Trimming Back the Alphabet

I've decided I've got a bone to pick with the alphabet.  The English language as a whole is due for a tune-up if you ask me, but I figure why not start with the building blocks and work out from there?

It's not English's fault really.  Any language is just a vessel humans use to communicate their ideas and their cute little aspirations toward meaning, and every vessel needs an overhaul from time to time.  Language evolves and changes with the humans who speak it, and as with most things human-- it generally does so totally unconsciously.  Since English has undergone so many mutations through migration, occupation, and conquest, it's picked up a lot of dust and modification along the way.  It's lost a lot too, probably for the better, like the informal 2nd person thou and thee-- that's right, those used to be the informal.  Most native English speakers seem to think that, just because they're archaic, they must have been formal.  Not so.  "You are" used to be formal and "thou art" what you might say to your kids and close friends. I'm not sure if it's for the best that we dropped the conjugated endings for most of our verbs ("Dost thou hear me?"), but it hath definitely simplified the grammar and madeth the language one of the easiest in the world to learn in that regard. Overall though, having been born a Germanic language as Anglo-Saxon, occupied by the Normans and picked up a lot of French, and therefore Latin, I'm afraid all of that muttery has resulted in a pretty slipshod alphabet and some totally whack spelling conventions and I think it's high time we made some adjustments.

Therefore, in order to streamline English for a new era, I propose the following:

The letter C is hereby expelled.  There's no use for the C.  I mean, sure, it's got a nice sexy curve to it, and it looks nice on the page, but it serves absolutely no function in the alphabet, except to complicate things unnecessarily.  It either makes the S sound or the K sound, can't seem to make up its mind, which confuses the crap out of little kids trying to learn to spell, and since we already have both an S and K doing their jobs, I say C has got to go.

The letter X-- also expelled.  For much the same reason as C, X is a totally unnecessary letter.  It even uses the same two letters as C but at the same time!  So, why not just use KS and shave another freeloader from the alphabet.  Granted, it would make signing legal documents even harder for the illiterate, but by making English easier to spell, I figure we can cut down on illiteracy and strike the problem at its heart.  We'll also have to find another way to mark things on a map, but that's really a small price to pay, and there's no reason X can't stick around as its own symbol, in maps and algebra, I just say stop befuddling the alphabet.  I mean, think of all those books for teaching toddlers how to read: with pictures of things that start with each letter-- they only have tired old X-Ray and Xylophone to choose from.  I think they'll be relieved.

W-- also cut.  I mean, it's bad enough that we seem determined to make U feel inadequate, that it's not good enough or strong enough to do its job in some uords and needs to be doubled.  . Uhat's more, we drau it as if it uere a Double V, uhich just adds body shaming to the hole abuse of U and I uon't stand for it anymore.  There's nouhere in the language that U can't do the job as a single, empowered letter, undoubled and proud. It just needs some solidarity from those of us who see the problem. And if ever it does need a little break, double O can serve just as ooell ooithout adding more klutter to the alphabet.

Limit the power of G.  On its own, I have no truk with G.  It's a fine letter, all kute and squiggly when it's small and growing up into a fine, stately sort of kapital letter with great kurves and buttresses.  But it has gained a bit too much freedom and power in the language and needs to be reined in a bit.  (Probably egged on by H-- see beloe).  Freedom, after all, is a fine and noble quality until it begins to infringe upon the freedoms and rights of others, and that's presisely uhat G had done to J.  I kan see no reason at all oohy any letter should make more than one sound.  Isn't the hole point of a letter that it is, like an atom, the most fundamental building block of a languaje?  And sinse the "juh" sound is perfektly well represented by the J, I demand that G immediately and forthuith be prohibited from the kind of kopyrite infrinjement that it has been engajed uith for so long.  Again, think of the children!  Please note, that also means we'll need to chanje the uay uee pronounse the very letter in the alphabet song.  Just think of the klarified butter, and it uill be fine.

Finally, Abolish GH.  This one is less about the alphabet and more about the languaje itself, but bear ooith me. For far too long, the GH konglomerate has held a komplete monopoly over all the unnesessary sounds in the languaje, overkomplikating simple sounds and konfounding the brightest young learners.  In the spirit of trust-busting, I say no more!  I mean, when you take into konsideration that "ough" alone kan make siks totally different sounds (rough, cough, thought, though, through, and bough) I think my point is made.  Sure, OU needs some work too, but, like EI, it's really that lurking GH konglomerate throwing its weit around that's the real problem, making things more difficult than they need to be.

