Welcome to Montana!

I arrived in Great Falls, MT last Monday night. After unpacking all day Tuesday, I headed off to Helena for the Americorp Pre Service Orientation that lasted from Wednesday to Friday. It had all of the other Americorp VISTA members that had volunteered to serve in Montana for the year. I'm not sure what I expected, but I was really impressed with the people. Everyone was really accomplished. One girl had just gotten back from Ghana where she'd been on Fulbright scholarship to study the impact of culture on teaching methods. Another had been teaching in the Republic of Georgia. One guy had served in the Peace Corp. Just really cool people. The highlight of the event was one morning where we all sat in a circle and discussed our views on the causes of poverty. There were such a variety of backgrounds and experiences that it was fascinating to listen to.

On Friday, when we'd finished all the instruction stuff, they put us on a bus and

took us to the capital building to take our VISTA oath. The governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, actually did our swearing in, met us, and did a little Q & A session. It was pretty neat. The guy is quite a character. He takes his dog, Jag, with him everywhere. I got to pet Jag! Two ladies from my work who used to be VISTAs were insanely sweet and had driven up for my swearing in. After everything was done with Orientation, I met them at a restaurant and they gave me tips on adjusting to Montana. Interestingly, they're involved in policy initiatives and go to Helena a lot and we're friendly with several members of congress. I'm impressed with how accessible their state government is. Of course with so few people in the state, I guess sense.

When I got back to Great Falls, I got to be impressed with how much I lucked out in getting a nice and helpful roommate. We went and saw a movie on Saturday and afterwards he invited me to go dancing. He took me to a country themed bar that had a dance floor and live music. He'd gone there the week before and made friends with people, so we sat with them. I was shocked at how much the guys liked to dance. And I'd never seen dancing like this. I was really bad at first because I kept trying to anticipate what was going to happen. Then I got some pointers on how to follow and I think I improved. I took a video of the incredible dancing, but sadly it's too dark to show up on the compressed Blogger video tool. I think this link might work though: http://picasaweb.google.com/lauraah/MontanaAsOf01272011?authkey=Gv1sRgCMbGlYaI_bnOYg#5567095690430026658 Those two people were in our group and the guy was a genuine cowboy!

The next day, some people from work were having a football party to thank a bunch of volunteers who were going to be helping people with their taxes. The host, my current boss, lives just a bit out of town and here is the view from her back porch.

It was a really good week! This week I started work and it's been a bit slower, but good so far. The guy I share an office with and work with is really nice. He teaches at the local college and is in charge of their speech and debate team so he seems insanely busy. He's smart and a bit on the awkward side, so I think we'll get along just fine.

Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card

For the long trip up, I bought the audiobook of Orson Scott Card's Pathfinder. I'd heard good things about it and I have to say it was pretty decent. It is the first of a series so I kinda wish I'd waited to read it as I'm sure it'll be years before the next one comes out, but it was good for the car ride over.

OSC's later books have all been extremely preachy to the point of not being enjoyable. While this still had his trademark preachy issues, they weren't even remotely a focus which made it easy to enjoy. The book deals with kids with special abilities (it is an OSC book!) and in this one, time manipulation is a feature. While the exploration of the possibilities of time travel sometimes got extremely detailed to the point of being indulgent, I'm interested in reading the next one whenever it comes out.

Trip to Montana

I decided to join Americorp this year and am going to be working with a Financial Literacy program in Great Falls, MT. So on January 13th, after my nephew's birthday party, I started off for Montana.

My mom had previously offered to drive up with me so we decided

to make a bit of a road trip out of it and go and see Roswell, NM.We loved the tv show and thought it would be pretty fun to see and it was! We were expecting a real desert, but tv lies and it looked more like the prairie of West Texas. We went to the International UFO Museum while there. I overheard a little boy ask his dad a question and the dad incredulously responded, "You know that none of this is real, right?" and then the little boy replied "Then why are we here?". When I told my mom that story, she said she overheard a little boy ask his mom if aliens were nice and she said that it depended. Some were nice, some weren't. :-p We were hoping to hit a cheesy, touristy diner like in the tv show, but the only thing anybody knew of that was remotely like that was a McDonalds shaped like a UFO, so we checked that out.

Our next stop was going to be to to visit my sister, Emma in Utah but on the way up there we saw a sign for Arches National Park and decided that we just had to stop. It was beautiful!

Then we finally made it up to Provo, UT and got to see my sister, her roommates, and her boyfriend. My friend Mark, also drove down from Salt Lake City on Sunday to hang out with us. It was a really fun weekend!

When hanging out was over, I dropped my mom off at the Salt Lake Airport and drove the rest of the way. It is beautiful up here! Soon I'll write an update on my first week in Montana.

The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris

I really enjoyed this book. Harris’ thesis is that the common conception of morality as belonging to a realm separate from science is false. Instead, he argues that it should become a new field of science. He insists that morality is all about the wellbeing of conscience creatures. While I have always seen something similar as the basis upon which to define my own sense of morality, I have been more hesitant to claim it as anything other than my own preference for enjoyable life. If a theoretical person felt that counting the grains of sand on the beach was of the highest moral order, who was I to argue? Harris argues that this type of subjective morality is the cause of a great many evils and that if we do not define morality with his axiom, what else could it possibly be? If it does not relate to the wellbeing of conscious creatures, it is by definition of no interest to us. I find this reasoning to be extremely sound. He goes on to argue that while there is tremendous grey area, we have methods of measuring wellbeing and that clearly there are “good” lives and “bad” lives. This being the case, he argues that we should study in objective a way as possible what we can do to maximize wellbeing.

I have read several of Harris’ articles before and always found them off-putting. He is an ardent atheist who has an extremely negative view of religion. I tend to see more negative than positive come out of attacking religion at every opportunity. As he states in his book, people most often believe whatever it is that they believe for emotional reasons first and the rational reasons come second. With this being the case, I think that only those of us who already think like him- and perhaps those that are teetering close to the viewpoint- are likely to be convinced. I see great benefit in explaining my views on disbelief to believers, as to most believers, atheism is tantamount to an admission of having no morality. However I find that if they feel attacked (and some people seem to feel attacked no matter what) that they are not going to be willing to try and understand your perspective and will probably have an even more negative opinion of it. So I prefer discussions on faith versus skepticism to attempt to remain respectful and I feel that people like Harris make it more difficult for that to happen.

So, it was with hesitation that I bought this book- and even then I bought the audiobook. But I thought the premise of an objective morality sounded worth exploring even if it had a great deal of religion-bashing mixed in. It did not lack in the bashing, but it was also an extremely good read. I have long thought that we as humans are not a blank slate and that all of us tend to find fulfillment and happiness in our lives from the same categories of experiences. Certainly there are variances based on personality and upbringing, but the commonalities far outweigh the differences. In the past few years, I’ve read several books on the science of happiness, and all have indicated this same truth. Harris cites much of this research when exploring his thesis. Combining this science with the science of morality never directly occurred to me, but now that I’ve read this book, it seems self evident. Morality is not a distant, intellectual concept. It is a here and now factual reality. Our lives are spent trying to maximize our own wellbeing which typically also involves trying to maximize the wellbeing of at least those other humans who are closest to us. What better tool is there than the scientific method to ascertain moral truths? And in my opinion, it’s a hard to think of a more important field of discipline.

2011 Is Here!

I wanted to start a blog this year, so here it goes... One of my goals for this year is to read more and watch television less. I thought I might try and write about the books I read here as well as whatever else might come to mind.