Author Archives: David Truss

Bad arguments

First of all, let me get a couple things out in the open.

1. Yes, I’m getting the vaccine. Vaccines are a proven technology that saves lives.

2. And yes, I’m pro-choice. Women have a right to choose if they want to bring a life into the world or not, and religious beliefs shouldn’t be imposed on others that do not have those beliefs. (Ie, if your religion tells you differently, you can choose to follow those beliefs.)

Given these points, I think there are people that agree with me, who are choosing bad arguments to justify these points.

Bad argument #1: “I don’t care what’s in that vaccine, I’d do anything to get out of these lockdowns.”

This argument takes all the science and care people have done to study the vaccine and ensure it is safe and lumps it into a category of, “Anything is better than this.” With the word ‘anything’ including all kinds of fear and misinformation about what could happen after taking the vaccine. This argument says nothing of the efficacy of this vaccine, or any vaccine. This doesn’t focus on how many millions of flu vaccines have been taken yearly for decades, and the lack of any statistically harmful effects, juxtaposed to how many people die from flus each year… or how many people have already died, and will continue to die, or have lifelong adverse effects from covid-19.

Bad argument #2: “If you really are pro-life, then why are you against social programs that would support single moms, and why aren’t you willing to adopt a child that a mother isn’t ready or able to raise?”

This argument suggests there could be a perfect world, where every expectant mother could have choices to have the baby, and thus not need the choice to not have it. Absolutely, there should be better social programs to give expectant mothers more choice when faced with an unwanted child. But the idea that if those external choices are all there, the mother will then no longer have a choice to not have the child… this is no longer a pro-choice argument.

Both of these arguments are examples of taking positions unhelpful towards making a valid intended point or choice. Both do not convince anyone with opposing views that they should change their minds. They are bad arguments that do not help support the very points they are making.

Want to argue with someone that disagrees with you? Start with a valid argument that actually supports what you are saying.

I understand, but I don’t

I understand that atoms are made up mostly of empty space, but I don’t understand how solids can feel solid when they are made up of atoms that are mostly just empty space?

I understand that we are all made of stardust, but I don’t understand how every atom that I’m made of has come from different parts of the universe?

I understand that our cells don’t live longer than 10 years, and that every cell that I was born with has been replaced at least 5 times, but I don’t understand how that’s possible and I’m still me?

I understand that the more I learn, the more there is to marvel at, and the more that I don’t really understand.

Potential Humanity

We live in an era of incredible potential. And yet when I opened my news feed this morning this is what I saw:

A misogynist Op-Ed that was clearly written with malice.

A racist group causing harm and violence.

An extremist left group doing the same.

An anti-mask gym owner saying he’ll continue to pay fines to keep his gym open.

A politician calling covid a ‘hoax pandemic’.

The largest iceberg ever, that broke off in 2017 thanks to global warming, is heading to islands likely to cause an ecological disaster.

Crazy.

When I think of the potential of humanity, I think of benevolence, creativity, generosity, love, and kindness.

When I open the news I see hate and ignorance. Today these stupid headlines came (except for the iceberg) from the country south of our borders. A country that’s supposed to be about equal opportunity, liberty, and justice. A country divided into two camps so opposed to the other side that they see the other as enemies more than neighbours (or I should say neighbors).

What does it mean to be human? What potential do we have as a species? What could we accomplish if we work together? What kind of world would we live in if we focused on what’s possible?

We can be better as a species. We can be peaceful. We can be kind. We can be loving. We can be more human.

Charge your batteries

I went for a walk this morning. Met two friends and we had a social distance walk. We chatted about work to the halfway point then I instituted a push-up rule on the way back: first person to talk shop does 5, next one 10… etc. One buddy did 5, I did 10, and we talked about family and favourite movies and series the rest of the time. First face to face connection with anyone outside my family in weeks.

Came home and showered and went for another walk with my wife. Just did my meditation and cleared my mind some more.

Beyond that I had more than 5hrs sleep last night for the first time in a week, as it seems my insomnia is lifting. Even with the lack of sleep through the last week, Friday at work was incredibly productive. I haven’t had a day with so many things checked off my ‘to do’ list in months.

And now I’m m listening to one of my new favourite songs on repeat, created by one of our students at Inquiry Hub. I find that a single song on repeat helps me write. Usually I pick one without lyrics, but this one works for me.

