There are many ways to judge a work of art. I think the most important, but nearly independent, scales are: concept, impact, and execution. A true connoisseur focuses almost exclusively on execution, particularly the artisanship involved.

For a casual audience, it is impact that counts. And this is exactly similar to the effects of nature _ a sunset or a stormy ocean. For intellectuals, the concept overrides almost everything. But the connoisseur recognizes difficulty and workmanship and compares those to other known masterpieces.

For those not know, swooning over tiny and usually unnoticed or even irrelevant details is quite tiresome. They often see those who do so as bores at best, snobs at worst.

However, I believe that being a connoisseur is a way to become close to an artist, particularly a great artist. The work’s concept is certainly important, its impact depends on circumstance. But understanding how well something is accomplished, how hard a thing is to do, how much actual handicraft is involved, is very similar to actually doing that something oneself. 

Today, in art as in all activities, much can be conceived with little effort, given impact with instant fads. A connoisseur feels a deeper satisfaction in what can be truly appreciated for how well it has been done. 

I am constantly amazed at the inconsistency of political theory. For example, those who most strongly deny that social issues in the past have any influence on the present are often those who glorify the role of parents in their own past.

None of us choose when and how we are born. No humans would be here if an asteroid had not wiped out the dinosaurs. I was privileged to be instantiated into a wonderful time and place. I had nothing to do with that, and I will accept no guilt.

But I do believe that society should help those in less fortunate circumstances. Children especially need to be helped a great deal.

After that _ well, I am not so sure. I understand that some people are geniuses, some work better and harder than others, some are just lucky. Society is usually enriched, and those folks should be rewarded. 

But luck affects us all, and sometimes those who most affect society are not particularly virtuous nor constructive. Typically they lack empathy for chunks of the population. But all firmly believe that they are not slaves of any past.

I have embraced all I was and all those who helped and recognize situations and luck in my life. I also think I lived well and worked hard and helped a little. I used my past adequately.

Mostly I recognize how complex the world is, and how all political slogans are simplistic and wrong. Creating slaves to the present. 

Instinct is an automatic reaction to sensed phenomena. What we consider intelligent consciousness is prediction based on memory. Following scent to a waterhole is instinct, remembering where it is and going there the next time you are thirsty is predictive intelligence. 

The human species and its predecessors expanded that immensely. Predict how to strike a rock to make a tool. Predict that in the future a tool will be useful. That type of train of thought and all its ramifications is the key to who we are.

Logically that leads to “why”, especially when we are learning. “Why should I strike the rock this way?” “Because it will put an edge on the ax head.” “Why do I need an ax head?” And so on questions right up to modern equivalents of “why should I become a dentist?”

But we never stopped at practical matters. We can ask “why is it cloudy today”, “why did mommy die”, “why am I so unlucky?” And over time there were many answers, most involving gods or spirits, some involving conspiracies. “Nobody knows” does not satisfy.

Science is prediction on steroids. It gives us marvelous technology by being able to repeatably predict what will happen under certain controlled conditions.

But it fails at the grander “whys.” I do not trust it when it relies on math _ much as priests rely on faith. The quantum multiverse is a creation of pure math. 

I only respect its speculations when they yield predictable results not otherwise accounted for. And even then, I add more than a single grain of salt.

I often get angry. It allows me to focus emotions, concentrate, and sometimes express myself. It is an extremely useful tool for me to use internally and in dealing with a chaotic world. 

But the far end of anger is hatred, which I avoid strenuously. Hatred is a smoldering long-term anger, not subject to rational consideration. It is appropriate to be angry at a motorist who just cut me off. It is useless to extend that to a constant hatred of all other motorists or automobiles in general.

The worst hatreds are the artificial ones, not generated from personal experiences of anger, but inculcated from the views of family, peers, or media. Hatfield’s must hate McCoys. Short people must hate the tall.

Too often, hatreds are useful excuses. If I know that dwarfs run the country and I hate them passionately, I can blame any given dwarf for me losing my job last week. Or whatever. Instead of actually trying to figure out why I lost that job, or just saying “the hell with it” and moving on.

Most hatred eventually becomes an embedded blemish of the soul. It is subject to neither rational discussion nor useful perspective. And, for the most part, hatred makes any individual more socially unfit _ which just feeds the hatred. 

The real trick is to turn developing hatred into immediate anger. And to deal with that anger as we would any other fleeting emotion. 

Every holiday we are assaulted to “remember true meaning”. Patriotism, religion, whatever. But the “true meaning” really is exactly what is signified today _ not its magical or historic baggage.

For example, Christmas and New Year, the end of year holidays in the northern hemisphere. Its beginnings are “truly” reflective _ beginning in the murky Neolithic before long written memory began _ marking solstice and the gradual return of the sun. Celebrating survival of another yearly cycle. Enjoying companions now present. Remembering those departed. 

Several thousand years of monotheistic religions have piled wooly mythology onto this ritual. With the vast uncertainties in the world today, a lot of Americans, in particular, find such stories easy and comforting and a useful guide to life. 

But “true meaning” is that this holiday is a celebration of life and family. Another trip around the sun, another cycle of seasons. Back where we began 365 days ago, much the same but different _ we are at least older, sometimes unrecognizable.

It is the proper time to be nostalgic and grateful and a little more aware of family and friends. Tampered by the frantic rush and sometime anger of what did not work out as planned. That depth of feeling is also “true meaning.” 

Forget the media and political sloganizing. Time to embrace the cold, ro look to the future, ro appreciate the present, and ro be grateful for this moment of existence.

