Where do we find Faith?

Constantly, I’m wondering whether religious faith is innate, kind of hardwired in us, or shaped by external factors like culture and environment. If we look at the arguments for innate religiosity, we might have evolved to develop a tendency to attribute natural events to supernatural forces, like gods or spirits, just like our ancestors explained thunderstorms as the manifestation of some angry gods. 

There are also theories that assert that our brains are wired to infer others’ thoughts, making belief in invisible, mindful deities intuitive. Some studies have also suggested that spirituality can be inherited while neuroscience finds that temporal lobe stimulation can trigger mystical experiences. Still, I believe that religion is more influenced by cultural and social learning.

The best example is that kids typically adopt the religion and the general culture of their parents. A child born in Saudi Arabia is likely Muslim while born near us in Provo, Utah is more likely to be Mormon! Same thing for me when I was raised in France and had no other choice than being corralled into the Catholic faith. There’s the social aspect of organized religion with its rites and traditions, creating a certain cohesion in communities. 

The most attractive element of religion is that it answers existential anxiety by mitigating the fear of death, to the point, I’m told, that in societies with high mortality rates people tend to be more religious. The reverse is true in countries that are well-run, more advanced and very stable like Scandinavia. Between these two forces, some scholars agree that religiosity arises from both innate tendencies and cultural shaping and claim that our brain structure and cognitive biases make us prone to supernatural beliefs. 

I’m a bit skeptical about that and I believe that it’s culture and social pressures that determines which gods, rituals, or moral systems dominate. Then there are those that bring up near-death experiences, that’s explained by a biological phenomena stemming from oxygen deprivation and leading to the “tunnel of light” stories we’ve all heard about, as the gateway to Christian "heaven" or Buddhist "bardo". 

Along the same lines, there’s of course the effects of prayer and meditation with neurologically measurable effects, but these practices don’t come instinctively as they need to be taught. If it’s certain that religious faith is neither purely innate (like hunger), nor purely learned (like algebra). Instead, certain factors make humans susceptible to supernatural beliefs and our environment determines the specific form those beliefs take. 

What do you think?

Kashmir and the Brits

The recent events in Kashmir have prompted me to search what caused them in the first place. The problem between India and Pakistan regarding Kashmir originates a territorial dispute resulting from the 1947 partition of India. That decision was made by the British government, with Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, playing a key role in implementing the plan. The Muslim representatives supported it, while India’s Gandhi and Nehru did not. 

As Mountbatten rushed the independence timeline, he also made lots of critical errors that haunt both countries to this very day, including keeping partition maps secret, failing to resolve the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, and failing to plan for resource sharing. As the British government faced pressure to end its colonial rule in India and was woefully unable to quell growing communal tensions, it decided that partition was the only solution. 

The mess began with Lord Louis Mountbatten, as the appointed Viceroy, who rushed the process, bringing forward the date of independence by ten months, to August 1947. He then implemented a plan to divide the country into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. 

A British lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe was tasked with drawing the borders of the new states in a similar short time frame. 

He drew lines based on religious demographics, but did a terrible job in areas with mixed populations like Punjab and Bengal, leading to a complex and controversial division. Borders were drawn without local input, splitting villages and rivers.That process was developed around some key mistakes that are still lingering today with the disputed partition of Kashmir. 

First, the partition maps were kept secret by the protagonists, leading to uncertainty and misunderstandings about the new borders. Then, the fate of Jammu and Kashmir, a princely state with a Muslim majority but ruled by a Hindu prince, was left unresolved, contributing to the ongoing tensions that are still unresolved today. To make things worse, there was a lack of planning for how resources and assets would be divided between the two new nations. 

Finally, the accelerated timeline and the short time frame given Radcliffe to draw the borders led to a rushed and chaotic partition process, leading to immense suffering, including a million people killed in religious riots, 15 million displaced, and the creation of deep-seated animosity between India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan became independent on mid August, 1947 while Kashmir conflict began immediately, leading to wars in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999. 

Great Britain has a knack for taking over territories takeovers and causing havoc in that process, from the Indian subcontinent to Palestine among many others. The question we could all ask today, why aren’t the Brits mopping up the messes they create as the move on? Brits just shut up and hope no one remembers this, as as they’re inventing new ways to colonize the best parts of Italy, France, Portugal and Spain as only them know how to!

Three years at the wheel of my Tesla

We’ve now owned our Tesla for three years now and I love the car to the point that I wouldn’t go back to an ICE powered vehicle ever! An absolute No-no! 

Still, I’ll admit that it took me some time to get familiar and effective with its touch-screen, but the car now has very few secrets left for me to discover. It says a lot about what the car can do for me in spite of his association with the individuals I despise the most.

