Author Archives: David Truss

The paradox of religion

I know people of faith. Good people. Jews, Muslims, Christians. Good people all. Faith can be a good for people, it can anchor them, it can ground them. It can build community and a sense of belonging. But there’s a catch. It’s a big catch: Religion is only helpful to good people. That’s right, religion doesn’t make people good, it fosters the good in already good people.

Meanwhile, religion is used by bad people. Bad priests who prey on believers. Foolish people who take words from ancient texts literally. Weak people who feel hopeless and lost. And sometimes it even takes good people and clouds their judgement, turning their faith into misguided devotion.

When good and smart people who contextualize religious teachings with a morality that anchors them and their faith leave that faith, they do not suddenly become bad people. The religion isn’t a necessary part of being good. But religion is often used to to harm ‘others’; to ostracize and attack those that don’t fit. The crusades, military jihadists, ethnic cleansing, these are examples of how religious beliefs undermine morality as opposed to foster it. Man’s inhumanity against Man has often been driven by faith.

If religions were to suddenly disappear, would there be more or less violence in the world? How many good people would suddenly fall from grace? On the other hand, how many blindly devout and misguided people would suddenly have no need to harm non-believers?

Today, more hate is promoted by religion than love. This is the paradox of religion: Good people will be good without their faith, bad people will not be as bad without scriptures to misinterpret and blindly follow. What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what it does to co-opt the weak, draw them in, and have them blindly follow the misguided religious teachings of men and women who misinterpret old and outdated texts.

Has religion helped some people? Yes. Absolutely. But at what price? How many have died in the name of their or other’s religions? How many continue to die? To hate? To fight? To abuse believers? To impose their beliefs on non-believers? All in the name of God.

Fully missing the point

I saw a post on LinkedIn yesterday that was more like a post you’d see on Facebook. It was essentially a ‘proud’ American saying, ‘This is my Pride flag’ with a picture of an American flag. And while I see no issue with an American being proud of their flag, I think that’s a purposefully insensitive way to express it. The comments were quite literally written from two fractured camps, and included comments that discussed women’s rights and abortion.

Then today there was this LinkedIn story, “TikTok has a new reigning champion. Khaby Lame, a 22-year-old Senegalese-born creator, became the most-followed person on TikTok last night, surpassing American TikTok star Charli D’Amelio”, and the headline was, “World’s most followed person on TikTok, Khaby Lame, is a Hafiz and practicing Muslim.” I’ve seen previous articles emphasizing that he was a factory worker. In both cases there were comments asking why his religion or his poor beginnings mattered?

What I find frustrating to see is how many people miss the point:

You can be proud of a country without intentionally belittling the pride flag. When Charli D’Amelio became the number one person followed on TikTok the storylines did not have the same emphasis as Khaby Lamé’s. I’m not sure if anyone can tell you her faith based on headlines written about her?

But it’s not just the headlines, it’s all the people that are in the comment section who also miss the point. That’s what concerns me. The headlines are a problem, but so too is the fact that so many people not only don’t see the problem with the headlines but actually support them.

Headlines matter, and when they miss the point, so do many that read the message.

Resonance

Strum a guitar near another guitar and the second guitar’s strings start to vibrate.

Jim Rohn says that ‘you are the average of the five friends you hang around with’. This resonates with me. This resonates like the guitar.

Even these words combine to resonate as you read them, some with understanding, some with agreement, some with doubt, some with disagreement… Once read, the words resonate.

What do you do when you come across someone that doesn’t resonate? Do you pluck your own strings harder, louder, so that you drown out the sound the other is creating? Do you try to hear what they resonate with? Do you try to find a way to mutually resonate? Do you leave them be?

We can strive to resonate, or we can choose dissonance. Consensus or conflict. We can create music or noise.

I know that I want to positively resonate with others, but I also find myself seeking dissonance and distance, from those that do not resonate with me. Dissonance when others resonate with hate, and harm others. Distance to showboating, antagonists, and stupidity.

