Month: November 2017

Twitter launched in 2006 and introduced the concept of micro-messaging. It was originally designed to mimic text messaging on cellphones and thus had a limit of 140 characters per message or “tweet.” So friends could send these bite-sized messages or updates about what they were currently doing and they could follow each other, or they could follow people that they liked to hear from. It became a great tool for celebrities to use to update their fanbase on what they were doing, what they were eating, who they were dating, and so on.

Twitter also popularized the use of the #hashtag although it didn’t invent it as some mistakenly think so — hashtags were used back in the IRC (internet relay chat) days of the 90’s but most of the people using it then were computer geeks like me and it had not yet gained mass popularity and usage like it has today. Hashtags are a way to group different tweets together in a topic so one could, for example, search #FastCars or #Bitcoin and very quickly see what others are posting about the topic at hand.

An entomologist named Dalton Ludwick recently tweeted a hashtag called #MyOneScienceTweet asking scientists all over the world: “If you could have the entire world know just one thing about your field of study, then what would it be?”

I have gathered some of the tweets that I found interesting. Of course, these are condensed tidbits of information and I suggest you read further on the topic that jumps out at you to get a more comprehensive understanding:

1. Homeopathy is a scam. – Scientia Portal
2. ‘Natural’ doesn’t always mean safe, and ‘chemical’ doesn’t necessarily mean bad. – Scientific American
3. EVERYTHING is made of ‘chemicals’; including us! – Michael Winiberg
4. Less access to health and preventive care lead to early mortality in patients with mental illness. – Cedric Bornes
5. Interaction and institutions shape people’s behavior and beliefs as much if not more than cognition, genes or instincts. – Judson Everitt
6. 1 of 2 belief systems guide our behavior; faith based or evidence based. The results are compelling. Choose wisely. – Donald Keys
7. ‘Evidence’ is not a pure, platonic ideal — it matters who gathered it, how, where and why. Diversity = better evidence. – Fiona Robertson
8. Science education should train students to BE scientists (wonder, question, gather data, draw conclusions) rather than only learn what scientists have discovered in the past; that’s called history. – Alison Stuart
9. Our immune system changes as we age but we can still manipulate it to improve health and resilience. – Dawn Bowdish
10. Vaccines do not cause autism, SIDS, autoimmune disorders, diabetes, or cancer. They cause adults. – Rodrigo Guerrero
11. Your gut is inhabited by trillions of bacteria affecting your health, take care of them. – Robin Mesnage
12. Every computer ever built is based on the ideas of one man who was arrested, drugged and ostracized for being gay. – Matthew Parets
13. The plural of anecdote is not data. – Julia Jung
14. Civilizations rarely collapse. Sociopolitical structures, however, often change and restructure with conflict episodes or waves of instability preceding political breakdown. Also, the Maya never disappeared. Millions of Maya live in Central America. – Valorie V. Aquino
15. The Higgs boson is responsible for the mass of all the elementary particles I’m made of, which is only 1% of my mass. – David Rosseau

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

I had the opportunity last weekend to reconnect with an organization that has had a tremendous impact on my life since I joined their seminar programs around 7 years ago. In fact, one of the reasons that I am now a columnist is the result of a dream and a goal that I set during a coaching program with them. At that time, I simply had the goal to write a set number of blog entries on a certain theme.

Around a year or two after that, I expanded the goal from being just a write-whenever-you-want or a write-whenever-you-feel-inspired kind of writer to one that can write and produce articles on a regular basis — putting aside excuses such as “I’m not inspired,” or having writer’s block or having nothing to write about. So here I am at 4am on Thursday morning, on the second paragraph of an article that I still do not know how I will end. But I’ll worry about that later. Let’s go back to the what happened during the weekend.

This time around, I was not in a seminar as a student but as a volunteer staffer. Together with other volunteers, we helped the facilitators create the right conditions for a successful session, which included room setup and assistance with some activities. Nevertheless, it was a great experience and was as close as possible to a re-audit of the course.

One of the lessons that struck me most was that every choice we make has both a benefit and a price. Now, people are often used to thinking in dichotomy, in terms of either/or, good or bad, light or dark, black or white. So when one hears that statement for the first time, one usually understands it as “every choice we make has a benefit OR a price.” It usually takes a little more time for one to fully grasp the lesson.

