Aftermath

Our Christmas letter for 2009 is here. [PDF]

Below are more details. You can jump immediately to photos or videos if you’d like.

Emily’s humor articles at TheChristianPulse.com
• This is a perma-link to all of them including future ones.

The mathematics theses that Gene reviewed in 2009:

• Jonathan Dent, Geneva College, master’s thesis in Education, “Non-Trivial Natural Inclusion of Faith in Mathematics.”

• Richard Rast, Dickinson College, senior honors thesis in Computer Science, “Automated Interpretation of Arithmetic in First-Order Theories.”

Photos:

• Josiah & Anderson DeRosa, Summer 2009, Ocean City, MD. [Gene's favorite photo of the brothers so far.]

• Emily and I help to decorate Simeon’s nursery walls, May 2009, Frisco, TX.

• Emily & Simeon Chase, August 2009, Frisco, TX.

• Anderson DeRosa plays miniature golf, September 2009, Carlisle, PA.

• John & Kelly Chase and John & Eleanor Parke and Gene & Emily Chase, Thanksgiving 2009, Springfield, MA.

• Josiah and Anderson DeRosa visit cousin Caleb Masshardt, New Cumberland, PA.

• Josiah and Anderson DeRosa visit cousin Caleb (second shot).

•
Josiah DeRosa celebrates fourth birthday party, at several places, album.

• Anderson Ross DeRosa, Columbia, MD.

• Gene’s elementary school class when he was in fifth grade, Riverhead, NY. Beginning of a nostalgia trip.

Some of John’s juggling videos

• Juggling fire with his friend Matthew Wright, during an inner-city Philadelphia outreach. Video.

• Juggling clubs with a guy named Peter. Video.

• Juggling fire and other things at Boiling Springs High School, for the annual Labor Day fair, September 2009. This is also a permalink to Gene’s YouTube channel for future videos.

Videos of grandsons:

• Josiah DeRosa’s first soccer practice, Columbia, MD.

• Josiah DeRosa hitting a line drive in T-ball, Columbia, MD.

• Josiah DeRosa playing the drums, Columbia, MD.

• Simeon Chase dancing, Frisco, TX.

Photos of our family getting our houses in shape

• John and Kelly refinish their basement.

• Prisca and Anthony’s new house, Woodbridge, MD.

• Gene & Emily put new carpet down, Mechanicsburg, PA.

John’s paper at an NCTM math conference in Texas

“Increasing textual and spatial literacy through the examination and application of reading strategies utilizing the language of geometry”

It’s now possible to export all one’s Facebook photos. Here supposedly is my link to my photos. It appears to be a link to my whole Facebook site. I’ll try looking at this from another computer before I say that for sure.

Gene Barry Chase |

Here are three stories about the faith development of my grandsons, Anderson, 2, and Josiah, just now 4.

In March, Anderson and Prisca–his mom–visited his great-grandparents. Anderson was named after his great-grandmother, the former Eleanor Anderson. We call her “Grandy.” On Grandy’s wall is a crucifix made of palm leaves. Because it’s rather abstract, Anderson can be forgiven for not having figured out what it represents. He asked Grandy. She said it pictures Jesus on the cross with his arms outstretched.

Anderson, who knows more about baseball than he does about Jesus, said, “Safe!”

Anderson expressed perfectly the meaning of the cross …

… even if the metaphor itself doesn’t work perfectly, since Jesus is the Runner not the Umpire. Still, I will never again look at a cross without being thankful that I am “safe!” at home.

—–

In church, Josiah learned that God is everywhere. So when he got outside the building, he shouted into the sky at the top of his voice, “Hi, God!” Prisca pointed out that because God is everywhere, He’s not only in the sky, but in us as well, so that we can talk to God quietly, too. Josiah must have understood, because on several occasions during the following week Josiah was heard to whisper quietly, “Hi, God.”

—–

While Anderson was visiting Grandy, Josiah was visiting us. On his first morning, I asked Josiah how his sleep was. He said, “I had a dream about Jesus and God. I love them.”

On another day I caught him singing the words to the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” I asked him how he knew the words. After all, some of them are big words: “griefs,” “privilege,” and “forfeit” to name just three. Josiah replied, “One of Anderson’s books has the song.”