Resonance, dissonance, and distance. There is a time and place for all three… but what I seek, what fills my heart is finding ways to resonate with family, friends, and those that I can assist and support. Seeking resonance fills me with harmony and gratitude, and I’m grateful for all the wonderful people that want to resonate with me.

Nothing and Everything

The earth has been around for 4.55 billion years. Homo sapiens for about 200,000 years.

200,000/4,550,000,000 *100= 0.0043956043956

Humans have only been on earth for 0.0044% of the earth’s history. Or if you look at the age of the one universe, 13.78 billion years, humans have only existed for 0.00144% of all time.

For a little more perspective, a single 100 year life is lived for only 0.00000073% of all time. Insignificant. Our lives are not even a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of the universe. Nothing.

Yet for us, it’s everything. It’s all we know. It’s all we have. It’s no wonder people want to believe in an afterlife… why, there simply has to be more… or so the thinking goes. But regardless of your beliefs, this life is unlikely to go past 100 years. Life is so short and fleeting. This begs the questions:

Are you passing time, or are you experiencing it?

Are you completing tasks or creating memories?

Are you treating life like it is nothing, or do you realize that, for you, it is everything?

If I forget

I have a friend who knows everybody. I’m at a loss to remember the last time I was out with him and we didn’t see someone he knew. Doesn’t matter the city or even country we have been together in: San Diego, Cancun, Philadelphia, and local cities in BC. He likely has 3,000 plus people in his phone contacts, and could probably tell you something personal about 2,500 of them, and easily tell you how he knows the other 500. He doesn’t just add them to a pool of people he sort of knows, he can name them.

I’m not like that. I’m way too much of an introvert, and my memory issue with proper nouns makes it such that if I am at a social event and meet more than 2 people, it’s unlikely I’ll remember their names. It’s hard to remember thousands of names when you can’t remember the names of people you already know. I had an issue yesterday where I was with friends and bumped into someone I have known for a few years, and have had several exchanges online with, including 3 days ago, and I couldn’t introduce them. I had to go to a Microsoft Teams conversation to pull his name up.

The weird thing is, if I don’t see him for a couple months and bump into him again in an unexpected place, and especially if I have the added stress of having to introduce him, it’s likely that once again I won’t be able to retrieve his name. This is one of the few areas in my life where I actually feel anxious. I will even forget the names of the people I’m with when it’s time for an introduction.

The most panicked I’ve ever been in my life was when I was a vice principal and at a ‘meet the parent’ night the principal unexpectedly said to the audience, “And now Mr. Truss will introduce the staff.” I made it through but when one of the teachers I knew best was about 3 introductions away, I was completely drawing a blank and I actually started to sweat. When we were done I told him, “Never do that to me again!” and he was taken aback by my response. He and I did a lot of sharing things out and it wasn’t unusual for him to throw me a task like that, so he had no idea of the terror he put me through.

So if we meet and I don’t know your name, it doesn’t mean I don’t know you. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care enough to know your name, it doesn’t mean I didn’t try. If you give me directions and I ask you to remind me where a main/major street is, even if I travel on it regularly, know that I’m not being lazy, I’m actually in an anxious state where my brain is on overdrive, and the name or your name is not retrievable from my memory bank.

If I forget, please be kind and remind me.

Routine woes

It’s the last day of school for teachers, and although I will be in next week I’ve already started to alter my early morning schedule. No workout this morning and the latest I’ve written for this blog on a school day since I started writing daily in the summer of 2019.

This is a bit of a wake up call for me. My pattern for workouts and meditation start to fall apart in the summer when I break my work routine. I don’t want that to happen (again) this summer so I’m going to need to build in a regular routine that works. I used to think routines were boring, now I realize they help me get stuff done.

One routine I broke this year is archery. I haven’t shot arrows in a couple months. I haven’t been upset about it, I let it go because everything felt overwhelming and I decided writing, fitness, and meditation were more important. I hope to build archery back into my summer routine… I just need to figure out what that routine will look like.

