“Idle hands are the devil’s playground” has long been a mantra in this country. Republican conservatives truly believe that it is better to make everyone dig holes and fill them up again than to “do nothing”. Otherwise those folks will just lounge around watching TV, making love, and drinking beer. Perhaps our fundamental religious elements should be reminded that such was presumably exactly the case in the garden of Eden before the “Fall.”

Work can be defined in two ways. One is as anything that a person does not want to do. The other is anything for which someone is paid. Often, but not always, those are congruent. The happiest people are those who find _ like me (and coding) or many sports stars – that they truly enjoy what they make money at. Even the wealthy professionals who brag about their long toil spend hours playing golf, eating lavish meals, or sailing yachts as they conduct “useful” business .

The biggest problems are in working out what is truly socially useful and how to pay for it, and what to do for sporadic or short-term or long ago labor. An influencer who may have had six months popularity, – rideshare driver or – again – aging athletes. And is an “influencer” popularizing multi-thousand dollar handbags really doing more productive socially useful work than a daycare worker? 

In other words there are a lot of gaps in what seems to be an obvious and simple truth. In our extremely complex world, slogans of any type tend to obscure more than they instruct .

It is fashionable to hate government at all levels. I may be one of the last overt fans of the “deep state” so detested by just about everyone. These latter-day Marxists and Rousseauians are sure that if the state would just go away, the natural goodness (or Darwinian selection) of humanity would prevail to set up a far more perfect world. Where men are men and nobody tells anybody else what to do. And notably, where the speaker (whoever or whatever he or she may be) is on top .

Petty regulations are very annoying. But one person’s “petty regulation” – like no playing loud music in the backyard at 3:00 a.m._ is another person’s “necessary civil common sense.” Typically the real problem is when rules useful in a crowded urban setting are applied to open rural areas .

There are also many kinds of overlords. With no consensual government, monopolistic corporations like 1890 steel mills and coal mines dictate life in company towns and company stores. The biggest organization is always the de facto government. Mobs led by demagogues take over social mediation – often based on revealed (to the demagogue) religion. And so on – to true dystopia .

Me – I like a rule-based stable bureaucracy. It provides employment for the less aggressively greedy and for all its minor irritations smooths most life for everyone. I don’t want it filled with acolytes of the last party to win elections. I myself have strong doubts about Rousseau or Marx.

But I guess it’s a clever meme phrase, in an age that grasps clever memes as if they represented wisdom .

Even prisoners in a cell have cockroaches, rats and an occasional literary canary as local wildlife. Even city dwellers are familiar, in addition, with pigeons, raccoons, and the occasional falcon or fox or coyote. Here in the suburbs we even have larger fauna such as deer. But my favorite lately has been our little population of chipmunks .

In general they are cute, timid, do little harm, and should they accidentally get into a house only try to get out again as quickly as possible. They dash from place to place avoiding predators and pop into almost invisible holes in the lawn. They eat with paws carefully, like good children or – yes – proverbial monks .

There is currently a bad vibe that they may be one of the vectors for the ticks that cause Lyme disease. But never directly. They seem to cause no real damage. Unlike, for example, mice, their populations do not explode. Did I mention they are cute? It’s hard not to smile when you see them. Finally, it’s nice to believe they remain truly wild .

Of course there is lots of other stuff even now in this land of parking lots, pavement, pools, and sterilized lawns. Many animals and birds, some thriving, some barely hanging on. All of it interesting .

But a chipmunk can be a circus in itself .

Herbert Hoover was a fine and daring engineer. He turned his organizational skills to effective relief efforts after World War I. He was a smart, organized, compassionate man. He is remembered with disdain bordering on revulsion .

Most economic historians remain uncertain about the exact reasons for the market crash of 1929 and the great worldwide depression that followed. Most political historians still argue about what would have been the most effective political response .

No matter. Blame President Hoover, after all it occurred on his watch. 

I fear that whoever the next president may be, he or she will face much the same circumstance. Shortly – possibly already – “climate change” will grow into “climate crisis” and shortly afterward “climate catastrophe”. Food supplies and economic networks will be lost or severely affected. Social systems and international relations will become bitterly chaotic. Planning may turn into a hopeless nightmare .

I doubt if it is existential to the human race, although mass depopulation seems likely, unless the crumbling leads to full nuclear war. I do believe it is existential to “civilization as we know it.” Right now will be nostalgically remembered as the “roaring twenties” once were .

And no matter the party or avowed policies, or heroic attempts to overcome the tragedies, it will all be labeled as a fault of President Whoever. 

From a quantum physics standpoint everything we sense does not exist. A leaf on a tree is not “really” green, or shiny, or soft with rough edges. Songs from birds or the rush of wind are sensations manufactured for us by an imaginative brain using very partial evidence. So it is no surprise that quantum now demonstrates time does not exist .

The only relevant thing about that – like similar arguments about an omniscient omnipotent God – is that you and I have no free will. Everything we will do is exactly like our past, already cast in stone. Unfortunately, since we do make choices all the time – or die – this is a pretty corrosive attitude .

