At TED, Rachel Sussman describes her travels in search of the oldest living things in the world. They include lichen that grown only 1 centimeter every 100 years. They also include a clonal colony of quaking aspen trees, which is 80,000 years old. You'll see a photo of a 9,550 year old Swedish spruce, the location of which is kept secret in order to protect it. I had never before heard of the "underground forests" of South Africa (up to 13,000 years old). In the U.S. we have clonal creosote bushes and Yucca plants (both of these up to 12,000 years old) in the Mojave Desert. Spoiler alert: Th eoldest living thing seems to be Siberian actinobacteria (between 400,000 and 600,000) years old. I really enjoyed this talk, though it was distressing how often Sussman mentioned that human activity is threatening these ancient living life forms.
Alain de Botton doesn't believe in supernatural beings, but suggests that non-believers should change the way they think about religions and their followers. Through their religions, followers are seeking many of the sorts of things the secularists seek, or should seek.
Many people enjoy Christmas carols, old churches and the ritualistic and community aspects of religions, but don't believe in any sorts of fairies. Until now, they were forced to live in "a spiritual wasteland" in order to partake of the parts of religion that they enjoy.
In this TED talk, De Botton suggests that atheism should be about sorting through religion and picking up the things that are worthwhile and ignoring the rest. Secularists intend to replace scripture with culture, but higher institutes of society, including institutes of learning see humans as rational adults needing only information and data rather than guidance and didactic learning. We do need guidance, though, and this is best delivered through some sort of scheduled and somewhat repetitive sermons rather than mere lectures (which deliver merely data and information).
We all need ritual, which can be a simple as scheduling that we look at the moon on a regular basis, to remind ourselves that we are small in a vast universe. In a religion, the ideas are delivered through a particular type of rhythmic talking, and physical actions and movements. Religions also recognize the importance in art. The modern world, through our system of museums and schools, puts art in a hermetic bubble and tries to explain art rather than allowing it to become a visceral encounter. Religion allows art to be didactic. In the modern world, artists tend to be isolated individuals, not collaborating their efforts through an organization. He adds that religions are big well-monied machines that can encourage this sort of collaboration--the secular world should consider similar collaborations for spreading ideas of higher meaning. He adds that there need not be any particular leaders for this effort--he offers that perhaps it can be done though a wiki.
Religion offers powerful communal advantages, even for those who don't believe any of religious dogma. Religion offers a highly effective mechanism for spreading ideas. Atheism 2.0 can use these techniques to cultivate the idea that the world is about much more than any particular person.
My wife (an artist) posted Ursus Wehrli's TEDTalk on her Facebook page yesterday.
She said, "This is great! My engineer hubby should appreciate this!"
Well, he certainly does. I particularly liked Wehrli's takes on Jasper Johns and Jackson Pollack.
If you've lived in or spent any significant time in another country, you might have had to answer questions about why your country was doing certain things on the world stage. And if you took time to think of who was asking and how things appeared from their perspectives, your answer might be different than if you spent your life wearing parochial blinders.
I was in Korea when we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. I couldn't answer the questions like, "Why is the U.S. doing that?" or the more common one, "Why are Bush and Cheney doing that?" And these from a country that enjoys (not universally) a U.S. presence and strong relationship with the U.S. I couldn't answer not just because I was in the military for part of the time I was there, but also that I tried to understand how things looked from outside the U.S. I was, after all, a guest in their country.
Sam Richards, in this TED Talk titled "A Radical Experiment in Empathy" illustrates a message that I think that every single American needs to hear, whether xenophobic or not. I've lived all over the U.S. and I am continually saddened, if no longer surprised at how Americans view the world. "Speak English!" "But you're in our country." "Speak English anyway." I am also saddened that I know many people that will not understand this video, which is all the more disappointing because despite my other challenges regarding the nature of humans though their arts, I do.
The message is simple: Step out of your tiny world and understand the larger world differently.
It should open some eyes. I really hope it does.
I really enjoyed this TED lecture by full-time ninth grade math teacher Dan Meyer. His main point is that modern math textbooks do so much hand-holding that they fail to inspire students to think through the problems. Instead of teaching math, they teach students to "decode" the problems by all-too-apparent reference to the exemplars.
As a result, many math texts cultivate impatience. Dan argues that we've got to stop thinking about math as merely computation skills. In support of this point, he quoted a man named Albert Einstein: "The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill."
Dan is doing his best as a teacher and a blogger to change the way students look at math class. I should not be something students resist, but rather embrace. His approaches to teaching math are easy to understand, and he offers many creative applications along the way.
Meyer's work brings to mind the writings of John Paulos, who bemoans rampant American innumeracy (and see here).
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