Which Universe Do You Live In?

For a multitude of reasons, I have friends and Facebook and follow people on Twitter who have philosophical views drastically different from my own. What's baffling to me--a person who occasionally can be overwhelmed by too much or too much conflicting data--is how all of these folks live in the same universe. If I believe all the opinions and "facts" put out by conservatives, the world is going to heck in a handcart under Obama. If I believe everything liberals say, they are the source of all that's good and right in the world and conservatives are gravely mistaken about everything. If I believe the folks who lean libertarian, the conservatives and the liberals are both screwed up and need to have their political power taken down several notches (no two libertarians, however, can agree on a method for such a scenario). And so forth. What's interesting is that all of them use "facts" to back up their claims.

One example will suffice: unemployment. Right now, official government figures have the unemployment rate at ~6%, which is well-nigh decent, and a big improvement over the 8-10% we had in 2008. However, if you take a different view of "the numbers," the unemployment rate is actually much higher because the labor participation rate (i.e., the number of people eligible for work who are not employed or not looking for work) had dropped to historic lows because people have simply "given up" trying to find a job. Then there's the contrarian view that a lot more jobs could be created if government regulations were drastically trimmed. And so forth.

Who do you believe?

What's at the root of all these opinions--and gosh knows I can only spend so much time reading political rants before I feel the urge to do something else, like laundry or cleaning the tub--is reality itself. Different groups operate from different assumptions and so interpret the "facts" of the world accordingly.

Do you believe humanity is basically good or, at worst, neutral? Do you believe that individuals are a product of societal forces and the specific circumstances into which they are born (nationality, wealth, race)? Do you believe that the "American Dream" (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) is admirable but unrealistic due to societal forces working to suppress minorities? Do you believe that human beings can be improved, either through individual effort or wise leadership from enlightened "right thinking" people? Do you believe that history is one of never-ending progress with occasional downturns? Do you believe that government's most important role is to ensure the social and economic equality of all? Do you believe that all moral systems are inherently equal because they're all aiming toward some sort of good but have some disagreements as to how morality should be enforced? Do you mistrust religion? Do you distrust big businesses more than big governments? Do you believe government should be the ultimate source of economic problem-solving among people? If you answered yes to the bulk of these questions, you are probably a liberal.

Do you believe humanity is basically "fallen" and that individuals are good or evil from birth? Do you believe that individuals have the ability to overcome their circumstances no matter how dire? Do you believe the "American Dream" should apply to everyone, regardless of birth? Do you believe that human nature is constant (essentially bad) and bad behavior can only be restrained through religious or governmental authority? Do you believe that human progress (freedom, technological development, enlightenment through inquiry and the arts) is a temporary phenomenon and that societies must guard against "barbarism?" Do you believe that some moral systems (e.g., Western) are superior to others due to their outcomes? Do you believe government's most important role is to ensure a nation's economic and political strength? Do you distrust big governments more than big businesses? Do you believe the marketplace should be the ultimate source of economic problem-solving among people? If you answered yes to the bulk of these questions, you are probably a traditional conservative.

Do you believe humanity is essentially neutral and a product of his/her birth and education? Do you believe individuals can overcome their specific obstacles in life if they are given maximum freedom from government and society? Do you believe the "American Dream" should be exported around the world peacefully? Do you believe that human nature, while bad, can be overcome? Do you believe that human progress is possible, but only through individual, non-government efforts? Do you believe that all established moral systems are valid as long a they don't try to harm others? Do you believe government's most important role is to ensure individual freedom and to allow individuals to achieve as much as possible? Do you believe individual choices and trades (the marketplace) should be the ultimate source of economic problem-solving among people? If you answered yes to most of these, you're probably libertarian.

The challenge, as I noted earlier, is that all of these attitudes--and more!--are at play on the internet and in our national dialogue. If you let yourself get overwhelmed by the babble and the back-and-forth, you have a few choices:

• Tune out everybody and just avoid politics as much as possible
• Listen to/read only those people with you you agree
• Absorb it all and try to obtain a balanced perspective on how people think about the world

The benefit of the first option is less stress; the downside is that you become ignorant of matters which might greatly affect how you live and work.

The benefit of the second option is comfort; you can read or listen to commentators with whom you agree and become part of the cheering section; the downside is that you can have your viewpoint skewed to the point of ignoring or being unable to comprehend facts that contradict your isolated worldview.

The benefit of the last option is that  you get a clearer picture of what's being said about the state of the world/nation and how it might be interpreted; the downside is data overflow and a tendency to read more arguments than you might care to see.

I've tried all three options, sometimes within the same week, sometimes within the same day. Sometimes I'll spend a long stretch using one option. Occasionally I even throw in my own two cents. Therein lies the challenge: you can learn about what people say about the world from watching/reading the news/internet/etc., but you also have the option to participate. How do you see the world? Do you believe your voice can make a difference? I guess it all depends on which universe you choose to see.

Doing What's Important

It seems to be human nature that, as long as things are going well or predictably, we don't think too much about what we're doing with our lives. Are we doing the right things? Are we focusing on what's important? Et cetera. Usually it takes a crisis for someone to get off their duff and to do something important or constructive or meaningful with his/her life.

Luckily, in my case, no crisis was needed. I had the first adult conversation with myself when I was around 25. I was writing an "alternate history" in which I tried to imagine what my life would have been like if my parents hadn't divorced, and how it would have been better had they not. It was a faintly ridiculous exercise, and I realized--even as and after I wrote it--that I did not believe the premise. All the life circumstances I'd described in the story were relatively achievable, I realized, if I just did something. The reason I call this my first "adult" conversation was that this was the first time I stopped asking, "Why me?" and started asking, "What do you want to do about it?" The specific question I asked--jeez, 20 years ago now--was, "What do you want to do with your life?" And a scared but determined little voice in the back of my mind said, "I want to go into space."

So what this answer led to was a simple question and a few realizations. The question was, "So what are you going to do about it?" From there arose the following realizations:

• My life wasn't going to get better waiting for some magical thing to just happen to me.
• I could change my life's narrative.
• I could take constructive steps on my own behalf to live the sort of life I wanted and make the sort of world I wanted to have happen.

That was some heady stuff at 25. I still need occasional reminders at 45 that this is what I'm doing. But at 25, that meant changing my attitude for the better at work (I did); getting smarter about space (which I did, first in the form of reading a lot of the eminent books on the subject, later through formal schooling); and trying to figure out what sort of career I could have to make "space" a reality. Eventually I became a space advocate, got myself a better degree, and developed a daily habit of doing something constructive every single day. That last habit continues. Mind you, it took about 15 years to realize that going into space might not be the best career choice for me, given my biological susceptibilities to claustrophobia, motion sickness, and fear of heights. But I'm still working in the space business. I can't help it. It's what's important to me.

Why?

Funny thing, that. From a very young age, I've just always believed that going into space was fundamentally a good thing. Call it an article of faith, if you like. The words coalesced around that kernel of faith later, but here they are: If human beings are out in space, they're expanding their literal and figurative horizons. They're looking outward, trying to understand the universe and gaining knowledge for themselves rather than looking inward and meddling in the lives of their neighbors. They don't see life as a zero-sum game. They have an expansive view of themselves and their place in the universe. They believe that they have the abilities necessary to learn what's out there and how to survive in it. A society that's going into space believes that it's worthwhile to do so because it believes that it's worth expanding; that their way of life is worth replicating on other worlds; that it has confidence; and that is worth emulating, and worth duplicating on other worlds.

My way of supporting that cause is to write. In my case, writing takes on many forms: some glorious, some complicated, some mundane. I write outreach materials for NASA. I write technical documents and proposals for organizations that do aerospace work. I write policy papers and manifestos. I create documents and processes so Science Cheerleaders can go out and get kids excited about science.

So that's what motivates me. Your mileage might vary. In any case, I'm living my life in line with and in support of my ideals. I am not waiting for some major catastrophe to rip me out of my world and ask, "What have I been doing with my life?"