The plain fact is that our consciousness inhabits only a tiny fraction of whatever “everything” may be. Much of what we know is “true” – like the manifestation of a leaf to our senses – is in “higher reality” not there – just an odd assemblage of molecules and wavicles that themselves are not what they seem .

However, and in “truly real” contradiction, I can choose to eat this green leaf of lettuce. Once I have done so, that choice is frozen. Until then -well so what ?

Mathematics is just as much – or more _ of an imaginary illusion as the leaf. Those who seek to find the “true meaning” of it all are doomed to failure. We are, in fact, “all that we can be,” free will included, and no more than that .

No matter how troubled the world, there are still infinite treasures available to me. Most are concerned with my immediate physical being. The taste of a strawberry. A good night’s sleep. Birdsong in the morning .

Each day, first thing, being an old-fashioned type of guy, I go down the driveway to get the daily paper. No matter what hour, there are some bird noises. Early enough, it is more a beautiful symphony. The various notes and calls assure me that all is well .

Oh, I am quite aware that it may not be so. Birds, like everything else (except maybe bacteria and viruses) are in some danger of extinction in the near future. My printed news may stop at any time. My own brief stay in this universe is coming to an end .

But … today can still be glorious! The world remains vast. Many birds still serenade at breakfast, even as the mix of species varies with climate change. All may not be well, but I can at least pretend it may be so, or will be so, or could be so .

Ignoring the very news I gather off the concrete, I return inside, briefly cheered by wild nature. I suspect life has often been so for almost everyone through all the ages. 

Archimedes famously stated that with a fixed fulcrum and a lever long enough he could move the world. That’s a brilliant illustration of a true mechanical principle. Unfortunately, like other fine abstract truths, it can be misused when extended beyond its meaning. 

For example some people try to see an immovable fulcrum as their “centering” or core purpose. They think of their actions as the lever. And the really fuzzy part is the “world” which becomes not so much an object to be moved as a system to be changed

Obviously it seems useful to have a “center.” Of course, some centers are wrong or evil. And far from being immovable, they can vanish in an instant or mutate into something else entirely different. Religious meditation, a Pandora’s box of ways to find and solidify a “true” center, are available. They all usually fail. None are necessarily “correct” .

Action as a lever is just as helpless. It is no longer just pushing down on some defined goal. You can act sideways, smoothly, with a jerk, or even stop and have unpredictable effects. The illusion of the metaphor no longer holds .

And as for the world – how does one change a complex system? Even a single consciousness – our own – is infinitely and ineffably vast. What could a lever do anyway, except maybe break it ?

This essay is a simple diversion, but I mean it to cast suspicion on any similar tropes which try to extend the artificial universes of math and mechanics into our messy and chaotic human existence .

“What is a man?” asked Shakespeare. “What good is a newborn baby?” asked Churchill. Both a man and a baby have become difficult to define. The religious fanatics who increasingly pack courts and state legislators have a clear answer .

They claim, effectively, that a baby is any bit of human tissue with the potential to become a person. Technology, unfortunately, keeps redefining the boundaries. Once it was all any baby viable out of the womb. Then premature babies could live. Once it meant healthy babies. But technology saves many that were formerly miscarried or dead after a few days. Now the definition has been pushed back to favor for cell embryos, or eggs and sperm, or – soon – any cell that can be cloned .

“God’s gifts” they clamor. But all these god’s gifts eventually die, and have always died, sooner or later. Hard to believe that the exact moment matters all that much to any universal consciousness. 

The sad fact is that humans tend to treat other humans badly, especially if they are not in “our” tribe. What constitutes a person? We don’t even have to look back to the horrid customs of Carthaginians, Romans, Aztecs, or Nazis. Simply look at our own prisons, wars, politicians and… 

I think the current religious fervor in the USA is less about God and more about culture. The “right” kinds of persons are having too few children, the “wrong” too many. A “problem” since at least the time of Augustus .

We should definitely respect “persons.” But it’s hard when we are not sure what “persons” are  and anyway a lot of them are awful .

Most of us know Emerson’s quote “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It sounds profound. The key word, however, is not “consistency” but “foolish.” You can replace consistency with almost any other noun – even “inconsistency” – and the quote sounds pretty much the same .

My question would be is “consistency” ever not foolish? Consistency is usually only valid for a given time and given conditions. As an example one can go out in New York City on any clear warm summer afternoon without coat or umbrella. Doing so in a blizzard would indeed be foolish Those who try to root their inconsistency in religious certitude – hardcore morality or “age-old values” for example – are the most foolish among us. For all the evils of being too “relativistically” oriented it is in fact our adaptability that has made us masters of the planet .

In a less grandiose vein, it is those who adapt well as conditions change _ presenting new problems and opportunities – who are most successful in life. Consistency is a highly overrated virtue .

Americans’ national foolishness is to overly admire consistency in the views of politicians. Anyone who cannot react well to changed circumstance is hardly qualified to be a leader. Yet we think being so rigid as to be almost insane is a fine qualification. Foolish anything is a hobgoblin of minds little and big as well .