Are Humans Good?

 HS #68 2021.3.11

 

 Are humans good?

 

 

Are humans good? Seems like a good-hearted assumption, but this idea, advanced in two books I’m presently reading, is contrary to my Christian upbringing. Perhaps you too were taught that humans were made good but now fallen, at war with self (Romans 7), even good works are dirty rags, and in need of a new nature.  

 

There is certainly a case to be made for a fallen nature. Consider the “terrible twos.” As soon as a child gets a will, trouble begins. Children must be patiently taught to be polite, to express appreciation, to share their toys, to bend to authority of parents.  Most of us were successfully socialized, but what about our inner self? “Schadenfreude” is the German word for that (scientifically confirmed) inner pleasure we sometimes feel upon hearing of the misfortune of others.  What better evidence for an evil nature! 

 

When C.S. Lewis wrote “Screwtape Letters” theologians praised him for the research he ostensibly put into understanding the human condition. Lewis laughed it off. He explained that all he had to do was to look inside himself.  Interestingly, Raymond Smullyan (“The Tao is Silent”) did the same – looked inside himself - but he came to the opposite conclusion. Then generalizing to others, as did Lewis, he concluded that others must also be basically good. 

 

Smullyan does not claim to be faultless. He just observes that his deep wish is to do good and to be good. The fact that he doesn’t always live up to his aspirations only shows that other things get in the way. But he takes his desire for goodness to be indicative of “his real self.” Indeed, if you, like me, sometimes experience Schadenfreude, then you may also, like me, experience shame at feeling it. So at our core, perhaps we are good. 

 

The Apostle Paul made a similar, but different, argument in chapter 7 of Romans. He claimed that “his members” were at war not with his basic good human nature, but with his new nature in Christ. That seems presumptuous. Did Paul think that those without “the new nature” do not have similar conflicts? Did Paul not have the same conflicts before his conversion?  Of course he did. 

 

But perhaps the conflict is not between a new/good nature and an evil nature, but instead is simply a conflict between two Darwinian drives. If we are wired both for self-preservation and preservation of our group/species, then the conflict that arises between these drives may be what we interpret as good versus evil. 

 

Let me explain:  Notice that the drive to preserve oneself leads to behaviors we condemn as bad/sinful: selfishness, cheating, lying, stealing, coveting, hoarding, promiscuity, materialism.   These are actions and tendencies that serve the individual at the expense of the community. 

 

On the other hand, our drive to preserve our species leads to behaviors we praise as desirable/good: charity, recycling, volunteering, kindness, self-sacrificial giving, honesty (so others can trust you), caring for the earth and wild animals (for the benefit of future generations). 

 

If our behavior results from competing genetic drives, how did we come to condemn one set of behaviors as “bad” while praising the other as “good”?  Perhaps we are just selfishly encouraging others to behave in a way that benefits us, so we label their self-centered behavior as bad because it doesn’t benefit us. How ironic! We selfishly encourage others to be unselfish. 

 

Do humans in fact sacrifice their own happiness for that of others, or do we just gain happiness from helping others? Also, is this inner struggle between drives uniquely a human phenomenon? My father once observed that no guilt-stricken dog ever returned a stolen steak back to a butcher.

 

Patricia Churchland’s, “Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition” provides helpful insight to these questions. She observes that only some animals – mammals in particular – have this double devotion to themselves AND to their group.  Why? The warm-bloodedness of mammals provides advantages such as moving at night and greater territory to live. But there are significant disadvantage too. In particular, it takes ten times as much energy (i.e., food) to live. Acquiring that food requires greater intelligence – hence a larger brain. And a larger brain means that infants must be born more premature – thus requiring the care of a mother and often a group. It takes a village. 

 

Hence many mammals, primates in particular, are wired to preserve both the individual and the group giving rise to the conflicting urges we label as evil and good. How interesting!

Finding Common Truth

 HS #67  2021.2.11

 

Finding Common Truth

 

Did last fall’s election lead to the wrong candidate being inaugurated? Is it safe to take the COVID vaccine? Is there even a pandemic? Is global warming occurring and produced largely from human influence? Is the earth only 6 thousand years old rather than 4.5 billion? 