Extremes

We are a curious species. Given a particular attribute in our lives, we have a habit of running it into the ground.
Give us desire, we find lust.
Give us temperance, and we find gluttony.
Give us want, and we find greed.
Give us righteous indignation, and we find wrath.
Give us self-esteem, and we find wanton pride.
Give us achievement, and we find vainglory.
Give us beauty, and we pursue vanity.
Give us power, and we pursue overreach.
Give us a cause, and we pursue fanaticism.

And so forth. Whatever we don't have we spend our lives pursuing. Whatever we have that we want we want more of. Whatever we have that we don't want we spend a lifetime trying to avoid. Are we just restless by nature, or do we pursue single, specific things so that our lives make sense?
I'd guess that this is why the ancients (Aristotle, I believe) preached "everything in moderation," not just the foods we consume, but the ideas. I can sense times when I have taken my life too far in one direction, and I usually find myself backing away soon thereafter. If anything, extremism bores me. Too much time on one topic, and my mind wanders. Not everyone feels that way. I read somewhere that Americans feel "too much is just right." Is that, in fact, the case, or is personal extremism merely pursued in different ways outside of this rambunctious country?

And yes, this is a perfectly normal train of thought for me at 6:41 on a Saturday night. There are worse ways to spend my time, right?

Closure Exercise

Recently a friend attended a discussion that talked about things family or friends should do with or for the eventually-to-be-departed. The basic notion was that people should have some deep conversations with their loved ones about the end of their lives: not just medical, financial, or funeral arrangements, but closing out more personal business.

For instance: if you knew you were to die in the next year, month, week, or day, and you still had your wits about you, what would you want to share with them about what your life meant? What lessons would you want to pass on? What advice would you give? Orson Scott Card had something like this in his Ender series, a "Speaker for the Dead," who would try to sum up what a person's life and death meant, to themselves and others. However, instead of having some third party guess, why not have the person sum things up themselves rather than leave others to weep, lament, or guess because they didn't get that oh-so-psychobabbly world, "closure?"

Personally, I think (and said as much to my friend) that this sort of "closure" exercise has become more necessary because people have less faith in an afterlife and seeing their relatives therein. After all, if you know you're going to heaven, you can rest assured in the knowledge that you will "see you real soon." I was told that my attitude was "very male." I would've gone with Christian or Stoic, but whatever.

So as a follow-up, I said, "Tell ya what: when I get home tonight, I'll share my summation of my life on my blog so there won't be any doubts." Understand, then, that what follows is an honest attempt to answer a friend's question, not because I anticipate my imminent demise. Lacking a smoking habit or an extreme-sports kind of lifestyle, I'm looking to be around longer than some people would prefer. Nevertheless, this is a summation, or an attempt at one. Subject to revision, addition, or subtraction in the future, as my mood suits me.

What I've Learned, What I Think My Life Has Meant, and Other Thoughts

Bart D. Leahy
I have been incredibly blessed, whether by God or random circumstances. I had a painful childhood and adolescence that I didn't enjoy a lot of the time, and if I ever had to live it all over again, I'd say "No thank you, I don't need to experience that more than once." Nevertheless, however painful my childhood (and I don't pretend it was anything other than petty evils, occasional thrashings on the playground, or ugly moments on the way home from school that hurt me), that was not so important as overcoming those things and becoming a man I could look in the mirror with some justified pride.

I always had my eye on the future, on what I was going to be when I grew up, under a naive but persistent belief that I'll learn more and the future will be better. That belief did not come naturally. I have a certain Irish tendency to tragedy that has always warred with my learned American optimism. I sometimes cling to that optimism more than is wise because I worked so hard to achieve it.

I had a lot of dreams as a kid, and I wrote about them in fictional form well into my twenties. I wanted to be a writer. I am one. I wanted to live in Orlando and work for Walt Disney World. I did those things for 12 years. I wanted to work for the military in some form. While an Army recruiter refused to take me, I did get a chance to be a writer for a defense contractor. That contractor designed, built, and maintained petroleum, water, and truck systems for the Army, including armor kits that protected soldiers in Iraq. In some way, then, I got to help. I also wanted to work for the space business--NASA in particular. I've been a space advocate for 15 years and a NASA contractor for nearly six. Those dreams were achieved through a belief that they were worth pursuing in the real world, and by putting in the hard work to make them a reality.

The Science Cheerleader activity has been a complete fluke to me. If you had told my 20-year-old self that I would be working with professional cheerleaders with science and technology degrees, I'd have laughed in your face; nevertheless, here I am. It's not like I sought out this sort of adventure for myself. A friend connected me to Darlene, and I found that I believed in her multi-layered cause:

• She wants cheerleaders and women taken seriously as contributors to the science community.
• She wants to make science and technology outreach fun and to break up some stereotypes.
• She wants more American citizens to be science/technology-literate.
• She wants broader public involvement in science and technology issues.

I can get behind all that. I didn't require a lot of persuading or "attitude adjustment" to get behind the cause. Mind you, I've had to learn how to behave appropriately, but that's a whole 'nother story.

At this point in my life, I can look back on my career with pride and few regrets except that I didn't take more chances on my calling sooner.

My dreams have been pursued out of love of the work, not for love of money. Money has come, bit by bit, but that money has gone to other things I love: books, travel, meals and beverages with family and friends, as well as institutions that I respect such as my church and the USO. If I love what I am doing, no reasonable amount of money will lure me away from it; likewise, if I do not love what I'm doing and a lower-paying job is offered that does allow me to do what I love, the money will lose. I follow my heart in professional matters, and it has rarely led me astray.

In relationships I have not been so lucky, and my heart has led me down some dark, ignorant, and foolish paths. I have given my trust and affections to women who, quite frankly, weren't as interested in me, or who abused my tolerance or trust. I have hurt some unjustly for superficial or self-serving reasons, or because someone hurt me or I could not see myself spending the rest of my life with that particular person. My formative experience with adult relationships was my parents' divorce. Through that, I learned about hurt and broken families, but I also learned about resilience, rebuilding, and independence. My father remarried, and mother did not. I took my mother's path: focusing on taking care of my duties (work) and functioning without a partner. As a regularly ostracized or picked-on youth, I was not particularly in demand as a dating partner. Eventually, I learned to make a virtue of necessity and am now happier single. I regret more things I've done in my dating life than things I haven't done. All this adds up to a life that will be spent traveling and living alone. It is part of who I am.

What else would someone want to know from me? What has my life meant to others? I cannot always speak to what others think, but I gather I've added good doses of humor and occasional deep thought to some lives. I have tried to be a good friend and a doer of good deeds when no one is looking. I have been nicer on occasion than people might have known and there have been occasions when I've been a bigger bastard than anyone thought possible. I won't name names on this blog, but if I've hurt you in this life and you're reading this, I'm truly sorry for any damage I've done. That's not the same as wishing I'd never done some of the harsh things in my life, but it's as close as this flawed individual is likely to come to it--I'll have to answer to God for the evil I've done.

What do I think my life has meant to myself? I can only describe things this way: I have tried to be the best Bart Leahy that I can, in my own goofy way. This has meant reading a lot of philosophy and religion; refraining from sins even if they might've resulted in some long-term benefit; trying to be "nice," and learning what I can about the world and the universe in which it moves. If there has been one constant to my life of mind, it has been that I have sought wisdom, wherever it might be found. Some of this learning has been concentrated on myself as well--long hours, days, or years alone with my thoughts--trying to sort out why I'm here, why I do what I do, and what I need to do in the future. I am unlikely to fully succeed in this venture, as I learn greatly and fail grandly. I suppose this is why I alternate between idealism, pragmatism, and cynicism. I am an idealist to the extent that I believe some things can be made better if people of good will apply enough intellect, wisdom, or hard work to them. I am a pragmatist because I often absorb ideas that appear useful to me and because I am not a political revolutionary by any wild stretch--I strive to work with people and the world as I see them to be rather than as I might wish them to be. I am a cynic when my efforts at idealism or pragmatism fail.

