Took the opportunity with my 9yr old tonight to ask him ‘why’? Question his beliefs. “Do you believe in God? Why?”. I really want my boys to be thinking about things. To question things. To analyze things. I want them to think about what they think they know and not just accept those things, but look into them a bit more.

One thing that came out of the discussion was that he said he believed in God but admitted sometimes it was hard to because he didn’t ‘see’ God. He’s not alone. He’s 9, but 39 and 89 year olds have the same issue. They don’t believe in God basically because they don’t ‘see’ him.

My perception is that what my son sees is school activities, friends, video games, his mom nagging him, his little brother, cars and trees and sky and stuff just going on. It’s pretty simple…it’s just stuff, and it’s just going on. I think a lot of adults carry that perception as well. I don’t think my son was grasping the ‘infinite’ (particularly to a child) complexity and scope of our existence and so we talked about how large the universe is and some of its goings on, and about the universe within us, the smallest, minutest things and that all these things from the incomprehensibly largest and greatest to smallest working together every moment we breath. We talked a bit about thoughts and the brain. Starting the process of having him have some conception of systems and how complex and dependant they are.

So when he looks at the world around him he just doesn’t see cars, trees, sky, friends, video games…but systems….systems upon systems. All things ‘working’ and effecting.
Having discussed this I was able to explain that is where he will see God very clearly, which also led nicely to “ex nihilo nihil fit”; nothing comes from nothing…which is easy for a 9 year old to understand. “Even my brother (6yrs old) would understand that, right dad?”

“yup,…ok bedtime buddy.”

So I suppose some time around now would mark two years of really trying to crack Cantonese. Should I start with the positive or negative?
Ok negative it is…This marker has brought about quite a funk, and funk in the worst sense of the word, because as I generally describe my linguistic abilities in L2 I admit to knowing nothing. This is primarily because of all that I’ve studied and learned and watched, practically, where the rubber meets the road, I have nothing to show for it.

Can I watch a show and understand it? No.
Can I speak to anyone? No.

It especially gets upsetting when you see others who pick it up so fast. Fellows I’ve watched for awhile like this RoadRunning and Cantonese.hk and the venerable Khatzumoto. Pretty bloody depressing.

Something I’ve learned in these last two years is that like photography those who sell you that a good camera doesn’t make a difference and it’s all the photographer are ruthlessly disingenuous, and so it is with the ‘$3000 camera’ that is good memory, and being outgoing to the language learner. There are many other personality and environmental advantages that give some people a leg up in this exercise but you can’t compare yourself to other people and expect to get the same result even when you imagine you’re doing the same things they are. You can only compare yourself to where you were before and whether you are moving forward.

Ok, the positive. If I’ve learned one thing it’s that language learning is a war of attrition, and I just gotta press on. An interesting thing is that often on the heels of these lows comes inspiration, drive and insight. Even as I wallow in my Canto funk I found a bit of a way forward.

The good thing is I’ve maintained interest and daily exposure every day for the last two years. The last few months though I’ve been spending way too much time with ‘entertainment Cantonese’ (Watching shows, movies, dramas, music, etc) without context which although it has it’s place if a huge chunk of it is not being comprehended and there isn’t any supplemental vocab building going on it’s value is negligible. Just not very efficient.
I need to get back on the vocab train, but more than that I need, and indeed want, to read.

I’ve got a large series of audio dialogues that I’ve transcribed and I listen to every day on the train. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to discover, but combining the listening with extended periods of silent reading of the Chinese (characters) seems to supercharge my comprehension. You’d think it would be more confusing, but my mind is more engaged I guess, so it fires more of whatever excites my brain and puzzle pieces start clicking together.

The other huge thing which I have to do is read out loud and actually engage my vocal chords…uhhh ya think? In the past I’d mimic, shadow, and repeat dialogues over and over and over…in my head. But the difference between the voice in my head and my actual mouth is huuuge and although I may think I rock it when I ‘say something’ in my head, when asked to actually open my mouth all I got is ‘uhhhhh’. So although I remain of the opinion that people don’t need to engage in bumbling conversations with their L2 ‘as soon as possible’ and should feel alright to do it only when comfortable, I think I should have been vocalizing in whatever way was comfortable for me, privately reading out loud or some such activity, as much and as early as possible. So I’m going to make that a major part of this next year.

Hopefully next year I can read this post with smug satisfaction that I can answer those previous two important questions about TV and talking with ‘yes’.

