http://www.celestialfamily.org Making our way back home Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:59:47 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2011/11/happy-carl-sagan-day.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=happy-carl-sagan-day http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2011/11/happy-carl-sagan-day.html#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 12:48:00 +0000 Michael http://www.celestialfamily.org/?guid=4232205394c519dc8db030be2c8f4194 "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
Carl Sagan

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/552803990443635053/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2011/08/just-kidding.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=just-kidding http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2011/08/just-kidding.html#comments Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:07:00 +0000 Michael http://www.celestialfamily.org/?guid=18def473ba326fcb23f89bf66b9c3ebd
I get more than a little irritated when people misuse and abuse language. Here’s an example that I’ve seen happen a few times a week for the last several months and even been the unwitting victim of the exchange quite a few times too.

Person A, “Hey I’ll trade you that watch for this used popsicle stick.”


Person B, “No way!”


Person A, “Yeah I was just kidding.”

The watch and the popsicle are just examples. Substitute the watch with anything of value and the popsicle stick for anything of substantially less value or no value at all. The conversation typically takes this form. Person A proposes a very lopsided deal. Once rejected A then attempts to camouflage the scam as if it was just a joke. My irritation comes at the use of the phrase “just kidding”. I wonder if B had accepted the deal would A have accepted the watch. If so, then was A really kidding? I think not. In every situation I’ve seen A was completely serious and would have followed through with the lopsided deal if B had accepted. So they were not kidding. They only chose to claim that they were kidding once they had been caught. “Just kidding” seems to be used as a poor substitute for “I’m sorry to have even proposed such a lopsided deal. Please forgive me.”

I recently had somebody propose a deal to me that was very much not in my favor and opened me up to some serious liability. I promptly declined the offer. They followed by saying, “I don’t blame you. If I were you I wouldn’t have done it either.” Really? They openly confessed that they knew the deal was not fair but they followed through with it anyway.

Yeah I know this is kinda petty. I just find it irritating. Whether you call it The Golden Rule, Kant ‘s Categorical Imperative or any of the other names that it goes by treat others the way you would like to be treated. If you would accept the deal if it went in your favor then you were not “just kidding” you were being manipulative. And if you wouldn’t accept the deal if it was offered to you then don’t offer a deal that you know is unfair.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/3586350889482225704/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2011/01/whole-bunch-of-blind-people.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-whole-bunch-of-blind-people http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2011/01/whole-bunch-of-blind-people.html#comments Tue, 04 Jan 2011 18:23:00 +0000 Michael “Hey, Dad. The way I see it if somebody pucks your eyeball out and you go pluck out theirs pretty soon you’re just gonna have a whole bunch of blind people.”
I assured him that he was exactly correct and then pulled up a quote that sounded very similar to Noah’s epiphany.
“An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” Mohandas K. Gandhi
Noah though it was cool that somebody else had the same idea. What I thought was so cool is that this basic philosophy seems like complete common sense to a ten year old. Yet it was also rather sad that this logic completely escapes most politicians.
As I read this over I think I prefer Noah’s phrasing to Gandhi’s. Something about the childish use of the word eyeball and pluck reminds me that it came from a ten year old and makes it seem whimsical yet no less profound.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/8890745105165560007/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/12/whats-in-name.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what%25e2%2580%2599s-in-a-name http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/12/whats-in-name.html#comments Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:35:00 +0000 Michael
VW stopped making the Beetle for the US market in the late 70s. But in the mid 90s they announced that they were going to start production of their New Beetle. We were living in Salt Lake City at the time and Victoria and I made a trip to the dealership to see one. We weren’t in the market for another car. I was just curious about it.

After only a few minutes at the dealership I was ready to go. The car was nice but it just wasn’t what I had expected. The car was so different from the original Beetle that it left me pondering why they even continued to call it a Beetle. The Beetle, the original one designed by Dr. Porsche, had a flat-four air-cooled engine in the rear and was rear-wheel drive. All of those things are significant defining characteristics of the car. Yet this New Beetle had a straight-four, transversely mounted water-cooled engine in front of the car and was front-wheel drive. The New Beetle would resemble the original more if you drive it around backwards everywhere. Except for the rounded body styling it did not resemble the original at all. It was much more similar to the Golf, which I later found out the car was based on. Mechanically it was a Golf with just a throwback body styling. Don’t get me wrong, the Golf is a great car. It just ain’t a Beetle.