—–

Psalm 8:2Psalm 8:2
English: World English Bible - WEB
2?From the lips of babes and infants you have established strength, Because of your adversaries, that you might silence the enemy and the avenger.

toddlers shout the songs
That silence atheist babble.

We are safe. God is near. And I love Him. What more do I need to know?

And so I whisper, “Hi, God!”

My niece’s husband Dan Masshardt inspired me to prepare this entry. He listed the above themes as separate topics and created them as timeless lists of talking points. It fits my style better to have a chronological arrangement and not to separate the two themes, since the reasons came to me in a clear order, but it has never been clear to me how to disentangle the two themes. I also couldn’t separate my very personal reasons from general theological speaking.

The list is cumulative. For example, those earliest stirrings of sin, love, beauty, and answered prayers continue unabated to this day. Besides those reasons, the Bible spoke to me as a unique book and the logic of the Christian worldview grounded me by the time that I finished college.

1. Elementary school
a. Sin. I was all too painfully aware that I was a thief and nosy, although I had “good reasons”—my family was poor and I was insecure about who I was. But my conscience worked, so I knew that I was doing wrong things. I wanted to stop, but I didn’t know how.

b. Love. Alice Huntington, my second and third grade teacher, and to a lesser extent Elizabeth Terry, my Sunday School teacher, showed me love which I did not get at home. They claimed that it came from God through Christ. I had no reason to disbelieve them.

c. Beauty. Alternate yellow and red tulips every Spring filled with beauty the hexagonal star in the center of the traffic circle in front of my apartment. The sleek lines of the 1956 red and white twotone Chevy Impala, were a graceful contrast with our black family clunker. A black and orange Monarch butterfly emerged from its jeweled green chrysalis. The Dona Diana Overture captivated me. (It was the theme song for the radio program Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. We get our beauty where we can.) These are just a few of the beautiful things that caught my attention as a young boy.

d. Answered prayer. Two of my big prayers were answered in elementary school. In 1954, I prayed to become a Christian, sensing a need to be forgiven and a need for love. I was flooded with a deep sense of a permanent relationship to God. Second, I prayed that my mother would be able to live away from the mental hospital where she was locked up for seven years. That happened in 1957. Two smaller prayers were answered as well, when I was near death breaking through the ice into a deep pond and when I was near death being rushed to the hospital with a burst appendix.

2. Junior high school
a. Sin. Add to the above sins indulging in sexual sin. My guilt increased by the fact that it more clearly involved others and by the fact that I sensed how much it displeased Jesus, Who was now without a doubt living in my heart.

b. Love. As I got to know my relatives, I saw a stark contrast between those on the one hand like my grandmother Emma Chase, and my aunts Flo Cavanaro, Florence Glidewell, and Ruth Finch —who were Christians—, and those on the other hand like Marjory Bacorn, George Cavanaro, Carl Chase, and Dad who were not.
     I grant you that there were exceptions. My neighbor Alice Jeneski did not seem to profess to be a Christian but she loved me; Uncle Art did profess to be a Christian but he had a bad temper anyway.

c. Beauty. I consumed every mathematics book that I could find, whether from libraries, from Christmas gifts that I asked for, or from my small allowance. Parabolas were beautiful; algebra was beautiful. I bought One, Two, Three, … Infinity by George Gamow, and read it at least five times.

d. Bible. For me in elementary school, the Bible was a book of heroism—of David, Gideon, Deborah, and Sampson. I did memorize Psalms 23 and 100 then. But thanks to Wednesday afternoon Bible memory work at church offered during “release time” from public school, I began to memorize a lot of verses of the Bible. I began to see the Bible’s themes. The Bible was like “fire in my bones” (Jeremiah 20:9Jeremiah 20:9
English: World English Bible - WEB
9?If I say, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, and I can?t contain.

3. High school
a. Love. Rita Youngs, my high school youth group leader, showed me love, both directly to me, and to many foster kids she raised.

b. Beauty. High school teachers exposed me to the beauty of literature and of language. Although I messed around with a chemistry set since sixth grade, a high school science teacher showed me the beauty of Chemistry. Aunt Ruth’s gift of National Geographic Magazine showed me the beauty of far-off places. The book God’s, Graves, and Scholars showed me the beauty of far-off times. The Rev. Bill Blackwood’s Sunday School class on systematic theology that used George Pardington’s Outline Studies of Christian Doctrine showed me the logical beauty of the Christian faith.

c. Bible. Two summer camps continued my Bible memory, deepening my sense that this was no mere collection of human writings.

d. Prayer. It was in high school that I learned to “pray without ceasing.” Unanswered prayer didn’t bother me very much, because I was grounded in prayer as a relationship instead of prayer as a slot machine. I did pray that Dad would become a Christian and that I would be able to stay sexually pure. Neither of those happened fast. The first answer waited for six decades; the second answer, for one decade.

