Department Of Wishful (Wistful?) Thinking
Dateline: one week ago tonight, watching the Olympic Games opening ceremony. As mentioned previously in this space, moiself looooooooves to watch the Olympics Games; however, I almost never watch the opening or closing ceremonies. I’m glad I did this time; I thought the French did an excellent job, despite the rain and the attempts at sabotage diversions. If you missed the ceremony, try to find some footage of that beautifully strange and mesmerizing metal horse galloping down the Seine to deliver the Olympic flag. [1]
I actually, embarrassingly, found my eyes tearing up at some points, during the speeches by the French Olympic organizers – words of encouragement and welcome to the athletes and spectators – wherein the hope for peace and the ability to set aside differences and come together for games and camaraderie was lauded. Somehow, if only for a moment, those sentiments sounded more…plausible?…when spoken with French accent.
Reality of course reared its cynical head, when I recalled the Parade of Nations. The Parade of Nations is the main part of the opening ceremony where the participating countries’ teams enter the host country’s stadium in alphabetical order (as determined by the host country’s language). The French did it differently, and more creatively IMO: instead of marching around a stadium, the over 10,000 athletes from 204 nations cruised in a flotilla of 94 boats down Paris’ Seine River. Most of the boats carried the Olympic team members of at least two countries (and sometimes more, for the smaller nations). I found that to be a cool idea, and it was great fun to see the teams mingling and rejoicing…until the narrator reminded us of the fact that Iraq and Iran should have been sharing a boat, seeing as how their respective countries’ names share 75% of their alphabet (even in the French language)…but nope, couldn’t do that. And the Russian athletes were absent, their participation banned due to their dickhead of a dictator’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Dah, comrades, I am why we can’t have nice things.”
Moiself is fairly certain that in Some Ancient Someone’s mythology, wars and other inter-tribal differences were settled via sporting events. So, I’ll do the sit back relax and enjoy thing (confession: although I almost never watch daytime TV, for the next two weeks my TV will be on almost continually, tuned to the coverage of the you-know-what). And maybe, just maybe, I’ll dream of a future mythology shared by all, in which disputes are settled by a heartfelt Women’s Rugby Sevens match, capped off with a haka. [2]
* * *
Department Of Another Reason To Be Optimistic
Have you ever heard multilingual Rhodes Scholar, army veteran, former mayor and presidential candidate and current Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg speak? I get a wee twinge of hope whenever I hear him talk, on any issue.
Perhaps you saw him during the 2019 Democratic nominees debates, but have you heard him interviewed (as in his recent interview with the NY Times series, The Interview) , or at a press conference? Did you know that Buttigieg accepts invitations to appear on Fox News to be interviewed by their shamelessly partisan hacks “journalists”? He will accept invitations to speak in such a hostile environment, where many of his fellow politicians would say, “What’s the point?”, precisely because, as Buttigieg points out, the Fox News type of audience is not even going to *hear* the Democratic party message if no one is willing to take it to them. He stays calm, remains rational, makes his points – which includes something I’d previously given little thought to: remember, there is the possibility that person who controls the TV remote does not necessarily speak or think for his [3] entire household. Translation: just because the household TV is tuned to Fox News that doesn’t mean that every mind in the household is closed off to anything but the Fox News POV…but that’s all they will hear if no rational person is willing to speak to them.
I admire Buttigieg’s composure, intellect, ethics, ideas, and presentation. And while this year is not yet his time for The Big Chair®, I’m looking forward to seeing Buttigieg serve in the Kamala Harris cabinet, and to having the opportunity to vote for him for president, four to eight to however many years from now. [4]
* * *
Department Of, And Yet…
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
(Carl Sagan, in ITAL Broca’s Brain [5])
You may be familiar with British mathematician, philosopher, author, and activist Bertrand Burton Russell’s “china teapot argument.” Russell used the argument-by-analogy to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making empirically unfalsifiable claims, as opposed to the burden of disproof being upon a person hearing such claims.
In the example of religion, Russell wrote that if he were to claim, sans offering verifiable evidence, that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because it would be difficult if not impossible to prove his assertion to be wrong. [6]
“I ought to call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I do not think the existence of the Christian God any more probable than the existence of the Gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is *not* between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the Christian God just as unlikely.”
