Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Monday, October 30, 2023
Psalm 142:4
I look for someone to come and help me,
but no one gives me a passing thought!
No one will help me;
no one cares a bit what happens to me.
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Job 27:11-12
I will teach you about God’s power.
I will not conceal anything concerning the Almighty.
But you have seen all this,
yet you say all these useless things to me.
Friday, October 27, 2023
Target
Since I'm the only pedestrian in town, and since rain and dark days are fast approaching, I have been getting reflectors, and putting them on my dark clothing.
However, since I'm suicidal, I have been somewhat bemused by why I'm doing this. Since all the drivers in Port Alberni are so bad at it, I've been hoping that one of them will kill me, and save me the trouble of killing myself. I mean, is that too much to ask?
But it does seem rather counterintuitive that I am putting reflectors on my clothing. Won't that reduce my chances of getting killed?
Today I suddenly realized: I'm not warning drivers away.
Since they have been unable to hit me so far, I'm trying to give them an aim point ...
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
You're a card
The approach of Hallowe'en, and the arrival of more great grandchildren reminded me: Gloria didn't necessarily object to Hallowe'en, but she certainly felt that it was overblown. Hallowe'en used to be a bit of family fun, primarily for per-teen kids. Dress-up. candy, leaf bonfires, and maybe some fireworks. You spent it with your family, and in your neighbourhood. Adults didn't wear costumes, unless they were giving the kids a bit of a show. Then banks got into it, because it was the only holiday that they were open, and then we got adult parties, and company parties, and Hallowe'en is starting to rival Christmas as a marketing blitz.
So, one year, as Hallowe'en was getting bigger and bigger, I found a card that was celebrating "Baby's First Halloween!"
"Baby's first hallowe'en" immediately became our code phrase for the commercializing excesses of retail marketing.
Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Sermon 17 - False News Proves God Exists
Sermon 17 - False News Proves God Exists
Psalm 12:2
Everyone tells lies, and no one is sincere.
Psalm 4:2
You rabble—how long do I put up with your scorn? How long will you lust after lies? How long will you live crazed by illusion?
Job 28:9-13
9 People know how to tear apart flinty rocks
and overturn the roots of mountains.
10 They cut tunnels in the rocks
and uncover precious stones.
11 They dam up the trickling streams
and bring to light the hidden treasures.
12 But do people know where to find wisdom?
Where can they find understanding?
13 No one knows where to find it,
for it is not found among the living.
...
23 God alone understands the way to wisdom;
he knows where it can be found
I have spoken, in other sermons, about discord attacks, and the significance of false news in relation to that topic. False news seems to be the bane of our times, and it is creating problems in politics, the church, and society at large. A lot of discussion has taken place about whether we are in a post truth society, and what terrors that may bring. People have been talking about lies. We apparently have all kinds of different names for lies. I kind of wonder how many words we have for falsehoods, for misinformation, for disinformation, for social engineering, and for all the other forms, and all the other ways, that we refer to untruths. But we're really talking about lies. Most recently, of course, we were talking about fake news. But people are even starting to tell lies about fake news, and so now, in order to discuss the idea, we have to refer to *false* news. It's all still lies. Of course, sometimes people say that they aren't lying, because they didn't know that they were lying. They were just spreading stories, that they liked, and they didn't know whether they were true or false. But they wanted them to be true, because it made somebody else look bad. So they spread the stories. Whether they were true or not. And mostly they're not. It's all lies.
Social networks, and social media, have been the means of promoting much of this false news. Now the new large language models of artificial intelligence have a demonstrated properties which make it seem that they have almost been created intending to generate false news.
In addition, artificial intelligence is seen as a threat in a number of other ways. And some of the threats of artificial intelligence seem to be particularly directed at faith, and the church.
However, these rather terrible forces also provide us with a new opportunity. And even a new hope.
It may seem strange to try to prove the existence of the God of Truth, from the existence of lies. But that's often the way logic works. If X can either be true or false, and, if false, then Y must exist, then if Y does not exist then X must be true. That's often referred to as deductive logic. We're going to look more at logic in a bit.
And I even found a Biblical passage that seems to talk about this weird idea. It's in Job 13:7:
Why are you lying?
Do you think your lies will benefit God?
Many years ago, I based my own belief in God, and in the existence of God, on a preference for a universe with a God in it. There are many proofs for the existence of God, but none of them are, in fact, completely provable. If we could, actually, prove the existence of God, what would that do to faith? If we could, in fact, prove the existence of God, then belief in God would simply be a matter of being intelligent enough to understand the proof. Faith wouldn't enter into it.
