Why I Say, "Bah, Humbug" To Traditional Thanksgiving

In less that a week, the vast majority of American families will get together, eat a huge feast, watch football, watch parades, and give thanks for their lives.  A few will discuss the story behind Thanksgiving that we all learned in elementary school.  But I feel like we as a country have not only forgotten the lesson of Thanksgiving, but I wonder if anyone really got it at all.

Why?  Because we, the new Native Americans, do not welcome people into our country with open arms.  We don't help others live, and we definitely don't share a large percentage of our food with strangers in a show of harmony.  What we do is persecute people who want to come to the United States; we greet people with suspicion and lots of questions.

Do you have a job or a visible means of support?
Do you have an education?
Do you have any sexually transmitted diseases, or any other communicable diseases?
Do you have family in the U.S. to help you out?
Are you bringing family with you?
If yes, how many?  Who are they?

Maybe we can blame our reluctance towards new people on the fate of the original American Indians, since history shows that nothing good happened to them after the Europeans arrived.  After helping the new settlers, more immigrants sailed over and began to kick the Native Americans out of their territory.  We brought over the flu and other diseases that acted as plagues.  We brought over alcohol, and destroyed lives with it.  We wiped out most of the Native Americans, stole their land, and polluted the environment.

In general, Thanksgiving marked the rise of the colonists and the downfall of the Native Americans.

So what are we celebrating when we eat Thanksgiving dinner?  Are we celebrating the success of the colonists to serve in the New World?  Even though those same colonists contributed to the virtual genocide of a native people?

Sorry, but I must say "Bah, humbug" to that Thanksgiving.

But I still have a Thanksgiving dinner.  What I celebrate is the ability of humans to share, to learn together, and to be kind to one another.  I celebrate the times when we rise above ourselves to help each other, to put another person ahead of ourselves and do what is right - to become the people that we want to be, if only for a moment.

Children and Multiple Intelligences, Part 2

Before we proceed to comparing the theories of multiple intelligences to the standard IQ tests, I believe a little history lesson is in order.

The modern intelligent quotient (IQ) test began in the early 1900s.  France passed a law requiring school for all children during this time, but the French officials worried about how much money to put into the system.  Specifically, they worried about slow learners.  This is where Dr. Alfred Binet and his team enter the picture.  Dr. Binet agreed to help the French government.  To get around the problem of testing pre-literate children, Dr. Binet used three criteria for his tests:

• Attention span
• Problem Solving Skills
• Memory

Soon, Dr. Binet and his team noticed that while the majority of children performed the tasks within one standard deviation, some children performed the tasks on par with children either significantly older or younger.  They created a formula to describe this phenomena:

Mental Age of Child

_______________

Real Age of Child

Note that this gives you the "quotient" part of IQ.

Dr. Binet multiplied the resultant number by 100 to get rid of the decimal.  So the first formula for IQ was

 Mental Age/Real Age x 100 = Intelligent Quotient

So if a child who is 10 years old performs as well as a 12 year old, her IQ is:

12/10 x 100 = 1.2 x 100 = 120

While a 10 year old child who performs as well as an eight year old child has an IQ of:

8/10 x 100 = .80 x 100 = 80

The scientific community latched onto Dr. Binet's work as ground-breaking in the arena of measuring intelligence, something that had not been done before.  But Dr. Binet stressed that his tests were limited in their scope, and that further research needed to be done.  Dr. Binet died before this research was completed, but several scientists took over, continuing his research and evolving the test to what we have today.

The Fall of the American Empire

I have a secret.

I see patterns.

Okay, so  it’s really not as cool as seeing dead people.  But it’s my one super power (so to speak).  In elementary school, I saw patterns in numbers, and used the knowledge to ace every multiplication test on the planet.  (Did you know that there are at least 4 patterns to figuring out the 9s table?)  Later on, I used patterns to remember events in history, find results in science labs, and even write music for a humanities class.  

Outside of school, patterns are not quite as useful.  I still use patterns when writing music, and I see patterns in the plots of books.  Today, though, I want to talk about a pattern that I see in history, and how I think it relates to the current situation in the American economy.

Throughout recorded human history, civilizations have grown from small villages to huge empires, only to topple and be replaced by other empires. From Europe to China, empires rise and fall with regularity in history.  If you look closely, you realize that the vast majority of empires did not fall outright to an external force, such as another empire.  Rather, internal corruption weakened each empire, corruption that started at the top and worked its way through the political organization.  

When I examine history, I see a pattern in this corruption.  It begins when the people at the top of the power chain begin to think that their needs and wants trump the needs and wants of society as a whole.  When people act elite, their decisions become self-centered.  Unfortunately, these same people tend to have the power in society, so the more elite they act, the worse off the rest of society becomes until there is a change.  That change is revolution, whether a bloody affair, such as the Russian revolution at the beginning of the 20th century, or a peaceful affair,  such as Occupy Wall Street.

When our Founding Fathers set up the United States, they incorporated the concept of “We the people” into the documents and philosophy of the new country.  In the beginning, “We the people” only meant white men, but as time went by the concept grew to incorporate women as well as people of other ethnicities.    Now, “We the people” means everyone in this country, from the homeless person living in a cardboard box under a bridge to the wealthy inheritor who has so much money it could never get spent.

The trouble came to our country when the very wealthy acted as if their wants were more important than anyone else’s needs.  When the wealthy act as if they are above “We the people”, you get banks who give out mortgages that cannot be paid back, because it gives the bank a short term profit.  When the wealthy act as if they are an “elite few”, you get corporations who pay less tax than any individual American, but still ask for more tax breaks.  

When the wealthy and powerful act above “We the people”, you get the United States as it stands today.

If history serves as an indicator of what happens next, then the American Empire already began to fall several years ago when the banks and corporations started to care more about short-term profit and money over the welfare of the country.  The only question left is what kind of revolution we will have.