The power of changing your mind.

I have a few friends with whom I enjoy a perfect disagreement of opinions. We get along fine, in general, but sometimes we close on that ground where my opinion or belief conflicts with theirs.
Mainly, we do not treat this ground as a DMZ. We, rather enthusiastically, wade into debate. I share my points, they share theirs, and then magic happens: we learn.
This is not a natural state of affairs. Nor is it perfect. There are areas where either side won't budge and that, of course is fine, but the idea is to come away having learned something.
In general, we think that our opinions, regardless of how well formed, are correct, at least for us.
And that self assurance also convinces us that other opinions are wrong.
Standing pat on that impasse between friends can rapidly devolve into name calling and hurt feelings and even ruined friendships.
Compromise, on the other had depends entirely on a willingness to be flexible, but may also be insincere or condescending or just as brutal. "I'll believe that, if you believe THIS."
Sincerely held beliefs do not discount other people's beliefs. But a sincere wish to see those beliefs from the other person's perspective does not discount our own.
Learning this, while not easy, is a discipline worthy of cultivating.
Some of my friends and I are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. But we have learned the value of the other's opinions and beliefs and how seeing those opinions from the other's perspective, or at least trying, can have a very beneficial and enlivening effect.
It's not perfect, but it has enhanced our friendships, I think. And we've learned a lot that we wouldn't have if we maintained our stubborn and bullheaded defense of our positions.

Holding on.

What makes us cling so desperately to the things we believe in the face of fact, truth and rationality?
I think that we tend to describe ourselves as being "set in our ways" but then, when something challenges that mindset, why do we rail against it? 

I was reminded today, by a friend, of an old fear that I clung to, more out of habit than true belief. My Mother had always taught us that looking at the horoscope was wrong. It was not of God and therefore, it was not to be looked at.

So, for years, I did not read a horoscope.

After my life began to change, and I began to realize that the things I had held onto were fading and incoherent, I still avoided them. I just let my eyes float over them, without looking.

But why?

Habit? Fear? 

Looking back, now, it was probably that I felt that, as I changed, the horoscope was just the same as what I was leaving. It was useless, agonizingly vague and had no power over me. I should say, could not have power over me.

Funny how that applies on both sides.

Some believe that the month you're born in affects your disposition. That's as may be, though I've yet to see any solid science that proves this. 

But just like the other kinds of pseudoscience, like aliens and bigfoot. It would be cool if these were somehow proved to be real. But until they are, we have no cause to believe in them. Without the science to back up these observational pipedreams, they are just pipedreams.

And as Neil DeGrasse Tyson has said, science doesn't care what you believe.

So, I don't read the horoscope, still but it is mainly because I know it's nonsense, not because I fear it.
And the same is true of other documents to which mystical power is associated, or in which, can be found the source of all truth and power.

I used to be afraid not to believe, but not any longer.

Holding onto things can be beneficial, and it is a strongly human thing to do. But letting go of things that have control over you is also beneficial and it proves that we can learn by evidence, and rational curiosity, and not by pseudoscience and fear.

The way of No Enemies

Our library's Teen department just had a program about Aikido. The Sensei, who has been teaching and doing Aikido for years, spoke a bit about the philosophy of the martial art and I was pretty amazed about it.

Aikido is the only Martial Art that does not seek to harm the enemy or attacker. In fact, the main point of Aikido is to prevent the attacker from being hurt. It surprised me, as I was put into a hold, to demonstrate the graceful power of one of the moves; how this was a dichotomy to what we usually think about when we think about martial arts. It's mostly kicks and strikes and ways to crush or eliminate your enemy.

In Aikido, one of the main aspects is that there are no enemies.

This got me thinking. In our world, we have so many people who we might consider enemies. People of different faiths, or philosophies or different politics. We decide, in our hearts, that, since we don't agree, they're the bad guy. And likewise, they do the same to us.

How often do we really look at other people like they are not our enemies, even if we disagree?

I tend to take the viking way of doing things. Enemies are to be left alone, until they try to hurt me or mine. Then, I act with righteous and exacting vengeance. Even in this, I usually let whatever things they do go, because it's almost never worth me going to prison.

But the way of Aikido says that even the neighbor who poisoned your tree or ruined your fence is not an enemy. They are not enemies, no matter what offenses they have committed against you.
There are NO enemies.
That's a pretty unusual, but in my honest opinion, a very valuable and thoughtful philosophy.

