Attentiveness & Survival

More than a few times I have said a silent thank you to my step-father. He was a very opinionated person more likely to snarl at you because he knew you were smart than if he thought you were stupid. If he knew you were smart, and you did something he thought of as stupid, clearly you weren't paying attention to the task at hand, at least, not at the level he believed you could and should. 

Driving was a case in point. When I had my learner's permit, he suggested I take him for a drive so he could see how I was doing. Driving along, suddenly, he reached up and turned the rear-view mirror so that I couldn't see behind me and simultaneously asked me to describe the car that was following us - how close it was and so forth. Luckily, I had just checked, figuring he might do such a thing. I passed his test, but his comment was that I didn't check my mirrors often enough and I must always know what was going on all around my car while I was in charge of it. "One never knows when an emergency will come up - the car in front might suddenly stop and you will need to know that you have room to swerve. You won't have time to check in that moment, so you have to always know that you are clear to manoeuvre."

What brought this back to my mind, you ask?  I have been reading a book by Hannah Fry called "Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms". In her chapter "Cars", she describes a not-so-distant future where cars can drive themselves - mostly. In this future, the driver will give over control to the car for long periods of time. The car will mostly be capable of decision-making. However, if the situation becomes overwhelming, or too complex, the car will sound a signal for the human driver to take over.  I can imagine the horrified look on the face of the driver as they realize that the situation is out of hand - a scary way to end one's life. 

My step-father would be appalled at the very idea of this situation. He didn't even like automatic transmissions, power steering, or power brakes because they would make one less attentive to driving. And because he would have been appalled by a self-driving car, and he taught me about attentiveness and preparedness, the idea appalls me too.

You can be sure the self-driving feature won't be something I will use when it becomes standard equipment on all automobiles. I don't want the ghost of my step-father to haunt me! 

No One is Alone

Sometimes a message you need comes from a chance encounter. So it is with this video. 

Here is Bernadette Peters singing No One is Alone from Into the Woods. Its composer, Stephen Sondheim, died two months ago, but he can never be truly gone when such music and words remain. 

You Are Your Data

If you think climate change is a difficult problem to solve, you might be surprised to discover there is another much more difficult - no let's be honest - impossible problem to solve and we are contributing to it right now. 

We all know that while we use our phone, pad, or computer, every click and search is used to target us in, for example, advertising. We might even know that our 'likes' and 'comments' are all used to make sure we see more of the same thing online. A word like "algorithm" sounds very mathematical and computerlike, yet the term "business model" is much more to the point, for nothing in this capitalistic world is free. What we do online is our payment for the provider's service, and this is like gold to a political party or a potential dictator. It would be unfair to give away much more. There is a video below and it is informative and well-presented.

Maybe you know a teenager who needs to watch this.  While I definitely learned some things, at my age, my searches and clicks don't matter to most companies, or politicians, or ... anyone. Cynic that I am, I honestly have no hope that we, as a society, can escape the traps that have already been sprung or will be sprung very soon. 

However, it is better to know the problem. That way you will know where to allocate the blame when ... No, I'm not going to spoil it. 

The Importance of the Moment

My friend Joanna put up this post about living in the moment. It got me thinking seriously about something that has been in the back of my mind for some time - how I can better approach living, and yes, eventually but hopefully not soon, dying.

Of course, dying is something most of us want to ignore and definitely to postpone. What we might not want to acknowledge is that we often ignore and postpone living as well. 

As Jiddu Krishnamurti wrote:

"We think that living is always in the present and that dying is something that awaits us at a distant time. But we have never questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all. We want to know the truth about reincarnation, we want proof of the survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyants and to the conclusions of psychical research, but we never ask, never, how to live - to live with delight, with enchantment, with beauty every day."*

When young, I was always thinking - what next? -  instead of savouring life. Even now, writing this blog post is an example of not living in the moment. In my hubris I try to make something permanent out of a moment's thought when instead I need to make moments into the most important thing. 

Here, then, is a message I would send to my younger self if I could. It is definitely an instruction to myself now, to repeat as a mantra:

Find joy in what you are experiencing every moment so that when your last moment comes you will be prepared to experience even that - fully - and without fear. 

*Krishnamurti, J. (Jiddu) (1895-1986): Freedom from the Known

New York, Harper & Row, 1969

Money - Part Two

Fame or self: Which matters more?

Self or wealth: Which is more precious?
Gain or loss: Which causes more pain?

Those who are attached to things will suffer greatly.
Those who save will suffer heavy losses. 
Those who are contented are never disappointed. 
Those who know when to stop do not find themselves in trouble. 
They remain forever safe. 

Tao Te Ching of Lao Tsu, part 44:

Translated by Gia-fu Feng and Jane English with Toinette Lippe.

Thank you again Brian. 

To Be Authentically Human

 

To see truly and live fully:           

This is what it means to be authentically human

                      Jacob Needleman 

Money

This post might seem to be a bit dark. I have been thinking hard about a saying my grandfather learned from watching his parents. 

Grandad grew up in a family where everyone worked hard. His parents had been poor in England and immigrated to Canada where they found work. They bought a house. Money became the measure of all good for his mother and father, and my grandfather and his younger brother were sent out to work very early in life. Everything they earned had to be turned over to their parents - after all, they had to pull their weight. Such practices were not unusual in that time, but as a result of his disappointments, Grandad saw money, and the drive to acquire more and more, as the root of all evil, and said so. 

Over my life, I found a balance to this - earning money as a way to provide for family, and help others in my community - not so evil. 

Now, here is a dark story that has haunted me for over three decades. An acquaintance's husband, who had been a pharmacist, had recently passed away. In conversation with his widow, I was told that her husband had developed a treatment that he believed would cure cancer, but nobody in the scientific community was willing to believe or even test his idea. When he died, his treatment went with him. I have no idea whether that husband was deluded or a genius who might have ended a terrible scourge. 

In thinking about that possibility, what occurred to me was how many jobs in hospitals, research facilities, and fund-raising efforts would have been lost had this pharmacist indeed found a treatment to end all cancers. And the dark thought accompanying that is the sure knowledge of how determined the research community responsible for testing his idea would have been to suppress such knowledge. And why, might you ask, would they do that? One word: money. 

To what lengths would someone go to protect their fortune? Where else has truth been suppressed for the sake of money? Cigarettes? International relations? The food industry? Climate change? Social media? The "war" on poverty?

Feel free to add to the list ...

Now for the difficult questions: 

What can be done to find a better way to reward hard work and intellect? 

How much money is enough for any one individual?