This totally sucks, but at least the kid's okay

[UstadKhanAli]

As many of you already know, I'm a Special Ed. Teacher as my main job. I teach high school aged kids who are severely developmentally delayed. And most of the time, teaching these kids is pretty great, despite having to work with bureaucracy and legal documents and other nonsense.

 

But sometimes, it can be rough too. I have a student. He doesn't talk, and is severely developmentally delayed, and barely walks as it is. His parents just found out that he had a tumor and bone cancer in his right leg, and after much deliberation from several doctors, they determined that it would be better to amputate his leg from the knee down for fear of it spreading (chemo would have most likely killed him since he is already "medically fragile").

 

Fortunately, the operation was a success, the kid is eating (he has acid reflux, so that was some concern), there's no infection, he's recovering well, and was released from the hospital.

 

And so I am relieved that he is doing well, although really bummed about the loss of his leg. I sometimes have these thoughts that...well, basically, it's that this kid already has numerous health problems, severe developmental delays, could only walk with lots of assistance, and then on top of it, he's got bone cancer? I get the rest...that he's got a loving family and lots of support here at school as well, and that he's apparently beat cancer and will live and all that, but I just can't help thinking why the {censored} this happens to an innocent little kid who's already got enough issues.

[Dean Roddey]

It happens because, contrary to the mass hallucination of religion, we are the products of a non-focused mechanism, evolution, that has no particular goal and no concern for us at all, being a mechanism and not an entity. From an evolutionary standpoint, all that matters is propogation of the species, not the happiness of the individual. Nature is cruel beyond the wildest imaginations of the most evil human being who ever lived. I guess it's the fear of that cruelty that drives people to the warm and cozy mythology that they are watched over by a benevolent super being of some sort, but they conveniently ignore these types of situations because it doesn't fit into that that picture.

[blue2blue]

Cruel seems to me to imply intent and emotion.

 

So, I don't think nature is cruel in that kind of sense.

 

I just think it's, you know, the big picture. And in the big picture, we are very, very small.

 

Nature only seems cruel if we think we should be getting special treatment from it.

 

Since you mention religion, I think it's worth noting that the Abrahamic religions address this in what Christians call the Old Testament.

 

In the Book of Job, God is quoted as saying, in essence, that the outcome of personal fortune is not merit-based and that what I earlier called the big picture is, in essence, beyond our human understanding.

 

A cop out?

 

Maybe.

 

But it seems (to me) a very down to earth and sensible one...

 

 

So, when a wounded, now-doubting former "true believer" asks, "What kind of God would let this happen?" I'm tempted to reply: The kind who tells Job and his disapproving friends who rush to condemn him for the presumed sins that must surely have "earned" him his "cruel" fate -- that the "mind of God" is beyond their knowing or understanding.

 

And I'm further tempted to suggest that they get on with the business of living for surely, if there is any "purpose" in our being here for these few brief moments that it must certainly be to live...

[Jeff da Weasel]

I don't know, Ken.

 

I do know that I feel extraordinarily lucky based on all the stuff that hasn't happened to me, or the folks who are the closest to me.

 

I know a guy, a neighbor of mine. Constantly complains about how his life sucks, how he never gets the breaks other people get, and so on.

 

I want to hit him in the face when he starts talking about that. I've trid pointing out the things he could be facing as opposed to his childish attitude in regard to appreciating the things he has. No use.

 

I am one of the luckiest people I know, and grateful for everything I've ever had.

[UstadKhanAli]

At the end of the day, it's one of those "{censored} happens" sorts of things...it just sucks so badly...

[Dean Roddey]

 

Cruel implies intent and emotion. So, I don't think nature is cruel in that kind of sense. I just think it's, you know, the big picture. And in the big picture, we are very, very small.

 

 

Sure, I was speaking anthropormorphically, after specifically indicating that that's not the case. It's an easy trap to fall into.

 

 

So, when a wounded, now-doubting former "true believer" asks, "What kind of God would let this happen?" I'm tempted to reply: The kind who tells Job and his friends that the "mind of God" is beyond their knowing or understanding -- and I'm further tempted to suggest that they get on with the business of living.

 

 

That kind of gets into Occam's Razor territory. There's an all powerful God that we are supposed to worship and thank for everything, but there's zero statistical relationship between how much you do that and your odds of dying of some horrible disease or being trapped in a mine. Or, there just isn't one. The latter seems far more likely.

[Dean Roddey]

 

I want to hit him in the face when he starts talking about that. I've trid pointing out the things he could be facing as opposed to his childish attitude in regard to appreciating the things he has. No use. I am one of the luckiest people I know, and grateful for everything I've ever had.

