the giddy geek
- June 11, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In Science, wonder
- 16
We live in a universe made of a curved fabric woven of space and time in which hydrogen, given the proper conditions, eventually evolves into Yo Yo Ma. — from Parenting Beyond Belief
Last year I wrote about Major Tom and the way the Apollo program lit up my imagination and fueled my wonder in the 70s. I always shook my head in pity at anyone who shook his head in pity at the “coldness” and “sterility” of the scientific worldview.
I touched on this in one of my essays in Parenting Beyond Belief called “Teaching Kids to Yawn at Counterfeit Wonder”:
Religious wonder—the wonder we’re said to be missing out on—is counterfeit wonder. As each complex and awe-inspiring explanation of reality takes the place of “God did it,” the flush of real awe quickly overwhelms the memory of whatever it was we considered so wondrous in religious mythology. Most of the truly wonder-inducing aspects of our existence—the true size and age of the universe, the relatedness of all life, microscopic worlds, and more—are not, to paraphrase Hamlet, even dreamt of in our religions. Our new maturity brings with it some real challenges, of course, but it also brings astonishing wonder beyond the imaginings of our infancy.
I offered a short list of the kinds of scientific revelations that make me woozy with awe:
If you condense the history of the universe to a single year, humans would appear on December 31st at 10:30 pm. That means 99.98 percent of the history of the universe happened before humans even existed.
Look at a gold ring. As the core collapsed in a dying star, a gravity wave collapsed inward with it. As it did so, it slammed into the thundering sound wave heading out of the collapse. In that moment, as a star died, the gold in that ring was formed.
We are star material that knows it exists.
Our planet is spinning at 900 miles an hour beneath our feet while coursing through space at 68,400 miles per hour.
The continents are moving under our feet at 3 to 6 inches a year. But a snail’s pace for a million millennia has been enough to remake the face of the world several times over, build the Himalayas and create the oceans.
Through the wonder of DNA, you are literally half your mom and half your dad.
A complete blueprint to build you exists in each and every cell of your body.
The faster you go, the slower time moves.
Your memories, your knowledge, even your identity and sense of self exist entirely in the form of a constantly recomposed electrochemical symphony playing in your head.
All life on Earth is directly related by descent. You are a cousin not just of apes, but of the sequoia and the amoeba, of mosses and butterflies and blue whales.
Now that, my friends, is wonder.
I’ve tried to pay attention when geeks (a term of genuine endearment from me) of one stripe or another are enraptured at the poetry or wonder of something I can’t see. I know they are experiencing something transcendent, something that I lack the language or knowledge to apprehend directly.
I remember a student of mine, a math major/violist, walking into a rehearsal with a look of utter bliss, as if drunk on a mantra.
“What on Earth happened to you?” I asked.
“Laplace transforms,” she said. “Laplace transforms happened to me. They are so beautiful I can hardly stand it.”
I knew she was right, and that I would never know why. I was envious.
So imagine the fellow-feeling I felt when I saw this wonderful video by Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy. Next time someone starts into the drone about the cold, passionless world of science, show them this:
The awe-inspiring picture isn’t even my main point — it’s what the picture has done to Phil, someone who knows what it means, and better still, takes the time to share his amazement with the rest of us. Thanks, Phil!
[Thanks to Tim Mills at Friendly Humanist for leading me to this video.]
go ahead, judge the book by it
A first glimpse of the cover for Raising Freethinkers. I think the folks at Amacom did a very nice job, wouldn’t you say?
I’m now at work on a blog series that’s gone completely out of control. It’s been years since I taught courses and workshops in critical thinking, but this topic has it all flooding back. It’s confirmation bias, the one critical thinking error at the heart of most of our worst thinking.
A comment from a parent in the Minneapolis seminar in March got me thinking about confirmation bias again. My own thinking error in a mid-April post was a classic example of it. An idle comment I heard while watching Global Catholic Network EWTN during my May visit to Amherst NY brought it up again. The presidential campaign is laced with it. My son is tripping over it. And I’m just tucking in to David Linden’s fascinating book The Accidental Mind, which among other things looks at the biology and neurology of it.
In short, I don’t know where to begin. But I’m having a ball. Becca’s also finishing Part 2 of her post today, so watch for that as well.
Other fun: The Meming of Life is undergoing a secret facelift by one of my favorite web artists. Stay tuned…
parenting and the safest sex of all
by Dale McGowan
We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.
Lily Tomlin
Joycelyn Elders, the most quotable U.S. Surgeon General of all time, once said, “Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily.”
That kind of quotability can get a political appointee fired. At a UN conference on AIDS in 1994, Elders was asked whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation to prevent young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity. “I think that it is part of human sexuality,” she replied, “and perhaps it should be taught.”
