Morals and markets and outlandish CEO pay

Markets and morality: a tale of two uproars - reaction to the 2008 financial upheaval. Reuters photo

One of the searing issues in society is that of the pay difference between those in management and the "ordinary worker", especially the pay gap between chief executives and workers. On Twitter this week the US figures were again highlighted with tweets discussing data that CEO pay growth from 1979-2019 was 1167%, whereas worker pay growth from 1979-2019 was 13.7%. These US figures came out last year in a report by the Economic Policy Institute. 

The global picture was given publicity in 2014  with the examination of attitudes in 16 countries to this matter. One of the glaring findings was that people do not realise what the gap in pay levels is within a typical company. For example, the study found that Americans thought the pay gap was in the order of 30:1; in fact, it was 350:1 (using 2012 statistics). That ignorance, the researchers said, probably allowed CEO pay to broadly remain unchallenged. 

Business observers often cite self-interest and greed, not productivity or profitability, as the reasons for the lack of consideration of other stakeholders in the company, such as workers, especially at the production level overseas. One commentator on these statistics stated that their positions of power allowed that the business leaders' immorality to flourish: 

The reasons for this power are are many, including the fact that CEOs serve on each other’s corporate boards and are generous to each other. They pay the fees of corporate compensation consultants, who typically recommend generous raises, studies show. They pay the fees of board directors, who were paid an average of $255,000 in 2014 at the top 500 companies, which had increased 50 percent since 2006, a Boston Globe analysis found, and which has probably increased significantly since then. And the board members who earn these fees for a few hours work per week are, in turn, generous to the executives who pay them.

In short, its about insider power, not payment for skills. “CEO compensation could be reduced across the board and the economy would not suffer any loss of output,” the report notes.

As to the what many see is the failure of the players in business - as in society in general -to maintain a moral sense, Jonathan Sacks, in his 2020 book*, urges everyone to rethink neglect of behaviours that respect the common good:

There is no question that the behaviour of banks, other financial institutions and CEOs of major corporations has generated much anger at the most visceral level. After all, gut instinct is what drives our feelings of justice as fairness. But that behaviour is the logical consequence of the individualism that has been our substitute for morality since the 1960s: the ‘I’ that takes precedence over the ‘We’. How could we reject the claims of traditional morality in every other sphere of life and yet expect them to prevail in the heat of the marketplace? Was that not the point of the famous speech delivered by the actor Michael Douglas in the film Wall Street that ‘Greed – for lack of a better word – is good’? Greed ‘captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit’, he said: it marks ‘the upward surge of mankind’.

Markets don't distribute rewards fairly

 In a world where the market rules and its operation is driven by greed, people come to believe that their worth is measured by what you earn or can afford and not by qualities of character like honesty, integrity and service to others. Politics itself, because it can assume no shared morality among its citizens, ceases to be about vision, aspiration and the common good and becomes instead transactional, managerial, a kind of consumer product: vote for the party that gives you more of what you want for a lower price in taxes. You discover that politicians are claiming unwarranted expenses or getting paid for access: in short that politics has come to be seen as a business like any other, and not an entirely reputable one. That is when young people no longer get involved. Why should they? If all that matters is money, they can make more of it elsewhere.

However, Sacks is not advocating the overthrow of the free market system. But he is saying that when the morality that made the markets work, involving trust and confidence and faith in people and their words and signed documents, is neglected, "something significant is going wrong". He explains:

The market economy has generated more real wealth, eliminated more poverty and liberated more human creativity than any other economic system. The fault is not with the market itself, but with the idea that the market alone is all we need. Markets do not guarantee equity, responsibility or integrity. They can maximise short-term gain at the cost of long-term sustainability. They cannot be relied upon to distribute rewards fairly. They cannot guarantee honesty. When confronted with flagrant self-interest, they combine the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity. Markets need morals, and morals are not made by markets.

They are made by schools, the media, custom, tradition, religious leaders, moral role models and the influence of people. But when religion loses its voice and the media worship success, when right and wrong become relativised and all talk of morality is condemned as ‘judgemental’, when people lose all sense of honour and shame and there is nothing they will not do if they can get away with it, no regulation will save us. People will continually outwit the regulators, as they did by the so-called ‘securitisation’ of risk that meant no one knew who owed what to whom.

Markets were made to serve us; we were not made to serve markets. Economics needs ethics. Markets do not survive by market forces alone. They depend on respect for the people affected by our decisions. Lose that and we will lose not just money and jobs but something more significant still: freedom, trust and decency, the things that have a value, not a price.

*Jonathan Sacks, 2020, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, Hodder & Stoughton/Hachette, London and New York.  

Lovely People digs into Social Credit-style life

From Lovely People, a graphic novel about bunnies living under a Social Credit system

 In China, people are given points or have points removed on a government-run database according to their behaviour. This is called Social Credit. It affects each person's ability to use transport, banks, education, and much more.  Moreover, many people see Western governments and social media organisations like Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube increasingly acting as if they are part of a Social Credit system. A short graphic novel just out explores life under this kind of social checking. It’s written and drawn by Minna Sundberg, a Finnish graphic artist. You can access it here.  Enjoy the artist's creative approach to the issue. 

