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As a USAF Aviation Cadet, I kept a low profile. Doing something that called attention to yourself — whether positive or negative — meant greater scrutiny which increased the likelihood of some flaw in your performance being noticed.
Every week, we attended a lecture by the airbase chaplain. During one of these lectures, he said, "How many times a second does a clock tick? If you say one time a second, raise your hand." A few hands went up. Then he said, "How many of you say a clock ticks two times a second?" More hands went up. When he asked about three, there were no takers. When he asked about four times a second, many hands were raised.
When I was a kid, there were two clocks in the bedroom. One was a Big Ben alarm clock. The other was a huge clock with a pendulum. With each swing of the pendulum, the clock ticked and the second hand moved one second ahead on the dial. As I lay in bed unable to sleep, when the pendulum clock clicked once, the Big Ben went "click, click, click, click, click." Five times. I knew the answer to the chaplain's question. So when he said, "How many of you say a clock times five times a second" I, knowing that to be the right answer, raised my hand. Immediately, I felt uncomfortable. I was the only person with my hand up. The chaplain made the situation worse. He pointed at me and said, "You're right."
Sometimes it is terribly uncomfortable being right. When you are, what do you do about it? Do you stay silent to avoid trouble? Or do you muster the courage of a fictitious character like Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird? Finch said, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”
As to trouble with being right, we know about Galileo. He correctly observed that the earth orbits the sun. According to the church, the Earth was the center of the universe. This conflict between Galileo and authority - are we the center of the universe or not - started in 1610. Being the center of the world is still an issue. Must the world revolve around us? Or can we swallow our narcissism and deal with a planet in peril?
The split between the authoritarian and the scientific is all too clear. Some of us can open our minds, tolerate ambiguity, embrace change, and play fair. Some of us claim to have an open mind, but too insecure to tolerate ambiguity, cling to fixed beliefs.
This brings to mind my high school science teacher, Mrs. Perry. In our small North Carolina town, with only a few students in the class, the social dynamics were atypical. Mrs. Perry and I got into arguments on an almost daily basis. She won because she was the teacher. In my own mind, I won because I was right.
For example, Mrs. Perry said, "You can't see the moon during the day because the sun is not in a position to illuminate it as it is at night." She was obviously wrong. I said, "But you CAN see the moon in the daytime. I know because I have SEEN IT."
"No, you haven't. You haven't seen it because is impossible."
Like Galileo, I had seen what I had seen. Like Galileo, I was being told to recant. But, Galileo had it much worse. He faced an inquisition and was told, "abandon completely . . . the opinion that the sun stands still at the center of the world and the earth moves.” He was under house arrest for the rest of his life.
But, one incident with Mrs. Perry was a win. I always argued with her about how she graded my tests. Not that I was right all of the time, I was just argumentative, and she enjoyed a good argument as much as I did.
I got back a test about the human body. One of the questions was, "What is the fluid that lubricates the joints?" The answer is "synovial fluid." I knew that, but when I breezed through the test, I mistakenly wrote down "seminal fluid" as the answer.
I'm sure when she saw that answer, she knew it was wrong. But what did she do? She marked it correct. She didn't want to get into a discussion about the fluid released when a male ejaculates. Sex was not something churchgoing people in North Carolina discussed, or even admitted the existence of. Rather than suffer embarrassment, she gave my incorrect answer a pass.
But back to the subject at hand. Does the world revolve around us? On one hand, we have authoritarianism and religious dogma that says it does. On the other hand, we have science and enlightenment that says it doesn't. Must we be so narcissistic that we cannot - even at our own peril - accept what is correct? If you are distressed about what is going on, you are right to be. Being right - by having an open and updatable mind - leads to trouble. Alignment with authoritarian dogma - while merely claiming to have an open mind - brings peace.
Some refused to even look through Galileo's telescope. Galileo wrote, "My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?”
Will open minds prevail? Resolution can a long time in coming, if at all. Even as late as 1990, Cardinal Ratzinger - who later became pope - said the Church’s verdict against Galileo as “rational and just.” Some minds can never change.
