Einstein's Theory of, Sociology?

Disclaimer: [ Fast talking lawyer voice] I am not a physicist and I'm sure that many of you understand these theories much better than I do. I am merely using what I know of them to make my point. My aim is to be as accurate as possible however, so please, feel free to correct any mistakes that I have made. Now, on with it...

As we all continue to discuss the issue of police shootings, I want to frame the discussion in a new way, perhaps in a way that will help us all move forward, toward an America of love and acceptance. For this I will need a little bit of help. Enter our old pal, Al.

Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity is a way to explain phenomena in relation to each other, hence the root of the name, "relative." What it really tells us is that the TRUTH of what is happening depends on your vantage point. An illustration of this point that I remember from an old book (Physics for the Rest of Us was the name, I believe) goes something like this:

Imagine two people, one sitting on a train (let's call her Teri), the other in his car waiting beside the tracks at those annoying crossing thingies (let's name him Gary). In front of Teri is a table and on that table are two mirrors. One mirror lays flat on the table, reflective side up. The other mirror hovers one foot above the first, reflective side down. Between these mirrors is an electron, but it is as big as a golf ball and travels as slowly as a bouncing ball. And it is bouncing, between the mirrors, straight up and down. Got that image in your head? Great! Let's move on.

So this beam of light is bouncing in front of Teri, up and down, up and down, while she is traveling down the tracks on the train. The train is going, say, 20 mph. As the train passes by Gary, he sees the little light bouncing. "This is odd," he thought, so he starts up his dash cam and takes a video to show his wife because, let's face it, if he tells her this story without one she'll just think he's been out drinking again, and nobody needs that drama. So the train passes by as he gets a perfect recording because, thankfully, Teri's table is sitting right in the window. 

Later that night, Gary convinces his wife to go out to the car with him. She is disappointed when she realizes that it's not going to be some kind of nostalgic, "after the high school football game" kind of visit, but Gary wants to show her some video instead. She shrugs and he hits "play." As they watch the video, they notice that, since the camera was fixed straight ahead, the electron traced a sort of picket fence pattern across the screen. Gary has video evidence that the electron was bouncing up and down and moving, making this pattern. He posts it to Youtube and, of course it goes viral because, who has ever seen such a thing!? Well, one person has, and her name is Teri.

Teri knew that people would start thinking that her electron was bouncing around so she wanted to prove that it was actually just sitting still, bouncing up and down. Luckily, she had a video of this that she posted to Snapchat. Fortunately, someone saved it and then posted the copy to Twitter, where it too went viral. 

So the world is in an uproar, because we have two videos, two pieces of irrefutable evidence that seem to refute each other... Thanks a lot Al! So, what does this have to do with anything? I'm hoping that you have already figured out my point, but in case someone wants to be sure I know what the heck I'm even talking about, I'll wrap it up.

As we listen to news stories these days, it's important to keep in mind that the truth is sometimes, no, usually more elusive than what the reports might lead us to believe. The truth, like gravity, is a powerful and compelling force. Once it gets ahold of you, you are powerless to resist it. However, we have learned how to evade the truth. The forces of each diminish the further out you travel. Even though a galaxy may be hundreds of light years away, we are experiencing some of its effects as slight as they are. In this way, even if we are light years away from the truth, we are not fully free of it. A satellite orbits the earth, using the constant pull of gravity coupled with the initial inertia granted it (minus the combined effects of all other forces, of course). An idea can orbit for a long time as well, but only if it remains a certain distance from the truth. 

We have to begin to recognize what aspects of what we see and hear can be kept and which need to be discarded. We need to take the train into consideration when talking about Gary and Teri. We can't continue to have discussion about things and leave out known facts. We need to try and give legitimacy to the other points of view whenever it is warranted. We need to heal ourselves from all of this hate.

Thanks for reading and as always, if you think someone else might enjoy reading this please share!

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make thee free."

John 8:32 - KJV

A Life Has No Color

Discrimination is running rampant in our society, and it's being perpetrated by many who believe that they are actually fighting against it. It's like watching a dog, but instead of chasing its tail, its dragging itself backward in a circle by it. If it only understood that it was the cause of its own grief, all it would have to do is let go. So at the risk of a few scraped knuckles, I'm going to attempt to pry open the jaw a little. 

