What If We Were Heroes?

Fiction is often a what-if speculation. We saw a movie last night with James Earl Jones playing the part of a wealthy black widower whose wife asked him on her death bed to open a reading room in the old ghetto where he grew up. What if someone really did that? What would happen? Would the people in that neighborhood really like it? Would lives be changed? The author of this story was playing a what-if game with those who read the story or watched the movie.
Some say that watching television is a waste of time. Perhaps some of it is, but a great deal of it is a what-if game that makes us think. Even the news plays a what-if game with us. What if we had a hurricane and flood like the people in New Orleans had? What if all those terrible things we see happening to others happened to us? Maybe this explains something I have been wondering about for a very long time. Why do people want to watch the bad news, but aren’t particularly interested in the good news? The bad news is a better what-if game. A great deal of fiction writings are stories of good versus evil. Even J.K. Rowling, a very creative writer who has made over a billion dollars with her Harry Potter books, says that her stories are about good and evil. Doesn’t every kid who reads the stories put themselves in the place of Harry or his friends who fight evil with their magic? Wouldn’t you like to have the power to fight evil and become a hero? Wouldn’t you like to be able to fight like Chuck Norris or be smart enough to solve crimes in a C.S.I. laboratory? Isn’t the ability to suppress evil one of our most basic human wants? Of course each of us has our own way of suppressing evil. Some teach; some preach; some write what-if stories; some are lawyers; some are police; some are fire fighters. There are many heroes among us. Not all persons who are fighting evil are heroes; some do more harm than good, but most are genuine heroes.

Too Much Either/Or Thinking

There is too much either/or thinking going on. Our neighbors in Kansas are having a big fuss about what to teach kids in their schools. They seem to think that the Theory of Evolution leaves the Supreme Being out of the equation. There is no doubt that evolution exists; we see it all around us every day of our lives. It is obviously the way that the Supreme Being does things. The great thing about evolution is that it explains so very much about life and how it works; but, it doesn’t explain everything. I think it is obvious that there is Intelligence greater than our own in the evolutionary process. As to what children should be taught in school, that depends on whether they are in science class or philosophy class. Any reference to religion should be deferred to the student’s church, so that we maintain the very necessary separation of church and state.

Free Cell Is Not a Waste of Time

I have learned a lot from playing Free Cell. There is no magic formula for winning at Free Cell. It is a matter of forecasting moves, being on the outlook for opportunities, and paying attention. Every game is different from any other game. Common sense is our best bet. Forget self-imposed rules. Forget advice from others. Just play well, whatever that means in the context of the moment. As it is with Free Cell, it is with life.

The Third Way - Transcendence

This morning’s newspaper has an article about Kansas changing their definition of science as it is to be taught in the public schools to appease the Bible thumpers. I stand in between those purely science people and the Christian Fundamentalists and I want to tell them that they are both wrong. While it is quite true that the Christian and Muslim Fundamentalists are more wrong than the Science Fundamentalists, I argue that both need to get real. There are things in this world that science cannot explain, but turning to the Holy Bible or the Koran for answers is going off in the wrong direction. We may never, at least in this dimension, be able to “grasp the natures” of reality to any extent that can be measured by science, but we do have a separate reality that should complement science rather than replace it. One might call this the “realm of possibility.” We feel things, hear things, and see things that science cannot explain. Most of these things are subjective in nature, but there are a great many subjects experiencing them. There are things like beauty, for example, which almost all people experience, yet science cannot explain or measure it. In my opinion, these things are the reason why we have intuitive right hemispheres to our brains.

Something Good and Right

Huston Smith has written a book entitled The Soul of Christianity. I have not read it, but I think I know what it means. Beneath the layers of doctrine and dogma, lie something that is good and right. Jesus preached some good things; but then people decided to make him a god and wrote up all that dogma to support that. The thing is; Jesus was not a god, but a wise Jewish rabbi who lived two millenniums ago. The underlying principles of Jesus teachings, “love one another” and the Golden Rule are a big part of the soul of the religion. He also taught that we should have a positive mental attitude, in his “you can move a mountain” sermon. The layers that Christians have piled on top of this soul are not so good. Another problem is that Christians tend too much to believe that “love one another” means only love other Christians. It would move us toward world peace and nonviolence if all members of this religion would accept the diversity that exists in our world.
I imagine that all religions have a soul that is good and right. They too tend to move too much toward strict adherence to doctrine above the more important principles. There is one word I could use to express the solution to the problem; it is THINK! Real education is learning to THINK. We also need to use the God-given common sense that we have.