Fun Fact #1 - Jupiter vs Zeus...??

What's in a name? I never learned in school why the Greeks called their highest god Zeus while the Romans across the street called the same deity Jupiter. They sure don't sound the same as we learned them. I wondered about it, and even asked a few times, but the school answer I got was ambiguous: "Because they spoke different languages." I nodded my head, maybe even uttered a quiet, "Ah, of course," and let it go.

A couple days ago, at the ripe early pre-middle age of 36, I came upon the answer myself, so I shall now pass it on to you... just because I can.

Please note, if you are running low on gray matter memory space and think it may be risky to add another useless bit of trivia to your brain, you may want to skip this article.

Since Zeus is attributed to thunder and lightning, as depicted in such texts as Homer's Illiad and Milton's Paradise Lost, it seems ironic that the Greek name gets its life from the Indo-European root word dyeu-, meaning "to shine". Secondary meanings inlcude "sky", "heaven", and "god". When used as a syllable for part of a word, dyeu- became *dyu- or *diw-.

In the Illiad, Greek prayers to Zeus begin with "Zeu pater" (tranlated: "o father Zeus"), where Zeu is traced back to the stem *dyu-. The Romans also favored this visage as their patron deity; however, as my English and World History teachers of yore were happy to divulge, the Romans and the Greeks spoke different languages. Taking the same meaning, the Romans called him "Iuppiter" (translated: "father Jove"), -pitter being a reduced form of the Greek pater, "father".

Were I to stop there, it would be easy to cry foul and say "Zeus and Jove are two entirely different names!" Well... it turns out that Jove comes from the Latin Iov-, from which comes the first part of "Iuppiter's" name. An older Latin version of Iov- was Diov-, illustrating a corollary to the Greek *Diw-. The two come from the same Indo-European root word, dyeu-.

And thus we get: Zeus --> Zeu pater --> Iuppiter --> Jupiter


Zeus, Jupiter, and more?

There was also a deity in the vedic hitorical period (2000-1000 BCE to about 600 BCE) called Dyaus Pitar in Sanskrit; Dyaus means "sky", and Pitar means "father". The Indo-European root words can be seen in the Sanskrit version, as well.

But it doesn't stop with Southern Europe. The Sanskrit Dyaus is closely realted to the Indo-European word for god, "*deiwos", which appears in the name of Old Norse and Old English god Tiw, or Tyr (who was the primary deity in the region before Odin).

Fun Fact within the Fun Fact: It is from the name "Tiw" that we get modern name Tuesday: "Tiw's day".

My primary source for this article:
bartleby.com

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Fatherhood and Father's Day

This Father’s Day, my seventh, seemed different than the previous six. I wasn’t enthusiastic about celebrating it. It didn’t feel like a special day. It didn’t feel like it should be a special day.

The idea for a day to celebrate fathers came to life in 1909’s Spokane, Washington. While listening to a Mother’s Day sermon, Sonora Smart Dodd thought of establishing a day to honor her father and fathers like him who stood courageously and selflessly for their family. Sonora’s father, Jackson, was a veteran of the Civil War and widowed father of six.

Sonora approached the Spokane Ministerial Alliance with her day of recognition, and suggested June in honor of her father’s birthday. The Alliance settled on the third Sunday of the month, and on June 19th, 1910, the first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane.

Popularity for the day spread throughout the country and was soon observed in communities nationwide. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson declared the 3rd Sunday of June Father's Day in a signed proclamation, and in 1972 President Richard Nixon established the permanent national observance of Father’s Day.

The months leading up to my first Father’s Day, namely from about March to June of 2001, were afire with questions, self-doubt, worry, and perhaps a primal fear of the unknown. Born in May, my daughter was still a couple months away from introducing herself to the world at the time, and like every soon-to-be father in the world, I had no idea what to expect. And like most honest fathers, I was trapped under the weight of a single question: “Can I really pull this job off?”

I had accepted long ago the possibility that some of the choices I made in life were not the best for my future; I’d misstepped a time or twelve, taken the road most traveled, and countless other metaphorical aphorisms (insert your favorite here). Now I was co-creator of this entirely new person. I couldn’t afford to make bad decisions anymore.

And then J was born.

That single sentence is all I can muster to fully express the universal magnitude of every emotion and thought that hit me in that moment in the hospital. That afternoon I stood a little taller, my shoulders back a little more. And I held the responsibility of the future in my arms.

Last month we celebrated J’s seventh birthday, and in August, we’ll party again, this time for K’s second birthday. Between these two incredibly important days, I was left to wonder why Father’s Day wasn’t shaping up to be a special day in my mind.

My answer took shape Sunday morning, though I recognize I already had the answer back in the vaporous ether of my brain. I spent the day with my wife and children. What we did is unimportant. That little detail is why I wasn’t celebrating the day. My Father’s Day was generally like every other day since J was born. I spent it being a father.