 

These questions share several things in common: i) there are committed people on both sides of each issue, ii) answers are given with a toggle switch rather than a dial; that is, no middle ground, iii) there is an established position and a sizeable minority opposition. 

 

How do we find truth in such situations?

 

First, there must be agreement that truth exists. With sympathies to Kellyanne Conway, there are no “alternative facts.” Patrick Moynihan, statesman and senator from New York, observed, “You are entitled to your own opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” 

 

President John Adams went a bit deeper: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” 

 

Indeed, that gets to the heart of it. Apparently in Adam’s time as well as ours, people believed alternative facts. Easy to understand. Ever see a coach protesting a ref’s call that was in his favor? We see what we want to see. We believe what we want to believe. 

 

Given that we all have that tendency, how do we determine whether or not we are the one in error? Is it enough that we are in the majority? Is it enough that we are in the counterculture? As President Lincoln said to his cabinet when he found himself outnumbered, “Seven ‘no’ and one ‘aye’, the ayes have it.”  Numbers alone (or lack of them) do not determine the truth. 

 

Can’t we just look at the evidence? That might have been enough for our simple-lived ancestors when the question was, say, whether putting a fish with the planted seed helped the corn grow. Each planter could experiment and determine the truth. 

 

But modern questions rely on the research and experience and expertise of others. Who among us have personally counted ballots or measured the ice at the poles or given vaccines to research volunteers? The tough nut to crack – the real problem to solve – is determining “Who do we trust?” 

 

My own answers:

 

1)    I look at the motivations and passions of the source. Given that we all tend to believe what we want to believe, what sources don’t have a dog in the fight? Of course everyone does to some extent, but a main source for U.S. political news is BBC – at least it’s across the pond. 

2)    I look at the personal history of the source. Have they proved themselves reliable in past accounts? I differentiate between those who don’t give “the whole truth” from those who intentionally give false accounts. There is no “whole truth” to give. Every source will leave out facts that are considered important to others. Likely, the facts left out (intentionally or not) coincide with the source’s own interests. So I check multiple sources. 

3)    I steer clear of sources that combine claims of what “is” with claims of what “should be.” Given that we see what we want to see, this makes the source suspect. 

4)    I give deference to the established position. Statisticians call it the null hypothesis. It is assumed true unless there is a preponderance of evidence against it, as with our courts where innocence is presumed unless/until proven guilty. Why give this advantage? Because that is how I live generally. Every time I open a cereal box, walk into a building, drive on roads amidst traffic, get advice from a professional, or look at a map or a book, I am trusting the establishment. And I’m still alive. Obviously and gladly, the great majority of the time, established truth is correct. So I don’t doubt it without clear reason. 

 

Finally, some introspection. I suspect that believing alternative facts is a problem not with intellect, but with character.  It suggests the lack of fiber to accept and tackle the truth head on. Certainly, for example, it is tempting to ignore global warming (as we ignore our mounting national debt), and leave it for future generations.

 

Instead, we should heed Thomas Paine, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace; and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.”

 

 

Letter from Prison

 HS #66 2021.1.14

 

Letter from Prison

 

This past year some have felt like prisoners in their own homes, and have described both positive and negative aspects of it. The negatives are obvious. One positive is the opportunity for contemplative silence needed for deep thinking. Perhaps that is why influential literature has come from the incarcerated: Martin Luther King Jr., Paul the Apostle, Adolf Hitler, John Bunyan, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison.”   

 

I became interested in the plight of the prisoner several years ago upon reading an article in GQ magazine about solitary confinement. On any given day, the U.S. has 90,000 people in solitary confinement. That’s double the population of Holland. 

 

My interest was rekindled recently by an article in Popular Mechanics.  It described how Christopher Havens, a 10^thgrade high school dropout serving a 25-year sentence for a drug-related murder discovered the joy of mathematics, established a research relationship with mathematicians, and has recently published an article. Describing his research, he writes, “Continued fractions are beautiful and pure and they even have a pulse – they beat to the rhythm of a leaping arithmetic pattern.” That is poetry – it gives me goosebumps. 

 

Wanting to help other inmates experience the same, he founded the Prison Math Project. I wrote him to volunteer, and subsequently we have been corresponding by phone and email.  

