The Beauty of Imperfection

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It seems reasonable to think that imperfection offers a more authentic representation of the world. Plato maintained all of our physical reality, all objects are but flawed copies, imperfect representations of the Forms existing beyond the physical world. To be of this world is to be imperfect. In our reality, perfection can’t exist and is, therefore, without meaning.

I guess, then, what we need to understand is that as we work to improve, we must realize perfection will never be achieved, and that fact is the very thing that gives what we do value.

It’s good, sometimes to rationalize our inadequacies.

What Good is Critical Thinking

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Wondering lately about what it means to exercise critical thinking. Daily occurrences will produce events that require judgements. Often such mental requests should be denied, go unanswered because as soon as they’re thought about they {the critical assessments) will take hold, become of greater importance than if they would have been ignored or denied and more than likely such critical assessments are of little importance anyway, requiring, nevertheless, intellectual energy almost always better spent on positive actions.

A lesson I must concentrate on relearning.

An Inauspicious Beginning

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I went to the store this morning; collected what I needed and proceeded to checkout only to realize I’d forgotten my wallet.

Am ominous foreboding appears; what terrible occurrence will be next, I wonder. Will the dermatologist I visit later in the day need to autopsy a suspicious mole? Will the engine dash icon reoccurring with maddening irregularity require roadside assistance? Will all the tables be full at Bridgeman’s requiring a painful wait for our planned breakfast? Will Elon Musk become a trillionaire?

So many uncertainties. Must I accept that angst will always be a constant companion? Is stoic oversight the best solution to maintaining a peaceful existence?

Silly isn’t it to dwell on such insignificance when I know everything will be better tomorrow morning. For a while anyway. Until angst sets in once again.

Reminiscence

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Reminiscing with my siblings recently, sharing early memories of our home life, we found ourselves in the unique position, as so many families do, of calling up from the past events only we could know, renewing in the process common bonds. Diverse as our adult lives have become, sending us in different physical as well as emotional directions, the basic values developed in our childhood still hold. We share observations of our own children hoping we have passed along to them the sense of compassion, concern for our fellowman that we received from our parents, who always regarded family as their first concern.

Diverse as our adult lives have become, sending us in different physical as well as emotional directions, the basic values of our childhood check the varying complexities of our thought processes now allowing us to accommodate each other, although maybe best in the end to limit such gatherings to no more than one full day.

Transcendence

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Our first camping trip of the season with our small camper has me noticing the variety of large camping trailers and vans filling the parks this month. I’m struck by the names of some of these large mini-homes that are being directed into the nicely designed private campsites the state parks offer.

I’m wondering how the campers who are bringing these camping luxuries are thinking about the experience they’re expecting to have. Names like Transcend, Escape, Flight and the like suggest a vision the owner might have of finding his way beyond everyday existence to an alternative reality, at least for a few days, where the children will be happy and occupied where one can sit near an open campfire in contemplation, exchanging pleasantries with equally serene neighbors while enjoying well-functioning wifi access, warm toilets and showers.

Reality, of course will eventually set in as one tires of the long walk to the restrooms, replenishing the camper’s water reservoir, chopping wood and starting fires; the bed could be a bit more comfortable. It’s time to return home, let one’s colleagues know about roughing it while enjoying ‘the great outdoorsman’ status.

I guess it’s no wonder why so many people do it.

Quantum Mechanics

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I’ve been reading about quantum mechanics, not so much what it is but rather how the theoretical physicists of the early 20th C attempted to explain it. Years were spent attempting to derive mathematical explanations for how tiny invisible sub-atomic entities exist, interact and behave, and what form they assume in time and space.

The elusiveness of the endeavor led some theoretical physicists to determine that quantum existence was a closed system beyond the known structure of physical science, an idea refuted by brilliant thinkers such as Albert Einstein.

Still, the observed behavior of sub-atomic entities defied explanation. They could be waves or particles, their position and momentum impossible to determine with certainty. The thought experiment offered by Erwin Schrodinger emphasized the counterintuitive dilemma by suggesting photons presented into a closed box in which a cat was placed with a cyanide capsule triggered by particle but not wave suggested multiple scenarios: a cat dead in one, alive in another not reduced to a single truth until viewed by an observer, exacerbating the mystery of what quanta truly are, which leaves us within an unknowable realm beyond the reasoned three-dimensional world our limited intellects can conceive.

Abraham’s Covenant

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During the Middle Ages pogroms in various European countries disenfranchised Jewish populations, murdering and exiling thousands of people making them, in effect, homeless. Around the same time the papacy launched the Crusades against Muslim control of Jerusalem, a ‘holy war’ that permitted heinous atrocities against ‘enemies of Christ’. In the 15th Century Catholic authorities in Spain demanded Jews and Moslems to convert, refusal led to torture and burnings at the stake.

This infighting between religions, all adhering to a singular God, was a result, I guess, of mis-interpreted Biblical scriptures, studied in attempts to trace their religious origins back to Abraham through his sons and grandsons in order to determine who inherited God’s blessing as the chosen ones as dictated in the covenant passed down by God to Abraham.

Modern Art and Politics

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I saw an exhibit at the MIA recently that has me thinking about the confrontation between the fascist Nazi politics in pre-WWII Germany, confronted, as it was, by progressive cultural phenomena in the arts. The militaristic rigidity of the political authority at the time championing an Aryan superiority found nothing to like in the freedom of expression that was prevalent in German modernism of the time.

Political authorities denigrated modernism going so far as to produce an exhibit of modernist work labeling it degenerate, then confiscating and burning many works.

Something familiar about heavy-handed political will to control an unfavorable narrative.

Altruistic Evil

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……….. is savagery against one’s fellows in the name of God. Religious zealots fed by xenophobic fervor label those of different beliefs their enemies, infidels, therefore anti-God, deserving of extermination. These Others are demonized through false narratives creating the perception of a sub-humanity, an animal nature deserving to be sacrificed.

Examples of this behavior abound throughout history: The Old Testament God directing destruction of entire people He denounced as unbelievers; witch hunts in the Middle Ages resulting in the burning of countless people; French Catholic mass murder of the protestant Huguenots in the 16th Century and during the second world war the Nazi intent to exterminate the Jewish people, murder most foul perpetrated without regard for our common humanity.

It is clear that the demonizing of the Other continues to plaque us as evidenced by the xenophobic cruelty that today’s populist politics is perpetrating in the name of God. Such simplistic reductionism has me wondering how long humankind will survive.

Ways to Live

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In the late 19th Century Friedrich Nietzsche warned of the downside of embracing Christian morality, a slave-like adherence limiting one’s potential to achieve. One should reject such belief, he suggests, and instead strive to become, lift oneself above herd morality and establish a unique personal independence.

100 years later Rabbi Jonathon Sacks advocated for social integration achievable through adherence to a ‘do unto others’ imperative and achievable through spiritual faith. Such a moral stance ensures social cooperation and cohesiveness in keeping with societal norms and ethical principles.

Better, then, to relish a freedom beyond herd morality and an open-ended progressive future devoid of adherence to societal norms or the freedom spiritual belief and adherence to ethical principles shared among like minds provides?