Growing apart

Nine months ago I retired to follow my wife's job to Mississippi. And while my personal life is wonderful, my mental health is good and my emotions are generally upbeat, I am constantly bombarded with negatives from my environment.

For example, the person or persons who installed a red top on the hot water pipe behind the washer. And the person or persons who installed a red top on the cold water pipe behind the washer. Everywhere I turn in Mississippi I see incompetence and stupidity acted out in front of me. So much so that my normally seemingly inexhaustible rage seems to be... exhausted.

Being retired leaves me more time on line. Previous virtually all of my online reading was technical in nature, keeping up in my profession and the technologies in use in my profession. Slashdot was pretty much the only news-oriented type site which I read and mostly because Slashdot is a good site to keep a general eye on the type of technology with which I worked. For the last nine months I've read much more widely than that, and I have to tell you, a few hours following links on the internet and reading post and comments and even the most jaded stupidity hater will end up slack jawed in disbelief at the level of stupidity expressed in the opinions and ramblings stored on the servers of the world. I've read rants so ridiculous and delirious that the poster thinking they were the Emperor Napoleon would be one step closer to reality for them. People that make even my old college buddy, the one who thought he had a magical high school ring, seem sane.

There are some exceptions. I've found the world of atheist blogging, where the majority of posters are sane and reasonable and intelligent. Recently on alternet.org I read the following article http://tinyurl.com/dy53hj If "mainstream" religious nuts are dropping out, either turning more to the rational or the more extreme evangelical nuts, then there is a widening gap between those choosing to live in reality as much as possible and those choosing to live in fantasy as much as possible.

In Mississippi you still see, in the general population, the vast difference between rich and poor that dates all the back to the Civil war, and the US history of favoring large accumulations of capital (and how the oligarchs who make decisions of those accumulations of capital take advantage of the US political system) means that the huge socioeconomic gap in Mississippi is being mirrored all over the country.

Our current President is articulate, and this gets him charged as "elitist." Is stupidity now a goal? Are we headed for the society at the opening of Kornbluth's "March of the Morons?"

We are not melting anymore. We are separating. One of Heinlein's characters once opined that whatever particular government you instituted didn't really matter as long as there were sufficient avenues for advancement by merit. "Merit" is now not only running behind wealth and connections (which it pretty much always has), but it is now under attack by "spin" and "image" (again, backed by money). When attempts to correct information in the public sphere only end up serving to reinforce the original false claims, where are we as a society?

The fact of the matter is, most people cannot handle facts. (Consider the creationists flopping all across the public sphere, pretending that they are scientists.) If more people are working with fantasy rather than reality, then more than the US banking and mortgage industry is due to be reacquainted with Kipling's "Gods of the Copybook Headings":

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Disgusted in Mississippi

Today I saw something that made me want to puke.

I was driving behind a white Ford F150 that had a window covering in the back. The artwork was much like the 3 cross crucifiction (I can spell, don't 'sic' me if you quote me), except that the crosses were German Iron Crosses.

It doesn't take much imagination to figure out what kind of world view is required to put something like that on your car. There should be a filter in every ejaculatory duct to prevent racist Nazi-loving creeps like that from reproducing, and the fact that this knuckle dragging waste of space feels safe enough to advertise his moronic perversion severely tests the non-violent side of me.

Truth part 3 -- the importance of truth to me

I could talk about how the scientific method requires truthfulness and integrity, and all the obvious benefits of knowing how the universe really works is beneficial for society as a whole. But for this installment on truth, I think I'll put a more human face on the matter: my own.

For my wife, one of the more irritating aspects about being around the Pompotous is the fact that my predictions are correct more than 99% of the time. Being correct -- making statements that are as equivalent as possible with reality -- is a passion with me. My success rate comes from two factors: I tend to not make predictions in the absence of evidence, and I'm very good at analyzing evidence.