Why do I think I've been here? Since I was about 27 or so, I've had some handle on what my skills were and how I could tie my interests to my abilities to become a useful citizen. I am a technical writer because I love explaining technical subjects in simple, clear, and correct words. Perhaps that is not the same as finding the meaning of life, but it has been my goal, career, and purpose for getting up in the morning for 15 years now. And along the way, I've chosen to try to pursue the good as I see it: be a law-abiding citizen; follow the rules of the society around me, however confused or contradictory; speak my mind and speak the truth when asked--and sometimes even if I'm not asked; don't be evil or rude unnecessarily; be harder on myself than others (since I have more say over what I do); don't force my opinions or will on others; try to be a defender of women and children even if I'm not a husband or father; and be a good man. I suppose I'm the only one besides God who will ever know the whole story about whether I got things right. And like I said earlier, I have a lot of years ahead of me to find out, as He wills.

What advice would I offer to others? Sheesh, follow whatever dream(s) bring out the best in you. If you're a fisherman, be a fisherman. If you're an expert hair cutter, be a stylist. If you're a natural healer, be a doctor. If you have found the love of your life, connect with him/her. Life is too damned short. That amounts to "follow your heart," which also isn't bad advice because as long as you are doing something to which you are emotionally committed, you are likely to put more effort and (theoretically) more success out of it. No guarantees, of course.

What else? Be a good friend, day in, day out. Don't be a jerk unnecessarily. It has been my privilege and burden to work in the company of some very bright people, and I can say with relatively little controversy that not all of them have the nicest demeanors. There are some really brilliant ideas in these people's heads that will never be accepted by the bulk of humanity simply because the people holding them have been such asses to the people around them. "Nice" is a skill, too, and it's a good one to learn for those days when you can't manage "competent."

Also, don't spend your life worrying about or hating the people who hurt you in the past. You could not and cannot change who they were or what they did. Happiness really is an inside job. And if you can't manage it yourself, get help--from a professional, from clergy, from dear friends or a caring stranger. There is God, too: up there, listening, waiting to offer help if we'll let Him.

Keep a sense of humor about yourself. It's easy to do if you start out with the realization that you are not, and never will be, perfect. I have no idea if my humor will turn out to be my saving grace, but it has kept me from going bonkers on occasion.

I have a standing set of political rules that I work from: don't believe your own BS; however, if you DO start believing it, don't take undue advantage of the power that your BS gives you; and if, God help you, you have taken excessive advantage of said power, never forget that there are others who have more power than you.

And, as I noted earlier: try to be the best you that you can be. Only you truly know what your capabilities and strengths are. Only you know what errors and weaknesses you have and what resources you can call upon to overcome them.

*

No doubt there are other "closure" items that I would need to address with individual friends or family members, but the above is for anyone who cares to know. If you understand that my "prime directive" has been simple, constant self-improvement, the rest becomes easy to follow. Do you know why you do what you do? Do you think your family members will understand you after you were gone? If not, maybe it's time for one of these "closure exercises." They might learn things that are never too late to learn, and so might you.

This I Believe

This essay is my response to This I Believe, a print compilation of a radio series started by Edward R. Murrow in the 1950s and revived by National Public Radio. The series challenges people—of high stature or none—to speak for three minutes on the philosophy that guides their lives. The series includes statements by folks like Robert A. Heinlein, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Jackie Robinson as well as more modern voices like Newt Gingrich, John McCain, and Colin Powell. The essays range from profound to smile-provoking (how can you not like a statement that begins “You cannot have enough barbeque”?).  I don’t believe anyone’s life will be changed by these essays, but they might at least inspire some thought in readers about what philosophy they use to get through the day. Here’s mine.

***

Try to Be a Good Man

If I’ve had anything drilled into my head by my family, it’s the notion of being a good man. They probably never used those words, but they meant that behind every lecture, every piece of advice (solicited or otherwise), and every gift they ever gave me.

As an adult child of divorce now in my 40s, I lived most of my life without Dad in the house. This is not a rebuke to my parents; I am simply stating a fact. What that meant to a child of the “latch-key” generation was that I was the man of the house. It also meant, when it came to figuring out who and how to be, I was pretty much on my own. So like anyone given an assignment with few parameters and lots of room for error, I winged it. I noted what sort of behaviors were admired by other family members and tried to internalize those models.

I’ve had to learn, usually through screwing up, how to do not just the right thing, but the good thing, or the right thing done well. How should I put this? It is not a matter of just doing your job right or wrong. When I was in grad school for technical writing, we read excerpts of technical manuals from Nazi machines designed specifically to kill large numbers of people. One could do that job “right” but still be flat-out wrong. So being a good man also means having knowledge of good and evil, having a conscience. These I absorbed from church, but also from my experiences of living in and observing the world.

I’ve been called an idealist and a perfectionist by peers and managers and people who have worked for me. That doesn’t quite explain who I am. The goal for me hasn’t been to be perfect. I’ve had the recognition early on, and every day since then, that I will always be imperfect. So my goal has always been, “Get better!”

It means not just knowing the right thing to say, but when to say it.

It means not just knowing the right thing to do, but doing it.

It means doing the right things in ways that are unobtrusive, humble, and polite. I do good for the good of my soul, not because I’m interested in looking better than someone else.

I do not always get these things right, and I lecture myself when I know I could have done better. But every day is a new opportunity to try again. Trying to be a good man filters into everything else you do, so it’s a good place to begin. It’s where I began to think like an adult. And sometimes, even if you don’t hit the mark, others appreciate the effort.

Making It Better

I read this book review today, and it set me off.

“It Gets Better.” That’s what the current campaign says to encourage young people who are discovering their leanings toward people of the same sex. It’s a message that could apply to any persecuted, picked-on kid in junior high or high school. But it’s very damned difficult to convince a 13-year-old who’s getting followed home from school at least once a week by bullies who want to see the kid cry. It’s hard for a girl with a flat chest and too many freckles or too much flesh around her bottom to believe that life will get better. You, the adults looking back over scars 20, 30, or 40 years in the past, have the benefit of hindsight and survival over time. The teenager has just the now.

They hurt Now.

They’re being punched in the arm Now.

They’re being left by themselves in the cafeteria at lunch hour Now.

They’re getting laughed at in class Now.

They’re crying themselves to sleep and having nightmares every night Now.

Telling them “It gets better” 10 or 20 years from now is a copout.  They need help Now.

Yes, some of your adult perspective is simply “Kids will be kids” or recalling that “They grow out of it.” But again, that’s the easy stuff, like learning how to drive or understanding when to use the right piece of silverware at a formal dinner. What isn’t happening, it seems to me, is that we’re not preparing these kids—arming them, to be blunt—mentally for the social combat that makes up the teenage years, all the way up through our early 20s.

What this essay is going to try to convey is some of the process I went through, from being a bullied kid until now. I will say some unpleasant things in this essay. I will use profanity. I will probably say something unpleasant about nearly every social caste that exists because during the ages that one is facing bullies, there are damn few people that you don’t learn to hate. [Actually, this turned out pretty tame, but still...] It’s unfortunate, but it helps to get into that mindset before you start saying something tepid and trite like “It Gets Better.”

It’s not that easy. You have to work for it.

*

Portrait of a Young Bart, 1984

The boy starts his day at home. His hair is a mess, unstylish and greasy-looking. His complexion is a mass of acne and blackheads. His wardrobe consists of Swiss army shirts, camouflage pants, and army boots. He wears an expression of hopeful desperation, as he is psyching himself up for what he hopes won’t be too bad of a day. At 5’7”, he is nearly eye to eye with his mother, at least in height. His attitude is somewhere between punchy smartass and surly. He ignores his sister or tolerates her or listens to her, depending on his mood. He waits for the bus stop with a bunch of the neighbors, kids he’s known for a month or several years. The best he usually can hope for is that he won’t say something that causes a negative comment or a laugh at his expense. He has learned to suppress even things that make him happy because inevitably, he thinks, someone is going to either cut him down or use that knowledge against him.