Never mind that the answer was sensible. Never mind that it was true. Once U.S. conservatives pictured their progeny receiving instruction in self-gratification—complete with cucumber-based demos, no doubt—Elders’ dismissal was assured.
Sense and truth have never had much place in our cultural discourse on sex, and few aspects of the topic have been more twitchingly mismanaged than masturbation. Those who recall the baffling mix of intense pleasure and intense shame that accompanies most discoveries of masturbation should want nothing more than to spare our own kids the unnecessary torment. Yet masturbation, the very first form of sex kids will generally encounter, is the topic most often missing from parent-child discussions of sex.
The roots of our dysfunctional attitudes toward masturbation are intertwined with the age-old distrust of bodily pleasures. That distrust probably didn’t originate in religion. Among other things, religion is simply a place to put our most beloved bad ideas for safekeeping. But when it comes to perpetuating and reinforcing dysfunctional attitudes toward the safest sex of all, it’s hard to beat the Abrahamic religions for over-the-top hysteria.
The Catholic catechism calls masturbation “an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” One popular 19th century Jewish theologian called it “a graver sin than any other in the Torah.” Mormonism teaches that “masturbation is a sinful habit that robs one of the Spirit,” while Shi’a Islam forbids it completely, quoting sect founder Imam Ali as saying “one who masturbates commits a sin equal to killing me eighty times.” ¡Ay caramba!
But at least one influential religious conservative has voiced support for a more accepting, naturalistic parenting approach to masturbation—and has been excoriated for it by his fellows. The following passage refers to a conversation he had as a boy with his minister father:
We were riding in the car, and my dad said, “Jim, when I was a boy, I worried so much about masturbation. It really became a scary thing for me because I thought God was condemning me for what I couldn’t help. So I’m telling you now that I hope you don’t feel the need to engage in this act when you reach the teen years, but if you do, you shouldn’t be too concerned about it. I don’t believe it has much to do with your relationship with God.” What a compassionate thing my father did for me that night in the car.
Aside from “I hope you don’t feel the need” and the bit about God, this is almost precisely the message I want to get across to my own kids. And it comes from none other than James Dobson.
He still tangles it with silliness, suggesting that boys in the act think not of any girls they know but only of their “eventual wives.” Christian author Herbert J. Miles goes one better, suggesting that boys pray first, thanking God for the gift of sexuality, then think only of him during orgasm (which certainly gives “Oh, God!” a whole new meaning). But let’s give credit to both of them for getting the basic message right and thereby reducing the number of children growing up with unnecessary self-loathing and sexual repression.
In the absence of communication on the issue, children are guaranteed to feel tremendous shame and guilt when the natural developments of early adolescence lead them to self-stimulation. When your child is on the cusp of puberty, casually let him or her know:
- What masturbation is;
- That it’s a normal thing nearly everyone does at some point;
- That it’s a natural indication that the body is becoming ready for sexual activity and reproduction;
- That all of the stories about grave consequences are complete nonsense;
- That though it is not shameful, it should be done only in private.
Removing the guilt and shame from our children’s first encounters with their sexuality requires no detailed description or instruction—just simple permission. And nonreligious parents, free of repressive doctrines, are in an ideal position to give their children that permission, as well as the mental, emotional, and sexual health that comes with it.
_________
This column also appears in the June 4 issue of Humanist Network News.
A nice page of info on masturbation from Cool Nurse — Teen Health, Teen Advice.
see you in a bit
- May 30, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In My kids, Parenting
- 19
I’ve been ordered by my family to go one week without opening the laptop, starting tomorrow. Thought I’d share a funny moment from this afternoon before I go.
I was sitting at the breakfast table, panting and sweating after mowing our STEEP front yard, when Laney (6) asked if I could play catch with her.
“Aw sweetie, I’d love to, but you know what I just did?”
“You mowed the lawn.”
“And if I juuuust finished mowing the lawn, then I am…what?”
“Uh……free?”
“hey, mr. cunningham”
You never know someone until you step inside their skin and walk around a little. –Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird
_____________
A few years ago I was teaching a seminar on the use (and misuse) of the arts in the Third Reich when a student asked a great question — one of the best I ever heard as a professor:
“What would you say is the basic difference between ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’?”
What an unusually great question. I stared at the carpet for a week or so as I worked out an answer. Then, amazingly, an answer that I still consider the right one came bubbling to the surface.
I think the central distinction between liberal and conservative is the attitude toward difference. Conservatism embodies our evolved tendency to value what is familiar, shared, and traditional while distrusting the unfamiliar or foreign. Liberalism tends instead to distrust sameness and to see greater value in diversity and change. It seems to (liberal) me that this distinction is at the root of things.
