Goines On: In need of inspiration

Click image for more vignettes

Goines didn’t remember subscribing to “Inspiring Quotes,” but every day he was receiving an email under that rubric:

Today’s Quote: “Music is a higher revelation than...”

15 Quotes on Getting Older

Today’s Quote: “Love is free; it is not practiced as a way of...”

Mindfulness explained in 14 quotes

Today’s Quote: “Great necessities call out great...”

Life stories have the power to inspire us (Case 2)

Tiger Woods teaches us to never give up

By Dr. Ely Lazar & Dr. Adele Thomas

[Republished here by permission of the authors from their “Lifestyle Tips for Over 50s,” affiliated with their website “Passionate Retirees,” September 27, 2018.]

On Sunday, September 23, Tiger Woods produced a remarkable achievement. He won his first golf tournament in over five years, beating out the top golfers in the world. What makes the victory remarkable was that in 2017, it looked like his golfing career was over.

Life stories have the power to inspire us (Case 1)

Tim Samaras overcame tremendous odds

By Dr. Ely Lazar & Dr. Adele Thomas

[Republished here by permission of the authors from their “Lifestyle Tips for Over 50s,” affiliated with their website “Passionate Retirees,” August 25, 2018.]

We all have life stories, some that inspire us, others that are steeped in tragedy. We are drawn to those individuals who overcome tremendous odds and achieve greatness through sheer perseverance and drive. One such individual encompassed all of the above.

Thor's Day: Let's aspire

Before we expire

By Anonymous

[Editor's Note: the image was sent to us by one of our correspondents. We don't know who made the graphic, but it's a worthy thought, and a moral challenge.]

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean

Ask Wednesday: Are there as many odd numbers as even?

No...but... yes...but....

By Morris Dean

[Originally published, under the title "More even than odd," on January 10, 2011.]

I was amazed one morning to discover a "proof" for something that is quite counter-intuitive. I mean, there are as many odd numbers as even numbers, right?

Alive morning

My wife and I stood on the patio
beyond the window yesterday  to
view a Green Heron in a distant tree

Thoughts of various pleasing projects ran through my mind as I prepared our breakfast this morning, accompanied by the sort of "meta-thought" that the more immediate thoughts were enlivening me and I appreciated them.
    The pleasing projects weren't earth-shaking, just little, ordinary things that make up my life. Write to someone. Tinker with some wording on a recent post. Ideas for further reflections on the illusion of free will (such as the potential effects of the idea on people, and on people collectively). Set up my digiscoping equipment this week (maybe get a photo of that Green Heron my wife spotted yesterday, or of the Red-headed Wookpecker I thought I saw on a feeder while we were messing with the fieldscope). Deposit that check.
    Thoughts of these ordinary activities enlivened me by distracting me from bodily aches and pains, by engaging me and giving me something to look forward to, by assuring me that the day and the week (and the rest of my life if I am fortunate to have such thoughts every morning) need not be a drag but can ever be adventurous. (Do I hear some of you laughing at the revelation that such activities constitute "adventure" for me?)

And the meta-thought was a bonus—it provided the theme for today's post. Get it done this morning, and then on to, say, digiscoping, which has been neglected so far for thirty-six days of retirement. Not acceptable.
    Get it done this morning, not partially done in the evening then finished the next day, as I confess has been the case with several posts lately. Not acceptable. (But so far a dependable fall-back when needed.)
    Do it now. Be alive now.

What happens

We went to a theater last December to see The Descendants, and we liked it well enough to watch it again, even as early as this afternoon.

The Descendants (2011: Alexander Payne) With his wife Elizabeth on life support after a boating accident, Hawaiian land baron Matt King (George Clooney) takes his daughters on a trip from Oahu to Kauai to confront Brian Speer (Matthew Lillard), the man who was having an affair with Elizabeth before her misfortune.

When we saw it the first time, I don't think I particularly noticed the brief interchange when Hawaiian King confronts Speer to try to find out what happened between Speer and Elizabeth:

King: "How did it happen?"
Speer: "It just happened."
King: "Nothing just happens."
Speer: "Everything just happens."