I’ve got one more week to figure it out.

Over tired

I crashed and burned when I got home yesterday. Just felt wiped out. Slept for a couple hours on the couch and now it’s after midnight and I can’t sleep.

Two more school days, then another week to clean up and prep for next year. Then my holidays begin. Until then, I need to keep a better pattern of sleep.

I’ve done a lot to take care of myself the last few years and sleep needs to be the next thing I figure out. I used to live easily on 5-6 hours sleep but I need more now, and I’m not getting it. I need to figure out a sleep pattern that is healthy and works for me. And that should start with me not looking at my screen so late… and on that note, it’s time to get some shut-eye!

On bias… continued

I wrote about measuring bias yesterday. This comment by Joe Truss (my uncle) adds a lot to the conversation:

To add to the importance of Dave’s comment: a critical aspect of bias is the effect our local environment and context have on our opinions about what is happening in the world at large. People are very poor natural statisticians. When confronted with two similar events we begin to think ‘this is how it is for everyone’. An even deeper ‘local’ event is when we are upset or depressed, the entire world seems to be in line with our feelings. When we feel bad, the world seems bad. 

See: https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?language=en

https://www.gapminder.org
Take the awareness test on this link. ;-)}

Take the awareness test. I started guessing correctly not because I expected the result I was guessing, but because I was expecting the result to surprise me. We really aren’t good at estimating statistics and we make so much of the very little data we do know… and this shapes our bias… poorly.

Measuring bias

It’s not easy to see your own biases, and it’s really easy to see others. This in itself is a bias we all hold; This prevents us from measuring bias without bias.

And so, when we hold an ideology, it’s very hard for that ideology to be changed from the outside. A simple conversation won’t do it. It often takes a profound experience. The difference in scale needs to be large, or our own biases prevent us from making the leap.

It’s hard to measure how much our own biases change the way we look at the world, but if you think you see the world as it really is… well then it’s time to look deeply at that bias.

Hot topics and doing your own research

Hot topics

It’s hard to write daily and not touch on hot topics. But I also know that it’s hard to discuss hot topics without being misunderstood or offending people either by intentionally being one-sided or accidentally by making unclear or poor analogies and comparisons. I wrote a whole post today on one such topic then I read and participated in a private conversation with my sisters and deleted the whole post. I didn’t save it to my drafts for later, I deleted it.

There are too many people already writing polarized views on hot topics, completely missing the point that ideas fall on a continuum, on a spectrum. I realize that I’m not knowledgeable enough to share my polarized view. I will upset people, and I will not change any minds… that’s not a good outcome that accomplishes anything.

This is a time for many to speak up, and it makes me feel like I should too. Then I try and realize my voice is the wrong voice. I wish a few more people would think the same way. We have entered a social media culture that says everyone has a voice, and there is a flood of voices not worth listening to.

Do your own research

The solution often given to so many voices sharing information is to ‘do your own research’. What a bunch of bullshit that is… ridiculous advice to solve a problem in an era where anyone can find the information they are looking for to support their already established views. Doing your own research suggests you have the background in doing research, it suggests you can read a scientific paper and understand and meaningfully interpret the data… in a field you probably know very little about.

Yes you can share your opinion, No it doesn’t hold more water than another opinion because you spent 20 minutes or even 2 hours researching it on the internet. Most serious issues are far more complex and nuanced than that. I’m not saying to not do research, however I am saying that you might find research that only supports your bias, and that research may not be interpreted properly by you or the so-called experts you choose to listen to.

It’s extremely unlikely that a blog post from a non-expert is going to change minds unless it’s intentionally deceptive or already leaning in the polarized direction you were considering. So I won’t throw my opinion out into any current polarized arguments right now. I probably will at some point if I’m writing every day, but for now I think I just need to shut up with respect to hot topics. Being vocal might make me feel good but my voice will contribute nothing new, nothing profoundly insightful. It will be nothing but another angry voice screaming on the internet. I haven’t done enough real research to believe I have anything of value to add.