Mentally Obese

I’ll use the ancient politically incorrect connotation of obese to mean someone who is excessively fat from enjoying eating way too much with no regard to health consequences. That may damage an individual, but what I will call a “mentally obese” person may endanger a society .

In a consumer driven culture, most of us are “mentally fat”. We acquire too much and may desire even more. But we have limits to our greed, some self-imposed, some forced on us. Many folks honestly believe that what they do not own cannot be enjoyed. They must possess a thing before they dare appreciate it.

The worst mentally obese people are not simple consumers, but titans of industry. They must have more and more and more regardless of consequence. They think they are “lean and mean” but they are a social tub of lard, wallowing about in plans, risks, and ambitions .

They remind me of Marx’s observation that the end of classic capitalism would result in a few gargantuan monopolies owned and controlled by one survivor each. These days, it is not hard to imagine such a scenario where the CEO has no employees at all – only AI agents. And, for that matter, no CEO .

Perhaps, Marxist dystopia is only a temporary stage. With current IPOs, our mentally obese masters of the universe are well on their way to the ultimate end.

Spectacle

Now seems an age of spectacles. Huge crowds attend sports events, electronic extravagances in stadiums, concerts, and crazy oddities like “Burning Man”. A thirst for the exotic, satisfied continuously by spectacular technology .

Yet many spectators are really not on site. They view the show on tiny screens, or even large screens, with none of the crowding and hormones that make a live event so noteworthy. Yet they count it as a spectacle nonetheless .

I’ve grown more sedate, although I still do enjoy the ideas of some spectacles. But older and more fragile, I’m quite content to be an armchair adventurer most of the time. The revelation for me has been how much spectacle I can create in my immediate surroundings, by careful and total immersion in the moment. Truly listening to bird calls, rapidly staring at patterns of leaf shadows in a breeze, even staring for minutes at an ant or spider.

The whole world, properly seen, is a constant surprising miraculous spectacle. That’s really why I continue to draw. A sketch forces a trance-like state that squeezes my concentration to the point where whatever I am looking at is spectacular. With luck, that intensity carries over when I am done .

Giant spectacles are grand real marvels _ I’m not knocking them. But I find that without all the muss and fuss I am usually surrounded by equivalent possibility. True wonder .

Certainly Flexible

In our teenage years, we become convinced we know everything and are consequently certain we are always right. We may learn more as time goes on, we may change our minds, but we remain just as certain all the time.

Science constantly tries to break this tendency. The worst scientist is one who knows what, how, and why. In many other careers, it is equally important to acquire knowledge, apply it, think out of the box, and flexibly move on to better understanding .

On the other hand, in society and politics, changing one’s mind is a “flip-flop” and a sign of horrible dishonesty. “How can you have deceived me so?” Friends, families, elected representatives are supposed to remain frozen in attitude and belief, as we once thought we knew them .

It’s understandable. After all, the core of a society must be relatively conservative to function at all. We need to believe that lives have fundamental organization. Total chaos is unsustainable .

The only thing worse than an ongoing movement in what we are certain of, is to be frozen at one point until a sudden internal revelation forces us to reject all that we know, start over, and be absolutely certain, once again, that we are right in whatever new belief.

Like most of our leaders .

Entitled

Political speech is usually more concerned with connotation than definition. Consider the current polemics about “rights: which are viewed as free, and “entitlements” which cost money. What these words actually mean is best described in the lovely legalistic phrase “normal and customary” .

There are no absolutes. The rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are contradicted by graveyards, prisons, and slums. Entitlements such as pensions are viewed as earned rewards, but tend to include expected safety nets for food clothing shelter and medicine.

The rich, of course, always think that whatever they have is a form of right – granted by God, superiority, hard work. The poor assume society owes them other rights such as education. Everyone considers security and property protection on the fuzzy borderline .

This is where the war of connotation spills into redistribution of wealth. If everyone is entitled to health care, are we infringing on the rights of the well-off by taking away some of their assets? There is no easy answer, although the way politicians twist meanings may make it seem so .

Utopians have always claimed that the problem is simply scarcity. In a world of abundance the difference between what costs money and what does not will vanish .

Perhaps .

I’m not holding my breath .

Babies and Puppies

Advertisers know that big eyes sell. Slap a picture of a baby or a puppy on a product and more people will buy it. Most of us can scarcely resist those cute expressions, and we get a rush of endorphins just looking at them .

Nature probably evolved this in certain mammalian species (especially primates) which have young who require extended care. Humans then tended to breed dogs whose puppies were more appealing. In both cases, the cutest survived.

Social causes have now become deeply entangled with standard advertising. In particular, anti-abortion groups always picture helpless human infants as those being “murdered”. In truth of course most modern abortion involves discarding a lump of mostly formless tissue .

Ah, but the potential… Unsurprisingly anti-abortion never mentions surly teenagers nor terrifying criminals who may result from the rescue.

After babies grow up to be surly teenagers, hardened criminals, nasty insane terrorists, or just people we dislike, we have little trouble handling them roughly. “Pro-life” can be code for a social movement to preserve the “right people”.

Of course the crusaders are sincere. After all, they’ve seen the cuddly pictures on the propaganda media.

Looney Geniuses

Overwired brains often descend into what seems madness to others. Brilliance can be associated with insanity. Isaac Newton pored over mysticism, medieval alchemists tried to turn lead to gold, Chinese emperors ate crazy stuff to become immortal, many religious fanatics pondered the ineffable reasons for the universe even as they admitted humans cannot know .

