Steppin Stone

Nothing quite like 60s white people gettin' down.

Lamb Chop

 

Post 9800 - Fidelity in the Face of All Evil

Then Eustace came to his senses and saw the Calormenes scampering back to their friends. But not all of them. Two lay dead, pierced by Jewel’s horn, one by Tirian’s sword. The Fox lay dead at his own feet, and he wondered if it was he who had killed it. The Bull also was down, shot through the eye by an arrow from Jill and gashed in his side by the Boar’s tusk. But our side had its losses too. Three dogs were killed and a fourth was hobbling behind the line on three legs and whimpering. The Bear lay on the ground, moving feebly. Then it mumbled in its throaty voice, bewildered to the last, “I—I don’t—understand,” laid its big head down on the grass as quietly as a child going to sleep, and never moved again. The Last Battle CS Lewis

It's hard not to love that bear, supposedly not very smart and dying with his questions unanswered. Yet in the end, his was a very great wisdom.

Spoiler alert: "Among the happy creatures who now came crowding round Tirian and his friends were all those whom they had thought dead. There was Roonwit the Centaur and Jewel the Unicorn and the good Boar and the good Bear, and Farsight the Eagle, and the dear Dogs and the Horses, and Poggin the Dwarf. “Further in and higher up!” cried Roonwit and thundered away in a gallop to the West"

May we all do as well.

Christmas Goose

Have any of you made roast goose?  I am considering it for this Thanksgiving or more likely, Christmas, and want to know what problems people have encountered.

Including the problem of "Y'know, I don't think I like goose all that much."

Update: The recipes are about as straightforward as you can imagine.  "Put some citrus in the cavity and take it out later.  Cook it in a bath of shallow water, skimming the fat as you go.  Don't overcook.  Let it sit for a while."

The White Man Has No Friends

Recently from Aporia Magazine, an article by Canadian* anthropologist Peter Frost: The White Man Has No Friends. It is an anthropological look at how whites are viewed by native peoples worldwide, including our preference for individualism rather than group-mediated behavior. He is certainly not the first to notice this. I recall Theodore Dalrymple describing his time as a young doctor in Africa, and the relative luxury he got to live in despite a modest salary - because he could keep his money and use it on himself, while the African doctors, though paid the same, were expected to share it with numerous relatives and fellow-villagers. They resented him for it. Frost describes the use of group violence against individuals even when the individual has committed no harm, simply because they are part of an enemy group.  Such things are not unknown in the west, but much less pronounced. Perhaps significantly, it is more common among the young. That groupthink may be the human default which we teach out of our children. 

OTOH, some HBD people teach that it is a result of centuries of Christian prohibition against cousin marriage subtly changing our ability to cooperate with non-relatives and promoting an individualist outlook. Yes, the Church taught this everywhere, but for some reason was only obeyed in Northern Europe. There is some evidence of higher status of women and greater individualism among those tribes already, for example the ability of warriors to choose which leaders they would align with, rather than be solely bound by kinship ties. (Kinship ties remained strong, but only in comparison to modern sensibilities, not in comparison to other groups of the time.) The Northern European groups may simply have been already more used to the idea not marrying close cousins, at least, and had a jump-start on individuality already. Work in progress on the research there.

Frost credits these different attitudes with the spread of influence, even dominion, over the rest of the world.

In the late Middle Ages, the peoples of northern and western Europe gradually consolidated into nation-states and began a relentless expansion outward, first within Europe and then beyond… until they dominated the entire world. This domination was most obvious in their creation of colonial empires, but it was also apparent in other areas: the economy, science, technology, and so on.

So what was the secret of their success? It seem to suggest something to do with trust, individualism, and Christianity. Many readers here will also shout out: “Intelligence!” Perhaps. But a number of human groups have reached high levels of cognitive ability, maybe even higher, while failing to achieve the same dominance. Think of the Parsis, the Ashkenazim and the Chinese.

