Mild Mannered Trump

At a campaign stop today in Greenback SC, Donald Trump continued his controversial remarks. 

Asked who he considered a war hero he paused for a moment and then said “Well, I tell you who was not a war hero.  You know who was not a war hero?  Washington!”  When the audience settled down he continued, “I mean he lost the battle of Long Island, he abandoned New York to looting, he ran away into New Jersey.  He bungled Germantown and then spent a whole winter at Valley Forge doing nothing.  He only won because of a French bailout.  The frigging French, for God’s sake!  And it took him years,” Trump sneered, “Me and the guys I hire, we coulda done it in a coupla of months, tops, with Canada thrown in.”

Asked how he would help the economy, Trump quickly replied, “Those lazy bastards in Washington don’t even discuss the big issues, the ones that would make a difference.  Look at all our old people for instance.  We can’t support them, they don’t do much, just sit around getting fat.  We need to bring that whole thing under control.”  As applause softened, “I’ve had my staff looking into this scientifically, you know, and they tell me that by simply making the calendar year an even 500 days long, we could cut the age of every individual in the United States _ you and me, by the way _ by a third.  Think of that.  You could be a third younger.  But do those jerks in their fat chairs even think of solutions? Of course not, they’re not doers, not men of action.  And by the way, this simple step would also reduce property taxes everywhere by 33%.”

“And another thing, gravity.  Do you know how much the law of gravity costs the construction industry every year?  Billions, Trillions, Gazillions!  When I build something magnificent _ as I always do _ I have learned that gravity is our number one cost problem _ well, outside of building and safety inspectors, of course.”  Laughter.  “How hard can it be to launch a bipartisan effort to reduce the force of gravity all across this great land?  Who would oppose it?  Maybe the tax collectors weighing your gold.” More laughter. 

At this point the conference was interrupted by an aide rushing in and whispering in Mr. Trump’s ear, as two other aides rolled an old phone booth on stage.  A few moments later he flew off, his green cape emblazoned with its golden dollar sign flapping in the breeze.

Ray Rice Victims

Let’s discuss the Ray Rice story from the standpoint of the victims.  If this were a beginning journalism class, we might start with the classic 5 W’s and an H.

 

·         Who are the victims?  It’s hard to find any others than the couple themselves, two extremely young and otherwise apparently exemplary people who got in a fight in a public space.  Because of this, they have both been stripped of job, career, future prospects, and cast into the darkness of a future of perpetual underemployment or worse.

·         What was the crime?  Nobody filed charges.  Nobody was permanently hurt.  If this were two male friends fighting, two female friends fighting, even a drunken couple mixing it up in a bar, nothing more would have happened.  This was not an unprovoked lashing out, but the culmination of a lover’s spat.  This was not even part of a pattern of escalating abuse, but a momentary flare that probably could be handled easily with counseling _ at least if our social professions are not lying to us all the time.

·         Why is there so much outrage?  Obviously, most of it is fueled by envy _ he is making too much money, the NFL is too rich and arrogant.  More comes from the righteousness of true believers, who see here a set of avatars they can burn at the stake for the crimes of society at general.  The actual victim does not count, just another dumb woman girlfriend, she is a symbol.  And she would have had too much money, too.

·         When did the line to personal issues completely disappear?  Not since the days of Henry Ford and his house-invading spies have employers been so able _ even required _ to fire able workers for private acts.  These are the tactics of totalitarianism, but more than that they are the tactics of big business keeping employees under their thumb (Henry Ford did everything for the “employee’s own good” also.)

·         Where is our conscience?  Everyone who is yammering away casting stones has presumably never sinned.  Just like the religious fanatics who impose Sharia law.  But civilized people are supposed to understand that life is complicated, and temper their own sucker punches.

·         How did we get this way?  Polarized factions invoke saintly unblemished heroes who never existed.  The bible is great literature precisely because all its characters _ including God _ have flaws.  Believing in perfection leads only to cults of liars and frauds: Stalin, Mao, Dear Leader.

 

Apparently the idea of redemption, forgiveness, and possibility of change is only applied selectively and randomly.  Hardened criminals may yet be reformed, criminal politicians given another chance, but young lovers are beyond the pale.

 

Once upon a time it was at least a goal of responsible journalism to keep these issues in mind, and to try to treat them with attention to nuance, complication, contradiction, and the essential humanity of whatever had occurred.  I weep at what we as a culture have lost.

Lebron James – Economic Lessons

Lebron has signed with Cleveland for 21 million dollars a year, for two years.  He is an extremely talented basketball player, trains hard, works at his career, plays with elegance and ferocity.  Cleveland obviously believes he is worth more than they are paying _ the capitalist system working in all its beauty.  For all I know he is also highly intelligent, with a winning personality.  Certainly he deserves everything he is getting.  There are basic economic lessons in this story.

Lesson 1 is that commencement speakers lie.  We cannot be anything we want.  The most rewarded are often the most freakish _ with genius intelligence, physical gifts, stamina, or even obscure advantages like a need to sleep only one hour a day.  Not to mention the less discussed differences of luck and birth _ unlike many of his peers, LeBron has fortunately avoided injury.  At under five and a half feet, I could not be Lebron, no matter how much I practiced.  Half the human race is of the wrong sex to be offered his position.

