Life is a Miracle

Over these last few weeks I had been reading and reading about nutrition and science and certain phytonutrients in certain fruits and vegetables, and what happens when you cook them versus eat them raw, and what is lycopene, and what is the value of vitamin C supplements… and eventually I got tired.

I realized the more I read and the more I placed hope in this science of nutrition to tell me everything, the more hollow I felt.

What was the goal? Why was I so concerned about learning so much? …to know everything? …to never die? …so that my loved ones will never get cancer? I don’t know. But all this science somehow made life, and food, feel hollow. Where was the mystery? Where was the joy in eating, and living?

Mysteriously, I decided to pick out a book called “Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition”, by Wendell Berry. Here it is in my “dresser”:

This book touched on a variety of subjects that were perfect for me, including philosophy of science and art, and also economics, technology, agriculture, and our ecosystems. It helped me realize that the hollowness I was feeling was probably a result of the attitude, the language, and the unspoken assumptions behind the books I was reading and, as a result, the thoughts I was thinking in my head.

The material on nutrition I was reading was surely humble in its acknowledgment of the vast ignorance of modern science in the area of nutrition and health. However, there were still assumptions, language, and a view of the world that is communicated through such literature. There is the assumption that, with further research, we (science) will eventually understand everything. It is only a matter of future research until we know it all, until we know exactly what it is about spinach that makes us healthy and vigorous. There is also the assumption that the entire world, humans included, is one big machine. It operates according to the laws of physics (which we humans will eventually figure out), and everything is mechanical and explainable in these terms, we just haven’t got there yet.

I think Wendell Berry is right that this is the dominant assumption of modern scientists. It was exactly what I thought when I finished high school, and I had gotten my good share of Discovery Channel, library DVDs, David Attenborough, Honors Physics, and a 5 on the AP Chemistry exam. Not until college, when I started learning about modern physics, about special relativity, about quantum mechanics, did I realize, “Holy cow, this world is WAY more complex than I thought!” Even my physics professors would tell me in office hours: “Don’t worry that you don’t feel like you totally understand it yet, even when you get your PhD, you still won’t fully understand it. Because as far as we can tell, our world is not intuitive to the human mind.”

            Even in math, I learned about something called Godel’s First Incompleteness Theorem. For years and years it was assumed that math was perfect, human rationality decomposed to its bare minimum. Thus, it was assumed that every mathematical statement was either true or false, and could be proven to be so. We just hadn’t found the proofs yet. But, with further research, we shall surely find those proofs. AMAZINGLY, this is wrong! Godel actually showed that for whatever mathematical system you come up with, there will always be statements that cannot be shown to be either true or false! There will always be statements that can be neither proved nor disproved! Could it be the same for science, for our understanding of the physical world? Could it be that we humans are somehow “cut off” from a true and total understanding of our world? Thus, the world would not be just a machine awaiting human scientific explanation. I think it is possible.

What is important is that this kind of worldview, this kind of attitude and thought process, treating the world as a machine, really left me feeling hollow. It is much better to view the world in a different way I think.

I read Wendell Berry and thought about these things partly on a walk down a hill. I took the bus to Berkeley for the day, but the bus driver made a wrong turn, and tried to correct it, but couldn’t, and tried again to correct it, but couldn’t, and eventually we were all up in a hill, in a bus that couldn’t turn around, a mile away from Berkeley! I walked down the hill, ate some watermelon, and saw this beautiful sight! (Notice the bridge in the background!) Now isn’t life a miracle?

For quite a while it has been possible for a free and thoughtful person to see that to treat life as mechanical or predictable or understandable is to reduce it. Now, almost suddenly, it is becoming clear that to reduce life to the scope of our understanding (whatever “model” we use) is inevitably to enslave it, make property of it, and put it up for sale.

            This is to give up on life, to carry it beyond change and redemption, and to increase the proximity of despair (Berry 7).

We know enough of our own history by now to be aware that people exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love. To defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know. The abstract, “objective,” impersonal, dispassionate language of science can, in fact, help us to know certain things, and to know some things with certainty. It can help us, for instance, to know the value of species and of species diversity. But it cannot replace, and it cannot become, the language of familiarity, reverence, and affection by which things of value ultimately are protected (Berry 41).

To say as much puts me on difficult ground, I know. To confess, these days, that you think some things are more important than machines is almost sure to bring you face to face with somebody who will accuse you of being “against technology”—against, that is, “the larger, more efficient business organization” that will emerge inevitably “to the benefit of the many.”