 

He sent me his story, and I found it so moving that I want to share it with you. The following is Christopher Haven’s letter from prison: 

 

Our mission is not only to help inmates make positive life choices through the study and exploration of mathematics, but also to show them that a lifestyle exists where they can live in the pursuit of beauty and embrace their passion for mathematics. 

 

I once lived a completely different lifestyle to what I know today.  I began my sentence as another of the cliché "convicts" that media portrays the prisoner to be. After six months of this, I got into serious trouble and I ended up in what we call "the hole". The hole is an isolation unit, full of nothing nice. A prison within a prison. 

 

It didn't take long before I began passing my time solving puzzles. After months of this, the challenge was gone. All I had left was the noise of the screams and the yelling. I remember watching the scenery though a narrow window in my steel door. I picked out patterns among the scenery. I could predict when certain guards and nurses would walk through and which doors they opened first. I could predict the behavior of the other residents. One of these patterns was an older gentleman visiting a specific sequence of doors. He would pass envelopes through the doors, and repeat the process at a later date. This gentleman was distributing packets of mathematics. 

My door number was soon added. The math in the packets was basic algebra, but it was my first real exposure to mathematics. Man, I soaked it up like you wouldn't believe. For me, the computations were like little puzzles. Mathematics was like a seed in the fiber of my being. The isolated environment was precisely the condition I needed to finally slow down enough to realize that mathematics was what my life was missing. 

 

I spent hours and hours every day. I was hooked. The gentleman soon ran out of new material to give me, so I began buying books. That's when my questions really began! It was at just this time when I thought to myself, "I've got 25 years. I could become a mathematician."  

After my enjoyment began turning into a passion, something happened. I noticed that my thoughts were changing. My values were changing and my actions were being thought out instead of acted on impulse. I was changing, and I noticed it like the contrast between night and day. I'm not referring to a few changes. I'm talking about changes that made me question who I really was anymore. I won't go too deep into this story, but I want you to see that I was experiencing the transformative powers of mathematics.

Mathematics has led me to so many things that give my life meaning. It led me to taking responsibility of my life. This led me to empathy, which led to a complete restructuring of my practice of everyday life. I then learned to love things including myself. Self-rehabilitation was occurring, all through the lens of mathematics. This is how I define justice.

 

Advent: A Look Towards a Hopeful Future

 HS #65 2020.12.10

 

Advent

 

 

Last summer, returning to the Au Train beach from a Lake Superior kayaking venture, I came upon a wrestling camp in progress. A gung-ho military-styled coach was training a couple dozen junior high youth as their parents looked on from a distance. Having explained the necessity of being in top shape, he paired them with instructions for one to carry his partner on his back for 60 yards down the beach, then trade places for the return trip. As the coach exhorted and cajoled, all returned sweating and heaving, except one slightly built wrestler who was straining under the weight of his partner.

 

All could see the pain on the young face as he labored to keep his balance in the loose sand and grappled to keep the load from slipping off his back. It was clear that he was not going to make it. After a gallant effort, he approached the coach standing 20 yards from the finish line and prepared to drop his teammate onto the sand.  

 

But the coach would have none of it.  Seemingly blind to the pain of the faltering lad, he refused to let him stop, instead pointing to the finish line and bullying him onward. 

 

With no option but forward, tears of rage mixed with salt and sand covered his agonized face. I watched in anger, wondering if any parent would step forward to stop the emotional and physical abuse. Twice he hesitated, but somehow was able to command his wavering legs to take another step - then another - two more yards to go - then collapsed on the finish line to the cheers of his fellow wrestlers and the relieved parents. 

 

That young man will never be the same. I am sure of it. Heck, it was life changing for me just witnessing it. My contempt for the bully coach turned to profound respect as I saw what he had just given that boy - gave him a lesson that went far beyond wrestling or physical endeavor. 

 

I never met the coach, but I suspect that Holland has a statue in honor of a kindred spirit. Recently I read “With this Inheritance” written by Sara Michel and illustrated by Del Michel. It gives the account of Albertus Van Raalte leading the original group of one hundred Hollanders to Western Michigan. Jailed and fined in the Netherlands for disobeying laws regulating worship, Van Raalte met tough times head-on. Learning English while on the ship, he served as minister, translator, counselor, encourager, explorer, builder, teacher, host, and entrepreneur to the colony. He led them in hewing out a new settlement in a wilderness so thick with trees that corn and potatoes were planted between tree roots, the 70 foot windmill they constructed would not turn due to blocked wind, and new arrivers carried axes to mark trees when fetching their cows in order to find their way back home. 