Lesson2 is that there are few equivalent niches in the modern world.  Even if LeBron were 10 years older or injured there would be no equal job into which he could retrain.  The also-rans do not scale gracefully from his high salary to lower ones _ there are probably hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries from professional basketball _ media, airplanes, hotels, construction, ticket takers, advertising, vendors, and so forth.  Find the median income derived from all these and discover inequality of income.  And that has nothing at all to do with how “hard” each of the “losers” is working.  There just are simply few high paying jobs, and most that are very low paying.

Lesson 3 is that “equal opportunity” is a corrosive myth.  The chance to do well is not the same as being groomed or handed wonderful possibilities because of genetic or cultural accidents.  Horatio Alger’s real-life counterparts often starve to death.  Even Ayn Rand’s architect will have fallow periods when no building is going on or he is not part of the current building clique.  This leads to intense hoarding and misery in both good times and bad, for “number one” is always in fragile danger no matter how much he appears to have.  This may be the worst aspect of current academic economic conventional wisdom.

Lesson 4 is that luck is always present.  Time and place matter.  If Lebron had been born fifty years earlier, a basketball career paid nothing at all.  If born two hundred years earlier in the same place, he would likely have been a slave, good for nothing except for an owner to show off, to beat up, and to feed too much for what he was worth.  If born in his ancestor’s native land, he might have been a simple herdsman, hardly distinguished from any of the others of his tribe.  But he has what is needed to meet a current social fad.  Some abilities are always wasted and out of synch with the times _ consider all the frustrated would-be Alexander the Greats or Napoleons.

Lesson 5 is that we need LeBron for social cohesion.  Like any human society, stability requires some bread and circuses.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with escape into the circuses, as long as the bread is not forgotten.  Vast inequality is hardly terrible as long as minimal living standards for everyone are met.  How much should those like LeBron contribute financially to maintain the living standards of the rest of the industrial quasi-slave laborers, a dime a dozen, flipping hamburgers or mowing yards or taking tickets, interchangeable and essentially economically worthless?

Frivolous Tasks

There is a thin line between being lazy and being contented.  We are to admire the lilies of the feed, but we believe Darwin discovered that the lilies of the field are engaged in constant life and death struggle.  You can sit and admire the flowers in your garden,  but sometimes you must weed.  On the other hand, if all you do is weed and never admire, what is the point of it all?

Some things are necessary and some are not.  Ideally, perhaps, half of the time would be spent in enjoying and experiencing what one has, half in striving to improve it or obtain more.  Few in this culture seem to achieve that balance.  A few rich people, of course, manage.  The poor, driven completely by necessity, never have any choice.  But for many, it often seems, envy has overcome good sense.

The mantra for our age is progress, change for the sake of change.  And the mantra for an individual is that time or energy expended should be an “investment”, something worth something in the future.  A better kitchen!  A newer bathroom!  A shinier spirit!  Rush about doing objective things, and you will be rewarded.  But, as the saying goes, what will it profit if you lose your soul in the process?

Most of us die without cashing out on all the so-called “investment”.  A new kitchen becomes old.  The updated spirit encounters new challenges and becomes dispirited.  Investment or expense require time, and time is limited, both in each day and over a lifetime.  It can be wasted as much as dollars, and that waste is not only in sitting around “doing nothing.”

Thinking, meditating, reading, working on a hobby like a musical instrument, these are all profitable enterprises that should never be measured by return on investment.  Oh, perhaps it is useful to pick up a hobby that is profitable in some ways _ tiling floors.  But that is just mechanics.  The main problem given external pressures is that all hobbies tend to be warped into proto-investments, turned into chores, and the joy taken out of them.  It is lovely to take walks in the morning, but grim if the only purpose of that walk is to “do what you have to do and get it over with” to preserve your health.

Advertising pressure makes it far too easy to waste all our time and energy in frivolous tasks.  These not only cause constant anguish from envy and lack of enough resources, but also cause us to lose sight of the real magnificence of the world as it is.  Many things do not need changing, or do not need changing this minute.  Letting them be for a while will give us time to enjoy the universe, and might just lower our destructive footprint on a fragile environment.  A new bathroom is hardly worth missing a spectacular sunset, and the sunset uses a lot less fossil fuel.  The experience of that sunset will always be a unique treasure to you, and may not be coin in the world, but is truly a store in heaven.

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I’m afraid I tend to the side of laziness.  I’m usually quite happy with what exists.  In the long run, everything is transient, so “improving”, unless absolutely necessary, is just makework and an excuse to ignore the pleasures of the day.

There are always a few things that are necessary, of course.  If the roof leaks, it must be fixed.  If one lives in the suburbs, the lawn must be mowed.  If there is no money, I have to work.  The problem is what to do after the minimum, or at least the minimum with a reasonable surplus, is reached.

