Impenetrable

There are many things I do not know nor understand. Some are too complex for my humble brain. Some simply do not interest me. Many I am too lazy to waste time on. But a few have become truly impenetrable .

To me, impenetrable carries a different connotation than “unknowable” _ an article of faith. I accept many things as unknowable – the meaning of life, the purpose of the universe – and most of the grand religious philosophic questions like free will and the true nature of time. Impenetrable rather means that something may have reasons, but they cannot be discovered by me. The best example is other people’s hidden motivations.

The boundaries between impenetrable and unknowable are tenuous and shifty. Which gets to my main focus of this essay: the future. I always accepted its details as unknowable, but I thought I understood the basic outline.

Nope. Now everything is both unknowable and impenetrable. Next year seems a gray goo, with no connection to the present. I can project no trends .

That annoys me because as an avid SF reader from childhood and student of history still, I unaccountably convinced myself I had some idea of what was happening and where the world might be going .

No more .

Shrinking

Roman and Greek morality looked back at an imagined golden age in the past and sought to emulate its heroes. A massive outlook change in Western culture (maybe science, industrialization, Christianity, or phase of the moon) had us looking at imagined futures instead.

There is now little respect for those who do not plan future growth. Yet I’ve been shrinking physically for some time now, shorter by at least an inch. My mental agility is declining. As I passed through my ’70s energy waned, senses were less sharp, memories became more important. I accepted that as natural, but society does not .

Young “whippersnappers” tell elders how active they should be, how they must engage in hobbies, how they must struggle to be better. Apocryphal tales speak of “old” people suddenly starting companies and becoming wealthy (although the definition of old seems to be creeping downward into the ’40s …)

In my newly engaged art pastime., I’ve decided to do away with future marvels. I simply want to use my reduced situation – senses and skills – as valid restrictions to construct unique artifacts. If my sight is blurred, let my drawings also be so. If my hand shakes, utilize that in my lines .

Not to get better in the future. Just to enjoy being a shrinking being as much as I possibly can .

Paradigm Shifts

A paradigm shift occurs when former ways of thinking and living no longer work. In personal terms it means our common sense and traditional values no longer apply, and new ones must be created .

Joseph Campbell in his books on mythology made the interesting point that such historic cultural breaks often occurred rapidly (in about a hundred years) then settled in for a long time (thousands of years). A good example is ancient Egypt .

We seem to be in the midst of the whirlwind. Our thinking is forced into new patterns every year or so, sometimes even more often. And unfortunately, it is impossible to tell what will emerge or whether we will like it at all .

My point is that our times may be very unusual. After the dust settles – for better or worse – whatever system of thought survives may last for a very long time indeed .

Okay, a comforting long-term thought. But it doesn’t help each of us now as the storm rages and high waves rock the boat. All we can do is deal with changes as they wash over us one after another .

The curse of “interesting times”. At least we still have the option of imagining various happy outcomes .

Mythology

As a modern scientific civilization, we used to think that we had put mythology behind us. Myths were simply fictional morality tales, a “primitive” form of literature. We did not depend on gods and demons, but on facts and logic. Not for us the strange and inexplicable rites of lesser cultures..

Of course, we found we were wrong. An open mind in an open society merely lets us pick and choose among the many mythologies available. In other cultures, you often do not get to choose. But we all live by mythology just the same .

It has been painful to watch the erosion of “fact and logic” over the last decades. People now believe “influencers” as they used to believe astrologers or witch doctors. They attend cable news as they used to go to religious service. Belief is founded on just-so stories and wishes and selected fragments of reality. In this environment, the masses seem to be as easily led as peasants in medieval Europe .

Human nature. Not easily tamed. We must believe in something. And if the reasons for belief in anything are questioned, all bets are off .

So this civilization is not the civilization I thought it was. The current mythologies are darker and more blood drenched. An open mind in an open society has gone with the wind .

Smash and Dream.

Or maybe dream and smash? Angry people often believe that every problem is somebody else’s fault. If they can’t find an avatar scapegoat, they blame immigrants, government, society, or vague cabals. Somebody is obviously making them victims, because they’re not doing as well as mommy and daddy told them they would .

So they dream of a better world, like most of us. But they are certain that vague and evil powers will stop their desires. So first they must smash and destroy everything and rebuild in the rubble for a glorious future .

Oh, sure, lots of people will be hurt and die. Maybe even they will die. But they will be happy martyrs, welcomed into their vision of eternal heaven, admired down the future ages. Happy imaginations .

