small) transgression gray or black in all available records be found, there is no job secure, nor forgiveness. This is the new turn in discrimination--making legal distinctions of  difference in order to homogenize.

The old boys' club or one's career-path network has functioned in the same ways. Not long ago the letter of recommendation from reputable references carried some weight. One can now access more easily and quickly threads beyond the bother of the selected-for-special-purposes webs we weave and posted pieces of paper that we have to consume and verify.

Electronic information and communications technologies, as well as increasing public surveillance, prevent assessment of one's total worth as individual and productive socioeconomic asset. We now discriminate using personal/social flaws. Capitalism has brought us this: Business and the body politic have such unwavering and arbitrary standards, often not transparent, that the all-too-human individual has no chance to reach, some would say survive, without conformity to some something set by the lucky, entitled elite in charge.

So it seems the Mr. Thornton, objectionable enough as irresponsible master, must surrender today to investigations exceeding the limits of whether or not the most qualified and able to perform is chosen, and in spite of experience and relevant qualifications, advancement goes to the most acceptable candidate. Mr. Thornton's irresponsibility would trap today.

We must have the least objectionable in our employ to avoid incident where our benefactors and buyers can raise any qualm--relevant or not--to our goods/services proffered. "They'll make a fuss." Profitable (conformist) relationships with the market and society trump* all other factors.

And there are plenty of ways to make a fuss. Too many, God forbid. No, heaven forbid. No, Mammon forbid, or his duly, self-appointed representatives here in society, data-driven sentries at the gates of where individuals aspire to be.

No, no, that won't work. We are slaves to Mammon and the systems he devises to exact the most for the least from those who are paid to do a job in a way that analytics and the controls informed by them. . . . you get the picture.

Am I correct in the assessment? Of course not. We live also in a contentious age where the loudest opinion rules, and each is entitled to have an opinion (uninformed idea or belief deemed good, true, beautiful, applicable to everyone (else)). The human values and humanist tendencies of earlier times, as well as scientific sweat and tireless efforts by the more knowledgeable and skilled to establish what reality is in any given case, have been  suppressed or silenced and, sadly, not even inculcated in the young as a part of a set of civil society skills with which to guide the self and the collective forward. Sound bytes, in place of informed and thoughtful discourse, stand today for insight and ethics and depth of understanding.

Ah, age brings out the complainers, doesn't it? The more one experiences, the more one sees the ironies, inconsistencies, deceptions, hypocrisies, and of course other flaws, which like summer flies are impossible to chase away much less get rid of. Old guys always say they can't believe what the world has come to. And because this is an old saw, no one pays much attention to what the elders offer. And other fogies nod in agreement and sit back and doze. There is no saving them; why bother?

All of which leaves me reading nineteenth century novels from gutenberg.org and wondering if the times today are at once the same and very different as for those who came before.

No, no. Our age holds the greatest challenges at which it appears we are failing miserably to meet and manage for the betterment of man-, er, humankind.

(Old men. Grumblers yesterday. Same today.)

I ask in sincerity, though, is it such this time for the first time, because in profit-driven societies have we created something quite peculiar in history? Have we complexified ourselves  . . . or maybe simplified, that is reduced, our notion of human nature to a degree that we are lost beyond repair, beyond individual agency, beyond the respect for each other's independence albeit with flaws, a standard I myself still insist for me?

_____
* Except it seems in the case of the individual with the same name as the one who holds the "the suit declared to rank above all other suits for the duration of the hand"--CONFORMITY writ large, thankfully or hopefully just for a limited time.

Here is redemption, and hell

Why would He, who wants for nothing and having been responsible for everything, enjoin humankind to love, honor, and obey Him? Doesn't make sense.

S/he always was and always will be and is totally sufficient unto its self. S/he created you and me and all others past, present, future. We live given this world's nature and conditions, which s/he set in motion and leaves "well enough" alone. But we in petitionary prayer and lamentations think we can move the all-powerful to intervene in any of this? Or we surrender to just what-is, end of story, no comment or questions. Doesn't make sense.