Correct me since I’m wrong.
We watched To Kill a Mockingbird a few days ago. I wasn’t sure if the kids would take to it — B&W, some wooden acting, etc. — but once again they surprised me. As of this morning, Laney and Erin have watched it three times.
I remembered the story as an indictment of racism, but the racial narrative is just one thread in the larger message of the film (and book) — that we fear what is different or unknown, and that that fear drives us to kill mockingbirds (i.e. to hate and harm the innocent).
Tom Robinson is a black man falsely accused of beating and raping a white woman. Mrs. Dubose, the cranky elderly neighbor, is assumed by the children to have a pistol under her shawl. The unseen Boo Radley is assumed to be a homicidal maniac who “eats raw squirrels,” while his father is assumed to be “the meanest man who ever drew breath.” Even a dog walking down the street erratically is assumed rabid and has the Bush Doctrine unleashed on him.
If my definition of the difference between conservatism and liberalism holds water, To Kill a Mockingbird seems to be an extended tribute to the liberal impulse and indictment of the conservative. But again, I’m a damn liberal, so I might very well be engaging in confirmation bias. I’d be interested to see if a conservative sees it differently.
There’s one scene that seemed relevant to the nonreligious — who are, after all, among the hated-different-unfamiliar in our society. A classic lynch mob has gathered at the jail to kill Tom Robinson, only to find his lawyer, Atticus Finch, sitting in the doorway, reading a book.
The mob already has Atticus neatly labeled and dismissed as a “nigger-lover” and a “tricky lawyer” (and now a book reader! Pinko elitist to the core, this one). Having replaced his humanity with a caricature, they will find it a simple matter to do whatever it takes to get past him.
But then Atticus’ children Jem and Scout show up. He orders them to leave. They refuse, and Atticus does not beat them to death (permissive parenting!). Then Scout recognizes a face in the crowd: Mr. Cunningham, a farmer for whom Atticus has done work and whose son Scout knows. “Hey, Mr. Cunningham,” she says:
I said Hey, Mr. Cunningham. Don’t you remember me, Mr. Cunningham? I’m Jean Louise Finch. You brought us some hickory nuts one early morning, remember? We had a talk. I went and got my daddy to come out and thank you. I go to school with your boy. I go to school with Walter. He’s a nice boy. Tell him ‘hey’ for me, won’t you?
She says his name. She says her name. She reminds him of their connection and offers a kind greeting. Cunningham’s body language says it all. He squirms. He looks at the ground. He tries to hide behind the brim of his hat. He can’t keep the caricature from dissolving in the face of Scout’s humanizing connection.
I spend a lot of time telling nonreligious parents that one of the best things we can do for our children is to be out — to have our views known by those around us. It’s far less important to engage and challenge other beliefs than to simply put a known and loved (or hell, even mildly liked) face on the abstract bugaboo of religious doubt.
It works for every kind of reviled “other.” It’s easy to go to war against distant foreigners as long as “they” are “over there,” safely unknown and simplistically drawn. It’s easy to convince yourself that gays are a perverse threat to all that’s holy as long as you don’t know anyone who’s gay. And there’s no difficulty in convincing yourself that atheists are immoral hedonists if you continue to assume that those around you are all believers.
That’s why it’s important for those who differ from the majority — blue people in red states, red people in blue states, gays, atheists, the works — to be out of the closet, to be a smiling, normal, ethical contradiction to all the fearful assumptions. So I try to convince nonreligious folks to seize those “Hey, Mr. Cunningham” moments and put a human face on disbelief. And it’s equally important for us to avoid drawing a caricature of all religious belief — to recognize the normal, sane, ethical believers all around us. That’s the way the caricature crumbles — one person at a time.
three koans at turner field
- May 27, 2008
- By Dale McGowan
- In Atlanta, My kids, Parenting
- 14
We all went to see the Braves play the Diamondbacks on Sunday, our first trip to Turner Field since moving to Atlanta — and it was exactly as captivating as I had expected. Not a sports guy, you see. But in the stands, as one by one the kids joined me staring at the sky, wondering why baseball is called a spectator sport, I was peppered with questions so difficult to answer they were practically koans — those essentially unanswerable, Buddhistic questions on the order of “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” or “Is there another word for synonym?”
Here are three, each a perfect illustration of the asker. After reciting each koan aloud, sound the bell and lose yourself in contemplation:
KOAN #1 (Delaney, 6)
What makes gravity?
KOAN #2 (Erin, 10)
Hey, why aren’t there any girls on the baseball team?
KOAN #3 (Connor, 12)
Why is card-counting against the rules at casinos if it’s really just a way of carefully paying attention?