Even though I missed my workouts Wednesday and Friday from shear exhaustion from insomnia, I still made my 5-a-week minimum. And, I can feel that my period of maintenance is ending and I’m ready for another push. I’m a year and a half behind my goal to do a one-minute unsupported handstand… maybe that’s my goal again after finally feeling fully recovered from a shoulder injury.

Traditionally this weekend is a wipeout. I’m exhausted and the Christmas break can’t come fast enough. I already have at least 55 hours of work scheduled next week with after school meetings booked, and I can’t think too much about the break because it is still far away. So I won’t think about that.

Instead I’ll think about my batteries feeling charged. I’ll do a chore I had put off until the holidays, and get that out of the way now. I’ll write some more… and hopefully sleep for a solid 7 hours tonight. Despite feeling fully charged, I’m going to keep myself metaphorically plugged in, while I feel the power surging in.

Insomnia strikes again

I tried exercising before bed yesterday to help combat it. Found myself eating an hour later and still up well past midnight.

I don’t know what’s different right now? I can see the holidays ahead. I feel things are going as well as can be at home and work. I am feeling fit. I see positive news about a vaccine coming months sooner than I would have predicted. So what’s keeping me up?

I wouldn’t mind so much if it was creative time, but it isn’t. It’s unproductive time that I can’t concentrate on anything I would really want to do with more awake time. And it makes me feel more unproductive during the rest of the day, when I feel not tired, but slow.

Meditation is all but useless because I can’t stop my mind from racing long enough to actually meditate. I’m scattered and not doing more than putting myself through the (attempted mental) motions. My mind is too noisy to be still. Too restless to be useful. Too sleep deprived to be productive.

Reading this, I make it sound a lot worse than it is. I’m still functioning well enough that I can get things done. I feel like a six cylinder engine running on four cylinders… Still running, still capable of getting me where I need to go… just not at full capacity.

I think I’ll really try and stay away from my phone and laptop this weekend, other than listening to a novel. I think I need to stop distracting my distracted and sleep deprived mind with a screen. But even as I say this, I know it will be tough because I don’t enjoy it when my insomnia brain has nothing to be distracted by, but it can’t be productive.

Meanwhile, it’s still Friday and I need to focus on a good day at work ahead. I’ll exercise earlier than last night (couldn’t wake up early enough for my morning routine)… and hopefully early to sleep tonight.

Failure is a frame of mind, not an outcome

I’ve written a lot about learning and failure. In a post titled, Learning Through Failure vs Failing to Learn, I said,

“When we talk about learning from failure, we are not actually talking about failure, we are talking about perseverance, and resilience, and tenacity. We are talking about coming up to resistance and unplanned outcomes and working through them to achieve a goal. We are talking about students learning significantly more than if everything went their way.“

Listening to many students at Inquiry Hub, you hear them talk about this in an amazing way. They share the very ethos behind this idea:

For anyone that didn’t bother to watch these two short clips, here is what Thia said in the second one,

“Inquiry projects aren’t about always being successful. It’s about trying something new, learning new skills, creating something. It isn’t always about being the best at it, or succeeding in it. You might have a failed inquiry, and that’s completely ok. It doesn’t always have to be a success for it to be a good quality project. It’s all about the process.”

What’s interesting is that if you don’t understand this idea, it sounds like accepting failure is ‘OK’. If you don’t recognize that students are talking about putting themselves ‘out there’ and trying something beyond their comfort zone, then it sounds like they are giving themselves a participation badge for just showing up. But if you truly understand and embrace the idea of learning through failure, you aren’t talking about failure at all.

Elon Musk just had a rocket explode upon landing and called it a success because of the data they collected.


I’m sure there are people who get this. I’m also sure there are people who laugh, “Ha, you call that a success? What a loser.”

A real loser is one who doesn’t try. A real loser is one who gets an outcome they don’t want and quits. A real loser is someone that makes excuses rather than steps up to make things right.

People who do epic things, and people who try epic things and don’t succeed, understand that failure is a frame of mind, not an outcome. They understand that learning is a journey, not a destination.

Stop pig wrestling

Like my Papa used to say, “Never wrestle a pig, you both get dirty but the big likes it.”

