Sometimes it seems civilization is always “the best of times, the worst of times.” Good and bad continually compete to define the future. Only rarely is life perfectly balanced or obviously destined to become brighter. And when we think that may be true, it is often just hubris unaware of an unexpected disaster lurking just ahead.

One new issue, among many, is that so many of us are so aware of how fragile things seem to be that we are perpetually worried. Instant updates have made us all cultural hypochondriacs, imagining massive illness with every ache or collapse with every awful news story, however minor in the grand scheme of things. 

My hope is that society can evolve just like an organism. And learn just like a mind. Perhaps at some point a mass of people who count become immunized to social media. Or somehow that deus-ex-machina of AI begins to instantly ground all that is claimed with honest fact. Perhaps civilization can acquire its own electronic immunities.

But nobody knows, and it is a process that seems undirected. Advanced countries have tried to teach science and history, but masses of folks ignore all general education. Authoritarian governments try to decree “truth” but usually end in revolution by those who disagree with the groundwork. Who knows?

Not I. In the meantime, as all this goes on, it sure is entertaining to live in “interesting times.”

“Carpe diem” means “seize the day”, which is sometimes good advice. Do what needs to be done now! Cross that Rubicon! Fix that roof! Go for the gold! Time’s awastin’. 

There are many things which need doing, and they will not do themselves, it is true. But these days a lot of things do not need doing and are simply wants or habits. Time on social media, for example, or following events on video feeds. If those are not seized, no big deal, to you or the universe

I’ve come to use carpe with a different connotation. As I get elderly, every moment is precious, and there is no reason to believe that anything I do will make my future ones brighter. Oh, I can follow common sense, and even occasionally work on that roof, but all in all I really need to appreciate my good fortune in still being alive and relatively aware.

I admit that throughout my life I have done some of the same, probably hurting my earning potential. Dithering on the banks of the Rubicon, enjoying the sparkles and the butterflies. As I look back, no regrets at a life filled with as much contemplation as action.

We are all unique. That seems to have been a good path for me _ at least I can imagine it so _ but that does not mean it would be so for you also. Carpe what you will.

As a person of a certain age and background, I often wax nostalgic in midsummer on the vanished ecological paradise of my boyhood. Birds nested in the yard, there were natural fish in clear streams, box turtles and snakes inhabited the woods. We wandered freely because strict property boundaries were rarely enforced. And there seemed to be many, many fewer people.

Oh, I know a lot of it is illusion. The US had already decimated a lot of its flora and fauna. The rivers were becoming filled with centuries of casually dumped pollution. The air was smoggy. More land was being developed on a large scale day by day. Already, Thoreau would not have recognized our haunts or, if he had, he would certainly have wept.

And yet. Even looking with clearer eyes, there were good points. Lots of land remained quiescent, not required for our multi-fold increase in population. Large stretches of the world remained nearly virgin wilderness. Few species had actually become extinct. Even fought-over Europe, blasted for hundreds of years, remained full of birds, insects, forests.

Alas, much gone now. The real worry has become less “worry” and more “preservation.” No matter where one goes there are lines, fences, rules, and _ often  _ crowds. So even though my golden nostalgia is mistaken in a lot of ways, it is not in many others.

Well as we say “it is as it is.” I can only hope sanity prevails at some point, but all that is well beyond my influence and control. 

Making a list is by definition exclusionary. There are things which are “in,” and all the rest is “out.” That is why the current fanatic devotion of “constitutionalists” who focus on the “founders’” original thoughts of “enumerated rights” is so corrosive to our society.

Those who actually study history know that the real founders did not want to include the first ten amendments _ The Bill of Rights. They actually claimed that by proclaiming some rights, they were trivializing others just as important. In the end, they went along but more in the line of “for example”, then “this one only.”

They were wise enough to understand time changes things, and they were masters of balancing dynamics. How could they possibly know what society would consider necessary in the future? They were humble enough to think that their careful system of checks and balances would work it out. Flawed perhaps, but possible.

I think they would be aghast that pseudoscientific lawyers have been trying to make each of their decisions a kind of holy writ. Instead of rights, we have commandments. And if we have need for new ones _  too bad. Whatever they did not think of “need not be considered.”

I hate it when very intelligent people get swept into a fanatic mania. It all has happened before, and is often a precursor to inquisition and enforced dogma. 

In this age of gentle euphemisms and “snowflakes” it is no doubt horrifying to label those over 80 as “crones.” I take the liberty since I approach that threshold myself and know many people beyond it. That has required a personal survey of the future, filled with visions of self-decline, home care, senior centers, nursing homes, hospice, and so on.

The most striking thing about the whole slide of age is the common agreement of a decline to “second childhood.” With good intentions, the elderly are fed, cheered up, kept active, pushed to stay curious and socially engaged. Treated, in fact, as if they were elementary school students gradually regressing through kindergarten and preschool. Even using some of the same tools (arts and crafts) and techniques (group singing.)

That is wrong.

Children are being socialized, taught how to survive in their culture, with expanding horizons of mind and body. A child sitting alone in a corner is a problem to be dealt with. An old person in the same situation may be quite content.

Crones have a lot to remember. They enjoy the luxury of being still and relaxed within tiring bodies. They have slow and gentle needs, when modern medicine does not intrude. They have already gone through civilized culture and are mostly happy to just watch it from now on. People in a different stage of life.

Not children. Not to be treated as such. 