This drives my wife bonkers, a view that most, if not all, of my male friends have trouble understanding. (Not to digress into a discussion of gender.) Reality is what it is, why be upset about a statement demonstrating a good grasp of reality? To me, demonstrated accuracy is a helpful indicator that my model of the world still works, meaning I'm still in some sense sane, and that my opinions and judgments can be trusted.

The wife is also slightly irritated when I apply my truth principles to her interactions with our daughter. Maternal instructions of "eat some chicken and you can have more bread" would result in Baby K taking a single small bite and expecting more bread. Fortunately, after years of practice with me, Mama was able to adjust and now couches instructions in more accurate terms (i.e. separating out what must be eaten to gain the reward). I caved on the whole Santa Claus/Easter Bunny thing, and needed something in return: in our direct dealings with each other, I think we need trust, and trust can only come with accuracy, because accuracy reduces the chance of misunderstandings.

Excalibur is a movie with some excellent moments, and one of my favorites is when Merlin is pressed to provide an answer to "what is the single greatest virtue?" Eventually he spits out, "Alright then, truth, that's it, yes, it must be truth, above all. When a man lies he murders some part of the world." I love that part. Because I was raised in a family of lies.

Yes, to be truthful, my attachment to truth is in part an emotional reaction to my life. Some of the truths behind some of the lies I was told for between 11 and 30 years (all revolving around my maternal side):

• my grandmother had 3 husbands


• my grandmother's first husband beat her into a miscarriage after WWII, thinking the child wasn't his (it was)


• my mother was a bastard


• my grandfather, after a fling resulting in my mother, was married for 15 years and had 2 children


• my mother, as a teenager, located her biological father and stole from her stepfather and used it to fly to where my grandfather was, proceeding to break up his marriage


• my mother used her middle name because her first name was too close to that of one of my grandfather's legitimate children, whom he never saw after my mother broke up his marriage


• my grandfather, while a finalist for sergeant major of the Army, in part didn't get the post because he had joined the Army as part of a plea bargain over an assault with a deadly weapon charge (knifing someone at his high school prom)


• my grandfather was 1/2 Native American, which explained how so many of his friends from his Army days were Native American, but he himself "passed" during my lifetime

While in college I ended up hospitalized for a bit with a large combination of illnesses. (Fortunately I responded to the antibiotics and steroids, and so didn't have to get a spinal tap to rule out meningitus.) I was 15, and Gaby C. (my first girlfriend, 20 years old) didn't visit me. When I got out, the first time we engaged in foreplay I noticed a hickey on her breast. I wasn't quite horny enough to ignore it nor stupid enough to believe her when she said I had placed it there. Thanks, Steve P. Given where my life went, and that I became friends with the three other guys I know she dated during college, I should probably forgive you.

Julia G., the 16 year old I'd fallen hopelessly in love with when I was 11, was getting ready to start marriage number 2 by the time I reconnected with her after college, law school and joining the military. Rather than hating her betrothed, poor Steve M., I came to love him like a brother. So the first time Julia G asked me to become more than friends I left the state, coming back a year or so later when Steve M called and asked me to come back to help take care of Julia G and her mitral valve prolapse.

The night Julia G took off all her clothes and jumped on me, telling me to fuck her right then or leave her house forever happened to be the one night that Steve M wandered out of the bedroom after going to sleep. Julia G insisted on talking to him first, after which I was invited in and Steve M announced that we should try to make this work with all of us. A year and a half later, in a fit of pique, Julia revealed to me that she had given Steve an ultimatum that night: say what he ended up saying or she'd divorce him right away and move in with me. And, she added, I was surely too smart and must have known that's what she did. (I did not, by the way.)

When Curtis B, a married colleague of mine, took such great pains in seducing me, my track history, obviously, had me knowing that this would end badly, that her protestations of love for her poor husband, Kevin B, were incompatible with the "will always love you" and "will always be there for you" and so on towards me. Yet I ended up relying on them for a couple of years, right up until she broke up with me forever for the 1st time within a week or two of my devastation on learning that my grandmother had Alzheimers. (In case you are wondering, there were a total of 3 "break up forever" moments with her, the second right after she got pregnant for the first time (she said she was already two weeks pregnant the last time we had sex that go around, and I had no clue she was off the pill), the third after she felt sufficiently recovered from the miscarriage of the first pregnancy.)

