In “Mind of an Octopus,” Peter Godfrey-Smith makes the following statement: “When we try to compare one animal's brainpower with another's, we… run into the problem that there is no single scale on which intelligence can be sensibly measured.”* Godfrey-Smith notes that the “head-foot,” that is, the cephalopod that we call octopus has about 500 million neurons, most of which lie in its eight arms. That means that the “brains” of an octopus are different from our brains not just in degree, but also in kind. We’ve localized most of our mass of 100 billion neurons in our heads.
 
We can give an octopus IQ tests of various sorts, and Godfrey-Smith says such experiments have been run. An octopus, for example, can learn to unscrew a jar to get the food it contains. As the researcher reports, an octopus even figured out how to turn off lights by squirting water to short-circuit the power supply. Got to be some intelligence there. Just don’t really understand what’s behind it. You know, a “mind.”
 
Reportedly, an octopus can even distinguish among aquarium keepers and—this is a bit strange—can even develop a dislike for certain individuals, showing dislike by squirting water on the keeper. Ah! The anecdotes are like tales from science fiction writers. We listen to them and shake our heads. Is this our imagination at work, an imposition of human characteristics to convince us that we understand what is going on? Or can these animals really purposefully do what people report they do? The key word: Purposefully. You’ve got a problem if you are the aquarium keeper and your octopus hates you on purpose. How can you convince it that you are a lovable, though alien, creature?
 
Back to Godfrey-Smith’s statement, the one that I believe acknowledges a profound discovery. “There is no single scale….”
 
What is the significance that intelligence of some kind evolved differently from our own? These eight-armed mollusks seem to bear little-to-no-resemblance to “our” kind of life, but, of course, we have a tendency to see things through human analogs. Thus, we draw conclusions that associate our behavior with that of other animals.  We know, however, that we share no similar brain structure with the octopi as we do with other vertebrates, and that makes our own misunderstandings all the more strange. Sharing a brain structure doesn’t seem to give us any more access to another vertebrate mind than the limited access we have to the mind of a cephalopod.
 
So, how do we deal with not just another kind of brain, but also with what the author calls “mind”? Is “mind” even understandable when we consider the brain? When we look at “intelligent” birds, dogs, or elephants, do we have any real understanding of their “minds”? Sure, we have some clues: A wagging tail, a show of teeth, a snarl, a certain posture. Maybe these outward signs reveal a probable intention. But do they reveal “mind”? And in the outward signs of our fellow humans do we see a true revelation of “mind”?
 
Are we capable, even with our similarly structured brains, of sensibly measuring each other’s minds? Sure, we can map the brain, categorize behavior, trace the biochemistry of memory and emotion, and devise tests that purportedly measure “intelligence,” and we can piece all these together into a puzzle we call “mind.” But the puzzle is always missing crucial pieces.
 
So, when we run into the unexpected, say a behavior such as suicide by one who seemed “happy” or debilitating addiction by one who seemed to have everything, what understanding do we reach about the mind behind the brain and its manifest behavior? Or when we run into apparently motiveless malignity, do we have any real explanations other than to call such a mind “evil,” “warped,” or “pathological”?
 
If by spitting at one aquarium keeper and not another an octopus with 500 million scattered neurons befuddles a human with 100 billion localized neurons, is there hope that we will ever reach an understanding of another 100 billion neurons whose cumulative and cooperative work generates a “mind” separate from our own?
 
There might be, however, some instances of a “meeting of minds” that is, in itself, not comprehensible and not measureable. Two people “of one mind” act at least briefly in unison. Moments in sports between or among teammates, moments in military action, moments in times of catastrophe, all “heightened” moments, and moments in “love” somehow join “minds.” Strangers become one. Separate organisms join in ways that cannot be quantified.
 
Maybe those 500 million neurons in an octopus somehow allow it to sense the mind of an aquarium keeper. Maybe an octopus can read something it doesn’t like in one and does like in another human. Maybe in that perception there is a meeting—albeit in dislike a negative one—of minds between brains that evolved along different paths. Or maybe there’s just some bit of instinct that isn’t “mind,” but rather is a reaction to a stimulus as simple as magnetotactic bacteria sensing north and south in a magnetic field. Tough call.
 
