How the Righteous Murder

Last night I saw "Killer Joe" at Profiles Theatre. "Killer Joe" is a play by Tracy Letts. Letts won the Pulitzer for drama this past year for his play, "August, Osage County". He writes about themes of self deception, denial and ultimately murder. The murder could be overt, as in "Killer Joe" where a desperate and resentful son seeks out his mother's insurance money so he can rid himself of her insults, avenge the fact she stole his cocaine, and safely reconcile his debt with the drug dealers he owes for the absconded cocaine he couldn't sell. The murder could be covert, as the unseen patriarch who serves as the dramatic catalyst in "August, Osage County" whose mysterious absence (a murder or a suicide?) brings together a dysfunctional and far-flung family which ignites psychological murder in the form of deceit, addiction, verbal and sexual abuse. The characters in both plays embrace a self-centered righteousness that allows them to nurture their persecution complexes rooted in real or imagined torment. They both take place in the American Southwest, Pentecostal country. The action of "Killer Joe" happens in a trailer in Texas and "August" in a home in Oklahoma. The idea of fixed "family values" seems to be challenged as the home becomes an arena where the righteous contemplate the gains murder can bring.

This brings me to the Texas Board of Education.

The past month has shown that Letts' imagination of the righteousness formed by Pentecostal superstition in the American Southwest is not just good dramatic fodder. How the righteous murder is on full display as the Texas Board of Education seeks out a protection of family values that will kill the last 500 years of scientific advance and the last 225 years of democratic enlightened liberty. They seek to kill modernity for biblical authority as a means to protect their children from the creep of secular advance.

But, like Letts' characters they fail to see the irony and self-defeat their actions invite. They want to teach their children freedom by emphasizing John Calvin over Thomas Jefferson. The former enforced a Christianity that made it criminal for one to choose the bible he or she read while the latter liberated the American mind from Christian superstition when he invoked the promise fate provides all with "unalienable rights". Calvin dictated, for the sake of social order, that all members of Geneva embrace the doctrine of total depravity, or "slaves to sin", while Jefferson encouraged the self-evident truth that people are born into liberty. Calvin sought the persecution and murder of all those that disagreed with his doctrine while Jefferson hoped the people would be encouraged to over-throw his constitution with a new revolution every generation.

The only reason the Texas Board of Education can diminish the good son of enlightenment Jefferson for the "religious right icon" (their words) Calvin is because Jefferson ensured their personal religious liberty would be protected. They don't see that their desire to seek revenge for imagined danger has invited the murder of the ideas that generate the freedom they wish to protect.

The frightening aspect to the story, and why I use the term murder, is that Texas' size creates a power in public education with national reach. The curriculum they decide holds sway over the country's curriculum. Demand for text books is driven by what the Texas Board of Education decides should be in text books so, if Texans think that the agreed upon and well founded scientific principles of common descent are anathema to the creation story then "well-educated" American children may seek to publish sermons on how the triple-threat Intelligent Designer of Yahweh - Jesus - Holy Spirit created an opportunity for humans to walk with the dinosaurs rather than launch animal studies to initiate safety trials in service towards a cancer cure.

How the righteous murder the ideas that allow their righteousness to flourish is predictable. In "Killer Joe" the murderous son ultimately realizes that his plan to kill his mother was never his. He sees that his righteous reaction to given circumstances allowed him to be manipulated by crueler men (his step-father the beneficiary of the insurance policy; Killer Joe the hired murderer) and, he seeks to abandon the plot too late to change the dramatic action. He threatens Joe to back off and stop the plan. Joe sits in silence and calmly sips coffee while watching the son rage. The son threatens Joe that if Joe follows through then Joe will be sorry. Joe simply laughs, walks off-stage and re-enters dragging a Hefty bag full of something about the size of a dead body. Joe tells the son, "Don't open it."

