The Default Human Condition

Although I neither believe in nor practice any religion, I respect the beliefs of those who do.  Yes, I have difficulty understanding how they reconcile their beliefs with the realities of the world we live in.  Yes, I despise the manipulative, self-serving nature of many institutions of organized religion. Nevertheless, I feel I’m in no position to judge anyone’s beliefs, as did the Founding Fathers, hence the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, the same rarely applies in the inverse.   As long as there has been religion, believers have vilified non-believers, and that despicable practice continues unabated. Thinly veiled disapproval of irreligion is even embedded in cherished traditions and everyday idioms. Absurdly, the terms “God-fearing”, and “church-going”, among others, are considered compliments.  Politicians everywhere make a point of conspicuously attending religious services, and insert clichéd religious references (“God bless America”) in their speeches.  Faith and religion are typically considered “good”, while atheism and non-belief are considered “bad”, despite the fact that religion is simply not a part of the lives of a large and growing percentage of us.  Such is the stigma attached to atheism that many non-believers actually feel guilty about their non-belief, and go through religious motions simply to stay within the acceptable boundaries of their social circles.

In what can only be described as stunning irrationality, religious belief is widely considered the default human condition, and non-belief an aberration, logic (and Occam's Razor) be damned.  

By any reasonable rationale, non-belief should most certainly be the default human condition. Why is it not?  

The obvious answer is that religious organizations seized upon the inexplicable nature of much of the world to construct faith-based belief systems which allowed them to exert control over their flocks through fear.  Non-believers presented a threat to this control, and were therefore vilified. What we see today are the remnants of that historical vilification.

Another reason that comes to mind is the erroneous but widely held belief that religious people, since they ostensibly adhere to a value system, pose less of a threat to society than “loose cannon” atheists, so society tends to favor the religious.

I believe there is an additional, more nuanced reason for the irrational disparagement of non-belief.

Religion means having an opinion.  A strong opinion.  An opinion of such strength that it exists and thrives despite its lack of evidentiary foundation and factual support.  Irreligion means the absence of an opinion due to the absence of facts supporting one.  Religion is zeal.  Irreligion is indifference.  So then, religion, particularly religious zealotry, or fanaticism, attracts opinionated people.  People who are fervent about their beliefs, certain that there is no valid alternative to their opinion, and ready, willing and able to thrust their beliefs upon others.  Although zealots represent a small percentage of religious people, they are vocal, visible and influential opinion leaders.  And fanatics are capable of extreme acts in support of their beliefs.

The uncertainty and indifference inherent in atheism attracts a different crowd, far less fervent, more open-minded.  Less opinionated.  There is no such thing as an irreligious zealot.   No one has crashed an airplane into a building in the name of atheism.  Abortion clinics are bombed by religious fanatics, but churches are not bombed by secular fanatics.  Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews throw stones at those who do not share their beliefs about the Sabbath.  Irreligious Israelis do not throw stones at the Orthodox.

So, irreligion should be the default human condition, but isn’t because its nature attracts people less fervent than those attracted by religion, and the zealous are more influential than the indifferent.

Not exactly a great commentary on the human condition.

You Really Must Think I'm Stupid

So you give your 16 year-old son Justin permission to drive your car one night, with the understanding that he is to go with a group of friends to a local mall to watch a movie and get a bite to eat.  You trust your son, so you rest easy that night and turn in early in your Los Angeles home, confident that Justin will operate within the guidelines given him.

The next morning, Jake, one of Justin’s friends, is unexpectedly at your door.  He wants to talk to you. The two of you sit down.  He was with your son last night.  The group did not go to the mall.  Instead, they drove to Las Vegas.  Got a room at the Bellagio.  Spent half the night in the casino, and the rest partying with prostitutes in the hotel room.  Jake was part of the group and ended up in Las Vegas, but instead of joining Justin and the others at the casino he decided to take a bus back home to L.A., sleep for a few hours, knock on your door and come clean.

You are deeply disappointed by your son’s dishonesty and his abuse of your trust.  You thank Jake for bringing Justin’s misbehavior to your attention.

Later on that morning, Justin wakes up, checks his phone and realizes that Jake ratted him out, not only personally and directly to you, his father, but also publicly on Twitter.  He stews about it for a while, unsure about how to proceed.  He finally decides on a 2-pronged action plan.  First, he tweets that Jake has broken the code of friendship and should immediately be ostracized.  Second, he comes to you and says, “I realize that I went a bit overboard last night.  What I did was OK, because I know what I’m doing and nobody got hurt, but I recognize that it’s not enough for me to be comfortable with my actions; you need to feel comfortable with my actions as well.  I also recognize that I may need more oversight.  Anyway, I have a few ideas about ways in which I can improve things, and I will implement them as I see fit.”

