Dec 31 2021 - Top FIVE things for 2022

 

What if there were only FIVE things to watch in 2022?  What's the first?   It is the Pandemic and its persistent set of rolling waves.  Everyone is asking if 2022 is the year it moves into an endemic which somehow seems less scary than the past two years of pandemic.  That's the active word right now.   I am looking past the waves that roll into endemic and on to the aftershocks that impact the health care system itself.  That seems to me to be the actual thing to keep track of in 2022.  And it is going to be close-up and personal for those of us who are older and more dependent on the health care system. On to Number Two:  Would you think climate change, climate events, and climate actions might be the second thing?  Not according to the media.  Nothing there on climate change as the key trend.  It is things like inflation, The Big Resignation, electric vehicles and space travel.  These are so much easier to write about.  And the news organizations have been very low on expertise on climate, just as they were low on expertise on the pandemic when it started.  As an aside, I think the space travel trend in 2022 might bring the first big space accident, given the near misses of 2021.  I don't see anybody else making this sort of prediction, but then it is macabre. So climate change is likely to have even more climate events that impact more of us, and personally. A growing swell of weather gone wrong.  I am attentive to the weather forecast as never before, and considering the worst scenario is where I live. And the other three things?   It seems it is up for grabs, but it is actually easy to see.  It is our attention to U.S. politics and the state of democracy in America.  The US news media and social media players have a hold on us.  They want to rekindle the comedy and tragedy of the Donald Trump days - that Trump frenzy. And what about  the gladiator hand-to-hand combat of the "Republican problem?"  Be ready for it to play out on January 6th. So we're down to what are the remaining two things to watch in 2022?  What are you considering?  What compels your attention?   It is time for a new calendar - but I don't seem to have Kim Klassen's New Years templates.  I'll have to go find out if she produced them this year. Here's a New Years greeting from a few years ago.  What a different time that was, and doesn't this image demonstrate it.  A magical Longwood Gardens' Himalayan Blue Poppy welcoming the New Year into a welcoming Blue Starry Sky.

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Dec 29 2921 - Shaking Off Santa...At Least for a Year!

 

