Power to Heal is Darren Wilson's to Unleash‏

It may not be obvious, but Darren Wilson has the power to begin a process of healing in Ferguson because he is the metaphorical keystone holding both sides in place. He can bring down the structure on which the conflict is built, but it will take a great deal of courage on his part to do it because it requires a true apology from him. If he comes forward and honestly declares that what he did was a mistake—even if for some reason it was legal—the framework on which the current battle hangs will be gone. 

If, however, he comes forward and declares that he did nothing wrong, it will only serve to strengthen his keystone role supporting what's currently happening. Even worse, if he ends up being charged and found innocent, I predict the riots of the '60s will be seen as quaint. If it is declared at some point that he won't be charged at all, the result won't be much different, I'm afraid. Along with an honest apology, he needs to accept a plea of some sort that delivers some kind of punishment to send a message that his actions aren't being seen as unconditionally valid. 

Darren Wilson has in his hands the power to begin a process of recovery or remain the keystone that supports an ongoing battle that will continue to rage. Fair or not, the future is now in his control.

Dangerously Sized "People"

Headline: Fox News guest: Was Michael Brown too large to be an ‘unarmed teen’?

Corporations are people, large people are weapons, so large corporations must be weapons too. I guess they can also be killed just for being big.

Evil Comparison

Potential college debate topic: Compare the suffering inflicted by U.S. slavery and Nazi Germany, including the period following the U.S. Civil War and World War II.

Devotion to People More Powerful Than Ideas

Article: "Republicans Are Devoted to Protecting the Reagan Myth, No Matter What"

The above article by Paul Krugman ends with the idea that many people use "faith" when they make claims about Ronald Reagan, implying that there is a religious-style attitude in play. I do think that is the case with a whole host of those who have been at the head of political organizations ranging from countries to small activist groups. For some reason many of us need ideas to be attached to a person, and that person then becomes a point of protection for those "living in the faith." There is a difference in the way we perceive an idea when we contemplate it in an abstract sense versus the same idea when it can be attached to a person, and seem to prefer the later.

It would be hard to catalog every religion ever created by humanity, but it's a pretty good bet that the vast majority of them contain people at their center. The most obvious include Buddha, Mohammad, Jesus, Joseph Smith, Lao Tzu, to name just a few. (Even ancient multi-god belief systems and animism personify their spirits and deities.) Defense of these individuals is at the top of the to-do list for dogmatic followers because, as the assigned source of what they espouse, faith in them must be maintained at all costs or the whole faith system falls apart.

This is an unfortunate aspect of our existence. Hopefully, some day, we can see the evaluation of ideas and events themselves as an ideal rather than protecting the persona of someone who's been attached to them.

Murderous Attitudes

It's hard to find a substantial difference in the attitudes of people who support the killings of James Foley and Michael Brown.

There is Money in Filth-Protection

We have system in place that actually includes incentives for people to promote living in filth as a good thing...

Headline:
Experts: Pro-Smog Pollution Report Is "Unmoored From Reality"
Why Media Shouldn't Take Industry-Funded Report On EPA Ozone Regulations At Face Value

Avoding the Easy Proof

It would so easy for people who make supernatural claims to prove them, yet...

In Search of Divine Support

So many people are always on the lookout for a divine excuse to be an asshole.

Expert Blindness

In the book Wait by Frank Partnoy, there is a description of an experiment where chess experts were shown a chess board with checkmate for one of the players achievable in three moves, but the moves are non-standard and counter-intuitive to typical play by experts at the game. After less than a minute the chess experts tended to see the solution. Then, the experimenters did a similar test that contained the same three-move checkmate possibility, but also contained a five-move possibility that was familiar to expert players. In this scenario, the players noticed the five-move option immediately, but only half of the best players saw the three-move option, even fewer of lower level experts. These subjects were then shown the board as it was set up in the original experiment (with no familiar five-move solution available) and they still tended to not be able to see the three-move solution.