At the same time, in discussion with my atheist friends, of whom I have many, they could propose arguments against the existence of God, but they couldn't prove that God *didn't* exist, either. We can't prove God does exist, but they can't prove God doesn't exist. So, I figured that I could get away with choosing the universe that I preferred.
We believe certain things about the universe. We believe that there is morality, that there is right, and wrong. We believe that there is truth: that some things are true, and that some things are false. We also believe that we are aware, that we understand these things, and even these concepts about morality and truth, and even self-awareness. We all believe these things. All religions believe in morality, even if they differ on the details. Even atheists (for the most part) believe in morality, even if they differ on the details. And they believe in thought, and in truth.
I am not saying that any of us actually know "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." But all of us seem to think that the truth *is* out there, and that we can strive towards it.
But can these things exist in a universe without God?
I preferred a universe with God in it, because, if you imagined a universe without God in it, that runs on purely mechanistic principles, there is no mechanism to support morality. There is no reason to say that one action is good, and another is bad. You can say that one action will make people happier, or possibly even that one action will lead to more people living than another action, but you can't say that making people happy, or even keeping them alive, is morally right or wrong. Without God there is no basis for morality.
But it goes further than that. We believe that we are self-aware. We believe that we experience life, and the reality of the universe around us. But where does that self-awareness come from? What mechanism would create self-awareness? What mechanism would create an awareness of truth and falsehood? Evolution might drive the creation of a brain that leads people to survive, and some consistency with reality would better enable survival, but why would we have to be aware? Why would we have to be concerned about truth? And, even if we were, somehow, aware, why would it be that our brains would seek out reality and truth, beyond the immediate demands of survival? And, how could we possibly think that our brains do provide us with the truth, beyond the immediate needs of survival?
We think that we think. We think that we have the faculty for our thoughts to correspond to reality. But why should they? We certainly have no facility with logic: it takes a lot of work to develop our skill there. And many of us believe that we are more skilled in logic than we actually are. (But I digress.)
And, of course, Godel has proved that we actually don't know if we can rely on logic. We believe that logic allows us to determine what corresponds to reality, but Kurt Godel proved that no system of logic, starting with its own internal principles, can be proven to be correct. So, we have to take logic on faith.
Oh, dear. The atheists are on shakier ground.
As I am writing the notes for this sermon, I am also teaching the cryptography section of the information security seminar. I love cryptography, primarily because it is the history of really, really smart people making really, really bad mistakes. This is related to the idea of our belief in truth, and logic, and rational thought. Why should we think that we think? Even the best of us can make really bad mistakes. Part of the reason is that we decide issues more on the basis of emotion, than rational thought, regardless of how we feel that we actually do in those departments. But part of it is just that we make a lot of mistakes. We do not think as well as we think we think, but we have a strong belief that we do think, and that thinking is an advantage to us. Actually, just simply the fact that there are an awful lot of people who are tremendous successes, even though they are really, really ignorant, tends to work against this idea, but we still believe in thought. We still believe in truth. We still believe in logic and rationality. And why should we believe that, unless God has actually given it to us? Evolution is not enough of a process to give us reliable thinking mechanisms. Evolution is enough to give us processes that will help us to survive, but truth? Logic? Rationality? These are not concepts related to survivability. Natural selection might give us street smarts, but there's no reason to believe that it would give us intellectual rigour.
The idea that truth is not quite exactly the same as facts may be difficult for some. We think of truth as binary: things are either true or false. But that is often not, well, true. For example, there is C. S. Lewis's statement that fairy tales are important, not because they teach children that dragons are real, but because they teach kids that dragons can be beaten. There is the statement that comedy is a way of telling the truth with a lie. The again, saying that the value of pi is three, or three and a quarter, is incorrect. It is untrue. But it may be plausible, or useful, as a heuristic for quilting. (Especially if you are going to have half inch seam allowances anyway.) So there are lots of examples where we can see that something doesn't have to be true, to be useful for survival.
Again, while natural selection might favor some correspondence of behavior with reality, what possible mechanism could there be that would drive human beings to develop philosophy? It is a standing joke that the only job that a degree in philosophy qualifies you for is the teaching of philosophy to university or college students.
(As an answer to any of the foregoing, I will not accept any proposals that contain the phrase "emergent properties." "Emergent properties" is just another way of saying "and then a miracle occurs," and miracles are God's province.)
Therefore, we can create possible classes of untruths. There are things that are true. Philosophers have argued for millennia about what (if anything) is included here, but probably some mathematical facts belong in this category. Then there are things that are untrue (or incomplete), but useful. (Actually, most scientific theories fit into this category.) Then there are things that untrue, but plausible. (Most of politics fits into this category.) Last there are things that are untrue and complete nonsense. These things tend to be discarded fairly quickly, but there is, unfortunately, a large overlap with the area of untrue but plausible.