For example, there are people who are always angry at something or someone — it may have been someone who physically, verbally or sexually abused them in the past, or it may have been someone who betrayed their trust, or someone who hurt them in a very deep way. Almost every time you converse with this person, the object of their rage eventually crops up and they go on a mini-rant about it for a few minutes.

Why do they hold onto their anger and rage? What is the benefit?

The automatic answer is often “none,” but that is wrong. People who cling to their anger derive some benefit from it whether they realize it or not, whether consciously or subconsciously (but often times it is the latter).

The benefit is this: that they have someone or something or some circumstance to blame whenever their life goes wrong. “I am like this because of that bully who kept hurting me and calling me names in 4th grade,” or “I am emotionally unstable because I was raped in high school,” or “It’s the president’s fault” and so on. Not that I am belittling those circumstances or saying they are insignificant, but it is startling that people will hold on to some circumstance that happened years or even decades ago as the one thing that is ruining their lives, totally ignoring all other positive experiences or opportunities for growth and happiness.

Here’s another benefit, they become the star of their own soap operas. First time listeners, especially, will hang on to their sob stories and will often fawn over them, or offer consoling words, or also get mad at the object of their wrath. They get some much needed attention.

But what is the price? Well holding on to rage causes a lot of stress and takes a toll on the body. The person’s demeanor also suffers. While it may be interesting for a few minutes, no one wants to be around an angry person for long because everything feels so tense and unrelaxed.

So anyway, I had a chance to revisit that lesson last weekend, to review my own life and examine what I hold on to and what I have let go of, and to ask myself that question again about my life choices. What is the benefit AND what is the price of my choice?

 

* Many thanks to Rey Inobaya and Chona Santos of OCCI (Organizational Change Consultants Inc.) for your love and dedication to creating “a world that works with no one left out.” The program mentioned is ALC or the Advanced Leadership Course — which is the second of a trilogy of courses offered by OCCI — the others being FLEX (Foundations of Leadership Excellence) and LEAP (Leadership Excellence Achievement Program).

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

I came across an article entitled “Though You Do Not See Him, You Love Him” by Mike Schumman. It sounded like a typical devotional piece that I would often come across back in the day. I thought it would be interesting to read it with a former believer’s eyes and record the thoughts that come to mind.

The author writes with a dramatic flair, opening with a scene of a hailstorm. Then he lends an air of science as he cites John Piaget’s concept of object permanence — that even through the darkness of the storm, he knew that the sun did not disappear but was simply covered behind the clouds, even if he could not see it.

I know where this is going, I say to myself, and true enough, the article goes on to compare this with God and that people ought to have this idea of object permanence when it comes to their belief in him. Schumman asserts: “Many unbelievers know this, and yet are inconsistent about it. When asked why they struggle to believe in Jesus, a common reply is that ‘if I could only see him, then I would believe.’”

Hang on now. That’s a dubious claim. Many unbelievers know this? That kid born in a war-torn village in Africa, he knows this? That kid born to Muslim parents in Iraq, he knows this? Yes, I’m sure that Buddhist couple in a remote village in Nepal know all about Jesus but are simply being “inconsistent” about it.

Quoting Piaget does nothing for his case because Piaget’s studies require that one first sees the object in question before it is hidden. You cannot have object permanence to something you have never seen in the first place. How would you convince a man born blind that there are stars in the sky, even on a cloudy night? He would simply have to take your word for it, but if he doesn’t, you cannot claim object permanence because he has not fulfilled the first requirement for that to happen.

So no, an unbeliever is not being inconsistent when he asks first to see before believing. He is, in fact, being consistent with the reality he knows.

Schumman knows very well about this hole in his argument because his article takes a predictable turn as he scrambles to address this. He says: “You cannot develop object permanence with Christ unless you first receive a true Spirit-enabled sight of Jesus. This is the reason why some fall away in the midst of persecution, while others are choked out by the cares of the world — they had never truly seen Jesus in the first place.”