On the bus itself, he takes what is usually the least-desirable seat, the one directly behind the bus driver. But he knows why he takes it: he’s less likely to get punched or abused if an adult is within earshot. If he sits in the back of the bus, he’s in for a very long and painful ride. Once at school, he barrels for his locker, quickly looks both ways before working the combination lock (he had stuff stolen from his locker and burned a couple years ago, and he hasn’t forgotten it), getting what he needs, and slamming it shut. The interior of the locker is decorated with images of art, of science fiction movies, of pictures from Disney World. He does not share these things, they are simply talismans to remind him of happier days. He carries as many books as he can because he doesn’t want to have to go back to his locker more than a couple times a day.

In class, he keeps to himself or talks to the one or two people he thinks won’t abuse him somehow. He used to raise his hand in class, and sometimes he still does, when he thinks the question is easy enough. If he makes the mistake of answering something difficult correctly, he’ll hear about it later in gym or the cafeteria. “You think you’re so smart,” they’ll say, or words to that effect. His grades are lower than they could be. He’s in a slightly advanced algebra class—not the dummy version, anyway—and usually ends up with some of the brighter history or science kids, but he is performing well below his abilities, and he knows it. Even in the advanced classes in junior high, he discovered, the smart kids could be just as mean as the others, and who needs that sort of aggravation?

He gulps his food at lunch, eager to get out of the cafeteria before the bully of the day (singular or plural) finds him and decides to make his day difficult. He’s probably underweight simply because he’s under-eating and walking or running wherever he goes. He trembles occasionally, the result of recurrent fear.

Gym class is a painful joke, as he must suffer the multiple pains of being uncoordinated, un-muscular, and socially sensitive. He does not like exercise because it exposes his weakness for all the world to see and criticize and laugh at. He fails at individual sports and is picked last for team sports. He often skips the showers because the added vulnerability of being naked around his violent peers is often more than he can take. He occasionally shows up to class more fragrant than is strictly necessary, which adds to the greasiness of his hair and face.

By the time the bell rings, he has had enough. He hides in the Theater Department, where he is the teacher’s aide one period to get him out of some other, less comfortable place like study hall. The theater kids aren’t too bad, often outcasts like himself in some cases, but they aren’t quite sure what to make of him: too uncoordinated (again) for scene shop, too shy or self-conscious for acting, he works where he’s least visible or least likely to call overt attention to himself: sound, lighting, box office.

When class is done, he goes home and hangs out with one of his two or three best friends. He doesn’t have or trust many others. If they are not free, he composes fiction on paper or in his head on the way home. Sometimes he skips the bus and risks walking home. He wishes he could go to work, which he will in a year, so he can have something to do.

And yet this kid is not completely lost. He writes a great deal—journal entries, poetry, plays, Star Wars stories. He draws maps of airline route systems he imagines operating or aircraft he imagines designing. He is counting the months until he graduates—he has already selected his classes for the next three years, and has set things up so that he graduates a semester early. He was going to shoot for graduating at the end of junior year, but his mother tells him that he’d probably not be mature enough for college at that age.

Some girls like or admire him, but he is too shy or too terrified to speak to any of them. Like his stories and his hopes, he figures any girl he likes would be just another source of teasing. And then, too: the girl might be lying to make a fool out of him. It has happened before, numerous times, and he has a high mistrust of the female species, from cheerleaders to the girls at church to the unpopular girls. It’s a comfort of a sort that his sister hasn’t completely disowned him. He talks too smart or too self-defeating to deal with his cousins.

The boy gets along just fine with adults, particularly teachers and people in authority, which earns him zero credit with his peers. He wants to learn what’s in the homework or the news or the sly comments that adults make to each other. More than anything, he wants to get out of here, not sure if he means high school, Lombard, or Illinois, but he has his sights set on Orlando. He has a mixed relationship with his father, who has been remarried, but he likes his stepmother and loves the free, unstressed feeling he gets when he visits them, away from other people who know him.

He reads and writes a great deal: science fiction, history, science. His grandmother directs self-help books his way, and he reads those as well, even though some of them are written for people older than him. He doesn’t know what he wants to be, exactly, but he has thoughts about Disney, about the military, about space—but above all, about writing. Writing is his great escape. He writes poems that bleed out his hurt. He writes journal entries dissecting the behavior and characters of some of his worst tormentors. He writes stories in which characters like him have power, authority, and right on their side. If his fantasy life does not include women (a field of study utterly beyond him), it does at least include alternate worlds where he has the respect of all the people around him, men and women—adults.

He has visions of what could be. He just needs to survive.

*

The sad part is, 1984 actually wasn’t that bad. The worst year of my life was 1981-82, the year I was in 7^th grade. That was when I was having the psychosomatic illnesses, fevers (104.3°, at one point), and serious prayers asking Jesus to let me die. If someone had told me that year that “It gets better,” I probably would’ve thrown up on them, either out of disbelief or stress or spite.

Another scary thought: my high school was considered pretty decent for the time, certainly a lot safer than a lot of the schools in rougher neighborhoods or in downtown Chicago. At just over 2,000 students (now over 2,500), Glenbard East was as decent a suburban public school as you were likely to find. No metal detectors, as yet. No knives or guns on campus (off-campus was another matter). The usual experiments with alcohol or marijuana (and even cocaine, if I’m to believe some of my friends at the time) going on.  And I fa-king hated it because I was scared and miserable most of the time. Or at least those are most of the memories that survived.

Lombard Junior High, the place of my darkest despair, was where I hit rock-bottom, socially and emotionally. My clothes were cheaper then, my body smaller and thinner, my social skills even less developed. If I was going to make something better of myself, it had to be there. I can only tell you how I survived. My combination of traits, talents, and circumstances might not apply to anyone else. But the effort deserves telling, because I did survive. While I was unlikely to get knifed or shot, there was every likelihood that I might’ve gotten beaten up more, or that I might’ve taken that to-hell-with-this-I’m-going-to kill-myself voice at the back of my head. Obviously, I didn’t, but why? The question bears asking because certainly there’s still enough teenage angst bullshit going around that needs overcoming.

So below is my recipe for helping a kid suffering at the hands of his/her peers. I can’t guarantee success; I can only say it worked for me, at different times, and in various combinations, but believe me, all of it was tried.

I understood that my problem was temporary, not permanent.

I honestly don’t know how I came to this conclusion, but I could count at a reasonable age, and I knew that any event or situation had a beginning and an end. Some of this might’ve been taught by my mother getting us to plan for a vacation X months in the future, or sitting through enough other boring or painful events. I just understood that boredom or pain or whatever situation I was going through would eventually change, and that this, too, shall pass.

I took the time to examine my own behavior and figure out when/where my peers were reacting badly to my behavior—and then change it.

I probably took this one to an extreme, being a responsibility-and-duty-focused kid (such are the joys of growing up the only boy in a home run by a single mom). But I did at least take the time to figure out how people operated. What were they saying? What were their expressions? How did they change when I did X versus Y? Which behaviors of mine create the worst reactions with adults or my peers? On the latter score, that was easy: talking down to people. It’s not just a matter of correcting someone if they misspell something, but how did I do it? What tone was I using? What words? “It’s not what you say, but how you say it?” I never quite got over my habit of using big words, but I at least learned to temper the lecturing, condescending tone and not use the absolutely longest words I knew (unless no other word sufficiently says what I mean). But this habit of watching others and minding what I was doing forced me in on myself, caused me to listen more, and be more self-aware.

I was focused on becoming an adult, not blending in with my peers.

“Grow up!” was a common refrain in my family. The expectation was always that I was learning how to become a grown-up so I could take my place in society and be a productive citizen. Again, starting from a responsibility-focused childhood, this behavior and belief followed naturally. In addition, given that many of my peers engaged in some form of teasing (serious or not—I took it all personally), I was not likely to idolize any of them.

I understood that I had specific talents, and I spent my free time developing them.

