“Just goes to show ya.”
“What?”
“Things you thought were so, aren’t really as ‘so’ as you thought.”
“Meaning?”
“Take Betelgeuse. Until this morning I thought it was a red giant so large that if it were placed where the Sun lies, it would fill the Solar System to the orbit of Jupiter. Now, someone says it’s not as big—and not as far away.”*
“Details?”
“Not too important. Something like only 750 Sun-diameters and only about two-thirds the way to Jupiter. Still big, I’ll admit, but not what I thought it was. Not what anyone thought it was.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, so that makes me think of how I viewed my teachers and college professors. They seemed big, maybe because I was always seated and they were always standing and maybe because I was probably intimidated by their greater wisdom and age. When you’re little, you are little. So, the distance to what they were and difference in size were great. In my youthful mind I would never be ‘that old.’ And the size? Well, I just took it as a given that they were big. And then I grew up and became a university professor and colleague of some of those who taught me, and it dawned on me that their physical size wasn’t what I thought and their thoughts weren’t what I thought. As I gained knowledge and powers of reasoning, I gained some wisdom, and their bodies of knowledge and wisdom began, I thought, to shrink a bit—in some cases, a lot.”
“Isn’t that what happens to all of us? We grow and learn. We are larger than the following generation for a while, and we know more for a while—till they grow and learn.”
“Yeah. I guess I was reminded of the process when I learned of Betelgeuse’s new size estimate. And it’s closer than we always thought, not that mighty and distant object. Well, it is still very distant, but it’s supposedly now 25% closer than we believed.”
“And those teachers in your youth and professors you had in your late teens and early twenties? When you joined them in the profession, they were also closer than you thought.”
“So, I thought of something one of my nieces said on a visit when she was a grown woman. As a child, she thought the vaulted ceiling in my living room was impossibly high. When she looked up at it on that visit, she said, ‘I thought that ceiling was higher.’ That’s similar to my experience with Betelgeuse and my professors.”
“And, by extension, to most of our perceptions when we think something or someone is somehow bigger, better, and out-of-reach. It isn’t something one can teach to most kids. The size difference makes the perception immediate. But they can learn that everyone’s ostensible size isn’t the same for everyone. Adults, they can learn intellectually if not emotionally, aren’t giants in size or in knowledge except in comparison. Both their size and wisdom seem to shrink as one’s own world grows.”
“But there’s a catch. For some people, I’ll call them the ‘head-shakers,’ the idolization of others never seems to diminish.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I have been watching the political scene for number of years, and I’ve noticed that many journalists—MANY, I want to emphasize—who sit to ask questions of a political candidate they favor, won’t ask any really hard questions, and when they do, they cower, it seems to me, to the inner-brain responses of the candidates angry that they dared to ask a challenging question. I think it’s been my experience that many in the media never grew out of their school desks and their perceptions. Politicians that they support are the Betelgeuses of old, still apparently very large and very remote, beyond the reach of the ‘ordinary’ reporter who seems to have ‘grown’ only with respect to an unfavored politician.”
“Yes. Good point. People that other people put on pedestals are Betelgeuses that really aren’t what their idolizers perceive them to be. Reminds me of the Beatles. They were idolized by teens who then saw them as somewhat profound thinkers far removed from the ordinary crowd. Didn’t they do that Hindu mystic stuff for a while? And, hey, I still like their music. Besides, no one can take away their overcoming personal tragedies. Two of them lost mothers early in life, three of them lost a band member to murder, and two of them lost a second band member to disease. And they got numerous awards, even a knighthood because they reshaped twentieth-century popular music and fashion. They were Betelgeuses, and no one can fully take away their size, that is, their influence on the world, nor can anyone take away their financial distance from their followers who made them rich.
“They weren’t Betelgeuses in my personal world, however. A couple of catchy tunes is great, but they weren’t enough to make the singers my idols. I’ve never been much of a follower; never been one to idolize much, even when I was sitting in those elementary school desks. Respect, yes. Idolization, no. I’m willing to recognize great achievements and great skills or wisdom, but assume that achievements, skills, and wisdom require some basic inclinations, mental capacities, practice, learning, and especially hard work topped with a bit of luck. If the Beatles are Betelgeuses, it's because they worked hard and had some luck in the early going, getting just the perfect press and opportunities like the popular Ed Sullivan Show.
"Me? I can find Betelgeuses in people ordinarily thought of as ‘ordinary.’ Take carpenters, for example. I had two guys put in a storm door to replace an old one. The door frame on the 50-year-old house is a bit out of plumb. They worked for about four hours on assembling and installing the door, making sure that it fit perfectly and closed tightly. Betelgeuses, both of them. I mean it. They were larger than life to me in their skills, patience, and accomplishment. They put a straight door into a somewhat crooked frame perfectly. Giants in my mind. Watching them, I was sitting in that school desk in elementary school. They won’t get a knighthood from the Queen, but they now sit in the constellation of my universe. And maybe that’s how ‘stars’ should be seen. Starting out as apparently ordinary and moving to a position higher and farther and larger rather than starting out as apparently more distant and larger and shrinking in both distance and size.”
* https://phys.org/news/2020-10-supergiant-star-betelgeuse-smaller-closer.html Accessed October 16, 2020.
Joyce, Meridith, Shjing-Chi Leung, László Molnár, Michael Ireland, Chiaki Kobayashi, Ken’ichi Nomoto. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: New Mass and Distance Estimates for Betelgeuse through Combined Evolutionary, Asteroseismic, and Hydrodynamic Simulations with MESA. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 902, No. 1, 13 Oct 2020.