You say, “I never thought you would betray my trust this way, particularly since when you were younger you specifically criticized this type of behavior.  In fact, your strong opinions against abuses of power were instrumental in making me feel comfortable about loaning you my car.   I’m counting on you to make the necessary corrections, but in the meantime both you and I owe a debt of gratitude to your friend Jake, who called our attention to this situation.  Were it not for him, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.  Thanks to Jake you’re at least addressing the issue and taking actions you yourself agree are necessary and important.”

Justin’s response: “No, I was totally going to take these actions anyway.  Jake is neither my friend nor yours.  He’s our enemy and if I ever get a hold of him I will beat him to a pulp.”

“Justin”, you say, “you really must think I’m stupid”.

Cast

                  Jake …............................................................................ Edward Snowden

  Justin ….......................................................................... President Barack Obama

You (the father) ….........................................................The American People

A Few Cool Things About Baseball

It is the only sport where the defense has the ball.

It is the ultimate team sport, since you cannot simply give the ball to your best player every time.

It is the ultimate individual sport, since a player is utterly responsible when he is up to bat, and he cannot shirk his responsibility by merely passing the ball to someone else.

Records are kept, not only of what happened, but of what should have happened.  If a batter gets on base due to a fielder’s error, the batter is not credited with a base hit and the pitcher is not charged with allowing one.  There are earned runs, and unearned runs.  No other sport makes these fundamental distinctions in its recordkeeping.  Famously, no other sport is as obsessed with statistics.  More importantly, no other sport is as obsessed about the fairness of its statistics.

The best players in the world often look deceptively normal, so as you watch them throw, catch, bat and run you feel you could do those things as well as they do. Until you try.

The game is enticingly simple, yet profoundly complex.  You can learn its basics in a half hour, and spend a lifetime attempting to master its nuances.

It has been played, essentially the same way, for well over 150 years.  It has survived scandals, corruption, strikes, wars.  It has reflected the times, as worker exploitation, racism, bigotry and substance abuse have all tarnished it.  Yet it has, at times, dragged a sometimes reluctant nation forward in their repudiation.

Its heroes are as diverse as mankind itself.  The Christian Gentleman.  The Hebrew Hammer.  The Left Arm of God.   The Flyin’ Hawaiian.  The Golden Greek.  The Mississippi Mudcat.  The Cuban Missile.  So many more.

There is no clock.  Each game proceeds at its own pace.

There are no ties, and no artificial tie-breaking mechanisms .  The game continues normally until one team wins.  

Listening to a game can be as (or more) enjoyable than watching it.  Pull up a chair.  

Most of what is happening is not visible, and the pace of the game allows it to be discussed as it happens.

And finally, no one is congratulated for striking out.  Unlike what happens every time a free throw is missed in the NBA.

It Doesn't Matter

His team down by 1 with 5 seconds remaining in the game, the point guard brings the ball up the court.  He passes to the power forward, who passes back to him and sets up a perfect screen.  1 second left.  The point guard steps around the screen, squares up and shoots. The ball leaves his fingertips just before the buzzer goes off.  If he makes the shot, his team wins.  If the shot rims out, his team loses.  Let’s pause this narrative with the ball suspended in mid-air for just a moment.

If the shot is good, the analysts will praise the winning coach’s brilliant strategy.  If the shot misses, the same analysts will explain why the same coach’s strategy was flawed, and praise the opposing coach’s strategy.  The fate of that single final shot will skew all post-game analyses, when in truth both teams had virtually the same chance of winning the game, and the point guard’s execution of the final shot was in no way indicative of the effectiveness of either coach’s strategy.  

The point of the narrative?  Most analysis of this type is useless and a waste of time.   The story could have featured a last second pass completion or goal, or a walk-off home run.  The conclusion would have been identical.  

But the folly of such shallow, result-driven, post-event analysis is not limited to sports.  Every time a company becomes successful, its leaders are meticulously analyzed and books are written so that would-be entrepreneurs can learn about and imitate them in order to succeed as well.  The problem is that these leaders are generally not successful because of their habits, daily routines, or other easily imitated characteristics.  They are successful because of other factors which cannot be imitated,  and indeed may have succeeded despite their personality or habits and not because of them.   Furthermore, leaders of successful companies generally have very little in common with each other, so the study of one particular leader in an effort to discern exactly what characteristics are conducive to success is hopeless.

Examples abound.  Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Andy Grove, the Google triumvirate (Page, Brin and Schmidt).  All have led wildly successful tech companies.  Their management styles and personal characteristics have little, if anything, in common.  So which leader should a prospective tech entrepreneur imitate?   It just doesn’t matter.

