Truth crushed to earth

 

William Cullen Bryant once wrote that “truth crushed to earth shall rise again” … but when?

Why doesn’t Lawrence Ferlinghetti tell us when the “American eagle will really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right?”

Why doesn’t Edgar Allan Poe tell us if there is balm in Gilead? The raven says “nevermore” which might just prove to be correct.

I wonder, along with T. S. Eliot, “Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

The answer, my friend, is that they have been lost in misinformation.

The desert is not remote in Southern tropics … it is in the hearts of mothers and fathers and sons and daughters in Ukraine and in other remote places away from our fast food places and familiar faces.

We hear the words … those that ring true and the many lies and distortions … we know the truth … that life is essentially nasty, brutish and short … even for the super wealthy and those whose bank accounts have been frozen and had their yachts repossessed …

The moral is so simple as Bob Dylan said in a ballad … “when you see your neighbor carryin’ something, help him with his load” … our neighbors in far-away places are carrying more than their fare share and suffering from the arms and guns of those who wish to wreak havoc and cause them harm …

Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that what was mysterious (beyond understanding) was not how things are in the world (currently quite messed up) but that there was anything at all … what I find mysterious is why some people believe they should dominate, denigrate and cause the demise of so many others … my father aught me that for every tear drop I caused I would lose a year of life … I should be long dead by now so I modified that advice to be that for every loss of life I caused, I would lose a decade of life … still breathing with one hand waving free …

Mike Spector

March 2022

What are Russians thinking?

Can Russians really be so simple-minded or stupid enough not to see the unjustified horror that Putin is unleashing on the people of Ukraine?

Do international laws have no meaning ...no teeth?  Bombing civilians ... lying about what is happening ... okay ... America is not fault free on the world stage but we are innocent babes in the woods compared with Putin and his henchmen. 

How long will the world let itself be held hostage by a nuclear maniac?

It is so discouraging to be living through these times ... with a person we tolerated at the head of our government for four years who did a lot of damage to American society and now see a Russian leader wreak havoc on the world ... so discouraging ... I thought things could not get worse after the 1960s and 1970s but they have gotten much much worse ... I am feeling hopeless.

When will truth crushed to earth rise up again? Is there balm in Gilead? Quoth the raven ... nevermore.

I was just thinking ...

Yes ... thinking .. it occasionally occurs during waking hours ... more occasionally as I grow older ... too bad one cannot grow younger ... I tried growing corn once but just did not have the ears for it (my apologies to the huskers)... anyway, I was thinking that laughter is really the best medicine ... although I am not sure what the ailment is ... perhaps it is being too full of oneself ... laughing at oneself is a particular talent not capable in those who made it past the third grade ... my mother did not make it past the third grade ... she had a great sense of humor ... you either laughed at her jokes or had to repeat the third grade ... a sense of humor may be a sign of intelligence ... the ability to laugh at oneself is a sign of a possible brain tumor ... not really ... I know people who are simply not able to make fun of themselves ... they often seek elective office so that others can do the laughing ... the wisest and most intelligent people I have known were able to laugh at themselves ... so I laugh at them hoping some of their intelligence will rub off on me ... In actuality I was really just thinking about the few people I detest, and without exception they do not exhibit the ability to laugh at themselves ... I suppose I am biased (can you hear the silent internal laughter) ... they often laugh at and belittle others, however ... I am wondering whom you would put on that short list ...See Abou Ben Adhem for directions ... https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44433/abou-ben-adhem