Santa is such a delightful visual icon.  The white curly hair and beard, rosy cheeks, beautiful elves and fur "suit"... always so charming.  But the keeping of lists for naught and nice is a nasty underside to this soft, warm cozy visual experience.   These are 'substitute' or 'stand-in' words of naughty for bad, sinful, evil, and nice for good, ethical, virtuous. Such a moral framework within the guise of candies, cookies and presents.  No wonder philosophers have looked at Santa carefully and wondered about what moral framework was used or invented to guide him.  CBC took a look at philosophical frameworks to explain how describe how the framework might work.  Consequentialist? Deontologist?  Virtue ethicist? I've summarized the interview that can be found in full HERE. Santa as a consequentialist - The Total Score Consequentialism determines whether an action is good or bad based on the consequences of that action. This is also known as modern utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham an 18th-century English philosopher is the founder of this philosophy.  It is an addition and subtraction framework with a final score of right vs wrong.  "If you, as a kid, are constantly doing things that cause harm to other people and cause them to be in pain, that seems bad. And we might intuitively understand why Santa would judge you as naughty in that case,"  Bentham created  a way of assigning a numerical value to an action — by considering questions like: How much pleasure or pain might your action cause? For how long? How many people are you going to affect? "You add up all the pleasure and you add up all the pain and you take the pain away from the pleasure. And if your action results in more pleasure overall for more people, this is a moral thing and you were nice, not naughty." There are a few issues with consequentialism.  "You might be pretty moral overall," said Fellows. "So that's one problem ... For example, what if a child is generally kind to many people and does favours for them, but keeps a frog in a jar at home to torture it?  Consequentialism also doesn't take a person's intentions into account. For example, a child who wraps the family cat in blankets to make it cozy may think they're doing a good thing, even if they're actually causing harm. Santa as a deontologist - The Stickler or One Strike and You're Out! One school of ethical thought that does account for intentions is deontology, best represented by Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century German philosopher and one of the central thinkers of the Enlightenment. "He said that you must always try and follow your duty, and your moral duty is to follow what's called the categorical imperative."  His concept is categorical because it applies in all places at all times, and it's imperative because you must follow it without exception. "Whereas we thought of Santa with Bentham as being like Santa the Mathematician, Santa for Kant would be maybe Santa the Stickler, because Kant says you have to follow this rule."  "In other words, allowing other people the freedom to make their own choices," said Fellows. "And maybe they choose to help me achieve my goal, and that's great. But I also have to [show] respect if they choose not to help me." For example, if a parent asks their child if they ate all their brussel sprouts before they're allowed to have dessert, a child who lies would not be respecting their parent's' rational autonomy.  "They're manipulating their parents into trying to get the ice cream. So they're not telling all the truth and they're not giving the parent a free choice."  On the other hand, a child who admits to their parents that they gave their vegetables away to the dog would be acting morally. But when it comes to making it on the nice list, there's a twist. For Kant, the only way to be truly moral is to follow the categorical imperative because you've chosen it as the right thing to do, and not because you're trying to get a reward out of it like a Christmas present. "If you are only following the categorical imperative because you want the treats and you don't want the coal, then you aren't doing it properly either. You've already failed. In fact, you need to take Santa out of the equation and not worry about his approval at all." So with Kant, it could be "one strike and you're out!" Santa as a virtue ethicist - The Soul Observer - Improbable Decisions for a Four-year-old If Santa the consequentialist only cares about the end results of your actions, and Santa the deontologist only cares whether you're respecting other people's rational autonomy, then Santa the virtue ethicist only cares about looking into your soul to see if you're trying to be good. Virtue ethics, a branch of philosophy that goes all the way back to Aristotle, is concerned with individual moral aspiration.  "Rather than focusing on this specific situation and what should I do in this specific situation, virtue ethics asks: Overall, over the course of my lifetime, what kind of person should I try to be?"  According to Aristotle, to become virtuous people, we have to identify the virtuous course of action. For him, virtues can be found at the midpoint of two extremes, what he calls a "golden mean." For example, if your little brother draws a not-so-pretty finger painting, and proudly shows it off to you, do you lie and say it looks great, or do you tell the truth, which could hurt his feelings?  "Truthfulness is at the golden mean. It is at a midpoint, but it's a midpoint between deception — that is, lying, which is a vice of deficiency — and what Aristotle calls kind of a boastfulness or a hard truth… truths that hurt people."  "Part of achieving the golden mean of truthfulness would be learning when to tell the truth, how to tell the truth, and when it might be best to keep silent." Virtue ethicists like Aristotle also acknowledge that while people may aim for the golden mean, they're bound to make mistakes, and that's OK. "The real point of virtue ethics is that morality is a skill that you have to practise until it becomes second nature. And when it becomes second nature, you actually remake yourself into a moral person."  "So in some ways I like virtue ethics because it is a very positive theory. No matter how naughty or how bad you are, you can work to make things better, to make yourself better."  Under an Aristotelian model, Santa would be an observer, watching what you did over the course of a year. He would ask: What habits did you acquire? How did you practise the skill of morality?  "The reward is that you will actually be a happier, better, more well-rounded person, and that you will have less regrets at the end of your days."   "So you will kind of give yourself the present. You won't need Santa."   Let's all explain that one to a four-year-old.  What moral habits did a four-year-old learn besides name some colours, count, remember parts of a story, draw a person with 2 to 4 body parts, use scissors, and so on. I rest my case on Santa - at least for another year. That's likely why he only comes around once a year.  There's too much to explain, too much "Santa's watching" threats to invoke and then moderate, keep score on how things are going with motivation and so on.    As we come to the conclusion of 2021, we look ahead to 2022.  We hope for a better year ahead.  Can we pass through the keyhole of the pandemic and climate change urgency in one year?

