I don't believe in magic. I don't believe that reciting chants or incantations can produce any demonstrable effect on the physical world or defy causality. But this is not to say that I don't believe in the power of the spoken word; that saying a word aloud can create a very profound impact.
Many words (often vulgarity) clearly have this impact: racial slurs and swears and obscenities manage to affect our moods more than their euphemistic counterparts. Most of these words are fairly well-known, and those who speak them without consideration are at least aware that the words bear unpleasant connotations. There is, however, one word whose use (or misuse) seems to elude most who come into contact with it. This word has the power to--as if by magic--distort facts and twist reality. It's no hocus pocus, no alakazam...it is the otherwise ordinary-seeming can't.
Many of you are likely rolling your eyes and thinking of when you would ask your teachers, "Can I go to the restroom?" only to be corrected with a snide, "I don't know, can you?" This all-too-common experience for most of us only addresses a very superficial misunderstanding of the power of can't (and can). The full power of can't is much deeper.
Can't negates ability. Can't negates possibility. And in many cases, can't negates responsibility. To say, "I can't go to your party because I have to work" removes the burden of responsibility from the speaker; whereas, "I will not go to your party because I choose to go to work" more accurately reflects the role the speaker plays in the process. The speaker (for whatever reason) chooses to attend work over attending the party. Granted, choosing to miss work might produce more unpleasant consequences for the speaker than choosing to attend work, but a choice is still being made. The use of can't as an excuse circumvents the responsibility for this choice on the part of the speaker.
In other situations, can't has the power to not just deny responsibility, but possibility. Many times people will use can't when referring to a task that is foreign, overly difficult or that requires extensive alterations in order to succeed. A statement like, "I can't write a good essay," while technically accurate for some speakers, is often used to preclude the possibility of ever being able to do so. A more accurate statement by someone having difficulty with writing would be, "I don't know how to write a good essay." A similar statement,"We can't possibly solve this problem," may be used to deny the possibility of multiple approaches to solving the problem or of multiple interpretations of what it means for the problem to be solved. A more accurate statement might be, "This approach does not solve the problem."
Is can't evil? Should we strike all uses of it from our language? Certainly not. It serves an important purpose when describing limitations and deficiencies ("That blind dog can't see the ledge"). When used with qualifiers, it even loses some of its magical properties ("I can't write a good essay yet" or "We can't possibly solve this problem with only this broken pen and a greasy napkin").
Like with all magic, though, once you know how it works you have no excuse for being fooled by it again.
Monday, May 27, 2013
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Treating People Like People
Saw the movie 50/50 tonight, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a twenty-something man coming to terms with his cancer diagnosis. Seth Rogen's pitch of the movie on The Daily Show didn't do justice to the premise, but it did get me to check out the trailer. The trailer did a great job of portraying our characters as more than the typical 2D cut-outs we get from cookie-cutter rom-coms dealing with pain and loss, i.e. Sex and Other Drugs or P.S. I Love You.
50/50 could easily be praised simply for its ability to tread the line between comedy and tragedy to paint for us a moving and compelling story of a man dealing with a damning diagnosis. However, I feel that its true strength lies in its ability to create human characters rich with complexity, vices, and virtues. 50/50 also manages to do so without the heavy-handedness and sentimentality of movies like Crash, where we're beat over the head with the didactic "treat everybody nice 'cause you don't know what they've been through" treatment.
50/50 successfully portrays a tenet which politics, nationalism, and religion tend to underplay--that we are all people. "My enemy is my brother or my sister first, and my enemy second."
50/50 could easily be praised simply for its ability to tread the line between comedy and tragedy to paint for us a moving and compelling story of a man dealing with a damning diagnosis. However, I feel that its true strength lies in its ability to create human characters rich with complexity, vices, and virtues. 50/50 also manages to do so without the heavy-handedness and sentimentality of movies like Crash, where we're beat over the head with the didactic "treat everybody nice 'cause you don't know what they've been through" treatment.
50/50 successfully portrays a tenet which politics, nationalism, and religion tend to underplay--that we are all people. "My enemy is my brother or my sister first, and my enemy second."
Monday, October 3, 2011
To Boldly Go
Anyone who's seen the new Star Trek movie has undoubtedly noticed the rampant amount of lens flare the film makes use of and, while some may think it cheesy or tacky, I began to appreciate it more after J. J. Abrams explained how he felt that t was cool that "the future was so bright it couldn't be contained in the frame."