“…but its undeniable that the human brain does things which are far beyond what you would expect of a creature that merely has to survive in the Plasticine of Africa and hunt wilder-beast and find waterholes and things…”

I was listening to the recent Dawkins/Rowan Williams (the Archbishop of Canterbury) ‘moderated discussion’ this afternoon and the question of where the higher cognitive abilities we exhibit come from, such as consciousness, that are superfluous to an evolutionary picture of human development and Dawkins response was he felt it was most probably an example of emergence. (around 37:30 minutes in)

“…so there are strong emergent properties in the human mind which arise presumably because in order to build a brain that is good at surviving in a certain way in a mundane world, its rather hard to build that brain which is not automatically capable of doing more advanced things such as mathematics and philosophy. ”

I would wonder how he knows that it’s hard ‘to build a brain good at surviving’ that isn’t automatically capable of our wonderful bonus traits of mathematics and philosophy, particularly when we are the only ones who exhibit them to any extent and the greater part of the animal kingdom seems to carry on quite well in a much more limited capacity to say the least. It seems most other creatures were able to develop without math and philosophy and that we’re inordinately special in comparison…by orders of magnitude. So…how exactly does he know that our uniqueness is somewhat of an emergent inevitability?
Invoking emergence sometimes seems to be a handy way to explain things away when there isn’t a good scientific explanation that still enables you to sound scientific…

“in rather the same way as computers were originally designed as calculating machines and then without any modification it turned out they were also very good at playing chess and drawing pictures and doing all the other things that they do.”

I don’t understand Dawkins appreciation for the computer analogies. Primarily because computers are designed systems that are infused by us with order, purpose and information and I can’t see where chance plays any part at all in their functioning or evolution.

Was there ever a calculating machine that with no modification turned out was good for playing chess? Dawkins knows much more of emergence than I do so presumably that’s why he sees it in his analogy and I don’t. I don’t see how a computer designed for calculating that is then programed or modified to play chess or draw is exhibiting emergence in any way at all analogous to a brain adapting and changing by favourable mutations with no design or intent whatsoever but more favourable for survival manifesting, by it’s very make up and sum of it’s parts, consciousness, feelings, emotions, introspection, self-awareness, empathy, imagination, language,…etc etc.

Well…maybe being able to spell ‘Boobs’ on a calculator is some kind of unexpected emergence?

“when i look up at the nights sky, and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact and I look up, many people feel small cuz they’re small and the universe is big, but I feel big because my atoms came from those stars…Theres a level of connectivity”
“Thats really what you want in life. You want to feel connected. You want to feel relevant.”
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Feelings of connection and relevance may appear to give a sense of grandness and purpose to our existence but are actually irrelevant if DeGrasse’s worldview is correct. Any appearance of purpose or an actual relevance would be completely illusory. It is a, …shall we say crutch perhaps?…to give a person some sense of purpose or something bigger than us in universe where there is in fact none but that which is imagined by the brain that holds it.
So what if I’m stardust? So what if just by being alive I’m a participant in the activities and events that go on around me?

I would’ve thought that a self evident and somewhat un-interesting fact. It does sound pretty profound when you back it with a Cinematic Orchestra track though…love them.

Ever since I was my boys age (5 & 8) I’ve wanted a remote control car. I used to buy the magazines and dream of getting one for each birthday and Christmas. One year I finally got a remote buggy with air filled tires and I was so excited. It still had a wire going from the controller to the car, but I was stoked. Until it broke it was my favourite toy, but still I knew it wasn’t like the ones in the magazines…the ‘real’ ones.

I’ve always maintained a tangential interest with the hope one day I could get one…and I finally did. If I’d known as a 10yr old that I wouldn’t get the toy I wanted for another 25 years I can imagine I’d have been pretty despondent.

Axial Wraith

I got onto the Axial Wraith from a Youtube vid somewhere as I was wondering about getting an RC crawler. Crawlers looked great and loved that they could climb everything-but they seemed slow so wasn’t sure one could maintain my interest. Seeing the Wraith I figure I’d found the perfect RC that could do what I used to dream about as a kid. It could crawl, and go a reasonable speed, and looked realistic. So I figured it was time to get one.

I mentioned to my wife on the way home from somewhere that I’d like to stop by a hobby store nearby so I could take a peek. She wasn’t interested so she stayed in the car. I’d known the Wraith was popular and seemed hard to get so wasn’t expecting to see one on the shelf…but there it was. Long story short I came out of the shop with a big box and popped it into the back of the car unbeknownst to my wife. She was ‘little peeved’ by that particular purchase once apprised. Evidently there are more practical things we should be spending our money on.

But she’s come around…
Family fun in the park