The world is as such that we act seemingly independently and together, and there is the illusion that things change and there is the promise they will get better. But we live and die without full realization or assurance of any of this, much less a deity's existence, whilst all is culturally specific. . . and therefore do in varying ways we revere. Why would we deem some entity thus deserving? or have any motives for us much less mandates? Doesn't make sense.

There is no evidence of goodness and protection when human pain and suffering we witness daily. It is impossible to love, honor, and obey such a god or ground of being. It is impossible to behave as if we can make any difference in what happens by pleading, or that we can do nothing because it is already all a fait accompli. It is impossible to discern any plan we are a part of or should follow. These things don't make sense--especially because there is no protection from or end in innocents suffering.

Hell? It is here and now. The promise of goodness and something better lie with us. What other conclusion can you deduce? without making up stories.

The only other question that remains is hearing incarnate voices, or some variation of same. Are one's personal experiences then sufficient to believe and act otherwise? If so, would it then be the start of the same stuff all over again?

We don't need no stinking labels

In this protracted season of slinging, swearing, smudging, slaying, smearing, and separation--distancing--here is where I guess I am. You?

And will your score prevent us from talking and reaching agreements on proceeding some way somehow? that is, making progress?

Or will you refuse both yes and no and just sit there impervious, ignorant . . . stupid?

Vote the obstructionists out, I say. It's the left-leaning libertarian's way, if this label has not also lost its meaning in the needless frays.

Penetration revisited

No, this is not about that.

Abstract.

To see and understand a culture one must move below the surface of things from one's own perspective to the inside as seen and understood from the position of the other. Experience of and in a culture can aid this movement to the inside. Cultural informants, broadly defined, can help interpret things observed, and not observed . . . such that useful insights are confirmed or uncovered for the observer.

Over ten years ago, I proposed

a model for penetrating a culture beyond its surfaces and how it might be used to structure thinking and discussion in cultural studies. Steps involved in thinking and discussion are finding more precise language for phenomena (defining), discovering why people do what they do (explaining), and discerning what their behavior means for them (understanding). As observer-informant interchanges produce better stereotypes using these steps, new formulations may change the levels and types of generalization. The object of using models like the one proposed and the suggested inquiry procedure is to realize fresh interpretations of cultural phenomena in and beyond the classroom.

I wish to revisit this model.

Penetration into the culture is a function of the depth of information and insights the observer has access to. What may sometimes be tacit and difficult to articulate can be loosened from its embeddedness by more careful observation and persistent inquiry. Some of the most useful but most difficult roots of behavior lie at the core, in strata of bedrock as it were, not readily available even to the most astute observers and insiders. What is needed is more information and knowledge, or perhaps dramatic events, to shake loose the unconscious and inarticulate ground. With these, and perhaps in crisis times, what a person or a people characteristically does can be more easily seen, and why they do it may be more easily understood.

The above model assumes there are behaviors and products, or artifacts, of a people that we can observe and describe. Of these, there are some that we can readily explain; others can be explained with the help of those who are informed, or are themselves insiders. As a product of interaction, the meanings given by insiders in their words can help us understand why they do what they do.

There are, no doubt, behaviors and products we cannot see clearly, or do not see at all. Perhaps even resident natives cannot see some things about themselves clearly or at all. And there are interpretations that elude even the most able and embedded resident native, leaving the cultural observer with but surface observations, unmediated insights, and best conjectures.

Objections to the use of the word _penetration_ and the up-down, height-depth language/visualization aside, the model still works for me personally.

The article was written while residing outside my own country and culture, and for most of the past ten plus years, I have continued living abroad. I am a student of culture and cultures (my focus is ways of living versus the study of high culture, art, literature, etc.). Sometimes the insights I get are dramatic and at other times mundane. So be they.