Given my experience, I think that it is safe to say I agree with Merlin. On a personal and emotional level, truth is vitally important for emotional wellbeing. Lies generally don't last forever, and a lie discovered is the death of trust.

It is truth, people. Truth can, indeed, set you free. Without truth, without reality as it really is, there is just falseness, error and pain.

Truth: deal with it.

Unoriginality

A recent tweet from vjack (author of the most excellent http://www.atheistrev.com/) asked, "Why is it that nearly every Christian who comments on an atheist blog acts as if he/she is the first to ever do so?" I suspect this was in reaction to his latest Christian troll, a 14 year old with all the arrogance and enthusiasm of his tribe, along with the lack of answers or experience also common to his tribe.

In part I think that old arguments get brought up to provoke a reaction (rather than taking the time to see where they've been answered again and again and again), but part of it lies in the basics of the human ego, particularly among the incompetent. (Incompetent people, of course, have no idea they are incompetent, and tend to rate themselves more competent than people who are competent.)

Before I retired, the products whose user interfaces I and my team designed consistently made profits, took market share in expanding markets, and spurred supplies profits. Yes, these products were in a niche market where ease of use was an excellent selling point, but the point is that much, much money was made by these devices, and our work was the public face of these flagship devices.

As our success became obvious, market forces and trends happened to erode the profitability of other divisions in this Fortune 500 corporation. And here's the counterintuitive part, the one that I think ties in with vjack's question: the more money our products made, the more awards we won, the more rave reviews from customers, the harder it was for us to do our jobs.

Designing a user interface requires scientific creativity. You make several things up, you test them, you iterate, and so on and so on until, out of all your hypotheses about how different aspects may work, you end up with a theory of a usable interface that matches your customers' needs. This process involves seemingly endless research and thought and experimentation.

When you outperform others in a multi-billion dollar a year company, one where corporate "restructuring" is CONSTANT as a method for placating financial analysts, people want to be associated with that stellar performance. As our devices performed better and better across the years, more and more people tried to interfere in the development process: you should do this, our customers are going to hate that, I think this should go here and be called this, well how many people did you test, on and on and on.

And the most frustrating part of all of that almost universally worthless advice and questioning is that the majority of these incompetent hangers-on were impossible to shut up. "Yes, thank you, no one on MY team is a moron, your points have already been considered and rejected."

"But blah blah."

"Blah blah doesn't matter, it has already been considered, tested, and rejected by the exact same process that has resulted in profit making, market share taking devices for the last 9 years."

"Well, the old one did bleh, and I think that is the way to go, our customers really like bleh."

"I am the one that personally INVENTED bleh, I hold a patent on it. The same methodology that said BLEH was a good idea says that our current ideas are even better!"

And this continues for days. Weeks. Months. Years even. (We had a normal 2 year development cycle, and the same stupid suggestions would get reborn as new people, with no training in our field, no experience and little intelligence would come in and duplicate the time wasting of their equally idiotic predecessors.) I once tried sending out form letters of, "I read and understood your points. Your opinion now resides as a data point in the thousands of users and experiments whose actions and opinions and results I have absorbed. Nothing that you have said is new, and there is no reason for I or my team to spend any more time on this issue. Thanks for your input, The Pompotous."

Needless to say, I was ordered to stop using that -- too insulting, as if an untrained novice with no evidence attempting to dictate to a seasoned, educated and proven successful professional wasn't insulting! But that is corporate life. People really don't seem to understand that some ideas are correct, many more ideas are incorrect, and there are indeed instances where this can be demonstrated. Being wrong, as a scientist, is just part of life. It is part and parcel of the scientific method. Most people can't seem to internalize that, and end up wasting a lot of time with what is, quite frankly, crap.