I’ve shared that quote before and also said, ‘Bad ideas get unwarranted publicity when the battles get messy… and the weak-minded get fuel to oppose good ideas when those with the good ideas act in bad faith. You do not have to ‘turn the other cheek’ but you do have to act in a way that is decent and good, if you want to fight for things that are decent and good.‘

Recently, across many social media platforms, I’ve seen people using the strategy of sharing hurtful, mean, and ignorant comments from internet trolls, and doing one of two things: 1. Calling out the person for being mean (or essentially saying ‘ouch’ or ‘look at this idiot’). Or, 2. Sharing it to launch an attack.

While I get why, and understand that sharing like this can garner sympathy, or feel like a way to vindicate yourself, or attack the attacker… this is a bad idea! It’s pig wrestling.

These people aren’t worth your time. They don’t deserve you, or those who follow you on these platforms, as an audience. Don’t surrender your time and energy to them. They. Aren’t. Worth. It!

Delete the comment, block the idiot.

Let me say that again: You get a rude/mean/nasty comment on a social media post, so what do you do?

1. DELETE 2. BLOCK.

… and move on. They don’t deserve your time; they don’t deserve your attention; they don’t deserve your mental energy. So why give it to them? Why allow them more time in your thoughts than they deserve?

They are pigs. Don’t let them get you dirty just because they like to get dirty. And hey, I get that it’s hard to turn the other cheek sometimes, and if they threaten you in some way, then sure, take it seriously. But most internet trolls are playing a game, they are purposefully trying to engage and enrage you. To steal your time and attention, and to hurt your feelings. The act of mud wrestling with these losers helps them win.

You want to strike back at these mean people making mean comments? Diffuse their energy by not giving them any of yours: Delete. Block. And move on to spend time and energy on people that are better than them.

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Addendum: I’m not suggesting you delete and block people just because they disagree with you, this is only about comments with malice intent. We don’t learn from them but we can learn from people who disagree with us.

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I wrote this a decade ago:

I remember watching The Razor’s Edge years ago. Bill Murray plays Larry Darrell a taxi driver ‘in search of himself’ who at one point serves as an ambulance driver in World War II. His partner/co-attendant Piedmont is a sour man that is bitter and unpleasant.

If memory serves me correctly there are also two wonderfully optimistic, volunteer, British ambulance drivers that work with Larry and Piedmont. In a scene, these two happy-go-lucky ambulance attendants have engine trouble as they attempt to bring injured soldiers to safety while under fire. Stalled, the Brits attempt to repair their ambulance while enemy fire pinpoints their stationary location. Bombs get closer and closer until they blow up the ambulance, killing these two men. Larry is distraught and the bitter Piedmont says a few kind words about how nice these two were and then says, to Larry’s disgust, “They will be forgotten.”

Later, Piedmont is killed (I don’t remember how), and in a monologue Larry talks of this unruly, unkind and cantankerous man and then says, “He will be remembered.”

I was still a teenager when I saw this movie but it has a powerful lasting affect on me. I realized then and there that we tend to pay far more attention to people and things that are negative and annoy us than on the things we should be happy and appreciative about. I’d like to think that this is learned and not human nature. We don’t have to focus on the negative, and we are better people when we don’t.

Shifting Dreams

I’ve already shared that I almost never dream of people that are currently in my life, dreams for me usually include people I have not seen in a while. That has shifted a bit recently. So has the number of dreams I seem to recall. I am waking up regularly during the night with a full dream in my head.

They are ridiculous. One of them last night included me being a twin double agent that was subjected to a life-altering test administered by a rogue lizard-man. This beast was an escaped prisoner that we were not allowed to catch, and when we found him we just had to surrender to being hit with spray from a water gun that had dangerous chemicals in it.

Another dream last night turned into a covid dream… I went to visit the archery range, without my bow, and one of the volunteers talked me into shooting guns with them since archery was cancelled. He loaned me a gun, had me sign a waiver (that I didn’t have to read) then took me to a signup building that ended up being an indoor shooting range. Only after being packed into this thing with dozens of people did I realize that I was in a crowded room of anti-maskers, with a sick kid coughing next to me. Stressful. And bizarrely stupid.

When I was in university, I went through a phase of really vivid dreams and I trained myself to make them lucid. The trick was to realize I was dreaming and raise my hand in front of my face. Once I could do this, I realized in my dream that I had the power to choose what I did in the dream. The first couple times I did this, I got too excited about it and woke up.

