John Stuart Mill wrote “he who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”
Older cognitive bias
…empirical studies by psychologists John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler, whose 2019 essay in Science Advances was titled “Kids these days: Why the youth of today seem lacking.” Protzko and Schooler summarize their many studies showing that older people suffer from a variety of cognitive biases, such as that we each have biased and self-serving memories of what we were like at that age, and so we older people always find current younger people inferior and declining.
Jonathan Haidt
https://www.persuasion.community/p/haidt-the-teen-mental-illness-epidemic?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=61579&post_id=101632411&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
Did I get it Right?
We ask, “Did I get it right?” which phrases the question with the emphasis on ourselves. Webecome the center of our attention – which misses the point. That point is better stated as, “Am I walking in the Light?” In this, the focus is on Christ who is the Light. If I fail, then I fail within the light. The point is not my failure (for, if I walk in the Light, then the blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin) but the Light. Christ is everything.
Fr Stephen Freeman
Power of Evil over Good
Decades ago, Archbishop Desmond Tutu was asked whether evil is more powerful than good. His reply can help shape the terms of our challenge in this moment: “Evil is not more powerful than good,” Tutu replied, “but it is better organized!”
Beauty
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Keats
Simplicity
Just as all higher mathematics depends on learning basic arithmetic, and just as all more sophisticated music depends on mastering the basics of tempo, melody, and harmony, the spiritual life depends on learning well the essential lessons of this first season, Simplicity. If these lessons aren’t learned well, practitioners will struggle in later seasons. But if in due time this season doesn’t give way to the next, the spiritual life can grow stagnant and even toxic. Nearly all of us in this dynamic season of Simplicity tend to share a number of characteristics. We see the world in simple dualist terms: we are the good guys who follow the good authority figures and we have the right answers; they are the bad guys who consciously or unconsciously fight on the wrong side of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. We feel a deep sense of identity and belonging in our in-group…. This simple, dualist faith gives us great confidence.
This confidence, of course, has a danger, as the old Bob Dylan classic “With God on Our Side” makes clear: “You don’t count the dead when God’s on your side.”
Brian McClaren
Artificial Intelligence
This is what many of us notice about art or prose generated by A.I. It’s often bland and vague. It’s missing a humanistic core. It’s missing an individual person’s passion, pain, longings and a life of deeply felt personal experiences. It does not spring from a person’s imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy that underlie any profound work of human creativity.
[for example] Empathy. Machine thinking is great for understanding the behavioral patterns across populations. It is not great for understanding the unique individual right in front of you. If you want to be able to do this, good humanities classes are really useful. By studying literature, drama, biography and history, you learn about what goes on in the minds of other people. If you can understand another person’s perspective, you have a more valuable skill than the skill possessed by some machine vacuuming up vast masses of data about no one in particular.
David Brooks
View from the Lanai
It may not be a light at the end of the tunnel but hopefully it is is reason for some optimism.
Senate Prayer Breakfast
Once a week, a bipartisan group of two dozen of us get together, pray together, sing together, and most importantly, listen to each other at something called the Senate Prayer Breakfast.
Read the full article: https://reflections.yale.edu/article/lets-talk-confronting-our-divisions/prayer-not-politics-wednesday-mornings-sen-chris-coons
I am encouraged.
When I first heard about it, my first reaction was skepticism, revealing prejudices deeper than my confidence in prayer.
Introspection is a good thing.
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STILL ON THE JOURNEY