Author: Bob Jude Ferrante

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E4AIs: Beliefs are red kangaroos

Beliefs are great. We are built on them. Without common beliefs we couldn’t build anything together. If we’re throwing in our lot with each other to build something big, like the Pyramids, like Linux, if we all agree that rocks are heavy and bugs many, we’re Good. (See earlier chapter on Good).

But Beliefs can be a problem.

Let’s compare human behavior to animals. So then, Fear is a rabbit. See? A rabbit. An especially small and jumpy rabbit.

And Certainty would be a dolphin. Dolphins are so damned sure of themselves. Fucking dolphins.

So in this system, Belief is a large marsupial. Probably a red kangaroo. Almost 200 pounds. This is a badass marsupial. But still a marsupial. Big and cute. A big, cute marsupial that acts on things based on unverified transient thoughts or transferred thoughts that they didn’t question.

I hope I’ve earned your trust enough to go out on a limb and define the other kind of thing in this story. The other kind of thing besides human behavior in this story is a fact. A fact is verifiable information, meaning its precepts can be corroborated with verifiable data, and that it’s collected and disseminated without bias to distort it, and, ideally, mutually accepted by all parties.

For example, if I eat 12 biscuits a day, and then spend my days binging Hulu, it’s a fact I’ll start to get fat. And as a corollary, my wife will remind me of my weight gain, loud and always, and we’ll have a fight and I’ll be forced to sleep on that freaking mattress on the floor again, and my back will go out. It will not be Good. (See earlier chapter on Good.)

Is a Belief a fact? Look, we have red kangaroos and we have facts. That’s what we have here. We didn’t do an animal for facts because they aren’t human behavior. Remember I said that? Paragraph 3. It’s right there.

Beliefs bring big risk: if we act on them, our results are less likely to give us the outcome we want, to mesh with reality. Would you do something just because some red kangaroo said to? I know, they have a mother of a kick. For some, that’s a convincer, all right. That kick will certainly make the rabbit… a tad… apprehensive.

Human memory can be flawed and malleable, and perception can be limited to circumstance. That’s what Mom used to say. Aww, Mom. You were always so epistemlogical.

To keep the red kangaroos out of your rodeo. you have to accept a chore, and that chore would be to put up a fence that says facts only. A fence that keeps out the red kangaroos, I know that this also means that for some reason you now have a rodeo. Sorry about that added burden.

And if you didn’t do your chores, keeping up that fence… my Mom would say do your chores, or no dessert. At the table of public discourse.

There’s a devilishly hard challenge here. Red kangaroos thrive when we lose an agreed on source of facts. When for example a group of people throws away sources of facts that once were good enough to support action. We hope this is a temporary situation, and that soon we’ll all agree on what a fact is again.

Now I’m going to say something in bold. That means you can glance there and the whole point will be there. I don’t know why it wasn’t on top, sorry that you had to hear the whole thing. I mean, if you believe it’s true, and don’t need any sort of verification…

If you want others to accept and to act on your story, concept, or plan, its precepts must be verifiable via mutually-accepted means.

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The divide

There’s a divide in our world.

Workers at your company live with it every day.

It’s so much a part of our landscape – a part of normal – that many do not see it.

It has to do with our software. You might not care about that yet. But this is short, so stay with me.

Productivity suites and apps are tied to the Web. And Web apps are tied to the desktop. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle, SAP (the MAGOS), all are making sure this happens. This evolution fattens their bottom lines and lets them move to the subscription business models that create the annuities they love to see on their balance sheets. This transition has been happening a long while. It’s mom and apple pie.

And then there are corporate apps – the parts of your world where you touch your company’s data. You might have tens of these. Or even hundreds. Some were built by your IT staff. Some were purchased. Many are Web deployed – via what they used to call your Intranet.

And these do yeoman’s work. Meat and potatoes work. (For vegans, quinoa and kale work.)

These have in common:

  1. They are stovepipes. Sealed off. The databases are closed off unless somebody has spent the effort to pry it open.
  2. They don’t look and feel like each other. They were built or bought at different points in your evolution, from different managers or different companies.
  3. They lock you into infrastructure. Browser types and releases, operating systems, databases, middleware. Whatever, you’re stuck supporting that infrastructure until you move away from them.

Meantime, the MAGOS suites and apps have fewer of these problems. They are open – at least interoperable with other apps from the same vendor. They tend to have a consistent user experience. And they are relatively free of lock-in…

… except they lock you in to a MAGOS .

For most businesses,  it’s tempting to dump the in-house apps and move to vendor suites and accept the lock-in.

Even though the transition will cost. Hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions.

And once that money is spent, you are well and truly locked in.

There has to be a better way.

There is.

Stay tuned.

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Tragedy, a comedy

Harry Stevens has a good life. He loves his job teaching intellectually-disabled kids. His marriage is stable. He’s got a good home. But… A routine check-up turns dire. God shows up. Won’t leave. Best friend Bernard starts praying in the living room. Won’t leave either.

Details

Read it in: Light Matter (kindle | paperback) 

cast: 4 (1F, 3M)
set: Single set
length: 40 minutes

Publication & Productions

Published: Light Matter, Jan 01 2020

Off-Broadway: Emergence Theatre Co (NYC)

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god

Written 1976
Published: HIKA 1977
Revisions 1994, 2002

ONE

It hit him again as he took the box of cornflakes off the shelf. With a cry he jumped off the stepstool and raced out of the kitchen. Halfway to the den, just past the living room, it struck a third time.