So, some people like you, and others don’t. Good luck in figuring out why in either case. To do so means understanding mind.

Practical application: Is there any relationship between the foregoing musings and current or past events? Am I suggesting that the above applies, for example, to reactions to the 2016 American election? Just read my mind, but please don’t squirt water on me as I walk past the tank. 

*Scientific American Mind, Neuroscience, “The Mind of an Octopus,” January 1, 2017. Adapted from Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Copyright © 2016 by Peter Godfrey-Smith. Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC (U.S.), HarperCollins (U.K.), at
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-mind-of-an-octopus/#
​

Behavioral strategies. Do they differ under different circumstances and in places with different character? Do they prove a hierarchy of humanity? Why should I ask?
 
The highly common nature of our human DNA suggests that we are all, in fact, human. Yes, we do different things. Yes, we hold varied values. And yes, we even look different, so much so that for thousands of our species’ years we have either recognized or argued about race. Ostensible differences, however, don’t keep us from calling both white and red “wine.” Back to my question: Why should I ask?
 
I was intrigued by John J. Shea’s hypothesis that humans have always been human.* Shea proposes that archaeologists need to rethink human origins, that the so-called revolutionary transition from “nonhuman” hominins to human ones was not a matter of a gradual rise from primitivism. Our ancient human ancestors were human, just as you are human. Evidence for this hypothesis lies in the strategies that our ancient ancestors used to shape and use their tools. Here’s a passage from his “Refuting a Myth about Human Origins: Homo sapiens emerged once, not as modern-looking people first and as modern-behaving people later”:
 
​  "The differences we discover among those strategies will lead us to new and very different kinds of questions than those we         have asked thus far. For instance, do similar environmental circumstances elicit different ranges of behavioral variability? Are there differences in the stability of particular behavioral strategies? Are certain strategies uniquely associated with particular hominin species, and if so, why? By focusing on behavioral variability, archaeologists will move toward a more scientific approach to human-origins research."
 
Imagine trying to suggest this kind of thinking in Nazi Germany. No, step into the present. Imagine trying today to suggest that behavioral strategies shaped by place mask a common humanity.
 
Here’s your assignment: Make that suggestion in an American inner city, in the suburbs, and in the presence of any exclusive group. Make that suggestion in the Middle East. Make it to Hutus and Tutsis. Make that suggestion to any two opposing groups of “humans.” What, do you suppose, will be the reaction to your suggestion?  
 
 
*John J. Shea, “Refuting a Myth About Human Origins: Homo sapiens emerged once, not as modern-looking people first and as modern-behaving people later”
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2011/2/refuting-a-myth-about-human-origins/5

Paths, walkways, streets, and highways have long been a part of human life. Life seems to like the straight-and-narrow. Even animals make and then use beaten paths. Following a previously traversed route has even put certain images into the cultural psyche: Route 66, Oregon Trail, Trail of Tears, the Silk Road, all bring to mind not only geography, but also tales of heroism and despair, stories of adventure and trial, and visions of a hopefulness that comes with traveling to new places. So, after centuries of making trails that cross the planet on both land and sea, we come to a time when stepping off the beaten path brings a certain joy and excitement. Of course, there are those who prefer the walk they’ve walked, the stroll past the familiar. Known routes are generally safe routes because the traveler knows what to expect.
 
We shouldn’t fault ourselves for not being the first to make a path. Not everyone gets to be a Phoenician, a Viking, a Mediterranean sailor, or an Astronaut. Similarly, we shouldn’t fault ourselves if our thoughts have been the thoughts of those who have walked before us. We might follow a path made by ancestors, but we all take different steps. The nuances of our thoughts make thought-trails different. We see them as insights. We think of ourselves as off-roading. Our maps are personal surveys of landscapes never measured.
 
Recognizing that others have walked similar, but not exact, paths keeps us humble. Knowing that we walk a different step here or there—if only slightly off trodden ground—gives us a sense of Self.
 