And I don't want to give the idea that all input from untrained novices with no evidence is useless. Sometimes questions from the non-idiots can provoke a chain of thought, when answering, that opens up new doors to be explored. That's the basis of collaboration, at least the way it worked for my team: someone lays down a set of hypotheses and you start asking questions until you're down to things with all the obvious logical or technical flaws removed, something that needs to be explored through experimentation.

Too much ego is bad for the scientific method. So when scientists come along and say, "You're not only wrong, you're not worth arguing with because YOU HAVE NOTHING NEW AND THE PROCESS HAS ALREADY HAPPENED," they just go nuts with outrage. If the basis for, say, evolution was as completely worthless as the basis for, say, creationism, then speaking out would be warranted. But it's not.

I wonder if there is an atheist FAQ (or FAA, Frequently Answered Answers) that we could point to: you think Biblical Creationism is a scientific theory, you have provided no new evidence to support your ridiculous position, see tinyurl.bleh#3.

Truth part 2 -- what is truth?

Soon after I started skipping grades I had one of the many, many arguments that I've had with student teachers throughout my years. This particular young woman distributed a "True/False" test, but instead of a list of statements that could be marked true or false there were a list of questions, with question marks after them, something along the lines of:
Whiskey has a higher alcohol content than beer? True False

I objected that the choices weren't valid: questions framed in such a way could be answered yes or no, but that true and false applied to statements, and there were no statements on the test.

I might not have been such a jerk about this if the "teacher" hadn't tried to fun of me for correctly pronouncing "liquor" and "liqueur" in an early incident, causing me to a) question her age b) question her upbringing as a source for her ignorance and c) carry a grudge that expressed itself with all the vigor of a vindictive 11 year old.

In any event, Pontious Pilate cavalierly tossed off "what is truth?" and I'll just as cavalierly answer that truth is a statement that corresponds, as closely as currently possible, with all that is known of the objective universe.

The best method that we have at the moment for discovering truth is the scientific method: observe, hypothesize, predict, experiment. Like any field or method, there are fine details involved at each of the stages, and lay people are often mistaken about how to use the scientific method or how to interpret results.

The key feature to the scientific method, at least in my mind, is the fact that all parts of the scientific method are viewed in context and iterative, leaving the door open for correction at a later date. This is absolutely vital. I was once accused of being closed minded by a management type when (of course) the results of my team's experiments weren't what this VP wanted them to be. "I'm not close minded," I said, "I just only open my mind in the presence of evidence about my methodology or my results. Your single, biased opinion is one tiny, biased data point."

Since all of our interaction with the objective world (yeah, yeah, either it is there or it isn't, haven't seen a good argument for assuming that it isn't there) takes place through subjective interpretation, the scientific method (and associated ways of using it such as heterophenomenology) provides as much of a reality check as we can get, and being in touch with reality is pretty much the most objective definition of sanity that I can think of. Truth is something which we must always attempt to approach.

So when I talk about AGR (attenuated grasp of reality), I'm talking about having a declared position or action contrary to the current state of some truth. As an example: you send someone a letter stating X. That person then writes a bunch of people saying, "Pompotous said Y!" This is most likely AGR because "Pompotous said Y!" appears to be false statement. Evidence might be gathered showing that X and Y, whatever they may be, are functionally or semantically identical, but that's something that the Pompotous normally does to other people, not something that normally happens to himself.

Truth, part 1 -- when I'll hide it

Part 1 of series on truth

Obviously, Pompotous is not my real name. I use it in this blog as a guard against casual public discovery because my wife is a CEO who is in the public spotlight and must deal with the sort of people who might attempt to damage or hinder her work in a fit of pique over some of the positions that I espouse, particularly atheism.

