That old pagan muddle of terminology

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn beliefs, writing4 Comments

I was amused at the semantic chaos a character in a recent novel fell into while trying to explain the various pagan groups to an individual who (a) was a born-again Christian with Baptist-oriented beliefs, and (b) thought anything labelled “pagan” or “witchcraft” was pure and simple “devil worship.”

I blame both the Catholic Church and Hollywood for creating and sustaining the ignorant idea that pagans and/or witches and/or Wiccans and/or hoodoo practitioners all worship the devil. Many of those “charged” with worshipping the devil don’t believe in the devil. The devil is more or less a Christian notion.

I call my series of conjure novels “folk magic” which, in many ways, is like conventional witchcraft. The terms get  muddled because many Wiccans call themselves witches while others mix up Voodoo and hoodoo.

Wicca, like Voodoo, is a religion. Hoodoo and conventional witchcraft are practices usually with a strong link to nature and spells drawn on what is observed in the natural world. Those who practice hoodoo, with its origins in Africa, are often very strong Christians and see no conlflict between the two belief systems.

I find it easy to write stories about conventional witchcraft and hoodoo because they seem to me to be very natural to those who notice the ways and means of the seasons and the natural world. Both allow the practioner to worship the gods and goddesses of their choice, Christian or otherwise.

Creator of Wicca

The Wicca Academy website states that, “Wicca is a contemporary, nature-based, pagan religion. It refers to the entire system of practices and beliefs that comprise the modern pagan witchcraft spectrum. Although people often think that the terms Witchcraft and Wicca mean the same thing, that is not the case. All Wiccans are witches, but not all witches are Wiccans.”

The Green Man website states that “Drawing Witches into a cohesive identifiable group of any sort is truly like herding cats! And Traditional Witchcraft is no exception! So to cover my ass I think it best to state that all I can share is my own perspective based on my own practices, beliefs and understandings. These I have gleaned over more than 4 decades as a Traditional Witch and over two decades of leading a Coven and Tradition as well as teaching and presenting Trad Craft to the general public. All that said, there are many others with valid experiences and credentials who, coming from other Traditional foundations, would present Traditional Witchcraft in quite a different manner. As with all such explorations, look for multiple, diverse sources and find what speaks to you personally. That is in fact an approach that would be perfectly in accord with Traditional Witchcraft practices, as I present it. As Traditional Witchcraft is rooted in one’s personal senses or rather extra-sensory abilities, built upon one’s intuition, we call it “The Sight” aka “The Gifts”. Informed through direct communion with the many forms and expressions of Spirit, a Traditional Witch is then guided by their own sense of right and wrong employing what one might call one’s Ethical Compass. It is this personal and direct communion relationship a Traditional Witch has with Spirit that sets them as a Heretic: meaning outside of all forms of organized religion and circumventing any priesthood authority mediating Spirit or imposing a codified “One and True practice” or belief with regards all things related to Spirit. ”

In general, I like the practices better than the religions because I don’t really trust systems in which others tell me what  I can do or what I must believe. Truth, I think, comes in following what we believe rather than what a hierarchy of leaders and rules say we must believe.

My two cents as a solitary.

–Malcolm

‘Is Math Real?’ by Eugenia Cheng

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

While watching “A Beautiful Mind,” I wondered if all those equations on the blackboard could possibly be real. Yes and no. “Yes” because a consultant kept the film’s math on track and “no” because the plot plunged viewers into one of John Nash’s delusions at the beginning of the film.

And yet, is math real in “real life”?

An NPR story states that “From start to finish, Eugenia’s book explores the ways we do math outside the classroom — and how they upend the binary true/false we’re taught from an early age. From examples where 1+1 does not equal two, to the concept of infinity, Is Math Real? relieves us of that rigidity and encourages us to reevaluate our relationship to the abstract. She reminds us that math is driven by human curiosity and creativity—not by right and wrong answers.”

I also thought that the chalkboard filled with equations in films proved the math was fake. If the math were real, wouldn’t the mathematicisn use a computer? Not so, it turns out. First, that’s tradidional, and second, it make theorms easier to present to a class.

