Human

Sages calmly explain “we are just another animal.” Other sages claim that “surely in infinite space there are others just like us”. Adventurers announce humanity will soon spread to the solar system and beyond. Cyberneticists predict we will develop and give way to the next mechanical stage of consciousness .

They are wrong .

The difference between human consciousness and that of other animals is like the difference between an amoeba and a drop of water. The evolution of human consciousness depended on a series of unlikely fortunate accidents. Anything may be possible in “infinite space”, but in a universe that is merely ALMOST infinite most stuff is flat out impossible. Our only comfortable home is this planet. Our “mechanical descendants” are only like us in bad science fiction, no more akin than that drop of water and amoebas.

We have been told that the great shock of modern times was that “man” discovered “he” was not the center of the universe. Another great shock may be the realization that you, I, and each human is, in fact, the ONLY meaning in the universe. Right here, right now.

That may take a little while to settle in, just as it took a while for the older myths to be swept away. For those becoming aware, however, it means we must treasure ourselves, our planet, and each other as never before.

We are probably all there is .

Old Minds

I’ve become increasingly distressed by the advanced age of our leadership. With modern medicine, people who should have been dead live a very long time. As someone almost 80, with many friends and relatives in the same bracket, I can’t help but notice changes in our mental processes . Often rapid and unexpected and worrisome.

Cultural judgment tries to be kind, on a scale of normality. An elder can be “sharp as a tack”, senile, ” busy as a bee”, “sitting all day doing nothing”. But all these judgments by younger folks really miss the point .

The aged have accumulating ongoing problems. Some are physical constraints, aches, ailments requiring treatment. Some are mental degradation with forgetfulness, sleeplessness, and brittle angry reactions to change. Some is simple sensory softness .

But all of that misses the point. After all, much younger people may have many of the same issues and be just dandy .

No, what worries me about leaders – because I see it in myself and others – is lack of sensible reaction. Because of underlying physical conditions, advanced seniors live angrily or passively in the moment. They take each minor conflict as a major slight, they overreact on grudges, they impulsively just do things to get them over with. Their long-term memory is often excellent, but their intermediate memory is gone or irrelevant to their decisions. We lack fundamental common sense. We always believe the last person or thing we heard .

Okay for me. Not so great for leading a nuclear nation .

Handcrafted

Not so long ago, “untouched by human hands” was a source of pride and a selling point. No low-class laborer had touched and possibly corrupted your product. New technology and machines were glamorous, shiny marvels, heralding a better life .

“Handcrafted” has now made a comeback. Like “bespoke”, it signifies that one is wealthy enough to rise above the common. A handcrafted candle or sweater or any artisan artifact is just SO much better than mindless cookie cutter productions .

Of course, the two currents intermix. Lately food service workers are required to wear latex gloves. There is still glamor in acquiring a machine like a cleaning robot ahead of everyone else. And we truly take for granted that most stuff is NOT touched by human hands, even though it may be the result of sweatshop conditions in distant lands .

Both viewpoints have their virtues, depending on time and place. Machine products are often elegant, functional, and inexpensive. Handcrafted articles contain a human element of thoughtful construction, a touch of true artisanship. We appreciate the basic abundance even though we may sometimes highly value the unique .

Like the rest of our lives, complicated but basically a very good change to human culture .

Listener

I’ve never been an alpha male. I have stubborn firm beliefs and ideas, but both my size and temperament have caused me to keep them inbound. I’ll contribute when appropriate, rarely try to force a viewpoint down anyone’s throat. Before going very far, I’ve always found it very useful to listen with concentration. That habit makes it surprisingly easy to get along with almost anyone.

Our natural tendency in this media-driven culture is “I talk, therefore I am”. Listening becomes a mere mental intake breath, unconscious and oblivious, as we formulate what we must say next. So it pleasantly surprises anyone when you actually pay attention to what they are saying and let yourself respond to that .

