You call it war. I call it massacre.

Even as I continue to read Jill Lepore's sweeping, single-volume, history of the United States, it is difficult to shut myself off from the shit that pours out of trump's mouth and tweets.  It is his mouth that is really a shithole!

The horrible human being in the Oval Office evoked the Wounded Knee massacre in a recent tweet, in order to mock Senator Elizabeth Warren.

In this post, I noted from Jill Lepore that between 1500 and 1800, as many as fifty million Native Americans died.  The hunting down of Indians continued on.  Many European settlers believed that “indigenous practices were by definition savage, superstitious and coercive.”  So, what did they do?

In part because of this belief, the U.S. government decided not to recognize Native Americans as citizens of sovereign governments in the 19th century, but as colonial subjects. In 1883, the Department of Interior enacted the first “Indian Religious Crimes Code” making the practice of Native American religions illegal. These codes remained in place until 1934.

Keep in mind that many European settlers were also the same people who fled religious persecution back in their old countries!

In response, Wenger writes, some Native American groups tried to convince government agents that their gatherings were places of “prayer and worship” similar to Christian churches. Others claimed that their gathering were “social,” not religious.
But this kind of masking of religious practices did not stop the U.S. government from using violence to suppress these Native American ceremonies.
In 1890, the U.S. military shot and killed hundreds of unarmed men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in an effort to suppress a Native American religious ceremony called the “ghost dance.”

This is the Wounded Knee that trump uses to mock Warren!  Millions of Jesus-loving born-again Christians voted for this horrible human being?

Lepore writes about the religious revival in the colonies, which gives us an idea of the track record of most of the religious in this country.  But, there were exceptions.  Very, very few.  But, the  kind of exceptions that give us hope.  One of them was Benjamin Lay.  A widely traveled man, and well read, he was one of the first to speak up and loudly against slavery.

In 1718, Lay sailed to Barbados, where he saw people branded and tortured and beaten, starved and broken; he decided that everything about this arrangement was an offense against God, who "did not make others to be Slaves to us."

In contrast, his contemporary, George Washington "inherited his first human property at the age of ten."

After a few years in England, Lay and his wife left for Pennsylania--the Quaker State.

He traveled from town to town and from colony to colony, only ever on foot--he would not spur a horse--to denounce slavery before governors and ministers and merchants. ... His arguments fell on deaf ears.

What a commitment to the cause!

But, even he ran out of steam.  Benjamin Lay became a hermit.

Outside of Philadelphia, he carved a cave out of a hill. Inside, he stowed his library; two hundred books of theology. biography, poetry, and history. He'd decided to protest slavery by refusing to eat or drink or wear or use anything that had been made with forced labor.

Such principled activists are how we will make America great again!

He continued to press Benjamin Franklin about the slaves that he owned.  "Lay pressed him and pressed him: By what right?"

In 1758, "the Philadelphia Quaker meeting formally denounced slave trading; Quakers who bought and sold men were to be disowned.  When Lay heard the news, he said, "I can now die in peace," closed his eyes, and expired.

A hundred years later, the country fought a Civil War over slavery.  But, it took another 100 years to end separate but equal.  And 60 years after that, we have a President who talks about fine people on both sides!

But, at least there were a few people like Benjamin Lay.  May their tribe increase!

I could be wrong, ... but ...

To a large extent, I felt  smacked around into being intellectually humble when I started graduate school. I was amazed at how much had already been said and written about, and I became convinced that I had nothing to offer.  What the heck could I think about that the great minds had not already thought about?

I was an easy convert to "I don't know a damn thing!"

I became convinced, very easily, that my work would not be about uncovering anything dramatic.  No patent or copyrights.  My intellectual ego was quickly deflated.

In addition, I also became suspicious of people who came across as intellectually arrogant, as if they knew it all.  I started staying away from them.

When I started teaching, this understanding that we know very little is one that I have tried to get across to students without making that explicit all the time.  The subversive that I am, it has been mostly an implicit message.  Sometimes, through humor--like joking that the genius Einstein had no idea how to communicate in Tamil when even a three-year old kid in Tamil Nadu can do that ;)

Intellectual humility has always fascinated me.  I have even blogged about that here.  Like this one in 2012.  Or, like when I quoted Montaigne: Que sais-je?