From the Publisher

“One of the world’s most creative mathematicians offers a new way to look at math—focusing on questions, not answers

“Where do we learn math: From rules in a textbook? From logic and deduction? Not really, according to mathematician Eugenia Cheng: we learn it from human curiosity—most importantly, from asking questions. This may come as a surprise to those who think that math is about finding the one right answer, or those who were told that the ‘dumb’ question they asked just proved they were bad at math. But Cheng shows why people who ask questions like “Why does 1 + 1 = 2?” are at the very heart of the search for mathematical truth.

“Is Math Real? is a much-needed repudiation of the rigid ways we’re taught to do math, and a celebration of the true, curious spirit of the discipline. Written with intelligence and passion, Is Math Real? brings us math as we’ve never seen it before, revealing how profound insights can emerge from seemingly unlikely sources. ”

From the Reviewers

“An invigorating philosophical take on the field…Cheng has a talent for making mathematical discussions accessible, and her wide-ranging analysis leads to some surprisingly weighty conclusions…It adds up to a stellar meditation on the nature of knowledge and math.”―Publishers Weekly (Starred)

“[Cheng] also succeeds in making the reader feel that not understanding something in mathematics isn’t the same as being bad at it: rather, it is a clue that you are onto something deeper, the pursuit of which could reap rewards.  The book is infused with personal ruminations that lighten the load and keep the tone conversational…Cheng wears her heart and politics on her sleeve, segueing seamlessly…from mathematics to social concerns…Nicely parried, while providing fodder for those who want to chew on this some more.”―New Scientist

You don’t need a chalkboard to understand this book.

–Malcolm

‘Devil Bones’ by Kathy Reichs

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

After my focus on Oppenheimer,  John Nash, the fires in Hawai’i, and quantum mechanics, it was a joy to go back to simpler books about chopped-up bodies, serial killers, and the other nefarious deeds Kathy Reichs (Bones) writes about in her crime/thriller series about a forensic anthropologist. This time I went back in time to an older novel from 2008, Devil Bones. It has a pentagramme on the cover that tells you whether or not this is your kind of book.

Here’s a real-life tip. If you’re working on an old house and discover a deep root cellar, don’t go down there. Since this is a wholesome family blog, I won’t tell you what’s down there in the novel even though the publisher’s description spills the beans about that.

From the Publisher

“In a house under renovation, a plumber uncovers a cellar no one knew about and makes a grisly discovery: a decapitated chicken, animal bones, and cauldrons containing beads, feathers, and other relics of religious ceremonies. In the center of the shrine rests the skull of a teenage girl. Meanwhile, on a nearby lakeshore, the headless body of a teenage boy is found by a man walking his dog.

“Forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan is called in to investigate, and a complex and gripping tale unfolds. Nothing is clear—neither when the deaths occurred, nor where. Was the skull brought to the cellar or was the girl murdered there? Why is the boy’s body remarkably well preserved? Led by a preacher turned politician, citizen vigilantes blame devil worshippers and Wiccans, and Temperance will need all of her expertise to get to the real culprit first.”

I smile when I read these kinds of descriptions because I don’t believe in the devil and wonder just what the hell those who believe they are devil worshippers think they’re doing.

—Malcolm

Na ‘Aikane o Maui Center Destroyed in Maui Fire

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn cultures

As I write this post, the death toll stands at 114 in Maui with a thousand people missing. The vultures (developers) watch closely because they want the land cheap. The loss of the Na ‘Aikane o Maui Center  on Front Street adds insult to injury.

ARTNews  writes,  “The center not only taught Native youth traditional art such as weaving and carving but also helped families fight for their rights to their ancestral lands. Hundreds of Native artifacts including 19th-century land deeds stamped in wax, traditional feathered capes, and old maps were lost in the blaze, along with legal documents that could have helped families in disputes against developers and others who laid claim to Native properties.”

The center kept Hawaiian culture alive and vital and it’s records supported their initiatives. They plan to rebuild, and with their philosophy  of “‘A’ohe hana nui ke alu ‘ia” which means “No task is too big when done together.”

I hope they succeed. You can donate here: https://naaikane.org/lahaina-wildfire-relief/

Meanwhile, we must kill the vultures who want to steal the land.