The future of the Texas Board of Education will be as dark, heavy and impenetrable if they are allowed to shape education in favor of their superstitions. At the very least, emerging nations like India, China, and Thailand will surpass our collective scientific IQ and will continue the march towards technological advancement, leaving us behind in hopeful eschatology awaiting the bloody monarchy of "King Jesus" but, a darker turn could be made. The ideas of the enlightenment existed as a push back to Theocracy because Europeans became tired of suffering holy wars. They craved evidence and reason, rather than obedience to superstition, to lift them from totalitarian manipulation. If world religious trends continue and more people convert to the preferred religion, Islam, then the Texas Pentecostals will see the fruits of their righteousness. Sharia Law will not allow the expectation of a super-hero King Jesus to lift Christians from imagined persecution. It will enforce real persecution in the form of dhimmitude, the Islamic system of governing populations conquered by Jihad wars, which amounts to majority rule and slavery. The righteous don't realize that it is only the secular protections they see as evil which allow their "family values" to flourish. They don't understand that protection of the individual starts when we put aside superstitions like the obedience Calvin sought while burning heretics and instead, embrace the mind of Jefferson when he honestly said,

"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity."

One can only hope that honest Texans will challenge the authority of those wishing to murder the ideas that allow the righteous their protections.

Celebrating Failure

This is not a challenge to anyone who works in TQM. One of my favorite people and role-models, my cousin Mike, is an efficiency expert, employing linear math to optimize supply chain management so, I appreciate six sigma and endorse the opportunities inherent in continuous improvement.

I just think in the face of a respect for efficiency and safety, it would be a good idea to appreciate the beauty found in failing.

I might be writing this simply because I received my performance review two days ago and am hoping this past year's failures are pregnant with potential. Pondering the possibilities within failure helps me modulate my depressive tendencies.

Businessweek ran a great story a couple of years ago entitled “Eureka, we Failed” where they posited the theory that innovation cannot happen without the necessary embrace of failure.

They state,

"Getting good at failure . . . doesn't mean creating anarchy out of organization. It means leaders -- not just on a podium at the annual meeting, but in the trenches, every day -- who create an environment safe for taking risks and who share stories of their own mistakes. It means bringing in outsiders unattached to a project's past. It means carving out time to reflect on failure, not just success."

One of the cultural practices they recommend is throwing “failure parties” where a team, that has taken a risk for the sake of innovation, shares the narrative of their failure with the organization and communicates the lessons learned. The benefits are humility, honesty and awareness.

This type of thinking seems helpful, almost necessary. There's a lot of destruction going on right now that might be creative if we realize that perfection is our enemy and failure our friend.

I think it is time we abrogate the proverbial encouragement to good behavior and re-write it for our common good, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.”

I know I work in a pressure-filled environment where I try to manage the perception of perfection but, the reality is that life is a creative art and creativity is an imperfect pursuit.

Again, the BW article,

"Most people naturally seek positive outcomes and set about trying to prove that an experiment works. But designers, inventors, and scientists, all models for companies struggling to be more creative, take the opposite tack. They try to prove themselves wrong.”

And hell, if you hate this post, prove me wrong. I'd appreciate the failure.

I am an egotistical lover of beauty who hungers for truth and change

Last week I read Stephen Jay Gould's essay, "The Median is not the Message" and in it the author says,

"Heart and head are focal points of one body, one personality,"

By which the author means that one's hope for oneself must also consider the facts about oneself but, the facts about oneself must be respectful of one's unique nature if hope for oneself is to be had.

It is helpful to understand where you fall in the bell curve and you can't be afraid to find out that you might be far from average.

George Orwell gives advice in "Why I Write" that is specific to writing but, could apply to a broader consideration of self-reflection and self-acceptance he says;

". . . there are four great motives for writing . . . they exist
in different degrees in every writer . . .

1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc. etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one . . . Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.
2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose on the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not be missed . . .
3. Historical Impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.
4. Political Purpose - using the word 'political' in the widest sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people's idea of the kind of society that should strive after."

They all make sense to me and they are all hard to admit.

I like to make arguments that express my personal sense of who I am in the world. I feel more hopeful when I do. To sum Orwell, I am an egotistical lover of beauty who hungers for truth and change.