More importantly today, the model suggests greater care should be taken in the current discourse about huge groups of people living their particular and unique mores seemingly in thorough opposition to our own (your _own_ being yours and not this writer's).

We need better ways of stereotyping* as we cope with violations of the "live, let live" injunction I recently wrote about.

---
* For a copy of the unpublished paper from which this statement and summary derive, please request.

Flash--Liberland, live

If there is no life (consciousness) after death, that's all she wrote for the atheist and the theist. Nothing there and no one to witness.

If there is an afterlife, the theist will have one belief confirmed and surely then know what injunctions for the good life were for and what they should be/have been. These will not necessarily be confirmations of known earthly devotions. But perhaps these won't be the concerns of the re-awakened. In the case of a waiting room for the next reincarnation, the concerns may involve what choices there are and pleas to the prime mover: "Oh, please not that." If there is a singular cause, one might be occupied with how to communicate news to the ones left in this vale of tears. No matter, in short, the theist will be in good shape. The great steamroller will have left all "arguments" smoothed into one in its infinite wake.*

The atheist will have at least reason to know one way or the other, if rational thought was incorrect and there is a someone/-thing to believe in, a then moot question because there he/she/it/they--that other--will be revealed right there, right? If the life after affords the atheist correction, fine, but the default choice will be not belief but knowledge certain for which the true atheist, and agnostic,** will be pleased because persistent curiosity is now satisfied.

Can the two, believer and nonbeliever, coexist in this life with the prospect of nothing or something after? The atheist _believes_ this is possible, even preferable, and does not need to proselytize that singular view. Same goes for the believer. We must assume here that this life now is intended for the believer and all others no matter how people are working through it in their own ways and traditions.

Thus, discord in this life over one view or the other stems from fervor and acts of moral superiority. Would that the proselytizers and doomsday accelerators just live and let live.

I wonder if the new state of Liberland can survive its state motto, because this too is a value, a stance, a belief above the fray, "To live and let live." History has not been kind to the kind and considerate, but both of these can be embraced in a time and a place and a society. Look carefully here and there. We have it, we have seen it, and some have experienced it and lived in the hope and trust that such a state is good for all regardless of differences.

Our condition, no matter persuasion, is secular. We are of this world. Given that same starting point and condition, we can shelter the family and persuasions of humankind. If there is something to spread the word about, it is that you can have what you want for you if you leave others alone and they leave you alone. Failures to do that are against the golden rule, a rule no one human or group, faith-based or rational, can lay exclusive claim to. It is for and of humanity which we have been thrown into this vale without our choice and without incontrovertible evidence as to which ways other than these--kindness, consideration, do-unto-others--are best. We know these work. We know them as good.

___
* A monochrome afterlife must be one about which we must inquire.
** Some decry the agnostic as a kind of cowardly lot. A defense of this position may be in the offing.

It's the little things

Isn't it? Today it's the jam jar. Have a look.

Imagine my dismay as the product nears depletion; the container it came in prevents me from savoring the last berries and globules of nectar. No spoon or knife can get into the ridges at top and bottom of this jar, and the nub at the bottom obstructs any clean swipe with ordinary tools I can find in my kitchen. Alas.

If science and its handmaiden technology cannot by this point in history work together to make breakfast or tea time frustration-free zones in our otherwise trivia-filled lives, what's the hope? There is no progress in certain sectors of my world. Yours?

As I stretch my mouth around the jam jar's opening and stick my inadequately sized tongue in to lick the uppermost ridge of the jar while the beard on my chin acquires a new color and consistency, I must contradict Stewart Brand, who I otherwise almost always agree with when virtually having him join me for breakfast via The Edge:

When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn't change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.

Scientists, engineers, designers (in this case German), people! Unite. We need a better jam jar. I await accrued changes to improve my world irreversibly, specifically with regard to this one, little thing.