–Malcolm

‘A Beautiful Mind’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing2 Comments

Was it a lapse in my education or a personality defect that brought me into the theater in 2001 to see the Ron Howard-directed film “A Beautiful Mind” with absolutely no idea who John Forbes Nash  (June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015) was, much less the focus of his work? I suspect my lack of knowledge of Nash came out of the rather thin coverage of subject matter in my university’s general education courses. Since I’d never heard of Nash, I didn’t notice the publication of Sylvia Nasar’s 1998 biography A Beautiful Mind on which the feature film was based. The biography is well written and yet, I missed it until after the film came out

Had I known about Nash, I would have known his philosophy (though not his math) through such quotations as “Rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos.” I agree!

The movie made quite a splash and won many awards, at the Oscars and elsewhere. Some people didn’t like the way schizophrenia, from which Nash recovered. Others thought Nash’s wife Jennifer Connelly was miscast as Alicia Nash who, in reality, came from El Salvador and spoke with an accent. And then, as Wikipedia reports, “According to Nash, the film A Beautiful Mind inaccurately implied he was taking atypical antipsychotics. He attributed the depiction to the screenwriter who was worried about the film encouraging people with mental illness to stop taking their medication.”

Sad to say, I don’t think the film–as much as I liked it–left me with a strong sense of what Nash’s specialty was. Wikipedia states that “John Forbes Nash, Jr. (June 13, 1928 – May 23, 2015), known and published as John Nash, was an American mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, real algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and partial differential equations. Nash and fellow game theorists John Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten were awarded the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. In 2015, he and Louis Nirenberg were awarded the Abel Prize for their contributions to the field of partial differential equations.”

In the Oppenheimer biography American Prometheus, Oppenheimer is said to have a “forgiving instinct for the frailty of the human psyche, an awareness of the thin line between insanity and brilliance.” He worked with Nash and saw the issues behind the individual.

Of Nash, Britannica writes, “American mathematician who was awarded the 1994 Nobel Prize for Economics for his landmark work, first begun in the 1950s, on the mathematics of game theory. He shared the prize with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten. In 2015 Nash won (with Louis Nirenberg) the Abel Prize for his contributions to the study of partial differential equations.”

My thoughts: the book gives readers a better idea of Nash’s work than the movie. I suspect that most of those who watched and enjoyed the movie had no idea who Nash was before the film’s promotions began and probably forgot the little they learnt in the film within a few weeks of watching it.

—Malcolm

PEN AMERICA: REMOVING BLOCK BUTTON ON TWITTER/X PUTS ANOTHER NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF THE PLATFORM

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Social Media

PEN.ORG

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 18, 2023

(NEW YORK)—In response to a thread on Twitter (now known as “X”) from Elon Musk that suggests he may end the platform’s block button, PEN America’s Viktorya Vilk, director for Digital Safety and Free Expression, issued the comments below:

“Elon Musk seems determined to make X (formerly known as Twitter) the least safe and least equitable social media platform on the internet. Before Musk acquired the platform, PEN America worked closely for years with Twitter’s human rights experts and trust and safety specialists to reduce the harm of online abuse against women, people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, and others disproportionately targeted online for their identities and professions. Since acquiring the platform, Musk has undone it all – and then some. He’s fired all of the human rights experts and most of the trust and safety specialists. He’s shut down one safety feature after the next or put them behind a pay wall. Removing the block button–a critical tool that so many writers, journalists, artists, and other users need to protect themselves from attempts to silence them with hate and harassment— would just be adding insult to injury and putting yet another nail in the coffin of a platform that is no longer Twitter, either in name or in spirit.”

–

In its story “Elon Musk’s Idea to Actually Make Twitter a Hellsite,” Slate Magazine writes, “Elon Musk said on Friday that he plans to do away with the block feature on X, the website that most people still call Twitter. Musk’s publicly stated case is a vague one: that blocking “makes no sense.” But it’s reasonable to think his motivations are more specific. Musk seems to have become aware by the week of this year’s Super Bowl that he’s one of the most commonly blocked users of his own website.”

The New Republic writes,”Elon Musk on Friday declared he wants to remove the block feature on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter—despite frequently using the block button himself. There’s also one other big problem: Musk’s desire to limit this blocking feature could also cost X its spot in various app stores.”