On the way home from the dealership I complained to Victoria and waxed philosophic about our experience. So how many details could they have changed and still made me comfortable with calling it a Beetle? I’ve blogged a little bit about this once before. I don’t know the answer to that question. But clearly they had changed too many for me. As cute as this new car was I just could not get comfortable with how drastically different it was. Why didn’t they just call it the VW Retro or something else? But as far as I was concerned it sure wasn’t a Beetle anymore.

For the past several years I’ve been going through a transformation too, not completely dissimilar to the example above.

For my whole life I’ve been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormons to most of the world. Mormons have a set of core beliefs that define them. Since I was a young child most of my beliefs have fallen well within the guidelines of the church. I was comfortable calling myself a Mormon and they were comfortable with me.

Like any healthy mind should, I continued to learn. A calling I had teaching Aaron’s Sunday School class got me really studying about the church. I read just about every history and biography I could about the church. After finding more questions than answers using the official, church sanctioned materials I was prompted to look elsewhere for some of my answers. I just couldn’t make certain aspects of the church’s history and doctrine line up without digging a little deeper. As I uncovered new truths, new to me at least, I did my best to incorporate them into my set of beliefs and still continue to call myself a Mormon. One issue at a time and little by little I found myself having to really bend over backwards to make myself fit into the mold that the church was providing. (I’ll spare the specifics of the changes for other posts. I’ve already detailed many of them over the last few years.) How many defining characteristics of being a Mormon could I change and still identify with the name? Like VW did with their Beetle I was rearranging and redesigning massive amounts of technical details while still doing my best to keep a rough tribute to the original.

A few months ago I was in another teaching position at church. The lesson for that day called for me to teach a principle that I no longer believed. In fact I found the whole Old Testament story of genocide difficult to even read. Yet I was being asked to tell the story and then give the official position of the church as if I believed it. I just couldn’t do it. It was an eye-opening experience for me. Just as if I had walked to the back of the car, popped the latch and sat there looking at a spare tire and an otherwise empty trunk rather than the engine compartment I had expected to be there. Things had changed. And I couldn’t stand at the back of the car and pretend that there was an engine back there anymore.

The next week I asked to speak to our Bishop and I told him what I was going through. This would be the third Bishop I’d conveyed my struggle to. At the time I just asked to be released from the teaching position. I just couldn’t be honest with myself and still teach from the official lesson plan.

So on the cusp of this new year I look back at where I was and where I am now. I no longer have so many of the characteristics that used to defined me as a Mormon. My beliefs have changed. Like the Beetle, do I still deserve the name? Am I still a car with a flat-four air cooled engine in the rear with rear-wheel drive? Or have I evolved into something else that deserves a different name? Here’s a little bumper sticker philosophy for you. “If you were accused of being a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict?” or in my case, “If I were accused of being a Mormon would there be enough evidence to convict?” I just don’t know anymore. So that round car based on the Golf that VW came out with in the 90s, I’m just not comfortable calling it a Beetle. And whatever I have evolved into in the last several years probably deserves to be called something else too. I’m just not sure what it is yet.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/270499354053756348/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/10/different-monitors.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=different-monitors http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/10/different-monitors.html#comments Wed, 13 Oct 2010 15:24:00 +0000 Michael I’ve been looking at buying a flat panel monitor for my wife’s computer. I had a friend of mine email me a link to the monitor he has. In the email he was bragging about the color definition on his monitor. I looked at the monitor online and then, with tongue firmly planted in my cheek, responded, “The color definition doesn’t look any better than my monitor.” He laughed and thought it was pretty funny and then suggested we head over to a computer store and look at one in real life.

The incident reminded me of the TV commercials where you’d see a whole bank of other TV’s and you get to compare the picture quality. As a kid I remember remarking to my dad about how stupid those ads were. We never even had a color TV so I got a kick out of a Magnavox commercial showing a bunch of color TVs and I only saw 6 relatively identical black and white images. Today it’s the same thing. You can brag about your 1080P HD images all you want. Showing me a picture of it is not going to convince me unless I already have a 1080P HD TV. And in that case I don’t need the advertisement.