It really took until I was in college and was surrounded by people who not only couldn’t write but were willing to pay me to edit their papers that I understood that I might have something to offer others and that not everyone could do what I did. Even so, from a very young age, I was writing stories or poems and getting my thoughts down in written form. I figured out what I was good at and what I enjoyed doing. It took many, many years after that to find a job that would pay me to do the things I loved, but at least I had that start. My mother told me (and I recall the conversation) that I wanted to write for NASA. My grandmother told me I was five when I told her I wanted to write a novel. In any case, my future was going to involve writing.

I understood that I had a soul, and that it was worth preserving.

There’s no way around this: I had religion in my life. I had an understanding (in addition to self- and family-taught responsibility and duty) of sin as well as sacredness. There are things that are fundamentally and should remain good; to violate this goodness is, in fact, a sin. Frank Herbert wrote that the single, common message of all religions was, “Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.” True or not, that’s a lesson I absorbed at a young age.

I had an active internal life and a means of escape in the midst of an unfriendly crowd.

This is related to an earlier point, but it boils down to this: if you’re an outcast, you’re forced to develop your own inner resources simply because there’s no one else around to talk to. So I read a lot of books. Difficult ones, as my mother would tell me. She stopped understanding what I was reading when I was ten. As long as I dove into these other worlds and didn’t come out some sort of demon worshipper or terror to myself or others, she left me alone with my odd literary tastes. The act of reading did several things: when I was actually reading, I could tune out the verbal (and sometimes even the physical) obnoxious behavior going on around me. I could image a newer, more advanced, better world than the one I was living in at the time. And these other worlds helped expand my vocabulary—necessary for a writer—as well as my mental horizons and my future plans for myself.

I could take action on my own behalf.

One of the most horrible side effects of bullying is the utter powerlessness it inflicts on the victim: first, there are the physical circumstances of having someone bigger than you inflict pain on you. Then, if they keep after you long enough, you eventually feel powerlessness to take any action on your own behalf. You grovel or beg or humiliate yourself to get someone to stop hurting you or, if you’re particularly desperate, just be nice to you—and aren’t needy and desperate great personality traits? Anyhow, the books I was reading (SF, self-help, history, philosophy, what have you) all seemed to have similar messages: heroes have the ability to take action to fix their circumstances. For lack of a better idea, I decided to see myself as a hero, fictional or otherwise, and that freed me up to take actions that might make things, if only one day, one little bit at a time. So: wash the face to fix the acne; take karate to learn at least the rudiments of how to fight back; get a job and learn to take pride in my work; start and complete stories in which Bart-like characters triumphed.

I had a few friends and a family who believed in me.

This can’t be overestimated in its importance. If I’d been chased home from school by the bullies and then come home to an abusive family, I wouldn’t have come out nearly so well. Yes, I resented the stuff Mom or Dad or the grandmothers, aunts/uncles, cousins, etc., did on occasion, but I didn’t doubt that they could be counted on—they were family.

I had a desire for meaningful work.

I started working when I was just barely 16. My parents, aunts, and uncles always talked about their jobs, so I understood that to mean that they drew a great deal of their identities and self-importance from the work they did. With work came responsibility (which, again, I was all about) as well as accomplishment, independence, mobility, and money. The longest period I’ve spent unemployed since then was two months, and I was miserable. I kept looking for work because sitting around doing nothing can make me go stir crazy. If I’m working, I’m busy, and I’m not dwelling on some of the other things in my life that might be bothering me. And, at the end of it, if I’ve been doing things right, I’ll have something to show for it at the end of the day.

I learned to think for myself.

Another advantage of being an outcast is that you’re unlikely to join a gang, cult, or any sort of movement that will cause you to lose your identity. I learned quickly—as did my peers—that “peer pressure” was a great way to get me to push back even harder. What starts out as circumstance—your peers ostracizing you because you’re “different”—eventually becomes a badge of honor. You learn to hold onto your individuality because it’s all you’ve got. There’s a Peanuts cartoon I remember fondly: Lucy hands Linus a list of his faults. Linus reads the list, then shouts back, “These aren’t faults, these are character traits!” So sometimes behavior gets you labeled a kook (“He’s always off on his own somewhere”) eventually becomes one of your favorite activities and something that you come to see as integral to your self-image.

*

Final Thoughts: Your Mileage Might Vary

The lessons I learned above are partly the result of circumstances—where I grew up, who my parents were, what my family situation was, what sorts of traits I inherited, what church I went to, who my peers were—but a lot of it was simple reading or learning things the hard way. The person reading this might not be much of a reader or be terribly sensitive to others’ feelings—they just want to be left alone. Fine. Find alternatives. Build up your own inner life with music, art, woodworking, athleticism, mathematics, science, mechanical tinkering, horticulture, animal care. If you don’t know what you like or what you’re good at, keep trying things until you discover them. The point of all these little lessons, I guess, is just that social survival can be achieved, but a lot of it requires a will to make things better for yourself. I’m speaking from a vary first-world point of view here—I’m not sure if any of this advice would matter in a situation where you’re facing down guns or worse every day. But if you’ve got some of the basics covered (food, shelter, clothing, safety), you can work out the rest. The goal is to make yourself a better person, not to punish the ones who are trying to make you feel or be bad. You can’t do much about them, and becoming a bully to others just passes the problem off to the next poor bastard—and what sort of life is that?

So I hope this does someone some good. I feel better for having written it, but your mileage could vary. Let’s be careful out there.

Potpourri CLI

The busy-ness continues. I'll provide more details about ISDC and the Science Cheerleader thing as the Outreach Coordinator (i.e. that'd be your humble narrator) writes them. :-) Meanwhile, on to other things!

Where has all the oil gone in the Gulf? Well, we've captured some, some is still leaking and floating around out there or polluting the beaches, and some...well, some of it is being eaten by bacteria.



Is the web hurting Gen Y’s critical thinking skills? My guess would be yes...but not just theirs.

From Karen: a bacon wallet. Furreal.

This is pretty cool: the Kepler telescope has detected its first multi-planet solar system out there among all them-thar bright stars. We are living in an age of wonders, my friends. Gotta pay attention out there.

A summary of 11 great operas in 10 minutes. Caveat visor: I have watched this yet, it just sounded fun.

Okay, this will make you feel very healthy, sane, and well-adjusted. Some dude has spent $250,000 remaking himself to look like a lizard. Did anyone at ANY time consider offering this guy counseling? Like, ever? Seriously. Dude.

I need to re-watch this video and respond at some point. It is an attempt to redefine what ethics should look like in the 21st century. I found myself reacting against some of it, because either the logic or assumptions were fuzzy. Or, perhaps, because I found the conclusions unrealistic. But then most of my philosophical influences are either ancient or from the Enlightenment, which are exactly the things the piece is criticizing. Go figure.

An essay talking about fear in our lives, but also fear in airport security. I liked its new term "the fear tax." Worth reading.

Note to people who both a) want to visit Afghanistan and b) perform public displays of affection. Uh, don't: Taliban militants stoned a couple to death over alleged love affair.

Critique: Rule-Breaking from Creativity to Illegality



I found this essay on Facebook, and found the title sufficiently interesting (and the content refreshingly short) enough to read. I also found myself identifying a couple of flaws/fallacies and disagreeing with a couple of the authors’ “trans-disciplinary” arguments. Fair warning: I’m about to head off into Philosophical Geek Land. You also might need to take the time to read the referenced article to understand what I'm griping about and to see whether my gripes are reasonable.


To save the reader of this blog a little time and to clarify the fundamental argument with the paper, I will attempt to summarize the authors’ thesis and my disagreement(s) with it. The authors equate creativity—specifically paradigm-breaking ideas or ideas that fundamentally change how human beings interact with or perceive the world around them—with “breaking the rules,” in effect a form of illegality. They then argue that the difference between creativity and illegality depends on the long-term end results (positive/negative) and the legitimacy of the laws/rules being broken.