As you walk and think today, take an occasional sideways step to do a little “off-roading.” You don’t have to wander too far. You don’t have to get lost. And, as you know, when any of us go way off the trail others follow, two things can happen: We can’t find our way back, and those who look for us give up the search.
 
You’re not going to discover a totally new world previously unknown by such off-roading, but you will discover a bit of Self no one has ever experienced. You might stumble upon a new perspective that no one else will ever see. (It is difficult to get others to follow along an unfamiliar trail) But remember that humans have conquered the planet step by step.
 
There’s an explorer in most people, and that’s why universities have departments and academics have specializations. Take archaeology as an example. Main path? Guys like Heinrich Schliemann discovered Troy. Archaeology at first meant finding old stuff and places. “Not enough,” a second, third, and fourth generation of archaeologists said. So, now we have the subdisciplines like aerial archaeology, archaeoastronomy, archaeozoology, archaeobotany, calceology, computational archaeology, maritime archaeology, osteology, and the list goes on. Little steps off the beaten path, exploration by baby steps, and the discovery of whole new worlds called categories, or subdisciplines, or specializations. Want to see how we off-road? Look at the list of courses for any university major field of study. Look at the credentials of every academic. Eighteenth-century “naturalists” have branched; the road has divided. We might not be able to look back on the personal “road not taken,” to use Frost’s words, but we can look back to see many have taken many roads, and we can look ahead to see bits of untrodden earth, nuances of philosophy, and variations of study. It’s how civilization expands, tiny off-road explorations.
 
Where will you step today? Have a desire for some off-roading?

I know, ‘you can’t tell a book by its cover’ is the expression. But maybe you haven’t heard. Researchers at MIT are developing a technology to read a closed book. The system would use terahertz radiation. How lazy have we become?
 
“Charley, I want to read your book, but then I’d have to open it and turn all those pages.”
 
“No, just sit back and point this terahertz reader at the cover.”
 
And now 2017 brings us to another technology that will definitely change our lives. After a man in Arkansas died in his hot tub, investigators decided they needed to examine an Amazon Echo smart speaker to see whether or not it recorded information about his death.
 
“Charley, I was going to do all the traditional leg work to investigate, but, hey, Alexa says she’ll save me the trouble. I think she’ll investigate while I read an unopened book with my terahertz reader.”
 
Imagine the ancients unrolling scrolls. Go back further. Imagine carrying around runes or having to go to a painted cave wall or scratched rock in a desert to obtain information or to communicate.
 
“Charley, I wanted to show you the family pictures, but we’ll have to wait until I light this torch. The cave is dark, you know.”
 
“Charley, I left you a message on a rock in the desert. Walk toward the setting sun for a couple of days if you want to read it.”
 
And you, techie that you are (Don’t deny it; I see you reading this on a HD screen), ask, “Charley, am I really that dependent on machines and AI? Am I becoming—or have I become—a creature of technology? Am I personally transforming?”
 
We’re not going to stop advancing our technology, and, as we all know, that advancement will present new problems as it solves old ones. But one problem that tech will never solve is a meeting of minds. It will merely give us a greater facility to disagree.
 
I’ve not done any survey. Maybe there’s an algorithm for it: What percentage of technologically enhanced communication is given to disagreement as opposed to agreement? What percentage is love rather than hate?
 
I wonder whether we would find our world a bit less contentious if we had to find some sticks, figure our how to light them, walk into a cave with our torch, and look for ochre on a cave wall before we communicated. Or, what if we had to carry rocks with runes to convey messages? Or, even walk long distances to see a petroglyph?
 
Tech could enhance peace and love because it provides an instantaneous way to communicate. It doesn’t, of course. Time and space have virtually disappeared; and to a certain extent with them, love and peace.
 