So could my next car be a Tesla? No, if it’s still owned by Elon! I don’t want to add one red cent to that horrible man’s wealth, but would look at BYD when my current automobile needs replacement during my lifetime. 

Given some time, it may catch up and overtake Musk’s brand!

“Hola!” Pope Leo XIV!

It’s with relief that I saw that the white smoke didn’t take long to come out into St Peter’s sky when the new Pope was elected, and that he didn’t sound particularly conservative as he said he was going to be continuing his predecessor’s efforts in seeking peace and social justice.

 

Being American, but speaking perfect Italian and even better Spanish, he stands as the antidote to Trump and his sycophants. This is the right direction for the new head of the Catholic Church and the entire world. 

Will he do everything he said, particularly in his quest for peace? Well, time will tell, it might not be that easy, and I would want to keep a lid on my expectations, but in the meantime is choice is felt as a relief from the American chaos...

Do you still love “Take 5”?

I don’t know about you, but I love “Take 5″ and so does my wife. I first heard it in 1961 when I joined the watchmaking school in Cluses, France, no other than from the “N’H Quartet” our school’s jazz band where my school mate Jean-Marie Peyrin played the clarinet. This tune released in 1959 was a huge hit by any standard and was emblematic of the West Coast “cool jazz” sound at the time. 

Paul Desmond had composed one of the greatest alto sounds of all times that sounded quite differently from what came from the east coast in those days. West coast cool jazz was simpler harmonically and tempos were generally not as fast as hard bop. I might be generalizing, but Take Five encapsulated both the cool sound and attitude. 

There are better examples (Bud Shank, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan) but this was just a fantastic recording. While, unfairly I think, Brubeck wasn't thought of in the same class as some of his peers, Desmond was a genius at using his sound and his use of strong melodic lines and space to develop interesting solos. 

The track was written after the Quartet's drummer, Joe Morello, requested a song in quintuple meter. For those like me who don’t know much about music, a quintuple meter refers to a time signature that contains five beats per measure. It can be either simple or compound, similar to other meters like duple, triple, and quadruple. Simple quintuple meter is most often written as 5/4 or 5/8, while compound quintuple meter is typically written as 15/8. 

Paul Desmond composed the melodies on Morello's rhythms while Brubeck arranged the song. The track's name is derived from its meter, and the injunction, "Take five", meant "Let’s take a break for five minutes". 

Now you’ll know everything next time you happen to hear and enjoy listening to that beautiful piece! 

What’s YMMV?

When I was doing my research on my home network, I ran into an acronym I had never seen before: “YMMV”. Always curious, I immediately checked it out and found that it stood for "Your Mileage May Vary", which is used to acknowledge that an opinion or experience is purely subjective and may differ for others. It implies that what works well for one person might not work as well for someone else, and vice versa. 

In fact, the phrase "Your Mileage May Vary" originally appeared in car commercials to acknowledge that factors like driving conditions, habits, load, tires, ski rack and the car's specific make and model could affect fuel efficiency or mileage as most call it. 

This expression was adopted in social media to precisely express that something that works for the speaker might not work for others, due to individual differences in experience, taste, or circumstances. Something like: "I really like this pair of skis, but YMMV." My driving experience with Tesla was fabulous, but YMMV." 

Good luck in making the best of YMMV!

Solving another technological problem?

For the past six months, I have struggled to solve a problem with our Google smart speakers. Like most users we find these little devices very handy and helpful in answering many questions like how old is Trump or how young is Macron. But mostly, we use it in the morning while we’re having our first coffee in bed, and order the little device to “Play our NPR station” and it gives us brand new updates for the day. 

We’ve been using our smart speakers for more than seven years and they worked pretty well. Four years ago we got a faster internet routers and these magic little speakers kept on working well, except that in larger homes where WiFi signals can be blocked a mesh router is often required to ensure a consistent and reliable Wi-Fi connection throughout the entire area.

Unlike traditional routers that broadcast from a single point, mesh systems use multiple nodes that communicate and work together to create a seamless, wider coverage area and can accommodate frequencies from 2.4 to 5 GHz while keeping the network seamless. 

It worked perfectly until six months ago when it began to sometimes drop the signal and stop unpredictably and frequently enough to become a real nuisance. Going from heaven to hell, so to speak. From the get go, I suspected the functionality of our Google smart speakers or the morning news broadcaster, factory-reset the former and chastised the latter, which tried to help but couldn’t find anything, 

This was until more recently when the same flaw began to appear on other devices, like our TV while we were streaming a movie. That forced me to look well beyond my assumptions and dive into my network. Finally it’s on the Reddit chat room that I finally discovered that the Google Mesh system after a certain time of use exhibited this nasty behavior and had to be replaced. 

All the discussions I followed comforted me in that direction. As a result I ordered a new mesh system and tomorrow, I’ll get the device and will discover if that really was my problem, so just stay tuned!