Well y’all know how I think. I couldn’t help but take this experience and extrapolate it out to other aspects of life. How often do we try to relate to somebody else and not take into account how they would see it? Each of us has certain filters that we view the world through. Expose somebody to a new idea and they are going to experience it differently than we are based on those filters. Suppose a friend were confined to a wheelchair. She would likely see a youtube video of a rock climber with a whole different attitude than I would. It would remind me to get off my butt and work out a little bit more, but it may bring nothing but discouragement to her.

I see this same thing come up all the time in discussions. Take the topic of climate change. Many people are only looking through the filter of politics. And it is a very political issue. I have many friends who refuse to accept the science behind climate change because they are afraid of what the political ramifications might be, higher taxes, increased cooperation with other countries, etc, etc. All of these are honest political concerns and there is nothing wrong with debating them. When I put on my political filter I see much the same image that they do. But if we could look at it with another monitor, if we could set the political filters aside and look at the science alone, ignoring the politics for now, I think it’s much easier to see the real image.

Lately there has been a lot of press about some remarks that were made by an LDS general authority at last week’s General Conference. I think we have the same thing going on to a great extent with this issue too. Those in the gay community have their filter that they are looking through and the faithful members of the church and church leaders are looking through another. Both sides seem to be talking about the same event yet they each see it in completely different colors. I have my own opinions about this issue too. But I recognize that my perspective may not be any better than the others.

It’s all too easy to jump to conclusions based on just our perspective. I’m not going to completely dismiss purchasing the monitor that my friend sent me until I check it out in person. Similarly I try not to completely dismiss anyone’s opinion or idea until I’ve at least attempted to view it through the same filters that they have. Now I still may not buy the new monitor or accept the other opinion. But at least I have made a solid attempt to view it in the most realistic way before I dismiss it or accept it.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/6947715462073681903/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/08/many-hats.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=many-hats http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/08/many-hats.html#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:22:00 +0000 Michael While we were off at Philmont last month many of the camps that had historical significance also had reenactors. The staff would dress in early 1900s clothing and pretend that it was actually the early 1900s. I though it was a nice touch. When we showed up to the Miranda campsite they welcomed us as if we were a band of mountain men who had just showed up for their annual rendezvous. They had tepees set up and were wearing buckskin pans and shirts. Everything added to the feeling that it really was the early 1900s.

Later on that day I was very impressed with one particular reenactor. Caleb, the same guy who welcomed us to the mountain man rendezvous, led us over to the range to shot black powder rifles. As son as we were all on site he began to instruct us. “Let’s get something straight right up front. Until know I have been wearing the hat of a historical reenactor. I also wear the hat of a certified NRA range safety officer. I will not attempt to stay in character while we handle these firearms.”

I was comforted that Caleb had his priorities in order. Sure the historical part was fun but historically they wouldn’t have likely had eye protection or ear protection. And historically I’ll bet there were a bunch more injuries than I’d be willing to accept. I later learned that all of the camp staffers were Wilderness First Responders, backcountry EMTs. Just one more hat they wear and I’m sure that they have no reservation about again abandoning their historical reenactor roles and pulling out their CB radios when that need arises.

Caleb’s judgement about when it was appropriate to wear which hat got me thinking about the many hats that I wear. Husband, father, son, brother, scout leader, Sunday school teacher, co-worker, friend, etc. etc. Sure all of these roles are important. It would be nice if there was never any time when we had to choose one over the other. But the realities of life are such that we frequently have to choose. Wisdom comes in knowing when to take off one hat in favor of another. I thank Caleb for reminding me of this.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/151451363584119661/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/05/thats-not-fair.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=that%25e2%2580%2599s-not-fair http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/05/thats-not-fair.html#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 19:24:00 +0000 Michael Well as Victoria was reading this article to me my 6th grader, upon hearing that her sibling will not have to take this 2nd grade test exclaimed, “That is so unfair!”. Hmm. This got me thinking. Why did she feel this way? So I asked her. Did she think the test was meaningful? No. Did she herself benefit from the test? No. Then why did she think it was unfair? After a little discussion I discovered that she thought the change was actually for the better but she was upset that they hadn’t done it while she was in 2nd grade.
I wonder how many times we have continued a tradition, a ritual, or anything that we didn’t like when we went through it just because we think it would be unfair for us to have to do something that those coming behind us didn’t have to do. How often do we put our kids through things just because that’s the way we had to do it? I wonder how deep this mindset penetrates our society. Last year Victoria read a book that had Chinese foot binding as a major theme. I wonder how many of these women did these to their daughters just because they felt it would be unfair for them to not go through it after they had. I wonder if there were any salve owners in the south who felt that slavery was wrong but that it would be unfair for them to try to work without them. I could go on but I think you get the point.
I’ve given my kids the “walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways” argument several times. When I do it I hope they are taking away from it that I think it’s cool that they have access to cell phones, the internet, and other modern conveniences. They should be thankful that they have all of these things. I sure hope they don’t think that I’m crying foul. Yes, I wish that I’d have had some of the benefits as a kid that they have now. But I would hate for them to think that I’m putting them through something that I disagree with just because I had to do it.