Regression to the Mean

Regression to the Mean Something must be wrong with me as I went from thinking about regression to the mean to something else ... I seem to recall that regression to the mean is a statistical phenomenon about how data measurements taken once that are extremely higher or lower than the mean will likely be found closer to the mean on a second measurement. Sir Francis Galton, a British scholar who studied a wide variety of things including human differences with regard to a variety of characteristics, documented this phenomenon. The idea was published in Galton’s Natural Inheritance published in 1889 (see https://galton.org/books/natural-inheritance/pdf/galton-nat-inh-1up-clean.pdf and look at Appendix E). In the 1880s, Galton was noticing that some researchers attributed causes to events that were just as easily explained by the highly common regression to the mean with regard to extreme cases. It is now 2021 and researchers still make the same mistake that Galton saw so many years ago. Failure to understand regression to the mean is still all too common. Such failures are all too common, especially for a commoner like me. Another regression comes to mind today, however. Namely, regression to the meanness. This too is all too common. Witness how quite reasonable statements such as “I will nominate a black woman” are treated as a form of creating a ridiculous criterion that amounts to favoring someone who cannot distinguish a law book from a J. Crew Catalog. Since I have no clue what a J. Crew Catalog is, I suppose I would also have trouble distinguishing a law book from a J. Crew Catalog. The meanness of the criticism is apparent. From the statement to the criticism involves a regression to meanness. Another criticism was that the statement implies that the majority of people are not qualified to be considered nominess for such a prestigious position. After all, most people are not black women. The meanness is again apparent overlooking two hundred years of racist mistreatment and abusive treatment. Perhaps the white person making that criticism is only three fifths human … or perhaps that is overly generous to someone exhibiting this form of regression to meanness. But it is a reminder of the dark history of racism that many would like to ignore and prevent children from learning. Oh, what a tangled web they weave when first they practice to deceive (my apologies to Sir Walter Scott). By some counts, DJT lied more than 30,000 times during his time as the official resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is not about just one big lie. It is about 30,000 lies and official government paper documents torn up to get rid of damning evidence. We had eight years, more or less, prior to number 45 but then there was the regression to meanness … not just in the white house but in the dark hearts of so many people I once considered friends and even family. I want to think about things that are central to learning and education but then my mind takes me down that path paved by the regression to meanness … such a dark path shrouded in that tangled web of hate and venom … and it causes me much anger and anguish … anguish because I do not see a movement back to normalcy … the tipping point has passed and the demons are out of the closet … burn the books … lie to our children … don’t let those three fifths people vote … Birmingham Sunday has become the American Mourningday … lest we forget … forget the six million who died … there were good people on both sides … forget all those hangings that were all too common … and forget those children who died that Sunday in Birmingham … this is the land of the free and the home of the brave … at least those who are carrying their AR-15s … oh yes … the “truth” they are telling is just the “truth” that is selling … sold American … sold down the dark drain of hate and bias and the wrongheaded confidence in one’s own infallibility … while the choir keeps singing of freedom. Okay. I will go away and hide … along with all those buried truths … truth crushed to earth will rise again. mike ... cowering in the state of denial called Texas ...

What are we telling our students? (AKA, leaking gray matter)

The standard message we deliver to our doctoral students in Learning Technologies is to identify a gap in the research in an area of interest to them, and then to propose a first step study to address that research gap. Find the gap and do something about it. We are sinking in the gaps and not just gaps in the area of educational research. What other gaps might be addressed, not just in our professional academic lives but in our personal and social lives? As J. Alfred Prufrock says, “I grow old… I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.” As someone older than dirt, I am starting to recall the lessons of my youth … lessons so few seem to have learned. For example, there is a passage I recall from Vayikra (Leviticus) in chapter 19 that many repeat: “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself … ” But there seems to be a huge gap between the people a typical person loves so dearly and so clearly (namely, members of one’s immediate family) and one’s neighbors along with those who live in neighboring or distant countries as well as those who seem different from one in terms of color, class, religion, and so many other differentiating factors that allow so many to hate so many others. Love thy neighbor … so often repeated buy so seldom realized. And what captivated my interest for years was the Book of Job … Job … a man from the land of Uz … a man challenged with many adversities who admits that G-d is great but admits that we cannot know Him as Job expresses his despair and lack of understanding for such punishment in return for having been so devoted. And then there is the answer from the Whirlwind asking Job where he was when the foundations of the earth were laid. Indeed, that is the one book in Jewish liturgy that I embrace. The lesson I have taken away is that it is precisely the limitations of our knowledge that makes religious belief possible. The irony is that so many religious people claim to know G-d’s mind. And then the notion of origins of the universe comes to mind … namely, the big bang theory … a notion about how the universe began. And it is so in line with opening of Berasheet (the Book of Genesis) … in the beginning there was chaos and the void … things beyond our understanding … and it is also in line with Aristotle’s reasoning that there had to be a first cause because it was impossible for humans to understand an infinite regress of causes … a couple thousand years later came the big bang theory where our reasoning and understanding comes to a halt, as noted in the opening of the first book of those five books of Moses. There are limits to our understanding and our knowledge. As O. K. Bouwsma noted in an unpublished journal, it would be a remarkable coincidence if the limits of his imagination happened to coincide with the limits of reality. Or, as Wittgenstein noted in the Tractatus that it is not mysterious how things are in the world (our experience and science informs us about how things are, at least when we are willing to listen and learn) but what is mysterious is that there is anything at all … it is beyond our understanding. And yet so few people seem to admit the limits of their knowledge and understanding and have wrongheaded confidence in so many of their beliefs, as Bouwsma so often reminded us. And I stumbled into classical scepticism in my studies and Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism with one of the basic principles being that different impressions come from different sources which is a cause of withholding judgment … but so few are so often reluctant to withhold judgment … and then Edgar Allan Poe asks the raven if there is balm in Gilead … and the raven answers with the one word it can utter – nevermore. What can we change. The poet laureate says it “was never my intention to remake the world at large” and he reminds us of our duty when we see a neighbor carrying something to help him with his load. And T. S. Eliot has the Rock remind us that “The desert is not remote in southern tropics, The desert is not only around the corner, The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you, The desert is in the heart of your brother.” Hello neighbor … what gaps do you see … gaps between the have lots and those who have a lot less … gaps between love and hate … between disdain and respect … between ignoring and searching … between I and thou … so many gaps … so little time … having taken a bite of that apple,what I really want to understand is why we must imagine Sisyphus happy. I close with Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 7 – “what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” These remarks leaked out of aging gray matter … hush my mouth and bite my fingers.