Some people are always looking for little things to do.  Some of my neighbors and other acquaintances think that a weekend without tiling the bathroom anew or redoing the deck or having a contractor review how to expand the house, is time wasted.  Because of our mania for progress, it seems patriotic.  What made this country great, the myth goes, is that everyone is always striving for something better. 

I’m never really sure anything is all that much better.  I’d rather enjoy as much as I can, get full joy from what is available now, and contemplate the happy mysteries of existence.  Most would call that a decadent European attitude.  I watch them scurry around mostly in wonder, only once in a while with a twinge of envy for their ambition.

Age matters, too.  As an elder, I no longer feel the need, internal or cultural, to constantly improve.  I and my surroundings have improved quite enough, thank you.  It is more a question of maintenance, which I, like most, hated when I was younger.   It has always seemed the core of wisdom that whatever I desire should, first of all, be age appropriate; second of all, possible. 

Anyway, there may be much to do.  My wife certainly thinks so.  I watch the birds and listen to the cicadas and put off as much as I reasonably can until tomorrow.

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Load 16 tons, and whaddaya get

Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the company store.

Some say a man is made out of mud

A poor man’s made out of muscle and blood
The rich get richer and they don’t have to try
Everyone else just tries to get by

Most folks are told that if they work hard

They’ll have a big house and a beautiful yard
Borrow the money and don’t really think
Slave every day, rush and worry and drink.
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You should carefully budget your moments, for time is just as limited as money.  Always trying to make things better instead of simply accepting (and experiencing) them as they are is a fool’s paradise.  You can be so busy trying to improve that you never actually get a chance to notice, and that is a tragedy.

Selecting what are good tasks and what are not is very difficult.  Perhaps improvement is required, perhaps you are driven by necessity, this conversation is not about such issues.  Yet presumably you live in the midst of affluence, and when do you really have to get the latest, greatest; when do you really have to reach perfection to appreciate?  Trust your unconscious in this, if it feels like it’s not worth the effort, it probably isn’t.

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We live in a time of progress and desire.  It is almost a fever, really, a disease of more.  Nothing is ever enough, and we spend so much time dreaming of how good things will be in the future that we miss time going by.  Or we are so bored by being unable to marinate fully in each moment that we drive ourselves to rush on to find something better, to make ourselves earn or discover something that is worthwhile.  And, like riding on an express train, that very rush makes us miss most of the beauty of the landscape.

Some people, of course, handle our times well, and there are disciplines available for all.  Most of them concentrate on contentment, which is good, and seek to root out envy.  Yet too often, the lessons seem disconnected from “real life” when we always must do something, and always should be somehow active to retain our own sense of meaning.

We are, after all, alive, and bound by the conditions of being so.  To pretend we do not need to eat is insane.  To pretend we should not, to some point, seek to eat better, or to more enjoy what we are eating is equally stupid.  The question is not one of finding the lowest possible limit and enjoying it, but rather of understanding the problem of diminishing returns.  At some point, all improvement becomes an awful lot of effort for a really minor gain.  And at that point, and beyond, whatever is being done has become truly trivial.  Finding that point in everything we experience and do is what we must discover in everything to be really happy.

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King Midas had learned to control his gift, so that he only turned what he wanted to into gold.  This let him make as much gold as he wanted while still enjoying his meals, other people, and all the rest of the original issues in the old tragic fable.  So naturally, he became fantastically wealthy, and could buy anything he wanted.  His family romped happily in the fortune.  He was a basically good king, so everyone in his country was taken care of and properly careful.

He had it all.  And for a year or so, that was quite enough.  Whatever he wanted to get done could get done, and most of it was well received.  His kingdom prospered, and he was proud of all that he and his people had accomplished.  Others came from far and wide to admire the land and culture.

But, well, there were some things that didn’t quite work with money.  People still died, he still got a little older, there was still an occasional crime, sometimes the weather was terrible.  The problem, he decided, was that he needed a more perfect world, and he spent infinite time in his secret laboratory, trying to replicate his success in calling up the genie of the gold wish.  Except this time, of course, it was for a genie of power.

And so the years went by, and he got older and more discontented and more driven to find the answer.  The kingdom was doing fine, birds sang and flowers bloomed and love was everywhere, but he could not see it.  The lab was dark and bitter, and he grew to be very like it.

King Midas never found the power genie.  If he had found such a fellow, he would have soon realized that even power was not enough.  What he really needed was a medical genie, who could cure him of his fatal disease of “more.”

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Before doing anything, one should consider not how important it may be, but how trivial it might turn out.   Are any possible returns in the future worth the investment of this exact time?  We are rarely trained to think that way, but perhaps that is a necessary condition of full maturity.

Steak

The problem is simple.  Red meat cut from butchered cows is a food that many people have traditionally enjoyed, even though most people can go without it without harm for their entire lives.  Yet butchering animals brings up painful moral issues, and raising animals en masse causes innumerable ecological problems as well. 

A cut of sirloin at the supermarket or served at a restaurant is simple animal biology, an anticipated taste, a delicious barbecued dinner.  Humans are constructed to enjoy just about everything, and this food not only provides variety, but also satisfaction partly because it is so nutritious.  Other meats are also available, of course, also requiring slaughter after generally terrible growth conditions.  But the higher up the “great chain of being” one goes, the more squeamish thinking about the source of food can become.  It is somehow less difficult to think about eating grains of wheat than dead people, although cultural adaptation can pretty much force use to use (and even enjoy) anything when we must.