( Absence of Evidence, Evidence of Absence, and the Atheist’s Teapot. 1958 Ars Disputandi. 10 (1): 9–22. doi:10.1080/15665399.2010.10820011. S2CID 37528278 )
Got it; absolutely agree. [7] I have no desire to even quasi-seriously entertain the idea that the natural world is the way it is because of the supernatural world (this is the tenets of all religions and spiritual beliefs in a nutshell [8] ), and/or that there are supernatural beings which are capable of intervening in the affairs of the natural world (but evidently choose not to do so, or do so with an almost violent capriciousness [9] ).
Given the evidence and statistical probabilities, [10] I can confidently assert that I do not “believe” there is a china or porcelain teapot – or a warm beverage-holding kettle of any composition – orbiting any celestial object in our solar system. However, what with all the junk humanity has dumped/let escape into space in the past 70 years, it wouldn’t surprise moiself if some alert amateur astronomer spots a rogue astronaut’s diaper (excuse me, Maximum Absorbency Garment eeewwwwww) circling a satellite or even the International Space Station.
That said, moiself can understand the appeal, if only from the point of view of a fiction writer, for holding on to such flights of fancy. There is much art to be made – many incredible flights of the imagination, from the whimsical to the grotesque, with which to entertain ourselves – in an orbiting-china-teapot world.
Remember, boys and girls, your tin foil hat will protect you should the teapot’s orbit disintegrate.
* * *
Department of Employee Of The Month
It’s that time, to bestow that prestigious award upon moiself. Again. The need for which I wrote about here. [11]
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [12]
“As established in the Constitution of The United States,
there are three branches of government.
Your religion is not one of them.”
( as per the legions of us often referred to as Anonymous )
* * *
Parting Shot: I love it when/I hate it when…
I hate it when I have to think about something that makes me want to quote nonsense to combat nonsense…which is something I try to avoid in this space because it takes me to dark places I’d rather not spend time and brain cells mucking through….
Such dark places include the sadly undeniable fact that some people who identify as Christians support a certain, carroty-tinged candidate.
* * *
May you find hope in the existence of some young(er), sane, idealistic politician;
May you consider using a haka to celebrate your victories,
acknowledge your defeats, and settle your disputes;
May you enjoy the occasional foray into an orbiting teapot cosmos;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Not a very good description…you just have to see it for it to make sense.
[2] There are a variety of hakas (ceremonial dances and shout-chants, usually performed by a group) Māori culture. “The haka is commonly known as a war dance used to fire up warriors on the battlefield, but it’s also a customary way to celebrate, entertain, welcome, and challenge visiting tribes….it’s also a customary way to celebrate, entertain, welcome, and challenge visiting tribes. The very first New Zealand representative rugby team, known as The Natives, performed a haka during a tour of Britain and Australia in 1888-89. The haka performed then, Ka Mate, is still performed by the All Blacks (NZ rugby team) today.” (History of Haka, experienceallblacks.com )
[3] “…or her”…nah. It’s usually a he.
[5] Sagan’s dictum is related to Occam’s razor and other scientific and philosophical principles on how the weight of evidence for an extraordinary claim must be proportioned to the extraordinariness of the claim)
[6] Because the teapot is too small to be seen by our telescopes, for example, but really, it *could* be there, you just can’t see it.
[7] With minor quibbles as to the varying definitions for what one person may find “extraordinary.”
[8] Which is where most of them belong.
[9] and the causes of/reasons for these sporadic interventions vary among the various supernatural theologies (read: religions)….
[10] I’m not going to quote those here; I just wanted another footnote.
[11] Several years ago, MH received a particularly glowing performance review from his workplace. As happy as I was for him when he shared the news, it left me with a certain melancholy I couldn’t quite peg. Until I did.
One of the many “things” about being a writer (or any occupation working freelance at/from home) is that although you avoid the petty bureaucratic policies, bungling bosses, mean girls’ and boys’ cliques, office politics and other irritations inherent in going to a workplace, you also lack the camaraderie and other social perks that come with being surrounded by your fellow homo sapiens. No one praises me for fixing the paper jam in the copy machine, or thanks me for staying late and helping the new guy with a special project, or otherwise says, Good on you, sister. Once I realized the source of the left-out feelings, I came up with a small way to lighten them.
[12] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