In the beginning ...

“In the beginning … the earth was formless and void” (Genesis, 1; commentary by JMS, in the beginning there was chaos and the void and things have not changed much since, except that entropy has been increasing, which is paradoxical) “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast the understanding. Who determined the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who stretched the line upon it? Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the corner-stone thereof” (The Book of Job, 38) “O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying! The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to God. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust” (Choruses from the Rock, T. S. Eliot) What is reality and what can we know? I know that the square root of 2 is not a rational number. So much for rationality. I learned from my father than the ancient Hebrews had to approximate the value of  in order to build the temple in Jerusalem. We can approximate irrationality … well, the truth is that we embody irrationality. I believe that everything I see is real but what I see is what probably existed a few nanoseconds ago. Why believe the future will resemble the past? What evidence can exist to establish that the future (that which has not been experienced) will resemble the past (what has been experienced)? We think time moves in only one direction, yet in space we can walk back and forth, pacing, trying to understand who we are and why we are here. But we are told that time and space are interrelated … there is just space-time … and, by the way, it is curved. Why does HE/SHE/IT/THEY keep throwing curve balls? Why should there be light? Well, maybe HE/SHE/IT/THEY is faster than a speeding bullet but not faster than the speed of light … only nothing can go faster than the speed of light … remember that beginning … there was nothing … just chaos and the void … moving faster than the speed of light … OR, maybe in the beginning there was stuff and nonsense and things have not changed much since. Somewhere long ago I read that creation stories exist in many different cultures and religions around the world … is that not odd? I now suspect that rumors can travel faster than the speed of light. Who could know what there was in the beginning? What does ‘the beginning’ even mean? I met a girl and thought it was the beginning of something special. I might have been mistaken. But there is no mistake in my proof that the square root of 2 is not a rational number. Why should irrational numbers exist? Do they exist? I can count the pages in a book and determine whether there is an odd number or an even number of pages. Things that can be numbered must be odd or even. Must? How about the number of grains of sand on Pensacola Beach. Grains of sand, while small, can be counted and numbered, so the number of grains of sand on Pensacola Beach must be odd or even. Who will do the counting and how long will it take. Meanwhile, the tides come and gp while the “women come and go talking of Michelangelo” (my apologies to T. S. Eliot). Grains of sand are deposited on the beach and some are swept away while the counting continues. Sometimes, numbers are not only irrational … they are irrelevant. Where were you while I was counting the grains of sand on Pensacola Beach and measuring out my days with coffee spoons (I just can’t get J. Alfred out of my head). Wittgenstein said that what was mysterious (i.e., unknowable) was why there was anything at all (Tractatus, 6.44). The world … why should it exist … created in six days followed by a day of rest in some traditions … the Tractatus consisting of 6 propositions (with sub-statements) followed by the remarkable conclusion that what we cannot speak about [meaningfully] we must pass over in silence (see https://www.gutenberg.org/files/5740/5740-pdf.pdf). When one starts out in life (I started out much younger, by the way), one has no idea how it will end. I wonder, if there is a God who got things going, did HE/SHE/IT/THEY know how it would end or if it would end. Must it end? What happens when entropy reaches infinity? (Who could know? Some questions have no answer.

The rise and the fall

My older and wiser brother (Daniel Earl Spector, born Dec 19th in 1942, now resting in peace for several years) was one of the very few people I know who read The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (a six volume treatise by Edward Gibbon which is critical of Islam, Judaism and Christianity and ultimately blames both the rise and the fall on Christians although many factors contributed to the fall, including corruption, invasion, slave labor, economic problems, and the rise of Eastern empires – all currently existing factors). Were my brother still with us and available to advise those in and out of power, his advice would probably be to read Gibbon’s work and learn from history that greed and lies do not a stable society make. “Notice how the chest rises when praising one’s own accomplishments.” “Notice how the jaw drops when blaming others for real and imagined ills.” “Brow beating and chest pounding do not a truth make.” The unfilled need to be praised is betrayed by the fake news that one embraces. I remember my brother telling me more than 60 years ago that what happened in Nazi Germany could happen in America. I did not believe him then but have since come to my senses. It is happening here. And now. In plain sight. With no shame but lots of blame to go around and around and back again. I used to think the path to insight and knowledge was through logic and philosophy. My brother thought it was through memory and history. Someone said "It's not the earth the meek inherit ... it's the dirt" ... If one's worth is judged by the number and quality of one's friends, then I am amazingly wealthy. ... And yet in the midst of racism, intolerance, injustice, greed and hate there is beauty and innocence and grace ... and yet there is hope for this species called the race to the bottom ... mike see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceX5jJ5fggs also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a23945btJYw