Yes the Hajnal Line, the Western European Marriage Pattern, comes into this. It also fits in with Grim's recent discussion of Roman versus Greek concepts of virtue. Frost summarises all this and places it in a context of a full cultural difference. He sees its apotheosis in The Enlightenment, which always annoys the heck out of me, especially when he is the very one tracing these values back as far as the 600s, but that made-up era will always be popular with the secular fans of Western Civilisation, I'm afraid.  He also quotes Gregory Clark on the full boat of cultural changes "Thrift, prudence, negotiation, and hard work were becoming values for communities that previously had been spendthrift, impulsive, violent, and leisure loving.” I agree, but note we still have plenty of the latter behaviors, just less regularly than other peoples.

*Not the British anthropologist who studies the Incas.

Birthplace

I shared an office at one point with a gentleman just a little older than me, who had grown up in Chelmsford and Lowell, MA and gone to Fitchburg State. This is very much the territory of my father's family, and my father's second wife is still alive, living in Nabnasset.

One of the programs at the hospital included the place of birth of the patient. Paranoid patients would sometimes not want to tell us, wondering what terrible use were were going to put that information to. While making other demographic entries in the program I hit one puzzling entry that in a moment caused me to smile, knowing I would keep this one for years.

"Fred. Fred. Come over here.  You have to see this." There under place of birth was the entry Wusta. A wonderful New England accent moment.

Fox On the Run

 It's not actually a 1940's Earl Scruggs or Bill Monroe bluegrass tune, but late-60s Manfred Mann.

One of my favorites for years.

Kairos

In looking up logos, ethos, and pathos, Aristotle's modes of persuasion for use in a possible post*, in order to get them quite right, I found there is also kairos. Huh.  Never heard of it before.  I rather like it. It means the "right time", "season" or "opportunity".^[4] Kairos is an appeal to the timeliness or context in which a presentation is publicized. (Wikipedia entry) The example given is an advertisement that relies on the same logic, appeal, and emotions it did forty years ago but has a different effect now.  I have thought that this was the one most powerful advantage of Martin Luther King, Jr.  All the logos, ethos, and pathos arguments had been made before, sometimes years before. But he sensed it was time, and leveraged the situation on that basis. Evangelists do the same, often realising it only in theory that a certain portion of their listeners will have been primed by the Holy Spirit to hear the Word this night, not on the basis of their preaching but because of how their whole lives have unfolded leading up to this moment. 

As a practical matter, we may use this far more often than we notice, only telling ourselves that we are operating from logos. We always think we are being super-logical, yet as near as we can test such things in our thinking and behavior, it seems we are usually just employing post hoc rationalisation.  Some psychologists would claim it's never any better than post hoc reasoning. I would allow that much is, perhaps even 99%.  However, why would we develop such a skill for rationalisation if it did not occasionally actually work and be recognised as superior? Why bother?

*I didn't use it directly in the previous post about inference, but it's in there, in the emanations from the penumbra.

Inference

When Christians are asked to provide a proof of the existence of God, or of the resurrection, it is a common response to use some version of the explanation "It doesn't work like that. Proof is actually a form of compulsion, that there is no possible other explanation and one simply must accept Explanation A. It is better to use what is called inference to best explanation." I will develop that no further. Others have done it better than I ever will.

I will allow that I have an initial sympathy with those who find this unsatisfying. It does have the sound of being evasive. "Well, you haven't got a proof, so you're sidestepping into some sort of second- or third-best approach instead." I don't think that argument is sustainable.  I think it is itself an evasion, because even those who use it revert immediately to inference to best explanation for everything esle they do, without noticing or acknowledging it. Yet people with OCD or Aspergerer's or a rather strict sense of laying everything out in the most provable possible sense do see why it at least seems like an evasion at first.  I would only say "Hold that thought and follow it further."