Now this is pretty convenient because now those who have never believed in the first place were never gifted with the “Spirit-enabled sight of Jesus” and those like me who previously believed but now do not, “had never truly seen Jesus in the first place.” It also introduces guilt-feelings in believers who are beginning to doubt. After all, you wouldn’t want to be the one person in your little Bible study group who hasn’t actually seen the Lord or felt his touch, would you?

Instead of strengthening his argument, however, this actually goes against it because it all the more reinforces the fact that an unbeliever has never seen God or Jesus and therefore cannot have any sort of object permanence with him, her or it. This claim contradicts his earlier statement that the unbeliever knows about God but is being inconsistent about it. If anything, it is this muddled teaching that is inconsistent with itself.

The article ends with an exhortation to believers to continue believing in the Son they cannot see, who is just hiding behind the dark clouds of life, and would soon (very soon) be showing himself. And again, there is the unstated threat that you wouldn’t want to be caught doubting him when that happens, would you?

I understand that many people find comfort in stuff that people like Schumman write, but I am not one of them. In fact, I have never found such clarity and peace in my life as when I shed off my beliefs like one discards old clothes that no longer fit, like throwing down a heavy burden on one’s back. It is seeing through the smoke and mirrors of religious dogma.

It is freedom.

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.

 

When I was still involved in Multi-Level Marketing, one of the strategies we used to convince people to join was to show them the key to getting their dream house or their dream car did not lie in their little jobs but in “doing their own business.” It was often necessary for us to demonize employment as a kind of modern day slavery. There would be “baliwan” meetings when those who were successful would encourage prospects to resign and “fire your boss” because they were not working for their dreams but rather for the dreams of their employers.

This mentality still persists in one form or another and we have heard perhaps one too many “inspirational” speakers echo that sentiment. Just recently, I came across someone who said: “If you will not pursue your dreams, other people will drag you to become their slave to fulfill theirs. Its called employment.”

This is a false dichotomy. Being employed is not slavery, nor should it be seen as an opposition to the pursuit of your dreams. It is an agreed-upon exchange of time and labor for wages — you applied for a the job and your employer agreed to give you one.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur, and that is as a good thing because who would entrepreneurs employ if everyone wanted to be one? And why should pursuing a dream be slanted towards being an entrepreneur? Some people could very well dream to be a high-ranking officer, but still an employee, and there ought to be nothing wrong with that.

Why not instead see employment as a stepping-stone or as a means to achieve your dreams? There is a lot that you can learn from being employed especially if you get a good boss. But even if you get a bad boss, there are also many things to learn, especially on things you should not do when you decide to start your own business.

There are never-ending lessons you can glean by just being observant. Why is it that a highly paid co-worker is mired in debt while a relatively lower paid one manages just fine? That’s a lesson in how to manage cashflow and expenses right there. Why is the seemingly intelligent supervisor being ignored and disliked by many while the boisterous office clerk gets a lot of affection and support? That’s a lesson in leadership and influence.

Pursuing your dreams doesn’t mean throwing caution and planning to the wind and shouting, “Just do it!” Very often, you will end up falling flat on your face as I have experienced time and again. Of course, you read of the success stories of people like Steve Jobs, Jack Ma, J.K. Rowling, and so on, but you have to understand that the reason you read or watch about them is precisely because they have made it. If you could read or watch the lives of the many people who worked just as hard as them but didn’t make it, for whatever reason, you would realize that there are a whole lot more of these than the former.

Statistics in the US show that half of businesses do not survive past 5 years, and only a third make it past 10 years.

When my wife and I were in New York, we signed up for a short tour of the Juilliard School which is famous for its programs in dance, drama and music. We were shown an impressive concert hall, an opulent theater, hundreds of practice rooms, a dance studio overlooking the streets below and so on, and then we were also shown a relatively new office that assists students in planning out their career paths. They had also realized that a lot of students enroll to “pursue their dream” but have really no idea on how to go about doing that in a very practical sense, or have no clue on what sacrifices need to be made. Indeed New York has a lot of artists selling their art on the sidewalk and street performers singing and dancing in the parks and subway stations.

There is a point when dream meets reality and if your head is floating too much in the clouds, you will be in for a rude awakening when you come crashing down the pavement. Best follow the advice of Theodore Roosevelt: “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”

Originally published in Sunstar Davao.

Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.