It's true, such changes will not come easy.  No revolution of thot or kustom is born uithout its detraktors, and there uill most sertainly be some hoo kling to the oppressive imperialism of tradition.  It's also true that the changes I propose will ripple out and require a great deal more adjustments.  (I still haven't figured out how to spell the "chuh" sound without a C). But think of potential!  The hole "I before E" rule just got a lot simpler, sinse uee got rid of C, and "neighbor" and "weigh" won't have to be mere ekseptions anymore.  That konfounding EI will work itself out.  I'm sure of it.

It's also possible that more changes may bekome nesessary onse uee embrase such a radically self-adjusting mentality.  (The letter Y should probably think about updating its resume.)  As uee begin to trim auay all of the ekstra hangers-on from the alphabet, uee mite also konsider just going all the uay bak to the orijinal Anglo-Sakson runes. It uas so great and simple bakk then; the letters even meant something! Plus uee could purje the languaje of all the foreign influense it's pikked up along the uay.

Yes I say it's time not for progress but regress, bakkooard change to rekover some of the sense that's been lost in the konfusing press of time and globalism. And if these arguments don't konvinse you, think of it this uay: moving down to 23 letters uill save a fortune on those early reader Letter Books I mentioned earlier.  

Rumi's Chickpea to Cook

This is one of my favorites from the great 13th Century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks, an outstanding poet in his own right.  When I read this, I reflect on the deepest challenges of living that polish our spirits, of the fires that burn away the parts of us that no longer serve our deep selves, and of the mysterious workings of the hidden world that are constantly calling us into greater heights of presence and awareness.


CHICKPEA TO COOK

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot

where it’s being boiled.

“Why are you doing this to me?”

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.

“Don’t you try to jump out.
You think I’m torturing you.
I’m giving you flavor,
so you can mix with spices and rice
and be the lovely vitality of a human being.

Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this.”

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea
will say to the cook,
“Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can’t do this by myself.

I’m like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn’t pay attention
to his driver. You’re my cook, my driver,
my way into existence. I love your cooking.”

The cook says,
“ I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practices.
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher.”

~Rumi

Waking

I'm visiting my birthplace in Phoenix, AZ with my daughter Cybela.  She's 17 now, newly graduated from high school and possessed of a depth and earnestness that always leaves me proud and teary. We're looking at the summer stars under an inimitable desert night sky and at her request I'm pointing out stars and constellations, some of which she remembers from past nights like this.  Some are new.

I tell her the Tlingit story of how the lights of the Big Dipper got caught in the sky when the people used long poles to push it up above the earth from the four corners and we trip over the topic of Native wisdom and European colonialism.  She tells me "Sometimes I picture the old villages and how they used to live, without the modern world touching them or knowing about them.  It's sad that's gone." 

I tell her that there are still some left.  I tell her about the Kogi people in the Sierra Madres, who rolled up their bridges and pulled back into the mountains when they saw the Spanish coming.  They've lived the last 500 years as they always have, unknown and untouched by the mental illness of greed and environmental opportunism the Europeans brought with them.  Elder brother, as they call themselves, came down from the mountains in the 80's to urge their Younger Brother to wake from this illness, to take better care of the earth and the water and the air.  Younger Brother is what they call people of European descent and all those who live like them.  The Kogi, I tell Cybela, choose their medicine people at age 7, and train them for 7 years in caves to learn how to dream clearly.  7 years of darkness so they can learn how to See.  Like aboriginal Australians, they believe that the dreaming world is the real world, and this world is the dream.

I'm filled with gratitude in these moments I share with my smart, caring, shiny daughter.  My mom gets teary watching me pass on teachings of the constellations that I received from my dad, and I'm overflowing, too, with this precious gift of finding my place in the long chain of generations, of anchoring my existence in Love and Duty and Relationship.

Looking up again and listening, with Cybela's eyes looking parallel to mine, somewhere in the black fabric between the stars I think I see the Kogi dreamers looking back at us.  She feels it too, and comments about how much time we spend in our little bubbles of awareness and self-centeredness, how much of our lives we spend focusing only on taking what we can for ourselves, while we can.  In that moment, we share the realization that, when we step out of that little bubble, our awareness expands and we feel the fragile gift of this life, the gravity of responsibility we have to take care of each other and the world, the water and the air.  