Musk’s plan sounds like lose-lose for everyone, including himself.

–Malcolm

If it can happen, it will happen

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

Is “if it can happen, it will happen” pure cynicism, a long-ago mathematician’s theory, a quantum mechanics idea, a version of Murphy’s law, or common sense? Perhaps it is all of these.

Cox and Forshaw will tell you it’s a quantum mechanics idea in their  book, as the subtitle suggests. I agree with them.

Or maybe French mathematician Émile Borel thought up the idea in 1943. Or maybe it was in Morgan in 1866

Many of us see it as a version of Murphy’s law. When I was in the Navy, we saw Murphy’s law everywhere because that was just the nature of ships, oceans, and wars.

People will always debate where the law came from, but apparently –as Wikipedia says, “Though similar statements and concepts have been made over the course of history, the law itself was coined by, and is named after, American aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr.; its exact origins are debated, but it is generally agreed it originated from Murphy and his team following a mishap during rocket sled tests some time between 1948 and 1949, and was finalized and first popularized by testing project head John Stapp during a later press conference. ”

Common sense tells us that the old Chinese curse, ” May you live in interesting times” doesn’t really mean “interesting,” but “bad.” I think Murphy would agree. Lately, the times have been playing out abnormally as a cosmic SNAFU as those of us in the military abbreviated “Situation Normal All Fucked Up.” (Parson mon français.) Or, as the Austrians might say, “Fatal but not serious.”

SNAFU is people drinking all night in a bar while climate change is causing the seas to rise up to the doorstep. Hell, maybe “if it can happen, it will happen” is pure cynicism as we see our politicians arguing about how many angels can dance of the head of a pin while ignoring what’s really important.

Actually, I think that everything that can happen has already happened. We just haven’t noticed it yet.

–Malcolm

‘As you read these words, copies of you are being created.’

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books

So begins the publisher’s description of Sean Carroll’s 2020 book Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime. If you’ve wondered about quantum mechanics, especially the Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI), this book will clear things up for you in this universe and, possibly, others.

Nature Magazine wrote: “At the beginning of Something Deeply Hidden, Sean Carroll cites the tale of the fox and the grapes from Aesop’s Fables. A hungry fox tries to reach a bunch of grapes dangling from a vine. Finding them beyond his grasp, but refusing to admit failure, the fox declares the grapes to be inedible and turns away. That, Carroll declares, encapsulates how physicists treat the wacky implications of quantum mechanics. Carroll wants that to stop. The fox can reach the grapes, he argues, with the many-worlds theory. “

From the Publisher

“As you read these words, copies of you are being created.

“Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of twentieth-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything.

“Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927. Quantum mechanics has always had obvious gaps—which have come to be simply ignored. Science popularizers keep telling us how weird it is, how impossible it is to understand. Academics discourage students from working on the “dead end” of quantum foundations. Putting his professional reputation on the line with this audacious yet entirely reasonable book, Carroll says that the crisis can now come to an end. We just have to accept that there is more than one of us in the universe. There are many, many Sean Carrolls. Many of every one of us.

“Copies of you are generated thousands of times per second. The Many-Worlds theory of quantum behavior says that every time there is a quantum event, a world splits off with everything in it the same, except in that other world the quantum event didn’t happen. Step-by-step in Carroll’s uniquely lucid way, he tackles the major objections to this otherworldly revelation until his case is inescapably established.

“Rarely does a book so fully reorganize how we think about our place in the universe. We are on the threshold of a new understanding—of where we are in the cosmos, and what we are made of.”

From the Reviewers

“Sean Carroll is always lucid and funny, gratifyingly readable, while still excavating depths. He advocates an acceptance of quantum mechanics at its most minimal, its most austere—appealing to the allure of the pristine. The consequence is an annihilation of our conventional notions of reality in favor of an utterly surreal world of Many-Worlds. Sean includes us in the battle between a simple reality versus a multitude of realities that feels barely on the periphery of human comprehension. He includes us in the ideas, the philosophy, and the foment of revolution. A fascinating and important book.”—Janna Levin, professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College and author of Black Hole Blues

“[A] challenging, provocative book . . . Moving smoothly through different topics and from objects as small as particles to those as enormous as black holes, Carroll’s exploration of quantum theory introduces readers to some of the most groundbreaking ideas in physics today.”—Publishers Weekly

“What makes Carroll’s new project so worthwhile, though, is that while he is most certainly choosing sides in the debate, he offers us a cogent, clear, and compelling guide to the subject while letting his passion for the scientific questions shine through every page.”—NPR

I’m biased, of course, because the MWI is my passion.

