This morning Lucy and I were talking about people's reponses to hierarchy. We were wondering about why people would be pleased about the way the US is perceived now versus prior to 9/11 and the subsequent wars. I, and all of the people I know, are relatively horrified that the US is perceived as an aggressive superpower out to dominate world affairs, but a lot of people must enjoy that perception, given their support of President Bush. I thought about it a bit and it reminded me of a department chair I knew -- let's call him Jack. Jack had been a faculty member for many years and eventually became chair of his department. I remember one time, Jack was wearing a suitcoat and tie and he confided to me that he was doing that for the Dean. "The Dean likes it when you wear a coat and tie," he said. Another time, he confided to me that the Dean had chewed him out for something -- called him on the carpet and dressed him down. I was suprised because he seemed cheerful about it -- almost fey. Eventually he said something that caused the pieces to fall into place for me. "Faculty," he said, "think of the chairman as their representative to the administration, but that's not really true. The chairman is really an administrator who pretends to be a faculty member." Jack had worked for a number of years in industry before finishing a PhD and joining the faculty. I came to realize that, as a faculty member, he missed feeling like he was part of a hierarchy. He enjoyed the feeling of having someone who was clearly above him to validate his own position. I think a lot of people are like that. They aren't satisfied unless they know who the boss is. And who they can exert their authority over. Jack never seemed to have much need to do that, but, returning to the international theme, I get the feeling that a lot of people like the idea of the rest of the world cowering in fear of a resurgent US. And that's why they like Bush. Sigh...
Phil linked to Theodora Goss's journal who I see wrestling with perceptions of nature and man's relationship to the earth. As a young man, I came to treasure natural beauty and wildlife. I found great peace in visiting natural features, walking beside waterfalls, and wandering through canyons. I reveled in secret knowledge: recognizing the maidenhair fern, identifying the outcrop of limestone by the adjacent white cedars, knowing where to turn rocks and catch brilliant long-tailed salamanders, with herringbone patterns on their tails. Similarly, I experienced a horror at seeing factories, brownfields, and industrial wastelands. I remember being shocked by Raku pottery: why would someone want a bent, lumpy tea cup when a machine could make you a nice, shiny, perfect one. At some point I realized that these responses are just that: responses. It is an internal experience to feel pleasure or horror in response to external stimuli. I came to see my earlier reponses being like a raven attracted to shiny baubles. These realizations were capped for me by a canoe trip down the Kalamazoo river, in which not only was there profound natural beauty: great blue herons lifting into flight and soft-shelled turtles snatching a breath of air, but also oil slicks from the old roundhouse and smells of raw sewage near the paper mills. Drifting by a dead factory, watching the dust settle in the sun shining through the broken windows, I realized I could find peace and harmony even in a dead, blasted landscape (or in the WabiSabi of a wiki). This has worried me, because, if that's really true, why do we need beautiful natural areas?
The answer is that we don't. We do need to (minimally) preserve biological and ecological diversity. We need to preserve functional landscapes. But I still worry that without shiny baubles to attact the crows and ravens, the effort won't be very successful.
I spent most of the day working on an updated version of BugHunt. A fellow at Western has been trying to get me to build a new version using artwork he commissioned to create a simulation of Kettlewell's classic experiments. I was happy to do it (though its only been in the past few days that the new Carbonized version of SuperCard was reliable enough to do any real work). It was rather horrifying to go back and touch code I hadn't looked at in 8 years. It was also horrifying to work with indexed color pict images again. I still feel like I need to go wash my hands or take a shower or something. But I got a version working and sent it off to the fellow to see what he thinks. Supercard apps are carbonized now and feel just like MacOS X apps! It's great! My real question is how he's going to use the simulation for teaching. You see, Kettlewell's experiments have been pretty widely discredited. This paper provides a benignly scientific view of the controversy, but others have a more shrill and rabid tone. The simulation could be used as a nice introduction to evolutionary models and a jumping off point into exploring the realities and complexities of evolutionary systems. I sure hope he's planning to do something like that and isn't surprised by the issues.