How to change our attitude to suffering

Writer Maggie O'Farrell, who contracted viral encephalitis, a sudden swelling of the brain, when she was eight years old, having to learn to walk again and to talk clearly

What a friend shared to many recently has made me sensitive to what people say about their suffering - whether there is a stance with regards that experience other than cursing God. I quickly found a surprising consensus. My friend suffered a vicious attack in 2014. This is the sharing:

What I’m about to say will most likely be misunderstood, or for some, hard to hear. Recently I watched a TV show on the Disney Channel (I know, I’m really a child at heart). The show is called Secrets of Sulphur Springs. It’s about some children who have found a portal to go back in time and they are working to change something bad that happened. After finishing several episodes I started thinking, if I found a portal and could go back in time, to May 19, 2014, would I change things? And as hard as it is to say (and I’m sure for you to understand) I came to the conclusion that I would not change things. Although I still deal with grief and lingering trauma…I would not change things.  [...] even I’m surprised by my response.

What situation in your life do you believe Jesus has mismanaged for you? What I’ve learned is that Jesus is willing to be misunderstood by us in order to do good things for us. I don’t understand or have all the answers but I know that He works all things together for our good...and, oh, there was a time I could not stand to hear that verse…but it is such a powerful (hard to understand) truth.

Within days of this, the Guardian website had an interview with Irish-British writer Maggie O’Farrell, who has won a prize for her novel Hamnet, about the death of Shakespeare's son. The interview relates...

her own experience of viral encephalitis as an eight-year-old, when she woke up one summer morning with a headache and “the world looked different”. Later in hospital, she overheard the nurse whisper to another child: “Hush, there’s a little girl dying in there,” and was shocked to discover that she was talking about her. “I think anyone who has been through a really severe illness knows that it completely refigures you,” she says. “It is a bit like passing through a fire.”

A journalist recently asked her if she could turn back time would she erase the illness. She replied: “No, because it is who I am. It made me who I am in a lot of ways.” She credits the long convalescence (endless audio books, reading and rereading), and the resulting stammer (thinking hard about every word), helped her to nurture writerly habits.

The Guardian piece tells how O'Farrell is well acquanted with suffering: 

Her offbeat memoir I Am, I Am, I Am – which documents her own 17 brushes with mortality, including a binoculars-wielding strangler, a couple of near-drownings, a botched caesarean, and acute encephalitis as a child – was a surprise bestseller in 2017.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Finally, my reading turned up more on suffering, this time  from Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died in 2008 after being held in prison camps by the Communist regime, and exiled. An American writer has this to say about Solzhenitsyn's insights:

In his masterwork, The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn reveals how he and his fellow inmates were beaten, humiliated, made to live in filth and freezing temperatures. and to endure many other grotesque manifestations of Communism’s determination to create heaven on earth.

That’s why nothing in that epochal book’s pages shocks more than these lines:

"And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me: 'Bless you, prison! ... Bless you, prison, for having been in my life!'”

Solzhenitsyn’s audacious claim was that suffering taught him to love. There is nothing in the Gospels that requires Christians to seek out suffering. The Word of God is not a prescription for masochism. But the life of Christ, as well as the Old Testament’s example of the prophets, compels believers to accept that suffering, if rightly received, can be a gift.

“Accepting suffering is the beginning of our liberation,” he says. “Suffering can be the source of great strength. It gives us the power to resist - a gift from God that invites us to change.”

Miracles need an open mind to comprehend

 

Christians can be blasé about the wonderful things they see in the lives of family or friends, and especially that they hear about from fellow believers who are moved to give testimony of the goodness of God. What follows is such an account from an American family who adopted a Chinese son. For the sake of privacy, the boy’s name has been changed to Elijah.

I do not know the family, but they have been vouched for by those whose judgement I trust. The father wrote in early March:

My six-year-old son Elijah was born mostly blind, afflicted with microphthalmia and congenital cataracts which in turn led to other issues, among them amblyopia and nystagmus. The conditions would have been treated almost immediately after birth here in the United States: in China, for a mother in desperate circumstances — which she must have been — there were no such options. My son was abandoned in a public place as an infant, and eventually found his way to his orphanage, and received no treatment whatsoever for his vision during the most critical early months of his life.

Several weeks before I met him for the first time I received a courtesy call from China: as the prospective adoptive father for [Chinese name], age 21 months, would I object to a local Ningbo medical clinic performing cataract-removal surgery tomorrow? Of course not, I replied. Please proceed. I felt confident in the decision. I have some familiarity with international health and medicine, and I knew that cataract-removal surgery is one of the most common surgical procedures in the world. It’s the sort of thing you can trust a small Zhejiang clinic to do right, even in a child.

I informed my wife, almost as an aside — it was late evening in Houston, early morning in Ningbo — and she said okay. Then she called me back. She was filled with a sense of dread. She was possessed with a conviction that this surgery must not happen. I had to call China back immediately. I had to stop them.

Responding with the gentle understanding that makes marital life with men from my family an exercise in premature aging, I ticked through all the reasons she was being preposterous. The surgery made sense. It is exceptionally common. Zhejiang is a cut above most of China in medical care. The chances for harm are small anyway: the boy is probably almost totally blind no matter what. Reason says do it. Plus, I have no idea how to track down these people in China now.

She listened, and then said: Stop it. Stop it now.

Frustrated and tired at this stage in the evening, I told her I’d think about it. I indulged my frustration for a little while, and then decided that it wasn’t worth the domestic squabble. The child would be blind anyway. The surgery can wait. I’ll make the effort, which won’t work, and then I can say I tried.

Mostly my ego was bruised at the emphatic rejection of what I thought was my knowledge and insight.

I called the adoption agency’s man in China. He picked up the phone and, across a bad connection, I explained to him that he had to track down this orphanage and stop this surgery that was happening in — oh, maybe thirty minutes? I will try, he said, but I don’t think I can. I hung up.