Looking to the future and its unbridled possibilities, I am usually overcome with a wave of awe, an electricity of anticipation, and more than just a twinge of fear. At times, though, I find myself so completely overcome with the beauty of human potential and the what-can-be of tomorrow that, if I were a stronger man, I would allow myself to cry at the amazement of it all. I fathom an America where community and human engagement have become tangible, where the news broadcasts highlight good being done, and the new church preaches that "education" is a lifestyle, like being a vegan or a parent or a citizen, not a four-letter word whose domain begins and ends within the walls of a building. And then my next immediate thought is usually a very sobering "it's a shame that we are not on-track to make this a reality" and I'm aware of how a frustrated idealist can be mistaken quite easily for a brooding pessimist.
Looking to the future and its unbridled possibilities, I am usually overcome with a wave of awe, an electricity of anticipation, and more than just a twinge of fear. At times, though, I find myself so completely overcome with the beauty of human potential and the what-can-be of tomorrow that, if I were a stronger man, I would allow myself to cry at the amazement of it all. I fathom an America where community and human engagement have become tangible, where the news broadcasts highlight good being done, and the new church preaches that "education" is a lifestyle, like being a vegan or a parent or a citizen, not a four-letter word whose domain begins and ends within the walls of a building. And then my next immediate thought is usually a very sobering "it's a shame that we are not on-track to make this a reality" and I'm aware of how a frustrated idealist can be mistaken quite easily for a brooding pessimist.
Monday, May 16, 2011
The New Religion
"But as church becomes a place where people go to look good — instead of being the one, safe place where they could risk looking bad — we're losing that regular storytelling forum. And the salvation, redemption and communion it allows."
In a world where we accept what it means to be human--that talking about our fears and our urges helps us to take ownership of them, to master them--we could hope to dispense with the lies we teach, the lies we preach, the lies we cling to in the darkness that are sometimes all we have to link us to the past...and we could get on with living.
In a world where we accept what it means to be human--that talking about our fears and our urges helps us to take ownership of them, to master them--we could hope to dispense with the lies we teach, the lies we preach, the lies we cling to in the darkness that are sometimes all we have to link us to the past...and we could get on with living.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
New Frontier
"When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer." We have expanded civilization, conquered the New World, and then flattened the Earth back out to achieve an unimaginable level of interconnectedness. We have figured out how to outrun the collapse of the tower of Babel, how to work together to accomplish great feats of cooperation (though not necessarily how best to mete out the gains for such feats).
In a time when the New Frontier isn't a physical location, when political boundaries are overscored by corporate agendas, when the constructs of civilizations are advancing not only faster but faster than many of us can keep up, what looms is a Human Revolution, an Internal Revolution. It's like the New Year's resolution or the fad diet that we keep telling ourselves we'll get around to. And maybe it's just human nature, but who's to say that it's not just the old human nature that needs to move aside to make room for the new? Perhaps it's finally time that we stop focusing on how to be better people and start learning how to be better persons.
In a time when the New Frontier isn't a physical location, when political boundaries are overscored by corporate agendas, when the constructs of civilizations are advancing not only faster but faster than many of us can keep up, what looms is a Human Revolution, an Internal Revolution. It's like the New Year's resolution or the fad diet that we keep telling ourselves we'll get around to. And maybe it's just human nature, but who's to say that it's not just the old human nature that needs to move aside to make room for the new? Perhaps it's finally time that we stop focusing on how to be better people and start learning how to be better persons.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
What is Science? or Understand What You're Saying
The following entry is dedicated to Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
There are lots of arguments and misconceptions about the world of science. Some think that science is is a cult whose initiates seek to rid the world of imagination and replace it with metal and godless machines. Others think that science is experimentation on nature or imposing man's will where it doesn't belong. Still others think that science is the one and only truth and anything that is not branded as such isn't worth knowing. What is science really? Science is the "
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation." That's another way of saying that science is all all the information we know about the world around us that is based purely on witnessing things happen. We can witness something a lot of different ways; we can see it happen in front of us, we can see the evidence of its happening in the past and use that evidence to reconstruct the events, or sometimes we can even apply rules that we know to be true in other cases to a situation to uncover evidence that would otherwise be hidden to us.