—Malcolm

‘Summer Serenade’ by Elise Skidmore

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

As a disclaimer, I should mention that I have known Elise online since the days when CompuServe was the pre-eminent social, technical, and professional network in cyberspace. Both of us were participants in the very busy Literary Forum where Elise was on the staff for almost ten years.

Summer Serenade was released on August 10 by Heart Ally Books at 112 pages. Skidmore’s previous books (Looking for the Light: Hindsight is 2020, A Dance of Dreams. among others) show us a prolific poet and short story author. She also produces her books’ illustrations.

From the Publisher

“A New Yorker by birth, Elise Skidmore lives on the south shore of Long Island with her husband. Recently retired, they enjoy spending time together and love to travel. Their nest may be empty, and though she misses her two daughters, she is very proud of the wonderful women they have become.

“She has been a writer since childhood, with poetry being her focus for many years. It’s her way of working through dark times and celebrating the joyful ones. SUMMER SERENADE is her fifth volume of poetry. Two of her earlier anthologies were finalists for Epic eBook Awards. She is also an amateur photographer and her original photography can be seen in all her books. While one may summarize Elise in any number of wonderful descriptors, the chief among them must always be a writer.”

Since I grew up on Florida’s Gulf Coast, I appreciate the book’s dedication: “To anyone who has held a seashell to their ear and heard the ocean singing.” Yes, I have. And then there’s the opening story “You Wanted a Story.” It’s a wonderful prelude to the poems that follow.

—Malcolm

I thought I would know everything by now

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Old Age, writing

When I was little, my parents, grandparents, and aunts (one of who lived well past 100) all knew everything. That was how the world seemed to work when I was in kindergarten through junior high school.  Having zoomed past another birthday two days ago, I realize that old people don’t know everything and it’s not because of dementia but because they never broke the code.

One thing I do know is that the person who promised her Bitcoin (whatever that is) dealings had been so successful along with winning a suitcase of lottery money, that she could finally send me  “a car for people who thought they would ultimately know everything.” Sadly, the car never arrived and her phone number has been changed to some communal phone at Sing  Sing in Ossining, New York. Here’s the photo she sent me before entering the slammer. If you have to ask what it is and/or how much it costs, it’s not the car for you.

One thing you discover with age is that the stuff you believed 50 years ago that everyone else thought was nonsense has now become the latest fad. People tell me I’m too old to understand it. I say, “I understood it before you were born.” They reply, “So you’re a guru, then, and know everything.” In response, I say, “Nathaniel Hawthorne was right when he said, ‘A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

Other than that, I can’t say that I don’t know anything other than my wife’s name, where I parked the car, and that I can’t keep putting a lot of Tabasco Sauce on my food including the food of love where I don’t play on, I get heartburn.

I strongly suspect that–due to my belief in the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics–that many of us don’t live in the universe where were started out. But I can never quite catch the change happening. The only clue is today’s history classes that no longer teach things I remember happening. In today’s universe, perhaps they didn’t, or else we’ve sanitized it out of existence. The chart shown here seems self-evident, so I won’t waste time going back to the work of folks like Niels Bohr and Max Planck. I’ll note that I really like  Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle because the older one gets, the less certainty s/he has about everything.

I’m certain about one thing. When you’re my age, you don’t know everything such as the speed and location of an electron. I strongly suspect that this is the new way of the world, one (e.g.) when even Senators and Congressmen/Women don’t simultaneously know the location of their asses and the nearest hole in the ground. This has caused a lot of polarization between the two major parties.

So there it is. As you approach my age (classified) you’ll discover that you don’t know everything, contrary to what you thought would happen when you were ten years old. I can tell you one thing: if you embrace uncertainty, you’ll need fewer Xanax or Ativan prescriptions.

I don’t even know where my cat is.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of “Conjure Woman’s Cat” a novel that shows us what we know and what we don’t know.