About an hour later he called back. They were bundling the child up to go to the clinic when he reached them, he said. They were annoyed, but they complied. There was no surgery. Thanks, I said, and I thought that was the end of it.

A couple months later, I met him at the orphanage in Ningbo — May 12th, 2016, possibly the most wonderful day of my life — and watched him feel his way along the floor, and thought I was right about that surgery.

Six months after that, I saw him again, on the date of formal adoption, and I thought again that we still should have done that surgery. But in a truly heroic act, I kept it to myself.

Three months after that, after a series of exams and scans of his afflicted eyes — now in the United States — we learned that the peculiarity of his cataracts and the scarring within his eyes meant that had that surgery gone forward, his retinas would probably have been pulled off and he would have been plunged into darkness forever.

It stopped me short. My complacent assurance would have doomed him for his entire life. My wife’s passionate conviction, so unusual in its context, arising ex nihilo as it were, was the antidote — as was my (candidly) very uncharacteristic decision to acquiesce to it. My little boy was saved from a maiming and blinding by mere minutes.

I still think it was Divine intervention, and I thank God my wife had the sense to listen to the abrupt conviction that seized her then.

This morning Elijah went to the eye surgeon for a periodic check-in. He’ll have surgery for the amblyopia this summer. The first time this surgeon saw him, four years ago, she estimated his vision at perhaps in the 20/600 to 20/800 range: shapes and colors and shadows and nothing more for him.

This morning his distance vision tests out at 20/100 to 20/150.  His near vision is 20/30.

Someone watches out for this little boy, and we are just the instruments. My son, my miracle, my Elijah.

But there is more in the brief history of this adopted child. A friend of the family gave them an icon of St Paraskevi, a second century Greek Christian who was born in Rome. She is considered to be a healer of the blind, because of a miracle she prompted in restoring the sight of Emperor Antonius Pius, who had been torturing her because of her faith. An account of her life can be read here.

Elijah’s father provides more details of what seems to be miraculous care for the boy. He writes:

Elijah came home with us in early December 2016, and we got him examined, with the surgeon and an MRI, in January. The examination results were grim: lots of scarring (likely from in-utero infection), and what’s known as persistent fetal vasculature (PFV) in both eyes. (This is where we learned that the China-side cataract removals would have likely pulled off the retinas.) The PFV is usually a consequence of the eyes’ failure to develop in the womb: they start to form, and then basically stop, meaning the network of blood vessels that normally dissolve into the vitreous fluid within the eyes, don’t. We got those results back, and it basically meant that any future intervention would be marginal at best: even with cataract removal, the PFV inside the eyes would permanently block vision. You can’t go in and clean those out.

A week or so after this happened, a good friend of ours — [a priest] — called to let us know he was in [our city]. That was a nice surprise. Even more surprising was that he had relics of St Paraskevi with him. I forget why he had them, [and] he offered to come over and bless Elijah with the relics. So I said of course, and he came over and did just that. Elijah was only two years old then, so he squirmed about a bit while it happened, and that was it. Then we had a nice chat, and caught up, and I thought no more of it.

Maybe a month or so after that, we had to go get another MRI — or maybe it was an exam under sedation, I’ll have to ask my wife — because the retinal surgeon wanted it. So we did. And guess what: the PFV was gone.

Gone, gone, gone.

This changed everything for Elijah. Now we could start planning for what we actually ended up doing later in the autumn: have surgery to remove his cataracts and give him artificial lenses, which is what he sees with today. About a month later, I took Elijah to the monastery of St Paraskevi [in] central Texas to give thanks.

So that was the big miracle as far as I’m concerned. What’s really interesting, by the bye, is how utterly unfazed the physicians were by the change. I was totally astonished and amazed, and they weren’t. (I didn’t tell them about the holy relics.) To them, it was simply a matter of conflicting inputs, with the latest one invalidating the earlier one. I suppose I should allow that possibility: that the PFV was never there, and that it was a bad scan at the outset, and that I am imputing a miracle where there is only ordinary processes. But I don’t think I am: PFV is, well, not subtle.

Two thoughts on this that have occurred to me as we’ve watched this happen:

First, there is nothing — nothing — about me or my wife that suggests a holiness in family life or personal devotion that would suggest the sort of people who may simply expect saintly intercession.

Second, I have to admit that I never quite believed saints like St Paraskevi really existed. […] Surely we can’t be expected to believe that a young Roman woman of no social standing once proclaimed her faith, and performed miracles, before the Emperor Antonius Pius? I was very much taken with modernist standards of proof. Then I was given an entirely different standard of proof: that a once-young Roman woman interceded before God for my little boy.

See related: Miracles can be filtered out of our sense of reality

Morality with me at the centre of the world

Twitter and other social networks are very judgemental environments - and I guess this post is already sounding like it's one of the same kind. In this, there is a difference between disagreements over ideas and  the  judging of one another for doing what is "wrong". How is a person able to judge the moral value of another making some statement, behaving in a certain way, or not doing something that, it is assumed, should have been done?

With that introduction, I want to give the rest of the space in this post over to a Christian leader who analyses why many people believe conduct in society is becoming worse, no matter whether looking at shoppers' behaviour to each other and to the staff, or in the business world, academia, and instutituions in general. With the understanding that the writer knows that the biblical account of the origin of humankind is a poetic one, consider the ideas below:

Clearly, we must trace the source of division [among people] in the human heart and the human mind.  This division is caused principally because man sought full autonomy from God.  This is the message from the book of Genesis.  We are told that God, after He created the earth, “shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being.”  God gave His Spirit to man and he became a living being.  Indeed, the moment God withdraws His Spirit, we will turn back to dust.  “If he should take back his spirit to himself, and gather to himself his breath, all flesh would perish together, and all mortals return to dust.”  (Job 34:14) Hence, man’s existence is dependent on God alone.  Without Him, man turns to nothing.