If God exists, He can provide us with self-awareness. God can provide us with an awareness of the importance of truth, and a faculty, and facility, for seeking out truth.
Now we turn to the areas of mathematics known as number theory and set theory. Don't worry if you didn't study them: the basics, and the parts I'm going to use, are pretty simple.
The huge prevalence of false news has allowed us to study lies. Not just epistemologically, but analytically and mathematically. The existence of computers, and the Internet, and social media, has given us a huge dataset, such that we can have a high degree of certainty that our conclusions are correct. The storm of false news has given us a way to see a truth.
The point is that the set of truths is much smaller than the set of things that aren't true, but are plausible, credible, or believable. For everything that is true, there are a great many things that diverge from that truth, but are still plausible. So the set of things that is plausible but untrue, is much larger than the set of things that are actually true. Therefore, it is much easier to create something that is untrue, than something that is true. There is a much larger set of things to choose from.
In addition, untruths spread much more quickly than do truths. This is partly because there are more of them, but also because it takes time, and effort, to verify something as being true, but it takes only a fraction of a second for us to believe something that we want to believe. So the truth is always at a disadvantage. There is always more untruth, and there is always the fact that the untruths spread much faster than the truth.
There is much more that is plausible than that is true. Creating a brain that finds the plausible is probably a lot easier than creating one that finds the truth. That assertion now seems to be supported by additional evidence: the evidence that we have created artificial intelligence systems that can create very plausible products--but a lot of them aren't true.
OK, now comes the part that might make your head hurt.
The atheist believes in truth, and thought, and logic, the same as we do. But he has to believe that evolution; which is a wonderful theory for explaining the diversity of life, and has ample evidence that it is still happening today; has, without assistance, created a brain capable of logic and truth. And that this brain has enough facility in logic to come up with the truth of its own creation. Natural selection selects for reproductive advantage. Truth is not an advantageous trait. It is expensive, in terms of both evolution and energy. Evolution tends to take the low energy path: a low requirement for energy always has survival advantage. The probability that evolution would create a mind that would reliably find truth is low. Therefore, the probability that the idea of unassisted evolution that such a mind would conceive is, in fact, correct, is also low. So, to state that God does not exist, and that we figured this out because a thoughtless universe created a mind that could figure it out, seems to be a self-defeating argument.
Now, it is still possible that, somewhere in the immensity of time and space, and possibly multiple universes, hydrogen is a colourless, odorless gas which, given enough time, turns into people. And it is possible that, randomly and accidentally, we came across the truth. And that, in addition, also randomly and accidentally, we developed the capacity to recognize this truth. But it doesn't seem very likely.
And, even if we did, somehow, improbably, develop the capacity for truth, we can't take any credit for it. If God doesn't exist, the mechanistic universe was pre-determined to create us, and in such a way that we developed the brains that we did, and, given precisely the same set of initial conditions, we would always come to precisely the same conclusion.
(If you want to say "quantum" to me, and say that everything *isn't* precisely determined, I'd say that, in some ways, that's even worse. In that case, the universe, at base, regardless of how it seems to us, is pretty much completely random and chaotic.)
This doesn't, logically, prove that God, necessarily, exists. We are now in the realm of *inductive* logic, where the compilation of evidence directs us one way, or another. So, it would seem that we can only say that God *probably* exists.
I would prefer to live in a universe where right and wrong exist. I would prefer to live in a universe where we can rely on being able to figure things out, correctly. Therefore, I would prefer to believe that God exists. If God exists, He can make us aware that He exists.
So, while the existence and prevalence of lies may not necessarily prove that God exists, it certainly seems to make His existence much more probable than the universe we seem to think we live in, but without Him.
And, if God *doesn't* exist, then for some reason, the mechanistic universe wants me to prefer to believe that He does. So, what do you say to that?
Sermon 38 - Truth, Rhetoric, and Generative Artificial Intelligence
Monday, October 23, 2023
Saturday, October 21, 2023
Back to back
Back in June I wasn't able to sleep in the bed for over two weeks. I made do with the chair. It's not great, and I have to be careful not to get into a position where my leg starts to ache, but there are some positions, well, really only one or two, where the pain in my leg is not enough to keep me from sleeping.
It's back, again.
