[Yesterday: 3.5 miles]<\/p>\n
So we are coming up to Christmas again and I’m back in the traditional Facebook argument with my cousin about the supposed pagan meanings of Christmas.<\/p>\n
I probably shouldn’t get into it again with him.\u00a0 But it does help me think through some things.\u00a0 This year I’m thinking about information and conscience.<\/p>\n
So, he tells me that putting up a Christmas tree is a reference to an ancient pagan worship practice.\u00a0 I assume he is right that pagans did this, it doesn’t really matter.\u00a0 What matters is, by imparting to me that information he removes my ignorance and my innocence.\u00a0 The rightness or wrongness of the information doesn’t matter, but my reception of it does.\u00a0 (I should say, the right\/wrong of the information doesn’t change the shift of burden from him to me.)<\/p>\n
Our society is going through a period of “outing” famous men for being sexually crass.\u00a0 I’m not going to comment on that, but just say that your favorite entertainer, artist, commentator is outed.\u00a0 It can change your attitude about their work and the enjoyment you had before is not the same now.\u00a0 A case in point:\u00a0 Bill Cosby.\u00a0 What was seen as a wholesome TV show is forever tainted because now everyone knows that Bill Cosby did some bad stuff.<\/p>\n
Is it better to know or not to know?<\/p>\n
I’ve been mostly a not-know guy and I’ll probably continue in that vein.\u00a0 My wife gives me a bit of a hard time about this, for keeping my head in the sand. I suspect I do it for my own self preservation and I’ve missed the opportunity to help people who needed help.<\/p>\n
Here’s my defense:\u00a0 by assuming that someone is innocent it helps me to have an innocent attitude toward them.\u00a0 Neither they nor I are improved by my knowing their intimate faults, unless there is some assistance I should be giving.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, having an untruthful conception about someone is counter-factual, living in denial, not where I should want to be.<\/p>\n
It’s an interesting question.<\/p>\n
And, back to the Christmas thing, the impartation of information can have this moral dimension:\u00a0 step on a crack, break your mother’s back.\u00a0 Ok, if I internalize that information it changes the way I walk.\u00a0 I’m going to step on all of the cracks to fight empty superstition \/ I’m going to not step on a crack because I love my mother \/ I’m going to ignore that stupid saying and step wherever my foot goes.\u00a0 It’s a weight of information (hopefully not too heavy in the “step on a crack” case) that is transferred from one person to another.\u00a0 So now I think about Christmas trees in a different way. I don’t think it has improved my life to know this.<\/p>\n
Is ignorance\/innocence something to be valued?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Yesterday: 3.5 miles] So we are coming up to Christmas again and I’m back in the traditional Facebook argument with my cousin about the supposed pagan meanings of Christmas. I probably shouldn’t get into it again with him.\u00a0 But it does help me think through some things.\u00a0 This year I’m thinking about information and conscience. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6114,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6112\/revisions\/6114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}