For that moment at least, I wake from the dream and I know without doubt that the Kogi are right.

A Modern Proposal: some thoughts on Arms and the 2nd Amendment

I’ve listened to a lot of different kinds of people lately, since the latest really big mass shooting in America.  (We have to qualify them now, since we have varying degrees of “mass shooting” happening on the regular in this, the  Gravest Country on Earth.) 

I’ve listened carefully to the young people organizing en masse and walking out of their schools, staging sit-ins outside the chambers of stuffy old Senate Majority Leaders.  I’ve listened carefully to red-faced, right-handed apocalypticals who’ve been convinced in their very guts that any kind of gun-control legislation is the next phase of the Liberal-Elite Government’s takeover of Freedom.  I’ve even listened to well-researched podcasts that carefully trace the relatively recent rise of the NRA and its obsessively narrow reading of the 2^nd Amendment—an obsession which began, ironically, not with White Rednecks but Black Panthers claiming the right to arm themselves for their own protection.

For any readers unfamiliar with the Second Amendment to the American Constitution, it reads, bad commas and all:  

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the Security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

As short as it is, it’s a doozy, not the least because clear people see it as loaded, while loaded people see it as clear.  

Let’s ignore for a moment the whole “well-regulated militia” part; regulation is a dirty, liberal word, so let’s focus on the arms part.

I think one reason even our well-meaning, red-faced, right-handed apocalypticals have become so mobilized, so patriotically inflamed about this particular Amendment in recent years is this: as the instruments of political power have grown more and more, well, powerful, it becomes more and more difficult to believe that We the People have any control at all over our own politics.  Information, media and education: out of our hands.  The economy, jobs, foreign trade and interest rates: out of our hands.   Voting, gerrymandering, the electoral college and runaway campaign finance: out of our hands.  These are important instruments of power, it’s true, but let’s face it: when Americans want to feel powerful, especially when we start to fear that we’re not, the first form of power we grab for—instinctively, you might say—is the armament. 

After all, how is the average, increasingly uncritical American citizen supposed to feel powerful when the Black folks are getting shot in the streets, the White folks are losing their unquestionable majority privileges, the Brown folks are threatened with deportation, the Red folks are getting even more of their grounds poisoned and dug through with pipelines, all the while some Yellow folks across the ocean are building nuclear missiles, and not a one of us can honestly believe that our teeny, tiny vote makes a damn bit of difference?  Of course we need assault rifles!  How are we supposed to defend ourselves against our own military and police forces, King George and the Liberal-Elite if they have them, and we don’t?  In fact, I think we need to go all the way with this argument.

Therefore, in the fairly recent but still somehow hallowed tradition of the 2^nd Amendment, in order that the People shall feel empowered and secure in their person (which after all is why we have a Constitution in the first place), here is my proposal: 

I propose that, immediately and forthwith, every man, woman and child in these United States of America be armed with a tactical nuclear weapon. 

It is the best and only way, in this crazy Age and this crazy Day, to insure the security of a Free State. And that's what we're after isn't it?  Security?  Or was it Freedom? Note that I include children in this demand.  Age-limits are a slippery slope and where will it end?  Any limitation is logically the same as total limitation, I’m sure the NRA will agree.  The second Amendment gives us no limits on the size of the arms we have the right to keep and bear—Madison even capitalized the word!—and yet time and again, the Government has given literally trillions of our hard-earned tax dollars to private contractors to build itself Stealth bombers and Raptors and Smart Bombs and Blackhawks and subs and tanks and depleted uranium rounds while We the People quibble over bump-stocks and clip-sizes and age limits.  Why shouldn’t every American have access to that wealth of technology, being necessary for the Security of a free state?

I say: No more! 

Put a nuke in the hands of every citizen and I guarantee we will have all the Freedom we can stand, once and for all!  And if it brings about the Apocalypse, well, isn't that our God-given right too?. 

My red-faced, right-handed friends are sick of waiting for it anyway.