    I'm sure I noticed it this time because of having read Free Will, by Sam Harris. (I wrote about the reading Friday.)
    The exchange between the two men isn't striking just because Speer summarizes Sam Harris's thesis. Look at the preceding line of dialogue:

Nothing just happens.

    I think that the George Clooney character says that because he's suspicious that Speer, who is a realtor, started the affair to try to gain an advantage in a huge land deal the King family are involved in.
    But out of that context "Nothing just happens" is another way of stating the theistic position:

Everything happens for a reason.

That is, God's in control (or perhaps your guardian angel or angels), and they have a plan....
    Well, if they have a plan, then apparently it calls for quite a few people to believe it...and for the rest not to, and for a good number of the former to believe so strongly that everything happens for a reason that they simply refuse to entertain the possibility that it might not be so. (At any rate, it's people who believe that sort of thing from whom I hear the statement, "You can't make me change my mind.") What a plan.

But seriously, why do people believe that nothing just happens?
    The material world of evolution and "everything just happens" can be very unsettling, as can the facts that people suffer, everyone dies, and justice is not done in this world. Beliefs that deny these realities provide solace. Suffering is for our own good, and it will be made right. We'll be resurrected and live forever (if we follow the right prescription for salvation). God will right the balance of justice at The Last Judgment.
    Solace is the Number One Reason for such beliefs (in the cases where it's not simply that people are paying lip service to the beliefs they've been taught and have never questioned).
    Actually, though, there's a sense in which it's true that nothing just happens—the sense in which happenings have material causes. Believing "nothing just happens" in that sense can inspire a person to try to find out the causes. It can lead to insight, and to science.
    And actually, believing "nothing just happens" in the theistic sense can also inspire a person to look a little deeper into his or her spiritual and moral life, to try to discover why something bad, or something good, or something problematic happened. Insights can be found that way; people can (but may not) become better people as a result. Believing that there's a god and he (usually it's he) has a plan isn't necessarily the end-all of such a believer's life. Life can still be good for such believers (besides the solace). (Hey, I think I really am becoming more accepting of others, just as I said on Friday.)
    The main thing seems to be that we keep looking and seeking and trying to find out. As long as our beliefs inspire that, we're still alive and ticking.

By the way, it would seem from the considerations above that Harris believes both that nothing just happens and that everything just happens. But it's based on an ambiguity.
    He believes that nothing just happens, because everything that happens has causes. And he believes that everything just happens, in the sense that it's an illusion that our free will is one of those causes.

Every day of retirement?

When I retired, I expected that henceforth I would never miss a day of blogging. But a few late evenings of desperation, when I was tired from turf-turding, or just tired, or empty of inspiration—perhaps because I had some inspiration earlier in the day but made the mistake of ignoring it for later—have taught me that my daily post had better not be forced. Writing something because I "should" or because I promised myself I would hasn't done it for me.
    Posts I've written for those reasons likely haven't done it for anyone else either, for I suspect that even some posts I've written and really liked didn't do it for anyone else, but only for me.
    It would be too sad for a post not to do it for anyone at all.

An un-odd semantic solution

Last Monday, I reported my "insight" that there seemed to be more even numbers than odd numbers. I labeled the report humor to signal that my tongue was in my cheek. But I also labeled it parody to signal that I was seriously making fun of a certain way of trying to think (exemplified by numerology and astrology and, perhaps more often than not, by theology).
    Commenter Ken provided a serious, logical counter to the "proof" that there are more even numbers than odd. There's an infinite number of both, he pointed out, and one infinity is just as numerous as another. Actually, as Georg Cantor (1845-1918) theorized,

there are infinite sets of different sizes (called cardinalities). For example, the set of integers is countably infinite, while the set of real numbers is uncountably infinite. –Wikipedia

But Ken is right, because, with even and odd numbers, we're confining ourselves to "countably infinite" sets.
    Of course, I never thought for a minute myself that there were more even numbers than odd numbers. But the semantic example I contrived (the asymmetry of "even number of odd numbers" and "odd number of even numbers") did sort of make it look as though there might be more even than odd numbers.
    While Ken's logical objection is well and good¹, I've been waiting for my muse to provide a fitting semantic retort. Alas, I've been disappointed, and I've even had grapefruit almost every morning. I'm going to have to work to provide a proportional solution.