 

He had no coach to encourage him as he encouraged others in the midst of hunger, illness and death. Instead, his motivation was “this inheritance from God’s hand and desire to attain God’s end.” 

 

Both of these individuals point us to Advent. They envisioned a future event with fervent hope, whether it was 20 yards away or “God’s nursery for eternity.” This is a tough hope rooted in truth and requiring action and sacrifice as opposed to wishful thinking rooted in passivity and cynicism.

 

It forms a stark contrast to those whose false beliefs align with what they wish to be true: dying COVID patients denying the reality of the pandemic, those who claim the recent election was fraudulent despite firsthand testimony and judgements to the contrary, and those certain that global warming is a hoax, avoiding “an inconvenient truth” thus keeping their present lifestyle with no guilt. As a former student of mine has noted, “the mind justifies what the heart desires.” 

 

Al Franken caught the contrast between easy belief and tough hope: “Some love America like a toddler loves their mommy - it can do no wrong. Others love America like a parent loves their teenager - they know it can do better.”

 

This year, even in the darkness of the presently increasing COVID death rate, we have opportunity to exercise tough hope – to celebrate Advent as we look forward with justified assurance to the end of the reign of the coronavirus with a vaccine provided by the arduous labor of scientists. It is an Advent built on grit, tenacity and truth. 

Boron Rods

 HS #64 2020.11.12

 

Boron Rods

 

I remember it vividly. My 6^th grade science class was watching a film that explained nuclear reactions – a reaction caused when a neutron smashes into a uranium-235 nucleus releasing three more neutrons and a bit of energy. The resulting exponential growth in the number of neutrons results in a nuclear explosion. 

 

To demonstrate it, the floor of an entire room was covered with mousetraps – each with a ping pong ball perched on it. When a single ball was tossed into the room, it sprang a trap releasing another ball, and those two landed on two more traps which released their balls. Almost instantly the air was filled with flying ping pong balls. This is what destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

 

In order to explain exponential growth to my math classes, I use the great-grandpa example. Suppose you have two ancestors who 200 years ago each deposited $10 in a bank at 6% annual interest. The first included directions that each year the interest be removed and collected in a jar, while the other directed that the interest stay in the bank to earn additional interest.

 

The first account grows at a constant rate of 60 cents each year, so after five years there is $13.00 and after 200 years a total of $130. What about the second? At the end of the first year, you have $10 times 1.06  = $10.60. A 60¢ increase. Second year: $10.60 times 1.06 = $11.24. A 64¢ increase.  Then a 67¢ increase. Then 71¢. After five years, you have $13.38 – 38¢ more than the first. How much after 200 years? A whopping $1,151,259.04 

 

Unlike linear growth which increases at a constant rate, exponential growth happens whenever the amount of change is not constant but instead grows proportional to the amount present.  Whether a bank account, a nuclear bomb, zebra mussels, or small pox which decimated continents, the result is the same: unconstrained explosive growth. 

 

So how then do we harness nuclear energy to safely produce electricity? Boron rods are positioned in the reactor chamber to absorb enough of the particles to keep the chain reaction from going wild. If pushed in all the way, the reaction stops. If pulled out, the reaction turns into an explosion. Simple. 

 

When the Manhatten Project under the bleachers at the University of Chicago tested the first nuclear reaction, Enrico Fermi and company had done all the calculations on slide rules to assure that things would go as planned. But so great was the consequence of a miscalculation that a physicist stood ready with an ax to drop control rods into the reactor if needed. They also considered positioning a suicide squad of three young physicists on the ceiling with containers of cadmium-sulfate (neutron-absorbing) solution. 

 

By absorbing just enough of the neutrons, they achieved an exponential rate of 1.0006 (equivalent to a tiny interest rate of 0.06%), but that was enough to convince them that the theory of Einstein and Bohr really worked. Had they not put the control rods back in place, within 90 minutes the one-half watt of power would have multiplied to a million kilowatts – vaporizing them and melting the room. 