Paid in Full: Reconceiving the Currencies of our Life-Salaries

For years I have been working for nonprofits, consulting, creating, directing.  The first nonprofit organization I helped to launch was a tiny one dedicated to creating curriculum and programming for children’s peace education.  As you may imagine, I volunteered an enormous amount of time to see it grow and even when I did manage to raise the money to get paid a salary, it was a pittance compared to what my two M.A.s might command elsewhere.  At the time, though, I was a single dad raising a young daughter, and my time with her was so precious to me, the ability to participate in her school and play so valuable, that I considered it a fair bargain.  Certainly, there were months when rent was tough to meet and I grew used to level of poverty that many know far more intimately. I also experienced a kind of shame in that poverty that, I think, is particularly acute here in the US where the Myth of the Self-made Man so dominates the thinking of the people.  That Myth I speak of, that opportunity is equally and justly distributed among all, and if you’re poor it’s your own damn fault, is a complex and powerful one, of course, and I will not get too deeply into it here.  You will draw your own conclusions by the end of this piece, hopefully with some new ways to think about it. 

My real purpose here is to offer some thoughts about the way we conceive of money and payment for the work we do.  As a poet and a writer, I am of course, passionate about language, and I revel in the act of swinging from words and exploring their roots and branches.  Let’s consider, then, the word “salary.”  We use it so often in modern English and, particularly because of its modern connotation, we spend a great deal of energy hunting the larger members of the species.  Isn’t a large salary, after all, why we spend so much time and money going to the right college for degrees,  why we spend so much time and energy getting good grades in high school?  Isn’t a large salary why we so readily change the place we live when its demanded of us, or why we spend so much time away from our loved ones, and over-stressing our minds and bodies, and placating the egos of superiors, whether we respect them or not?  

The word salary comes from the Latin sale, meaning “salt.”  The word is a descendant from the Roman Empire, which would reimburse its soldiers with portions of salt, if they were worth theirs, of course.  At the time, before refrigerators or Ziploc baggies, salt was extremely valuable as the primary resource for preserving meat and therefore feeding one’s family over long periods of time.  It’s a good reminder, I think, particularly since salt is so cheap and readily available now, of two important facts: a) symbolic currencies have never been more than a means to the ultimate end of providing security, health, and happiness to ourselves and our families, and b) when those currencies are no longer useful to that purpose, it becomes time to consider them in a different way.

If you listen to elders on their deathbeds, you will find what many researchers and interviewers find when they ask dying people what, if anything, they regret about their lives.  Very often, people who are dying don’t really regret not having made more money or spending more time at work.  People usually regret spending so much time pursuing money, at the expense of time with their loved ones, or in pursuit of their deep dreams.

Consider then, the idea that it is not actually a greater salary that we are all interested in—at least in the monetary sense of the word.  It is rather what we believe money provides, which is security, happiness, ease, and freedom, all of which taken together become synonymous with a Healthy Life.  The problem is a very old one, and one that many wisdom traditions speak about at great length, which is mistaking the symbol of something for the thing the symbol represents.  In the Old Testament, for example, one of the first commandments specifically warns of worshipping graven images, precisely because when we give too much attention to the representation of something, especially of the Divine, we begin to think that the representation is the thing itself.  This notion of idolatry was so deeply ingrained that it included not just literal graven images, but even verbal ones, which is why it was forbidden to speak the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name of God.  It is also why usury was expressly forbidden in both the old testament and the new.  Usury, though it’s often believed to refer to charging excessive interest on a loan, originally referred to charging any interest on a loan.  The reason for this is that money is by definition a symbol.  It is the representation of the value of a thing.  I want a goat and you have a goat, so we agree on the value of it and exchange a piece of metal or paper that represents that value.  That’s all fine and it makes practical sense for trading merchandise; however, as soon as I treat that symbolic representation as a Thing in its own right, something that can generate more of itself through interest, I have committed the sin of usury.   In fact, I have gone even further and created a symbol of a symbol.  This is also why, in the New Testament, Yeshua famously threw the money-lenders out of the Temple, for profaning a place of direct connection with the Divine with graven image-worship. (For a deeper trip down that Rabbit Hole, think about the stock market, which creates symbols of symbols of symbols.)

