When Laura moved in, the only decorations she brought for the walls were maps. She was a bit worried I would think it was weird to have a bunch of maps on the walls, until she arrived and saw that my room was full of maps too.

There are a total of eleven maps decorating our apartment. We love them and consult them regularly to settle geographical trivia disputes. That said, I have a new toy that I wanted to share.

NationMaster is an amazing site for national statistics. You can compare all sorts of serious (coal reserves) and fun (roller coasters per capita) stats. It’s like the Economist’s Pocket World in Figures book but ten times as cool or the CIA World Factbook in a searchable database.

Some of our favorite facts:

• People trust Swedes! Swedish companies are the world’s least-likely to be perceived as paying bribes.
• The average person in the United Kingdom drinks as much tea as 23 Italians.
• Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country.
• The average woman in New Zealand doesn’t give birth until she is nearly 30 years old.
• Nepal’s flag is the only one in the world that isn’t square or rectangular.
• Want to go to the United States? Try going to Albania first. Albania has more U.S visa lottery winners per capita than anywhere else in the world.
• The fourteen unhappiest countries are all in Eastern Europe.
• No winter olympic medals have ever been won by African or South American countries.
• More than a third of the world’s airports are in the United States of America.

Man, facts are great. Can’t get enough? Head over to StateMaster to find, you guessed it, statistics about the United States.

Here is an interesting (but long) article on a topic we have touched on before, the gap between modern adolescence and adulthood. This article focuses specifically on males in their late twenties and their frequently childish behavior.

Laura and I had remarkably similar conversation after watching Knocked Up (two thumbs down). My favorite part of the article describes the movie:

It is also a fairy tale for guys. You wouldn’t know how to become an adult even if you wanted to? Maybe a beautiful princess will come along and show you.

Ha! It looks as though the tables have turned, for better or worse.

When Laura and I went to the Singularity Summit back in September, we learned a lot about the imminent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and technological augmentation of human intelligence. As you can see from the link above, we were left with some questions about the morality of the whole thing. I’ve been particularly interested in the possibility of a post-human species evolving and what that would mean for humanity (assuming any of us were left).

Better Humans recently had a post on this topic, referencing a paper by Bill Hibbard entitled, The Technology of Mind and a New Social Contract. The paper deals with the dangers vs benefits of the Singularity and suggests regulated development as the solution, unremarkable stuff, really.

What I found most interesting was Hibbard’s explanation of the social contract and its implications today, especially in regards to intelligence:

The social contract grows out of our human nature and is based on rarely-questioned assumptions, including:

1. Humans all have roughly the same intelligence (if you doubt this, consider that the chess skill that distinguishes Garry Kasparov from most other humans has been matched by computers, but the language and movement skills he shares with other humans are far beyond current computers). We assume this when we say that our competitive economic system provides equal opportunity.

He goes on to say:

The technologies of mind and life will invalidate these assumptions, with profound consequences for our social contract. For example, a less intelligent person will be unable to converse meaningfully with a person of radically greater intelligence. This is similar to the way a young child cannot converse at an adult level, except that the gap will be much larger. The most intelligent minds may know billions of ordinary humans well, and understand large-scale social interactions in a “single thought.” A conversation between two super-intelligent minds about such matters will be meaningless to an ordinary human. This will severely limit the ability of less intelligent humans to participate in economic and political discussions. If the super-intelligent minds are motivated by values similar to those of current humans, they will exclude less intelligent humans from important political and economic decisions, just as adults exclude children now.

Wow. What really struck me about this, is that although Hibbard uses a child/adult dichotomy to illustrate his point, this very situation goes on between adult populations. It’s begrudgingly accepted that a handful of (largely American) elites decide what is best for the rest of us politically, but the same cognition divisions can be seen in everyday life. People at high levels of cognition generally avoid interaction with people at the lower end of the spectrum. Meaningful communication between people of widely varying intelligence is infrequent in our society and can be strained when it does happen.

My point is that this is not an imaginary sci-fi problem. Communication and shared values across intelligence levels is a real issue, maybe the central issue of the modern era in many ways. Until we can have meaningful discourse and cooperation between the upper and lower strata of human cognition, we will continue to see further divergence in qualities of life. Furthermore, if we can’t work out a way to understand and appreciate each other better when the intelligence gap is relatively small, how will be be able to reconcile the gap created by the Singularity?

I don’t have any answers to this problem. It’s something I am actively working on in my own life. I’m confident there are ways to have consistently meaningful connections and mutual respect and these techniques might be useful in the context of post-human super intelligence.

I love this post from Steve Olson: Do American Suburbs Breed Fear?

I especially liked his conclusion:

More suburban parents watch television news and listen to talk radio and it distorts their perception of risk.