 

What do the boron rods do? By absorbing neutrons, they lower the exponential rate to a number less than 1. In the same way that 1.0006 multiplied by itself enough times will increase without bound, so also a number less than 1, say 0.9995 multiplied by itself repeatedly will head to zero. Lower the average number of released neutrons to less than 1, and the reaction dies down – similar to a bouncing ball coming to rest. 

Do you see where this is going? Our present coronavirus is a biological explosion. Social distancing and masks for all of us and isolation for those who test positive are our only effective “boron rods.” Without them, the virus will explode through the human population. If we wear them and responsibly distance and isolate ourselves, the multiplier rate will be less than 1, and the number of people with the virus will head to 0 – as it has done in China. 

 

Unfortunately, as with out-of-tune singers in a choir, even though most are responsible, a few  people can have a big negative effect, thus raising the multiplier above 1.  If 99% of cars are low-exhaust, but 1% are heavy polluters, the air is bad. The key is for EVERYONE to be responsible. Nothing else will do it. The math is simple.

This I Believe

 HS #63 2020.10.8

 

This I Believe

 

Recently a reader asked me to provide my underlying beliefs. He was referring to political beliefs, but I agree with G.K. Chesterton, “The most practical and important thing about a person is his view of the universe.” The philosopher Wittgenstein claimed that we all have core beliefs. These form the stationary hinge around which our other beliefs can then move. For twenty-five years, teaching senior seminars at Hope College, I challenged students to identify and reflect critically on their core beliefs. After all, none other than Socrates observed that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” So in the remaining space I give an overview of my beliefs, and challenge readers to do the same. 

 

My father liked to say, “All Indians walk in single file – at least the one I saw did.” That humorous line captures two important points: We learn by making generalizations from what we experience. However, those generalizations may be wrong.  If a growling dog bites me, I should stay away from growling dogs. However, I shouldn’t avoid ALL dogs. So making correct generalizations from our experiences is important. 

 

First, I learn about the universe by experiencing it directly via my five senses. I gain wonder and awe from sunsets over Lake Michigan. I learned multiplication by playing with blocks. I learned about forces from teeter totters and merry-go-rounds and bicycles. I discover what makes people happy and angry by interacting with friends and siblings. 

 

I also experience the universe directly through an internal sense. Immanuel Kant said, “Two things fill the mind with admiration and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” I agree. Even though I lose out on the fun of spending the money, something inside (possibly God’s imprint) compels me that I should return a lost wallet to its owner. As the physicist-priest John Polkinghorne said, “I know, as certainly as I know anything, that love is better than hate.” 

 

Finally, as the above paragraphs suggest, I learn about the universe through the testimony of others. Indeed, most that I know has come that way. I have experienced sixty years of history, but I know thousands of years of it. Via my eyes I see specks of light in the night sky, but via the testimony of others, I know that some of those specks are huge fusion furnaces like our sun and others are swirling swarms of billions of suns. All of this from the testimony of others – historians, biographers, scientists. 

 

But this is where things get tricky. I have learned from experience that the testimony of others is unreliable. Some are mistaken or deceitful, while others, including myself, are easily fooled. I recently learned via NPR that I have been sorting plastic in vain. Recycling numbers was a gimmick to get Americans to use more plastic – guilt free. I bought in. That is, unless I am being sold a false story by NPR. How do I know? 

 

Religious claims are especially problematic.   There may be intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. However, if anyone claimed they were abducted by extra-terrestrials, I would doubt the veracity.  Similarly, although a personal God or spiritual dimension may exist, I doubt those who claim to have personal information or experience with it. Just too many varied and contrary claims amongst the 4000 religions.  Obviously, most – possibly all - are mistaken.

 

Personally, I put scientists high on my “trustworthy” list. Why? Not because they are better than the rest of us, but because they are engaged in a career where gaining truth is the primary objective and is robustly and critically sought. I am presently peer-reviewing a mathematics article for a journal. Before it’s printed, several mathematicians will scour it for mistakes. Any major scientific finding is reviewed by hundreds. There’s a plumb for anyone who finds flaws in another’s discovery. Additionally, others repeat the experiments. 

