Oh, What a Whirlwind we're in!

        Shhh!  Don’t tell.  My very first post.  I find myself spiraling back and upward, like a DNA molecule, to the myriad of themes emerging out of my twilight zone. 

 

(photo by phys.org)

The spirals are so numerous I think I’ll start a “Spiraling Back” series.  (Sorry, Just like Eve readers, this whirlwind is still too big for the creativity of fiction, but I will “spiral back” to it when the winds slow down; if you’d like to hunt down a publisher for me, then perhaps I could return sooner . . . ? 🤔)  I’ll begin with my very first post and all three of its images: the fast-moving “freight train” of information, my “eyes of paradox” (one near-sighted, one far-sighted), and the movement toward whispering, careful speech.  

Image 1: The fast-moving freight train

           Shhh! Don’t tell explained this fast-moving train like a college lecturer speaking so fast you, a student, can’t keep up to take notes.  You had agreed to take notes for some absent classmates, but you gave up, told them the lecture was too fast, and they were on their own. 

I’m now trying to keep up with another freight train speeding along at record speeds.  Nothing adds up, but information – some useful and some really off and very distracting – is blowing in like hurricane.  With all this debris of information flying everywhere, which do we grab hold of, and which do we let go?  Friends, the answers are not at all obvious.

Too many think they know which nuggets of information to trust and which to distrust, but they might be making those decisions based on either a “False Authority” fallacy or an “Ad Hominem” fallacy.  These logical fallacies are opposites, so let me explain them:

A False Authority fallacy is the belief that a statement must be true just because Reliable Person said it.  Perhaps Reliable Person is an authority, but just because Reliable Person said it does not necessarily make it true.  Reliable Person has to provide strong, accurate, reliable evidence for his or her statement in order for it to be trustworthy.  Therefore, a False Authority fallacy does not necessarily mean the speaker is not an authority; instead it means the statement cannot be trusted just because the speaker said it.  Genuine evidence is necessary. 

The classic False Authority is truly false: "Celebrity says solar flares are harmless." However, a subtle type is a Non-sequitur (it does not necessarily follow) type of False Authority: “NASA says solar flares are harmless.”  NASA, of course, is a genuine authority for such a statement.  Without evidence, however, its logic is incomplete. A good listener should ask why NASA says that and what evidence NASA has for such a statement.  (BTW, NASA hasn’t said this; I made it up for the purpose of the analogy, and I purposely chose a respected national agency who I myself trust.)

An Ad Hominem fallacy is the opposite: it believes a statement must be false because Unreliable Person said it.  Maybe Unreliable Person is reliable, and has genuine evidence for X, but is getting demonized 😅 for something she stated (perhaps in jest) about Y.  Are we not to listen to her evidence on X because something from unrelated Y, taken out of context, condemns her?

Or, perhaps Unreliable Person really is unreliable.  Does that mean that everything that person says is false?  What if Unreliable Person brings forth reliable evidence?  Shouldn’t we take a look at that evidence?

 Think about these two questions also:

1.     Has Person, who is being presented to you (or you think is) either Reliable or Unreliable, provided evidence?  Has Person provided it accurately, based on your own fact-checking through the original data or the original source? 

2.    Are you seeing the full evidence in full context of Person, who is being presented to you (or you think is) either Reliable or Unreliable?  Perhaps Person is Reliable, but is being presented as Unreliable, and Person’s strongest evidence has been eliminated from what you’re seeing.  Have you checked the original source?

Image 2: Eyes of Paradox

           As noted in “Shhh! Don’t tell,” I have anisometropia, or what I call “eyes of paradox,” a slightly near-sighted left eye and a fairly pronounced far-sighted right eye.  In certain ways, like trying to read anything from the Internet on my cell phone, or trying to hit an overhead in tennis, my condition is a nuisance.  No set of eye-glasses can give me perfect vision, so I do the best I can, while taking advantage of its benefits, like being able to see road signs far in advance.  “There it is, coming up, next Exit, you’ll need to stay in the right-most lane of the fork,” I tell my husband when we’re on a busy freeway.  Astonished, he exclaims, “You can read that?!”