And so I would like to be as plain as possible. What I am against—and without a minute’s hesitation or apology—is our slovenly willingness to allow machines and the idea of the machine to prescribe the terms and conditions of the lives of creatures, which we have allowed increasingly for the last two centuries, and are still allowing, at an incalculable cost to other creatures and to ourselves. If we state the problem that way, then we can see that the way to correct our error, and so deliver ourselves from our own destructiveness, is to quit using our technological capability as the reference point and standard of our economic life. We will instead have to measure our economy by the health of the ecosystems and human communities where we do our work. (Berry 54).

Logic Octopus

My logic professor, Dr. Noel Adams, always loved to find great examples of logic in everyday life. Nick was serving lunch the other day, and I think he encountered a particularly awesome one. When he handed the man his lunch and cup of water, the man took the food, leaving the water on the tray, and said:

"You can take the water. I'm not an octopus."

Clearly, this is an awesome statement. I absolutely loved it. It is really quite complicated though, and it took me a while to really unpack the logic inside. Here's my attempt.

(Typical lunch and infamous cup of water)

In predicate and propositional logic, we could represent the situation as follows:

Let Ox stand for "x is an octopus".
Let Wx stand for "x wants water".
Let m stand for "this particular man Nick and I now know"
The symbol "--" in front of anything means "not" or "the negation of".
The symbol "-->" means "implies".

The implied logical argument of the man's statement, which we should have known:
(1) For all x, Wx --> Ox
(2) --Om
(3) Wm-->Om
(4) --Om--> --Wm
(5) --Wm

Explanation:

(1) Only octopi want water. "Only" statements are tricky, but I remembered that they can be translated into "If… then" statements. So, "Only octopi want water" translates to "For all x, if x wants water, then x is an octopus" or "For all x, Wx --> Ox".

(2) We are given the information that the man is not an octopus, i.e. "--Om"

(3) By instantiation from line (1) we can obtain: "Wm-->Om" for our particular man.

(4) Then, from line (3) and the use of the Contrapositive, we can obtain "--Om--> --Wm".

(5) Finally by using lines (2) and (4) and the Arrow Out Rule, we can obtain "-Wm".

Thus, clearly, if we had just remembered (1) our propositional logic, (2) the fact that this man was not an octopus, and (3) that only octopi want water, we would have obviously realized "--Wm", which is what we should have known all along:

He didn't want any water.

Bulldogs in Love!

Nick Wren and I are going to soon start a website called "Bulldogs in Love." Anyone can send in their pictures of their bulldogs that are potentially in love. Then, Nick and I will screen the pictures to make sure the bulldogs are indeed in love. Here is an example of an acceptable loving couple that happen to live right next door to the Oakland Catholic Worker.

I have recently been reading "Superfoods Rx" by Steven Pratt, M.D. from Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. Some foods are better for us than others, and as research suggests, some foods are incredibly better than others. Below are some examples of fine, nutritious, whole foods that we will soon give out tomorrow at our food distribution to over 200 families!

On the right, Plums! And, on the left, Broccoli!

Apparently... "a researcher at Johns Hopkins University announced the discovery of a compound found in broccoli that not only prevented the development of tumors by 60 percent in the studied group, it also reduced the size of tumors that did develop by 75 percent." (Click on the word "Broccoli" for the link).

Above you'll find the Cantalopes! And, a beautiful mural painted on the wall downstairs. It was also my first laundry day. My clothes dried beneath our orange tree!

Away Today to San José!

Yesterday I visited Mara down in San Jose. Zena and Tim were giving Nelson a ride down there to apply for a job, so I hopped on in. Mara is living at a Catholic Worker house in San Jose, CA, and has been since June. Here is her house!

I got there in time for dinner, which was delicious salad with basil and spinach and almonds, pinto beans, and celery with peanut butter. Afterwards, we walked across the street to Mi Pueblo Foods and Mara bought me some cookie dough ice cream as a treat. Here is a picture of Mara in the kitchen at her Catholic Worker House. I didn't take this picture, but rather jacked it from Facebook. Hope you don't mind Mara!

The next morning after breakfast, I explored San Jose a little bit. The first place I went was, of course, the library, which was an 8 story tall building with tons of windows and art exhibits! It was awesome. They even gave me a library card, for free, without proof of residence!

Art exhibits... Prints For The People

The view from the 8th floor! Notice the mountains!

A sturdy, storm-enduring mountaineer of a tree...

Today is Sunday, which means a day of rest. But as the great John Muir once said:

"I wish I knew where I was going. Doomed to be 'carried of the spirit into the wilderness' I suppose. I wish I could be more moderate in my desires, but I cannot, and so there is no rest." - John Muir.