Most of our current batch of lunatic geniuses concentrate on science fiction. They want to move humans to other worlds, live forever young, turn the next stage of evolution over to silicon machines, vanish into a “singularity” which, if it existed, would exactly resemble the current universe .

But in one or two areas (when financed with other gullible people’s money) they are indeed brilliant. Some actually build things, many simply manipulate gambling spreadsheets. Their narrow focus on whatever they succeed at makes them less than stable and realistic in other areas of their lives .

I truly enjoy reading of their adventures in immortality. Instead of ingesting gold or jade, hiring magicians to enchant them, or bathing in virgins’ blood, they simply do weird self-denying rituals. Living in oxygen tents, starving, precise foods. All to extend lives which _ examined from a wider human experience _ hardly seem worth living .

I wander outside to smell the roses and laugh in the moonlight . In my own world, forever, eternally young

Imagination

Imagination is wondrous. It can raise hopes, deepen fears, widen our perspectives. We can mold it and change focus in an instant. It is the basis of narrative stories and most artifacts .

It is, in fact, as important to our consciousness as logic. And, in the hands of the obsessed or powerful, far more dangerous. Dreaming of doing something is not always a benign pastime, as we know from past activities of prophets and dictators .

Unfortunately, our technology has escaped control by social systems, and society now faces the peril of those with vast imagination, unlimited wealth, massive technology. Most of our billionaires seem to be narrowly ignorant of true humanity .

Perhaps the worst examples are those whose science fiction imagination is creating ruin. They want humanity to expand into space like in Heinlein juvenile novels, and they ignore the wonderful planet they actually inhabit and which will probably remain the only home of humanity forever. In the meantime, among many other catastrophes, they garbage up near Earth orbit with debris that could end our current technology age quite dramatically.

Unlimited power in fanatic minds is always a prelude to disaster. And that prediction is only a little bit relying on my own imagination .

Medical Mess

Social systems, like organisms, are often insanely complex and convoluted. “Simple” things like an animal taking a step invoke nearly infinitely complicated signals, even after we discount the infinite underlying reactions keeping life going.

Any crackpot or “normal” person tends to believe if we “just keep it simple” we could clean up a social system such as medicine and make it cheaper, more responsive, and more robust. After all, how hard could it be?

Ask a biologist what’s involved in a deer strolling across a meadow. And don’t forget things like all the trillions of ATP cellular reactions.Fixing a social system is even worse. Like organisms, social systems are not isolated but exist in an ecology.

Reform may, in fact, be impossible. What often happens instead is extinction or replacement by creatures invading the territory.

I suspect we are in such a situation. Most of our cultural systems are complicated ancient relics that still work but are increasingly susceptible to extinction or replacement.

Not “fixing them up”, not “evolution”, but vanishing into irrelevance.

Medical coverage and practice among them .

In such cases, it seems better to concentrate on “why” rather than “how”. Presumably our AI masters will produce all the answers necessary.

Not sure we will like those much .

Angry Wealth

America has traditionally considered itself a land of “improvers”. An individual life was supposed to be one of financial advancement. Society was expected to progress as tinkerers brought forth new technological marvels. “New, improved” replaced “excelsior” as the mantra of the masses .

A core belief has also remained that satiation is impossible. You may get sick of too much ice cream, but never of ever better living conditions. Useful hedonism has no upper limit, and striving for the impossible is one of the things that makes an individual successful and society exceptional .

Okay. All that is hardly in dispute. Yet there seem to be very wealthy people not only sad but increasingly angry. They resent everyone else. They envy everything they do not have. They bitterly curse that they do not have more. They scream at cruel fate which limits them to mortality. They especially whine about social limits .

Perhaps we made a wrong turn somewhere. Technology makes it so easy to concentrate on baubles and gadgets that most of us neglect traditional pleasures. You can’t “improve” a sunset nor the joy of a rose garden (although industrial culture can easily ruin or destroy both). We’ve come to expect that “improving” our minds is only useful if it adds to our income .

I enjoy technology. The only caveat I have is that we may be wealthy already, and we should be properly grateful without always screaming for more.

Make America Something Again

Politicians and preachers have often invoked the image of the last golden age, so unlike these degenerate times. On the opposite pole, prophets of the future proclaim utopian visions. The common thread, of course, is that all you miserable little people will be much happier if you just listen to me (and contribute) .

I’ve always been as skeptical of future visions as I am of any dreams. I know enough history to understand how distorted nostalgia can be. Of course, I’ve never pitied myself as one of those alleged miserable masses of everyone. Most of my happiness has been founded in ignoring the sales pitches so common to our consumer culture .

However it’s been entertaining to follow social fads as they parade through society. At one time (see I can do it too!) religions, for example, may have been fairly stable. But now the latest viral sensations advise and pummel us hour by hour .

Among the silliest are the various “make great”. It is nothing new, people always thought they could “make great” by doing something or other, often involving wiping out other people. It’s the “again” that goes against my instincts, perhaps because I was raised in a progressive-directed environment .

Hate to tell people, but for us “ordinary” folks there was never a perfect world to which to return. Examined closely and honestly, life at all times has been chaotic and desperate and unfair. And fine, wonderful, and miraculous.

Just like this now moment, the reality you should concentrate on.

Again and again .