Welcome to my blog!

There are hundreds of posts and pages here, with all kinds of material. This home page shows the latest posts, and they tend to come in waves. So if you should see lots of poetry posts in a row, or lots of lengthy articles on this or that, please don’t assume that that’s all there is to the site! You can peruse the links above to get an idea of what all is here. And if you find the site interesting, I hope you’ll go read my “About” page here.

Enjoy!

Jack

What Everyone Should Know About My Enemy

I hope you’ll listen carefully
As I lay out the hard truth about my enemy.

He is charming and kind
Attractive and affable
Good-humored and clever
Generous and frugal
Intelligent and wise
Creative and resourceful
Helpful and proactive
Responsible and conscientious
Diligent and successful in his career
A loving and devoted husband and father
A man about whom there are many things to love.

Continue reading What Everyone Should Know About My Enemy

An Arrow Can Only Be Shot…

I’m pondering this meme I found on Facebook:

This thought is not ready for publication. It’s sloppy, and has some flaws that weaken its impact considerably. Let me make some general observations first, and then we’ll look at the stumbling blocks here.

The human brain is designed to notice things and to make sense of them in various ways. One of those ways is that we can notice similarities between things—even if the things we are comparing could also be contrasted in various ways. And we can describe one thing in terms of something else. That’s what the meme attempts to do—to describe the value of being “launched” into great things by way a description of the bow and arrow.

What’s Wrong With It?

  1. “An arrow can only be shot by pulling it backward.” This is simply false, and immediately provides a stumbling block to those who catch the arrow in it. Having trained in archery, I can easily recognize that rather than pulling the bowstring and arrow backward, one could certainly push the bow forward. No, that’s not a common method, but it’s certainly possible. But the author starts with an absolute statement that is not only unnecessary, but is false. Why not say something like, “Before the archer launches the arrow forward, he pulls it backward in the bow”?
  2. “When life is dragging you back with difficulties…”. For what it’s worth, I think it’s much more common to describe life as “getting in the way” rather than as “dragging you back”, so this is clumsy writing here. Sure, the reader can figure out the intent, but an extra mental step is necessary to do so.
  3. “…it means it’s going to launch you into something great”. Let’s check the logic here. Does the author really intend to imply that everyone whose life is difficult gets launched into “something great”? This is an overstatement. The meme over-promises. This will be a stumbling block to the realitan who sees it for what it is. He can still get the author’s point, but not without dealing with the mess the author has made. It’s cognitively distracting, therefore, and is also needless, as a better-written meme would simply avoid such stumbling blocks.
  4. “So just focus and keep aiming.” Huh? Who am I? Am I the bow? Am I the archer? Am I the arrow? Previously, I was informed that I was going to be launched, so that makes it sound like I’m the arrow, and this is a passive ordeal. That is, that “life” (the bow?) will launch me whenever it thinks it’s loaded enough energy into the system by pulling me backward. So if I’m the arrow, and life is the bow (or perhaps the archer and bow together), then how am I supposed to “just focus” and “keep aiming”? Arrows don’t do either one.

All three of the meme’s sentences, then, are messy. The intent is to encourage, but it’s fairly obvious that the author hasn’t thought it through. And so, likely, with the reader who would share it with others. And this is how it goes in our cognitive-miser culture, where we often deal in fuzzy ideas without ever sitting down to sort them out properly to see whether they’re really good ideas or not.

I see problematic memes every day, and often, there’s a single point that needs attention. This one is worse, and it struck me as a fine example of someone having the barre set pretty low for their thinking, while still having the desire to share those thoughts with others.

How A Grown Man

Funny how a grown man
Can be pouting on the inside
So deep down that he will never
Realize it in a hundred grouchy years—
And if you asked him he’d probably
Deny it—clueless soul that he is—
Unless he goes down there
On purpose to find out
For himself what’s
The problem.
And then
After he has
Seen it he can
Cut it out and get
On with the growing
He had grinched himself
Out of —all the time thinking
Himself more mature than that.