The depth of my love for my wife is revealed by the fact that I've gone along with this kaka suggestion. Almost 30 years ago, as a young college student, I formed a group called "Students Against Senseless Stupidity," and served as its President and its only "open" member (meaning I was the only one whose real name was publically associated with the endeavor, which consisted of putting broadsides up around campus denouncing current stupidities). As an aside, I'm proud to say that the organization lasted for well over a decade before falling defunct, always with at least one openly acknowledged member.

So strong emotion can cause me to "hide" the truth.

Utilitarian considerations can also cause me to withhold information. When I first started at the Fortune 500 company I worked at for almost a decade, one of the leading lights of the organization told me that the free dissemination of information between departments within the company was a BAD idea. Much to my chagrin, he was correct, and I apologized to him. You see, dispersal of information is the best idea in a perfect world, but a large company is not a perfect world, and when you give information to idiots the resulting problems caused by the idiots outweigh the additional contributions from the non-idiots receiving the information.

So I'm willing to "hide" the truth for practical considerations, at least those which are also self-interest considerations (dealing with incompetents is physically, mentally and psychologically debilitating).

Yet a passion for knowing the truth is one of my principle traits (and my "telling the truth" trait is much stronger than that possessed by most other people, if my personal and professional life is any indication).

Executive compensation: what do you DO for your money?

The late, great Peter Drucker had a core question that he would ask workers and management when beginning to analyze a company: what do you do for your money? Drucker (who was incredibly influential in turning the Japanese car companies profitable) found that many, many people were unable to cogently answer that question, usually saying things like, "I go to meetings," or "I'm in charge of the blah-blah."

Drucker's viewpoint, after a long life of examining large companies, was that executive compensation should be, at most, 20 times greater than the compensation for the lowest paid worker. Obviously the exact number is subject to argument, but the important part is acceptance of the fact that what a CEO actually contributes to a company is worth much less than the hundreds-of-times the average worker's salary that they (in general) currently earn.

Even worse, executive pay is often not based upon performance -- consider the K-mart CEO who ran the company as it ground its way down over several years, all the way into bankruptcy, who resigned after the bankruptcy and received millions and millions in a golden parachute because he was "not fired for cause." And was able to turn around and get another CEO job right away. Or the recent AIG bonuses, in the hundreds of millions, going to the executives in the division responsible for AIG's de facto destruction, a heavy contributor to the current economic crisis.

In this article ( http://tinyurl.com/cxuhey ) the government appointed chairman of AIG makes use of the "We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses" argument. A common argument for outrageous executive compensation, the "reward to attract and retain" argument is, quite frankly, bullshit. (As the former CEO of Dupont once put it.) Yes, you must reward people for their work, but concentrating such rewards on executives (and to such outrageous levels) is simply part of the incestuous relationship between executives and boards and large scale stockholders. If you allow people to vote themselves obscene and dangerous amounts of bread and circuses, guess what? You'll get obscene and dangerous amounts of bread and circuses.

The same executives who outsource jobs overseas (sacrificing quality for short term labor savings -- and as a veteran in a Fortune 500 tech company I know what I'm talking about here, I worked with overseas programmers on a daily basis) don't seem likely, anytime soon, to turn that same logic on themselves. Why not outsource the CEO positions to CEO candidates in places like South America? Maybe the quality won't be as high, but they will surely be cheaper!

I do not know if the stimulus package will work. My macroeconomics courses instilled in me a healthy skepticism in the ability of a government to control something as fluid as a national or global economy. I do, however, know that the power to limit the power of executives is basically currently in the hands of the executives. The whole reason for a corporation is to evade responsibility, and those who attain the highest levels of corporate leadership are infused with that ethic.

Kipling's Gods of the Copybook Headings have spoken again, and the ONLY way to gain control of the runaway accumulation of power in corporations is through government limits. NOT government control (such as instituted by the Republicans in response to the crisis, and continued now by the Democrats), but by limits. Why are there game laws limiting the type and quantity of game you can gather? To create a sustainable ecosystem, to prevent, in a broad manner, the tragedy of the commons. Our economic ecosystem is in need of such limits, without them people are just too damned selfish, stupid and shortsighted to avoid periodic catastrophe.