Such an apparently passive conversational style is often regarded as wimpy acceptance, like the apocryphal 98 pound weakling having sand kicked on him by the big bully in the comic books of my youth. I rather find it a useful sieve. Without automatic deep engagement (with me trying to be the ringmaster), I can quietly decide if continuing interaction is worth it, and if so how I want to proceed.

I often learn quite a lot, and people remain friendly. Nevertheless, I remain internally certain of most of what I have learned and absorbed. It’s almost impossible to rock my core beliefs. I just don’t care to argue. I suspect most others – bullies included – are just as adamant..

Of course, in this blog format, nobody talks back !

Socialists

The conventional political world is terrified that “socialists” have won some recent American elections. It might be useful to understand that these economic and political labels belong to a bygone ignorant age.

Before 1850, when most of these terms came into vogue, the conceptual environment of the modern world was just beginning. Chemistry, physics, biology, geology, psychology, electricity, all were in chaotic transition from classical imagining to modern theory and experimentation .

Labels are useful. An eye is not a hand. Stopping at labels is, however, medieval. The eye is functionally and inherently different than the hand, but related in infinitely complicated ways. A politician who stops at a label like “socialism” without going into complications is a lot like a physician who claims he doesn’t believe in all those newfangled ideas about cells, germs, hormones, evolution, and genetics .

We need to understand the uselessness of political name-calling, where puerile unique identification is the be-all and end-all of knowledge. “Socialism” means almost nothing, beyond a system that believes that wider wealth distribution is important to civilization. Details are not provided – but the details are what’s important .

In culture and politics, in civilization and human society in general, we are still at the stage of medieval physicians. We recognize problems but are clueless as to how, why, and what to do .

If we survive the current crises, our descendants will doubtless look back on our ignorance with the same stunned amusement as we do those Venetian doctors warding off plague with beaked masks .

For all I know, computer technology may actually prove helpful in our awakening .

Omnivore

We had friends over for an afternoon lunch. As often happens when people in their late ’70s gather, talk tended to center on ailments and medical attention. Lately an awful lot of medical discussion – and not just for the aged – relates to diet .

When I grew up in the ’50s, there was much less concern. We ate anything we could afford. Our parents, having lived through depression and war, were grateful for simply having enough to eat. So maybe there was a little too much meat, and not much worry about new snack foods except cost.

Now – oh how different. Diet is life for so many. How they begin the day, what they must include, what they must avoid. Not only the obvious like salt and fat, but hidden issues like pesticides, GMOs, hormones, bacteria and a host of issues concerning invisible components like vitamins and fiber .

I’m slave to my upbringing, and still tend to think I can eat most anything in moderation. Humans are omnivores, after all. Our ancestors ate anything they could find when they had to. Additives, like high salt content, have been around since ancient times, and massively present not long ago. “Fresh” during most of the year in winter was a fairy tale until the late 1900s .

We talk and dream and think that at least by controlling our food we can control our health.

But. omnivores are tough creatures, well-equipped by evolution to handle almost anything.

We should always remember that .

Mount Ultralympus

The Greeks imagined a pantheon of superheroes who had enormous power, but were fairly dumb. Those gods fought each other over petty annoyances, and let their anger spill onto mortal reality. They were, in fact, a pretty good explanation of how fate works .

Mount Olympus failed to hold up to a vision of heaven ruled by a just Middle Eastern absolute monarch. Everything then could be explained as ineffable divine will, with rewards for the just in the eternity beyond death .

Now we have come full circle. The ultrawealthy are just as powerful a clique as the Olympian gods ever were. Also just as stupid and petty, bickering amongst themselves, scattering mortals into misery as they work out their indulgent irritations. Some are more powerful than others, some true colossi, some mere half breed god/mortals .

To understand the ultrawealthy it is simply necessary to be fluent in ancient Greek mythology. The parallels are quite amazing, and would be amusing if they did not terrify us quite so much. But abuse of power comes with the territory .