I can agree with their thesis in the specific instance they mentioned—paradigm shifting. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions offers an excellent history of scientific paradigms and how they change (for example, the unchanging Earth vs. plate tectonics or a Newtonian vs. Einsteinian understanding of physics). In the case of scientific paradigms, the creativity of Einstein had to overcome established systems, beliefs, and interests; all of these might be treated as social conventions or “rules,” but are not precisely laws. Indeed, Einstein was not attempting to undo Newton’s theories, but to amplify them and give them a slightly different interpretation. In the long run, his theories were validated by empirical evidence, experimentation, new technology, and social acceptance of the new theory. Kuhn’s theories on scientific revolutions constitute of culture shifts and maybe disregarding the social currency or ascendancy of particular theories, but that’s quite a stretch from “illegality,” unless one considers E=mcˆ2 to violate the laws of nature. Einstein and his later adherents were certainly not breaking any social, civil, or criminal laws in presenting a new view of reality.




That said, my arguments with their thesis are as follows:


1. Creativity is not always a case of “breaking the rules.” Creativity in the arts can be unique without breaking any fundamental rules. Indeed, many art forms have conventions (vanishing points in the visual arts, meters or rhyme schemes in poetry). One can be “creative” in those situations without breaking rules or causing harm to others.


2. The authors blur the functional differences between civic or criminal laws and social conventions or rules. For one thing, civic laws are concerned with preventing and punishing harm to others or society. Social guidelines (mores, manners) serve approximately the same purpose, but usually do not carry legal or criminal penalties if you break them.


3. The authors have a really far-out definition of what it means to be a “creative” entrepreneur: “The innovator entrepreneur combines available resources in a new way that challenges conventions of human behavior, even imposing conceptual and empirical challenges for commercial laws.” I’ll buy the part about combining resources in a new way; but to say that every innovator is challenging human conventions or creating challenges for commercial laws is quite a stretch. You might make a case for automobiles, telephones, or computers, which fundamentally changed our society, but would you describe canned tuna, office staples, or electric fans as creating “conceptual and empirical challenges for commercial laws?”

4. The authors head into shaky territory when they start to take on “perverse legality, positive illegality, and perverse creativity.” Perverse legality they describe as a situation like “the whole Nazi project” (a violation of Godwin’s Law right there) “protected actions that were later recognized as social perversions,” the end result being that behaving morally/creatively in that society would constitute breaking the laws of that society.

5. The authors posit another scenario "in which illegality does not imply social damage, [but] it is also possible to find a scenario in which creativity is oriented to cause social damage." Their specific example is when a nation-state's legal mechanisms are co-opted by some alleged criminal enterprise, ostensibly like a drug cartel taking over a nation in South America or the kleptocracy that gradually took over post-Soviet Russia. I will return to this issue in my own conclusion.

6. They create some unnecessary acronyms and then make the situation worse by mistyping or not explaining one of those acronyms. They have “one mind that is breaking a rule (MBR),” “minds that are evaluating that rule breaking process (MVRB),” and “informal rule (IR).” What, then, is MVBRP? I wouldn’t make much of a big deal about this, except that they used MVBRP twice, when presumably they meant MVRB. This is not a logical argument on my part, I admit, merely an aesthetic one.


7. Where I parted company from the authors almost completely is regarding their statement that “Today, almost no one would consider revolutionists of centuries XVIII and XIX as criminals.” If they mean the leaders of the American Revolution, I would agree. If they mean the leaders of the French Revolution, I would take exception on the following grounds:


a. They utterly destroyed the state, leading to such instability that France has not had an enduring republic since then (they are now on their Fifth Republic). And, in fact, the Revolution led directly to the dismantling (and killing) of nearly all legitimate authority, including the King, Church, aristocracy, civil servants, and eventually the revolutionists themselves.

b. The power vacuum and bloody chaos thrown up by the French Revolution made the ground fertile for a Bonaparte to seize control. The end result of his rule was 20 years of war that tore apart Europe and imposed “liberty, equality, fraternity” at the point of the bayonet.

c. The fervent atheism of the Revolution undermined Christianity, one of the fundamental strengths of European culture, for the last two centuries.

d. Note: Lest anyone think I am completely insensitive to the historical plight of the French peasantry under the Ancien Régime, I am not. I am suggesting that there were other ways the grievances of the people could have been redressed that need not have demolished French society or resulted in guillotines on the Champs-Élysées. I am also suggesting that the King, Church, and aristocracy might have learned the British lessons about accommodating the will and needs of the people before the situation became that desperate.


8. In their second "Conclusions and Explorative Issues," the authors state, "Since the psychological rule-breaking process underlying illegality and creativity is the same, it is therefore needed to pay attention to other criteria when defining both illegality and creativity." I would submit, based on my points 1-3 above, that the authors have not made their case on this argument conclusive.

9. In the authors' point 9, they state that "The judicial branch is also considered a moral tribunal because this branch sometimes creates laws through production of jurisprudence." This might, in fact, be the case, but that was not (in my view) the intention of the American Founders, nor is it necessarily a given in most justice systems: courts of law are there to adjudicate situations where the law is unclear; not to write new law, as has become the custom in American federal courts in the XXth and XXIst centuries. Be that as it may, their point is regrettably true, as moral and legal matters are now settled in the courts rather than in the legislatures, where the true will of the voters might better be expressed.

10. In the authors' point 10, they state that "Pointing out that both criminals and creative people have a similar psychological process does not mean that criminals should be rewarded or that creative people should be punished." Good.

11. The authors conclude point 11 with "The longer of the time-scale use to evalue the rule-breaking process, the most accurate that evaluation will be." This seems to be saying that, "the longer your historical perspective, the more likely it is that your judgment of whether someone was creative or merely a law-breaker is correct. Science fiction writer Larry Niven would put this more succinctly: "Hindsight is 20/20."

12. The authors' point 12 explains how law-breaking is defined based on the legitimacy and correctness of the laws.

13. The authors' final point 13 states that "simulation and prospective analysis tools are required when evaluated the social effects of a law or an informal institution." I would restate this as "You need more than the laws themselves to determine whether they are both rightly executed and morally good." I would tend to agree.

But, but, but...I kept turning over in my head exactly what the point of this essay was. Were the authors trying to provide moral sanction to people fighting "creatively" against corrupt laws? Or, more disturbingly, were they trying to provide moral justification to people who are trying to "be creative" or "change the rules" (a more modest phrase) in societies the authors find "co-opted" somehow--and let "history" decide if they'd made the right/moral choice?

I asked questions like this partially because at least one of their sources (Law and the Rise of Capitalism) is written by a Marxist scholar, and Marxists have a rather creative view of what they consider a "legitimate" government. And partially I questioned their thesis because they seemed to be unnecessarily (and somewhat inaccurately) blurring the definitions of "creativity," "paradigm shifting," lawbreaking, and political revolution to the point where someone subverting a government that others see as legitimate might come across to readers of this document as merely a creative rule-breaker, if you're willing to wait around a couple of centuries to see the end result.

Anyhow, these are the sorts of thoughts that wander through my mind when I'm confronted by murky philosophy--or clear philosophy with murky results. Philosophy matters, so I took the time for this dissection. Make of it what you will.

Book Review: The Godmakers





Frank Herbert, author of the Dune saga, is known for mind-expanding fiction, as he addresses philosophical, political, environmental, cultural, and technological themes in a very cerebral, serious style. The Godmakers, a collection of short stories written in the author's pre-Dune career, was assembled into a novel in the early 1970s in an effort to capitalize on Herbert's fame. It covers many themes familiar to Dune fans, including the effects of fantastic powers on the individual, the risks of worshipping human beings as heroes and "gods," and manipulation of others via religion.

The story (or stories) themselves follow the adventures of one Lewis Orne, a member of the Rediscovery and Reeducation (R&R) corps, a shadowy organization that is responsible for "rediscovering" lost human planets after a galaxy-wide "Rim War." R&R agents are sent to these worlds to determine if the locals are peaceful; if they are not, a military team is sent in to pacify the population. Orne is subsequently recruited into a parallel organization called Investigation-Adjustment (I-A), which has oversight over R&R.