William Edward Hickson popularized the proverb:

'Tis a lesson you should heed:

Try, try, try again.

If at first you don't succeed,

Try, try, try again

W.C. Fields modified the proverb a bit:

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.

For every person that has succeeded by being stubbornly persistent there is another that has succeeded by changing course, or “pivoting” as is annoyingly trendy to say these days.  So, the truth is, if at first you don’t succeed, you may succeed it you persist, or maybe not.  Or you may succeed if you quit and try something else.  Or maybe not.  Your company may be successful if you manage it in the style of Steve Jobs.  Or maybe not.  There are so many variables involved in every aspect of life that to try to find precepts that always apply is an exercise in futility.  Sometimes what you do pays off.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes the fact that it pays off is related to the manner in which you did it.  Sometimes it’s not.  

I have some personal experience here.  I ran a company for 15 years.  The managers of the manufacturer of the products I primarily distributed decided that it was in their best interest to purchase my company.  They made me an offer, we negotiated a bit, and ended up making a deal that worked out well for them and for me.  So, in hindsight, I can pat myself on the back knowing that I ran my company brilliantly, because of the happy ending, right?

Not so fast.  The manufacturer could have just as easily decided to enter my market directly not by purchasing my company but instead by setting up shop independently and driving me out of business.  Had that happened, in hindsight I would have kicked myself in the ass knowing that I ran my company into the ground by exposing it to such a risk.

So, did I run my company brilliantly or horribly?  Who knows.  As much as I would like it to, the end result doesn’t validate the strategy, since it clearly could have gone either way.  Like the point guard’s shot.

So, what’s the moral of the story?  Hell if I know.

Fifth or First?

Many of us are celebrating the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions regarding same-sex marriage, which in one case struck down the absurd Section 3 of 1996’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) thus entitling  same-sex couples to Federal benefits, and in the other effectively allowed same-sex marriages in California by leaving in place a local trial court decision.   No doubt, the gay marriage movement has gathered a head of steam, and hopefully will continue to garner much needed victories in other venues.

The always offensive and now unconstitutional Section 3 of the DOMA simply states:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

The Court found Section 3 unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment.  Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority:

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.  By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Although the “equal under the law” argument as presented by the Court is valid and relevant, I would have liked the Justices to go further, since in my view Section 3 violated not only the Fifth Amendment, but also the First Amendment, which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Many religions accept and celebrate gay marriage.  Others do not.  For an Act to define marriage the way some religions do violates the First Amendment in two ways.  First, it “establishes a religion” by making law a concept only espoused by some religions.  In addition, it prohibits the free exercise of the many religions that accept gay marriage.  I’m puzzled by the reluctance of the Court to see this as a First Amendment issue as well as a Fifth Amendment issue, particularly since the most vocal opponents of same-sex marriage oppose it on religious grounds.

Perhaps this reluctance is somehow related to the many other clear violations of the “religion” portion of the First Amendment that continue to exist unabated.  For example, the phrase “In God We Trust”, which appears on our currency, was adopted as our National Motto in 1956 (by the way, it was adopted in a Cold War effort to distinguish the U.S. from the officially atheist Soviet Union).  How is this motto, inherently offensive to those of us who do not believe in God, consistent with the First Amendment?

Prayers and invocations are de rigeur at presidential inaugurations, and yes, they are usually multi denominational, but no matter, they are religious in nature, and therefore have no place in a Federal Government ceremony.  Many people seem to think that as long as diversity of religion is acknowledged, religious freedom is being respected.  That is simply not the case.  Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.

The Pledge of Allegiance, which opens congressional sessions among many other events, reads:

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [emphasis mine].

The words “under God” were not part of the original pledge as written by Francis Bellamy in 1892.  They were added in 1954, by President Eisenhower, who had been baptized a Presbyterian just a year before he orchestrated the modification, which was suggested by George MacPherson Docherty, a Presbyterian pastor.  How is adding this language to the Pledge not a gross violation of the First Amendment?

There are countless other instances of clear First Amendment violations that are inexplicably allowed to continue, but the last one I’ll mention here is that religious institutions are not taxed by the Federal Government.  The Treasury forgoes as much as $71 billion a year due to this blatantly unfair policy.

Religion is certainly a polarizing matter, and the political coverage afforded by appearing to be devout is amply demonstrated by the politicians themselves, who never fail to end a speech with the offensive “God bless” this, and “God bless” that.  Understandably, no one in power seems to have the courage to advocate a more strict enforcement of the First Amendment, which is regrettable, since in addition to ending all sorts of objectionable practices, it would require the removal of religious considerations from the debates surrounding issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, scholastic curriculums and many others.  And what a wonderful world this would be.