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Jan 2 2020 - Out with the Old and In with the New

 

“Out with the old, in with the new” means to leave old things or ideas behind and start fresh with new things or ideas. People usually say this at the beginning of a new year or at the beginning of something new.   This answer comes from Quora, the website where top-ranked questions are answered by a "community."  The answers that come from this community range far and wide. I am sorry to have Quora always at the top of the answer stack.  It has figured out that Google is in the business of showing webpages that answer questions.  Quora answers questions in whatever way its "community" feels like.  So the answers can be nonsense, vicious rants, hate speech, vulgarities, unrelated ads, or factual answers.  We have to figure it all out, and Quora is in business by making sure an appropriate "answer" hits the top. I went to Marian Salzman's website HERE for her view on 2021 trends.  What is the New that will be ushered in? Let's start with the headlines of past trends: 2010:  Cellphones are the new transfats 2011 The new social is antisocial 2012 Let's get reality competitive 2013 Small is the new big 2014 Massification of organics 2015 Self everything 2016 Uneasy street 2017 Sleep as a status symbol 2018 Cryptocurrency craze 2019 Reality meets virtuality 2020 Chaos the new normal In the 2021 introduction, Salzman compares Y2K and C-19 and what the threats were/are and our responses to them.  She says our Y2K fears materialized a decade later - in 2020.   She says that we are in a different world in 2020 than we were in 1999: "More divided. More skeptical. Less willing to put aside partisan ideology in service to the greater good. Our calendars have advanced two decades, but society appears to be moving—sometimes at hyperspeed—in the opposite direction." In her annual trends report, Marian explores 11 ideas that will influence life choices and behaviours and ultimately become the next normal. Mostly these ideas feed into new product development, marketing products and investment strategies.  That's what her company does.  She always offers ideas that lead to economic advantage.  However, she includes some that are societal and political - so a broader view is also given.   It is the final sentence of the report that brings attention to this broader view.  What does she end with?  I'll show you.     Our picture of the day is my version of out with the old of 2020. It turns out to be a visual expression of her 2020 trend "Chaos the new normal".     Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Dec 12 2020 - My Infinity is bigger than yours

 

TVO has a series on Mathematics and last night they covered the topic of infinity.  It turns out that there are a lot of answers to the question: "How big is infinity?"   An article that explains this says:  "Infinity is an extremely important concept in mathematics. Infinity shows up almost immediately in dealing with infinitely large sets — collections of numbers that go on forever, like the natural, or counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. Infinite sets are not all created equal, however. There are actually many different sizes or levels of infinity; some infinite sets are vastly larger than other infinite sets." The explanation takes more than this page.  You can read about it HERE. It explains the theory of infinite sets, developed in the late 1900s by Georg Cantor.  He showed that there are many infinites. But this is all a premise to find good infinity jokes:  I was going to tell a joke about infinity But I don't know how it ends. I love the concept of infinity. I could talk about it forever. To the guy who invented infinity. Thanks for everything, Why can’t the Infinity car company trademark ∞ ? The legal battle would be endless. What's infinity minus one? A sideways seven. And here's the best for last: Dictionary namesake Noah Webster's funeral Noah Webster was an important man in the field of lexicography. So when he died his wife, Miriam, decided to have a large funeral. Many people came out. Near the end, after the eulogy, Miriam asked if anyone else wanted to say something about her late husband. A man comes up to her and says, “I would like to say a word if that is acceptable.”  Miriam says, “Of course!” The man goes up and says, “Plethora.” The widow Webster smiles and says, “Thank you, that means a lot.” Another man comes up to her and says, “I, too, would like to say a word if that is acceptable.”  Miriam says, “Of course!” The man goes up and says, “Infinity.” The widow Webster smiles and says, “Thank you, that means more than you can know.” Lastly, a woman comes up to Miriam and says, “I, too, would like to say a word if that is acceptable.”  Miriam says, “Of course!” The woman goes up and says, “Aorta.” The widow Webster smiles and says, “Thank you, that warms my heart.” Here's the start of our 2021 Calendar images.

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