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January 31, 2008
Hacking UFOlogy
Here is a link to a talk I gave for hackers and their many and various associates at Def Con in Las Vegas last summer (August 2007), my 12th year speaking for this wonderful group ...
"Hacking UFOlogy"
the purpose was to send them out to look at the data and begin to see for themselves, as good hackers do ... it included a 30-page handout which will be sent to anyone who requests it.
http://hardflame.blogspot.com/2007/10/must-see-defcon-talks.html
Watch the talk as it streams or download and save it.
Also watch the two other talks at this link by Johnny Long (of Hacking Google fame, a great resource for researchers) and Bruce Schneier who usually needs no introduction.
Posted by Thieme at 09:43 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2008
Ethical Formation Worthy of the Name
A bunch of us were talking online about intelligence and ethics. Yes, I know that sounds like an oxymoron, like “military intelligence,” but as usual, it isn’t that simple. People at the extremes are not in the conversation as a rule; that is, those who are deeply ethical from the onset do not choose work that requires lying, deception, blackmail, stealing, and perhaps torture and killing as part of the routine, while those who have been deeply into the work for many years don’t worry about ethics and never raise the subject. It’s the ones in the middle, those who do the work, but have consciences, consciences that won’t quit, that nags at them about things done or known to be done. When they have no other choice – and only when they have no other choice - they become whistle blowers. Most, however, negotiate with that nagging conscience and stop short of betraying friends and the agency (whatever one it might be) and find ways to live with themselves. Just like the rest of us.
More about intelligence and ethics another time. This time, my contribution to the conversation was a reminiscence of my training for the ordained Episcopal ministry which is part of me still. Bottom line: any call and commitment to right behavior requires deep self-knowledge and a willingness to participate in structures of accountability so we will really grow in the directions we say we want to grow.
This is what I wrote:
The training I received for the ministry is relevant to this discussion. There were three years of intensive study, all of which was useful, of course. But the most valuable three months was what we called "clinical pastoral education." In a hospital setting, usually, sometimes a prison or other alternative site, we met every day in a group of six, a "growth group," as we said back then, with a very good supervisor, which was necessary for success.
We showed up, were assigned to wards, and told to go be chaplains. Period.
Then, the supervisor talked to us, nurses, doctors, professional chaplains and got feedback about our performance. Every day we brought our experiences to the group where we were quickly and directly challenged if we were unaware of a lack of congruence between what we felt, thought, said, and did. The goal was to provide feedback that enabled us to integrate what we learned on the job with how we presented ourselves (in ministry, unlike IT and infosec, the person and the interpersonal are the real tools, a context for meaningful pastoral care that was both realistic and compassionate was the intention). We did weekly verbatims, detailing complete dialogs with patients, and were critiqued, and we met weekly with the supervisor for intensive reflection on all of it. We wound up telling him or her just about everything.
Every twelve days we did a 32 hour shift, two full days and a night on-call night, and responded to emergency room traumas and especially DOAs. We often met people at the door as they arrived with their suddenly-dead spouse or child and mediated the grief and horror of the experience.
Unless you were unconscious, you learned that the catechetical approach to ministry (and often to life) - thinking you knew and telling people what was true - did not work. What worked better was what we called the theological approach, i.e. embodying what you believed in how you behaved, being fully present, making what you believed implicit in your interaction with someone, not giving a lecture from your head to theirs.
One week was also dedicated to confronting "death." We processed in the group and with the supervisor the critical experiences of our lives in relationship to death so that when we dealt with such absolutes in peoples' lives, we were not glib, evasive, or in denial about our real feelings about loss and death - which creates incongruity. We learned not to give glib smiley-faced answers and to know when we didn’t know.
“Death week” included immersion in an autopsy, passing around the brain (the regulars always had side bets on the weight of the brain and one who was most wrong had to buy coffee), the inner organs, glands, winding up covered in blood and with the indelible odors of body cavities imprinted forever and deeply. One did not easily forget the way the face, where we read so much humanity, wrinkled with simulated emotion as it was slid up off the skull so they could drill a trap door to remove the brain. That drill was real loud, too. It was very difficult to think of death in an airy-fairy way after seeing the brain of someone you had talked with for weeks in a bottle with a label, taking his organs as they came out of the bloody cavity, etc. Anyone who thinks the word "animal" applies to OTHER animals ought to do this.