A lot of it comes down to definitions.  In large parts of the current Western culture, cows, pigs, chickens, fish, and plants and pretty standard fare.  There is more resistance to rats, dogs, cats, horses, and pigeons.  And great ambiguity about things like deer.  The more complete the nervous system, the more the consciousness approaches are, the more like cannibalism it seems.  And that perception, of course, depends more on our background than on any scientific measurement.

Raising huge quantities of  such animals, outside of everything else, is affecting  local ecologies severely, and may be impacting the planet as well.  The obvious solution would be to learn to manufacture acceptable substitutes from soy or algae, even though purists would complain.  But one grey lump, manufactured or not, is pretty much like another under gravy.  And cheese puffs or cola certainly prove that there is an easy slope to accepting totally artificial constructions as sustenance.

An argument can be made that one must live within the culture one is born into.  If everyone else is eating steak, there is little one person not wanting to eat steak can do to affect the balance, even though we desperately want to believe in the power of one.  But it is also possible to believe one can rise above the culture, be better than it, and at least be an example of what could be.
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I need to admit right out that I truly like steak once in a while.  I tend to eat red meat in some form once or twice a week for dinner, and have chicken or fish most other nights.  It’s delicious, makes me feel good, and is relatively inexpensive.  Yet, I am aware of the moral issues involved.  Unfortunately, they are not easy to logically resolve.

For one thing, there is the question of whether there is an absolute issue involved.  To say I only eat red meat once a week is not far different from saying I only commit murder once a week.  It’s either wrong or not, no matter how often done.  To say I mostly eat chicken or fish is to somehow judge just how precious a given kind of consciousness is.  And it remains true that I could certainly live happily on cheese, eggs, and shellfish, for example.

The conditions in which food is raised are another concern, but again the moral distinction is hazy.  Perhaps feed lots and claustrophobic cages are horrid, but eating once contented cows or free range chickens strikes me as a little like that Aztec tradition of granting a captive a year of splendor before ripping out his heart.

Environmental concerns about ruminant methane _ well, ok _ but at our current population density intensive agriculture is no friend of the Earth’s ecology.  You can eat soybeans all your life and still be destroying large areas.  The fact is, until human population is controlled, all food sources _ including manufactured _ will lead only to a decreasing quality of life for everything.  So this particular issue is not much affected by what I eat.  I would also point out that non-intensive agriculture as serenaded by locavores is far less romantic that usually pictures, and a family farm life is a hard, nasty, and dangerous life.

The final consideration is that all things are mortal, death is part of life, and “natural” conditions for both people and animals are far more savage and brutal than nature shows generally allow on camera. So I eat my steak, and think my thoughts, and do nothing else.  I am not sure yet of the true moral path and in the meantime, I indulge in my animal appetites.
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Mary had a little lamb

Its fleece was white as snow And everywhere that Mary went The little lamb would go. Mary also had a cow A pig, a duck and more Mary’s family had to eat She don’t have them no more. Suppose that Mary had a dog An elephant of cat If she chose to butcher them What would you think of that? Steak -

You will have certain philosophies about eating, even if you think you don’t.  If you eat unconsciously, or just eat to live, you are making a declaration of your importance compared to everything else.  If you make careful decisions about what you consume and why you will find yourself in conflict with others who have strong but different views on the same subject.  There are those who enjoy their food as naked as possible, and others who rework it into something unrecognizable with processes, sauces, and spice.  Nobody, right now, is sure of the right way.  Almost everything seems unsustainable, given current population levels and consumption trends.

How much steak or other meat you consume, if any, is one of the more fraught decisions in dining.  It involves health, of course, in both directions _ sometimes the concentrated energy of red meat is the only thing that can keep you healthy, while too much will lead to many health problems and presumed early death.  But outside of that _ well nothing is as clean as you probably think.

That nicely wrapped meat has an origin in pain and filth.  Those locally produced chops still required a lot of energy to supply the feed, house the animals, support the farmers lives, butcher, transport, store, and package.   If you do not eat any, it will go to waste and add to the refuse problem.  The claims of organically raised livestock, or happy contented animals roaming the fields, may be colorful lies invented by the typical flaks of corporations. 

Perhaps you hunt, find your own game, cull the weak, smoke it yourself, and remain wholly self-sufficient.  If you do that exclusively, living only by your own wits, you cannot have much time for anything else, you are marginalized in society, and to be honest you have no impact on the food chain problem, one way or the other.  If you do it as a hobby, it is irrelevant. 

There is no good answer, and that is the problem.  You are to some extent bound by the human condition of what you must do, and what you enjoy.  You are to some extent haunted by the human capacity for empathy and compassion.  You are complex, and there is no reason at all why your food should be any less so.

