Almost Right

People like to seize on the clearest and simplest explanations of phenomena. Things fall to earth because they “want to be nearer to it”. The Earth is flat. Those explanations are, actually, almost right. They are good enough for everyday life. They only fail if one is trying to predict something or control it. Malaria was associated, rightly, with bad air and swamps. Which just happened to also be filled with disease carrying mosquitoes. Avoiding the bad air in season almost worked very well. But it was useless for an eventual solution which required either draining or spraying the swamps.

I’m reminded of this with the MAHA fanatics, who once again want clean, simple explanations to complex problems. They point out that “science was wrong” in believing that COVID 19 was spread by infected air particles (largely able to be stopped by masks) when it was actually conveyed by tiny free floating viruses (against which most masks were useless). MAHA doesn’t believe science should ever be wrong _ if science gives incorrect advice it’s because scientists have nasty secret agendas .

Probably science has become much too complicated for most of us to understand. And it is still notably wrong or incoherent or provisional in many matters of health. So if flat earth and bad air were good enough for our grandparents, folks are sure they should be good enough for us .

Father William

“You are old, Father William…” (look up the Lewis Carroll poem if you don’t know it.) It pretty well captures my outlook and that of many of my more sane friends .

Young people think a variety of things about their elders. It’s natural, we did the same thing years ago. In some ways they revere what we have done, they think we have accumulated wisdom and gained perspective. In other ways they know we are irrelevant, stubborn, and often irritating, not to mention completely out of touch. All true .

But the key – as in the poem – is silliness. Elders can hardly take the future seriously (those of us who do so are the worst enemies of civilization.) Old people should be irrelevant to everyone but their immediate family. Our knowledge is vast and hard won, but hardly applicable to various modern crises. We enjoy our personal shell and bubble, but are well aware of how fragile it is. It won’t last very long …

So Father William jokes a lot and seems out of touch and a little sly. And yet – my days are joyful and my worries more immediate than they used to be. I think that attitude is appropriate for my age. But, of course, I would think so.

Fear

Fear or its equivalent is instinctually hardwired into most animals. A deer may not experience “fear” as we know it, but certain perceptions of sight, sound, or smell will provoke a flight response. Humans seem to inherit the whole range of abilities to be afraid of various things and provide actions to avoid or deal with issues .

A problem is that our overactive brains can invent many things to fear. Some are real – will that approaching car hit us? Some are imaginary – does that creaking tree contain a malignant ghost? It is useless to talk about rationality, because all fear is only probability, and my mind can manipulate anything to appear rational (at least to me) .

“Paralyzed by fear” is a real thing, often transmuted to “enervated by fear”. Today there are such fears everywhere, focused by attention-grabbing media or sales provocateurs. If we listened to them all, we’d never leave the house. We’d be deeply worried all the time anyway .

I think the greater danger is that all the minor trivial fears desensitize us to real problems. We have to learn to ignore so much that we cannot recognize something we really should do something about .

Like that deer caught in the headlights, we never react to the sound of the rifle being cocked. Our entire civilization is now paralyzed by the onslaught of the internet .

Face Value

Someone who accepts anything at “face value” is considered naive and shallow. We have been taught from the cradle that everything is complex, nothing is exactly as it appears, and if you trust your first impressions you will be in trouble .

A certain amount of cynicism is probably healthy. “Face value” is often only one aspect of anything. But – and this is the most important fact – it is usually the most important and obvious facet of anything. In many cases face value is all we need to judge things. A healthy looking apple is probably a fruit that is good for you. Something that quacks and looks like a duck is probably a duck .

One reason that everyone is so worried and nervous could be that they cannot take anything for granted. Maybe that apple is poisoned, or is overpriced, or represents terrible labor practices or elimination of nature or … Maybe that duck is really a clever robotic bomb. There is no end to the fractal, increasingly minor and implausible qualifications and contradictions .

And yet – we mostly exist at the level of “face value”. Sometimes it is a good idea to simply accept things as they appear to be, to not dissect them too deeply. Life and consciousness after all, are limited. Pursuing below face value may cost us much of our precious time, our happiness, and our sanity.

Like Sleeping Beauty, I’ll probably take a big bite of that delicious looking apple while the duck looks on and the hell with it …

High T

Ponce de Leon is alive and well! The fountain of youth (for men) has finally been discovered! More testosterone will make them young, vigorous, sculpted, sexy and – of course – much happier than they are .

It’s natural! (So is arsenic.) Pay no attention to those doctors behind the screen muttering about side effects. It’s your life! Make it better !

This culture lives on advertising. Usually I enjoy the commercials and realize that most people have been immunized enough by constant exposure to retain a degree of skepticism. Even when I grew up long ago, comic books had full page ads on how Charles Atlas could help you fight off bullies kicking sand in your face .

Ah, but bodybuilding requires work. Curing “low t” is just a matter of taking a pill or enduring injection. Just like drinking from the fountain of youth. Hey, this smiling face promises, and he looks pretty honest .

We have become a culture looking for easy solutions, maybe because we have little time or energy for complex ones. Slogans to fix social problems. Pills for physical issues .

Hope, if not exactly a fountain, springs eternal.

Infanticide!