My right arm is aching as well. The right arm has been medically confirmed as arthritis. The ache in both arm and leg is the same, which is what gives me to believe that the leg is arthritic as well. So far it hasn't been enough to keep me from walking, although some mornings it's a near thing. But, so far, the ache does tend to respond to "walking it off," and, after a while, or a few kilometers, the aching is somewhat reduced. Although some days it doesn't actually reduce: it's just never enough to actually keep me from walking. Yet.
At one point, not only were both the arm and the leg aching, but a headache developed on the right side as well. So, my entire right side was aching. The fact that it was my entire right side brought to mind the possibility of a stroke. Although I don't think aches and pains are precursor symptoms for a stroke. But, it brought strokes to mind, and the possibility of disability. Although, initially, I was thinking that it might have been a good thing. When you have a stroke on the right side of the brain, it generally affects the heart, and is more likely to kill you. This is one of the reasons that most stroke survivors seem to be paralyzed on the same side. But, that's the left side of the body. The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body. So, possibly aches and pains on the right side of the body would indicate a stroke on the left side of the brain, which is less likely to kill you, and more likely to leave you disabled, and, in fact, more likely to leave you aphasic, as well.
Oh, joy. Being disabled, and unable to speak, in a town where nobody cares whether I live or die.
I've been referred for an MRI to figure out the details of what's wrong with my back and hip. Presumably that might result in some ideas for treatment. However, that was five months ago, and I haven't yet had the slightest indication of when the initial MRI might happen.
Oh, joy.
Friday, October 20, 2023
Thursday, October 19, 2023
Wednesday, October 18, 2023
Pedestrian in PA
As the only pedestrian in Port Alberni, the return of wet weather, and the steadily darkening days, have brought back some concerns.
The fact that I am the only pedestrian in Port Alberni is easily evidenced by the fact that the sidewalks here, while they do exist, and are even fairly prevalent, are sadly neglected. Most of them are older than I am, which means that they are broken and buckled in many places, and thus provide very treacherous footing, particularly in the rain and dark. There is also the fact that they are unused, which has meant that many homeowners have felt free to allow hedges to almost completely overgrow the sidewalks. So, it's back to mostly walking on the roads.
There are also the crosswalks. An awful lot of the crosswalks around town are just painted with enamel paint, rather than the heavy (and expensive) grit containing paint that is used for most road markings these days. The new stuff is OK for walking on, but the enamel paint makes the crosswalks slick and a bit of a deathtrap in the rain. I tend to have to walk just outside the crosswalks when crossing streets, in order to make it to the other side without going skating.
With the return of dark days, my clothing, which these days consists primarily of conference and vendor giveaways, has become a concern. For some reason, it's primarily black. Most of my t-shirts are black, and those that aren't black are almost all dark grey. However, thanks to ICBC, I have been able to find some reflectors to attach to my packs and jackets.
Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Job 6:11-13
But I don’t have the strength to endure.
I have nothing to live for.
Do I have the strength of a stone?
Is my body made of bronze?
No, I am utterly helpless,
without any chance of success.
Monday, October 16, 2023
MGG - 1 - Memoirs of a Grieving Gnome - early
Memoirs of a Grieving Gnome
I was born at a very early age. I spent a number of my early years in the arms of another man's wife: my mother.
Yes, I stole that. No, I can't remember who from. However, it's probably no less accurate than any remembrances that I might retail of my early years. Memory plays tricks on you. When we are trying to remember something, we actually remember a sort of a note form of it, and then repopulate it with details. Some of the details we may obtain from other sources than our direct memory, such as stories we have been told about ourselves. Some of the details that we may use to populate the story may be complete fabrications, or taken from some other source.
As one example, shortly after my first birthday, my father took an exchange teaching position in England. My mother, father, and myself traveled to England on a boat, as was common in those days, when boats were more frequent and air travel was still quite expensive, and exotic. Well, I suppose a ship. Ships carry boats. That's how you can tell the difference.
In any case, my father left his teaching job in Vancouver, and taught at Harrow. No, not Harrow-on-the-Hill, although I'm certain that is what my mother would have you believe. But he did teach in the town, or suburb, of Harrow, at the public school there. Or what we, in North America, would call the public school. The local school where the locals went to school.