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Steak can be used as an interesting metaphor for attitudes on life.  After all, animal ecology is based on everything eating something else.  All ecology is based on the premise that every organism dies.  Once those basic facts are accepted, morality becomes constrained into the same problems life itself faces.  Is it better to have more, short lived mechanisms, or fewer longer lived ones?  Is general happiness a function of how many are enjoying life, or of the average happiness in all those alive, or only the highest peaks of happiness in an unexceptional existence?

Not to mention how to measure or give happiness.  What is a good life for a chicken?  Is a short, safe, crowded existence followed by quick unexpected death (much like people in Manhattan) what a chicken would rather have, or running around hungry searching for grain, worried about foxes?  And if we could, should we insert a gene that makes a chicken want to be killed and eaten by people?

Some people get squeamish and argue we should kill nothing.  Yet everything does die, and everything does go back into the food, one way or another.  Soylent Green where people are made into protein is not a whole lot different from the Marseillaise, where enemy soldiers are to be bled into the fields for fertilizer (of course, everything sounds more civilized in French.)

The core problems, like all the important ones humans face, cannot really be solved logically.  The world contains too many contradictions, too many subtleties.  Where there are many people involved, especially folks allowed to think freely, that means there will be thousands of different conclusions from the same chaotic premises, all based on logic, all faultless given what the proponent has selected as the most important starting points from an infinity of possibilities. 

We must each decide for ourselves.  That part is easy.  But should we also decide for others, claim this is permissible and that is not because I say so?  Is force acceptable in attaining such ends?  Yes, plain old steak can provide an awful lot of meditation if time is available.

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Wilbur had been saved, thanks to the spider web overhead.  People brought their cell phones to the fair and took pictures.  One of them caught Wilbur walking around trying to read the message, and posted it on you tube where it went viral.  Wilbur was famous.

He got booked at other county fairs, on the late night talk shows, and had a few newspaper features.  But, of course, without Charlotte, he was just another pig, and interest gradually died out and the public became interested in something else equally important.  Eventually he was back at the farm, a little older, just a regular old pig.

Before he was made into bacon, an entrepreneur who was trying to start the “Porker Hall of Fame” in Mason City bought him  as one of the attractions.  Naturally, that enterprise went bust after a few years, but out of a kind of nostalgia, the owner had him slaughtered and mounted as a remembrance in his living room, where he gathered dust for decades.

Eventually, it was just another piece of old furniture bric-a-brac when the couple died, their children had no desire for such a weird conversation piece in their house, and it ended up, and most things eventually do, discarded and buried.

Which moral is it here?  That fame is fleeting and illusory?  That nobody can really escape their destiny?  That no matter what a bright shining moment is worth having?  Or something else?  It’s entirely up to you, gentle reader.

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Steak, yes or no.  I guess that would be a fun debate topic, but the main point I want to make is that this is not an easily debatable subject.  There is a certain amount of logic involved, but there are also a lot of necessary contradictory assumptions.  And always exceptions to any truly rational and moral person.

Not all questions have easy answers.  Especially not ones doing with what is right, what is better, what should be done.  The scientific quest for easy reduction of everything to easy reproducible answers is one of the most dangerous illusions we believe.

Fanfare for Souls

There’s a stream of scientific news and theories based on experiment claiming to discover more about being human each day.  Lots of this seems to conflict with standard religion, old principles, and even common sense.  Eventually, there is talk of artificial people, the “Soul of New Machine”, pouring ourselves into eternal crystal to live as gods forever.

But isn’t it all irrelevant?  Examine yourself, what used to be called the soul, and which I shall call a soul for the sake of differentiation from the scientific nonsense.  You know you exist as a consciousness, a set of experiences, that is not exactly anything but you, and certainly not anything else.  We are marvels.  And part of being marvels is that we are not logic, but rather animals, with all the problems and glories that being live animals gives us.

Science has its uses, but our current culture is possibly too enamored of hard physical reality, and too little concerned with being human.  Or, rather, we tend to see a dichotomy between the two, which makes those who glorify the soul increasingly avoid science, and vice versa.  It should not be necessary to become ignorant to appreciate being us.  All we need do is accept contradictions that cannot be resolved in our capacity as humans, and celebrate our natures even as we try to mitigate our problems.
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I am afflicted by an inability to recognize particular people very well, but I accept it as part of being unique.  Maybe in other times I could have been a useful scout or hunter, since I have almost a perfect ecologic/geographic internal map.  Put me down anywhere and if I have ever been there before I can get oriented almost instantly.  Tell me to find my wife in the crowd at Macy’s, and I need to look for her height, hair color, and top she is wearing today.
 

Even though people thus become ecological extensions like each other object in my universe, I treasure each one.  They are all like me, in more ways than not, even if much of what they do is sometimes incomprehensible.  Heck, some of what I do is incomprehensible.

The world is complex and wonderful.  So are people.  But _ drum roll, this is the key point _ the complexity and wonder is only there because I am fully human.  Not because I can connect everything logically.  Not because I can catalog facts infinitely.  Simply because I have a consciousness that exists to wonder and respect complexity.  Because, in short, I have a soul.