“What?”
“Things you thought were so, aren’t really as ‘so’ as you thought.”
“Meaning?”
“Take Betelgeuse. Until this morning I thought it was a red giant so large that if it were placed where the Sun lies, it would fill the Solar System to the orbit of Jupiter. Now, someone says it’s not as big—and not as far away.”*
“Details?”
“Not too important. Something like only 750 Sun-diameters and only about two-thirds the way to Jupiter. Still big, I’ll admit, but not what I thought it was. Not what anyone thought it was.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, so that makes me think of how I viewed my teachers and college professors. They seemed big, maybe because I was always seated and they were always standing and maybe because I was probably intimidated by their greater wisdom and age. When you’re little, you are little. So, the distance to what they were and difference in size were great. In my youthful mind I would never be ‘that old.’ And the size? Well, I just took it as a given that they were big. And then I grew up and became a university professor and colleague of some of those who taught me, and it dawned on me that their physical size wasn’t what I thought and their thoughts weren’t what I thought. As I gained knowledge and powers of reasoning, I gained some wisdom, and their bodies of knowledge and wisdom began, I thought, to shrink a bit—in some cases, a lot.”
“Isn’t that what happens to all of us? We grow and learn. We are larger than the following generation for a while, and we know more for a while—till they grow and learn.”
“Yeah. I guess I was reminded of the process when I learned of Betelgeuse’s new size estimate. And it’s closer than we always thought, not that mighty and distant object. Well, it is still very distant, but it’s supposedly now 25% closer than we believed.”
“And those teachers in your youth and professors you had in your late teens and early twenties? When you joined them in the profession, they were also closer than you thought.”
“So, I thought of something one of my nieces said on a visit when she was a grown woman. As a child, she thought the vaulted ceiling in my living room was impossibly high. When she looked up at it on that visit, she said, ‘I thought that ceiling was higher.’ That’s similar to my experience with Betelgeuse and my professors.”
“And, by extension, to most of our perceptions when we think something or someone is somehow bigger, better, and out-of-reach. It isn’t something one can teach to most kids. The size difference makes the perception immediate. But they can learn that everyone’s ostensible size isn’t the same for everyone. Adults, they can learn intellectually if not emotionally, aren’t giants in size or in knowledge except in comparison. Both their size and wisdom seem to shrink as one’s own world grows.”
“But there’s a catch. For some people, I’ll call them the ‘head-shakers,’ the idolization of others never seems to diminish.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I have been watching the political scene for number of years, and I’ve noticed that many journalists—MANY, I want to emphasize—who sit to ask questions of a political candidate they favor, won’t ask any really hard questions, and when they do, they cower, it seems to me, to the inner-brain responses of the candidates angry that they dared to ask a challenging question. I think it’s been my experience that many in the media never grew out of their school desks and their perceptions. Politicians that they support are the Betelgeuses of old, still apparently very large and very remote, beyond the reach of the ‘ordinary’ reporter who seems to have ‘grown’ only with respect to an unfavored politician.”
“Yes. Good point. People that other people put on pedestals are Betelgeuses that really aren’t what their idolizers perceive them to be. Reminds me of the Beatles. They were idolized by teens who then saw them as somewhat profound thinkers far removed from the ordinary crowd. Didn’t they do that Hindu mystic stuff for a while? And, hey, I still like their music. Besides, no one can take away their overcoming personal tragedies. Two of them lost mothers early in life, three of them lost a band member to murder, and two of them lost a second band member to disease. And they got numerous awards, even a knighthood because they reshaped twentieth-century popular music and fashion. They were Betelgeuses, and no one can fully take away their size, that is, their influence on the world, nor can anyone take away their financial distance from their followers who made them rich.
“They weren’t Betelgeuses in my personal world, however. A couple of catchy tunes is great, but they weren’t enough to make the singers my idols. I’ve never been much of a follower; never been one to idolize much, even when I was sitting in those elementary school desks. Respect, yes. Idolization, no. I’m willing to recognize great achievements and great skills or wisdom, but assume that achievements, skills, and wisdom require some basic inclinations, mental capacities, practice, learning, and especially hard work topped with a bit of luck. If the Beatles are Betelgeuses, it's because they worked hard and had some luck in the early going, getting just the perfect press and opportunities like the popular Ed Sullivan Show.
"Me? I can find Betelgeuses in people ordinarily thought of as ‘ordinary.’ Take carpenters, for example. I had two guys put in a storm door to replace an old one. The door frame on the 50-year-old house is a bit out of plumb. They worked for about four hours on assembling and installing the door, making sure that it fit perfectly and closed tightly. Betelgeuses, both of them. I mean it. They were larger than life to me in their skills, patience, and accomplishment. They put a straight door into a somewhat crooked frame perfectly. Giants in my mind. Watching them, I was sitting in that school desk in elementary school. They won’t get a knighthood from the Queen, but they now sit in the constellation of my universe. And maybe that’s how ‘stars’ should be seen. Starting out as apparently ordinary and moving to a position higher and farther and larger rather than starting out as apparently more distant and larger and shrinking in both distance and size.”
* https://phys.org/news/2020-10-supergiant-star-betelgeuse-smaller-closer.html Accessed October 16, 2020.
Joyce, Meridith, Shjing-Chi Leung, László Molnár, Michael Ireland, Chiaki Kobayashi, Ken’ichi Nomoto. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: New Mass and Distance Estimates for Betelgeuse through Combined Evolutionary, Asteroseismic, and Hydrodynamic Simulations with MESA. The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 902, No. 1, 13 Oct 2020.
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