“Charley, you don’t understand. Even though people once had to travel across place at the expense of time to communicate, they still waged wars. Tech has done virtually nothing to improve the fundamental nature of human relationships. I know that this is nothing new, that many people understand human shortcoming is independent of space and time between people. But I do wonder whether or not those who cross space at the expense of time in order to communicate wouldn’t have a slight “human” advantage, whether or not adding time and space wouldn’t put a little more humanity in humans. Probably not, but today I will imagine my smart phone painted on a cave wall, scratched in desert rock, or etched like runes on the ruins of an ancient form of communication. I might even leave it across the room to pretend I have to cross space at the expense of time just to talk to someone who is not a disembodied voice in a smart speaker.”
 
http://esciencenews.com/articles/2016/09/09/researchers.prototype.system.reading.closed.books


Postscript 1: And soon, you'll be kissing your phone. See ​http://wtop.com/mobile/2017/01/lonely-kissenger-simulates-long-distance-smooch-internet/slide/1/ 

Postscript 2:  And is this the future of love? ​https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2605288/westworld-humans-robots-coming-rise-sex-machine/ 

Rising or lifted air: Meteorologists look for the invisible stuff daily. Everyone experiences the consequences of it: Weather maker. Heated air rises as long as it is relatively lighter than the ambient air through which it climbs. Hand-over-hand on a gondola suspended from a hot air balloon. Go up. Still warmer than the air at the new level? Then rise more. Keep rising until the temperature of the ambient air and the rising air reach equilibrium. Once a pocket of air becomes colder than the ambient air, it is destined to sink, to make the plunge back toward Earth, but it does so as a different character, now a cooler body of air. And then, surprisingly, as the air descends, it heats by compression under the increased pressure nearer the surface. Rising air is also a consequence of what lies below: The shape or composition of Earth’s surface, and definitely the infrared energy radiated. Air over the warm, moist Gulf Stream in the Atlantic takes both heat energy and moisture aloft. Air over summertime Nevada rises dryly. And then there’s the influence of topography, of the shape of Earth’s surface.
 
Air can’t move a mountain except bit by bit, mineral grain by mineral grain pushed by winds. No, air that approaches a mountain range, called an orographic barrier, has to rise to pass over the rocky blockade. Orographic lifting: The model for getting by things that stand in our way. Run into an obstacle? Rise above it.
 
Of course, in rising, character undergoes change. Rising air will cool with decreasing pressure at increasing altitudes. Cooling changes the ability of the air to hold its moisture. That’s why you see a puffball cloud on a clear day. Some air rises and loses its ability to hold moisture as a vapor that through condensation on microscopic dust in the atmosphere changes to liquid, the little drops that in the billions make a cloud. And so, on the windward side of mountain barriers, rising air also forms clouds that on the lee side dissipate during the descent and subsequent warming. Think of lee sides as blow driers. Warming increases the potential for evaporation on air that lost much of its moisture to the rains and snows on the windward side of the orographic barrier.
 
So, too, all of us, in rising to pass over the obstacles in our life, must leave something behind, must change character. We might have to bang into a mountain, but we’re not stuck there. Rising is an alternative, even if it means changing our character by leaving something, some mark, on the windward side. Stand in our way? We’ll pelt you with what we carry, some rain. We’ll cover you in snow. Then lightened, we pass over and on the lee side, pick up a new energy. And behind us? The barrier itself has been changed, and not just temporarily. Rains and snows-turned-to-glaciers erode; they lower the barrier’s elevation for future masses of air. Every barrier suffers decay, just as barriers you must cross have been worn by those passing before you.
 
Every obstacle changes us, but getting past one provides the opportunity to discover something new about ourselves. Carrying too much moisture at the base on the windward side? It’s gone on the other side. Look back where you left the tears you lost in the climb. The obstacle bears the mark of your passing while you, forever changed, move over a new landscape. Character change is inevitable, but becoming something different while being recognized as that which passed over a barrier is the nature of Self. We can look back at what we left behind, but we always have a changing landscape to cross. At times, we will adopt the character of the landscape, becoming, like air, hotter or colder, wetter or drier. At times, we will shed both heat and moisture, maybe at times we will even pick up briefly some choking dust. But because we are always in the process, we always have some new character.
 
Barriers lift us.
 