We spent a year in England. My parents, during the second summer, did some touring of Europe, while I was left with a couple in England. At some point during that year in a bit, we went to an attraction called Beaconscot. This was a miniature village: a village of miniature houses, buildings, structures, and people, that you could walk around in. When I was approximately 10 years of age, I had vivid and detailed recollections of Beaconscot. I even remember having very vivid and detailed dreams about it. The only problem is that when I was about 20 years old, I traveled to England and toured around again. Myself. And I visited Beaconscot. It was completely unlike what I vividly remembered in detail. For one thing, the scale was much larger. What I remembered was built on a scale where a 10-story building would come up to the shoulder of a small child. The actual Beaconscot is on a scale where a three-story building would be about that tall. In addition, the style of the buildings in Beaconscot was much older than I what I vividly remembered with details of much more modern buildings. In addition, the detail of the actual Beaconscot was much cruder than the fine accurate details that I remembered and dreamed about. So, memory is not really to be trusted. This has come back to me, very vividly, in my professional career as a security maven, and particularly in regard to interviewing witnesses about incidents. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
According to my mother, who was never one to let reality get in the way of what she considers a good story, I learned to walk on the ship traveling over to England. This is unlikely. If it is true, then I was very late at learning how to walk: the ship didn't sail until well after my first birthday. Most kids are learning to walk before their first birthday. (Mind you, I have always been a klutz. I have never been good at sports, or anything requiring eye hand coordination. I am no good at fixing things, or building things, or doing anything with my hands. Not even typing, with all the writing that I have done over the years. My handwriting is abysmal, as was my father's before me. I'm dictating this now, even with all the mistakes that Gboard makes, which I will have to fix later, because it's easier than typing. Even when I have to fix all of Gboard's mistakes. Even as an adult, I am unsteady on my feet. So, it is not entirely outside the bounds of possibility that I was rather delayed in learning how to walk. However three months delayed does seem a bit much.)
Anyway, my mother insists that I learned how to walk on the ship. This is because she could then go on and tell people that as soon as the ship docked I was no longer able to walk, and had to relearn how to walk all over again on dry land.
Mother also insisted that, over the course of the year and a bit that we were in England, I learned how to talk with an English accent. When I got back to Canada I had what she considered to be the cutest British accent. I lost it eventually, of course.
But possibly not entirely. In my teens I could distinguish, and, upon request, recreate, at least seven or eight different regional British dialects accents, plus three Scottish accents, and two distinct Irish accents. (Also a skill that I have subsequently lost.)
I retained, briefly, certain physical objects from those days in England. There was a tricycle with chain drive, rather a rarity in North American circles. There was a a stuffed bear, with plastic face. There were also some books from the Rupert series. (No, the bear was not Rupert.)
I retained them briefly because my parents had a strong personal investment in recycling. As my brothers and sisters were born (I was the eldest), these objects, as well as bibs, onesies, shirts, and other children's clothing, stained with spit up, would be handed down to the next one in line. Some of these objects, and clothing, my parents even tried to hand them down to my niece and nephew, when my baby brother started a family. (His wife wouldn't take them. Wise woman.)
I do have some early memories. I remember a room in the basement with material coming in through a window from the outside. I have learned, in later years, that the house that we lived in when I was three or four years old, had a furnace that ran on sawdust. This room was undoubtedly the storage for the sawdust that burned in that furnace.
At about the same time I remember looking at a newspaper, on the floor. It was about some momentous local event. I wasn't reading it: I didn't learn to read until I was at least six. It may have been the collapse of the Second Narrows/Iron Workers Memorial Bridge, or it may have been the explosion of Ripple Rock. I may even have conflated the two stories in memory. I do also recall that, at or towards the end of our time in that house, I was watching a TV, so we must have had one at least that early.
I do remember bathing my baby sister. Or, she was my baby sister at that point. I was only three and a half years older. I do not actually remember changing her diapers, but I am assured that I did. I do remember changing the diapers of all of the others.
Saturday, October 14, 2023
Friday, October 13, 2023
Why do people fall for grief scams?
I have been presenting a series of workshops, to various groups in town, on the risks and dangers of scams and frauds from phone calls, texts, and email.
I have been covering grief scams, a variation on romance scams, as part of the workshop. Very often I am asked if people really do fall for these scams, and I have to say that they do. Grief and romance scams have been around for a long time. There have been many who prey on the vulnerable, certainly over all of recorded time. As a Certified Grieving Widower, I have even been telling the workshop participants why it is that people fall for these types of scams.
However, recently it occurred to me that I'm uniquely qualified, and can also tell people how to *protect* others against these frauds and scams.
Romance scams prey upon the lonely. The recent structure of our society, with the rise in isolation and alienation, and breakdown of normal familial and social connections, leaves more and more people prey to loneliness itself, and therefore prey to romance scams. Grief scams are a slight variation: the bereaved, and mourners, are very desperately lonely, and thus are far more vulnerable targets to the scammers. (This is primarily because we are a grief-illiterate society, and talking about death is forbidden.) I know from my own experience that the first female who says a kind word to me is in grave danger of me making an absolute fool of myself, and deluding myself that I might possibly be an object of romantic interest.