Orne's adventures start out as a series of intellectual exercises in cultural observation, each of which he overcomes in increasingly challenging fashion. Herbert puts together his puzzles as exercises in cultural history and psychology. Orne is a typical Herbert character--cerebral, serious, insightful, and sensitive to nuances of behavior and politics.

The primary conflict of The Godmakers centers around a world where all of the galaxy's religions have congregated onto a single planet, united in a treaty and dedicated to developing superior mental and "Psi" abilities. Orne is, again, challenged to uncover some sort of conspiracy on this world using his personal insights and increasing abilities.

This work lacks the finesse and long-term unity of the Dune series, and it appears to have been assembled hastily, as there are clearly parts where character histories are repeated unnecessarily--giving the reader a clue that this was originally a series of very different stories. The characters in the story also lack a great deal of the depth and sympathy that Herbert's greatest creation enjoy. Again, it is a series of shorter stories put together as a novel (much like Asimov's Foundation Trilogy), and the hand of a writer looking to make a buck comes across.

Still, one can find Herbert's heavy, psychological style beginning to come to life here. His characters' tendencies to speak in aphorisms and his habit of opening chapters with quotations from fictitious books can be found here. Herbert remains one of the masters of philosophical science fiction. As such, his work cannot be ignored, regardless of its form.

Stuff from TED

A talk about finding meaning and purpose in life by Viktor Frankl.

Dan Meyer on giving math class a makeover. His blog can be found here.

Esther Duflo (who's that?) on social experiments to fight poverty.

Depressing, but timely: Jeremy Jackson on how we wrecked the ocean.

Bjarke Ingels on architecture.

TED is a worthwhile site. Give it a try!

The Cure for Space Burnout--Remember Why You're Here in the First Place

It’s not pretty, and we don’t like to admit it, but job/career burnout can happen in any line of work, even careers we’re passionate about. Such things usually happen through overwork, lack of creative control, lack of challenge, or as Dr. OZMG likes to say, “deeper underlying issues.” I’ve had a three-year job adaptation cycle for awhile now, where I spend the first year absorbing the content, the second year kicking arse using that content, and the third year repeating the performance of year two, but usually with a lower level of enthusiasm. My pal D2 reported a similar phenomenon to me, so it’s not unheard-of. The challenge, of course, is what to do if you’re burned out in the literal career of your dreams.

When I worked at Walt Disney World, I went through several three-year cycles, but managed to stay with the same company for 12 years. One of the things I would do just to keep myself happy and motivated was to “renew the wonder.” This would involve something like staying in one of the hotels I hadn’t stayed in before, taking a Disney Cruise, or just hanging out in the parks with no set agenda. My favorite personal recharging is still a walk through Epcot.

It’s a little hard to revisit rocket launches in the space business because they don’t happen very often. In fact, we’re only five missions away from the end of the Space Shuttle Program. That little fact is beginning to creep up on people outside NASA for the first time, and so now normal (i.e. non-space-geek) people like my family, Disney friends, and Dr. OZMG are starting to ask, “You’re closing down the Shuttle? Really? What do we do then?” And if you’ve been in the middle of that debate with little to no influence on the outcome but a whole lot invested in the outcome, you have to ask yourself what you can do to keep your spirits up and avoid the stress of prolonged uncertainty and possible massive changes in your program. In my case, I have to remind myself why I got into this business, what it means in normal-person terms, and what it means to me personally. Below is such an exercise. As usual, these views do not reflect those of NASA, my employer, etc. They are an English major’s view of why the space program matters to him.

The Big Picture

Before I got interested in space as an actual business or line of work, I was a science fiction fan. Science fiction encompasses everything from the space fantasies of Star Trek and Star Wars to the sociological utopias/dystopias of Ursula K. LeGuin and Ray Bradbury to the “hard” science fiction works of Larry Niven, Arthur C. Clarke, and Michael Crichton. Many of these stories depict human beings living, working, and having regular human problems in a future where space travel is not just possible but commonplace. We are nowhere near there yet, but that’s the “vision thing,” as George H. W. Bush might’ve said.

The space advocacy group I belong to, and currently write policy/position papers for, is the National Space Society (NSS). Their vision is “People living and working in communities beyond the Earth.” I dug that. I liked the idea of homes and businesses on the Moon, on Mars, in space stations circling this planet or others. It intrigues me that human beings could explore the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, collect helium 3 from the atmospheres of Neptune and Saturn, and use water-ice objects from the outer solar system to add water to the atmosphere of Mars. It startles and humbles me that I live in an age where objects made by humans have and can leave the solar system. I can’t do any of it, but the dreams are big, and such things appeal to me. If NSS is doing our jobs right, we get those aforementioned normal people to take an interest in the policies and technologies that will make such a future possible.

Technology

It’s not just a matter of zipping around to other planets, making footprints on the sand, and taking pretty pictures for political consumption back home. There have been and continue to be huge benefits from space exploration, direct and indirect, to people on Earth who would never in a million years consider being an engineer or an astronaut. The revolution in miniature integrated circuits—the basis for our computers today—had its birth in data collection for the Saturn V. We can thank the space program for many of our most advanced high-technology medical tools, from the CAT scan and MRI to improved breast screenings and lightweight eyeglasses. Would these advances have occurred if we hadn’t gone into space? Perhaps some, but not most of them. The key to “spinoffs” is what philosopher Gonsalvo Munevar called the serendipity of exploration:

• You develop a widget that helps a spacecraft (probe) perform a task or survive in a place with no atmosphere, high vibration (upon liftoff), temperature extremes, and strange radiations not encountered on Earth.
• You work on improving the device, material, process, or technology for future use.
• You or someone else realizes that the new device—which would never have been invented if it hadn’t been for our crazy desire to explore space—has certain properties that would also be useful for more mundane but equally useful Earth-based purpose.
• Life is improved on Earth through the new application of the space-based device.

Energy

There are two big gorillas in the medium-term future of space power that deserve to be investigated: space-based solar power (SBSP) and helium-3 fusion.

The idea behind SBSP is that you put a large farm of solar panels—say, one square mile’s worth—into geosynchronous orbit (the sort of orbit where the satellite’s period of revolution around the Earth is exactly one day, so it always stays in one place in the sky). The solar panels collect unfiltered sunlight 24 hours a day—at roughly three times the intensity felt on Earth’s equator on a hot day in spring—and transmit the energy in concentrated form via microwaves to a receiving/rectifying antenna (rectenna) on Earth. The rectenna is plugged into a city’s power grid, and voila! Fewer brownouts, fewer coal-burning power plants, less pollution, fewer hydrocarbons used. I’ve heard arguments against SBSP, but until we invest in one and put it into orbit, we really won’t know. And if we want to continue to have a prosperous, high-technology future, we’re going to need new sources of energy; “green” technologies are all too small to have much impact on our future large-scale needs.

Another potential future energy source would be nuclear fusion using helium-3, an isotope of helium that is more easily fused into other elements without as much hard radiation as a side effect. We’ve been pushing for fusion for over 50 years, and it’s always been “only 20 years away.” Helium-3 is most likely a longer-term energy solution, but again should not be discounted until we at least try it. If we want both a high-technology civilization and an improved environment, space technologies offer two possibilities worth investigating. The long-term energy supply from both of these sources runs into the centuries, not just decades.

Materials

John S. Lewis has postulated that a nickel-iron asteroid a few miles across would be enough to meet the metal needs of our planet for 20 years or more. The reasoning being, these asteroids have a lot more than just nickel and iron (an decent combination for making stainless steel, by the way), including platinum-group metals, and other useful metals, not to mention organic materials (carbon, nitrogen) and water ice, all of which could be used to build things in space or meet our metal-hungry civilization back on Earth. Of course we’d need more routine access to and from space before the cost of hauling in such a treasure trove was possible, but in the meantime, the possibilities asteroids open up for building a civilization in space are very exciting.