Many years ago (in the early seventies), I became interested in "creative problem-solving." One of the things I learned from my mentor, Moe Edwards ("Moe" was simply his initials; there's a reference on the web to a book titled Doubling Idea Power, by M.O. Edwards, Palo Alto), was to "ask provocative questions"—or to ask any question at all, to see whether it can spur a thought.
    Okay. What's going on when you (1) double an odd number and get an even number, but (2) take an odd number of even numbers and also get an even number?
    What this struck right off is the realization that when you double two things, you get an even number of them, and when you take an odd number of things, you get an odd number of them. So something fishy or sleight-of-hand seems to be going on in (2), taking an odd number [of something]...and getting "an even number."
    And the clue as to what's going on is that the phrase, "of them," was coyly omitted in Monday's "proof." That is, it didn't say "getting an even number of them," but "getting an even number."
    I'll go on and spell this out later (perhaps tomorrow), but for now, as a gift to my readers, I'll leave it to them to work it out for themselves, perhaps while eating a grapefruit.

Proof more odd than even

The proof "more even than odd" was semantic,
Playful, good-humored, a little pedantic,
    Done for good fun,
    As well as the pun,
And while not even odd, it was, flatly, antic².

_______________

1. "Acceptable, all right, as in 'If you can get a better discount elsewhere, well and good.' [The] redundant phrase ['well and good'] was first recorded in 1699." –yourdictionary.com
2. antic. adjective: ludicrously odd
       Example: "Hamlet's assumed antic disposition."

More even than odd

I was amazed this morning to discover a "proof"¹ for something that is quite counter-intuitive. I mean, there are as many odd numbers as even numbers, right?
    Wrong. There are actually more even numbers than odd numbers. Here's the proof that came to me while I was eating my grapefruit half:
    If you add an even number of even numbers, you get an even number.
    But you also get an even number if you add an even number of odd numbers! And you don't conversely get any extra odd numbers when you add an odd number of even numbers. Rather, you seem to gain some even numbers—or lose some odd numbers, depending on how you look at.
    Therefore, there are apparently more even numbers than odd ones. And I haven't even tried to find other ways we might gain even numbers or lose odd ones.
    Isn't that amazing!

How can that be? Can that possibly be right?
    If true, it is so astounding, do you think maybe this might be a clue toward discovering a proof for the existence of God? Or maybe for the existence of two of them (God even rather than odd)? Or for their nonexistence? Wow.
    What if duotheism is the True Way, rather than monotheism? Or if atheists have to deny the existence of two Gods in order to be atheists? "Aduotheists" is hard to pronounce.

An odd God limerick

More even than odd...the truth about God?
Then let's swell the ranks of Their Squad,
    Double Their pronouns,
    Use King and Queen crowns,
And on Fridays eat twice as much cod.

Notes for further analysis:

1. The operator "even number of" is equivalent to "multiplied by two" (or "the numerical result made even").
2. The operator "odd number of" is not equivalent to "the numerical result made odd" (if the things there are an odd number of are even numbers).

    Further disquisition
_______________

1. Note: This post is labeled "humor." I only added this note later when I suspected that some readers had not detected the post's parody of wishful or theological thinking, possibly because they'd noticed that I'd lately been taking myself so very seriously.

Imagine that "God" exists if doing so...

Today I find myself considering a reformulation of my "new tenth commandment," currently stated:

Thou shalt not bow down and worship likely non-existent "God."

Not inconsistent with that, but indulging the proclivity of perhaps the majority of men and women (some of them my relatives and friends), would be the formulation:

Imagine that "God" (or "Allah" or "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" or whatever) exists if doing so somehow comforts or inspires you, but don't fall down and worship it.