Gould wrote his essay when he was diagnosed in 1982 with abdominal mesothelioma, a rare and very deadly form of cancer, which technically speaking offered him, a "median mortality of eight months" to live. He took the time to understand who he was relative to the average and lived for 12 years.

His quote above is the resolution of the conflict between "what is" versus "what's possible" and, he postulates, a death sentence is only accurate if a person fails to appreciate, with head and heart, the unique variations s/he carries within. He concludes with sage advice,

"It has become, in my view, a bit too trendy to regard the acceptance of death as something tantamount to intrinsic dignity. Of course I agree with the preacher of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to love and a time to die - and when my skein runs out I hope to face the end calmly and in my own way. For most situations, however, I prefer the more martial view that death is the ultimate enemy - and I find nothing reproachable in those who rage mightily against the dying of the light."

Makes sense to me.

Learning a new fallacy

My favorite blog is "Debunking Christianity" it has unseated the MLive MSU Football Forum as my Internet diversion of choice. I like it because it has introduced me to the idea of fallacies and how they operate. Watching atheist skeptics and Christian apologists debate God's reality has helped me realize how faulty my reasoning skills are.

An example of this is my new appreciation for the fallacy of equivocation. I appreciate this fallacy because I love words and their precise use. The fallacy demands one define terms if they are making a challenging argument. I like paradox also so, in the past a phrase such as, "One should be skeptical of a skepticism" would delight me.

I am a skeptic and therefore of course am skeptical of skepticism but that doesn't make me doubt my skepticism because I now understand the importance of fallacy.

You can read why I can say that here.

The Rounding Influence of Storytelling

Insight is a story. It goes beyond an agreed upon fact and uncovers paradox.

There really isn’t any formula for insight because it depends on the ability to see beyond the data and consider context.

For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been pursuing insight, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. The archive is one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.

An article from last June’s Atlantic entitled “What Makes us Happy” focused on this study.

Amidst the data collected, the enduring lessons of the men studied were paradoxical and the scientific output needed, “the rounding influence of story-telling."

Insight is a story. How something is told affects its meaning. What to tell?

The Mendacity of Measurability

Albert Einstein once observed, "Not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that can be measured matters.” This is a tricky aphorism to comprehend because on the surface it would seem to be a celebration of intuition over empiricism.

That observation would deny history however because the good physicist demanded his “General Relativity” be corroborated by a total eclipse before it could be Nobel-worthy.

The insight is useful though if we consider that it offers clarity around the potential for equivocation when we automatically assume quantification as thought. Ideation can be compromised when we seek the right answer in the face of complexity rather than being comfortable accepting complexity itself. A prior formula can mistake the nature of variables and deliver an outcome that fails to recognize the functional relationship of those variables.

The author Mark Slouka exposes the fallacy of quantification further in his essay “Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School” when he discusses the current trend in scholastics towards standardized testing. He paraphrases David Brooks on the importance of data capture skills and education;

“all we need to do is make a modest in- vestment in ‘delayed gratification skills.’ Young people who can delay gratification can master the sort of self-control that leads to success; they can sit through sometimes boring classes and perform rote tasks. As a result, they tend to get higher SAT scores, gain acceptance to better colleges, and have, on average, better adult outcomes.”

But Mr. Slouka exposes the fallacy of this thinking by observing,

“There’s something almost sublime about this level of foolishness. By giving his argument a measured, mathematical air (the students only achieve better adult out- comes ‘on average’), Brooks hopes that we will overlook both the fact that his constant (success) is a variable and that his terms are ‘way unequal’, as the kids might say. One is reminded of the scene in the movie ‘Proof’ in which the mathematician played by Anthony Hopkins, sliding into madness, begins a proof with ‘Let X equal the cold.’ Let higher SAT scores equal better adult outcomes.”