There, that got your attention! And such is the real purpose of shock words these days – to condense a slur, rally a slogan, and sometimes promote a hidden message. I remember when students would shout “hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today .”

Some issues are tangled, mysterious, insoluble. Abortion and women’s rights _ or potentially crippled-child rights _ is one of the toughest. Definitions are almost impossible. The world refuses to be solved .

For the record, I am in favor of all children, everywhere, being born normal, healthy, and into circumstances where they are well cared for until their late teens. For the record, in our real world, even if babies are born normal and healthy, society often lets them die or suffer from neglect, starvation, war, disease, or other violence. And genetic luck guarantees that many embryos do not produce normally healthy babies. It used to be far worse – nature was never kind .

But “baby killer” is an effective slur. Nobody wants to be so labeled. The problem is that those who use it are – like those anti-war demonstrators – really pursuing a deeper agenda One in which it is the duty of women to produce and raise children and leave the rest of the stuff to men.

I dislike such people and their agenda. Perhaps one day I too will have to find something simplistic to shout back. Isn’t that really the true problem with our civilization? Not stupidity, not evil, just fatigue at complex, seemingly insoluble, issues .

The Good Life

A list of what constitutes a “good life” is almost infinite. Security, health, purpose, achievement and all kinds of immediate desires driven by situation and often stoked by envy. Constructing a comprehensive list would be impossible .

Nor does it help that our mercurial consciousness juggles the proportions all the time. If we are very secure, we may desire adventure. If we have all we could possibly want all the time we may be bored. As we age, the possibilities and strength of desires mutate deeply .

Often in younger days there are immediate massive problems that overwhelm all others. Some are illusions, but they seem real at the time. At times the jumble is so chaotic that our wishes become simple, like just getting a decent meal or a good night’s sleep .

So for an elder to outline “a good life” to anyone else – especially someone less old – is malicious. One thing I think becomes clear wisdom is that conditions vary, and the past is rarely a reliable guide in matters of the soul. Anyway, there are enough puffed up guides out there to satisfy anyone’s curiosity. I wouldn’t trust them -, but then, I’m not you .

I adjust and remember and immerse myself in my own “good life” and wish you luck with yours .

Live Long or Live Well

In our competitive society, there once existed a group of people who firmly believed “he who dies with the most toys wins.” Now that everyone has too many toys, that has mutated into “he who lives longest wins.”

Even in the dim and ancient past, aristocrats and rulers frantically tried to live “forever”. They would eat gold, jade, mercury. Perform rigorous and/or disgusting rites. Indulge in the latest fad – oxygen, radioactivity, fasting, exercise. They wanted to extend their pleasant lives indefinitely, regardless of how that quest might degrade their immediate happiness .

As fairy tales frequently point out, the fly in the ointment was exactly what such an extension would involve. Does anyone really want an eternity as a typical 110-year-old crone, crippled in body, deprived of senses, in constant pain, or barely aware of being human ?

The whole point of having consciousness is to react well in the moment. Perhaps to simply enjoy, perhaps to try for a better future. To fully engage where you exist is itself a kind of eternity _ the only true “reality” we ever experience between memories of the past and visions of the future .

Reasonable attempts to extend living well are commendable. Obsessive focus on distant future possible life extension probably destroys appreciation of actual existence and replaces it with the hollow vision of dreams.

Face Blind

In an era of mass production and conformity, it may be easy to forget how different people actually are – both physically and mentally. And how that shapes their outlook on the world. Individuals are treated very much as if they are the proverbial “bricks in the wall,” identical in possibility and hope .

Of course when we think about it that is not true. Short people simply will not be basketball stars. And so on. Talents and handicaps vary. Much depends on the time and situation into which one is born. That is all common sense, easily agreed on. What it means and how much it is actually important is a whole other matter.

As a trivial example I am face blind – I cannot recognize people from their visage. Not really much of a problem, but it tended to limit me to being comfortable only in small groups and otherwise treating everyone as anonymous strangers. Today, with virtual AI eyeglasses doing facial recognition, it would even be correctable, like lenses for 20/20 vision. But in my times, I realize it truly shaped my response to life .

I worry, then, that the iron homogenization of computerized capitalistic rule is ignoring such basic human facts. A society composed of people finds ways to deal with such diversity. Rigid “scientific” silicon-based laws may not .

Sanity

Most people feel it is good to be sane most of the time, although a bit of madness now and then may be useful. But to which sanity do we refer ?

Sanity could be defined as how well we integrate with reality. But realities differ. Our internal reality (based on our perceptions) may not be that of others around us. A paranoid, for example, believes he is sane. But no doubt the first test of sanity is if we ourselves believe we are acting appropriately for our environment .

That gets tricky as social environment varies. What I think is sanity may not match at all what others are doing. Fortunately humans adjust well, and can usually adapt to the general cultural perspective, no matter how weird it may seem at first.

But sometimes other people do seem crazy. Proverbially your mother would ask “if your friends all jump off of a cliff would you have to?” There is a logical internal sanity based on “higher values” – God, science, logic, experience – whatever .

All these (and probably more) get thrown into the mix, possibly consciously, possibly not. And then – how do we judge if we are sane or not? Survival? Happiness? Success? Smugness? And what degree, what color or odor the eventual resolution ?

Such a simple thought. Except that all of us are very complicated indeed .