The biggest folly and ignorance of man today is to think that he is the center of the world.  The modern man thinks highly of himself, of his intellect, knowledge and power to do things.  He does not need God and makes no reference to God. He does not believe in absolute moral laws but everything is subjected to his whims and fancies.   He thinks he is the center, the whole world and everyone revolves around him.   What is needed is a Copernican revolution instead!  God made it clear that He is the center, not man.  “Yahweh God planted a garden in Eden, which is in the east, and there he put the man he had fashioned. From the soil, Yahweh God caused to grow every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”  The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil is the symbol of God’s life and wisdom.  Only God can give us life.  Only God knows what is good and evil clearly.   He gives us laws so that He can guide us to the fullness of life.

God placed moral boundaries for human beings so that man can be protected from his ignorance.  “God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it. Then Yahweh God gave the man this command, ‘You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die.'”  In other words, man does not have absolute freedom.  He is given the freedom to choose but if he does not obey God’s moral laws which are part of creation and in harmony with natural laws, man will suffer a backlash.   

Morality is something placed in the hearts of man.  We have a conscience that tells us from within whether something is right or wrong.  We all know that there is objectivity to morality because of natural laws.   Who placed them there?  Even without studying morality, we know that something is not right.  Morality as what the world wants us to believe is more than just situational or conditional.   We are moral beings and God has planted truth in our hearts.  Truth is not an invention or creation of man.   But man uses his reason to rationalize and justify what he wants to do all in the name of relativism.  If we search deep into our heart, moral laws are as clear as the sun!

However, due to his arrogance, man wants to rely on himself instead on God.  He wants to continue with selfish and self-centered acts.  Without God, without absolute moral norms, he twists and turns all moral laws to suit himself.  We think that morality is a matter of opinions and statistics simply because the majority believe it to be right.  This is why when we use reason alone, we cannot agree on what is ethical or moral.  The tragedy is that God has been removed from humanity in the Post-Enlightenment Period.  Science and technology without God and without morality has led to the destruction of humanity.  We can see this in climate warming, pollution, deforestation, wars and nuclear armament.  Today, the world justifies every action, including terrorism, assassination of world leaders, chemical wars, abortion, and euthanasia, all in the name of justice and human rights.  We are blinded by our intellect and arrogance.  Fulfillment can only be found in God alone.

Published 10 February, 2021. Written  by Catholic Archbishop of Singapore William Goh. His reflections are not archieved, but his work can be read here.

DNA and genes and humans and chimpanzees

In this video, Simon Conway Morris talks about Convergent Evolution.

The fact that we share 98.8% of our DNA with chimpanzees gives rise to some strange conclusions. However, to avoid comparing apples and oranges, it needs to be noted at once that “DNA” does not mean the same thing as a “gene”. The significance of this point is drawn out by science writer and educator Maggie Ciskanik. This post drinks at the well of her enlightening article. She writes:

The DNA molecule is extraordinary. When stretched out, the length of DNA in one cell is close to 6 feet (almost 2 meters). Along its length are over 3 billion base pairs that make up the “rungs” of the DNA double helix. The Human Genome Project identified over 20,000 genes along its length.

Genes are functional sections of DNA which vary in the number and sequence of base pairs that make them up. Genes code for functional products, like structural proteins or enzymes; but there are large stretches of DNA for which there is no known function. Couple this “unmapped” region with the fact that a 0.1% difference in base pair sequences still leaves 3 million base pairs to make [each person] unique!

What About Similarity to Chimpanzees?

Let’s go to genetic similarity of humans to a different species, the chimpanzee. Being 98.8% similar in DNA to a chimpanzee can be misleading. This percentage is based on the similarity among base pairs on the same gene.

A good example is the gene that enables both species to see red. Since the gene’s function is the same in both species, this fact shouldn’t alarm us or surprise us. The percent similarity emphatically does not mean that we are 98.8% genetically the same as a chimpanzee. First, the size and number of chromosomes is different among species, and there are genes we do not share.

It is true that we do share many genes with other mammals, from those governing the production of functional and structural proteins to the development of the eye. The latter is used by paleontologist Simon Conway Morris as an example of convergent evolution. In this video, he compares the eye of an octopus and other mammals with the human eye. Fantastic!

It is unfortunate that genetic similarity statistics are used in what seems to be an assault on the unique characteristics of the human person, especially any characteristic that points to a transcendent origin and destiny. We must learn to ignore the more materialist interpretations of what these numbers mean and rejoice that this kind of order is in evidence throughout the created world.

Another take on the similarity and difference between humans and chimps (and bonobos):

Human and chimp DNA is so similar because the two species are so closely related. Humans, chimps and bonobos descended from a single ancestor species that lived six or seven million years ago. As humans and chimps gradually evolved from a common ancestor, their DNA, passed from generation to generation, changed too. In fact, many of these DNA changes led to differences between human and chimp appearance and behavior.

If human and chimp DNA is 98.8 percent the same, why are we so different? Numbers tell part of the story. Each human cell contains roughly three billion base pairs, or bits of information. Just 1.2 percent of that equals about 35 million differences. Some of these have a big impact, others don't. And even two identical stretches of DNA can work differently - they can be "turned on" in different amounts, in different places or at different times.