(I am not only lonely, and depressed, and grieving, but I am also suicidal. You want to talk about suicide? Of course you don't. Not only is it about death, but it's stigmatized death. I am always rather bitterly amused when groups that I am a part of start discussing suicide, beginning, of course, with, "Why would anyone do that?" Well, I can tell you why anyone would do that: they're lonely. No one is talking to them. At least not about anything that's important to them. There could be other reasons: it's not a necessary, but certainly a sufficient, condition.)
Do you know someone who is lonely? Do you want to know anyone who is grieving? Of course you do. There are a great many lonely people in our society, and a great many bereaved in our society.
What are you doing about them?
How do we protect these lonely people? Well, make sure they aren't lonely.
Easy to say, and not so easy to do. In societal terms, there are various attempts to address this issue. Most of them are not terribly successful, because most of them are fairly formulaic. Making sure that somebody is not lonely tends to be fairly individualistic, and idiosyncratic. You have to actually talk to people.
Actually, it's not so much talk to people, as listen to them. This is not easy. We are not good at listening. Ninety percent of us think we are better than average at listening. The math does not work out. In actual fact, most of us are really, really terrible at listening. We only listen until we find something to which we can respond, with our accumulated wisdom, and store of cliches, and then we launch into our part of the conversation. The thing is, the grievers, mourners, and bereaved that you are talking to have pretty much the same store of accumulated wisdom, and have probably heard all the cliches before. They don't need you to repeat them. They need you to listen. Very often that means that all you have to do, is just shut up.
However, that is not always what is needed in listening. Just simply sitting there, and not saying anything, is not necessarily listening. People who teach about listening talk about active listening. Active listening does involve responding to the person, the griever, the mourner, the bereaved person. But it only involves confirming, to the person you are supporting or counseling, that you have heard, and understand, their problems. Very often you *won't* actually understand their problems. They are going to be pathetically unable to analyze their own feelings, and put them, accurately, into words. So, before you think that you have understood what their problems are (and that you have the solution), you need to ask. Restate, very briefly, what you think they said. Let them respond, and either confirm what you think you understood, or correct your misapprehension. And remember, if they say you got it wrong, you got it wrong. Even if they cannot concisely, and accurately, and briefly, outline what their actual problem is. You have to still be listening. You cannot lose patience, just because of their inability. Remember, the person in front of you is the one who is damaged. You are the adult. That means it is your responsibility to understand.
Do you call them? When you call them, if they are grieving, do you allow them to talk about death? Death is the last taboo in our society. We can talk about rock and roll, we can talk about drugs, we can talk about sex, we can even talk about perversions, but death is taboo. We don't speak about death, and we don't allow anybody else to speak about death, either. I have had some very interesting conversations and experiences in this regard.
Let the person speak. And, definitely, listen. That is the greatest gift you can give them. And I mean listening, not simply sitting there in silence, although that's a good start. But listen to this lonely person. Find out how they feel. Find out what they, themselves, have tried to do to address this loneliness, and/or grief. Talk to them frequently. It's not just in the first week, or even the first month, after the death that grieving happens. And, of course, loneliness is probably life long. So this is a long-term project.
You don't, of course, have to take all of it on all by yourself. Convince other people to listen to their lonely and grieving friends. Get them to read this piece, and pass it around. If you convince two other people to take on the project, and each of them convinces two people to take on the project, and each of them ... Well, you get the idea.
Did I mention that the bereaved are desperately lonely? That they are likely to cling to *anyone* who is willing to pay attention to them?
Well, what are you doing to help the bereaved? To ensure that they *aren't* desperate enough to fall for the scam?
Thursday, October 12, 2023
Job 3:21-23
They long for death, and it won’t come.
They search for death more eagerly than for hidden treasure.
They’re filled with joy when they finally die,
and rejoice when they find the grave.
Why is life given to those with no future,
those God has surrounded with difficulties?
Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Sunday, October 8, 2023
What is truth?
How do you explain to a child who has been "protected" from the very idea of philosophy that the literal meaning of words on a page does not equal or negate truth?
Friday, October 6, 2023
MGG introduction
These postings, with an "MGG" flag in the subject, are my memoirs. A memoir is a kind of autobiography, where the author has not taken sufficient rigour for the piece to be counted as a biography. As I have never been particularly rigorous in the books that I have published, and because I have lost my editor, and thus my writing is suffering and is even worse than it used to be, this can't be a biography, so I guess it must be a memoir.