The third and subsequent times I was able to stay dreaming and I would choose to fly. The sensation was exhilarating and absolutely amazing. I loved it. The only two times I had sensations stronger than the sense of flying in a dream were when I woke up once before my body did and I was comatose, trapped in a disconnected body, this was horrifying. The second was when I met the Messiah in a dream and felt compassion that was so intense, it brought so much love and joy to me, that I crumbled to my knees. One day I’ll share that dream, but not today.

I think I’m at a phase of dreaming where I could get back to lucid dreaming. I think I’m going to go to bed reminding myself to look at my hand and then take control of my dreams. I want to shift from dreams that are silly and stressful to ones where I can enjoy sensations that I can’t in real life. I want to fly again.

Stretching my back and my mind

Stretching my body has always been a chore. I find the discomfort of stretching tight muscles painful rather than uncomfortable. But I need to do it. I was 4’11 at the end of Grade 9, and grew to 5’6½” at the end of Grade 10. That growth spurt included a torque in my back that left me with mild scoliosis and back issues that persist to this day. Add hamstrings that are tighter than a piano wire and I’m a walking corpse with rigor mortis set in, when I don’t take the time to stretch.

But I hate the feeling of stretching.

My challenge now is to stretch my mind before my body. I need to re-evaluate how I think about stretching. I need it to be part of my routine, rather than feeling like an add-on that I don’t want to do.

Both stretching my mind and my body in this area feels unnatural. Just saying that tells you I’m failing at stretching my mind. I realize there is a knowing and doing gap here, but telling myself this doesn’t seem to help.

I wonder what mental roadblocks other people have that are similar? Is there something you do that you know is bad for you, or don’t do and know that you should? Where do you need to stretch?

And if you made that stretch… what’s your secret?

Humanity – versus – Reality

I saw a video a few days ago of hundreds of unmasked protesters, packed together in a square in the United Kingdom, singing ‘Stick your poison vaccines up your ass’ to the tune of ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes’. I wanted to write about it sooner, but I could only come from an angle of anger and disgust. It would have been a good rant, that would probably have made me feel better, but I’m done ranting with the purpose of making myself feel better. I’ve been seeking out joy, determination, fun facts, and when dealing with our current situation, humour, as sort of coping mechanisms for dealing with the discord that seems to be pervasive right now.

There is an epic battle going on. It is a battle on many battle grounds. It is a battle happening across the world. It is a battle that pits humanity against reality. Here are six of the battlegrounds:

  1. The Covid-19 Pandemic: Many people are dying – versus – Protests against the preventions and lockdowns to prevent the spread.
  2. Vaccines: They save lives – versus – They are dangerous (or they will be used to monitor and track us).
  3. Climate change: It’s the greatest threat we face as a species – versus – It’s a hoax.
  4. Science: Seeking objective facts – versus – un-objective and agenda-driven propaganda.
  5. Freedom: Government are here to serve and protect us – versus – Governments are corrupt and stripping away our freedoms in an attempt to control us.
  6. Civil liberties: Issues like racism, gender identity, pro-choice, freedom of expression – versus – Religious values, as well as both right-wing (QAnon) and left-wing (Antifa extremists) using hateful tactics to argue their points.

I purposely didn’t use the word ‘Truth’ before now. I believe that we are living in a post-Truth era (with an intentional capital ‘T’).  I’ll leave you with Stuart McMillan’s webcomic about Neil Postman’s book, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. I recently listened to both 1984 and Brave New World back-to-back. I was struck by the contrast between a world run based on fear – versus – one run based on pleasure. I think that things are so messed up right now that we are stuck in a dystopian novel where both worlds exist simultaneously. Many people live in constant fear based on ‘facts’ that are cherry-picked, on half-truths, and even made up completely. Many more are living in a social media based alternate reality where their truths are based on a ‘news’ feed designed to entertain with a confusing mix of facts and fiction.

I don’t know how so many people could be naive enough to believe that the world is flat and other ridiculous conspiracies; That vaccines will be used to monitor you; That so many people can confuse mask use with being a sheep; Or that so many people can believe one group’s fight for rights undermines their own rights? Yet, across the globe, millions of people are so sure they are right, that protests and propaganda based on ignorance are now commonplace.

We are living in an era where humanity has no grasp on reality. Fiction and fact are interchangeable. ‘T’ruth is subjective. And a common, collective plan for peace and prosperity seems further away than any worlds that Huxley or Orwell could fabricate.