Witt's End

The lack of acceptance and often hostility I’ve felt in so many circles is currently growing.  This is a stream of consciousness filled with frustration and pain. Read accordingly. Please.—- Have you ever spent time in a place where people hate an inherent part of you? Repeatedly? I’m not talking a belief you hold. I’m talking about something inherent. Intrinsic to you. Now I’m a privileged white guy, so my experience doesn’t involve around race. And usually doesn’t involve my gender.  Mine involves something you can’t see. Something that  ——— I'm just going to say it. I'm flabbergasted at times by how much so many people fear and/or hate queer people. I'm using the catch all term for a reason. It's not a specific fear or anger. It's diffused. It's more inherent. It's frightening to me.  Different cultural groups are grappling with the history and the present as they work through this period of history.  I'm struggling to give the grace to others on this...

We all have confirmation bias. Let’s just get that out of the way. We also have experience. And we have expertise. That means we all have a limited scope of the world in one way or another. Let’s get that out of the way. Our limited scope and confirmation bias leave us open to to unavoidable natural distortions of the media. The normalization of the novelty, and everything being fair and equal. If we aren’t aware of these and don’t look at things critically we can get lost in information and our own desired outcomes.  So let’s examine novelty and fairness and how they can be distorted.  Few things spread as quickly as a novel news story. It’s what sells. Its what is most sensational. But ironically what can be known widespread may not be a commonplace occurrence. News stories are typically what's abnormal or sensational. They are not what's typical. What's typical wouldn't be news. It's that simple.  I think it' s fairly easy to see how the news constantly repor...

 How are we ever going to be able to unite on solving problems if we can’t agree on sources to use? Several times in the past few years I’ve been asked to share my opinion on topics I’ve researched. This has ranged from healthcare, to mental health prevalence, to racial disparity, and now COVID. I’m willing to put in the time and read a lot of source material to form an opinion. I don’t really go with my gut. I chase information and roll it over and over until I have a new opinion. Because I’ve put in that effort I’m often asked about my opinion, often by people who haven’t taken the same amount of time. I try to preface any discussion of this nature by disclosing it’s my interpretation of data I’ve studied, and this is my conclusion. I’ve discovered a troubling trend when I’ve done this. If the conclusion doesn’t fit the questioner’s paradigm, then all of the data used to form the conclusion becomes suspect. That we can’t trust the collectors of data, or there are ulterior motives...

I hate not breathing. I really really do. It's one of the worst feelings that there is. Your body tells you, informs you how vital the function that's missing is. I've had a few different times in my life  I hate wildfire season. Living in a valley prone to inversions has been interesting. It's resulted in that difficulty breathing more than once. This year is starting to shape up dangerously. The debate surrounding these fires seems to be that it's either a result of global climate change or poor forestry practices. After this year's record heat wave I would proffer that two things can be true at once. And I would also proffer that they can exacerbate each other. This not an easy dichotomy. This is a problem with multiple variables that we need to take into account.  The truth is that the earth does appear to be warming. The truth is that we don’t deal with underbrush and forest management like we used to. The truth is that because both of these are true, it’s ...

I have actually spent a significant amount of time researching whether there is systemic racism and what impact implicit bias plays into that. I’m currently looking at the role of implicit bias in medicine, law enforcement, and other sectors of society. Systemic racism is often wrongly interpreted as an accusation that everyone in the system is racist. In fact, systemic racism means almost the opposite. It means that we have systems and institutions that produce racially disparate outcomes, regardless of the intentions of the people who work within them. With that in mind,I began looking at this topic after Pres Oaks talk last October. After beginning I found there was a lot more to uncover. Let me go study by study, legal case by legal case, of a portion of my research. You say look at the evidence. This is what I have found over the past 6.5 months. First real demonstrable case studies involving housing: Sept 24 2015: Hudson City Savings Bank settled for $33 million for avoiding mort...

Tragedy has struck more than once the past few days. El Paso, Ohio, Chicago. There are too many events where too many people are dying by gun violence. That's just a fact. We all need to realize it. Regardless of what side of the line we're on we need to realize that the other side is not full of spineless capitulating cowards, or bloodthirsty heartless monsters. That's also a fact. You have people who are afraid of weapons who are scared to leave their homes. People with a legitimate fear of mass shootings. Afraid of being a victim. You also have people who worry there is a motion to take their guns. All of them. Not some. But all. Who would lose something they may use for food or defense, actually use. Afraid of being a victim. Both sides are being motivated by fear. That's now how this should go at all. We can have some discussions. We need to. So to what I really wanted to say. There is no good easy silver bullet solution here. And I have to admit to being a b...