If it ever gets published, the title will be "Memoirs of a Grieving Gnome." This is the explanation of the folder on my computer that holds these files, and, if I get around to posting them on my blog, the indication of why any subject might be tagged with an MGG. The reason for this title is currently given by the fact that it is a memoir. Another part is that I am a grieving widower. (Hence my lack of an editor.) And the third part of the rationale is given in one of my blog postings, which details some of the story behind my gnome-like appearance.
A number of people in the infosec world have asked me to write my memoirs as a "leader in the field" and one of the "old guard." I have a bit of trouble thinking of myself in this way. I have known people in the field who are older than I am (well, a few, anyway), and definitely known some who have been in the field longer than I. (I came to the field pretty late in life.) I also have real trouble thinking of myself as old. I recently read some material on "subjective age": the age you, internally, think yourself to be. Apparently, most people think of themselves as about twenty years younger than they are. I, apparently, take this to extremes. I have, for five decades, thought of myself as nineteen. I have no real idea of the reason for this. It may be because nineteen was "legal" age where I grew up, and so that was the last birthday that had any significance. (But then, when I turned sixty-five, I became eligible for a pension, and it didn't change my "subjective age," so ...)
As I say, I have lost my editor, and my writing has suffered. I never did publish a book before I married Gloria, and it was Gloria's help and support that allowed me to do so. After I had published a book or two, some of my friends, who, themselves, thought that they might have a book in them, asked for my advice on writing and publishing. I had two pieces of advice: one was that when you had finished writing the text of your book, that was the easy part done. However, more than that, much more, was the advice that I gave that, if you came across a good copy editor, you married her. Actually, as noted, I hadn't published any books before I married Gloria, so that advice was a little bit misplaced, and not entirely based upon my own experience. But it was my experience that Gloria was able, due to her excellent grasp of the English language, and her command of spelling and grammar, as well as her command of written language in all of its forms, that allowed her to not simply correct my copy, but to prescribe editorial changes, which improved my writing no end. Unfortunately, while my writing is undoubtedly better than it was before I married Gloria, and before she died, I still don't seem to be able to turn out text of the quality that I did before she died, when I was able to submit it to her for reading and editing and comments. Therefore, it is unlikely that this memoir will ever be published as a book, but I might publish it, piecemeal, on my blog. Heaven knows, my blog is not good for much else these days.
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
Table of Contents (so far):
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Self-image
A while back, one of the artists in town did a picture of me.
I didn't think it looked an awful lot like me. I rather thought it made me look like a puffball.
However, recently, as part of one of my volunteer duties, I had my picture taken by the local paper:
Apparently, with my hair at this stage, I look like a puffball. (Just when I had gotten used to looking like a gnome ...)
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
75 minutes
Well, as long as I'm sharing my whiny complaints and woes, I might as well tell you about the men's breakfast.
The breakfast was pretty standard. I don't eat, since I'm trying to diet. (One of the attendees asked, and I told him that, if he ever saw me eating at the breakfast, it was because I had completely given up on the church and the breakfast "fellowship." He pushed it, so I ate breakfast. He apparently hasn't noticed that I haven't been back.) Guy breakfasts, with lots of buttered toast, pancakes, with syrup, bacon, and sausages, are not exactly diet food.
Oh, sorry, I have to back up. I have to mention that, a few days earlier, someone was actually listening to my situation and tale of woe. And opined that the reason that I am here in Port Alberni, undergoing all this grief, and being open, and honest, and vulnerable, about it, is to encourage the congregants of the churches of Port Alberni to be more open, and honest, and vulnerable. And I started crying. And when I started analyzing why I was crying, it was because I was seeing no evidence of anybody being open, and honest, and vulnerable. So this was a rejection of me on a very deep level: not just a rejection of me personally, but a rejection of, if this fellow was correct, my entire purpose in being here.
So, I'm sitting there with my cup of coffee, which has too much cream and sugar in it, but at least it's not a stack of pancakes, and talking with some of the other guys. After most people have finished eating, the speaker gets into his devotional. Today his theme, if, in fact, he had a theme, was on the difference between living according to the flesh and living according to the spirit. Don't worry if you don't understand that, all you need to know is flesh bad spirit good.
He's the type of guy who really has quite a command of the English language, and all the correct answers out of scripture. He also has a very solid fund of cliches that he can use when necessary. He spoke for at least half an hour, and, well, you know the joke about the guy in the balloon who gets lost in the fog and spots somebody on the ground and asks where he is and the guy on the ground answers you're in a balloon and the guy in the balloon knows that the guy on the ground is an economist because what he has said is true, but completely and utterly useless? The devotional was that kind of word salad.