Calling such a day “Father’s Day” implied to me that every other day was different, like every other day I wasn’t being recognized as a dad, or that I wasn’t as appreciated as I was on Sunday.

Everyone who knows me knows I’m not the best father, but I am among the most fortunate. Seven years later I still have the questions, the self-doubt and worry, even that primal fear of the unknown. And every day I’m struck with the same question: “Can I really pull this job off?”

And now, seven years later, I look at my daughter and son and think, “So far, so good.”

“Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”
~Barack Obama, Father's Day 2008

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Drive Home Discussion - Try to Keep Up

Today was the last day of First Grade for our daughter, a jam-packed two-hour flash in the pan of a day. We're still not sure why they bothered to bring students and faculty in for so short a time. I'm only slightly joking when I suggest the school has to pay the state back for any pre-paid days they don't use. It's the cell phone plan of education systems: "What do you mean we don't have roll-over days?!"

The drive home was a sonic salvo of information about the events and interactions of her day. It brought to mind a particular conversation she and I had more than a year ago on our way home from Kindergarten, the contents of which continue to make me laugh today. It was so noteworthy that I wrote it down when we got home and sent it promptly to my wife's work email. Thankfully she blogged it, because I had erased the email and ultimately lost its content. Recalling the conversation after today's drive, I went looking for it so that I could impart the story to you:

"Can we watch Mickey Mouse tonight?" 5-year-old J asks from the backseat. I know she means Fantasia, our only video even remotely related to Walt's landmark creation.

"No, not tonight," I answer. We've watched the movie three nights in a row and— despite my enthusiasm for classical music and Disney animation--I'm not ready to make it a fourth. "If we watch anything, let's watch something different." I'm careful not to outwardly condone another movie night.

"Awww," she moans. "But I want to watch it."

With this statement I know the conversation can turn grim, so I look for a diversion. We're about to pass the apartment building mailboxes. "Do you know if Mommy picked up the mail today?"

"Yes."

"She did?"

"No."

"She didn't pick up the mail?"

"No."

"But you said Yes'."

"No," corrects J, "I said yes, I know if Mommy picked up the mail."

"Oh."

"And she didn't."

"Okay. Got it."

"Kipper," she says.

"Pardon?"

"Kipper."

"What about Kipper?"

"I want to watch Kipper tonight."

"Are you asking a question?"

"Yes."

"What are you asking?"

"I'm asking that Kipper's what I want to watch."

"That's not a question."

"I want to watch Kipper, please."

"You know how to ask politely."

Rather than the 'May I please watch Kipper' I'm expecting, there comes a short pause.

Then…

"I don't like squirrels."

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Selflessness is Selfish Behavior…

If you’re a fan of the old NBC series Friends, you may be familiar with this concept. In one particular episode, Joey defies Phoebe to undertake a completely selfless act, meaning she cannot receive any benefit from it, including personal happiness or achievement. The show’s writers then pursue Phoebe for the remainder of the half hour as she tries without success to not feel good about doing good deeds.

It’s a popular idea in the modern world that has been volleyed back and forth in every medium from yawn-inducing psychological analyses to fervor-inducing radio talk show segments, from sermons at the pulpit to humorous sitcoms. Extensive research has been done on this one idea, including a twenty-plus year study by Mark Snyder, University of Michigan professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in Psychology. In 2006, UMN News posted an article about Professor Snyder called “Studies in Selfish Altruism".

There is in this bizarre, hypocritical age a stigma of sorts hovering over the idea of getting something out of helping others. If you are truly a Good Samaritan, then you should do “good” without reaping the psychological reward. Anyone else is just a pretender.

In a few weeks time I will be volunteering with my coworkers at a local food relief organization, part as a team building exercise for our group. Because of the circumstances by which I will be volunteering, it may be argued that this cannot be categorized as an act of altruism. After all, chances are great that I would not have volunteered with this agency had my company not sponsored the event, since the warehouse is across town and my time is intricately scheduled to accommodate the needs of my job and my family.

My question then is this: Is Altruism defined by the action, by the intent, or by the beneficiary? Should “selfish altruism” still be looked upon as a pretender to the throne of Selflessness? Is it hypocritical to help others when doing so rewards us? Or does the act of helping others outweigh any reciprocal benefits we may receive?

Whatever the answer, Professor Snyder documents an interesting trend found in his research: Those who do gain benefit from volunteering are always the same individuals who continue to volunteer.

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An Idea and an Action - Part One

So the story goes...

The cobble-stoned alley was hidden from sight by the cool evening fog, left in the shadows of the oil lamps lining the main avenue. This attribute made it the location of choice for those who wished to avoid the prying eyes of others. And so it was the case for Mister Baynes and Mister Scarsbrook that late evening in 1735.