Watching the TV news will absolutely distort your reality. I also think that being in hyper-controlled situations all the time causes you to be nervous in public spaces. I grew up in the suburbs and I was scared of taking the bus until college; now I do it everyday and hardly think about it. The more comfortable you become in uncontrolled situations, the less fearful you become in general.

We highly recommend expanding your comfort zone for personal growth.

During the course of my 36-hour shift at the group home, I sometimes feel myself devolving into a 10th grader. I try to counteract this phenomenon with some intellectual fare from Google Video. My latest selection was the BBC documentary The Century of the Self.

This four part series takes us through the history Freudian psychology and its effects on American culture. Freud’s nephew founded a new field which used the theories of subconscious motivation to influence consumer purchases and voter loyalties; he called the field public relations. The documentary also touches on various New Age practices and the manipulation of independent thinkers in recent elections.

It’s a long series, but well worth it. It will definitely have you questioning the underlying forces of American culture and your how your own choices might be manipulated.

(Here is some criticism of the series to keep things balanced.)

In my work with juvenile delinquents, I’m learning a lot about the criminal justice system among other things. This weekend I was waiting to pick up one of my little ones from a class required by his parole officer at Juvenile Hall, when I got a strange message from the Universe.

An middle aged man came up to me and started telling me the story of his sons, how he made many mistakes as a father and how his youngest had ended up on probation. He told me that the devil is at work in people’s hearts and minds and that sometimes they can’t break free. Then he referred me to Timothy:

We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (1 Timothy 1:8-11)

I found this so interesting. Righteous people don’t need the law because they are already doing right. The law is for the unholy, to keep them in line, to give them guidance and structure. This is so applicable to my work. I constantly argue with the kids about the rules. It’s hard for them to understand that the rules are there to help herd them towards a better life. As a libertarian, I’m no fan of laws, but I have no intention of breaking any but the most minor. I have no urge to steal or kill, but some people genuinely do. The concept of sin or the threat of jail may seem cruel to those who are not tempted, but they are often effective deterrents for people who need help staying on the straight and narrow.

Similarly, I have a friend who moved back home with her mom in recent months. She said that although it can be a pain to live with your parents, sometimes their rules keep you from doing things you probably shouldn’t, namely bringing a stranger home from a bar. As I relayed this story to another friend, she grew uncomfortable at its implications: that traditional familial oppression might be for a girl’s own good. Perhaps not surprisingly, this friend is not prone to such behavior in the first place. Here again, we see the rules benefiting the sinner and not the saint.

Maybe I’m just on a traditional values kick lately, but I think that these Bible verses are very important. They bring a new perspective on law, that instead of protecting the innocent from criminals, they may protect would-be criminals from themselves. I don’t mean give my stamp of approval to our current criminal justice system or backwards patriarchy, but the encounter at Juvenile Hall was just so strange and the Bible verse so relevant to my work, I had to share it with you. Rules can certainly help keep us out of trouble; the trick is finding a balance between authoritarianism and anarchy.

(I think I would do very well in anarchy, but I am beginning to see that not everyone is as self-regulating as I am. Some people need structure imposed on them to stay out of trouble.)

Yikes. I felt a little nauseous just writing the title of this post, but since this issue has been coming up for me lately, it seems like I should write about it. To preface: I’m white.

For the first time in my life, I am having extensive contact with black people on a consistent basis in my work (I’m a counselor at a group home for foster youth). It has raised a lot of interesting issues for me:

1. I have an aversion to noticing that we are of different races. My brain seems to try to block it out.
2. I watch what I say and dread any race related conversation.
3. I feel the tension in rooms when white people don’t speak openly even about issues that are unrelated to race because they are afraid they could be turned into racial issues.
4. There are certain issues I don’t want to bring up because I don’t feel like it is my place to comment. For example, I don’t know how to raise my concerns about the kids calling each other “nigga”.
5. I get extremely annoyed listening to recurring diatribes about white privilege and patriarchy.

These are just a few issues that have been coming up in the last couple of weeks. What I think is most interesting is that I don’t say anything about my concerns for fear of offending one of my black coworkers. Generally, I prefer to remove myself from the situation, rather than have to express any thought or concern that relates to race in even the smallest way. This reaction has me wondering if the same forces are at work in society at large. Despite the advancements of civil rights, most people live fairly racially segregated lives. It seems easy to proclaim tolerance and understanding from afar.