And to prepare for yet another cycle. Which is never simply a cycle. 

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

I suspect most everybody lately wakes up and immediately knows the times are crazy. Headlines in the wider world are filled with disasters natural and man-made. Scientific and technological discoveries pile on one another and threaten to disrupt everything. Life seems uncontrollably chaotic. 

Even our local environment refuses to remain calm. We hope nothing changes day-to-day, we soon notice changes are happening. Prices go up. We have a new ache or pain. The weather is good or bad. And chores or emergencies arrive without reason or warning.

It’s natural to wish for things to settle down. Return to the calm “Golden Days.” Except that there never were any. 

Students of history know that few lives rich or (mostly) poor were ever tranquil. Women, for example, almost always faced the trials of childbirth. Even a clear review of our own past will find almost no periods of stasis and equilibrium.

The truth seems to be that since the beginning of the ice ages which directed the evolution of our species, there were always crazy times. The “golden olden age” was always a cheerful myth. Famine, violence, disease, and coping were always our heritage.

Today, fortunately, at least for a while, most of us have avoided most of the worst rough edges of existence. Our main hope is that future generations do not regard us as the last true golden olden age. 

“My Way” is the title of a fairly maudlin song by Frank Sinatra. It allows both successful and failed seniors to reflect on the importance of being unique and surviving in a complex world. Perhaps it concentrates a bit too much on social achievement, but most old people can relate to the basic narrative concept.

I am no different, although I do twist focus inward. I am less concerned with what I did than with what I thought or learned. I am less insistent on displaying the past then I’m using my insight to evaluate the present.

My way has come to mean myself taught wisdom. I have read extensively, but never to absorb insights. No, I have my own insights all the time, even today. I treasure them. Reading is an argument, a way to test my insights against those of others. 

Some of this is just childish joy at the unexpected. I often metaphorically slap myself upside the head and exclaim “why didn’t I understand that earlier?” But the primary emotion is the happiness of discovery, not the gloom of opportunities lost.

The result of all this is a skeptical mind. When I read great philosophers, or shallow journalists, I argue with them. Likewise when I hear people express their own opinions.

This is not to say that I want to be a nasty know-it-all contrarian. I realize that my own insights often are incomplete or wrong. And if I learn better, I rejoice in the intellectual surprise. 

From time immemorial, people have believed that through prayers and rituals they can control _ or at least influence _  the gods and spirits who control everything. Silly primitives. We civilized folk realize that it is people who control everything. 

Human science understands the universe. Technology has tamed it. Society uses it to steer our destiny. And so, when things inexplicably go wrong, we look for whom to blame (lawyers are available) and seek out those who can fix it (sales people also on call.)

Most of us eventually realize the limits of such thinking. We do not control our birth situation nor our genetic attributes. Events often arrive haphazardly, and the best we can do is try to react well to them. We may guide the set of future issues we will deal with but only partially, and only some of the time. 

Those who truly believe people control everything are usually monsters. They lack the empathy of core understanding “there but for the grace of God go I.” They may focus blame for problems on groups of people, individuals, or social systems, but they are certain it is someone’s fault. 

And so our enlightened culture lurches on. Because believing in myths is often helpful to personal sanity, but can be corrosive applied to logical action. Thus the well-educated folks who think crystals can heal.

Or that paradise will arrive if we just do this one thing, or eliminate that one person.

We are assured we live in a scientific age. Indeed, scientific methodology has brought us comforts and marvels unimaginable in the not so distant past. The very fragments of fragments of atoms seem to do our bidding. The foundations of the universe seem to yield to our inquiries. 

And yet…

Scientific outlook applied to daily life is often less than wonderful. In fact, I would almost call it wrong. A few examples will suffice. 

I go to bed at the same time. One night I sleep soundly, one night I dream, one night I hardly sleep at all. I take the same route to work. One day I zip there in almost no time, one day traffic slows to a crawl, one day all routes are closed. Deep scientific outlook would tell me there are good reasons for all this. The problem, it continues, is that I am unaware of extraneous variables and conditions.

Knowing and controlling conditions is the sine qua non of science.

That’s the basic issue. An individual life and consciousness is immersed in and surrounded by extraneous conditions that are randomly variable and absolutely uncontrolled. Scientific outlook applied to life and consciousness works badly and erratically if at all. It is like a lawyer trying to raise a family as if it were a courtroom, a general as if it were an army. Don’t work well.

Sanity requires recognition that scientific outlook has limits. And most of those limits are apparent in the truly important things in our lives _ self and society.

One of the words that can immediately create a nasty ideological argument is “structural” when applied to history and society. “Structural” racism, sexism, ageism, or class persistence is part of the driving anger in our polarized politics.

After all, the US is built on the myth and reality that nothing is permanent, anyone can start over, and your life is determined by your acts. Also the idea that issues from the past _ especially issues deliberately “fixed” in the present _ can never be presented as a cause or excuse of an individual’s or group’s success or failure.

Obviously, some issues from the past continue to persist in shaping culture. The boundaries of a nation, the language it speaks, its climate and resources determine much about it. As do the backgrounds of the peoples settled there. We commonly refer to a “nation of farmers” or shopkeepers, or whatever.

Others claim the Protestant ethic and other Western markers. The odd thing about current political divides is that the “conservatives” who most decry anything “structural” are the same ones who lament the softening of the equally structural “pillars of society” such as family, church, and patriotism. These are “good” structures.

I think there are a hell of a lot of structural things which affected my life and everyone else’s. What to do with that perception is a whole different can of worms.