The idea could have come in any number of ways, and by any number of people throughout human history; however, the legend you have before you spins the tale of this particular pair’s uncanny meeting, and of their subsequent resolve to forward their cause.

The evening past, Mister Baynes had been the victim of a mugging along one of London’s many dangerous thoroughfares. Mister Scarsbrook readily answered the man’s cries for help. Rather than attacking Mister Baynes’s would-be assailant, however, Mister Scarsbrook parleyed with the man. Mister Baynes was mortified to see this stranger befriending his attacker.

Mister Scarsbrook nursed the thief’s personal story into light, much to the interest of Mister Baynes. The man whom Mister Baynes imagined by first impression to be just another miscreant of the London streets was in fact a young man of eighteen years who had recently escaped from indentured service aboard a ship-rigged merchant galley to find his family in upheaval. His father had been locked away in a debtor’s prison and his mother and younger brother were presumably making their escape to the Americas. The young man had been trying without success to free his father, and had now resorted to stealing from others to pay the family debt.

To Mister Baynes’s apprehension, Mister Scarsbrook and the assailant struck an accord; the lad would work for him under salary in exchange for the blade and his vow to renounce the road of violence he had started down.

When the young man was out of earshot, Mister Baynes thanked Mister Scarbrook for his rescue, and, as any gentleman would, asked how he may repay the act. Mister Scarbrook asked that they meet again the following night to discuss that very thing.

This is how the two gentlemen came to be in the seedy alley in London’s East End. The location had been a suggestion by Mister Scarbrook. When Mister Baynes asked him why such a place should be the site of their second meeting, Mister Scarbrook is said to have responded, “Because, though I may be a gentleman, I have an insatiable thirst for the dramatic.”

In truth, and as he would later tell Mister Baynes, the building behind which they stood that night was a property Mister Scarbrook had recently purchased. His intent had been to establish a public house; however, of late he had broader goals in mind.

“I want to create a meeting house,” Mister Baynes’s journal quotes Mister Scarbrook, “for those of us who may conspire to flood the land with philanthropy.” Believing that such a meeting of individuals may in time draw the attention of greater social powers, Mister Scarsbrook fancied his new public house to be the front of this clandestine philosophical society.

Mister Baynes was invited into the pub that night, and was given the tour of the grounds. Mister Scarbrook then walked him through what he described later as a labyrinth of side corridors, gin vaults, and storage rooms, before coming to a narrow door in the stone wall. Above the door hung a wooden placard with elaborate writing painted upon it in a language Mister Baynes did not recognize.

“That,” Mister Scarbrook explained, “is what my instructor used to tell me. It means: ’Knowledge breeds understanding, which breeds compassion, which breeds benevolence, which breeds knowledge.’”

Mister Baynes never recounted in writing what lay beyond that door; however, he did outline Mister Scarbrook’s idea of repayment for his rescue the night before. Mister Baynes summates it best in his journal:

“The man asked only of my time and commitment to his dream, for which I thought him surely a fool. I begged him that I should repay in a manner more suitable to the act, but he was steadfast in his want for reward. I gladly accepted his charge, and so became the second member of his League of Adenaean Pragmatists…”

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A Secret Society of Altruists?

What is Altruism? In general terms, altruism is the practice of putting the well-being of others and the community before one's own personal needs or wants. This is a behavior and (on a deeper level) philosophy that ties in well with my goals as an artist, a father, a husband, and a member of society.

Am I an altruist? Not entirely, and certainly not to the extent indicated in the definition. I cannot say that I would sacrifice myself or my well-being for a stranger. To give you my reasons would be to make excuses with which some may disagree. It suffices to say that try to see the greater picture and help when I'm able. See, that sounded like an excuse just then, didn't it?

There are organizations and living-room coffee groups dedicated to the advancement of altruism in its many guises throughout the world. Some think locally, some act globally. Some focus on human interaction, some expand outward to incorporate the planet en masse. Regardless of the focus, the really is no such thing as bad altruism.

Lao Tsu wrote in the Tao Te Ching:
"The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal name..."

Likewise, altruism in its truest form garners neither fame nor glory for the practitioner. With this idea in mind, it stands to reason that in this world, and in this era of instability, there would exist a clandestine group of individuals devoted to the well being of humanity, ecology, and the planet that sustains us.

This fellowship may include world-renown icons such as Norwegian Philosopher Arne Næss, and heretofor anonymous bystanders like overnight stocking clerk Ellie Williams. Perhaps it is such an over-arching group that it's members are unaware of the total number of participants.

Desiring no publicity, wanting for no reward, these altruists would live by a single axium: "Knowledge breeds understanding, which breeds compassion, which breeds benevolence, which breeds knoweldge..."

This is the human cycle of behavior that can bring positive change to the planet. Would it take this League of Adenaean Pragmatists to accomplish it? Or are we already members of this fellowship, just waiting for the authoritative word to take action?

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