The roots of science are tied to a man named Aristotle, who deviated from many of his predecessors who would sit around and think about how the world should be rather than study the behaviors and patterns of nature to learn about how the world is. Science tells us how iron will react when it is exposed to oxygen. Science tells us the temperature and pressure at which liquid waters transforms into steam. Science tells us how hard to hit a brick wall with a car to break through. If the pattern is too complex or its behavior can't be witnessed, then it falls outside the realm of what science is. Science can't tell us who will be elected President 40 years in the future. Science can't tell us the exact number of oxygen molecules in a state park. Science can't determine whether two people should marry (sorry, eHarmony).
To say that something is not science is not an insult, but rather a statement of fact that a method's principles do not align themselves with science's practice of studying the world through the observation physical events. To say that composing a song is not science is no more insulting than saying that it is not sandwich-making or fishing. Plenty of things aren't science and we don't care that they aren't science. Art isn't science and we really don't care one shred. History isn't science and yet we still keep it around. Philosophy isn't science. Poetry isn't science. Hollywood movie-writing isn't science (though maybe it should be given the kinds of movies that are being produced...). Baseball isn't science. One other thing which isn't science? Intelligent Design. The idea of Intelligent Design is, in fact, the ontological argument repackaged for the 21st century. Intelligent Design does not draw upon physical evidence in the world but rather makes an intuitive leap from observing the complexity of natural phenomena and claiming that it must have been created. Since the evidence of an "Intelligent Designer" cannot be observed, the concept necessarily makes itself ineligible to fall under the category of "Science."And that's fine. It may very well be a correct and profitable view of the world. All I ask is that you understand what you're saying...or at the very least, thinking. Just don't misinterpret philosophy (or "religion" if you prefer to think of it as such) as science.
Would you really want the following non-scientific concepts to be taught as science? The Flat Earth T-shirt is rather cute, but I don't need the idea taught as being on equal footing with our modern view of the Earth.
There are lots of arguments and misconceptions about the world of science. Some think that science is is a cult whose initiates seek to rid the world of imagination and replace it with metal and godless machines. Others think that science is experimentation on nature or imposing man's will where it doesn't belong. Still others think that science is the one and only truth and anything that is not branded as such isn't worth knowing. What is science really? Science is the "
systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation." That's another way of saying that science is all all the information we know about the world around us that is based purely on witnessing things happen. We can witness something a lot of different ways; we can see it happen in front of us, we can see the evidence of its happening in the past and use that evidence to reconstruct the events, or sometimes we can even apply rules that we know to be true in other cases to a situation to uncover evidence that would otherwise be hidden to us.
The roots of science are tied to a man named Aristotle, who deviated from many of his predecessors who would sit around and think about how the world should be rather than study the behaviors and patterns of nature to learn about how the world is. Science tells us how iron will react when it is exposed to oxygen. Science tells us the temperature and pressure at which liquid waters transforms into steam. Science tells us how hard to hit a brick wall with a car to break through. If the pattern is too complex or its behavior can't be witnessed, then it falls outside the realm of what science is. Science can't tell us who will be elected President 40 years in the future. Science can't tell us the exact number of oxygen molecules in a state park. Science can't determine whether two people should marry (sorry, eHarmony).
To say that something is not science is not an insult, but rather a statement of fact that a method's principles do not align themselves with science's practice of studying the world through the observation physical events. To say that composing a song is not science is no more insulting than saying that it is not sandwich-making or fishing. Plenty of things aren't science and we don't care that they aren't science. Art isn't science and we really don't care one shred. History isn't science and yet we still keep it around. Philosophy isn't science. Poetry isn't science. Hollywood movie-writing isn't science (though maybe it should be given the kinds of movies that are being produced...). Baseball isn't science. One other thing which isn't science? Intelligent Design. The idea of Intelligent Design is, in fact, the ontological argument repackaged for the 21st century. Intelligent Design does not draw upon physical evidence in the world but rather makes an intuitive leap from observing the complexity of natural phenomena and claiming that it must have been created. Since the evidence of an "Intelligent Designer" cannot be observed, the concept necessarily makes itself ineligible to fall under the category of "Science."And that's fine. It may very well be a correct and profitable view of the world. All I ask is that you understand what you're saying...or at the very least, thinking. Just don't misinterpret philosophy (or "religion" if you prefer to think of it as such) as science.
Would you really want the following non-scientific concepts to be taught as science? The Flat Earth T-shirt is rather cute, but I don't need the idea taught as being on equal footing with our modern view of the Earth.
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