           Although they’re usually a nuisance, I’m proud of my eyes of paradox.  My life has been about paradox, starting in childhood.  I often imagine my angels are upstairs laughing, playing a joke on me, as I think they did with my eyes.  She’ll be all about paradox; she’ll see nothing but paradox, so let’s give her eyes of paradox!  That my more pronounced eye is far-sighted is also not lost on me.  As I watch the world, life, everything, I see things much more in far-sighted vision than near-sighted.  Right now, I’m seeing everything in paradox, and I’m seeing more of it with the far-sighted eye.

           Let’s consider Highly Unreliable Person, a person I do not trust at all.  If I had not already been investigating X through credible sources, I might respond to what Highly Unreliable Person is saying like everyone else: Highly Unreliable Person thinks X; therefore, X must be false.  But what if X is true?  It’s a paradox. I want to think Highly Unreliable Person can never be trusted.  In our whirlwind, nothing is that simple.

            Paradox accepts that there is no one size fits all.  Maybe a particular treatment will work well for you; maybe it won’t.  Each treatment comes with effects, some of which are more risky for some than others because our bodies are all different.  This should be a decision between each patient with his or her own doctor.

             Likewise, perhaps a particular preventative measure will help you because you have a weak immune system and could be assisted by it.  Perhaps  that same measure could set back another person who has spent years building up his own natural immunity.  For that person, the same preventative measure that helps you is like the boulder that he, Prometheus, has to roll back up a mountain.

           Here’s another paradox: the stay-at-home order that fits my own zen leanings, but jeopardizes the needs of those on my heart, the youth.  I’ve just posted It Still Takes a Village on the youth, so I won’t repeat that here; I’ll just say that what is trying for the youth -- to slow down and remain in place -- is actually refreshing to me.  These are just a couple of paradoxes, but in our whirlwind, the paradoxes are legion.

Image 3: Shhh! Careful speech

           Through this pandemic, my family has chosen to do “Family Movie Nights,” rotating each of us to choose a film and a couple of nights ago, at my request, we watched Karate Kid 2, my favorite of these because in this part, one of my all-time favorite of film characters is the star: Mr. Miagi.  This little man doesn’t look tough, he doesn’t say much, and he’s quirky – he tries to catch flies with chopsticks!  But no strong man, nor crowd of them, armed or not, can defeat this guy.  And even if his phrasing is as quirky as his habits, when he speaks, you’d be wise to listen.

             After a period of silence, a moment tends to arise when one is released to speak.  Another spiral up into the next rung for me on this theme comes from 2013.  I had been advocating for my students to “rise into voices of power for the sake of good,” and at the start of 2013, I began praying the same for myself. In early April, I faced quite a challenge for an instructor at the start of a new quarter: I lost my voice for two weeks.  The Spirit whispered, I will give you a voice of power, but I first have to take away your voice.  (If you glance at my Blog Archive and the posts per year, you’ll also see when my blog voice dropped off for a few years.)

            A year ago, the Spirit surprised me with another whisper: I’m positioning you to be that voice, so I’ve permitted a distraction to you for a test.  Will you be distracted, or will you be a voice of power?  A year later, I’d say the answer has been both.  Thankfully, not only I, but those relevant, following the divine forces, have shown restraint, opening the door for me to emerge into this voice, beginning with my successful advocacy on behalf of Oregon college students.  For now, the whispers repeat the counsel to emulate Mr. Miagi: be humble, simple, silent, restrained, and be ready when the moment arrives to move or speak.

(8/12 update: I hope to have the chance to be silent for quite some time now. A voice is very difficult.)

(photo by portcitywire.com)

Should we always listen to Reliable Person?  Should we never listen to Unreliable Person?  Oh, what a whirlwind we’re in!  To properly discern, we need to examine the evidence for ourselves through our Inner Authority.  To trust our Inner Authority, we need to free ourselves from fear, anxiety, anger, and lower nature desires. Once we do, our Inner Authority is remarkably reliable.  Here’s a doctor who studies, examines, questions, tests, and listens to her Inner Authority, and suggests we do the same.  As a triple board certified Internal Medicine physician, she fits “Reliable Person.”  But even she encourages us not to take her word for it, nor the word of the many speaking another narrative, but to examine the evidence for ourselves through our Inner Authority.

© 2020 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission or a citation that links to this blog.