How … Who?

DOS for Dummies may have been on your bookshelf if you were on the emerging tidal wave of computing back in the 1980’s. This ____ For Dummies series now boasts over 1900 titles and has become a marketing success beyond expectation. Yes, you can swallow your ego and admit you need help to understand much of our world and its various technologies.

Dan Gookin wrote that vastly popular volume which helped many with the elementary steps of understanding computer basics.  Here’s how he explains the background to his writing situation:

“For Dummies originated in the late 1980s, in California. At the time, technology was transforming the workplace, with people increasingly switching from typewriters and basic word processors to desktop computers. Users found the technology bewildering, but had nowhere to go for help.“We had beginners’ books on how to use computers, but they sucked,” American tech writer Dan Gookin said in a television interview in 2013. “They were condescending and patronizing. The author was arrogant, like, ‘You’ll never get this stuff anyway.’ ” Either that, or they were “dry and boring and not an interesting read”.

“In the late 1980s, he was shopping around a book proposal for The Idiot’s Guide to DOS, patterned after the popular 1969 hippie-tinged guidebook How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. Meanwhile, at a conference he met an editor from IDG who told him about a title rattling around in his head based on his uncle’s complaint that no one would write a book on “DOS for us dummies.” The editor read Gookin’s proposal and had just one big suggestion, in Gookin’s recollection: “This level of user doesn’t want to learn anything. They want to get the answer to the question, close the book, and move on with their life. Gookin wrote DOS for Dummies in about a month on an advance of about $6,000. The main note from the publisher on the first draft was that it was too short. (Gookin: “It’s Mozart being told there aren’t enough notes.”) Some bookstores refused to carry the finished product because the title sounded insulting to readers, and Gookin says the publisher ordered cautious print runs of just 5,000 over and over for months. But skyrocketing sales numbers changed everyone’s minds.”

More frequently today, we don’t turn so much to books to find out how to do things, we merely tap the Google app. In a fraction of a second multiple perspectives and possibilities surface for our consideration, most users being oblivious of the unseen payments to Google, in order to put their page at the top of those lists.  Bias, censorship and lack of funds all part of this Google search experience!

As one of my young grandsons mentioned to me, “Papa, Google knows everything!”

Perhaps and perhaps not! 

Yet another source of answering the “how” questions of life, resorts to those whose ingenuity is usually not written, and certainly not part of the Google research base - those whose life experiences have taught them valuable lessons on getting answers to their “how” questions.

People like the Amish who are considered some of the best problem solvers - and that with a maximum of 8 years of schooling! Ask an older Amish man a “How” question and don’t be surprised if he chews on some straw, waits to respond and then states, “There are several ways you could do that, but I think the best way is …”.  In a few brief moments he has taken the problem of how to do something, proposed several solutions in his mind, and suggested the best for you. On top of that advice, he will probably tell you if you go over two side roads, turn left and go to the third farm on the right you will find Elijah and he will help you with your problem!

This interactive process depends on interaction and we sadly, find it too time consuming for our liking - but oh the joy of speaking with someone who is not selfish with their information and loves to be asked how he can help you - and does! In the process you have made a friend!

But besides the “How” questions, we often spend considerable time on the “Who” questions, particularly if we are in new social contexts. Who we know and who others know is a means of evaluating our position in the hierarchy of society, or so we think!

Trivia games exemplify this tendency! 

1. Who is the only remaining politician who helped write Canada’s Constitution?

2. Who is the longest reigning monarch in the world?

3. Who is the fastest male sprinter in the world today?

4. Who did the first mechanical heart transplant into a human?

5. Who spent time in prison because of their faith in the New Testament?

The “who” questions centre on personalities and give us cause to observe whether we tend towards those who have strong media promotion or whether they are people we know who do not have such exposure.  These are persons we have interacted with, have discussed with, have been helped by, …

What a difference between the who of media exposure and the who of personal relationship - one is at a distance with created or fabricated presence while the other makes no effort to hide behind labels or caricatures, but is in someway, relational: sharing, talking, discussing, giving hope, counselling, laughing, worshipping …

The recent announcement of the Queen’s death is a case in point. Few, if any of us have ever spoken to her or discussed anything with her. She is someone most of us have admired but only seen through the lens of media.

But to me personally she was a monarch I had the privilege of actually seeing twice in my life. Once during my childhood when she visited the colony of Nigeria, and we stood by the road as her car passed slowly.

On a more recent occasion, we were invited by the Base Commander of the Ottawa Military Base to be present as the Queen left Canada to return to England on the Concord aircraft. 

A long red carpet led to the waiting aircraft and we were in the third row of low bleachers along that path. As the Queen made her way along this gallery, a little girl in front of us stepped forward to give her a bouquet of flowers. The queen stepped towards her and graciously accepted the tribute, and speaking with her as she thanked her.

To say we were close to Her Majesty in this case must be taken in a literal sense -  perhaps four feet away!

We had no time for small talk, but we were in the presence of a significant “WHO”!

If we allow the words highlighted in this brief blog to come together we find them as the basis for significant divisions within the religious context! How do we practice our religious faiths and who is the recipient of such adoration.

Would you agree that much division is caused by differences in the How more so than the Who?  It is so easy to judge another’s practices, isn’t it, and in judging to hold a superiority based on egoistic motivations?

It is so much easier to follow the “this is right or this is wrong” of one of the trees in the Garden of Eden rather than to focus on the Tree of Life where we might better ask, “Tell me about your relationship with Jesus and what it means to you!”

I am amazed to read statistics which suggest that the number of christian denominations worldwide is in the tens of thousands! Add to that the sects within other major religions and we lose count with one sole conclusion - they all believe that they are practicing their faith the right or correct way. 

So, the answer to the how of practicing religion has many answers.

A similar conclusion comes when we ask the who question about who is the focus or followed in various religious contexts.

Five minutes is not long to put your perspective/message across, when the eyes of more than half of earth’s population are on you, directly or through media - your choice of words to communicate across cultural, religious, and national divides is imperative!. But in his 502 word sermon at the Queens recent funeral, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby did an admirable job of placing the Queen’s service to humanity, within a Christian context with these words: 

“Jesus – who in our reading does not tell his disciples how to follow, but who to follow – said: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life.’ Her late Majesty’s example was not set through her position or her ambition, but through whom she followed.”

“How you live then flows from that, and so Elizabeth II committed herself to service – to serving the people but above all to serving God.”

Let’s pause to reflect on our own faith’s basis: 

Who we follow, determines How we follow!