Faith and Knowing

Knowing is an act of faith.  Taking any action based on what one knows is an act of faith.

One can act without knowing, but to the extent that that lack of knowing is recognized, the prospect of that action creates anxiety -- standing on the brink of the unknown -- depending on what one anticipates can translate itself into fear or pleasant anticipation.

Knowing is the act of bringing into consciousness some aspect of the world.  But bringing into consciousness some aspect of the world, means abstracting that aspect from the totality of the world, making it different from the rest of the world, alienating it from the world.

The world appears to be structured rationally, it is not random.  It appears to obey laws:  Applying or following these laws correctly, applying them to the correct abstracted aspects, results in predicted outcomes.

Science is the discipline of determining abstracted aspects and the laws that apply to them.  Our faith in the existence of these laws and aspects grows as predicted outcomes are continually validated.



Some humans suffer from an excess of consciousness.

There is a difference between "awareness" and "consciousness":  one need to be aware to be conscious, but one can be aware without being conscious.  Being conscious means that one has abstracted aspects of the world and overlaid the world with these aspects so that they stand out from the rest of the world.  One might do this in order to identify or abstract a specific pattern.  But if one must continually re-identify this pattern, then this leaves no time to act on this pattern.

In this sense, one is unable to identify its second derivative, the pattern as it changes over time -- one continually recalculates each point rather than understanding the curve that is defined over time.



Faith in God becomes more difficult the more one knows, because knowing itself requires faith of a kind that supplants the faith one gives to God as an explainer.  Maintaining faith in God is especially difficult if one conceives of God as a superior human -- a being who shares characteristics with humans but with more power.  Such a conception of God may allow one to have a common frame of reference with God, but this also allow Science to usurp God's authority.

A God whose authority one cannot usurp is a God that cannot be known, and such a God does not and cannot exist in consciousness, since such a God is an object that has been abstracted from the world, made different from and smaller than the world.

But what about ethics or morality.

Ethics and morality describe relationships between or among humans or beings who share a common factor or abstracted attribute.  "The Good" or "the common good" is a label (an abstraction) given to the outcome of the relationship, and is not inherent in the relationship itself.  If all parties to the relationship do not agree that the outcome is "good", then the relationship does not result in the common good.  A relationship involving two people, in which one person defines the outcome as "good" while the other defines the outcome and "not good", or "bad", results in no common good.

But since relationships exist over time, and the conditions of the relationship may change, a static or one-point-in-time definition of a relationship as "good" or "bad" is not useful to knowing or understanding the relationship over time.

Reparations - A Thought Experiment

Reparations for past wrongs is an ethical good.  The enslavement and persecution of African Americans by the American government and its people is an ethical wrong that should be redressed.

An argument against Reparations that it is impossible to an historical wrong or fairly compensate current individuals.  Historically, the opportunity to redress the wrong done directly to individuals was lost when the promise of "40 acres and a mule" was broken and Reconstruction became Jim Crow.  And so the wrong still need to be redressed since we are also creatures of history and a wrong can be perpetrated across generations.

So, while it is not impossible to redress those who were enslaved, the wrong of that enslavement is still with us and still cries out for redress.  Because we have let time pass without action, those who were directly affected have all died, but the wrong to the group remains.

When Japanese Americans received reparations, those personally wronged were still alive, and they, though quite old, were the beneficiaries of a cash payment of $20,000 -- the children of those who had died did not receive reparations.  What is interesting about those who did receive reparations is that many of them donated their money to the universities from which they graduated.  This is not surprising in that a college education is a road to financial and social success, and as a group, a college education has done much to benefit Japanese Americans as a group.

Perhaps one way to repair the harm done to the African American community without targeting specific individuals, and at the same time benefiting the United States as a whole is to establish institutions that benefit the African American community.

On such institution which has sought to benefit the Hawaiian community for almost 120 years is the Bishop Estate, which funds the Kamehameha Schools.  A major criteria for admissions is the ability to prove Hawaiian ancestry.   The "race based" policy was challenged by a non-Hawaiian in 2003, but a Federal circuit court in 2006 found that "Kamehameha [Schools] has a legal right to offer admissions preference to Native Hawaiian applicants as a way to remedy past harms and current imbalances suffered by the Indigenous people of Hawaii as a result of Western contact." 

As a matter of reparations, then, it would seem fair that the US commit to funding a similar institution for African Americans, at the rate of 1/10th of 1 percent of the Federal budget, tax exempt, (about $5 billion for the current budget; or the current budget of the Border Patrol) for the next 200 years, enough time to get on their feet or dissolve as they choose.  This funding will not prevent them from raising other funds or charging tuition.  An essential point is that these funds and the institution is controlled by the African American community.

From the perspective of the Federal budget this is a minuscule amount.  Where to get this money?  Five billion is 7/10th of 1 percent of the military budget.  The military has never been able to pass a Federal audit, they probably wouldn't notice.

These funds could be roughly divided among 5 institutions which would educate African Americans from kindergarten through graduate school.  These schools would be located in the major centers of the African American community.

Why schools?  Colleges are a major economic engine in a community, more so to the extent that they involve and embrace the community.  Every school needs support staff.  College students not in dorms prefer to live close to the school, where they contribute to the local economy.  Universities control patents for discoveries done through the university.  Institutions require consumables to continue daily operation.  Start-ups often begin close to the institutions where the entrepreneurs received their education.  College sports teams are huge generators of income.  They can train people, nurses, teachers, social workers, artists, doctors, lawyers, business people who want to serve and build up their community.

Take time, 10, 20 years, to plan and organize the community, while banking and conservatively investing the money.  In 10 years what is banked will rival Harvard's endowment.

Football Team Names

Since the "Washington Redskins" decided to change their racist name, they have decided to call their team the "Washington Football Team" while the team tries to come up with a "more acceptable" permanent moniker.

Perhaps they should stop their renaming efforts, and stay with the "temporary" name of Washington Football Team.  In fact it would be appropriate to rename every NFL team to more accurately reflect their geographic affiliation:  The Colorado Football Team, The Tennessee Football Team, etc.  As far as states with several NFL teams within their borders, should they acknowledge that their states are not truly unified entities but rather have competing interests within their borders:  The Oakland Football Team, The North Los Angeles Football Team,  The South Los Angeles Football Team?

The reason for this proposal is that it appears that NFL teams are surrogate military forces, symbols and supporters of national sovereignty; and football games are a surrogate for war and all the nationalistic feelings that accompany war.  We don't call the US Army the US Bears or US Eagles, we call it the US Army because that whose interest it represents.