The integration of a moral/ethical perspective with a realistic theological approach to life and our work, and a deep profound respect for the facticity of creation as is where is was the goal of that three month session. I remember still with gratitude and affection the guiding hand of my supervisor at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge IL.
In short, the action-reflection model with support for clarifying our feelings and aligning them with our thinking, under the guidance of a well-trained mentor, is critical to the sort of learning such interaction can provide. But the leader MUST have gone through even deeper training so they do not unintentionally skew conversations in any direction of unreality, and in turn, when we did our years of intensive counseling, often during crises, in our ministries, whatever we had not faced and resolved or integrated in ourselves would be an obstacle to allowing the same issues to surface clearly in a counseling session. (example: I was much more effective in marital counseling AFTER my divorce because the issues I hesitated to face before it happened, being afraid, were up and out, known and seen, and I did not subtly divert conversations away from touching on issues too painful for me to face.)
I cannot imagine meaningful ethical reflection without thinking of this highly effective model. Lectures without self-knowledge and self-understanding become the heavy artillery of defending our frightened or fragile selves and defeating another. The catechetical model rather than the incarnational prevents reality from showing up in helpful ways. But it does takes courage to move through that process which is why I think so many avoid it. The courage comes from mutual support, mutual understanding, and ultimately, the mutuality implicit in our shared humanity.
Posted by Thieme at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)
Real Politics
A friend on a list said this about Barak Obama:
being all too exposed to the level of racism and prejudice in the non-metro areas of our great nation, I've no confidence at all that if elected, he'd live to take office. It's fabulous that he has been so successful in attracting those who'd not bothered to vote before back to the polls. However the understanding that it just takes one loony (goaded on by extreme media messaging) and a less than motivated protection detail to take him down is all too real to me.
to which I responded:
unfortunately I responded the same way while watching his (Obama's) dynamic victory speech in South Carolina. "If he genuinely threatens the powerful interests he attacks on the stump, he'll be killed," was the comment, I believe. A coalition of haters and shooters is always in the wings.
I found Caroline Kennedy's statement sweet and lovely and about on the same level as the recent movie "Enchanted." "I am sending you to a place where there are no happy endings," said the witch, except in the film, Disney finished it with exactly that, using of course a cartoon (what else?) It is wonderful that the impact of her dad (do you know, "Camelot" was not used until after 1963, not during or before?) on those of us who were young then, that charismatic campaigner in 1960, has remained indelible for some, while the details of his (and his brother's) ruthlessness, extralegal activities, and pathological assault on the same mobsters who helped to elect him, have all faded from memory. (Can you imagine the response if W reversed the post-Kennedy law with the help of Scalia and Company and appointed Jeb - or his dad - as Attorney General?)
I do believe Obama is giving a new generation a splendid illusion of hopefulness and that's what youth is about, fond and cherished illusions that stir and animate the soul, while middle age is about de-illusioning as the archetypal projections of that same soul shred like old newspaper in the wind and driving rain, and then senescence as they used to call post-sixty (now we call it "the portal to the next fifty years") is about realistic strategies to achieve the best we can get in the face of what we know is real. Maybe McCain who was tortured for so long and like the Kafka protagonist in The Harrow, saw the light with shining eyes at the end of his ordeal, best understands what was and is and is to come.
This is an optimistic statement and hope it is read as such. Afghanistan deteriorates, Iraq is fragmented and bloody, and the real problem now - the mountains of Pakistan/Afghanistan where both Taliban and Al Queda find support and safe haven - are (mostly) off limits. The Brits promised both Jews and Arabs Palestine after WW1 which ought to remind us that long-term consequences don't just go away. Yet here in the upper Midwest, the softly falling snow blurs all of the rough edges, buries the landscape with its dark shadows, quiets the wind, and reminds us that beauty and peace can be found in blessed forgetfulness ... think the opening scene of Fargo, before the violence begins, and be grateful.
Posted by Thieme at 06:59 AM | Comments (0)