 

 

Yeh, definitely. Relative to a very small number of very lucky people, I have it not so great. But relative to the bulk of people on this planet, and 99.9999% of people in all of history, I'm extraordinarily lucky and I try to remind myself of this reguarly.

[dahkter]

Hi Ken,

That's a tough scenario for the kid and for his family.

However on the glass is half full approach, the operation was a success and he is with those he loves, and still here on earth. That alone is a great feat given the various uncertainties we all face every day of our life.

[MDLMUSIC]

I'm the principal for the alternative education department in my district and I see stuff like this all the time.

 

As some of you have said, rather than make me depressed, it helps me to better put some of my relatively minor problems in perspective.

[FireWithin]

Cruel seems to me to imply intent and emotion. So, I don't think nature is cruel in that kind of sense. I just think it's, you know, the big picture. And in the big picture, we are very, very small. Nature only seems cruel if we think we should be getting special treatment from it. Since you mention religion, I think it's worth noting that the Abrahamic religions address this in what Christians call the Old Testament. In the Book of Job, God is quoted as saying, in essence, that the outcome of personal fortune is not merit-based and that what I earlier called the big picture is, in essence, beyond our human understanding. A cop out? Maybe. But it seems (to me) a very down to earth and sensible one... So, when a wounded, now-doubting former "true believer" asks, "What kind of God would let this happen?" I'm tempted to reply: The kind who tells Job and his disapproving friends who rush to condemn him for the presumed sins that must surely have "earned" him his "cruel" fate -- that the "mind of God" is beyond their knowing or understanding. And I'm further tempted to suggest that they get on with the business of living for surely, if there is any "purpose" in our being here for these few brief moments that it must certainly be to live...

 

other wise, might as well be a totally nihilist. Such short sightedness is so distructive.

[Rudolf von Hagenwil]

I think the word is empathy.

 

I am proud of you that you can take this burdensome duties and do your difficult job with heart.

 

.

[rasputin1963]

Bless his heart. Some people do indeed have some rough damned challenges handed to them in this life-- I used to volunteer at CP hospitals for years. Thank God he has you to see the larger picture and to provide him with all manner of emotional support and courage. God keeps His eye on the sparrow, as they say.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Yeh, definitely. Relative to a very small number of very lucky people, I have it not so great. But relative to the bulk of people on this planet, and 99.9999% of people in all of history, I'm extraordinarily lucky and I try to remind myself of this reguarly.

 

 

That's what we keep saying here as well. This sort of thing does put things into perspective, as they say. As I keep saying, most of the people who are able to afford musical equipment and post here are among the richest and most fortunate people in the world.

[Dean Roddey]

Well, in my case I did it by selling my home theater, which I got back in the Silicon Valley glory days of yore. So I had to give up my other favorite hobby to fuel this one. But, I figured if I can only have one hobby, it should be an active and creative one, not a passive one. I'm actually quite po' these days, having started my own company.

[blue2blue]

 

... That kind of gets into Occam's Razor territory. There's an all powerful God that we are supposed to worship and thank for everything, but there's zero statistical relationship between how much you do that and your odds of dying of some horrible disease or being trapped in a mine. Or, there just isn't one. The latter seems far more likely.

 

I guess what I was getting at is that, for those who care to invest their faith in, say, one of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam or Christianity), the lesson from the Book of Job is quite explicit: life does not work on a merit-based reward system -- and there is an important corollary: anyone who pretends to know the unknowable (the mind of God) is lying to himself and others.

 

It seems a crucial lesson that appears to escape many in those faith communities.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

the lesson from the Book of Job is quite explicit: life does not work on a merit-based reward system -- and there is an important corollary: anyone who pretends to know the unknowable (the mind of God) is lying to himself and others.

 

 

Makes you wonder why everyone always seems to know how God is going to feel about things.

 

I remember sitting in church in 4th Grade. The pastor would take a line or two from the Bible and then expound upon it, acting it out, going into intense detail, for 45 minutes or an hour. I always wondered, "How does he know all this from just two lines?" How do people always know what God thinks...and are quite up front about telling everyone else about it? Even as a kid this struck me as quite unusual.