So consider again what we so doggedly pursue in our careers, that Holy Grail of a great salary.  Think of how fiercely we fight and lie and cheat—or even just how hard we work—all to obtain more and more symbolic representations of what it is we are really after, meaning and happiness and freedom.  Think of the bankers and businessmen who threw themselves off of tall buildings, or committed equally tragic forms of suicide during the various stock market crashes, when the symbols they worshipped revealed themselves to be hollow and they felt they had lost everything.  The good news in all of this is of course that if we are clear what the symbol is, the graven image if you will, and what it is we are truly pursuing, then we can renegotiate our salaries, so to speak.  We can include other forms of currency to symbolize meaning and happiness and healthy lives.

During the time that I worked part-time in the nonprofit sector and refused to compromise my time with my young daughter, it became clear to me that I was being compensated in non-monetary ways for the work I was doing.  Not only did my position pay me in units of Freedom, which I used to pick up my daughter from school and volunteer occasionally in her classroom, it also paid me in units of Meaning.  I believed absolutely in what I was doing.  Developing curriculum and educations programs for young people to learn about historical peacemakers, and to develop skills in conflict resolution that could last for many generations into the future—this was work that fit in perfect congruence with my values as a human being.  When I add these units of Meaning and Freedom to the relatively small sum of monetary currency I was paid, my salary was huge indeed.

How many people make great monetary salaries but hate their work, or worse, feel morally compromised by it?  In such cases, I think we should subtract units of Meaning or units of Freedom from that monetary salary to get a more accurate calculation.  You’ll notice I’m not saying that the monetary currency has no value at all—of course it does, but we have to remember that it a currency—which is to say a flow of energy that we measure in symbolic units, and the point here is that it’s not the only one.

What I’m proposing, then, is a new kind of formula for calculating the salaries of our lives and work, to see whether our labor is worth its salt, so to speak.  I will not presume to tell you how to value your own Freedom, or the sense of fulfillment (ie. Meaning) you get from the work you do, but I will ask you to assign some kind of symbolic value to these universal life Goals.  Call them Life-Chips or Freedom-Francs or Meaning-Dollars if you like.  Then add those into your calculations when you decide how much your job is worth to you.  Of course, you might say “You can’t pay a mortgage with Meaning-Dollars” and that’s true.  (Though I would also point out that in Latin, “mortgage” translates to “death-grip.”)  And it may also be true, after a fashion, that you can’t put a kid through college with Life-chips, but you can leave your children a considerable inheritance of them—and Meaning-Dollars, if you gather them wisely.  And with College Debt taking its own kind of death grip on our young ones these days, which is a wiser investment? 

As a final thought, I think it’s important to mention the power of our minds to shape our realities by the way we perceive them.  There are many worthwhile conversations to be had in response to my arguments here—about the privilege that my white maleness and education afford me to talk this way, for example, or about the realities of oppressive systems which have been deliberately created to keep working-class people chasing money in a sort of indentured servitude.  These are both valid points which I acknowledge humbly and honestly.  However I will also submit that the great gift—the Divine Gift, if you will—of being conscious human beings with at least some measure of Free Will, is that we get to choose where to invest our time, our beliefs and our life-force.  In this small regard at least, I think that the Myth of the Self-Made Person is not totally off-base.  And I hope that, as you consider how to evaluate the profit and loss of your own Life, the Freedom of Time, the Meaning and the Happiness—the true goals of a healthy salary—will factor in as much as the paper and metal symbols of Money.

Educating Global Citizens

Over the course of human affairs, as societies have steadily increased in size and complexity, it has become more and more important to question.  Particularly, as humanity become globalized in its economy and information sharing, and as the number of media messages bombarding our brains grows each year, it becomes ever more important for individual citizens to stay sharp.  In 1787, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, “Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.”  

The education of everyone is not a privilege bestowed upon the people by a democratic institution; it is a necessary condition of a democratic institution.

We simply don’t spend enough time in public dialogue about what education is, or what qualifies as a good education.  Sure, we spend a great deal of time and money evaluating whether a student can solve basic algebra, or name the causes and consequences of World War I, and of course, content is important.  I agree that we need some basic standards by which we judge whether someone has actually been educated or not.  However, with the takeover of profit-driven standardized testing in recent years, two issues in education have become painfully clear: 1) no one method of assessing content knowledge is complete, and 2) we must be diverse in deciding what that content is, and who decides it.    

