On memory and photographs

Someday, I'll be you: remembered best in the half-baked memories of grand-children who'll dream of stars and die too soon -- beauty trapped in tangled fibers.

On learning mathematics, learning to run, and learning the other stuff

From Lockhart's Lament (PDF)

SALVIATI: ...I'm complaining about the complete absence of art and invention, history and philosophy, context and perspective from the mathematics curriculum ...A real appreciation for poetry does not come from memorizing a bunch of poems, it comes from writing your own.

SIMPLICIO: Yes, but before you can write your own poems you need to learn the alphabet. The process has to begin somewhere. You have to walk before you can run.

SALVIATI: No, you have to have something you want to run toward. Children can write poems and stories as they learn to read and write. A piece of writing by a six-year-old is a wonderful thing, and the spelling and punctuation errors don't make it less so. Even very young children can invent songs, and they haven't a clue what key it is in or what type of meter they are using.

SIMPLICIO: But isn't math different? Isn't math a language of its own, with all sorts of symbols that have to be learned before you can use it?

SALVIATI: Not at all. Mathematics is not a language, it's an adventure. Do musicians “speak another language” simply because they choose to abbreviate their ideas with little black dots?

Words too unkind for a mother (of a different kind)

Someone once told me that they saw nature as a "disgusting" system that rewarded organisms for adopting an every-thing-for-itself modus operandus. While agreeing with the basics of what was said -- nature can be a "cruel" mistress, and it does revolve around death and killing -- I, on the other hand, see it as a staggeringly beautiful system partly because this cruelty needs to exist in order to create all the incredible diversity we see around us -- including intelligent folk like us, who can then sit around and contemplate how contemptuous and disgusting it is.

Dropwise distillation of a personal philosophy

I posted something as my Facebook status way back in November, and from the comments, I didn't do a good job conveying what it meant to me. Let's give it another shot, this time with some context:

I think we only accept truth insofar as it will allow us to be happy, or under circumstances in which future happiness is fathomable. The trick then, oddly enough, isn't always ramming home the facts, but is instead persuading others that they can still be happy even after accepting a given truth.

Here's where it came from: I'd recently had a ridiculous, across-the-board conversation with a guy I know, and I was so frustrated afterwards! (I'll keep his identity to myself -- he'll know anyhow if he reads this.) In all honesty, he and I share many of the same views, but he's a skeptic at heart, whereas I think I lack the requisite degree of cynicism that goes with that territory. Anyhow, we were talking religion and personal philosophies, and he was arguing life down to nothing -- very much like I imagine a nihilist would -- reducing things logically down to a point where everything lost meaning (or at least that's how I saw it).

After like 2 hours of talking and disagreeing, I was finally like "Look, I concede that what you're saying is essentially correct, but I can't carry my logic that far. I refuse. Your outlook is not an envious one, and I honestly don't ever want to see the world through your eyes. I need a cutoff point to stay sane. I could dissect the world right down to it's pieces of nothing, but where would that leave me?"

And then I realized that this was pretty much the same argument that many religious people make about atheism. Whether it's implicit or explicit, they say: "That's not true. If I go to the place where you are, then there is no purpose. I refuse to believe that. I can't." But for me, I know that I'm here with my personal godless worldview, and I can still see reasons to exist and reasons to do good and reasons to be happy. And if I expect anyone to take that leap, it's not by convincing them of the cold trail of logic, but by convincing them that the destination isn't scary -- godlessness is not the terrible end of humanity and compassion. Now, my friend was trying to tell me that he still saw the world with meaning, despite all the depressing-sounding things he was driving home, but obviously, he didn't do a good job of convincing me that his leap in perspective wasn't scary.

So anyhow, I initially came up with that blurb in terms of spirituality, but it's just as applicable to sustainability -- Just as atheism isn't the terrible end of humanity and compassion, a more sustainable world isn't the terrible end of prosperity and happiness. That's what we need to drive home.

Which I think is why I like Worldchanging so much. Optimism can't just be an add-on -- it needs to be the focus. It is the key ingredient -- the sugar without which the medicine offers no cure.