  -

In all eternal space and time

We hear that leptons float along
Quarks echo in peculiar strings
Forming atoms with their songs
Which unify most everything
Into some standards weak and strong
While you and I are built of slime
Which years congealed into sublime
Perspective making us the kings
Of all we think we know _ but wrong!
Outside of this our soul must bring,
Our conscious thoughts to dream, and rhyme.
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Scientific texts stress your brain’s chemistry, psychology stresses your brain’s complex intuitive connections, biology reminds you how much you are like the animals.  All such viewpoints are true, including the ones that stress that everything important that you perceive is interpretation and pattern matching.

Yet you are too complex for that.  You are not simply pattern matching, but infinite pattern overlays of everything from your childhood on, abstract analysis of what to pay attention to, and what to ignore.  You are never simply intelligence, emotions, drives and social conflicts.

You could call this your soul.  It is eternal even this moment in that it exists outside of time.  It is infinite even now in not existing in three dimensional space.  It is too mysterious for any words or rituals to circumscribe and too powerful for any logic nor equations to encompass.

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What constitutes a soul, an individual, a consciousness, a human existence _ all dancing around the same concept _ is an ancient question.  Every person asks it and requires some answer, although some accept simpler answers than others.

Any satisfactory response must address the fact that nobody is simply intelligence, nor emotions, nor drives, nor animal body, nor social position and conflicts.  And yet nobody is without intelligence, emotions, drives, animal body, social position and conflicts.  Anybody is driven by what they are and where they are placed and have no control over their lives.  Anybody sits above the maelstrom in some remote and calm other place and completely controls their essential core.

That question is more important now than it ever was.  Why we are.  What we are. What we should try to do and celebrate.  How different can we be from one another, how much respect should we have for one another and our place in the environment.

Somewhere, we hope to find agreement on how souls fit into civilization.  Somewhere find the balance between acceptance of what is and must be, and striving to be better.  Joy in the barbed gifts of hope and love.  That is a proper quest, even in these times of grand scientific triumph.

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Many angels with little else to do have hobbies, one of the most popular of which is constructing souls for their adventures on mortal Earth.  Like any hobby, the practice can become involved and expensive, including all kinds of esoterica unknown to those not involved.

When the periodic soul festivals are held, a casual attendee might notice only the grandest feature of the potential individual on display _ intelligence, physical stamina, hormonal combinations.  But for cognoscenti and the artisans themselves it is the more subtle touches _ pain threshold, memory clarity, logical leaps _ that separate the common from the exquisite.  For it is not in simply piling on more and more of better and better attributes that a masterpiece is constructed, but in the delicate aesthetic balance obtained.

Bel’s Soul Shoppe is probably the premiere hobbyist’s paradise (pardon the expression.)  There you can find all kinds of uncommon glue, superficial coverings, deep flaws, and all the other necessities of construction and polishing.  The actual work, usually, is done at home in the clouds before a cheerful fire, and can be one of the more solitary pursuits for the cherubim.

Of course, the hope of all is to produce something that will win a prize at one of the grand festivals, and then can be set into the cauldron of Earth to see how it works out.  Following the adventures of such amateur-designed souls as they traverse the perils of life is the grandest spectator sport of all.  The real fun is in seeing how they stack up against the professionally-designed work. 

For those who have not watched any episodes, the big twist is that any soul is not put into a perfect environment which suits it _ the artisan has no say as to when and where and in what circumstances the soul will be incarnated.  So the greatest reward is to see some totally out of place, although fully functional, soul take on the challenges around it and emerge victorious.  The grandest spectacle, of course, is the culmination on Super Soul Sunday, when the current game is ended, souls are gathered back into heaven, and points are awarded all around.

 -

A human is more than an animal, more than logic, and each one is unique in a unique universe.  Each moment which any human experiences is eternal and infinite.  Questions about the boundaries of birth and death are almost meaningless.

The danger in this scientific definition-mad era is that humans will build constraints that make them less than human.  This could be cybernetic enhancement,  overcontrol or elimination of the animal core, too much focus on logic and pattern solving.  The solution, as many religions recognize, is to fit the external and internal universes into each human experience, and to enhance each human consciousness to recognize its primary place in its own world, while simultaneously responding with love to everything it encounters.

Last Decades in Pompeii

In the first century CE, no place on Earth seemed as favored as Pompeii.  It was a vacation destination, very like the Hamptons or Caribbean today, where the wealthy would go for a while and dream of living on the villas overlooking the bay of Naples.  A place to relax and enjoy away from the cares of life and the hassles of the busy capital of the Roman Empire.

The villas stretched for miles, beginning to overrun the vineyards and farms which the locals had cultivated for centuries in the rich volcanic soil.  Fishermen whose ancestors not so long ago were poor and scratching out a living were suddenly delivering fresh seafood to markets at top dollar.  Money was exchanging hands, there seemed no end to possibility, the sun was warm and bright.  The Empire itself was entering a long phase of prosperity, where indeed all roads and tribute led to Rome, now being clad in marble. 

Of course, you had to be a citizen.  Dreams were not for the likes of the slaves, who actually tilled the soil, trimmed the vines, worked in the sex shops, created the artisan trinkets being sold, no doubt, as souvenirs.   Restaurants and shops flourished, all staffed by slaves, owned by freemen who had once been poor.  This was a civilization built on slave labor, as were most of those in the agricultural ancient world.