Finally, we’ve made something colder than the temperature on the chest of a witch, a tiny drum cooled below the supposed quantum limit. Jeremy B. Clark, et al., say “we propose and experimentally demonstrate that squeezed light can be used to cool the motion of a macroscopic object below the quantum backaction limit” (the lowest temperatures obtained by laser cooling).* The experiment cooled an aluminum 20-mm diameter drum with a thickness of 100 nm. The drum beat at a rate of 10 million times each second, but its range of motion was nearly zero. Imagine.
 
Everything moves. Everything. Not just big things, but the tiny stuff that makes up everything, and, as you know, the measurement of that movement is what we call temperature. Faster atomic and molecular motions equal higher temperatures. But now imagine that Clark and his fellow researchers have almost achieved the heretofore only imagined lack of motion. Nada. A stillness beyond comprehension. Seems almost spiritual.
 
We are creatures of motion, even in deep meditation and quiet. The motion is part of who we are: Neurons, bacteria, viruses, cells, organs and tissue, all in a seemingly chaotic motion while simultaneously working (most of the time) in unison. A drumbeat, or rather a multitude of drums beating more or less in unison. When everything seems to be going well, all the drums pound out a rhythm to which we march as a unit. But, of course as we know, keeping so many beating drums vibrating in sync isn’t easy.
 
It’s difficult for us to keep our own drums beating in unison for any extended period. Consider, then, how difficult it is to achieve a unity of percussion among so many different drummers. To do so, we have to cool down the drums, take away energy.
Maybe that’s why we want people in conflict to “cool down” and why we think of the “heat” associated with conflict.
 
It took hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of researchers’ time and material to cool a tiny drum to a previously unachieved quantum limit. Ironic, isn’t it? So much energy had to go into the experiment to reduce energy toward the magical state of motionlessness that was only a temporary accomplishment.
 
Want to know why we have so much conflict, so much heat and antagonistic motion, so many drummers beating different rhythms? We are creatures of incessant motion that only with the greatest effort can achieve just briefly a state of quiet and peace. Motion is built into the structure of the universe, and therefore, into the world of human activity. Sorry to say, but eventual conflict is our lot. But it’s nice to think that maybe a limit we thought we could never reach might be, in fact, reachable. Maybe the temperatures will fall someday, but I’m not betting on that cool day. 

Well, no one wants to be considered a misanthrope except the misanthrope. And, of course, there are such among us, people who just hate people. Hard for people-lovers to understand. Two sides to the human coin: Alceste, the misanthrope, and Philinte, the socially astute gentleman of the court. They are two characters in Molière’s play The Misanthrope, and early on in the play they address a problem we still face: Do we tell the truth and stand for some principle and in the process offend someone maybe even publicly, or do we express esteem for everyone, even for those with obvious vice in hopes that we offend no one?

Alceste argues thus: “Esteeming everyone, you esteem nothing.”

Philinte asks: “Would it be suitable to tell to people everything that you really think about them?”

Get the idea? Philinte thinks “utter frankness would be ridiculous and out of place” and “In society you have to express the usual formulas of polite behavior.” In contrast, Alceste says, “No, I can’t stand that… unworthy fashion which you society people now affect.” Alceste doesn’t like “lip service,” given by people who spread their arms for “insincere embraces, overflowing with useless courtesies, trying to win a war of compliments, treating alike the gentleman and the fool.”

How do we balance truth and fawning compliment? Most of us would recognize the sycophant as a person without much substance. Most of us would recognize insincere praise. Yet, most of us will allow such superficiality as social convention. Most of us would say there is some boundary that separates truth and frankness. Philinte asks Alceste if he would “tell old Emilie it’s time to lay aside her claims to beauty, say her enameled face is really an outrage,” or tell “Dorilas that he’s a bore, that he has deafened every ear at court with his nobility and gallant deeds.”

Don’t we all run into this conflict between truth and social decorum with regard to our values and those of people who see the world differently? Do we choose frankness to the point of being blunt? Philinte tells Alceste that his obsession with frankness “amuses people...and your high fury against current customs makes you ridiculous in the eyes of many.”