Like those Greeks, we know we cannot control the gods. We can only try to placate them. In the good old days it was by offering sacrifices like oxen, today it is an equivalent cutting of taxes .

Like the Olympic gods, the ultra wealthier are having their moment. We shall see if anything arises to replace them .

Tough Guys

If you rabbit-hole into health news and advice on the internet, you would think that humans are snowballs in hell. So many terrible things can happen. A new problem discovered daily. Any of which are certain to cripple or kill you slowly or suddenly, at any time .

I remember that I am on the far end of millions of years of evolution. Admittedly, some luck was involved, but humans did not take over the world because they were soft and weak .

Lately we tend not to give ourselves enough credit. People can eat anything, and throughout history, they have done so. A lot or a little, in conditions from charred to raw to spoiled. We automatically vomit up most poisons, we purge bad bacteria. Anything that makes it through the first line of defenses faces almost certain oblivion from a fearsome immune system. As for injury or damage – most organs usually repair themselves .

Admittedly, we do die eventually (although that might be another aspect of evolutionary toughness). And also over half of us now survive childhood when we would have once been dead before adolescence. No matter. With or without technology we’re the baddest life form that ever existed .

Okay. We need to avoid getting hit by a truck. Eat sensibly. Follow a relatively careful lifestyle. But the parameters in that lifestyle are immense, regardless of what some nerd with a microscope “discovered” yesterday .

So swagger a bit. It’s useful to play the bully once in a while. And all advice isn’t good.

Global Crossing Redux

Around 2000, I was working in a relatively high-tech company. All my colleagues were poised to get rich. They’d invested in all the upcoming technology stocks. The future would be golden .

Most were internet related. For the cautious, Microsoft was solid but turning into a has-been. Apple was there for the daring. But most dreams centered on the magic rockets like AOL or Yahoo. Speculative dreams pursued the “name territory” like Pets.com (nobody was using search engines so easily remembered names were the wave of the future). Beanie Babies were the bitcoin of those times. So many folks told me they knew their retirement and children’s college were set .

Of course they were partisans of their picks. They did not understand the venture capitalist truth that one must invest in a lot of losers to hope for one massive hit. They knew that they knew .

A lot of IPO issuances were springing up all the time. Ultimately buzz centered on ” Global Crossing” – a fiber optic company. Whispers in the hallway. Clandestine peeks at moments on the company terminals. Advice. Certainty of payoff. How could they miss?

Of course – well – the “dot.com crash”. Most startups vanished as most startups do, carrying their stocks to the bottom like the Titanic. Twenty years later GlobalCcrossing was an okay investment. But most speculators had gone down with the ships .

Oh, I forgot, the past does not predict the future ,,,

Goonies

Police in the United States have generally been respected, at least in the last 50 years or so, even if regarded a little cynically. For the most part they are neighbors with a tough and stressful job, long stretches of boredom marked by moments of unpredictable terror. Most of us can sympathize with their occasional overreactions, rudeness, and even civil transgressions. Understandable .

ICE broke all the rules .

Nazi Stormtroopers are imagined as lean, mean, hard, cold, nasty, and effective. The image of ICE is more that of a gang of mumbling rumbling Michelin men, always moving in fat, deeply swaddled herds. Angry for the sake of being angry .

At some point in the past ICE agents were due appropriate sympathy as trained professionals, going into difficult areas to find “the worst of the worst” violent criminal alien gangs. A necessary job to mop up what local government could not handle .

But now? Local law seems adequate to handle and turn over the worst of the worst. The goon gang seems to be ignorant, obese, overenthusiastic thugs egging each other on to violently seize inoffensive women and children. Only to fill quotas. And an awful lot of the new masked faces in a bloated force simply resemble poorly trained, bitter unemployables, grateful to act badly while unidentifiable .

Goonies. And not in a funny movie .