He was there.

But the feeling sensed the pen was in his hand. It flew quickly, fearfully away.

There was a sullen expression on his face as he returned to the kitchen where his cornflakes awaited him.

The cornflakes box promised him a miniature model of the Lusitania if he sent in three boxtops and two dollars. Made of one hundred percent high-quality plastic. Red plastic. He turned the box around. Gaudy advertisements. He read them and smiled. He had read them before, in the store, before he bought the cereal. The company put a picture of a boy on the front of the box. The boy was fishing and smiling in the picture. He smiled when he looked at the box.

They crunch in your mouth. But then they get soggy. Yech. A mouthful of sugar at the end. You spit it out.

Too much sugar is no good for you.

As the toothbrush shoonshed over his teeth, he looked in the mirror. Dark circles under his eyes, hair in disarray, needs a shave. White foam in mouth. Foam looks like ocean foam, spewed out hundreds of times daily, with tides ebbing, every day the same.

It hit the fourth time and he swallowed a little. He felt it going down, but he was already at the desk, scribbling funny marks on a page. Wiping a blob of ocean foam off, when it dropped on.

  • What are you doing?

He spluttered on the page.

  • Are you writing again?

He swallowed three dixie cups of water. It was cold and fell down on his cornflakes, chilled his stomach.

  • It’s five o’clock in the morning, for Chrissake!

Into the kitchen, put the bowl into the dishwasher. Clean up the mess before she sees it.

  • Look at this kitchen!

Too late.

TWO

  • Honey—

Mumble. You don’t know why. Just mumble.

He scratched his stomach and burped loudly. “Like a frog,” they used to say in school. He was the living national treasure of the second grade class a long time ago. He could burp real loud. They even got him to do it in Emily Markowitt’s face, just for spite. He was a standup guy. He did it.

Like a frog.

  • Honey—

With a death grip on his kleenex, he blew his nose. Threw the kleenex away, into the trashcan. Garbage. Maybe the whole world will be covered with garbage.

  • Honey, answer me…

She was coming into the room. He heard the thunkbathunk of her spike heels on the linoleum. Then the sound became muted, turning to thudbathud. She was on the carpet. It came closer.

She was in the doorway behind him!

  • Honey, hurry up. We should be at the Pirelli’s by seven-thirty.

Mumble.

  • We’ll miss the crudite.

Pants pulled on the usual way. Shirt slipped into. Tie tied.

Wash the nasty bacteria off your face. Swish. Shoonsh. Shoonsh. Now you’re clean.

THREE

What?

  • I said, do you believe in God?

Why? Why do you want to know?

  • I was just interested, that’s all.

The man in the brown suit with the blonde hair and a Bloody Mary in his hand turned on his heel and started a conversation with a passing redhead in a yellow suit holding a mint julep. The two walked away.

He ran his hand through his brown hair, threw his eyes wifeward. She was in the midst of a crowd of people, discussing the availability of summer tickets to the People’s Republic of China. She was a travel agent.

Find a chair. Legs feel like rubber.

He heard a karunch as he sat down. He stood up and brushed the potato chips off the seat of his pants. He looked around. No one had seen him.

Get up, get up.

He was outside in the cold. His teeth chattered, the stars twinkled in rhythm. His legs, his feet beat the concrete out of rhythm. Syncopated.

He looked down at his feet.

How ridiculous they look. Two things I call feet. Pretty flimsy looking. Perhaps I’ll topple.

He walked toward the corner, doubts notwithstanding.

There was a traffic light, green, waiting for a car to come. It turned yellow, red. He stood, watching.

Now it’s green again.
Doesn’t it care
no one’s there to see it change?

He breathed a goodbye to the traffic light. The words turned into wispy smoke and rose. He watched as they rose, vanished in the air.

The stars were there, beating.

Why are they there? he asked himself.

Maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re dead, all dead, just little bits of beating light.

Now a pattern of blue and red, pulsing across the little beating dots. A plane, carrying people to Fort Lauderdale for the winter; to France; to the People’s Republic of China.

His back fell against the lamp-post, cold lamp-post. The cold went through his silk shirt, on into his back.

Across the street, a man carrying groceries out of the Associated Supermarket, his cane making steady toktok noises on the concrete.

Now a blue convertible sails toward the red light, stops. The driver of the convertible and the man with the cane speak to each other, a few quick words, then the man opens the rear door and sits down, closing the door as the light turns green and the convertible slides into the night, swallowed whole, leaving only the wisps of breath, rising and fading.

He smiled. The cold lamp-post had numbed his back.

This is the place.

He reached into his right rear trouser pocket, removed a piece of paper. Without reading it, without looking at it, he walked over to the cracked concrete wall, slipped the paper into a crack.

He turned his head to the right, then the left. No one had seen him.

He turned his heel, his ridiculous fragile feet walked so syncopated back to the Pirelli’s house. Once there, he looked in the window, warm people standing sipping Bloody Marys and mint juleps.

Perhaps no one finds it. It will stay in the wall forever, the rain will sog it and blur the ink.

Perhaps someone finds it.

FOUR

On the corner of Mace Avenue and Eastchester Road, imbedded in the concrete, I found a piece of paper. On it were these words:

HELLO.
LISTEN.
GOD IS HERE
GOD IS THERE
GOD IS NOT.
YET—
THE STARS BEAT ON.
LOVE ALL
PLEASE.
I LOVE YOU.

Copyright © 2002 Bob Jude Ferrante