Are you Philinte or Alceste? Do you lie along a sliding scale between the two? What’s your stance? Or, have you no stance? Willing to accept anything just to fit in? Are you convinced as Philinte is that “the world won’t change for anything you do”?

​Think of the consequences when you are neither Philinte or Alceste, when you are esteemed by a Philinte out of social courtesy or told a truth about yourself by a blunt Alceste. Which would you prefer? Esteem, even if undeserved? Deserved truth, even if spoken bluntly? Observe yourself. Observe others. Are we characters in a play by Molière?


 

Here’s the gist: “Professor Robin Dunbar of the University of Oxford’s Experimental Psychology department, said: ‘This study showed that frequenting a local pub can directly affect peoples’ social network size and how engaged they are with their local community, which in turn can affect how satisfied they feel in life.’”* What in the world have we come to? Now we need someone to tell us what people have known since the discovery of brewing. Someone in England needs to “get a life.” And someone in America, too: The government spent $450,000 to discover whether or not dinosaurs could sing and $150,000 to see fish walk on a treadmill (one might guess the earlier study to watch shrimp walk on a treadmill warranted further study on how aquatic life takes to a moving belt)**.  
 
Can you imagine the after-work conversation?
“I’m home, dear.”
“Darling, how was your day?”
“The treadmill was down again, so the fish didn’t walk. This is going to set us back to square one on the project, and the report is due by the end of the month.”
“Have a glass of wine. I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Did you ever put one of those mudskippers on the ground between ponds to see what it might do? I think I squashed one on the highway once.”
 
Again, what have we come to?
 
We seem to have time on our hands and an insatiable desire to research any topic that pops into our heads. Okay, if that’s our desire, then I’m up for some studies that will teach us nothing: 1) If we put a junior high school student on the International Space Station, will he still stick gum to the underside of a work station? 2) Is there a universal definition of “business casual”? 3) Do angry Buddhists curse by saying “Siddhārtha Gautama”?
 
The reality is that folly proliferates rather easily in non-farm and non-subsistence societies. And both technology and specialization aid the proliferation. Don’t take my word for it. Go back to the 1972 publication of Stanislav Andreski’s Social Sciences as Sorcery, a book in which the author takes researchers to task, for example, for giving us pages of data to prove something our grandmothers knew: That humans are gregarious.
 
So, here we are decades later doing a study to find out that people like going to pubs to drink socially. Don’t we already have a cliché to describe this: “Birds of a feather flock together.” We even have individual words that do the same: Gaggle, gang, and party. And don’t we all already know that most people aren’t hermits, that coffee houses attract clientele, and that people take a bottle of wine when they are invited to someone’s house for dinner?
 
Though I’m not given to rummaging through the comment sections, I was struck by a review of Andreski’s work published by “andre” from Brazil in 2011: “here in Brazil, [in] the most prestigious universities, we saw the teachers saying the … obvious …with the utmost poise. It's … respected nonsense with a doctorate.”***
 
I think we all need an Andreski Check (or even an “andre” check) at times. Neither poise nor credential guarantees profundity. That we keep spending money on what we already know isn’t much different from the mudskipper on the treadmill: We’re not really going anywhere, and we’re probably not quite sure why we have to do all this walking to get there.
 
 
* http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-01-06-your-health-benefits-social-drinking  
 
** http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=fish+walking+on+treadmill&view=detail&mid=A143296CD23C71368CCFA143296CD23C71368CCF&FORM=VIRE
 
*** https://www.amazon.com/Social-Sciences-Sorcery-Stanislav-Andreski/dp/0233962263/ref=la_B001HCZQRM_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484141949&sr=1-1

If we haven’t been one, we know one: The recalcitrant teen. Hard to reach through a shell of underdeveloped emotion and ability to reason, such a person is dead set on reaching some immediate goal without considering its long-term consequences. It is the epitome of sophomoric living. Inexperienced in the ways of the world, yet having just enough knowledge to warrant a faulty self reliance, the teen “kicks back” and defies the wisdom of his or her elders. “What do they know about how I feel?” the teen says to Self.
 