 

~~~~

 

I had to tell people at my school this news today. It hit some people really hard. You could see their faces react almost as if I had slapped them. I mean, they all know what would happen if this kid underwent chemo. That would be horrible. So everyone's glad that he made it through and is recovering. But still....

 

His parents. Seriously wonderful people. I'm not just saying that. But talk about rough. My student's younger brother also goes to our school, and he too is severely developmentally delayed. Rough.

[Dean Roddey]

 

I guess what I was getting at is that, for those who care to invest their faith in, say, one of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam or Christianity), the lesson from the Book of Job is quite explicit: life does not work on a merit-based reward system -- and there is an important corollary: anyone who pretends to know the unknowable (the mind of God) is lying to himself and others.

 

 

That's the problem with religion of course. It's full of contradictions and I'm sure you can find plenty of quotes that give exactly the opposite point of view. It's a non-rational belief system and therefore whatever you want it to mean is what it means to you. That's all fine and dandy, but when it means to someone that they should fly some planes into a building, then they have just as much proof of their interpretation as anyone else's. If God's plan is truely unknowable, and it includes things like killing a hundred thousand people in a sunami, then I'm sure it could include flying planes into buildings.

 

This is the danger in a non-rational belief system, even when for the most part it's used in a fairly benign sort of way. Once you decide that the truth is a matter of interpretation, then anybody's truth is equally valid.

[blue2blue]

However one believes he arrived at possession of a brain, it's always seemed to me all but self-evident that if there is any purpose to the organ at all, it is to allow its owner to think...

 

 

 

I will say this: Certainty, is best spent on simple facts and relationships.

 

Those who claim certainty about this life, I believe are often fooling themselves.

 

Those who claim certainty about that why may lie beyond this life are usually trying to fool the rest of us.

[blue2blue]

Makes you wonder why everyone always seems to know how God is going to feel about things. I remember sitting in church in 4th Grade. The pastor would take a line or two from the Bible and then expound upon it, acting it out, going into intense detail, for 45 minutes or an hour. I always wondered, "How does he know all this from just two lines?" How do people always know what God thinks...and are quite up front about telling everyone else about it? Even as a kid this struck me as quite unusual. ~~~~ I had to tell people at my school this news today. It hit some people really hard. You could see their faces react almost as if I had slapped them. I mean, they all know what would happen if this kid underwent chemo. That would be horrible. So everyone's glad that he made it through and is recovering. But still.... His parents. Seriously wonderful people. I'm not just saying that. But talk about rough. My student's younger brother also goes to our school, and he too is severely developmentally delayed. Rough.

 

On the first, I was lucky in that my earliest church experiences were with a guy I remember as a very good pastor. I was in second grade when we joined. After a couple weeks, the church ladies tried to put me in Sunday school but after a couple weeks I said it was the adult session or nada and my folks went to bat for me and I got back in. I wanted to hear about how Jesus' teachings related to real life not some silly business about flying, fiery chariots. I'd already done the Greek, Roman, and Abrahamic myths and I wanted to talk about life, darn it.

 

Later I'd be trapped in a Sunday-school like thing called Released Time Christian Education -- not by my own church but by the public school system which had devised this as a way to teach religion in school... they took time out to send us to the church across the street.

 

Me and a Jewish kid sat it out for a while. Which really pissed them off. They put this real jerk, one of the few male teachers at my grammar school in charge and he'd stand right outside the door glaring at us and smoking cigarettes. We weren't allowed to do anything. After a few weeks they said we'd have to wait in the nurses office. After that it's hazy. Eventually I relented, and, later still, so did the Jewish kid. Which was pretty funny. Ha ha. I'm sure he tells this better... at least it was vaguely my supposed religion being forced on me.

 

Anyhow, it sort of left a bad taste in my mouth. And that was only compounded when we started going to the favored church of some of my mom's favorite relatives. My attendance was voluntary but I thought it was a good idea, somehow, I was still interested in all the things we'd discussed earlier at my first church. Unfortunately, this pastor only wanted to discuss the church building fund and how hard it was playing golf with donors all week long. No kidding. This guy was a real piece of work.

 

Anyhow, I guess I feel like I've seen the bad and good of church going and organized religion. Observing over the years has been a real test of charity and compassion at times.

 

____________________

 

 

On the second...

 

 

Grace is a funny thing. Sometimes it finds those who need it.

 

 

_____________________

 

 

I just had to add... a couple minutes after I finished this post The Fairfield Four's "Keep Me Near the Cross (Servant's Prayer)" came on my playlist... it's an extraordinary piece, amazingly slow, but interjected with a spoken prayer that gives thanks for the "sunshine and the rain" and addresses much of what we've been talking about here.

[Tedster]

 

