Future posting methodology follows that of the last year:
Essays are written longhand several months ahead on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and are edited before they are posted.
Essays and recent local cellphone photos are posted to WordPress blog on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to Facebook on Monday, and a summary list of the week to Bluesky on Friday.
Artworks previously posted over the last two years are reposted on WordPress and Bluesky each Tuesday.
Previously unposted artworks are selected for WordPress, Facebook, and Bluesky on Thursday.
All artwork postings also show media, year created, and size (length by width in inches), with any accompanying text written on the picture.
We seem to find it easier to be against something than for it. Maybe hate is easier than love. What we dislike – noise, clothes, morals – is often in sharper focus than what we are for .
Accordingly it is pretty simple to form social and political groups strongly against what they are certain they do not like. Trying to get people in favor of something often comes down to defining the enemy. Protect the environment, for instance, by hating industry .
The problem with anti-groups is a proverbial observation about always using a hammer because that’s what you have. And the problem with a hammer is that it is very easily turned against almost anything. Those against gay rights easily morph into being against certain ethnicities or religions. Those against certain medicines are easily marshaled against certain foods. Those who hate one modern morality are ready to go against any others .
With luck, very strong anti-groups eventually splinter against each other and dissolve. Without luck, all bets are off .
We may not exactly count “one, two, three, many”, but we do lose ourselves as numbers become immense. I think most of us understand 100, but 1 million is hard, and anything higher does become “many”. We can easily visualize odds at “one in a hundred”, but “one in a million” is practical infinity .
Our vast outreach of instantaneous knowledge and awareness has jumbled that picture. Odds of winning a lottery may be “one in 372 million”, but – as my wife claims – “somebody always wins”. We hear about that somebody all the time. Hey, it could be me !
With the unusual reported more than the commonplace, our perception of odds becomes strangely distorted. If chances of anything are truly one in a million, then in a country like ours 360 people (each one interviewed in a media moment) will have it happen to them. In a planet of 8 billion, 8,000 folks will. Suddenly it seems like an awful lot of people. Translated to our own surroundings the odds suddenly appear as likely as 50 or more percent .
That’s why anecdotal “evidence” in medicine, science, or society is so damaging. An anecdote seems real, a statistic kind of nebulous. We think “oh, a person just like me was affected”. Winning, losing. Then we act stupidly .
My antidote has always been “how many people whom I actually know have had this happening?” That is quite sobering, and puts odds into much better perspective .
Historians weave bygone “facts” into various narratives, depending on their own outlook and goals. Most intelligent readers know there are many valid aspects to such interpretation. I enjoy the American trilogy of Bernard DeVoto _ tracking the European overrunning of the North American continent .
Unlike many modern writers, DeVoto was able to be both brutally critical and empathetically understanding of some of the horrors and gallantry of the topic. He did not mind stating his opinion, always clearly as an opinion, but with a certain judgment often missing in the more shallow morality tales which treat the same subject today .
Brilliantly evocative, as I read – say – “The Course Of Empire” – I can nearly gasp at some of the appraisals of figures and cultures, which seem whitewashed in later treatments of the same subject. So much now forbidden language, so many prejudicial statements, so blunt a panorama of suffering, heroism, evil, stupidity, and progress .
Years ago I bought print books of these works. I often worry that in the future an Orwellian AI culture existing mostly electronically will hide, erase, or cancel anything like this by whim or accident .
In the meantime, I reread it all periodically as a treasure of my heritage .
I contend, contrary to current corporate creed, that there is value in public expenditures and public places. Plazas, parks, churches, and, for the purpose of today’s thought, museums .
A public museum is a marvelous place. Its purpose is always to arrange stories and show versions of reality. Sometimes bones or rocks, sometimes paintings or sculpture, sometimes any oddball mix of anything. Objects usually with a story attached to amaze, mystify, or educate .
There are claims that with the advent of virtual spaces on the internet, museums are obsolete. That may be true in terms of tagging objects. But another function of public places is as a setting for everyone’s street theater, to see and be seen by others. A crowd sharing some momentary focus.
You protest that is also true of things like private parties and such. Sports events. I agree. The bounds are fluid. But by being open to all, a public space provides a wide variety of experience. To get back to the title, I love museums. Old, new, whatever. They make me consider what some other folks considered important. They let me see how contemporary peers react .
Such public interaction is a great binding experience, less frantic and directed than a stadium light show .
Wealthy elites hire entertaining apologists to glorify and justify their position in society. One of the great meme inventions of such employees was the concept of the “deserving poor”. Those folks were wonderful people laid low by fortune. Obviously they deserved a helping hand .
That usefully left masses of other paupers (mostly those whose views and lifestyle the elite did not agree with) to be ignored and vilified as “undeserving poor”. Such groups should be kept miserable, oppressed, or removed for the general good .
In these days of wealth concentration I propose an equivalent expression of the “undeserving rich”. People who _ unlike Carnegie, Ford, or Gates _ did nothing to deserve their affluence. They gained it through inheritance, financial gambling (with other people’s money) or fraud. They do not deserve the adulation given to the deserving rich .
Specifically, the undeserving rich should pay a lot more to support society. Sure, limit taxes on the few magnates who actually work hard. But tax to the max their children or sycophantic associates. And stop respecting their suggestions about life, consumption, or politics .
I believe the undeserving rich should be targeted just as much as the undeserving poor. And that should give all of us just as warm and fuzzy a feeling when they are righteously oppressed .
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 