It isn't an easy one to adopt, but it may be worthy to try.

All the things we call ourselves.

I had an experience in a thought experiment the other day. I was building a gazebo from a kit and I was doing it in the hot sun, and as I went along, I tried to focus on the things I was telling myself, internally.
Before I started, I could hear my mind saying "You're going to need help with this."
As I got going, I could hear, "You'll get this section done, but you'll need someone to hold the other bit, while you set it up."
On and on, as I built it, I focused on my internal dialog. When I had finished the roof structure, I kept thinking how hard it was going to be to lift it up and that I would need help. But there was no help forthcoming, and it needed to be done and I did it.
Once it was complete, I stood there feeling a bit proud at how I had managed to do it all myself, with no help, despite the internal words I was telling myself.
This made me think. If I tell myself I cannot do a thing, but forge on, does that make my internal dialog useless, or less powerful?
What about the things I think about myself, the labels I apply to me? Do they, too, fall away, after I've proved them wrong?

Here's an experiment: Think about the things you've labeled your life with. Words like, Republican, Democrat, Christian, balding, chubby, slow, out-of-shape, short, too tall, impatient, grouchy in the morning. Think of all of those things like they are little items you can set on a shelf or desk, like I take off my glasses or watch. You're still you, but now, you're just you without all the other labels you have applied to yourself.
Without those labels, what do we know about you? About me?
Well, for one, I know that I am alive. I am a human. I feel emotions. I get hungry and full and have other physical needs.
Now, imagine that each of us eliminated all those labels from our lives, except the very essential ones. What if, as a moment of thoughtfulness comes over us, and we can look around and remove the labels from those around us, as well.
I look around and I see other humans who get cold, or hungry or tired, and who feel incompetent in some ways, etc. It's not hard, if you do that, to see in them some really endearing qualities. Qualities that make them all together similar to ourselves. We are all one species after all.

Some of what I tell myself is just me remembering some of the things I heard when I was younger. People doubted me because I was younger, or for being too rambunctious or too talkative.
Those doubts, and impatiences with me, have stayed with me. In a way, they have become me labeling myself as not very good at something, because I doubt myself.
But, as I move forward, I will look around at the gazebo and think about how much I had to fight against my doubts internally. I will think about how much I was able, over the years, to improve and get better and do things, despite my own internal dialog. Part of that, was a father-in-law who would not limit me to what others thought about me, or what I thought about myself. He encouraged me to try, anyway.
But, in the end, it has helped me to loosen the grip on all the labels I have applied to myself. So that I can see that we're all basically humans who struggle with things day-to-day, and that it's easier for me, when I allow myself to not be defined by those negative labels and all the things we call ourselves.

Mysticism as the Death of Rational thought

I don't get -- will never get -- how people can adhere to a mystical mentality in the face of reality. What could be more mystifying than learning about the orbits of Pluto's moons?
Yet, people want to pretend they see little supernatural workings in their lives on a daily basis.
Fine, I get it if you get chills from a hymn or some other ritual. That's for you. But don't try to make it a universal truth.
Reality is often hard enough to discern without muddying the water. I really think that muddying the water only confuses things.
If you want to believe in mysticism, that's fine, but keep it to yourself. Don't add a bunch of useless and unprovable realities to our one reality. It's hopeless.
If you believe, fine, you believe. But don't muddy the waters for other people.

How to teach right from wrong.

First, let me address spectacle.

Whether you love 19 Kids and Counting and think it's just a wonderful family doing God's work, or if it's disgusting to you in every way, the Duggar family are in the news and this time, it's for the worst thing imaginable. Sexual abuse.
But, just like everything that the media hawks jump onto, this is just more fuel for the fire of the people who feast on this sort of scandal. Sad, empty lives with no meaning, so they feed and feed on the bad news of the minute, and from all that feeding comes a hugely skewed set of strong opinions that just fill the airwaves and interwebs with more of the same.

The wrong of it all.

Strip away the spectacle and you have a young man with a very repressed sexual experience, doing something horrible to his sisters and possibly some other young girls.
Now, at 14 and 15, is he culpable?
Yes.
But so are his parents.
The reality is, that with 19 kids, how can you expect to give each child a true and valuable upbringing? A parent with two kids may feel strapped to spend enough quality time with both of them, to feel they've done a good enough job. And, to be honest, what's good enough?
No Jim Bob and his wife, Michelle Duggar have to come to the front in all this. They handled it badly, and they allowed something to happen multiple times, because they're too busy raising a truckload of kids, they're too obsessed with their own particular religious views and they're too concerned about their popularity to deal with it at all appropriately.
The young man, Josh, needs help. The whole family does. He did wrong, yes. And that is awful. He must be held accountable and he must face the punishment for his deeds, but so should his parents.