]]> Well as Victoria was reading this article to me my 6th grader, upon hearing that her sibling will not have to take this 2nd grade test exclaimed, “That is so unfair!”. Hmm. This got me thinking. Why did she feel this way? So I asked her. Did she think the test was meaningful? No. Did she herself benefit from the test? No. Then why did she think it was unfair? After a little discussion I discovered that she thought the change was actually for the better but she was upset that they hadn’t done it while she was in 2nd grade.
I wonder how many times we have continued a tradition, a ritual, or anything that we didn’t like when we went through it just because we think it would be unfair for us to have to do something that those coming behind us didn’t have to do. How often do we put our kids through things just because that’s the way we had to do it? I wonder how deep this mindset penetrates our society. Last year Victoria read a book that had Chinese foot binding as a major theme. I wonder how many of these women did these to their daughters just because they felt it would be unfair for them to not go through it after they had. I wonder if there were any salve owners in the south who felt that slavery was wrong but that it would be unfair for them to try to work without them. I could go on but I think you get the point.
I’ve given my kids the “walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways” argument several times. When I do it I hope they are taking away from it that I think it’s cool that they have access to cell phones, the internet, and other modern conveniences. They should be thankful that they have all of these things. I sure hope they don’t think that I’m crying foul. Yes, I wish that I’d have had some of the benefits as a kid that they have now. But I would hate for them to think that I’m putting them through something that I disagree with just because I had to do it.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/6295993438998140162/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/02/puzzles.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=puzzles http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/02/puzzles.html#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:53:00 +0000 Michael
It’s been a few years since I’ve done a jigsaw puzzle. But last month my youngest asked me to sit down with her and work on a small one that she got for Christmas.

This puzzle was of a horse wearing a Native American blanket. We went through all of the standard techniques for building a puzzle. First I propped up the box lid so we could see the picture that it was supposed to look like when it was finished. Then we proceeded to flip all of the pieces so that the picture side is up and the raw cardboard side was down. Next I started sorting out all of the pieces that had a flat side, assuming that these would be the border pieces. Ideally, in the process we’d find the four corner pieces. Then the two of us started sorting the pieces by color, trying to group the pieces into smaller groups to work on separately; horse, sky, grass, blanket, etc.

Next came the process of assembly. Each of us would pick up a piece and try to see how it fit into other sections that we’d already assembled. I started by looking at the picture and trying to establish the border. I don’t always start with the border but it seemed to work for this puzzle. Sometimes it’s easier to start with a predominant color and try to get it together first and then work in the border later. I don’t really have a preference as to which method I choose. It just depends on the puzzle.

Eventually you’ll end up with a few sections assembled but not linked together. At this point you start looking for pieces that have a little bit of two different things on it, pieces that could conceivably go into more than one pile. The pieces with a little grass and a little bit of horse help tie those together and the pieces with the grass and sky help defiant he horizon. The “ah ha” moments of most puzzles come when you can link two large parts together with just a few small pieces or sometimes with just one. The best pieces are the ones that help tie three different chunks together. Once you’ve linked them you start looking for support pieces that also connect those chucks. Those help reinforce that your linking pieces are correct. Sometimes they disconfirm and force you to look for new ways to link the puzzle together.

