Looney Geniuses

Overwired brains often descend into what seems madness to others. Brilliance can be associated with insanity. Isaac Newton pored over mysticism, medieval alchemists tried to turn lead to gold, Chinese emperors ate crazy stuff to become immortal, many religious fanatics pondered the ineffable reasons for the universe even as they admitted humans cannot know .

Most of our current batch of lunatic geniuses concentrate on science fiction. They want to move humans to other worlds, live forever young, turn the next stage of evolution over to silicon machines, vanish into a “singularity” which, if it existed, would exactly resemble the current universe .

But in one or two areas (when financed with other gullible people’s money) they are indeed brilliant. Some actually build things, many simply manipulate gambling spreadsheets. Their narrow focus on whatever they succeed at makes them less than stable and realistic in other areas of their lives .

I truly enjoy reading of their adventures in immortality. Instead of ingesting gold or jade, hiring magicians to enchant them, or bathing in virgins’ blood, they simply do weird self-denying rituals. Living in oxygen tents, starving, precise foods. All to extend lives which _ examined from a wider human experience _ hardly seem worth living .

I wander outside to smell the roses and laugh in the moonlight . In my own world, forever, eternally young

Medical Mess

Social systems, like organisms, are often insanely complex and convoluted. “Simple” things like an animal taking a step invoke nearly infinitely complicated signals, even after we discount the infinite underlying reactions keeping life going.

Any crackpot or “normal” person tends to believe if we “just keep it simple” we could clean up a social system such as medicine and make it cheaper, more responsive, and more robust. After all, how hard could it be?

Ask a biologist what’s involved in a deer strolling across a meadow. And don’t forget things like all the trillions of ATP cellular reactions.Fixing a social system is even worse. Like organisms, social systems are not isolated but exist in an ecology.

Reform may, in fact, be impossible. What often happens instead is extinction or replacement by creatures invading the territory.

I suspect we are in such a situation. Most of our cultural systems are complicated ancient relics that still work but are increasingly susceptible to extinction or replacement.

Not “fixing them up”, not “evolution”, but vanishing into irrelevance.

Medical coverage and practice among them .

In such cases, it seems better to concentrate on “why” rather than “how”. Presumably our AI masters will produce all the answers necessary.

Not sure we will like those much .

Self Limits

The young have sharp genius, grand ambitions, keen senses, and a clear mind. Those of us fortunate enough to age a long time find all the facilities dimming and eroded. We claim to be more experienced and wiser, but (even if true) it is not a great trade-off .

Visual artists generally notice these problems acutely. Sight is not as sharp, arthritis limits actions, muscles tremble. We notice the “decline” in the late works of most of them. Renoir with brushes strapped to his hands, Monet with nearly abstract water lilies, and oh so many who just stopped when they could no longer produce quality work .

But times change. Visual art is less bound to “reality” and any clumsy effort can be advertised as what was planned. I’ve taken a slightly different approach. I am drawing what I see and how I can do, not what anyone else sees and can do . I’m not in competition. My glory is in being unique, including accepting all the limits of being elderly .

Sure, that’s a self-serving rationalization. Pretending to be talented is not the same as being so. But the other thing about being old is that none of that really matters. That is simply a joyous activity filling time with art .

Finding my current limits, and using them as well as possible rather than concealing them or pretending they don’t exist is a kind of fun game. And I happily use it in other areas of life as well

Security

Ask folks what they want, and there are varied standard answers. Fame, fortune, health top the list for most. Friends, family, purpose fit in there somewhere. I suggest the most subconscious thing most of us crave is basic security. We like to know what we know, we hope what worked for us yesterday will still work for us tomorrow .

“Oh that’s silly” you will say. If things are bad we want a change. True, but only a change we can anticipate or accept. We always fear change for the worse. Sometimes we would rather realize a pattern than escape it. As Dylan Thomas wrote “there must, be praised, some certainty, if not of loving well, then not, …”

Gamblers seek excitement, but they not only think they know the odds, but securely believe they can always gamble again. Adventurers plan to return from their expeditions. These are bumps in the general security of their times .

Examine all social systems. The most stable tend to be exactly those where people are secure about what they do. Even if what they do is to start something new and different or to take a risk. Nobody wants to wake up in a jumbled inscrutable environment each day .

To some extent, that seems to be this society which is developing around us. It’s often scary. And no, I do not feel any more secure in simply recognizing that fact .

Micro Placebo

We believe in the massive effects of the tiny. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” One vote can change an election. One dollar off a pound of meat will help our finances. “For want of a nail …” Eating a bit more of this or less of that will make us healthier .

After all, we live in a culture of microtolerance. A random raindrop can destroy a cell phone. A rogue cell can begin a fatal cancer tumor. Split seconds win or lose contests. Every little thing counts .

Perhaps it’s a reaction to our true powerlessness. Rationally, we are well aware that a single vote is symbolic. Most of the time micro-effects are frankly swamped by macro situations. A single step does not mean much on a thousand mile trip. After all, everything we do (except maybe jumping off a building) depends on an ongoing series of decisions .

It’s easy to forget in an era of science that glorifies the small, and in which experiments at the most miniscule level breathlessly report a new discovery or linkage. But most actions taken are placebos. The smaller the initial impulse, the tinier its action on a large scale unless something also (such as our mindset) provides a good result .