Civilization

Raised in the American Midwest as I was, I grew up learning about the Northwest Ordinance, and the six-by-six-mile squares that were parceled out to German and Irish and other European farmers to make the settlement of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin possible. The government offered up land for sale, and people bought it, promised nothing save the right to make what good use of it they could and the responsibility to pay taxes when they did. The “frontier narrative” speaks to me as a freedom-loving American. It won’t be completely repeatable in space because human-made habitats will be extremely vulnerable—much more so than wagon trains moving across the Great Plains—but space as a place offers the hope of establishing a new life for the very dedicated few.

Education

Exploring and living in space will require our very best efforts. It will take the combined works of many, many smart people to make it so safe that someone who is NOT that smart to live out there without a degree. The specialties cover the range of human civilization to date, from garbage collection to quantum physics. Everything that we do here we will do or try in space. We just have to learn how to do them all over again, and that will take a very unique educational system, very technical and very creative. To make those works possible, we will need people educated people capable of understanding how structures, machines, and people will act in unfamiliar environments. We will need artists and musicians and yes, even writers to be out there eventually to convey the views of people living away from the blue-green-brown-white ball we call Earth and taking their best shot at the meaning of it all. If expanding our civilization into space is our long-range goal, then our educational systems must rise to meet the challenge. Just developing the curriculum for that would be the work of several lifetimes—but how rewarding, if successful!

Summary

So there you go: I want it all. I want a thriving, bustling, free civilization in space. I want to see great works of art and architecture. I want to see risk-taking, new experiments in freedom, an expanding pie of economic growth, cheap and plentiful energy and materials for a combative world. And I believe space exploration can make such things possible. However, it is very easy to get wrapped around the axle with the current politics or arguments of the day: where do we go first? What rockets do we build? What do we spend money on, how much do we spend, and who spends it? Should we send robots or humans? How far should we go to prevent pollution of the space environment?

Space is as much a philosophical as it is a technical adventure, as America was to the Europeans 500 years ago. What lessons might we learn today that we didn’t learn then? That is the reason I stay in this gig: I want to learn—and maybe even contribute—some of those answers.

Altruism, Liberalism, Etc.

Recently I've gotten into some very interesting and sometimes intense discussions with folks whose political opinions differ from mine, including the indomitable Dr. OZMG. Unlike some of my conservative brethren, I will at least entertain the notions that a) I'm not always right and b) there might be good ideas to be had from the opposition. Call the entry for this evening an exercise in intellectual curiosity, not political conversion.

Over two years ago, I sat down before this machine and hacked out my vision for a positive future. It is primarily space-based, as is my wont, but its emphasis was on increasing individual freedom and capitalism in an effort to make the necessities and luxuries of life more available and affordable to all. You can click on the link for the details.

The point, however, was to look at the other side's vision of Utopia. What follows is contradictory, but is based on inputs and comments from OZMG, D2, Doc, and others.

One might start with basic premises, like "What is the purpose of a good society?" or "How does one define a good society?" The primary words that I hear described as priorities are justice, compassion, individual freedom, dignity, equality, and peace.

Given the contexts, I believe these words are meant to convey the following:

• Justice: Individuals receive what they deserve (pay, respect, legal rights) based on fundamental individual rights.
• Compassion: This is a favorite of OZMG, and I totally get it (though we seldom practice it on ourselves). Ideally, individuals should have some feeling for the suffering of others and, based on that empathy, take constructive action to alleviate that suffering.
• Individual Freedom: This overlaps with a word I use, but while I focus more on economic and political freedom, the liberal definition tends to focus more on freedom of social expression and lifestyle choices (e.g. homosexuality).
• Dignity: This is a particular favorite of one friend of mine. She generally means by this the dignity the individual seeks or deserves through productive work or self-determination.
• Equality: While conservatives tend to emphasize equality of opportunity, liberals emphasize equality of results, both economic and social. The desire here is for less dramatic economic differences between rich and poor, more social equality afforded to (again) homosexuals, minorities, or other groups perceived to not have power under the current structure.
• Peace: This is relatively straightforward--absence of violence or conflict. Again, I dig it, and I can relate. We all could use a lot more of it, especially our troops overseas. Peace under a liberal definition also usually implies domestic tranquility: lack of domestic violence against individuals or social groups and (one might hope) peaceful resolution of political conflicts.

Admittedly, these definitions are filtered by a conservative, but I used to be a LOT more liberal, so let's just assume for now that my definitions are correct, and that these are the guideposts that people who disagree with me wish to use to order society. The next question becomes, in my mind, how do you implement these ideas in the real world of our current political structure?

Using my reductive definition, "justice" means that everyone gets what they deserve. If I understand my liberal friends correctly, a truly just social or economic system would ensure that the same groups of people (minorities) do not always end up poor, but eventually reach a point where they enjoy a standard of living equal to others who have been rich...or at least richer. The current methods generally applied to achieve justice and equality are income redistribution in the form of taxes on the rich and direct welfare or transfer payments to the poor. Another angle being tried is judicial activism, where judges who more strongly support economic equality are promoted to the bench to ensure the outcomes liberals want to see happen.

On the subject of compassion, I too would like nothing better than to see the weak lifted up and the strong to show mercy. And as a social phenomenon, there are things you can do to encourage compassionate acts. Shame, shunning, and social taboos are excellent weapons against bad behavior, bullying, discrimination, etc., and have met with some success. There are some challenges with acting strictly from a sense of compassion, one of them being a willingness on the part of some individuals to take advantage of the compassion of others. Also, there are times when compassion requires what others call tough love. "Yes, I care about your suffering, and I am willing to help the symptoms of it; but you, too, must do your part to change the behaviors that led to the bad circumstances in your life." The liberal resolutions to this, I believe, focus on therapeutic means and government (federal, state, local) efforts to alleviate the social circumstances (poverty, broken home, discrimination) that cause an individual's life to turn out badly.

Individual freedom, again, is something that I have no objection to in principle. There are many social taboos that have loosened considerably in the culture over the past 40-50 years, such as condemnation of abortion, cohabitation, promiscuity, illegitimacy, and homosexuality. Let's say, for the purposes of this essay, that these are unavoidable trends and that punishment by shame, shunning, or taboo are counterproductive. The argument from the left seems to be that these issues of lifestyle or personal choice should not, in fact, be socially punished but celebrated. Okay, great. But when any or all of the behaviors result in declines in standard of living or personal happiness, what is to be done to mitigate those outcomes?

The argument for dignity, again, is an economic one: individuals should not be "left on the street," as a friend so baldly put it, when they are deprived of work or health insurance. They should have the right to a decent job capable of supporting themselves and/or their families. If businesses can't or won't automatically provide jobs (a topic for another day, I assure you), then it would seem that government becomes the employer of last resort. This assumes, of course, that the government has something for the unemployed person to do that is in within their skill base. And, conversely, if the person is not interested in the dignity of work, the government (or someone) must determine what level of support is appropriate to keep the unemployed healthy and whole to avoid the indignity of poverty.

The establishment of peace, internationally and nationally, seems an obvious activity for any government. Ideally, the government establishes the conditions that reduce tensions between nations and individuals. At home this would include much that has been mentioned above, such as increasing economic justice and reducing discrimination. Internationally, this means reducing the number of reasons other nations might dislike us and increasing the number of reasons to like us. This is a very American approach to things, and I happen to practice it in my own personal life. However, I am also painfully aware that there are some individuals (or nations) who, no matter what the well-meaning person does, will never be satisfied. Indeed, these same individuals/nations are so keen on pursuing their own interests, they will deliberately take advantage of the well-meaning person/nation's desire to do well to further their own. I am still awaiting to see a resolution to this problem, especially when the self-interested person or self-declared enemy takes blatant hostile action.

What I've posed here are my best takes on the positions of those I disagree with politically. I'm trying to think like them and see the positive sides of their opinions, but I do have questions, and they're embedded throughout. Comments welcome.