At some point it seems you are always stuck with a bunch of pieces of relatively the same color and your only clue as to how they need to be assembled is to look at the shape of the pieces themselves and try to make them work.

Using these methods we were able to assemble this 200 piece puzzle in about 15 or 20 minutes. It struck me that in order to assemble it we had to make several assumptions about the puzzle.

1. The picture on the puzzle is the same as the picture on the box. I’ve put puzzles together without the box just to see how much longer it would take. If I had to guess it’d take at least twice as long. I’ve also participated in a team building exercise where the puzzle was put into the wrong box with a similar but just different enough image n the outside.

2. The pieces only have images on one side and raw cardboard on the other. I have actually done a puzzle that had images on both sides, but the stamping process made for edges that were easy to determine which side of the piece was for image one and which was for image two.

3. Flat edges are for the border. It’d be really sneaky to see a puzzle that had a jagged edge to the image and flat pieces that but up together inside the body of the puzzle.

4. The completed puzzle has no missing pieces in the body. We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve lost one piece and we just don’t feel like we’ve finished it.

5. All of the pieces have to be used. Want to really throw your head for a loop? Throw in a few pieces from another puzzle just to spice things up. I remember doing a puzzle and my grandmother’s house and having exactly that problem. She’d found a few pieces on the floor and just threw them into the first box she found.

I can think of several more assumptions that we make when we try to make sense of the scrambled pieces in front of us. But this will do to start out with.

Lately I've been working on a puzzle that seems to violate all of these assumptions.
No picture on the outside of the box. No raw side to the puzzle and no obvious way to tell one side from the other. Flat edges in the middle and bumpy edges on the edges. A few holes in the main body. A few extra pieces from other puzzles.
And the coup de gras of the whole puzzle is that I have a few large chunks of the puzzle that don’t even attach to each other.

Anyway, that’s my little analogy for today. I think I stopped talking about jigsaw puzzles a few paragraphs ago.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/844975338267034544/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/01/one-of-my-favorite-mlk-jr-quotes.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=one-of-my-favorite-mlk-jr-quotes http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/01/one-of-my-favorite-mlk-jr-quotes.html#comments Mon, 18 Jan 2010 12:50:00 +0000 Michael “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King Jr.

]]> http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/feeds/5417459507972894300/comments/default 0 http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/01/vigilant-realism.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=vigilant-realism http://freephilosophicaldiscussions.blogspot.com/2010/01/vigilant-realism.html#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:26:00 +0000 Michael A few weeks ago Victoria pulled me aside to watch and interview with Barbara Ehrenreich on The Daily Show. Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. A few years ago Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was overwhelmed with well meaning people telling her to avoid any negative emotions and to stay positive. She began to look deeper into this cult like attitude that so many people have that you can jinx your health, relationships, and your carrier if you don’t always keep a positive attitude.
Not many of us enjoy being around a cynic all the time. Don’t mistake Ehrenreich’s criticism of the giddy optimism promoted by so many as cynicism. It isn’t. She merely points out that being unrealistic about things can be far worse than just the occasion outward sign of frustration of negativity.
Last month while reading Emotional Awareness the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman pointed out that optimism can be just as destructive as pessimism if it prevents us from seeing events as they really are. Ehrenreich builds on this theme and shows case after case where people have been deluded by their own optimism. She goes in dept to point out how destructive this mindset can be. Blinded by optimism we set reason and rational reactions aside.
This book pulled from and added to many of the books and issues that I’ve been studying for the last few years. She tackled many of the peddlers of irrational optimism like, Oprah, Rick Warren, Joel Olsten, Zig Ziglar and many others.
Unfortunately we live in a time when a book that is literally about nothing more than wishful thinking is a best seller and celebrities and actors are seen as authorities on just about any topic just because they can share a personal anecdote. I’m sorry a personal anecdote is where science starts, not where it ends. Just because Suzanne Summers feels better after a colonic doesn’t make it science and foregoing real treatments can kill you with or without a positive attitude.
I really enjoyed seeing a book that was so passionately pro-science and anti-magical thinking get such good press. I couldn’t put it down.

“A vigilant realism does not foreclose the pursuit of happiness. In fact, it makes it possible.” Barbara Ehrenreich

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