A statement of direction.

motives | change | education | fear | closing

Deep Cover:

If you have come this far, you deserve to know some personal information, not available on Face book ™.

So what motives lie behind my beliefs?

When I started to school the scientists said that planet was dead, an inert mass; the sun was something to tan you, atoms were little planets surrounded by their electron moons, there were two kingdoms of life: plants or animals; God made me to know love and serve him forever in heaven, Church worship was in another "dead" language conducted exclusively by men, darker skinned people sat at the rear of public buses, women got married young and raised families, men alone went overseas to fight wars, television was transmitted in black, white and shades of grey, radio played rock'n roll if it was different from "easy listening," airplanes had things called propellers on their wings, and water was something to put in a mixed drink, run a fishing boat over, or swim in.

Today, fifty years later people have far more money and leisure time than in the 1960s but the sun is a twin source of electricity form the same radiation that raises our risk for skin cancer. The water is filled with feces from some other creatures or even from us. Scientists tell us the planet is -- well if not alive -- its not quite dead either. Our atoms are really quarks if not strings, and the nucleic acids that persist in the core of cells is the "secret code of life."

Aero planes have been replaced by jets and ladders to get into aircraft have been replaced by "jet-ways." Cans of lard or Crisco for frying have been replaced by "extra virgin oil". No one we knew ate meat on Fridays and Lent was a sort of middle class Christian "Ramadan" except we had no idea what Moslem's believed, let alone observed in their devotion to a holy ideal. Cars were heavy, big and burned lots of gas per mile traveled, while their back seats were a special place of ecstasy, denied us teenagers by schools, motels and especially policemen. Yes the police were exclusively composed of men. Women taught grade school, or were nurses.

Why do I tell you this? Well because I had to change my mind based on overwhelming evidence that countered my experiences, upbringing, or biases, and that is hard to experience. It is even much harder to change. But the evidence is clear that what we know of the world is subject to repeated changes due to new discoveries.

It is far easier to believe that Jesus loves me so much that he died for my sins and that mother Mary comforts me. But stories are not as convincing, despite their seductive appeal.

It is really more rewarding to think that I live in the finest –most free– and first country in the world than to think that the Netherlanders are smarter about the planet, the Norwegians more generous with sharing their wealth, the Japanese more hard-working and the Indians more spiritually diverse, if not more tolerant of other people's faiths. NAtionalism is just another sickness of the world I grew up in and that enough people have not outgrown.

You can probably tell that I am in the habit of seeing, and trained to see the world differently from everyone else. That is because having studied with Garrett Hardin, I can imagine a world more complicated than we can think because reason has its limitations in the face of nature's capacity to deceive us. Despite being on the margin of imaginative credibility and often being misunderstood, I am, yet comfortable with my distinctly minority view.

Why? I think because I can see for myself, read what I must, and put old information together in new ways in order to see what is on the horizon.

That may be so because I wish to foster wisdom in you, due to how tolerantly I was raised.

How?

Well, because Emory University altered my life and prepared me to do research. I succeeded, only barely at the University of California because I had professors who taught me to evaluate the results of my research into why something may have occurred the way it did -- as opposed to why I wanted it to occur.

Santa Barbara changed my life because it wedded intellect, to changed emotions and an understanding that the earth ocean and wild things were my neighbors and not my adversaries.

The world has built itself not just for me to understand but for creatures to encounter their and our disturbing presence in the world as a sort of perrenial partnership of give-and-take. I learned that from Garrett Hardin, as his teaching assistant, where too I discovered that I relish telling people what I discover. I am like some insignificant meadow vole always going far afield to find what I need to sustain my curiosity, to feed my lust for overcoming ignorance, and fatten my desire to know what is really difficult to comprehend.

This is all too self-congratulatory, so I must admit I am scared. So fright motivates me to put a lot of things between me and my fears, such as putting intellectual knowledge before my dread of death. I am scared of my feelings. If you show you are intellectually curious and want to make sense of the world, I am afraid to say that I love that quality in you and others. We live in a repressive society, so I have come to fear emotions and seek to find refuge in what I refer to as the "Police of the cerebral cortex," or my rationality and logic.

Although, I fail at many of these endeavors to really know my world, I do pursue an understanding of evolution, biology and history because I am both interested in and more deeply addicted to knowing what has recently been discovered.

In the ninth grade I won the school's current events award during the time when Kennedy was assassinated, based on a test. But I also won because I was curious to know why the world had failed and was plunged into war. I think that I remain in a state of lust for any new tidbit, any recent discovery, or any crucial finding that challenges my preconceived notion of reality.

I thank my parents for their love and tolerance, both of my grandmothers for my straight teeth and my first microscope, my many fine teachers for recognizing in me that I might possess some capacity and gift. I make it a point to share these gifts with others so we may seek new information and always open our minds and hearts to change.

I am still in search of that gift, perhaps you can help me find what it is?

I think you can, because I trust your intellect, and remain devoted to discovery.

While I barely survived my teenage wasteland, and so you may succeed where I have failed.

Cheers.

J. Siry
Tree planter, & house builder.

motives | change | education | fear

25-Mar-2007, 24-December-2008.

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