 Although humans and chimps have many identical genes, they often use them in different ways. A gene's activity, or expression, can be turned up or down like the volume on a radio. So the same gene can be turned up high in humans, but very low in chimps.

The same genes are expressed in the same brain regions in human, chimp and gorilla, but in different amounts. Thousands of differences like these affect brain development and function, and help explain why the human brain is larger and smarter.

See also: 70,000 Years Ago, What Made Us Human: The Origin of a Soul? 

Orphans capture the moment as they borrow a phone

Time for a selfie at Que Huong Orphanage, Binh Duong, near Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, March 20, 2021.

This orphanage has about 300 boys and girls from babies to teenagers.

LGBTQ+ questions over identity and faith connections

How can I stay connected to my faith when Christian teachings conflict with who I feel I am as a person?

Reply: It is key to realize that your deepest and most abiding identity is not around your sexuality but rather around your relationship with God. That is what is deepest and most abiding and most important about you. So, what is most important is that you're a beloved child of God.

It's only out of that more fundamental identity that you'll come to understand something like your sexuality. [We need to resist] the tendency to say that anyone's sexual identity is what's most basic about them. That is not true. It's that we're a beloved child of God that is what's most basic. That's what the church is fundamentally addressing all the time - how to be a mature child of God.

Here’s another insight:

People who experience same-sex attraction should know that, according to the Bible, they are not condemned for that attraction, any more than a heterosexual person is condemned for experiencing wrong sexual desires.

Both need their sexuality redeemed and all their sins forgiven. Both desperately need Christ and are called to live according to his kingdom.

A final thought:

Whatever personal (human) rights we have are not absolute. In every circumstance of our life we are limited in a variety of ways, whether we are dealing with free speech, or the gamut of conditions under “the right to life, liberty and security of person”.

Our rights are God-given, meaning they arise from the status of each human being as one endowed with qualities – transphysical characteristics – that point to a divine intervention in the history of the development of humans. Therefore, we recognize the fact that “God is God; I’m not”. God has made us in a certain way – in his image – and we are at most peace with ourselves when our behaviour is guided by the attributes of God. Also, the knowledge that God loves us balances any grief we feel because of restrictions on our wayward desires.

If anyone has a response to this post, write a comment. Complex matters demand thorough discussion.

Suffering and other acts of growth

With the Covid-19 virus continuing to cause upheaval both among nations and individually, the importance of accepting suffering in our life is gaining renewed attention. This attention is using the new experience of suffering to build on the realisation of people who have come through severe suffering in their life that the experience was formative, spurring growth and maturity. Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung has left us with this conclusion from his studies:

A life of ease has convinced everyone of all the material joys, and has even compelled the spirit to devise and better ways to material welfare, but it has never produced spirit. Probably only suffering, disillusion, and self-denial do that.

Researchers from Bath University in England last year were surprised to find that 88.6% of the participants in their study identified positives arising from the pandemic. "The majority (74%) of respondents were working exclusively from home, and almost half reported a reduction in income. Most of their children (93%) were home taught, and 19.5% of them reported having a family member with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 infection." 

Despite these burdens, participants reported "improved relationships, a greater appreciation of life, discovering and embracing new possibilities, and positive spiritual change". From this outcome, researchers were able to gain insights into what is categorised as "post-traumatic growth".

Mental health counselor GinaMarie Guarino explains:

Trauma has a lasting impact on a person, but it is a misconception that you cannot recover from or grow from trauma. Post-traumatic growth comes from overcoming challenges that you may experience in reaction to trauma and learning from the recovery process.

Self-denial and personal discipline, though partly forced upon a person by the dificult circumstances of the pandemic, can foster a person's ability to both look beyond inconvenience and more deeply consider the needs of others. Guarino puts it this way:

The removal of distractions helped many people reconnect with family and focus on their life goals and career aspirations.

Paul Stallard, professor of child and adolescent mental health at Bath University, says of his research:

It’s important to share the findings to provide a more balanced story about COVID-19. There are lots of news stories about the negative effects on mental health but people are also identifying some benefits out of this difficult situation.  

"Most of what we learn that has any value arises out of our own personal experiences", according to Stephanie Dowrick, a writer and explorer of Christian and Buddhist spirituality. "And often what we learn from, because they are so tenacious and difficult to escape, are our experiences of suffering". 

What suffering does that books, or conversation, or observing others, do not do is that it "knocks our corners off".

Suffering does that. Through tearing us down, and forcing us to think about what really does matter, it offers an irreplaceable opportunity to see things through the wisdom of the heart as well as of the mind. 

Finally, in her book Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love Dowrick points out that deciding to rise above the suffering that each person's life delivers makes "sublime good sense" whereas not doing so puts a person on a path to "inner bleakness". 

All of this has its echoes in Jesus' words just before his crucifixion: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."

It's an intriguing snippet of information that the advice "Be not afraid" occurs a total of precisely 365 times in the Old and New Testaments. 

Grasping at an understanding of the universe

                                                                                     Courtesy of PBS Learning Media

On the occasion of a recent startling discovery one astrophysicist exclaimed that it's a great time to be studying the universe because there was so much to learn about "the cosmos and the exotic and extreme objects that exist". Reporting on the discoverythat evoked that excitement, Marina Koren at The Atlantic relates how astrophysicists are puzzled by new findings on the Cygnus X-1 black hole. 

[When...] a team of researchers directed their attention to it a few years ago, they noticed something weird. According to their recently published findings, the black hole, the [stellar] system’s main attraction, is much more massive than they thought. Which is particularly strange because, based on what astronomers currently understand about these kinds of objects and the way they form, this black hole probably shouldn’t exist.