Something good about Mississippi Part 2!

Yes, faithful readers, something ELSE good about Mississippi, and so soon!

Little Tokyo II (one of a few restaurants owned and operated by a Japanese family) serves, hands down, the best sushi that I have tasted in my life. I was in awe at the intense and interesting flavor combinations in the various "house" styles of sushi. Yes, it feels a bit funny to order a "Mississippian roll," but it is definitely worth it.

Something good about Mississippi

If you know the Pompotous, you know he is an extremely fair man. So the Pompotous needs to speak about something GOOD about Mississippi.

Our house has a fairly large courtyard. The two external walls are lined with vegetation, and the walls fronting the house are lined with french doors. This provides easy viewing of the multitude of wildlife that stops by to visit. We have had cats, mice, opossums, geese, ducks, hummingbirds, various other birds, chameleons, squirrels, chipmunks, and frogs visit from time to time. (And a deer was seen on the street outside the courtyard.)

Our latest visitors consist of two adult morning doves and their child. In addition to watching the feeding of the tyke, Pompotous and crew have observed the mama bird illustrating to the youngster how to fly, and, when leaving via the courtyard, we've observed the mama bird doing the "Oh, I'm damaged!" trick to lure us away from the baby.

It was very neat watching the mama dove demonstrate (in bits and pieces) techniques for flying, and was a positive Mississippi experience for the Pompotous and family.

Home schooling (for now the answer is "no")

As an atheist (and as what in todays terms would be an exceptionally globally gifted youngster who was radically advanced 5 grades and still ended up bored) home schooling is something I've considered for my little girl, currently 2 1/2. In our former home of Lexington, KY the top rated pre-school in the city was a secular one. The closest thing to that which we've found in Jackson, MS is the public school Montessori, which she'll be entering next fall.

Since my spouse is Episcopalian, my daughter is already exposed to imaginary friends, so atheism isn't a strong motivator for me when it comes to considering home schooling. I'm much more worried about her intelligence. It's too early to tell if she'll inherit my global gifts, but at 2 1/2 she's probably averaging 6-10 words per sentence, often ranging up into 15-20 word sentences with grammatically correct conditional clauses.

Exceptionally gifted children don't really need school to learn. (When asked how I managed to get a 31 composite on the ACT at the age of 11 I always answered, "I read science fiction.") As a former college instructor with an extensive liberal arts background, I wouldn't worry so much about providing my daughter with sufficient academic preparation for college. (Although MOST of the resources that I skimmed in thinking about this are Christian-centric.)

In some of the studies that I've been reading lately it looks like structured radical advancement has the most benefits for really smart kids, and most of that benefit seems to come from the social opportunities of interacting with people on your own level of thinking. (As one researcher put it, no one expects to mainstream a child with an IQ of 40, why should we assume that a child with an IQ of 160 should be mainstreamed?) Public schools are, as vjack says (http://www.atheistrev.com/2009/03/atheist-homeschooling.html), centers for social instruction, but that doesn't ALWAYS mean that the social aspects are beneficial (although those aspects certainly CAN be in some, perhaps most, cases).

My own daughter is extremely social. She stayed at home the first few months after we moved to Mississippi, but kept asking to go to daycare (which she'd done before I retired). She simply finds being around lots of other children absolutely fascinating. She emotionally craves that contact. At this point, for my daughter, home schooling isn't currently an option. As a rationalist, of course, new evidence can always lead to change.

I think that the real question for atheists when it comes to home schooling is, "What causes more damage? Socializing with children who are very, very different (either in intelligence or in world view), or having very limited socializing until the dangerous late-teens?" I have trouble believing that any child who is too far off the "norm" can emerge unscathed from childhood, and I think that all parents should navigate their individual courses based on the circumstances that confront them. (Duh!)

