Chasing a tangent of a conversation this morning, I dug out my dusty copy of The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers. I spotted something I'd highlighted years ago. Moyers noted that Campbell saw judges in mythological terms. They wear black robes instead of suits. Why?
Campbell believed religion and culture and language transmit myths to us, even though we usually don't realize it. Those bits of myth "line the walls of our interior systems of belief, like shards of broken pottery in an archaeological site." But those broken shards aren't just junk. Campbell believed they could be energized through ritual, as for instance in the rituals of a courtroom.
"For the law to hold authority beyond mere coercion, the power of the judge must be ritualized, mythologized. So must much of life today...from religion and war to love and death."
Campbell died in 1987. I wonder what he'd make of things today; the greed, partisanship, and deepening poverty in the U.S. and much of the world.
Love is ritualized in marriage. But half those marriages end in divorce.
How about death? We have rituals, but compared to what's practiced in much of the world they aren't much. Ours take a few hours and we pay contractors to do most of the work. Compared to the way our great-grandparents buried their dead, we've pretty much skipped out on the whole thing.
War? Well, the US is at war right now. But most of us don't give a rat's ass. Most of us don't know anyone who has anything to do with that. Our wars are handled by a small underclass who ultimately get thrown under the bus when they're done fighting.
Religion? Our religions have become mostly politics.
Does the law have any power today beyond coercion? You tell me, but it doesn't seem like it. Our behavior, especially at the top of the pile, seems limited only by what we think we can get away with.
I'm just making observations. I have no prescription in mind. Maybe there isn't any for a culture amputated from its own roots and left to find meaning or purpose in nothing more than digital networking and credit ratings. Our ancestors left the trees so we could invent Facebook. Great...
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Ooooo! Pretty lights!
The subject of "automation addiction" among airline pilots is all over the news suddenly, again. New report comes out, the media runs with it, and lots of us will care for a few minutes, until our iPhones go off again. Well, kids, we ought to stop and think about this a little longer.
Once your next flight leaves the runway, those two pilots in front may only spend about 3 minutes actually flying that plane. The rest of the time they'll be "managing" the flight. Here's one summary of the issue and you can search that subject for yourself and pull up a whole bunch more.
Just to be clear, here's what those kids in front are "managing." This is the cockpit of an Airbus A320. The newer Boeing airliners look about the same to those of us who don't actually sit in them for a living.
Cool, huh? I think so. Ahead warp 6. Engage, and all that. I can well imagine how a couple of guys could snuggle up in there, hit the Wild Blue for Minneapolis, put er on "auto", get the laptops out, turn the radios down, and fly right past the whole damn city by a couple of hundred miles. Hell, that could happen to anybody. Perfectly understandable.
That incident had a happy ending. The aircraft was never out of control, just the crew. Everybody lived. If you were on Air France 447 you didn't. Same basic problem, though. It's all those pretty lights and what they do to us.
The Air France 447 plane (the plane, not the crew) got confused about how fast it was going. That confusion lasted less than a minute, but the plane shut off its own autopilot and said to the crew, "You drive." The pilot was clearly confused. He did exactly the wrong things. The plane stopped flying and hit the Atlantic at over 10,000 feet per minute. That wounded duck death plunge from 38,000 feet lasted roughly as long as a top 40 song on the radio. Find something on your iPod that's 3 min 30 seconds long, and scream through the whole thing. I picked an old song, "I'll Be Seeing You" by Sinatra.
What's my point?
I used to have a head full of phone numbers. If you're old enough, you probably did, too. But right now, if Peaches the pit bull eats my cell phone, I'll have to dial 411 to get the numbers for my own children. This isn't funny. Peaches has already chowed down 4 TV remotes in her short life.
There was a story a few years ago about a group of people who jumped off a perfectly seaworthy yacht in the Atlantic, in good weather, got into a raft, and set off their emergency locator thingy, while the yacht sailed away. Why? The GPS quit! The boat made it home.
Urban legend? Maybe. But don't be too sure.
Here's an interesting exercise for you:
Make a list of things you can do well, or subjects you know well, without the help of electronic gadgets, talking robots, wifi hotspots, Blackberrys, or instructions of any kind. What can you cook without your recipe file? Could you find the Grand Canyon or Detroit on a paper map, and actually get there without a GPS? Think you could build a fire in the woods on a rainy day with a pocket knife and three matches?
Science fiction author Robert Heinlein wrote:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
How we doing, do you think? It's a noble goal, at least.
Be well. Work for peace. Learn something new everyday. Watch your back-trail. Let's be careful out there.
Once your next flight leaves the runway, those two pilots in front may only spend about 3 minutes actually flying that plane. The rest of the time they'll be "managing" the flight. Here's one summary of the issue and you can search that subject for yourself and pull up a whole bunch more.
Just to be clear, here's what those kids in front are "managing." This is the cockpit of an Airbus A320. The newer Boeing airliners look about the same to those of us who don't actually sit in them for a living.
Cool, huh? I think so. Ahead warp 6. Engage, and all that. I can well imagine how a couple of guys could snuggle up in there, hit the Wild Blue for Minneapolis, put er on "auto", get the laptops out, turn the radios down, and fly right past the whole damn city by a couple of hundred miles. Hell, that could happen to anybody. Perfectly understandable.
That incident had a happy ending. The aircraft was never out of control, just the crew. Everybody lived. If you were on Air France 447 you didn't. Same basic problem, though. It's all those pretty lights and what they do to us.
The Air France 447 plane (the plane, not the crew) got confused about how fast it was going. That confusion lasted less than a minute, but the plane shut off its own autopilot and said to the crew, "You drive." The pilot was clearly confused. He did exactly the wrong things. The plane stopped flying and hit the Atlantic at over 10,000 feet per minute. That wounded duck death plunge from 38,000 feet lasted roughly as long as a top 40 song on the radio. Find something on your iPod that's 3 min 30 seconds long, and scream through the whole thing. I picked an old song, "I'll Be Seeing You" by Sinatra.
What's my point?
I used to have a head full of phone numbers. If you're old enough, you probably did, too. But right now, if Peaches the pit bull eats my cell phone, I'll have to dial 411 to get the numbers for my own children. This isn't funny. Peaches has already chowed down 4 TV remotes in her short life.
There was a story a few years ago about a group of people who jumped off a perfectly seaworthy yacht in the Atlantic, in good weather, got into a raft, and set off their emergency locator thingy, while the yacht sailed away. Why? The GPS quit! The boat made it home.
Urban legend? Maybe. But don't be too sure.
Here's an interesting exercise for you:
Make a list of things you can do well, or subjects you know well, without the help of electronic gadgets, talking robots, wifi hotspots, Blackberrys, or instructions of any kind. What can you cook without your recipe file? Could you find the Grand Canyon or Detroit on a paper map, and actually get there without a GPS? Think you could build a fire in the woods on a rainy day with a pocket knife and three matches?
Science fiction author Robert Heinlein wrote:
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
How we doing, do you think? It's a noble goal, at least.
 |
| Peaches is a bit bigger now. This was January 2011. She had Parvo and was left to die in a vacant apartment. |
Be well. Work for peace. Learn something new everyday. Watch your back-trail. Let's be careful out there.
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