As Collin Kaepernick makes his way back into the headlines, I am reminded of a pair of socks that he once wore depicting police officers as pigs. So here we have a man who is touted by many as a model of "social justice" in America (whatever that is) actively showing discrimination against and demonizing the other side, thus provoking more people toward anger at the police. HE is your "social justice" leader? Good luck with that one. 

When I was a kid, we learned that you should not discriminate against people. This message seems perfectly innocuous, but I believe it might be slightly misguided advice. The problem with telling people not to discriminate against a person is like telling them not to think of a hippopotamus. We are pretty much saying, "see that _____ over there? Don't assume that he's just like all the other ____'s." I'll leave it to you to fill those in. That's an obvious problem, but that's what has lead us to the point we are at today. The solution is to change our thinking from avoiding individual discrimination to avoiding group discrimination. 

This is a good time to make one vitally important distinction. We must be able to celebrate diversity and the differences among us. I have always been way more interested in cultures and people who were not like me than those who were because I find that I learn so much more from their perspectives. I love ethnic foods, music, literature, etc... We must be able to celebrate the differences among us and be proud of what makes us unique. That's what makes America's tapestry so vibrant. But we need some Oxyclean, because these colors are fading, not from the sun, but from the mildew and mold of the cellar.

We can do better. We have to start by recognizing this one simple, yet pivotal point. If we cannot understand this then all that we have fought for, all of the wars, fire hoses, dogs, tears, bondage marks, will be for nothing. We will have wasted the efforts of all of those people who came before us and sacrificed so much for us to have what we have today. We will throw all of that away because we are being taught to hate each other. We need to turn on those who preach hate, not with hate, but with love, and show them the better way forward is together, not apart. So what's the point already...!?

It is this - people are responsible only for what they do. 

It seems like such a simple concept, but it is not how we live our lives anymore. If a police officer commits a heinous act, then he committed a heinous act. If other people were complicit in such an act or helped cover it up then they are just as responsible and equally detestable. But unless they are of the previously mentioned, no other police officer has anything to do with that act. I don't care if they work in the same precinct. Another cop in that precinct was responding to a domestic violence call at the time and has nothing to do with that incident. Yet the media, Colin Kaepernick, and the Progressive machine will have you believe that somehow every cop in America is to blame for this. This is what the media does. They encourage hate and we eat it up like goldfish,  gorging ourselves to death on their lies. 

Black lives matter. No kidding. The only part that I would disagree with is that we call lives black or white. A life has no color. 

So what's the bottom line? We need to judge people based on what THEY alone do. We can't judge people based on occupation, income, hobbies, skin color, health or lack thereof. We can't say that "cops" do such and such or "black people" do this and that. I know people who would call themselves black. But just remember that this contributes to collectivism. If you want to know how the Nazis gained so much support in a country that was not particularly racist, read Erik Larson's book, In the Garden of Beasts. I'm not bringing up Nazis to shock anyone, but it's a good example of what happens when we stop seeing individuals and start seeing members of groups.

- Anthony Battaglia

Link to the book here

Please leave your thoughts, I would love to know your opinion on the matter!

Courage or Fear? - You Decide!

I can sense a lot of fear permeating our society today, which is ironic considering the amount of security that we have invested in. Fear is a rather dangerous and volatile emotion. Often times it is the fuse that ignites the powder, propelling shrapnel in all directions, leaving destruction in its path. Fear paralyzes us. It takes hold of our mind, body, and soul. It crushes our spirit and withers away our resolve with whispers of, "you're not good enough, it's not possible, nobody cares, etc..." And these lies become the spark that ignites the fear. 

As this is not going to be a book chapter, but merely a blog post, I want to address some very specific fears. I realize that by not being black, some people might consider me unqualified, or even out of line for expressing my views on what I see going on in America. Although I don't necessarily see it as courageous to do so, I am not going to let fear get in the way of saying what I think is important enough to be said. 