The Wall Street Journal has two types of columnists. One set is crusty, old, and angry that the world has changed not at all to their liking. The other is fresh young whippersnappers sure that they have figured everything out.

One of the latter recently declaimed that what we should all do to live better lives is to consider our “future self.” Hardly new. “Don’t drink to excess, think how you will feel tomorrow.” But since at least the invention of movable type, future self has gotten out of control. Or maybe it goes even further back, to ancient Kings and warriors wanting to be immortal, remembered forever.

But the idea has limits, largely based on time scale. The nearby makes lots of sense as in the example of wine. But the further we move away, the more irrelevant and even counterproductive “future self” becomes. 

A literally fatal flaw is that there may be no future self. And any elder will usually admit that life never turned out as planned. Furthermore, very remote (and fully imaginary) future selves tend to lead to a lot of immediate local damage, in religions and social movements. Wars are fought, people are killed, and in real life looking back much of it seems rather silly and trivial. Mostly driven by thinking of “future self.”

Our effect on our future should be kept in a sane range. Yes, I can surely affect my future self tomorrow, next week, maybe even a month from now. After that, it’s a crapshoot run by fate. Anyone saying different is probably trying to sell you something.

And, of course, the very concept of who and what our future may or should be morphs as we age. A guideline, all in all of limited value beyond common sense.

I spent some years in the early 70’s in Berkeley, associated with a commune. It was not exactly a crazy cult, but it had peripheral contact with some of the more fanatic tribes of “the movement.” I was more amused than intrigued.

But I did understand how anyone can start with a logical (although usually false or warped) perspective and then use anything that happens as support. And automatically dismiss or hate anyone who interprets or evaluates things differently.

Off the deep end, this leads to Manson or Hitler. Avoiding that is the best case for promotion of free speech, in the fond hope that two extremes can somehow synthesize in the middle, even though that rarely happens.

Such Artificial Ignorance _ using “facts” to support a previously determined outlook is what we should most fear from AI. Humans, after all, are complex and can often change their minds. Machines, not so much.

But the more current danger is the artificial ignorance of the various tribes formed by background, media, and social computerization. Good examples are cable news, newspaper editorial pages, and all the various organizations on one mission or another. They hear what they want, and make anything fit their preconceived notions.

The saving grace has been that fanatic obsessions are often (not always) taken over by exploiting cynics _ another human trait missing in silicon circuits. 

One of the nice things about being old and retired is that one can remember deeply without guilt. The young worry about what they should be doing next _ or instead of _ what they are actually doing. They try to control the future. Those of us with reduced futures can enjoy looking back.

Memory is a kind of “have your cake and eat it too” situation. I can experience adventure with all the thrills and spills without going anywhere. I can taste fabulous feasts and “bad” desserts without putting on weight. I can travel and work and, well, do anything at all, and still be right here.

When my conscious memory fails, there are always dreams which more and more involve people I had known or situations I had been in. It is interesting when I awake to match them up to what I think really happened. That memory, of course, is quite fallible. And malleable. What I sharply remember happening might not have happened that way at all, as I am often reminded by my wife, who experiences and remembers in her own unique way.

It’s a fabulous gift, this memory. I try to cultivate it as much as I can. it is usually a lot more fun and rewarding than scanning social media. Again, a happy function of becoming elderly.

So I remember the golden olden days, and if my conversation grows tiresome just ignore me.

Kozinski the Unabomber died this week. The WSJ had a strange piece nearly praising his manifesto as mostly correct in its complaints about the world. Almost admitting that the only way he could get those views widely noticed was to become a terrorist.

Cassandra is always with us, of course, because there are always things going wrong in the world. The peculiar fallacy of all these prophets is the belief that if people just recognize the problems, things can be fixed.

It’s a common binary thinking fantasy, that simply doing something different will make things right. If there is one underlying strength to wisdom it is that the world and its ills are all extremely complicated, contradictory, and entangled. Like an ecology, not a math problem. Change one thing and all kinds of unpredictable results will occur. 

Manifestos are also a way of becoming crazy in another way. That is to believe that there is some single fulcrum of power that will change things. Magical “if only” daydreams. In practical terms, it almost always evolves into a belief that one person or group controls society, and that simply converting or killing that conspiracy will fix everything. 

All that is pretty obvious to students of history, or for that matter to anyone with a fair amount of life experience. It’s the young who are easily seduced by apparent simplicity.

But a respected publication should really know better. Alas.

Panic, like orgasm, is hard to maintain over time. Eventually it subsides into various other states. 

The world seems to have lived in panic for quite a while now. Existential threats like climate change, social instability, nationalistic wars, plagues, and technology seem to rise like hydra heads each day. It is so easy to panic and react with consuming _ what?  Anger, indifference, hostility, withdrawal? But after waves following waves of doomsday scenarios, and no relief in getting the “good old days” to return, there is an inevitable slump in our reactions.

I also suspect we are getting immunized to the assault of media. The internet and popular entertainment are all hostility and revenge, or supernatural resistance, or horrible prediction. And, after a while _ we still need dinner

People have always been susceptible to waves of fanaticism. Religion, patriotism, economics have all led to extreme intolerance and violence at one time or another. What’s hard now is that there are so many extreme positions and projections arriving almost daily, overlapping, conflicting, impossible to sort out or even to prioritize.

The sanity, as always, is to get out of our minds and into our senses. Right now there is too much emphasis on intellect and sensory deprivation such as computer games.

Spring and summer may bring relief. At least a lot of folks are traveling. Exposure of senses may hopefully lead to sense.