Unfortunately, microscience is often wrong in a complex real world which continues to adjust and change itself. An awful lot of recent health results are not repeatable. We ping pong from avoiding eggs to eating many, and piously think we have taken off on a better path.

Overprep

We each have at one time or another encountered the phenomenon known as beginner’s luck. A naive person tries something for the first time and succeeds beyond the dreams of the more experienced. And then, the luck mysteriously goes away .

On the other side of the curve, suave experts can suddenly lose their magic. A baseball pitcher can’t find the strike zone. A musician can’t craft a salable tune. Usually, such events are short-lived, but unnerving .

Ours is a culture of perfectability, where everyone likes to believe that with hard work they can do anything. For that reason overpreparation is almost a disease. If a certain behavior is good, more training should make it better .

Except – often it doesn’t. There is a golden patch for anyone doing anything, beyond which extra exertion yields actively declining results. The mood can quickly turn to frustration and anger (and in these times, blame) .

I’ve often tried to invoke the counter-mantra of “just good enough”. That used to suit American pioneers. Not more and more perfect, but adequate to accomplish the task. Anything beyond, however elegant or pretty, would be superfluous waste of time and energy. It fit nicely with my other belief that “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” .

Nice to call it a philosophy. Honestly, more likely just innate laziness

Joy

In my same moments, I simply rejoice in being conscious and aware. A perfect enchanted unity. I reject the artificial division of body and mind, and the still more degraded notion of defining mind as logic. Down that useless path wanders the progress of AI .

We need not celebrate life itself so much as awareness. True awareness, of course, is built on life. An organism that is aware in any sense possesses consciousness. Without running off to deeper metaphysics, I find my own consciousness the ultimate glory of all I am .

Logic, after all, is a barren brittle construct. The joy in solving a puzzle has nothing inherently logical about it. The joy is an awareness of having achieved a solution .

My heresy is to claim that awareness – enabling that joy – requires life, requires a body. Whatever we’ve constructed without life will lack that. No joy. No awareness. No consciousness. Logic will exist, but never the actual exuberance of being .

I have a short “objective” window of existence as measured in years, although my subjective time feels infinite. During that opportunity, I joyfully seize the world and myself in the universe .

I pity those unaware of their own precious gift.

Science has value, as does logic, but that value is hardly logical. Without resort to dry ancient or futuristic metaphysics, I am free to expand into infinity.

Ostrich

Perhaps there is something useful in the apocryphal legend of the ostrich sticking its head in the sand to avoid seeing trouble. In these expansive times, ignoring obscure and distant threats may be an evolutionary advantage .

After all, in the “big picture” we are all doomed, both personally and in our wider manifestations of society and cosmos. We stand on our tiny patch of desert scrub, and perhaps stay there or run a short distance to somewhere nearby. We ignore our inevitable death, or we would fail to function at all .

So in a time when horizons have become nearly infinite and imaginations run wild, maybe a head underground is not so stupid. We are aware of every sparrow that falls in the world, and we can do little or nothing about it. There is too much awareness, omniscience without omnipotence, and that may poison our souls .

Nobody can withdraw completely. Even that pretend ostrich has to come up for food and water. There is still at least a little truth to “think globally, act locally”. But maybe only a little .

In a hysterical interconnected age, too much awareness might be a very dangerous thing to any single individual. It surely is to my own sanity .

A Little Knowledge

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. You think you are an expert, but you are not. A very easy trap to fall into, since we tend to overestimate ourselves .

Obviously this is hardly a new condition, but it has certainly been more and more aggravated by media and global electronic connections. We are “aware” of an awful lot of stuff. Unfortunately, that awareness is often shallow, scattered, wrong and only leads to worry about things over which we have no influence. And about which we may have entirely inappropriate background information and deep understanding .

At one time, we left most issues to “experts”. They might have been right or wrong, but it took our minds off such things and – since we rarely are directly impacted by distant stuff – did no harm. But now the internet is flooded with “facts”, stories, and anecdotes that falsely claim to deepen our knowledge about anything and make experts irrelevant .

As we believe we know it all, each of our worries becomes somehow more real and our own responsibility. We MUST do something. We must change things. We think we are fully aware.

We are wrong. About most of the vast ineffable universe of things, individuals, and society we each know very little except what we directly encounter and we often misinterpret that. The only

true cure is a bit more humility .

Millions

My dental hygieneist tries to scare me into flossing better by saying “there are MILLIONS” of bacteria on your teeth. I am not impressed. All numbers are relative, and this is a little like exclaiming “that brick is chipped!” when viewing a high brick wall a mile long.

“Millions” of bacteria, after all, are not the same as “millions of harmful bacteria”. And there are just as many or more body cells dealing with them. A minor thing that we have evolved to handle.

And, in context, millions doesn’t mean all that much. After all, I have over 30 TRILLION cells, and an almost equal number of quiet or symbiotic bacteria, not even mentioning viruses. A few on my teeth – relatively well-defended against as part of my outer membrane – hardly much to worry about .

We are an alarmist culture, always looking for “news” which is naturally not “ordinary”. We take for granted how well adapted we are for “normal” life. We worry as soon as some obscure tidbit is brought to our attention. This has become a culture with very little perspective .

I know that things can go wrong. I may get sick. At some point I shall certainly die. But I’ve learned it hardly serves my sanity to be alarmed all the time, often about things of very little immediate consequence .

Like those millions of tiny creatures in my mouth .