"Knowing" people

A delusional person I know wanted to know if we ever "know" people. Here's the relevant portion of the Pompotous's response.

With consciousness as an emergent property there will always be levels of examination where we cannot "know" anyone because at those levels there are too many variables for prediction (and because the attribute of "person" has not yet emerged at those levels). Sufficiently extreme input can give atypical results.

On some level we can know people, though, and we can certainly make predictions based on patterns of behavior. We may not always understand why a person does what they do, but, at least with most people, there is a good chance of understanding what they are going to do. (Such prediction was my profession, in fact. As a hyper-competent genius there is no way that I'm going to understand what goes on in the head of an average office worker, but after years of experimentation I became quite good at predicting how an average office worker would interact with her environment in any given situation.)

So, yes, for certain values of "know" you can know people. For example: my wife was pleased just a couple of days ago because I knew what toppings to put on a kind of sub when she just told me the type she wanted (and she hadn't ordered that type before). That same day I knew what my little girl was going to say to me when she came into the kitchen and found me after finishing her afternoon treat.

On higher levels, I know that if my friends jumped off a bridge I probably would, too, because they'd have a damned good reason for doing so. I know that I'd almost certainly do anything my father-of-choice would ask me to do because he wouldn't ask me to do anything that would violate who I am as a person. I know, from decades of experience, how my friends will be there for me when I need them. I know that my wife can be trusted with my heart and happiness, I know that she won't ever be shuddering and gasping under another man whom she's told she loves with all her heart.

The first and last trick to knowing is to look at people's actions, not their words. A minority of people lie because that is their nature or they enjoy it. Many of them are good at deception, and it takes a while to see in their actions and in their effects on those around them what they are really like.

You also have to be able to look at reality. Far more numerous than the selfish and deliberate liars are the delusional liars, who lie to themselves as well as others. These are usually desperate people who convince themselves that their fantasy is reality. The religious are the most obvious of the delusional liars, but they don't have a monopoly on it. Many of them mean well, but they have an attenuated grasp of reality and, I'm afraid, not much of a basis for a moral code. Delusionals liars, since they buy into their own fantasies, are very sincere and often think that they mean well, even when the results of their actions clearly indicate selfishness.

A subset of delusional liars are the incompetent. Incompetent people are, by definition, unable to accurately gauge their own abilities. And the vast majority of people are incompetent. Marketing types like focus groups, but usability professionals realize that you cannot trust focus groups because what people SAY about themselves is, at least 90% of the time, wrong.

In all cases, longitudinal studies are required. Observe people over time in various situations. Do they not have close, long term friends of a diversity of "types"? If not, why not? Do people seem better for knowing them? If not, why not? Do people trust them? Why or why not? Are their assessments of reality accurate? Do they know themselves and their own strengths and weaknesses? Do they know the strengths and weaknesses of their loved ones, and move to nurture or protect as necessary?

And in all cases, look at what people do to know them, not what they say. The abusive boyfriend that hits "his" woman will protest his love while using his fists. The terrorist, of any stripe, political or personal, says, "Look what YOU made me do," while deciding to hurt the innocent. The "family values" nuts have the highest divorce rates and spew hatred and venom against people working on creating families, while some pro-life "people" say that all life is sacred while killing doctors and nurses.

Look at what people do, how they influence the world. You can know good people because they are, in general, in touch with reality and have, in general, a positive effect on those around them that continues over time.

Words versus violence

I've never been a violent man. As a little Pompotini there were a few acts of discreet violence, but always in defense of someone else. I never had to physically protect myself because I always found that threats and intimidation were sufficient to forestall actual violence. (Which causes me to question some of the extremes that school systems these days go to in order to stop threats of violence. But I digress.

After growing from a Pompotini into a Pompotous, I've engaged in violence twice: once in taking a knife away from a rather rude man trying to rob it by pointing at my throat, once in response to a muscle-bound teenager who thought to beat the crap out of me for working at a place he'd been fired from. In both cases my assailants fled the scene in distress, and I was not actually hurt, but the feelings engendered by the violence, the fear, the breakdown of coherent consciousness when staring at a butcher knife in the hands of someone screaming at me, those impressions remain with me.