Maybe once in a while someone would worry a little about Vesuvius, looming overhead.  And yet, the volcano had been dormant for so long that the likelihood of anything happening on any given day seemed quite remote.  And surely, even the Cassandras felt that there would be typical warning signs if it was becoming active again.  Perhaps plumes of smoke or trembling earth.  Time enough then to gather belongings and get away. 

Just one more day in paradise, that’s all anyone wanted.  They would deal with the future as it came.  Life is, after all, dangerous anywhere.  No worries, have a drink.

Of course, on that awful day in 79 Vesuvius activated with a vengeance and no warning.  By the time anyone realized what was happening, most had been killed by superheated air rushing down the mountain, and soon after by the poisonous gas pouring through the streets.  The pumice that rapidly buried everything was almost, as it were, and afterthought.

We enjoy our days immensely, and have our own pleasures.  We think that if something catastrophic should happen to the climate, as we know it has in the past, we will have time and warnings.  Perhaps that is so.  But maybe the climate effects will be more like the hot air, gas, and pumice, sudden and final and with no chance at all to try to fix problems.

-

An interesting thought experiment is imagining that I ended up somewhere, at my exact age and situation but possibly able to speak the language fluently, and wondering what I would do, even knowing a tragedy would strike.  I have no illusions about my influence on things. 

Should I be about to board the Titanic, I would no doubt exchange my ticket and avoid the trip.  I might or might not try to warn someone about the danger, but who would listen anyway?  More morally uncertain is what I would do if I were placed in, say, Nazi Germany in the twenties, or in Pompeii in the thirties.  Should I spend my final years warning appropriate people of what is to come _ would I be any more heeded than those who are aware of the climate today?  Or should I just express my opinions where appropriate, but otherwise enjoy living out my days as best as possible?

I’ve done a lot in the world, I still influence my small domain as I will.  But it is also important to retain a cosmic balance and accept even the bad which is sure to come (in my opinion.)  It all may or may not be part of a cosmic plan, but the future is certainly unknowable, even to an astute fellow like myself.  Perhaps it is “apres moi, le deluge.”  But I refuse to take full, or much, responsibility for what may happen; just as I must take little or no credit if things should turn out well after all.

 

 

-

Another vision by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

-

On stately slopes, drenched by the sun,

The villas overlooked the bay,

Not far from Naples, up the shore,

Where wealthy Romans, rulers, more

Came to relax and play.

 

So many miles of fertile ground

With walls and courtyards circled round

The inner gardens bright with flower scent

Which floated on the murmured fountain fall

And outside stretching towards the sky there went

The vineyards, groves of fruit trees tall.

 

But oh! That deep forbidden chasm which shafted

Deep in the mountain heated richly under!

A savage place! as holy and destructive

As any scroll or sacred book instructed

To priests who warned of hubris-destined blunder!

 

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain creepingly was forced;

Amid whose swift gas plumes which burst

Would rain the dust as blindingly as snow,

Or potters’ clay, to harden here below;

And ‘mid those falling rocks to rest forever

Would hold a moment of historic river.

 

Square miles to vanish in an instant motion,

Freeze master, slave, and servant as they ran,

Each one-time wealthy Roman, ruler, more,

Would end together as a lifeless ocean.

 

And ‘mid the quiet, underneath the lyre,

Some learned voices prophesized the fire!

 

The vessels bringing visitors for pleasure

Floated wind-swept on the waves;

And soon was heard the sighs of leisure

As vacations drowned the hassle of the days.

It was a miracle of craft of men

The villas filled with harmony again!

 

Professors with their digging tools

In a picture once I saw:

They were Italians reaching for their past,

And used their tools to find that last,

Hoping for Empire’s call.

 

Could I revive within me

Such optimistic dreams

To such deep delights ‘twould win me

That in essays filled with schemes,

I would build that future fine,

Those happy folk! Those sun-drenched ways!

 

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

-

You have undoubtedly been exposed to Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court,” or any of its many variants in all forms of entertainment.  If only you could go back in time with what you know, how easily you could become wealthy and important.  But the sad fact is that very few people know enough about the details of history at any given time to make useful predictions, and a lot of what we know is predicated on other knowledge already being available (e.g. knowing how to make gunpowder is relatively useless without the ability to make the iron for cannons.)  And we are always stuck, just as we are in the present, with the limitations of who we actually are.  Perhaps your journey would be more like H. G. Wells’ “In the Country of the Blind.”, where the power to see becomes a handicap.

Especially for long journeys, you would have to relearn a new language from scratch.  And how could you tell what year it was?  Even if you know Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, how would you relate that to the people of that era who used completely different dating methodology?  For the year makes all the difference _ leave a good thing too soon and you are simply poor and foolish _ again.  Wait too long, and you are dead.

In most of history, even having a general idea of what is going to happen will be of very little use during the normal lifespan of a life.  The Roman Empire will fall _ sure _ but when and where exactly.  The Huns are coming?  Same issues.  Even simple things like knowing rats cause bubonic plague won’t be of much use if the bubonic plague doesn’t happen to be the plague du jour. 