4. College
a. Love. Pastor George & Gladys Decker treated me like their third son.

b. Logic. I read C. S. Lewis’s defense of Christianity in Mere Christianity, and a defense of Jesus’ resurrection by Frank Morrison in Who Moved the Stone? Since I wasn’t argued into the Kingdom, it’s not likely that I’ll be argued out. I did not see apologetics as a weapon, but as a thing of beauty. The logic of my faith was like the logic of Mathematics—a powerful, coherent story.

c. Answered prayer. I saw the lives of others changed as I prayed that they too would discover the joy of following Jesus: for example, Rick Lueth, Tommy Wandless, Anne Macomber and her brother David.

c. Beauty. Before college I was exposed to Protestant hymns on piano, polkas on accordion, and country music on guitar. For some reason, the classical music taught in my public school didn’t “get to me”; like poetry, it was dry as a mere object of study. But at MIT, Bach concerts on the Kresge Auditorium organ were intensely emotional experiences for me.
     In college I discovered the beauty of worship itself—through Lutheran vespers in the chapel on Wednesday nights, and through Anglo-Catholic services around Christmas and Easter at a nearby church.
     You might see my appreciating Bach as merely becoming cultured, but both Bach and formal liturgy increased my faith by keeping it from becoming mere sterile logic. My faith continues to be emotional as well as logical. That is why I answer the title questions with my story rather than with propositions. The man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument, I reasoned.

5. After college
I now draw on revelation, on reason, on tradition, and on experience to ground my faith, aware that no one of them by itself is without its challenges. For me one test of a faith that conforms to reality is this: Is it simple enough that a child can have it, but profound enough to engage the wisest of adults? Jesus said both about faith in Him.
     Where does a sense of sin, of love, and of beauty come from? I reasoned with the faith of a child that they came from the same place where answered prayers come from. Now as an adult I do not see how atheism adequately accounts for even one of those themes.

For Christmas — just as a joke — my brother-in-law Richard, who is politically to the right of me, regifted a T-shirt that he had been given, also as a joke. It said, “I Obama.”

I told Richard, “But I do love Obama. I pray for him. I wish him well.” I have been meaning to follow up on my long post supporting John McCain before the November 2008 election. This T-shirt reminds me to do that. I promise a shorter post this time.

My comments are primarily about the US economy. I will wait to see what kinds of executive orders Obama produces in other areas. I’m already pleased with his keeping his promise to draw on a broad base of leadership in selecting his cabinet.

I’m pleased with Obama’s plan to provide public works projects that will simultaneously address unemployment and shore up our country’s ageing infrastructure.

I’m saddened by all the corruption already evident in how bailout money is being spent. But the lack of accountability falls both on Congress with a (slight) Democratic majority and the Republican administration, and Obama is neither senator (any more) nor administration (yet).

I am disappointed that Obama is not going on record as planning to slash Federal funding for things that I think are discretionary, controversial, and ineffective. I would disband the US Department of Education, eliminate Federal funding for abortions, and until the economy is back on track suspend spurious concerns about man-made global warming — as the president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus explained so well at a conference on global warming in 2008.

But that’s what happens when you love someone. You don’t necessarily agree with them.

“Psychotic” is defined as “being out of touch with reality.” But whose reality?

The Hebrew Bible considers atheism psychotic. Twice the Psalms say: “The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God.’ ” On the other hand, the New Atheists consider theism to be psychotic.

Psychotic_Theism and Psychotic_Atheism are quite different.

Before the American Psychiatric Association (APA) removed references to psychoanalytic jargon in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), Freudians used a broader term — “neurosis.” Neuroses included not only distressing breaks with reality but also thoughts that seemed to the analyst to be breaks with reality — whether or not they were ego-dystonic, which is to say personally distressing. Consider William Stekel’s 1922 book Homosexual Neurosis for a view of homosexual ideation as a psychosis contrary to (heteronormative) reality. But in 1973 the APA removed ego-syntonic homosexuality from its DSM.