Especially given the current mental health crisis in this country as evidenced by the recent rise in mass shootings and other pervasive violence, basic coping skills and conflict resolution seem like a high priority to me, yet there are almost no content standards for the one subject that literally everyone deals with from cradle to grave: conflict.

There is much to say about testing, and a great deal more to discuss about the narrowing of curriculum that has resulted from corporatized testing.  My point here, though, is that real education is not something that can be measured like a long jump or scored like a soccer match.  Real learning doesn’t only happen in a classroom, but in the world, at home, with friends, and, if you’re doing it right, for the rest of your life.  I believe that a full education requires not just knowledge but wisdom.  We need to learn the critical tools for processing information relevant to the world and an understanding of our power to influence it.  I work for an educational program combining conflict resolution and social-emotional skills with community project design, social justice education and a survey of the work of recent Nobel Peace Prize winners.  PeaceJam was developed with the help of the Dalai Lama and 13 other Nobel Laureates to inspire young people to learn concrete skills by creating real projects in their communities addressing global issues at a local level, issues like understanding racism and poverty and resource conflicts.  I have seen firsthand the way that such an education engages students in the world.

A class working on a water catchment project, for example, will incorporate geometry, chemistry, algebra, planning and budgeting, and, if the project is done well, the social and legal context of water rights and access to building materials, to name but a few.  Students’ progress can be assessed (by the actual teacher working with them) by measures of work ethic, project completion or even self-assessment.  Granted, this requires flexibility for teachers in conducting their own classrooms, and there is no profit in this model for Pearson, the global testing conglomerate, but a great deal of profit for students and for the society they will certainly be shaping.

Even better, when students have input into creating a project that is meaningful to them and even fun, addressing a pressing issue, they become engaged citizens, invested in the workings of their communities.  And if education is not about preparing and empowering young people to be informed and engaged citizens, what is it about at all?  In the current flood of false information, polarizing political identities and thinning budgets, can even a fake democracy afford not to invest in such an insurance policy?

Sink or Swim: thoughts on philosophies and dogmas

I think a lot about beliefs. Amd I enjoy talking about beliefs, especially with people whose beliefs are different than mine. Though they're often held up as opposites, I think that understanding belief is a vital part of the pursuit of truth.  When the Jahovas Witnesses come to my door, for example, I often ask questions like “How much of your beliefs come from the Bible and how much from a direct relationship with god?” or “Why do you feel that the Bible is an accurate representation of God’s word?”  I’m not as confrontational with these well-meaning folks as I used to be, but I do still like to ask what I see as the core, challenging questions. I think it's important for all of us to be clear on the roots of our beliefs, since those same beliefs cause so much of our biggest conflicts.

Through all of this thinking and such conversations, I have come, I think,  to a useful distinction between holding a philosophy and a dogma.  I find that many people hold dogmas, beliefs that they have inherited from some other, often written source.  Particularly in the case of text-based religions like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and even Buddhism in some cases, these beliefs never come from the text alone, but are further framed by the clergy of that religion, who select the passages they find most important and endorse a specific interpretation of those passages.  There are also the kind of folkloristic,  metatextual influences on religions that shape the way groups of people in certain places think about their religions.  (The common Christian notion of Mary Magdalen being a prostitute, for example, appears nowhere in the Bible.)  The point here is that a dogma is a relatively fixed and rigid set of beliefs that people hold to that are based more on obedience to an authority than independent thought, whether that authority is a priest, imam, rabbi, a parent or even a book.

Conversely, a philosophy is a belief system that a person comes to from their own logic or experience (usually both).  While a philosophy can still be rigid, depending on how much of the person’s identity has been formed around it, it is inherently more flexible because it is based on personal values, perceptions and conclusions.  It is idiosyncratic, subjective and therefore something that can be discussed and argued.  Where dogmas tend to be mooring posts that people cling to in the stormy seas of doubt, fear and intellectual laziness, personal philosophies tend to be skills and practices that people develop that allows them to tread water, or even swim, on their own.  Though I understand the need many feel for dogmas, since it is far easier and seemingly safer to let others in authority do the thinking for us, I clearly favor philosophy as an ideological construct by which we steer our lives.  Not only do dogmas require us to abdicate our own critical thinking, they anchor us to a fixed line of belief that may be and probably is wrong. And when the seas of changing knowledge rise, as they always do, I would rather be free to swim than stuck to a dogmatic mooring post and sink.