Usually, they expect that right will prevail. A little because it must be true and right. A lot because its purity will make it a strong survivor. To be honest, most of the greatest smashers also believe they will remain since they are the strongest .

Finally successful. Mommy and daddy must be proud .

And now – all settles down to sweetness and light .

Finally, the right people in charge .

The more things change …

Fantastic Tales

I enjoyed Bible stories as a youth. Then those of the “golden age” of science fiction. Even now some space opera and fantasy. All had little twists and turns, many preached a certain view of society. Fortunately, I never confused them with science or history. Sociology – well that hung out somewhere in the middle .

I know the attraction of all those (mostly) male superheroes or charmed individuals who thrive against all odds. But, again, I rarely confused their exploits with what happened in my real life .

What bothers me now is that many people are overwhelmed with a glut of knowledge that still seems unable to predict their individual future usefully. So they cling to militaristic utopias like Heinlein’s StarshipTroopers. Or unfettered economic systems _ some controlled, some free. Or libertarian or dystopian or … And worse, these become not merely touchstones for their own consciousness, which may be a genuinely useful function, but also a blueprint for how society should really be, or actually is, or how they should act .

Ayn Rand is my personal hate. But any fiction is – really – fiction. Each person is more complex than described in a novel. Each society more chaotically unpredictable. Each solution encrusted with its own problems . And each individual life unique.

But not in these tales. “If only” has replaced “once upon a time” in our current fairy tales .

Lost Words

Young people tend to have nightmares or fantasies about old people (to be fair, old people reciprocate.) It is usually annoying to read “youngsters” giving us irrelevant advice, writing ridiculous entertainment scripts about elders, or solemnly discussing our plight.

It is true we have slowed down and become more careful. (But hardly so slow as the memory medicine ads would proclaim.) It is usually true that we gradually lose our taste for grand adventures – adventures occur all around us all the time, sometimes as simple as going to the store. We remain fully human, but (in spite of protestation) not as we were at 30 .

I feel a gradual degradation, which I accept (as I must, since – in spite of those ads for expensive medication – it is inevitable). Perhaps the most annoying are the constant little gaps in mind and memory. Particularly nasty are the constant stream of “lost words.” I know exactly what I want to say, know there is a word for it, know I know there is a word for it – but nothing but blank .

That clues me into other patterns I may not be quite aware of. Reflexes, adjustment to light changes, peripheral vision, and on and on .

In fact, what most amazes me in the whole process is how much I used to have, how much I can lose, and how I nevertheless remain me.

“Life is short, art is long”

“Life is short, but art is long” is one of those old Roman sayings that seem to make sense until we think about it. Up to a few hundred years ago, people conceived of time much differently than we do. Aboriginal tribes existed in a perpetual present, surrounded by “dreamtime” past and future. Civilized folks considered the past as a few hundred or thousand years – back to the Egyptians or some mythical beginning. Deep philosophers assumed the world to always have been as it is, possibly cycling through various stages .

More than that – in direct opposition to current ideas of progress – that past was always better, golden, inhabited by gods or semi-gods. Ancient art was always to be copied or imitated since the degenerate present could not compete. Thus “art is long”.

Now we laugh at a few thousand years. We know the world goes back a few billion, amazing creatures hundreds of millions, people like us over 100,000. And the world keeps changing. And “new improved” is demonstrably better than the old junk .

As for art … well it’s really as “short” as life. Useful for a generation or so at most. Like any legacy, soon gone with the wind, without even the solace of a grave marker .

As for other ” wise”, “golden”, sayings, ideas, and ideals of classic ancient cultures – don’t get me started .

Latin and Calculus

Striving suburban schools in the early ’60s would push Latin and calculus on “college track” students. The idea was – as it had been for centuries – that at least it would develop logic skills, language flexibility, and help us think more clearly .

Nowadays these courses are rarely taught in public schools. For one thing there is less overt “tracking” of students supposedly brighter than others. But mostly, Latin and calculus are seen as pretty useless compared to all the things kids “really need to know“.

I admit I’ve rarely used Latin and never touched calculus in almost 70 years. In that sense, I suppose it was wasted time. And yet …

It is good to get a firm logical base. Video games, wrapped in sensory candy, do not have quite the same applicability. The dry, hard exercises of calculus forced one to confront bare bones rules. Latin required a completely new and foreign manner of thinking and writing .

I have over my lifetime frequently felt the effects of that intellectual workout during my adolescence. Clear logic and formal observation of patterns have stayed with me and enriched my consciousness .

I know it’s not for everyone, possibly gone for anyone, but perhaps another meaningful cultural loss in our downward spiral .

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 .