Ronald Bayer documents in his 1987 Princeton University book
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry that the APA’s motive for the change was political, based on its (pansexual) view of reality.

I’m glad that psychoanalysis is out of favor with psychologists. Freudian analysis is pretentious and overly influenced by the analyst’s world view. Freud’s views are too easily politicized. Not a surprise! Freud is an intellectual child of Nietzsche, who — having abandoned God — was left with merely a “will to power” in making moral decisions.

Take the gulags of Marxist Russia for example, where prisoners were interred for their mental illness, to wit holding views contrary to the prevailing world view of the State. Marx is also an intellectual child of Nietzsche. Robert Heinlein’s 1941 science fiction short story, “They,” is clever allegory for this misuse of psychoanalysis.

Why am I thinking about these things today? Two sources came together for me this week.

I am finishing Arthur Goldberg’s 2008 book Light in the Closet (Torah, Homosexuality and the Power to Change). It argues that a conservative Jew cannot embrace the “gay is good” mantra.

Psychotic_GayIsBad and Psychotic_GayIsGood are quite different.

So are the anthropologists right after all? We must subscript all our terms with our world view.

Almost.

This week I also listened to Pastor Tim Keller’s masterful talk at Google headquarters (yes!) condensing the beginning of his book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. Keller quotes Bishop Leslie Newbigin’s caution about the familiar Feeling the Elephant analogy, here (starting 21 minutes into the talk, and extending for 2 minutes):

We might say that anthropologists are

Right_Anthropology

after all. Humility is required.

American literary figure David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon College commencement address in 2005 said–and I concur–”Everybody worships.” One cannot read his speech without thinking that he had life almost figured out. Yet he committed suicide. The London Times said that he had friends. I wonder if any of them told him that he should follow his own advice and worship Jesus or YHWH.

Here’s an excerpt:

[I]n the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshiping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Who or what do you worship?

In late May, I started a discussion with my kids and a few others about politics. By July 23, the scales tipped for me in favor of McCain. I waited until today to say whom I would vote for to see if anything would happen to change my mind. Each section is headed with the party which in summary I support on that section. I do not regard the sections as equally important, but to weigh them is another hard discussion.

• Energy: Republican

  The Republican consensus seems to be to move slowly on clamping down on energy use, relying on free-market forces to bring some sense to the energy crisis. The Democratic consensus seems to be to clamp down hard and soon, as for example by increasing the Federal gasoline tax. McCain even spoke of temporarily lifting the Federal gasoline tax to provide some relief for low-income taxpayers. That goes too far. The US economy is like an incompressible fluid. One can push it down here only to have it shoot up there. Since the consequences of a much higher Federal gasoline tax (to be spent on infrastructure improvements, of course!) can’t be known, I prefer slower clamping down on usage, agreeing with Republicans.

  As you can see, I have made a common Republican mistake in this analysis. I have treated the US in isolation. In fact, it is the global demand for energy, including and especially countries emerging from the Third World like China and India, which are pushing that incompressible fluid of a global market. They should be a part of my model. I don’t think global demand is a part of either the Republican or Democratic model, though. (To be fair, Obama did say something about discussing the global economy with China.) Typically the Republican view is nationalistic and the Democratic view is internationalistic (or as the radio preachers rant, “one world government”).

  Energy demand is inelastic: I have to drive to work; I have to heat my house. So clamping down on usage as Democrats recommend might destabilize the economy more than allowing free-market forces to work.

  (I wrote this section before it was clear to everyone that misuse of credit is the prime destabilizer of today’s world-wide economy. This misuse was pushed by a largely Democratic view that everyone should be in a home of their own and by a Republican view that the market will be self-correcting without Federal regulation. We see clearly now that both views are wrong. See Economics below.)

  I like our US Federal system, in which states become laboratories for experimentation. We should investigate the effects of Democratic and Republican policies respectively at the state level. Car emission controls, for example, were first tried in California with success, and now we have them nationwide. I’m suspicious of Federal-level solutions first about energy. That makes me a states-rights Republican on energy issues, as on many other issues.

