The Arc Bends

The marriage equality decision handed down by the conservative-leaning Roberts Court, and Bree Newsome's heroic climb up a 30 ft flagpole to bring down the Confederate flag that disgraces the South Carolina state Capitol, are historic cause to reflect and celebrate this Independence Day.

I am reminded of the beautifully poignant words that encapsulate my world view and my deeply-held optimism:

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
― Martin Luther King Jr.

If I've learned anything about the human plight here where we find ourselves in the outskirts of the Milky Way, it's that the bending of that arc requires occasional courage and unrelenting persistence.

The Bard from Asbury Park says it best:

It is time to move forward. The country that we carry in our hearts is waiting.
—Bruce Springsteen

REFEFENCES

• As Fox News mourns, the rest of us have an Independence Day to celebrate by Joan Walsh, Salon, 3 July 2015.
• Chords for Change by Bruce Springsteen, New York Times, 5 August 2004.
• Extended Interview with Bree Newsome, Who Climbed Flagpole & Took Down SC Confederate Flag, Democracy Now.

Human Judgment, Uncertainty, and Madame Marie

As Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking, Fast and Slow, decades of academic research suggest we place too much confidence in human judgment.

Kahneman's thesis lays out the dichotomy between rapid, instinctive and emotional thinking, and slower, deliberative thinking. Kahneman enumerates various cognitive biases associated with instinctive and deliberative thinking. The distinctions in modes of thinking and the potential fallacies in believing in their validity make sense to me.

But what about our ability, or lack thereof, to divine the future?

Academicians don't put much stock in divination. And, rightfully so. It's the stuff of priests and boardwalk hucksters. Yet it interests me how much attention popular culture pays to predictions, prophesies, and divination.

"Did you hear the cops finally busted Madam Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do."
- Bruce Springsteen, lyrics from "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)"

Attempting to foretell the future, putting forth prophesies, practicing soothsaying, and practicing a religious faith, all strike me as testament to human kind's primal need to contain, control, or spin uncertainty into order and predictability.

Madam Marie's Temple of Knowledge.
 Asbury Park, New Jersey

Madam Marie, fortune teller and psychic reader, was the longest running tenant on the Asbury Park boardwalk (1932 – 2008). Marie Castello (1915 – 2008) allegedly told Bruce Springsteen he would be a huge success. Springsteen later joked that she told all her musician clients the same thing. 

Beach fortifications in preparation
for Hurricane Sandy

Odd coincidences and serendipitous connections continue to amuse me.

I made the photograph of Madame Marie's "Temple of Knowledge" as Hurricane Sandy was bearing down on Asbury Park.

Coincidentally Sandy is a part of the title of Springsteen's song "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" - the same 1973 song with the lyric quoted above that turned Madam Marie into an icon.

The "Sandy" of Springsteen's song is, by popular accounts, a composite of girls Springsteen grew up with in New Jersey. Springsteen refers to this song as "a goodbye to my adopted hometown and the life I'd lived there before I recorded."

As it happens, I left New Jersey in the mid-1970s for college which was about the same time Springsteen was gaining national fame.