I could have killed them rather than driven them away with few hurts to anything other than their pride -- but I am not a violent man, although I capable of using it in its minimum forms when necessary. Had I not thought myself capable of inflicting harm under certain circumstances I would never have joined the armed forces of the US in my youth.

I have been the target of words and the target of blows and knife thrusts, and it still amazes me that there are people who equate words with violence. In graduate school I ran across a woman who, when I asked her if she would rather be called a "bitch" or shot in the face with a .45 caliber pistol, replied, "I don't know, words hurt for so long." This linking of words with violence has a following of sorts in the business world as well, particularly with sexual harassment consultants. In the latter case this is, perhaps, a case of frantically reaching for an argument that will be explain the seriousness of sexual harassment to the kind of microcephalic morons who might commit it, but I think not.

Take, for example, section 295A of the Indian Penal Code: Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

Pardon me, but the politicians that passed this, and the theists who utilize it, are lame fuckwits. 295a IPC assumes that words are dangerous. There are very, very few cases where I'll agree that words are dangerous, and they all involve violence in some form or another. Saying that you are a fuckwit with a ridiculous imaginary friend -- does that break any of your bones? Ignite your possessions and turn them to ash? In any way resemble stereo wire connected to your alternated, twisted and run into your gas tank?

No. There is a qualitative difference between words and violence. Words directly leading to real harm -- such as Manson telling his followers to kill someone, or shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater, thereby being sure to cause a few injuries in the attempts to exit the building, are few and far between, and certainly don't include things like making fun of some made-up characters in a book.

It is not words that are dangerous, it is power: the power to get someone to murder for you, the power to manipulate people into acts of violence upon themselves, the power to terrify a subordinate into putting up with sexual advances. You have little choice in how your body will deal with a bullet to the head, your mind has much choice in how to deal with someone calling you a name. When power and circumstances take away your choice, that is when speech is dangerous and calls for censure.

So for all those religionists out there who cry out at the horrors of saying, "Hey, you're an irrational idiot about this whole religion thing, aren't you?" I say, "Shove it." If a Christian burns down your Christian church (which is almost certainly the most likely church burning in the US), then you are the victim of violence and should be entitled to justice. If a teenager in a car shouts, "There is no God, chill the fuck out!" as he drives past your church, you have no cause for complaint.


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Barbarians

My heart goes out to my Indian friends. Apparently it is a crime to tell the truth about religions in India. This article in the Independent gives sufficient explanation and information for further pursuit of the situation: http://tinyurl.com/bny9ma

Who knew that such a disgusting law existed in India? Not I. But the law isn't the extent of the shamefulness in this case, apparently some barbaric Muslims blocked roads and attacked policeman in response to the reprinting of the article by Johann Hari. And why did these ridiculous people turn to violence? Because someone wrote a few words about someone long dead? Allah, like all other god(s)ess(es) is, of course, completely fictional, but if he weren't, if he were real, wouldn't you think that his Prophet on Earth could stand up to a little name calling? Five year olds stand being called names on the playground every day, but this Prophet fellow gets his nose out of joint to the point of violence over nothing but words? And accurate words at that? My, my, what a baby. And what a stupid bunch of followers this baby must have if violence is their answer to speech.

We have our own barbarians here in America, primarily of the Christian stripe. For the most part our religious violence is sly, hidden and isolated, and our govenrment organs, particularly the police, are fiercely protective of their theoretical monopoly on large scale violence. So we export most of the violence. (Hi, Iraq! How ya' doin'?)

Barbarians. So many, many barbarians. To Johann Hari, and, more importantly, to Ravindra Kumar and Anand Sinha I send my respect and my sympathy and my admiration. Good luck, and thank you for your actions. The world needs more people like you.