Koren continues her report on the findings, published in Science, The Astrophysical Journal, and here, by pointing out:

Black holes are some of the most mysterious objects in the universe, in our own Milky Way galaxy and many light-years beyond, and they often surprise the researchers trying to understand them. [In this case, ] a familiar black hole showed it still has secrets. The accidental discovery is a reminder that astronomers are still trying to understand some of the most basic forces in our galaxy. 

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There are still many unknowns, and even the most familiar objects, like Cygnus X-1, can still confound scientists. The latest research updates the black hole’s size from 15 times the mass of our sun to 21 times that of our sun. To the untrained eye, this is a small, almost negligible, jump. But to astronomers, the revised estimate means they must revisit their theories on massive stars and the black holes they become. 

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Astronomers thought, based on what they understood about stellar metallicities—a gorgeous term for the abundance of heavy metals in massive stars—that the biggest black hole an environment such as the Milky Way could produce would max out at about 15 times the mass of our sun. The existence of Cygnus X-1 suggests that this fundamental fact of our galaxy is incomplete. 

In summary, Koren writes, "attempting to decipher black holes can often feel like a game of galactic whack-a-mole. 'Every time you have some new bit of information, or answer one question,' [a team member] said, 'three more appear.'”

Postscript: From the Eurekalert website we get these reasonable comments from the leader of the Cygnus X-1 team, Professor James Miller-Jones from Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research:

Studying black holes is like shining a light on the Universe's best kept secret - it's a challenging but exciting area of research.

As the next generation of telescopes comes online, their improved sensitivity reveals the Universe in increasingly more detail, leveraging decades of effort invested by scientists and research teams around the world to better understand the cosmos and the exotic and extreme objects that exist. It's a great time to be an astronomer!

Near-death experiences and the spiritual realm

 A new book is out in which a psychiatrist relates what he has found from a long investigation into what sometimes happens to those at the point of death. Bruce Greyson, now a professor emeritus in psychiatry at the University of Virginia, tells an interviewer how, a month into his psychiatric training, in the 1960s, he had been “confronted by a patient who claimed to have left her body” while unconscious on a hospital bed, and who later provided an accurate description of events that had taken place “in a different room”.

 This made no sense to him. “I was raised in a scientific household,” he says. “My father was a chemist. Growing up, the physical world was all there was.” 

“It was a common phenomenon.” He became fascinated by the qualities of the episodes and the questions they raised, including perhaps the biggest of all: what actually happens when we die? “I plunged in,” he says. “And here I am, 50 years later, [still] trying to understand.”

Over the years, he has collected hundreds of near-death experiences, he says, either from people who, aware of his research, have volunteered their stories, or from patients who happened to have episodes in hospital. 

Of those patients he interviewed, about one in five had had an experience. His book is titled After, and it contains accounts of many experiences. "Most episodes involve  feelings of wonder, mental clarity and bliss, Greyson says."

His interviewer draws from him information on what makes this kind of experience so fascinating. This is whether there is evidence of a "transphysical" or "transcendent" element beyond the physical brain.

When I ask Greyson why he decided to publish After now, after all these years, he explains that “we had to wait until we had enough knowledge about near-death experiences to be able to understand what was going on,” by which he means not that we know what NDEs are, but that advances in science have allowed us to rule out a heap of things they are not. “There are physiological hypotheses that seem plausible theoretically,” he says, but none have stuck. Are feelgood chemicals, like endorphins, released into the body at the point of peril, creating euphoria? Does the brain become starved of oxygen, prompting real-seeming fantasies? Do various areas of the brain suddenly begin to work in concert to create strange, altered states? Nobody knows for sure. “We keep thinking, ‘Oh it’s got to be this,’” Greyson says. “No, the data doesn’t show that. ‘Oh, this then?’ Well, nope, the data doesn’t show that, either.”

Later in the article:

In After, Greyson writes: “I take seriously the possibility that NDEs may be brought on by physical changes in the brain,” though he also accepts that the mind might be able to function “independent” of it. There have been reports of people experiencing near-death episodes while their brains are inactive, he says, and “yet that’s when they say they have the most vivid experience of their lives.” This doesn’t make sense to him. Partway though our conversation, he asks: “Are these the final moments of consciousness? Or the beginning moments of the afterlife?”

The article provides a sampling of explanations for near-death experiences. Greyson seems to hold that they are more than the product of the brain. The article goes on:

Greyson knows that events in near-death experiences are impossible to corroborate. “We can’t do research on a deity,” he says, drily. But still, he finds it tough to dismiss wackier theories, even if the data isn’t there. When I ask him what his current logical understanding is, he looks resigned. “It seems most likely to me that the mind is somehow separate to the brain,” he says, “and, if that’s true, maybe it can function when the brain dies.” Then he adds, “But if the mind is not there in the brain, where is it? And what is it?”

Further:

To Greyson, the impact near-death experiences have on people’s lives has been his most surprising discovery. “I make a living by trying to help people change their lives,” he says. “It’s not easy to do. But here I’ve found an experience that, sometimes in a matter of seconds, dramatically transforms people’s attitudes, values, beliefs, and behaviours.” Often, these changes persist over decades. In most instances, experiencers realise they are no longer afraid to die, which “has a profound impact on how they live their lives”, because “you lose your fear of life as well – you’re not afraid of taking chances.” Greyson sometimes asks people to describe their partners before and after an event, “and they’ll say, ‘Yeah, this isn’t the person I married; this is someone different.’” He adds, “They see a purpose in life they didn’t see before. I don’t know of anything else that powerful.”