What this seems to show is that experts also have biases just like everyone else. To be able to adopt to accept new information and then change a previous determination that incorporates that new information is not only difficult, but for some people it's literally impossible.

I think this is one major reason why relying on "experts" to make sense of new information is always going to be problematic. Not only is there a self-protection bias, but there is a good chance they literally can't see it. It's probably even worse for those who assign themselves the "expert" label when it's undeserved.

"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been...into every corner of our minds." -John Maynard Keynes

Boo on Taboos

By making something taboo we stop our ability to learn, resulting detrimental consequences. The largest example might be the ancient taboo against touching dead bodies, which stopped the proper study of human anatomy until very recent history. A current example is sex. Talking about it is taboo to many people, but for those who do bother to question and learn, their sex-related problems drop dramatically. 

Imagine where we would be if we would only realize that seeking knowledge works.

A Present to the Futre

Just like the present followed our past, our future will follow our present. Do things today as if you are giving a present to our future. Try and remember that what you do today doesn't go away.

Fox News = Infomercial

Fox News experts are in the same category as doctors paid to pitch products on infomercials and be in cahoots with shady lawyers to give a desired diagnoses for a lawsuit. In short, Fox News is a continuous infomercial for making money, and doing so by making a paranoid and undereducated audience feel like their inadequacies are assets.

"Perfect" Rules Are a Distracting Pipe Dream

Humans seem to constantly seek an ultimate set of never-changing rules against which all decisions can and should be made. Such a list will never exist, however, because we can't know the future and therefore can't come up with rules for every possible situation, letting alone the problem of getting agreement on the validity of such a list. Yet, we still chase this fantasy as if it's real, even reaching back into the distant past to mangle ancient texts in hopes of finding this artificial treasure we've imagined to exist. This flaw is perhaps the most damaging one that humans posses because it stops us from doing the work of taking responsibility for ourselves within a world and a universe that never stops changing.

Fool's Gold Apologies

People don't really want apologies. What is really desired is a sincere acknowledgment of a mistake or something deliberately done wrong that results in a genuine apology; the apology is only an emergent property that follows. The delivery of an apology without honest recognition of mistakes is like being given fool's gold as if it's real; both are worthless and insulting when offered. If more widely understood, this idea could be used to produce fewer lawsuits & political battles along with a wide variety of better personal relationships.

Disfigured Fetish

Fox News: Serving those with a fetish for disfigured facts.

Justify This!

Students will one day get advanced degrees studying the Ferguson affair because it seems to be a perfect example of how people can't wait for the next piece of information to be released (true or not) and figure out how to twist it to match their long-held prejudices which allows them to feel justified for holding them.

Humanity Can't Handle The Truth

We have a really awful tendency to ignore what we don't want to know, so much so that we end up with a great deal of discord and harm that we will accept over the full picture of just about anything. This includes history, when we try and pass along only a pretty picture of the past (even when it's lies), sex education (where knowledge is seen as disgusting), corporate actions (where the chain of actions behind any business always eventually leads to a massive group of people somewhere not being treated with respect), food processing (where the process of slaughter is never revealed), climate science (cherry picking and lying about isolated sections of data), religion (ignoring when a claim – all of them, really – fails), and more. We are creatures who can't handle the truth and work very hard to keep it at bay.

Treat Trolls Like Junk Mail

Article: "Web Trolls Winning as Incivility Increases"

This is a real problem and I think it's beginning to get increased attention. Trolling not only negatively changes attitudes when encountered, but also wastes time for people to manage by deleting and banning people. I suspect that more attention will be paid to creating automated filters to ban trolls and their comments, similar to how email filters were created after junk mail became a massive nuisance. Social media will die if trolls are allowed to continue as is.

This whole thing is just one more unfortunate example of how way too many humans need chaperones.

Demolishing Help

In some places the long-term behavior of the police make calling them for help synonymous with calling a demolition crew to repair a sink.

Silent Speech

If people were to truly begin thinking before they speak, the world would become close to silent.