For those with no voices.
The girls, for me, are the worst part of all of this. They have had no therapy, they're given no second thought by their parents. They're just treated like objects that a naughty boy played with. Those girls are already having to deal with horrible retribution being rained on the family and are caught between that and the terrible indoctrination about sexuality coming from these people who cannot stop having sex long enough to realize it's ruining theirs and their children's lives.
The girls need help.
First, it should be that they are removed from this household. Sorry, we've taken kids away from parent's because the parents were "off the Grid, and everyone is all up in arms about that, but they're fine with 19 kids living in the same home? They're fine with sexual misconduct, too. They're fine with the fact that the parents have done such a paltry job of setting an example that the kids don't stand a chance, says a lot about how messed up the people's priorities are in this situation.
Focus on the victims of these crimes.

Setting the Example.

There's nothing wrong with raising your kids in a religious lifestyle. Only, give the kids a choice. Once they're old enough to start having sexual pressures internally, a completely natural thing, incidentally, start helping them figure out a way to express that sexuality in a healthful and thoughtful way. Curiosity about one's sexuality is nothing to be considered a sin. What can be considered a sin is on one side never using contraception, even when you could be endangering over a dozen kids, and other side, expecting your kids to remain chaste and celibate until they marry.
It's so hypocritical, that I'm not sure how a kid could ever come away from a situation like that knowing which way is up with their sexuality.
If you want your kids to be healthy sexually, you have to model that. Having kid after kid after kid isn't really a model that works, obviously, especially after you add the religious aspect of their beliefs.

As a former Catholic, the idea that you either abstained, or just kept having kids, was always suspicious to me, as though it was the Church's way of making sure there were always more believers.
I have some very good friends, who each have a large number of kids. I think it's great, and I have no problem with big families. That's not my point here. But, in many cases, youngsters need to know how to deal with their feelings. And in the raw and raucous lifestyle of a housefull of kids, you need to be on your game dealing with all the things that happen to developing kids.
So, it seems to me that the Duggar family could have done one or more things to prevent this whole thing, if they'd thought it through.
First, they could stop having kids. They could spend more time trying to educate their kids about sexual responsibility and not just teaching repressive tenets based on ancient (and well outdated) scriptures.
And they could take care of their daughters.

So why we love this as a spectacle, I'll never understand. But as long as there are young people in this world, it will always be their parent's and guardian's responsibility to teach and emulate sexually healthy lifestyles, accepting all variations thereof, and expecting that kids will be confused, scared and certainly ashamed of some of their feelings, until we help them sort it out.

Don't participate in the spectacle, but please do help to model what's right and what's wrong to your kids.
The Duggars are a perfect example of what not to do.

Not a hater.

Despite my previous posts, I do not hate Christians. I couldn't. That would be like me hating my father or brother because they live in PA and I no longer do.

The reality is simple. I don't like religion. It frightens me. I feel like a slave released from chains and I worry that, as we move forward, that others may be feeling trapped or enthralled too.
I don't mind if people have faith, or believe. I'm not exactly sure I'd call myself an atheist. I'm not. I look at the universe and am amazed and appalled by the distance and scope and I worry that we've got it wrong. That there is so much more out there than our tiny minds can elucidate.

But that said, I'm not against believers and I don't hate Christians, or other religious folks. I just want them to be whole. And I do not think that in all cases, religious dependency, like all dependencies, allows one to be whole.

If, as you read this or other posts, you thin decide that I have it in for Christians, or other believers, you're completely wrong. I know that spirituality is something that humans have an amazing ability to perceive and experience, and I love that about us. I just want people to not be deluded into a short or narrow focus of the way things actually are.

As we live, from day to day, we have to look for those things that enhance our lives in a way that is positive and healthful. If Christianity is that for someone reading my words, then I am all for it.

I would never put myself against an individual's right to choose their own belief system.
My hope, as I see it, is to try to rescue those who need rescuing and keep religion from becoming a tyranny that forces those with other or no beliefs to comply.