So, generation after generation, the kicking goes on: Inexperienced youth in defiance of experienced adults. Contention prevails. It’s a time of will against will in most families, and in society in general, it’s a time fraught with disagreement about what is and is not important, valuable, and meaningful. And as is usually the case, the ensuing generation only too late discovers the nature of the previous generation’s concerns, warnings, and advice. Emotion rules.
 
In such a setting isn’t every generation inclined to reach impasses? It seems that in general—of course, this in no way applies to you because you have never been recalcitrant—recalcitrance runs through the species. We might avoid it personally during our mental and emotional development, but there it is, a world of recalcitrant individuals imposing an almost ineluctable influence. So, contentiousness breaks out as one adult “kicks back” at another or at others, or, on a different scale, one group “kicks back” at another group (religious, political, social, economic). “What,” a person (or group) asks, “does he (or they) know about how I (we) feel (or think)?”
 
Is this a simplification? Is recalcitrance too easy to identify as a cause? Or is there really some innate “teen know-it-all” lurking in the depths of both person and society?
 
Here’s what we know through experience: Recalcitrant teens usually have to outgrow their recalcitrance, often through learning in a bad or even harmful experience. And, as we look at history, it seems that every generation somehow engenders a recycled attitude that leads to violence and war. Recalcitrance: Is it a basic human characteristic? 

Good luck to METI and SETI. The latter (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been listening for messages from outer space, and the former (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence) wants to send messages to Proxima b, the closest Earth-like extra-solar planet. SETI can’t positively identify as signs of messaging any radio signals it has received so far, and chances are that another intelligence’s discovering us through our communication will come too late for us to know. What about Voyager I and II and Pioneer 10 and 11? Those spacecraft are at the edges of and beyond our Solar System. Again, chances of their discovery by an alien intelligence are less than your finding a pea hidden on Earth.
 
How does it feel to be living in a modern Strongilovouni? Where? Thessaly. Recently  studied, the ancient and forgotten city lay buried beneath sediment of the Enipeas River for about twenty-three centuries. The city existed, fell into ruin, and passed from human memory. Sounds like a science fiction tale often told, a story of an intelligent race long gone, one that left some remnants of its existence for aliens to find, much like the old cult classic movie Forbidden Planet or like the more recent movie Total Recall in which humans are the “aliens” that discover remnants of ancient civilizations.
 
Save that CD you made a few years ago; save those pictures and videos. Aliens will want to decipher them as they work diligently to understand the remnants of your civilization. Build any big walls or structures? They last a long time; just look at the Great Wall of China and at Hadrian’s Wall. Walls at Strongilovouni have also survived in part. Of course, in time walls will fall into decay, and sorry to say your pictures will fade just as your digitized stuff will succumb to breakage, magnetic disruption, or burial.
 
Assuming Proxima b residents, having received a message from Earth, have both the technology and desire to visit us, we still have a problem of communication. We won’t be here when they arrive. In fact, centuries from now, we will be as lost to memory as the people of Strongilovouni are to us. Sure, we have some hints that tell us about Strongilovouni’s general makeup and culture, but not much more. We don’t know anything about any Strongilovounian in particular. No one left a CD, pics, or video.
 
Communication is two-way. Neither discovering nor deciphering is communicating, but archaeology is valuable as a partial avenue into the minds of peoples no longer capable of representing themselves. The people of SETI and METI know this, but it hasn’t discouraged them from trying to communicate across time and space. Their efforts, praiseworthy in the eyes of many, still have multiple problems, such as sending a signal to a distant world that is moving through the galaxy. To what part of the sky does one aim the message, where the object now appears or where it will be in, say, 4.2 years? And how does the distant intelligence know when or where to send a reply?  
 
What if we put as much effort in trying to communicate with the neighbors we know in our own Strongilovouni? Is it not interesting that we are both looking for messages and sending messages to other worlds when we haven’t mastered communicating on our own? In a sense, on our own planet we are surrounded by aliens, beings we only partially know or understand. They are building “cities” that won’t last long, but here’s our chance to understand some intelligence before time covers its place in the sediment of forgetfulness.