My intent here is to speak directly to the Christians about this state of affairs. Many of us would love to have a proof.  We would earnestly desire to have that level of no-escape surety, to be in effect compelled to believe because there was simply nothing else that could make it to the table. I think we miss why God runs things that way. He runs it that way because it accords with reality. If we had proof that God existed, we would without drawing another breath want a proof of exactly what sort he is, in finer and finer detail.  We would want proof that we were called to be an evangelist and want to know whether we should speak or write? To speak to crowds or to individuals? To preach revival in Memphis or in Nashville? To start the crusade at 7PM or 7:30PM? It is not only that we would be spoiled and childish, not developing any faith about it, which is the usual explanation given. It is that once one proof was given, of anything, we would never be quite sure of anything unproven ever again. And why would we not? If God proved one thing because it was so important, then why not the next thing as well?  What would be a possible reason for God not to prove himself over and over to the smallest detail?

We are given inference to best explanation as our starting point because it is also going to be our ending point and every point in between. In creating a psychiatric diagnosis, we look at the possibilities and try to fit the patients words and actions into one slot after another, hoping to find the closest fit. There are no glass slippers. Nor are there glass slippers in other parts of life.  Even the best possible matches have some downsides, some questions, some exceptions.

Swamp Yankees

Based on a conversation over at Grim's I am reminded of a joke.  I should tell more, really.

Fred Fernald came home to find that his wife had taken one of the trucks and run off with the hired man. And it was the Ford, the one with the new clutch.

Judging Update

I judged the type of event I participated in in high school, and did reasonably well at then. So I had seen, however many years ago, children of the same age do this much better than what I was seeing in front of me this morning.  At the time I was judging in the morning I had a fairly clear idea what the difference was, and could relate it back to the last time I judged, even though those events, Persuasive and Impromptu, were somewhat different from Open Interpretive and Biblical Thematic that I saw today. I had the mechanics of judging down, I had an idea I thought solid, and I discussed it with some experienced judges and coaches over lunch. They were in agreement, and thought that only a percentage of students would get what I was driving at, and those mostly older and more experienced. One coach told me that he had a boy a few years ago who had learned it by junior year, and had won at nationals two years in a row, clearly better than all the competition.

So for whatever reason (perhaps related to increased abstract reasoning somehow?) only some will get it, but they thought if I wanted to hit that idea hard in my judging comments it would be a good thing. So I did. I worked some or all of the following into every ballot I filled out this afternoon.

It's not a race. If you watch a movie, or a standup comedian, you will see that they use the pauses and hesitations as much as the words to get their character and story across. You should be pausing in the middle of some sentences, and the end of others, and when you get really good, even have some planned "false starts" where you begin a sentence again after a word or two - just as it happens in real speech. If you have gone three straight sentences without a serious pause or a hesitation anywhere, you have probably done something wrong. You should change expression in the pauses as new thoughts appear to occur to you, or sigh deeply, or shake your head.  It should take twice as long as just reading the words.

I did not write, because there was not the time, but to expand here: Consider the story of the woman taken in adultery in the Bible. When we read it aloud, it rattles right along. But to act it as a scene, there is a long pause between the question to Jesus the question changed and repeated a few times, and his answer; a painfully long pause while he draws in the dirt; a long pause between his question to the woman and her answer.  She has been weeping and is not nearly recovered.  She came up to the edge of a painful death. She still isn't sure what happened to her or who this man is. Her crying should not be wailing or shrieking, but soft, and she should have a hard time saying anything.  Then Jesus pauses again, and may even pause between "Go now...and?" and she looks at him puzzled, not knowing what to answer. When he says "Sin no more" that should take her a while to absorb as well, before she nods and walks away. It takes a minute to read verses 4-11 out loud.  It should take four minutes to act it out. Don't do that for performance at a competition - unless you have been doing this pausing for effect for a few years - but do it for practice.

Or in the chapter "The Rashness of the King" in CS Lewis's The Last Battle, the scene between Tirian and Jewel the Unicorn leading up to "...we must go on and take the adventure that comes to us."  Thirty seconds read aloud. Twice that when acted, or more. These are the most important moments of their lives you are enacting.  They aren't rushing, they are absorbing moment by moment.

Judging

I am off to judge Christian home-school high school speech contests today, the Regional championships in Chelmsford, MA. I have done it once before, with mixed success.  Unfortunately, the improvements I noted in myself over the course of the day I cannot now recall. Starting at near-zero.