Monthly Archives: October 2014
Cars in the Kingdom
If you imagine news footage of the average smoldering civil war in Africa or central Asia, you will see a bunch of guys with guns riding around in the back of a pickup. In Oklahoma we just called that “Saturday”, but that’s a different topic. The ubiquitous white four door pickup that has transported so many revolutionaries is the Toyota Hilux. It has such a reputation for durability, the brilliant team from BBC’s Top Gear tried to destroy one, and couldn’t. Search for “top gear killing a toyota” on YouTube and you’ll see the results. No television show or puppet government can stop this little truck.
The problem in the magic Kingdom is that I can’t buy one. It’s not the limitation of sharia law that argues against the inherent evils of charging interest; the banks have found ways around that (they always win, right?). Maybe they assume we can’t start a revolution if we don’t have any pickups. The barrier is that they are classified as commercial vehicles and regular citizens (or immigrant hired help like myself) can’t buy one. Along the same lines, you have to prove you have a family before buying an SUV. I wonder if you have to have 2 wives to get one with a third row seat…
Traffic rules here are easy to learn. The lines on the road are just decorations, don’t pay them any mind. Similarly, traffic lights are just suggestions, you really can drive through an intersection whenever you feel you can get away with it. The mass of cars juggle for position like a herd of camels trying to squeeze through a gate. Honking is random; I’m not sure if it means “the light has been green for 12 milliseconds, GO!”, “excuse me, coming through”, “go ahead, I’ll let you change lanes” or just “Listen to me honk. HONK! HONK! HONK!” In the next month or two I hope to update you with more on buying a car and driving in a very foreign land. Most likely followed with a post on what it’s like to have a fender-bender in said foreign land. Stay tuned!
The Calculus of Philosophy (or “I need to get out more”)
Fair warning- this post is going to be tagged “#unrelated topics”. And it gets really geeky. You’ve been warned.
When thinking about an ethical or philosophical issue, a fun exercise is to take your position to its ridiculous extreme and see if it still sounds reasonable, or is left gasping for air like the flabby rationalization it really is. Speaking of ridiculous, I just used “fun”, “exercise”, and “philosophical” in the same sentence. Those three words may never intersect again, and I’m just glad I got to be part of it.
Anyway, if something claims to be Truth, it should always be true no matter how you push, pull or twist it. One of the principles of calculus (which never ever lies) is that if you want to really define an equation, you see what it does as it approaches infinity. Interesting that mathematicians, not philosophers, realized that we can never reach infinity, but we can imagine what happens as we approach it. What is true right here and right now should be true in the most extreme of circumstances.
To apply this theory, imagine the competing truths or ideals we all juggle. Family, fatigue, faith, career, all combining in complicated permutations. For the sake of this experiment, let’s remove a few variables from the equation. Oh I don’t know, for demonstration’s sake remove family, cable TV, a car, outdoor activities, and bacon. You are left with career, faith, and… Well, that’s about it. What is the “truth” of career when it is put in such a prime position? How does it look as work approaches infinity?
Before you pound the keyboard and declare that work is evil and must be scoured from this earth, reverse the exercise. Remove career from the equation, and you have a not-so-pretty image of someone sitting on their couch watching televangelists, eating bacon, surrounded by 12 dirty children. I would assume a car is back in the picture as well, but it’s on blocks in the front yard.
Now the solution to this problem is that there must be an equilibrium; some point on the chart where the values of career and family and everything else can be in the correct proportion. This is when most people would say “Well Duh!”. During medical school we were constantly told to keep our lives balanced; in residency and then in our jobs, at church and in our neighborhoods, everyone repeats the mantra of finding balance. Our little math derivation has proven this to be true. But why didn’t anyone tell us how to find that balance? Now that we know there’s a formula, what is it?!? I think they don’t tell us because nobody really, truly knows. We are all missing the target in our unique way, filling out the scatter plot of life. Maybe we are supposed to make the most of what we have, and look with faith towards infinity. That’s where the truth will be.
Stones in the Road 