• Universal health care: Democratic

  I have changed my mind in the past few years on universal health care, from Republican (opposed to it), to Democratic, in favor of it. (Think about Hillary Clinton’s proposal when she was President her husband was President.) Using Pennsylvania as a laboratory, I see that universal health care for children aged 18 and under has gone well, both in terms of percentage enrolled and in terms of manageable economic impact. It’s possible to paint too rosy a picture of universal health care, as Michael Moore does in his film Sicko. But Moore says that Obama changed his mind from being in favor of “single payer universal health care” to being non-committal about it. All candidates change their minds as they move toward the center to capture uncommitted voters. In the current campaign, the Democratic-leaning New York Times editorializes about Obama doing that, as does the London Times. (h/t Micah Tillman for these references)

  I think that the US is ready to extend the Pennsylvania model of health care up to age 18 to the whole country as a first step in universal health care. The Democratic position seems more ready to tackle this, despite some waffling. The dissension that I hear about this is that it continues to allow private insurers to skim the healthiest segment of the population (ages 19-64) while the Federal government pays for the least healthy newborns and old folks. So a single payer universal health care for all ages would be cheaper per capita in the long run. I would be suspicious of the single payer being the Federal government were it not for the fact that the Medicare infrastructure is already in place. That makes me Democratic on this issue. I assure you that this has nothing to do with the fact that my Medicare coverage begins 3 days before the November 4 election! I changed my mind after hearing my philosophy professor colleague Tim Schoettle speak convincingly on the subject several years ago.

• Economic health: Republican

  Beyond energy and health care economic issues are other issues. I include here also whether we should bail out mortgage lenders who took foolish risks, how we can shore up the US dollar against foreign currencies, and whether tax cuts will help the economy. Since Obama has been changing his mind about these things too to become more like a Republican, I am giving this to McCain.

  (I wrote that paragraph before the recent economic collapse. Now three months later both candidates are looking more and more alike. McCain and George Bush are both behaving more like Democrats, which I think is a good move. However, I still oppose Obama’s plan for income redistribution. Listen to his own words about that in this audio clip (with a little video clip at its end).

• Net neutrality: Democratic

  Only geeks like me may care now, but if we lose net neutrality, everyone will care. The Democratic position is to favor net neutrality. This is ironic for Democrats, because it’s the laissez-faire viewpoint, viz. “Don’t regulate the internet!” McCain hasn’t really said much about it. I’m a Democrat here. There wouldn’t be an internet if it weren’t for the Federal government’s sponsoring the original DARPA as a national defense matter. In the same way, there wouldn’t be an interstate highway system or the US highway system if it weren’t for Federal funding for these projects in the interest of national defense. Some things require Federal participation. Which leads me to …

• Foreign affairs: Tie

  Obama is less experienced than McCain on foreign policy. But leadership depends heavily on those whom one listens to as advisors, and both candidates wisely do not say much about whom they will listen to as advisors. Leadership also depends heavily on stage presence, and Obama has more of that than McCain. Obama won a “global confidence” poll among several nations. This is either comforting or scary depending on whether you regard those governments as the kind you’d want to have supporting your views. Take this CNN video clip for example. McCain makes decisions rapidly. This is either comforting or scary depending on whether you praise his resolve or condemn his lack of deliberation. McCain’s Iraq policy, with its slower withdrawl timetable than Obama’s is a contrary example to rapid decision-making. Regarding foreign affairs, then, so far it’s a tie for me.

• Abortion: Republican

  McCain is pro-life; Obama is pro-choice. I’m pro-life.

• Supreme Court Judicial Appointments: Republican

  Since Republicans tend to be strict constructionist as I am, and Democrats tend to reinterpret the Constitution, even though the candidates haven’t been as clear as I’d like about Constitutional issues, I’m betting on the Republican party’s long-standing position.

• Gay Marriage: Republican

  As a consistent Federalist, I should say, “Let’s try gay marriage in a state, say Massachusetts, and see what happens.” Hey, we did! It has been oppressive in terms of respect for conservative Christians. For one example, a Roman Catholic adoption agency was not legally able to place children only in the families heterosexually married couples, according to their sincerely held religious beliefs. So they closed their doors after 100+ years.

  For a second example, parents cannot receive notification of when their kindergarten children will be taught about homosexuality in Lexington, MA, schools. This dated link does not address the very recent US Supreme Court’s refusal to grant a writ of certiorari to hear the case arising out of that, citing as its basis that Massachusetts law stands.