The final paragraphs contain telling conclusions about Greyson's insight into the spiritual capacity of the human person:

I ask if Greyson’s research has changed the way he thinks.

“I don’t think it’s changed me in terms of my relationships with other people,” he says, “except it’s made me more accepting, more open to unusual ideas.” As a psychiatrist, he remains “aware of what it means to be psychotic”, but, he says: “I’m more accepting of unusual thoughts that aren’t crazy, and it’s made me much more conscionable with the unknown.

“I grew up without any kind of a spiritual background,” he continues. “And I’m still not sure I understand what spiritual means. I am convinced now, after doing this for 40, 50 years, that there is more to life than just our physical bodies. I recognise that there is a non-physical part of us..."

That recognition can also be derived by the findings of Dr Janice Holden's assessment of 39 near-death experience studies in her Handbook of Near-Death Experiences (2009), where she found that there was a great deal of accuracy (83 per cent of the cases surveyed) in what the patients reported, and this was using strict criteria. In Spitzer's words (2015) commenting on Holden's findings :

It is difficult to believe that this degree of verifiably accurate reporting, which occurred at a time when there was no electrical activity in the cortex, can be attributed to a physical or physiological cause.

In view of this fact, as well as many of the reported incidents reached beyond human capabilities of the patient, it is not unreasonable to conclude that these perceptions (as well as the self-consciousness that accompanied them) existed independently of bodily function and could therefore persist after death.

The publisher provides these endorsements of Greyson, whom it states is "the world's leading expert on near-death experiences":

"Captivating…a major contribution to the study of what happens when we die, and will quickly prove to be a classic in near-death studies." —Raymond Moody, M.D., Ph.D., author of Life After Life.

"Dr. Greyson’s work has the potential to completely change our fractured and confused world, offering insights that may lead to an explanation of the nature of consciousness." —Eben Alexander, M.D., bestselling author of Proof of Heaven.

"A major international book of lasting value." —Alexander Batthyány, Ph.D., professor of Philosophy and Psychology, International Academy of Philosophy, Liechtenstein Director of the Viktor Frankl Institute, author of Mind and Its Place in the World.

After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond. St Martin's Essentials (a Macmillan company) 2021

What Genesis really means in the modern era

Wired.com

The biblical book of Genesis is often at the forefront of discussion about the origin and nature of humankind. But Genesis is poorly understood, even among those educated within the Judeo-Christian civilisation, even among churches, especially those outside the mainstream. 

Scholarly scrutiny of the the language and culture of the biblical world is a relatively new field of study. The mainstream churches have largely kept pace with this, but those who follow Martin Luther and his contemporary rebels in upholding a literal reading of the text have been left floundering.  Those churches that have maintained adherence to the principled traditions of historical Christianity have been open to the light shed on scripture by literary scholarship and so have been able to learn how God's message to humankind is conveyed in the Bible by means of the language and culture of each writer. God inspires the writer to capture theological truths, not  necessarily scientific truths.

A valuable account of how Genesis should be read has been given by the Catholic Archbishop of Singapore, William Goh. In expressing the Catholic viewpoint, his main point is this:

The account of creation is certainly not historical or scientific in today’s terms.  The book of Genesis presents to us two different accounts of the creation story.  It is not concerned with the question of how creation came about.  The author is not interested in physics or the question of evolution.  These are not the questions of the author.  So if we read the creation story to discover some scientific truths with regard to how creation came about, we would be disappointed or worse still, impose on the authors our understanding of how creation came to be.  

Rather, the purpose of the creation story is to reveal to us the theological truths of creation.  They reveal to us who we are, our identity and place in creation, our relationship with God and with the rest of creation.  Most of all, they reveal to us the divine plan of God for humanity, which is to share in His life and love.  But [Genesis] involves taking us into the mystery of God’s creation, evoking wonder; and contemplating His majesty, evoking adoration.

[Therefore], the author does not seek to explain creation.  He is certainly aware that it is contradictory to speak of creation of the sun and moon (Gn 1:14-16) when light was already created on the first day.  (Gen 1:3) Furthermore, how could we speak of the first and subsequent day when sun and moon were only created on the fourth day, a day implying sunrise and sunset?

 The author wants us to know that light is not even dependent on the sun and the moon.  Indeed, if God is the creator of the world, when was darkness created? It seems to pre-exist before creation and so too the water!  “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”  (Gen 1:1f) Clearly, the author is not dealing with the questions of science, the “how” of creation but the “why” of creation.  Science deals with the “how”, theology deals with the “why.” The creation story is meant to lead us to God, the mystery of all mysteries.  

Yet even in the mystery of creation, there is a certain order and contingence. God placed some kind of order in creation itself.  Hence, the author speaks of creation in stages.  There are natural laws in place to protect creation.  The author describes creation as systematically structured around the theme of six days, concluding with the seventh.  Indeed, God is seen to bring order and form into creation gradually, moving from preparation on the first three days to completion in next three where He then created the sun and moon, followed by the birds and fish; and then vegetation and living creatures.  The climax was reached with the creation of human beings, male and female in His image.  (Gn 1:27) Creation therefore has its own natural laws.  Indeed, there can be no science if there is no rationality in the created world.

The question is, where does this order in creation come from?  There must be a Mind controlling and ordering creation.   It cannot be nature itself.  Someone must have put order into creation.  Even for us human beings, where does our reason come from, if not the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God?  In other words, the author wants us to arrive at this truth, that the entire creation is dependent on God.  God is the Reason in creation.  This is why, in the creation account, the world is created by the Word of God. 