It happens because, contrary to the mass hallucination of religion, we are the products of a non-focused mechanism, evolution, that has no particular goal and no concern for us at all, being a mechanism and not an entity. From an evolutionary standpoint, all that matters is propogation of the species, not the happiness of the individual. Nature is cruel beyond the wildest imaginations of the most evil human being who ever lived. I guess it's the fear of that cruelty that drives people to the warm and cozy mythology that they are watched over by a benevolent super being of some sort, but they conveniently ignore these types of situations because it doesn't fit into that that picture.

 

 

Point counterpoint...

 

Counterpoint to Dean...

 

I disagree. Call it religion if you wish, call it some "purpose" to our existence, even if there is nothing anyone could call "God" (no one knows, the existence can't be proven or disproven) ...but, I digress...that has nothing to do, really, with what I'm about to say...

 

I believe that things like this happen because without them, there would be no impetus for us to advance as a species. And that fits in with evolution as well. If nothing bad ever happened, we'd have no reason to be driven to the next level of discovery. If there were no illnesses, if kids, young mothers, whoever, never got cancer, there would be no reason for us to investigate the science of what makes us tick. And yes, it's cruel. But it drives us as a species to accomplish that which would otherwise not have been accomplished.

[Dean Roddey]

Well, you are correct that it does drive us, but that's not *why* it happens. It's just a response by us to that happening. Keeping the correct sequence of cause and effect is an important point, often lost.

 

The why is partly because we live in an environment full of energy (even though it's fairly low here on our planet relative to ther places, it's relatively high here relative to the average in the universe) and that energy affects us in ways that are detrimental, e.g. the cosmic ray that whacks a chromosome that starts your cancer, or the movement of the earth due to heat generated by radioactive materials that causes a big wave that hits the land, or a very high speed cyclical air mass caused by the water being heated by the sun's energy that hits New Orleans, or the transfer of the kinetic energy of a small piece of metal spit out from a metal tube to your body when it hits your chest. And on and on. We are subject to forces beyond our control.

 

The other big why is because, evolution having no plan, never planned us. Our bodies are the way they are because anything that killed us too quickly either killed us off as a species or we developed biological resistance to it. But only something that threatens us as species really invokes that evolutionary mechanism to develop a resistance. Anything that kills a small number of us doesn't have to be dealt with it, because it's not a danger to the species.

 

Though, there again, I fall into the trap of saying it the wrong way and making it sound like there's a plan, even when I'm saying there's not a plan. Actually it should be stated that any danger either destroys us or we adapt. We adapt by those who have that succeptibility to whatever the danger is dying quicker than the rest of us, so we breed more. Over time, we have either adapted to anything that is dangerous to the species' survival, or we wouldn't be here. Anything that doesn't pose that danger doesn't kill off enough of us early enough to get that succeptabily out of the species (doesn't kill enough of us before we breed) so it continues.

 

Cancer kills lots of us, but usually after we've procreated. Once we've done that, we are surplus to requirements and there's never any evolutionary pressure to deal with things that kill us once we've served that primary evolutionary purpose.

 

Sorry, I rambled there a bit. But it's a difficult thing to state in the appropriate way that is completely free of any anthropomorphic wierdness. We are the end result of the longest and most elaborate Rube Goldberg contraption of all time. We are the way we are because everything else killed us more effectively, not because it was good design. It's the most brutal but effective filtering mechanism ever created really. But it only works to keep us at the point where we can procreate. Anything else is an evolutionary waste of time.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I sometimes have these thoughts that...well, basically, it's that this kid already has numerous health problems, severe developmental delays, could only walk with lots of assistance, and then on top of it, he's got bone cancer? I get the rest...that he's got a loving family and lots of support here at school as well, and that he's apparently beat cancer and will live and all that, but I just can't help thinking why the {censored} this happens to an innocent little kid who's already got enough issues.

 

Not a day goes by that I don't think similar thoughts Ken.

[UstadKhanAli]

Those thought have been echoing through my mind tonight, maybe more than anticipated. I can't sleep. It's almost midnight.

[Phil O'Keefe]

I wish I could give you an answer Ken, I really do. I don't blame God (in whom I still believe), but it's a imperfect world, and fairness sure doesn't always play into the equation. Why am I reasonably intelligent and my kids were both profoundly developmentally delayed? What did they ever do to deserve their fates? Sure, I've made more than my share of mistakes in my life, but why did they have to suffer?

 

I dunno buddy. I've lived through more crap than most people see in a lifetime, and the stuff that happened to me seems small potatoes compared to what happened to my kids. And as others have mentioned, in a lot of ways, I am exceptionally fortunate and blessed. I guess all each of us can do is try to be the best humans we can and take the rest on faith... At least that's how I try to deal with it.

 

Try to get some sleep...

[UstadKhanAli]

I don't blame anyone or anything. Just wondering. Life is random. Anyway, I'm still looking for the Off Switch for my brain. I've usually slept like a rock, but the last two and a half years have been a bit bizarre, so sometimes my sleep's more easily disturbed now.