  For a third example, there is now pressure (Skip to the section headed “Restrooms.”) to assign people to public restrooms based on their self-perceived gender, since gay rights advocates include transgender rights as a next goal. Those are some of the not-so-good things that have happened.

  My son-in-law suggests (link broken) that we might “give others the grace to make the right decision for themselves, even when their choices are wrong and destructive.” By that logic, then Pennsylvania is right in having legalized slot machines, with some of the winnings being set aside for the “destructive” effects of same, just as the Federal government legalizes smoking, and then gives tobacco profits to states to spend on programs to reverse the destructive effects of smoking.

  I believe that there are good secular arguments against consensual homosexual sex relating to public health, just as there are good secular arguments against gambling, smoking, and obesity (just to throw in a much more pervasive health issue). So my vote related to gay marriage is Republican, although I would object if government told me that I eat too many cashews! (See my blog entry citing the liberal theme, “keep your hands off my body.”)

• Other issues

  I’ve avoided mentioning things about which I have not yet formed an opinion, such as embryonic stem cell research, global warming, resuming space travel, or fixing the nation’s aging infrastructure. I’ve avoided explaining why I think that Palin was a bad choice for McCain’s running mate. This post is already too long. But I wanted to get something up before November 4. Even if you disagree with me, vote!

Jonathan Haidt gave an incredible talk for TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) in March entitled “The Moral Mind.” It’s about five foundations for morality necessary to make society work, rooted in our innate genetic makeup, gathered by Haidt and his colleagues from many places, including their web site.

Haidt is a liberal caught on the horns of a dilemma.  Here are the five foundations of morality that he and his colleagues identify in their research:

1. harm/care
2. fairness/reciprocity
3. ingroup/loyalty
4. authority/respect
5. purity/sanctity

Haidt points out that the last three are conservative values.  Liberals propose that we “celebrate diversity” contra 3, propose that we “question authority” contra 4, and propose that we “keep your laws off my body” contra 5.  The intellectually honest thing to do upon discovering these findings about the foundations of morality would be to champion the benefits of conservatism.

Haidt concludes instead that we rise above the liberal-conservative divide, beyond “us and them,” beyond “right and wrong,” even beyond “true and false.”  These sound like an oriental world view beyond all dichotomies, but they also sound strangely like the big tent of liberalism in contrast to the very foundation of values that Haidt’s research identifies as essential to a well-functioning society.

Noam Chomsky of MIT (political über-liberal as well as a world-class linguist) faced a similar problem.  He originally believed in a Lockean blank slate mind, but the more he studied children’s language acquisition, the more he rejected that in favor of his “innateness hypothesis.”

To say that language or morality is innate is not to say that it is God-given, but you shouldn’t miss Haidt’s use of the word “miracle” in describing the moral mind.  Haidt says that evolution led to this genetic situation.  Which is to say, Haidt has no idea what led to this genetic situation.

I applaud Haidt’s call to reject self-righteousness, which is a common failing of conservatives like me.  I also applaud Haidt’s providing another example of the self-defeating nature of liberalism, apparently unintended.

Florida State University offers a nice animation of
“Powers of Ten,” a variation of the animated film that Charles and Ray Eames made in conjunction with their
book Powers of Ten.

There we find our place evenly distant between quasars and quarks–between the gigantic and the minute. (At least logarithmically, which is the point of the book’s title.)

My pastor’s sermon this morning was on Psalm 90:12Psalm 90:12
English: World English Bible - WEB
12?So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 8 puts humans in the middle too. “What is man that Thou art mindful of him? … Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels. Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor. … Thou made him to have dominion over … the beasts.” We are neither angel nor animal.

I think about being in the middle a lot. My September alumni magazine, Technology Review, had two article that reminded me of that. One article mentioned how hard parallel programming is for humans. But programming in zeros and ones is hard too! We talk to machines best in the middle distance between very high-level concepts and very low level concepts.

Another article mentioned that we fare best psychologically in the middle distance between boredom and anxiety, called “the flow” by the psychologist with the unpronouncable name Mihály Csikszentmihályi. (Here you go, with X as in German ach or Scottish loch: mi XALE ee tshick shent mi XALE ee.)

His diagram summarizes his book.

I became a teacher to stand in the middle. “To teach” is a ditransitive verb: I teach a student a subject. I bridge the gap between the subject and the student.

Jesus is the Man in the middle, my Mediator. I think of that a lot.