Each day of creation is prefaced by the words, “God said …”  The Word is the Logos, the divine reason for creation.  St John speaks of creation as coming from God through Christ.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”  (Jn 1:1-3) St Paul in his letter to the Colossians, wrote of Christ, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been created through him and for him.  He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  (Col 1:15-17) 

The questions that arise about the nature of humans, questions spurred these days especially by the findings of astrophysics and neuroscience, are only the latest that have been intriguing thinkers for millennia. Over the centuries, Christians battled whatever offended reason but have taken on board may have been useful insights into the human predicament and our relationship with God:

Since the beginning, the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God (Pantheism). Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism). According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism). Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself (Deism). Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed (Materialism). All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #285) 

As to the scientific studies of the modern era:

The great interest accorded to these studies is strongly stimulated by a question of another order, which goes beyond the proper domain of the natural sciences. It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin: is the universe governed by chance, blind fate, anonymous necessity, or by a transcendent, intelligent and good Being called "God"? And if the world does come from God's wisdom and goodness, why is there evil? Where does it come from? Who is responsible for it? Is there any liberation from it? (284)

Such matters are not to be passed over lightly, because they give rise to the basic questions that people throughout history have asked themselves: 

"Where do we come from?" "Where are we going?" "What is our origin?" "What is our end?" "Where does everything that exists come from and where is it going?" The two questions, the first about the origin and the second about the end, are inseparable. They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions. (282)

NOTE: Archbishop Goh's reflections are not archived. His latest are at this website: https://www.catholic.sg/archbishop/scripture-reflection/ 

Salvador Dali and the beauty of science Part II

Salvador Dali produced breathtakingly original works of art. What makes him all the more interesting is how he combined his religious belief with care over scientific principles that he incorporated in his work.

See this blog’s examination of this fascinating aspect of Dali’s intention to reflect the wonder of the world through the mathematical design of a piece or the imagery deployed. For example, the complexity of juxtaposed images and the perspective shown is clear from this work, The Ascension:

Are we witnessing the splitting of an atom or activity of a human cell? One answer:

What we do know is that directly behind the ascending Christ figure are the florets of a sunflower – a natural design by which Dali was intrigued, because its continuous circular pattern follows the laws of a logarithmic spiral – a naturally occurring phenomenon he also found in the horn of a rhinoceros and the morphology of a cauliflower.

That comment refers, of course, to Phi, the golden matrix, that figures in so much of the natural world. For more on that topic, refer to this book The Golden Ratio – The Divine Beauty of Mathematics, which is by Gary Meisner, creator of the Phi website .

Drawing for Crucifixion

However, the “divine beauty” of Dali’s works, based on his use of mathematics, receives attention in the United Kingdom’s Guardian website here. The article points out that:

"The study for Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) shows how he explored a depiction of the cross as a tesseract, a hypercube with eight cubical cells, which is thought to have been inspired by the work of the 16th-century Spanish mathematician and architect Juan de Herrera."

A conclusion to be drawn from Dali’s practice is that art and science are embellished by religious belief, not diminished – and vice versa.

The human cost of technological 'progress'

Facebook and Google have been centres of attention over the past week, not because of accomplishments but because of the insights provided as to how top-echelon enterprises fail in the moral or social spheres.

Under the headline “Facebook’s news blockade in Australia shows how tech giants are swallowing the web”, Jennifer Grygiel, Assistant Professor of Communications (Social Media) & Magazine, News and Digital Journalism, at Syracuse University, writes, “Just because advanced technology exists doesn’t mean it’s helpful in all situations or good.”

After the Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre of 51 Muslim worshippers in 2019, Grygiel was also able to identify where technology breakthroughs can have a devastating impact on society. The point of her article at that time is summed up in the headline, “Livestreamed massacre means it’s time to shut down Facebook Live”.

As to Google, it has been hauled over the coals since late last year for being more concerned over profit than the welfare of its staff and the true good of the public. The strife has been articulated by a Guardian journalist in this way:

“Google has recruited top scientists with promises of research freedom, but the limits are tested as researchers increasingly write about the negative effects of technology and offer unflattering perspectives on their employer’s products.”

Therefore, as a particular technology begins to hold sway in society it certainly is a fruitful exercise for the principal players to stand back and offer a transparent view for all to see and understand what kind of difficulties are arising. Those difficulties have to be taken seriously.

In a simple form, “multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. Social media may promote negative experiences such as: Inadequacy about your life or appearance.” This last point seems to be especially true for girls.

From a wider perspective, there is growing interest in the “’rules, norms and governance’ that should be applied to social media and technology companies”.

In the same way, the personnel working at developing technology, whether in the medical field or agriculture to name but two areas of concern, must have focused attention individually on the ethics of the direction they are taking. They must decide where the common good lies.

Taking such steps follows in the path of the 70 Manhattan Project scientists who signed nuclear pioneer Leo Szilard’s petition imploring President Truman not to use on Japan the atomic weapons they had developed. Unfortunately, Truman never got to see the petition before he made his decision to reject realistic alternatives and to kill in the order of 200,000 civilians.

With technology these days having an impact so widely and quickly, there's a clear case that all the smarts and beauty of technology do not negate the need to be alert as to the consequences of what can be done. There's conflict in working out where the boundaries of technological and scientific activity lie, but it is imperative that we accept that not everything that can be done should be done. 

After the populations if Hiroshima and Ngasaki were annihilated, Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the Manhattan Project, told Truman, "I have blood on my hands".