Collin Kaepernick is once once again making headlines this week with his new endorsement from Nike. Once again we find ourselves mired in the same old discussions. It seems like we are almost spinning our wheels at this point. We need a shove to get out of the rut and moving forward again. But the slush is deep and the tires have lost their tread. But let's try, just for the heck of it. Maybe, if we can get this thing rocking back and forth, then we all push in one direction and bam, progress!

So, here's the shove... I think the biggest obstacle to this progress is fear, more specifically, fear within those who embrace and perpetuate the attitudes of a civil rights movement that has served its purpose. This is not my unique revelation. It is the opinion of Wall Street Journal contributor and Stanford University Fellow Shelby Steele. I have linked to an article of his that lays out his reasoning for believing that we are in a post-civil rights era, but I would like to talk about the underlying fear, that he says, prohibits us from moving forward. There are two parts, essentially - mistrust and guilt.

Mistrust comes mainly from those who identify as "the black community," whatever that is. I personally believe in individuals coming together for and due to different reasons, but there is no real "black community," just people who unite under a banner of black identity, which is essentially what leads to mistrust of those who do not (or in my case, cannot). If we have had a black president, then I must say that there is no limit to what a black person can achieve in this country, and thus the civil rights movement worked. We should be celebrating this fact, rolling out of the rut, but some need the rut because it's a safe place to be. Not very many serious car accidents involve cars that are sitting still. In other words, the fear of what it takes to move forward as a free person, one judged by their own actions is a scary proposition for many people. As Mr. Steel, a black man himself says in his article, "freedom snuck up on us." It's something new to the psyche of many black people, one that they cannot even accept as being legitimate - mistrust.

This brings up my specific problem with what Collin Kaepernick is doing, well, a couple problems. First of all, the singing of the National Anthem is a time during a sporting event when everybody comes together in unison as Americans and recognize that, despite our differences, it is being an American that unites us. The concerns of Black Lives Matter aren't the only concerns facing our country. So someone else, Sam Bradford perhaps, could protest the treatment of Native Americans. Someone else could protest the border wall, etc. The point is, that is NOT the time or place for ANY of that. Secondly, what C.K. is doing is actually counterproductive to his supposed agenda. If he thinks he is actually making things better by doing this then he is, in my opinion, sorely mistaken. What he is doing instead is watering the seeds of mistrust that have been planted in the minds of those who are already skeptical of the police. Unfortunately, the police are having to deal with a heightened mistrust, which could lead to more resistance, more aggression in return, and more shootings. I hope I am wrong. The only other outcome is an easing of police force which otherwise may have been used to subdue an offender. There was an officer in Chicago who refused to draw her weapon on a black man specifically out of this fear. He put her in the ICU and she nearly died. I spoke with an Uber driver in Chicago who was a police officer during the day and knew the female officer well. Three months after the incident she was still recovering.

The other component is the guilt that people have transferred onto themselves for things that they had nothing to do with. I will grant this point, the descendants of those who used slaves to advance their economic well-being have had an advantage that was ill-gotten. But time has passed. Enough time has passed that most big businesses are publicly owned, and the wealth that was accumulated over 150 years ago has since dissipated. Schools like Harvard for instance, lower admission standards for black and Hispanic applicants. In the spring of 2018, 15 percent of applications that were accepted for admission were from black students. According to Mr. Steele, if all students were judged equally, only 1% of black students would meet the admission criteria. 

Who are we serving when we tell people that we are willing to give them a pass based on their skin color? We are being racist. We are perpetuating the problem that we are trying to solve. We are pulling ourselves back into the rut.

Instead, let's focus on courage. Courage not to blame other people. Instances of racism will continue, there's no doubt about it. It's a problem all over the world. But we can have the courage to accept this fact and judge people based on their individual character, not paint with a broad brush. We can't say that "black people" do this, or that "cops" do that. Taking ownership for our own situation takes courage. Blame is easy, but it's a lie. Don't fall victim to this and sell yourself or anyone else short. 

Feel free to leave your comments! I will leave it here, for now, with a quote.

Deuteronomy 31:6 says it very well: "Be strong and of good courage, fear not nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee; He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee."  -KJV

https://www.wsj.com/articles/black-protest-has-lost-its-power-1515800438