A couple of years ago, I decided to offer a seminar on this subject.  I titled the course as "Intellectual boldness through intellectual humility."  In that, I essentially channeled my philosophy on education and life--to admit that I don't know.  The key, however, is to rise beyond that "I don't know."

Had I known about Benjamin Franklin's approach, I would have adopted that too: "whenever he was about to make an argument, he would open with something along the lines of, “I could be wrong, but…”

I offered that seminar in 2016 and, therefore, had no idea about this systematic attempt to understand intellectual humility:

in 2016, professors from Pepperdine University broke the concept of intellectual humility down into four components and published an assessment to measure them:

1. Having respect for other viewpoints
2. Not being intellectually overconfident
3. Separating one’s ego from one’s intellect
4. Willingness to revise one’s own viewpoint

An intellectually humble person will score high on all of these counts.

I am not sure whether boasting that I will score highly on these will be intellectually humble ;)

The author notes that "certain activities generally correlate with higher intellectual humility across the board":

Traveling a lot — or, even better, living for extended periods in foreign cultures — tends to make us more willing to revise our viewpoints. After all, if we know that it is perfectly valid to live a different way than we do, it makes sense that our brains would be better at accepting new approaches to problems at work. This aligns with recent research on the neuroscience of how storytelling helps us build empathy for other people. (Read neuroeconomist Paul Zak’s HBR article on this fascinating subject here.) Fiction readers tend to score higher in intellectual humility, perhaps because their brains are a little bit better trained to seek out stories that vary from their own, and see characters’ experiences and opinions as potentially valid. Preliminary research is also showing us that practicing mindfulness meditation, learning about the ins and outs of your own ego using a framework like the Enneagram, and learning about Moral Foundations Theory through programs like Open Mind Platform can each help us operate with more intellectual humility.

Readers of this blog, or the rare person who has paid attention to my remarks in the classes, will notice that these activities are also the activities that I talk up and practice.

I cannot understand how one could be anything but intellectually humble.  But then, to use Franklin's wise words, I could be wrong ;)

The benefits of dating (much) older women!

You might be in for a pleasant shock when you find out who gave the following advice on "the advantages of an older mistress"

[In] all your Amours you should prefer old Women to young ones. You call this a Paradox, and demand my Reasons. They are these:

1. Because as they have more Knowledge of the World and their Minds are better stor’d with Observations, their Conversation is more improving and more lastingly agreable.

2. Because when Women cease to be handsome, they study to be good. To maintain their Influence over Men, they supply the Diminution of Beauty by an Augmentation of Utility. They learn to do a 1000 Services small and great, and are the most tender and useful of all Friends when you are sick. Thus they continue amiable. And hence there is hardly such a thing to be found as an old Woman who is not a good Woman.

3. Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.

4. Because thro’ more Experience, they are more prudent and discreet in conducting an Intrigue to prevent Suspicion. The Commerce with them is therefore safer with regard to your Reputation. And with regard to theirs, if the Affair should happen to be known, considerate People might be rather inclin’d to excuse an old Woman who would kindly take care of a young Man, form his Manners by her good Counsels, and prevent his ruining his Health and Fortune among mercenary Prostitutes.

5. Because in every Animal that walks upright, the Deficiency of the Fluids that fill the Muscles appears first in the highest Part: The Face first grows lank and wrinkled; then the Neck; then the Breast and Arms; the lower Parts continuing to the last as plump as ever: So that covering all above with a Basket, and regarding only what is below the Girdle, it is impossible of two Women to know an old from a young one. And as in the dark all Cats are grey, the Pleasure of corporal Enjoyment with an old Woman is at least equal, and frequently superior, every Knack being by Practice capable of Improvement.

6. Because the Sin is less. The debauching a Virgin may be her Ruin, and make her for Life unhappy.

7. Because the Compunction is less. The having made a young Girl miserable may give you frequent bitter Reflections; none of which can attend the making an old Woman happy.

8. They are so grateful!!

I wonder if David Letterman might make a "Top Ten" out of this :)

Oh, so who gave that advice?

He was no Hugh Hefner, but was quite "an electrifying flier" who managed to fit his face into a few greenbacks!!! Click here to find out (ht)

Talk about "cougars" when that word meant only the animal, and nothing else!