Just remembering

A comment by Curt Bonk about my Legends and Legacies video got me thinking about so many impressive scholars I have had the pleasure of knowing … and I am thinking about one trait they all shared … namely, a willingness to listen and accept the views of others without ever showing an ounce of arrogance or self-importance … I am specifically recalling many meetings with Bob Gagné, Bob Tennyson, Dave Merrill, Charlie Reigeluth, O. K. Bouwsma, Ed Allaire, Stuart Spicker, Walt Davis, Rich Mayer, Bob Kozma, Dick Clark, Paal Davidsen, Norbert Seel, Sanne Dijkstra, Ton de Jong, and so many others whose names escape my aging mind … and then I think about so many others I have met who are into self-promoting and boasting about their accomplishments so much of the time … I am too much like the latter group and too little like the former … so I am now wondering if humility is an indicator of wisdom … and, I should add that two of those luminaries called me stupid in front of others for something I said … of course both Gagné and Spicker were right … I had said something stupid … but their words and guidance helped me through the fog of my arrogance …

Shallowness and superficiality are pervasive

I am finally stopping. No more listening to empty-headed news reports. With the exception of Rachel Maddow, the reporters and interviewers seem to be aiming for headlines – some simple-minded thing to put out to the equally mindless public. The obsession with headlines, deadlines, redlines, and battlelines is disturbing … no, meaningless … no, just plain mean … with so little emphasis and analysis given to foodlines and lifelines. Where is the humanity lost in information ... in misinformation ... where is that voice that spoke to Job and asked where Job was when the mountains and rivers were created? Where is the humility?

Thoughts on the value of repetition in learning and instruction

Time changes things. Technologies change. Technologies change what people can do and are doing. Technologies change what people will want to do. And, technologies can also change what people will want to avoid doing. That is one of my mantras. A second on is this: It is not about the technology; it is about learning; it is about the use of technology to support learning; and what counts as learning is a stable and persistent change in what a person knows and can do, as Gagné and others have said on many occasions. Do it again, the coach says. Say it again, the language teacher says. Read it again nearly every teacher says. Watch it again the movie enthusiast says. I omit the things my parents used to tell me for the sake of brevity. Repetition seems to be an important principle of learning (see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228318502_Repetition_is_the_First_Principle_of_All_Learning ... and https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/ed/10/01/repetition-repetition-repetition and many more) … but, repetition can lead to boredom … as noted in the first reference … but bringing new eyes and ears to the same activities and resources can deepen one’s understanding … SO … the critical factor may not be the same or different activities and resources but wide eyes and tuned in ears … aka, an open mind … just a passing thought. I think of things I have read multiple times … such as Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Camus’s Myth of Sisyphus and Gagné’s Conditions of Learning … and each time I stumble across something new or puzzling, such as “We picture facts to ourselves” (Tractatus 2.1) and yet many often picture things that are not facts to themselves … or “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” … why is that when his fate is endless and tiresome labor … or why was Gagné so intent on separating verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills and attitudes when they seem so often interconnected. Gagné and Merrill did write about enterprises which involve interconnected kinds of tasks. Keep reading and keep thinking. Read it again. Discuss it again with a colleague. Insights seem to happen irregularly and at unexpected moments. To understand Tolstoy, one should read A Confession. To understand Wittgenstein, it is important to look into his family life after reading Tractatus 7 … “whereof one cannot speak, whereof one must remain silent” and then he goes on to write extensively about language games. Why? Repetition can lead to boredom but it can also lead to improved memory and performance and occasionally to important insights. What matters? The technology? What matters is the learning. What matters? What one already believes or knows. Learning involves a persistent and stable change in … if no change … then no learning. Children are masterful learners as they do not typically let their beliefs and prior knowledge get in the way of learning something new, and they are generally open to change. As T. S. Eliot notes in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. … Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. … I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. … I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. … That poem is something else I have read perhaps a 100 times or more, and each time I seem to focus on somewhat different parts of that remarkable poem. In the shuffle and scuffle of life, I have learned that I know very little even though I have had the remarkable pleasure of having had amazing teachers and mentors. “Whereof one cannot speak, whereof one must remain silent.” Why is it so hard to remain silent?