The sad fact is returning to the past, with a fair amount of knowledge of how the future really worked out, puts you in not much better shape than you are in the present, wondering which of the strong possibilities (or some long-shot) for the future works out.  It is still you getting out of bed, making decisions, living the day, one day at a time.  Living in fear and hoping for a sign of imminent disaster will only cause you more worry, and will not save you from the blast, gas, and stone when it suddenly shows up.

-

Some, especially those with great stakes in keeping the world as it is, deny that there is any change in climate, or that if there is people and industry are the cause, or that if they are there is nothing to be done about it anyway.  Many more accept that the world is getting warmer, for whatever reason, and no matter what may be done.

But the scenarios are largely distant and gradual _ the sea will rise a few meters over a century, the temperature will go up a few degrees centigrade,  storms may become somewhat more frequent and severe.  Local rainfall patterns may change.  Some species may become extinct.  Too bad, of course, but all that you really need to do is to build a three foot seawall where necessary;  use a little more air conditioning; make houses stronger; change the patterns of what is grown to match the new climate.

Few except alarmist catastrophists point to tippling points and sudden equilibrium shifts.  Suddenly the sea may be saturated with CO2 and the temperature will skyrocket quickly.  Suddenly storms may be so severe that we never recover from them, and cannot move goods as we do now.  Rainfall patterns may become so erratic that we can plan no crops, and that everything fails one way or another.  Water disputes may turn into nuclear wars.  The squalid conditions leading to population collapse may bring forth a new plague.  Not in decades or centuries, but in months or years.  Not gradually, but so severely that there can be no normal adjustment.

Of course, at some point, the Earth is self-correcting and life will survive, maybe even human life, but after the death of billions and the end of the pollution and ecological dumping.  Not over centuries.  Suddenly as the black plague swept Europe, and with as little escape for anyone.

It is like living under the volcano of Vesuvius.  We all know it may erupt anytime, but nobody knows when, and meanwhile the days are lovely and life is very good.

 -

Lucius Publius was chatting with his neighbor Antonius Primus as they surveyed the crews working their fields above Pompeii.  They were some of the originals, people whose ancestors had been here seemingly forever, when the farms were respectable but poor, and all wealth was isolated and local.  Vast changes had been occurring as the town went upscale and the elite decided this was one of the places to be each summer, to see and be seen, to experience the fringes of life.

“So, Lucius, what’s new?” The Mediterranean sparkled below, blue and dotted with sails.

“Well,” drawled Lucius “To tell you the truth I’ve got an offer I don’t think I can refuse.”

“It’s hard to believe the prices being offered these days, isn’t it?”

“You said it.  I hate to give it up, this landscape is in my blood, but I think I owe it to the family to take what I can and let them try to move on up.”

“Now me,” said Antonius, “I don’t think it’s quite at peak.  I’m gonna hang on a few years and let the kids make their own decisions and probably get more.”

“I don’t know.  It seems like a big bubble to me.  One minor eruption from the big guy over there,” he gestured at Vesuvius, “ and the fat cats might all decide Naples is the better bet.”

“Ah, it’s ignored us this long, I’m sure it will ignore us some more.  Life is risk.”

“True enough.  Well, our risk is to find some modest villa outside Rome and make some connections.”

“When you moving out?” asked Antonius.

“Oh, in a month or so.  No rush.  They’re gonna level everything and start over.  Just want the lot, you know.”

“Yeah, no respect for patrimony.  Well, I’ll certainly miss you.”

“You should think about it friend,” said Lucius.  “We’re not getting any younger.”

“Too old to start over in Rome, for me, I think, “ smiled Antonius.

And the years went on.  Antonius held on to his farm, which kept rising in paper value, as his children engaged in local town politics.  He died shortly before Vesuvius blew, and never know that all his generations and all memories of them had been completely erased from the face of the Earth in a matter of hours.

Lucius found a lovely small villa and his children went into public service, rising in the bureaucracy as the Empire grew.  Unfortunately, all his descendants succumbed to the Antonine Plague a hundred-odd years later, and in the end there was nothing remaining of his family history either.

No matter what decision you make, you never know.  Both Lucius and Antonius themselves lived full and happy lives, and died in the happy knowledge that they had done their best.  There is no real way to prepare for most of the possible calamities of the future, and those that do so lose their best chances of the present.

-

Some claim history teaches us lessons.  Others dismiss it as bunk, for today is always new and tomorrow always unexpected.  Certainly trying to tease grand themes out of the past and apply them to the grand themes of today is usually an excuse to bolster irrationally formed goals.

On the other hand, to approach history humbly as a set of stories of people just like us living (or in this case not) through events can make us reflect on our own place.  The circumstances of history are stranger than fiction, and the reactions to those events were real, not conjured up by some novelist.

So think a bit on Pompeii, and hubris, and arrogance, and certainty and being blind to what might happen because it hasn’t happened yet.  But also be humble enough to recognize that even if you knew the future exactly, it would not do much more for your life than to make you more depressed.