Furthermore, I have never felt this uncomfortable when I’ve spent time with people of other races one-on-one or in more racially mixed settings. In those instances I have always felt that I could raise questions and have an open dialog about race. I think one of the reasons I feel differently now is that I am working in the foster care system with people (black and white) who buy into a “Progressive” agenda in which racial oppression is a primary issue. It feels like many people in this field of work are hypersensitive to issues of race which has a chilling effect on dialog in general. I constantly worry that I will use an incorrect term or ask unintentionally offensive question and be accused of racism. By keeping my concerns to myself, I find myself getting angry and resentful. Not exactly ideal conditions for increased understanding.

So what to do? I’m working on my own sensitivity as well as working up the courage to bring up my concerns at work. When uncomfortable incidents happen, I want to use them as opportunities for dialog, to get my questions answered, rather than just run away to avoid discomfort. I truly believe that an open, candid approach to these issues will be beneficial to all parties involved and will bring us closer together. I hope that we can have an open conversation about race, in which everyone feels safe to speak up and have questions answered.

With Ken Wilber and Ron Paul on my mind lately, I’d like to present you with a post from Holons blog on why Barack Obama is the most Integral (Wilberian) candidate.

I was particularly interested in the “secular humanism” that the blog post mentioned. I couldn’t find anything regarding Mr. Obama’s spirituality on his official website, an unusual omission for a politician, but Wikipedia was there to help:

In Chapter 6 of the book, titled “Faith,” Obama writes that he “was not raised in a religious household.” He describes his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as detached from religion, yet “in many ways the most spiritually awakened person that I have ever known.” He describes his Kenyan father as “raised a Muslim,” but a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his Indonesian stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” The chapter details how Obama, in his twenties, while working with local churches as a community organizer, came to understand “the power of the African American religious tradition to spur social change.” Obama writes: “It was because of these newfound understandings—that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world that I knew and loved—that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized.”

Again, I’m not exactly sure where secular humanism comes in, but it sounds like Mr. Obama came to his faith mindfully and from a background of varied spiritual experience. That’s always nice.

You can check out Ken Wilber speaking about Integral politics here. I enjoyed this video. Ken is kind of funny.

Good luck to all of the candidates today in New Hampshire. This was in no way intended as an endorsement for Barack Obama. My loyalties lie elsewhere.

We love hearing from all sides of the spirituality spectrum. As a former atheist myself (currently wandering the mists of pantheistic Taoist agnosticism) I am particularly interested in the recent surge in atheism in popular media. I keep flipping through books by Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett at the bookstore. Not sure which to read first, I decided to check out The Four Horsemen, a round table discussion featuring those four authors.

After watching the entire session, I was most put off by Christopher Hitchens who admitted that although he finds religion abhorrent, he wouldn’t want it to disappear completely because then he’d have no one to argue with. Yikes. However, I found myself gravitating towards Sam Harris. He seems most level headed and accepting of spirituality in some form. I will be sure to let you know how his books are.

Let us know what you thought of the video.

I haven’t known what to say about the recent happenings in Georgia. Today our friend John summed things up pretty well:

Many folks aflutter about the goings-on in Tbilisi: protesters tear-gassed on Rustaveli Ave.; Imedi, one of Georgia’s most popular TV stations, stormed by machine-gun commandos and taken abruptly off the air; a blanket 15-day “state of emergency” covering the entire country. Naturally, I’m interested too…as I would be in dramatic developments from anyplace I was intimately familiar with and had personal connections. Nevertheless, I’m much struck by how distant and (dare I say) insignificant it seems from where I sit now. Page 5 news…laughably inconsequential when juxtaposed with the (superficially similar) Pakistani crisis, where the stakes are so very, very much higher.

It’s easy to imagine, though, how if I were still in Sakartvelo it would loom as an earth-shattering event, occupying the whole of my attention. Distance may “lend enchantment”—and my occasional nostalgia for all things ქართული still surprises me—but it also lends perspective. Georgia has fewer than 5 million people, half the population of Beijing proper, and less than a third that of Greater Beijing. Despite its tiny size and miniscule economy, Georgia does have some small strategic importance, but not nearly as much as it likes to imagine, and could fall off the map entirely without most of the world raising an eyebrow. With this in mind, despite my connection to the place, I read of the recent events there with a disconcerting detachment…as though hearing of the emotional collapse of a person I used to know well, but who had long since drifted out of touch.

Still, vindication for my ex-host-mother in Adjara, who, eyes flasing, never let an opportunity pass for cursing Saakashvili and accusing him of being a tinpot tyrant. For my part, I genuinely thought Misha had better judgment than that: it would seem that if he had any lectures in “crisis-management” during his years at Columbia he must have played hooky. How Vladimir Vladimirovich must be chuckling over a nice frothy mug of Baltica 9! Whatever the outcome of Saakashvili’s clumsy crackdown, Putin has gained invaluable propaganda with which he will doubtless ensure “демократы” (democrats) remains a dirty word in Russian for many years to come.