Foolish arguments can seem logical as long as they are internally consistent but what reasoned truth demands is a credible premise. We live in a world swamped by data. We engage the fallacy of numbers but fail to recognize the premise behind the numbers we believe author reality. In the face of the data over-load there is an opportunity to embrace good old critical thinking. We have an opportunity to sharpen our thinking by challenging the logic of agreed upon premises. And we are living in a very complex time when logic is necessary but critically assessing the premise driving that logic is imperative.

When we are faced with a challenge that chases a specific outcome are we allowing our desire for success to impact our premise in a way where we embrace the appearance of logic as an honest attempt to reconcile complexity? Or are we assessing our options in a way that better understands complexity? Are we looking for what seems to be the right answer or do we consider what is real, albeit messy?

The danger we face is allowing our comfort with logic to leave us vulnerable to unquestioned premises because to question an agreed upon premise may seem inefficient (or, Heaven forbid make us look simple). But by giving an argument a measured, mathematical air we overlook the reasoned truth that the constant we all presume is a necessary variable may not be equal to what is real. Sometimes to avoid the formulaic answer one has to become comfortable with the complexity of the question.

Of accountability and car-jacking

The "man" in Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road" soothes his son's bad dreams in the midst of a post-apocalyptic living nightmare by telling him,

"When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up. I won't let you."

This week Detroit parents demanded that public school teachers and officials meet jail time and civil law-suits for their failure to teach basic math. Their outrage however seems ironic because it begs the question of accountability. These parents, unlike the man in the road, seemed to assume a dream-world where a passive approach to their children's educational possibilities is sufficient. Did they think that learning is a fast-food transaction where little money and less time can be spent to fill immediate needs? Did they think they could just send their hungry child's mind to seek processed gratification trading sustainable nutrition for salty goodness? Or did they try to satisfy the hunger for learning with some home-cooked lessons? If these parents are looking for culpability (and my personal understanding of the DPS would seem to indicate a high probability assigned to teachers and administrators) they need to consider themselves co-conspirators to these crimes.

I say this in the wake of my parents getting car-jacked yesterday. The criminals were, according to my Dad, between the ages of 15 and 18. They made a dash for my parent's Taurus as it was running in the driveway when my Dad went back into the house to see why my Mom was dawdling. My Dad looked to get control of the car from the teen driving it who, in an attempt to get away fast, gunned it down the drive-way hitting my Mom and shattering her legs. My Mom had surgery last night while my Dad did not sleep because his guilty imagination would not allow him to forget my mother tumbling and broken.

My parents are victims of a crime but my Dad's first response was to question his judgment in protecting his car rather than my Mom. His willingness to pose questions of himself in the midst of a tragic circumstance will sustain him but, his level of accountability seems lacking within Detroit's parents who too easily blame. The failure of Detroit's students is first their own; followed by the parents of these students and then by extension the teachers, administrators, and city, state, and federal officials but, when accountability begins with blame, an infinite regress from reality is practiced for the sake of fantasies that are neither true nor sustainable.

My siblings are pressuring my Dad to move from Detroit and he is struggling to fight them off. He wants to stay in his home. He doesn't want to give up.

I don't know what's best for him or my Mom. I don't live in Detroit so those closer to the situation have better information. I won't pretend to trade my 41 years for my Dad's 70+ and assume wisdom I have yet to earn but, I do fear for him and my Mom. I fear they will be victims again. I fear my Mom's long rehab on surgically repaired legs. My fears for my folks however are far fewer than those for the children of my hometown.

My Mom will heal and the pride that led her to confront hostile teenagers will sustain her recovery. My Dad's inventory of his failings will provide deeper wisdom and caution. But, what lessons will those teenagers learn? Will they be considered the criminals they are by their community and their parents? Or will they continue to dwindle in an apocalyptic half-light where parents' aversion to accountability ensures that persecution complexes lead to victimizing pain.

I'm not the praying type but I ask for your prayers. Please keep my Mom and my Dad in your thoughts. May their sense of responsibility keep them looking forward and struggling to find accountability in the midst of tragedy. Pray too for those boys who are now felons charged with larceny and attempted murder. May they not imagine righteousness in their actions but only dread for the pain and the hurt they've invited.