Movie Review: Man of Steel

As I watched Zach Snyder’s Man of Steel, I kept yelling at the screen (in my mind, of course).  Mostly, I yelled, “enough with the crumbling buildings already!”  I yelled other things as well, but let’s begin with the crumbling buildings.

The last third of the movie consists almost entirely of Kal-El fighting General Zod and his associates using Metropolis as the venue in what was meant to be an epic confrontation but turned out to be an excruciating, seemingly interminable sequence.  And yes, to see them catapult into each other  and plow through whatever is in their way causing widespread destruction was pretty cool the first time I saw it.  And maybe the second.  But the effects became repetitive and tedious, and despite the instant destruction of anything they touched, the combatants themselves seemed impervious to any damage.  Instead of being caught up in the fight, I kept thinking that at this rate the entire planet will be destroyed before the battle is over, and so what purpose will it serve to fight to save humanity if all of humanity becomes collateral damage to the fight?

Effects work well when they support the story.  In Man of Steel, the story is secondary to the excessive barrage of CGI effects, as is amply demonstrated when, in a shocking non-sequitur, Kal-El and Lois Lane choose to have their first kiss (and Superman’s only attempt at levity) at a moment when yes, Zod has been defeated, but Kal-El and Lois are literally standing in the middle of a freshly devastated city with presumably tens of thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of agonizing injured.  It seemed as if the writers knew they had to cross this scene off their checklist and just shoved it in there without pausing to think of how inappropriately it would play out.  Cringeworthy.

And take the religious references.  Please.  Kal-El is first Moses, sent forth from Krypton in a futuristic version of the biblical basket.  Then, with the subtlety of a jackhammer, he becomes the sacrificial lamb Jesus Christ, suspended in mid-air with his arms extended.  Still later, he consults with a priest inside a church, with a painting of Jesus (draped in a red robe, of course) visible in the background.  He is willing to give himself up to Zod to save humanity.  But of course.  The icing on the cake: Kal-El is 33 years old.  There is nothing wrong with the religious references per se, and they are actually part of Superman’s rich history.  But to be pounded over the head with them is a bit unnerving.  Subtlety and nuance are apparently not in Snyder’s repertoire.

In another appalling non-sequitur, Kal-El, fresh from his conversation with the ghostly consciousness of his father during which he (Kal-El) finally understands that his ultimate purpose in life is to bond with and protect the people of earth, decides to... return to Kansas to spend some quality time with his mother.  Huh?  And apparently he would have stayed there indefinitely, the people of earth oblivious of his mission, but for General Zod’s appearance on the scene.

I’ll preface the following discussion by stating that while I’m comfortable with my knowledge of the Star Trek universe, my familiarity with Superman is almost entirely derived from the 1950’s series with George Reeves in the title role, and the 1970’s and 80’s Christopher Reeve movies.  That said, my impression was that this Superman origin story sorely lacked the reverence for the source material so richly exhibited in the latest Star Trek reboot.  Somehow, J.J. Abrams and company were able to bring a new cast as well as contemporary effects and techniques into Star Trek while lovingly preserving the essence of not only the  characters and their relationships, but also, and most importantly, the feel of it.  That is why 2009’s Star Trek and 2013’s Star Trek: Into Darkness appeal to newcomers while delighting old Trekkers like myself as well.   Such is the respect with which Abrams treats Star Trek that in the 2009 movie he cleverly branched off a new time continuum to allow for creative freedom with the characters in the future while leaving their heretofore existing universe intact.

Man of Steel lacks such respect.  The earlier incarnations of Superman presented a title character that was consistently self-assured and even a bit cocky, but always with a self-deprecating, disarming sense of humor.  Henry Cavill’s Kal-El is bewildered, brooding, dour, dark.   Lois Lane’s sense of awe and wonder is nowhere to be seen.  Gone are the nuanced, metaphorically suggestive yet superficially innocent scenes epitomized by Lois Lane and Superman’s flight scene in 1978’s Superman.  Again, in Man of Steel there is no subtlety, no nuance, no layering.  In their place: body slamming and crumbling buildings.

In another affront, Man of Steel callously alters the franchise’s pivotal relationship by having Lois Lane determine Superman’s true identity early in the movie.  And so it is that as the movie ends, at what is in fact the beginning of the story we all know, Lois Lane knows exactly who Superman is when he begins working at the Daily Planet.  The entire Clark Kent subterfuge, so vital to the evolution of both characters, simply does not apply (at least to Lois Lane) in this reboot.  Apparently the writers plan to take their relationship, like the franchise, in a different direction.    They can count me out.