 

Recently I watched Francis Collins (physicist, physician, director of Human Genome Project, NIH Director, founder of BioLogos, and author of “The Language of God”) receive the Templeton Prize which is given to a person who “harnesses the power of the sciences to explore the deepest questions of the universe and humankind’s place and purpose within it.” 

 

An atheist who became a Christian at age 27 after being challenged by one of his patients to examine his own world view, Collins is presently searching for a coronavirus antidote, warning about human-caused global warming, and advocating for truth and harmony. That’s an examined life worth living.  

White Privilege

 HS #62 2020.9.10

 

White Privilege 

 

Every so often I have an “ah-ha” moment when blinders are seemingly removed from my eyes. Yet, I hesitate to make that claim because, like the blind man healed by Jesus, I am perhaps still not seeing clearly, but unlike the blindman, not realizing it. 

 

Be that as it may, I recently heard that in Saginaw Valley there is a monument commemorating its first white person - a Jesuit missionary priest in 1675. 

 

I instantly had two thoughts: “Cool! That’s a tidbit of history one wouldn’t know if not for the monument. It prods one to imagine the Valley back then.” The other was, “What hubris! Why do whites think that the first white is an occasion for celebration and note? Reflecting a bit more, I realized that if I saw a monument for “the first black in Michigan” I would likely think to myself, “There’s more of that political correctness stuff - someone trying to make a point.” 

 

Only at such times do I realize the deep extent of white privilege in my own thinking – even after having been sensitized by the death of George Floyd and the many yard signs in Holland proclaiming “Black Lives Matter.” 

 

I was recently in a conversation with someone who asked the purpose of those signs. His question, “What are they meant to accomplish? How am I to act differently after having seen one?” Good questions. Yet my “ah-ha” moment shows exactly their purpose. They hopefully help show me – and other whites – that, like it or not, admit it or not, I am part of the problem. 

 

Ironically, although affluent white Americans are likely among the most traveled in the world, this extensive exposure to other cultures may serve to increase our sense of pride and entitlement rather than increase our appreciation for other peoples and cultures.  I remember visiting the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, Colorado and being told by a Native American guide how well constructed these 800-year-old structures were. We climbed ladders to get a closer look at the clay rooms. Then it occurred to me that they were about the age of the great cathedrals of Europe. “Why are you so proud of this?”, I thought. 

 

I also remember visiting villages in Ecuador with simply constructed homes and children running around and about. While others commented how small and close-together they were, I found myself envious of the tight community they allowed. What a contrast to our life style where we stay secluded in air-conditioned homes, locked doors, and put up “No Trespassing” and “Private Beach” signs. How bizarre, when you think of it – this European idea that we can own a piece of the 4.5-billion-year-old earth. Like a flea owning the elephant. 

 Native Americans saw things differently – they viewed the earth as owning them.

 

But didn’t Europeans control much of the globe? Doesn’t that give them cause for pride? “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond provides an answer. Much of it was accidental. Smallpox and other European diseases wiped out 95% of the Native American population, as they did indigenous peoples on other continents.  Some is “personality.” In the 15^th and 16^th century China began exploring for trade while Europeans explored to conquer. 

 

The point is, we whites look around, see the world through our value system, and can’t help but think that we’re rather special. “If you’re not Dutch, you’re not much” is meant to be a joke, but, as Proverbs 26:19 points out, jokes often contain a germ of one’s true thought. 

 

So what can be done? Do we destroy the monument in Saginaw? Recently a John Wayne exhibit was closed upon discovering Wayne was a white supremacist – at least as indicated by things he said. Wayne, like all of us, was a person of his own time.  Do we censor him forever because he didn’t have the opportunity for the “ah ha” moments we have had?  What happens when we uncover 30-year-old comments or actions by our leaders and heros? Can we progress individually and as a society while still allowing for mistakes of the past? Isn’t intolerance for past actions a close relative of intolerance for other ethnicities? Aren’t both built on pride in one’s present position?  

 

Wisdom is needed, and wisdom, as shown by Solomon and Daniel (the two Biblical characters described as being wise) involves creative thinking and imagination. Someone in Saginaw Valley suggested leaving the monument and erecting another for Native Americans. That’s a clever start.