So somebody else in the group admits that he's having a problem with anger. And the speaker launches into more flesh bad spirit good stuff, and I say, but I'm still angry. This focuses attention on me. (I was really only trying to support the guy who had asked the question in the first place, but ...) Anyway, that leads to about twenty minutes of attacks on me. I suppose I have to explain that these attacks were all "done out of love." Yeah, it's weird, and painful, but it's acceptable if it's "done with love."
Then one of the guys that I knew slightly better than some of the others started in. At first I thought that he was attacking me too, but eventually I realized that, although he wasn't being terribly clear in what he was saying, he was in fact trying to defend and support my statement. And then the speaker seemed to get the point. He started talking about the fact that idea that it wasn't good enough just to come to men's breakfasts, or Bible studies, or prayer meetings, or even the church services: we had to get deeply involved with each other and care about each other's specific situations. And I was listening to this, and thinking, I was wrong! I am having an effect here!
And then that completely stopped, and we got back to attacking me, and not only attacking me but tag teaming the attacks so that there was no space for me to even respond to the various attacks. They also added the bit about if I was angry it was because I didn't have enough Faith to ask God to give me the Spirit, and therefore couldn't live in the spirit, which was *way* too close to the "if anything bad happens to you it's because you don't have enough faith" garbage that my parents were hit with when Fiona died.
That's maybe an illustration of what I mean about not being a safe space.
I do not want to leave the impression that I think these attacks are, in any way, personal. Likely none of these people care whether I live or die. Their reaction is our overall societal reaction to any problem, and particularly intractable problems with no possible resolution, such as death, grief, pain, or depression. It is the societal farce that causes us to reject any mention of them. It is the same force that drives us to cliches and immediate and simple answers to complex problems. We are afraid of problems for which we cannot see an immediate solution. So we fight against any idea of them.
Monday, October 2, 2023
How are you?
Me: I'm fine. (translation: you aren't worth the effort to be honest with.)
Me: Terrible.
You: No you're not.
(You think I'm kidding about this one. I'm not. The purest form of denial.)
Me: Terrible.
You: You can't say that!
(A slightly contaminated form of denial.)
Me: Terrible.
You: But you could *choose* to have a *great* day!!
(Toxic positivity. The worst comforters in the entire world. A rather weird [desperate?] form of denial.)
Me: Terrible.
You: Oh, dear. (And then launches into a half-hour treatise of *their* troubles.)
(An interesting form of denial, *pretending* to be about sympathy, but really ensuring that there is no space/time for me to outline the realities of my life.)
Me: Terrible.
You: [Run away!]
(Yes, I'm well aware that death, grief, pain, and depression are taboo subjects in our society. I've known about the "death" prohibition since my sister died, when I was a teenager. But I have been surprised, recently, by just how strong this aversion is ...)
Me: Terrible.
You: I know *exactly* how you feel! I've felt like that when ... (and then considerable detail proving that, no, you really don't have much of an idea of how I feel at all ...)
Me: Terrible.
You: Just the way you like it!
Me: In what possible universe do you translate "terrible" as "just the way you like it"? I am a grieving widower, and a depressive, and I'm *surrounded* by people who can, when I say I'm terrible, say "just the way you like it!"
(I think I have mentioned that someone opined that the reason that I am here in Port Alberni, undergoing all this grief, and being open, and honest, and vulnerable, about it, is to encourage the congregants of the churches of Port Alberni to be more open, and honest, and vulnerable. https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/75-minutes.html If so, I am signally failing in fulfilling God's purpose in having me here. I wish I were dead ...)
Me: Terrible.
You: Why are you terrible?
Me: Because not one person, in all of the twenty-one churches in this city, cares whether I live or die. You have just proved that. You have asked why I am terrible. We have talked about that before. I am a grieving widower. That has not changed. My wife is still dead! Also, I am a depressive. Depression is not like the sniffles. You don't get over it in a couple of days. So, knowing all this, you still ask me why I am terrible. Obviously you don't care.
You: Well, buddy, can I pray for you?
Me: No.
You: Why not?
Me: Well, obviously, you don't mean it. You don't care. You have prayed for me before. It's always the same prayer. And it never happens. Jeremiah 31:25 never happened. It's almost as if you guys are determined to prove that it's a lie.
Me: Terrible.
You: Stop saying that. People are complaining to us that you complain.
(I really, truly, wish I were dead. Obviously nobody here cares whether I live or die, except those who would rather I died. Or, at least, moved away and stopped talking.)
(See also SYN/ACK: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/05/synack-let-me-know-if-i-can-ever-help.html and Everything you need to know about grief counselling, you can learn from Holly Cole
Sunday, October 1, 2023
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