So, I used this Sunday to explore downtown Oakland. I wanted to go to the John Muir exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California, but alas I learned that the flyer I found from the library that said "Second Sundays" are free was mistaken. It is actually "First Sundays". Oh well, there are other things to do in Oakland, I assured myself. First stop, walking around Lake Merritt!

 I forged ahead, rounding the tip of the lake, to find a beautiful Bonsai Garden!

 ...where I ate my lunch of two plums, some broccoli, a muffin made mainly from brown sugar, and some slices of raw onion.

 I found a composting exhibit set up near the rear-end (pardon the pun) of the Bonsai Garden, and low and behold, there was a picture of my future house! (or at least one of the infinite possibilities)

 Of course, Alex's trip through Oakland could not possibly be complete without a visit to Benjamin Franklin's greatest gift to the United States...

 I breathed deeply upon exiting the library, thinking to myself, "What a wonderful day, I think I shall return home and eat some salmon." However, on my walk back to the BART, I happened to spy some commotion at the entrance to the Oakland Museum of California.

"The museum's not free today, but I guess I'll check out what's going on..."

The Oakland Standard presents "Seed Circus", a series of four events at the Oakland Museum of California organized by the greenhorns! Today was all about making cheese! I tried free samples of an amazing sheep cheese, some Mexican queso fresco, mozzarella, and even some blueberry, goat-milk, organic ice cream!

 Better yet, when I decided to walk further on into the museum, no one stopped me! I asked the ticket clerk where the John Muir exhibit was, and walked right on in. Of course, John Muir and myself share an upbringing in Wisconsin, where Muir spent his golden years between 1849 and 1864, before heading for California.

 The view from the top of the Oakland Museum of California. Lake Merritt and the hills are in the background.

This day left me with but one John Muir quote echoing in my head.

"As long as I live I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing... and get as near the heart of the world as I can." - John Muir

Lazy days of summer

These past few days I have been hanging around the house helping, cleaning, cooking, and giving out the food every day for the lunch service. There has been a lot of reading as well, and thinking. I don't have a library card yet, so I looked in the bookshelf downstairs and found Barack Obama's book, "Dreams of my Father". I haven't been able to put it down.

There is a passage I read earlier this morning about when he lived in Indonesia. His mom was married to Lolo, a man from Indonesia. This passage gave Lolo's advice about how to deal with beggars, and since I am handing out free food every day, I thought it was relevant.

"Like how to deal with beggars. They seemed to be everywhere, a gallery of ills -- men, women, children, in tattered clothing matted with dirt, some without arms, others without feet, victims of scurvy or polio or leprosy walking on their hands or rolling down the crowded sidewalks in jerry-built carts, their legs twisted behind them like contortionists'. At first, I watched my mother give over her money to anyone who stopped at our door or stretched our an arm as we passed on the streets. Later, when it became clear that the tide of pain was endless, she gave more selectively, learning to calibrate the level of misery. Lolo thought her moral calculations endearing but silly, and whenever he caught me following her example with the few coins in my possession, he would raise his eyebrows and take me aside.

"How much money do you have?" he would ask.

I'd empty my pocket. "Thirty rupiah."

"How many beggars are there on the street?"

I tried to imagine the number that had come by the house in the last week. "You see?" he said, once it was clear I'd lost count. "Better to save your money and make sure you don't end up on the street yourself."

Here is my book and a house guitar in the dining room.

Here is the porch that I sit on to read and look out at the corner of International and 50th.

...and here is the view from that porch.

Mi cuarto nuevo!

I drove the van to Hermana Susan's house today to pick up a bed! Then Vicente gave me some sheets and a table! It is all happening.

My new room. It is so pink! and beautiful!

I should probably fix that window.

Volunteers?

So I am going out to Oakland to volunteer, and it turns out that is the first thing they asked me to do at the airport terminal. Airtran overbooked my flight, so I volunteered to take a later flight, 10 hours later, from Chicago's Midway airport. They gave me two free round trip tickets, $75 off my next Airtran purchase, and $30 worth of food! Awesome.

To top it off, they drove us to Midway Airport in Chicago by Limo from Milwaukee. It was me and my new 5 "volunteer" friends in the limo. Look at me, riding a limo on my way to become a Catholic Worker. I think that's how it is supposed to go.

Here is Trevor in our Limo on the way to Chicago's Midway Airport.

Here is my guitar case in our limo. We had so many glasses, but no tequila.