Here’s the version of the tale I heard: Sent to stop a riot, a Texas Ranger stepped off the train. The locals said, “They sent only one Ranger?” His famous reply, “You got only one riot.”
 
"Ne te quaesiveris extra," as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in “Self-Reliance.”  

TV comedy writers have given us many lines and situations we can share at parties by revisiting favorite programs in memory and laughing together. You probably have your favorites you share with your friends. Of course, for someone not a fan of your favorite program, it’s a matter of “you-had-to-be-there-to-get-it.” So, at the risk of being one of those carrying around a situation from a comedy series that “outsiders” might not appreciate, I want to recall at our virtual party a line by Kramer from Seinfeld.
 
Lost in Manhattan (this is that part where I try to somehow get you into gist of the program vicariously), Kramer, a somewhat loopy character, calls Seinfeld to ask for help. When Jerry asks him where he is, Kramer says, “I’m at First and First. I must be at the nexus of the universe.” Okay, in my retelling, I fail to recapture the comedic nature of the situation for people unfamiliar with the TV series. You had to be there.
 
But being at the corner of First and First is your situation—everyone’s situation. We’re all at the corner of First and First, regardless of where we are and when we are. Your ancient ancestors also stood at the same corner, and your descendants will stand there, too. Sounds strange and anti-comedic, all of us lumped together at the corner of First and First: But if, as seems certain at this time, the universe began as a singularity smaller than a proton, then everything in the universe, regardless of when it was or is and where it was or is, was on the corner of First in Space and First in Time.
 
This is both troubling and uplifting. Troubling because everyone has a primacy in space and time; there is no “secondacy.” Uplifting because you are as significant in space and time as anyone who ever lived, now lives, or will live. With regard to existence, we’re all the same, and no one holds some special title. All have a common origin at First and First.
 
That also means that all of us—past, present, and future—have an inherent similar value of existence. So, where do our differences originate? When we judge one another and assign value, it isn’t on the basis of our shared origin. Rather, like that tax we place on goods and services called VAT, we establish a Value Added Existence.
 
Now, there’s no escaping the VAE imposed by societies. People have always judged others on VAE. But like any good or service, the value depends on the context. Cars have value because they get us from place to place, but they are useless on 71% of Earth’s surface, where boats obtain their value. Value Added changes not only with place, but also with time. That’s especially true of fashion. Shoulder pads incorporated into dresses in the 1980s lost value; in 2017 many women wore dresses with bare shoulders. (Yes, fashions recycle; values return; some designers have reincorporated shoulder pads into desirable dresses) 

If we know that VAE is transitory, then we might consider value from that nexus of First and First. It lies in all of us, regardless of what we do or how we are perceived. And when we look at VAE, we might consider putting it in context, recognizing that whatever its basis, it will change. 

In 1665 plague hit London. Hard. In 1666 fire destroyed much of it. Did the gods conspire to lay the city and its people in ruins?
 
No. The two incidents were unhappy juxtaposed circumstances, but you can imagine the discussions among the largely uneducated people of the time. Imagination fed by the happenstance of some passing comets and the conjunction of some planets produced the usual wild speculations about causes. In his account of the plague, Dr. Nathan Hodges addressed the notion many Londoners of the time held about causes:
 
     "BUT as soon as it was rumoured amongst the common People, who are always enough astonished at any Thing new, that the Plague was in the City… for it was a received Notion amongst the common People, that the Plague visited England once in Twenty Years; as if after a certain Interval, by some inevitable Necessity, it must return again. But although this Conceit, how well soever justify’d by past Experiences, did not so much obtain with Persons of more Judgment [italics mine], yet this may be affirmed, that it greatly contributed, amongst the Populace, both to propagate and inflame the Contagion, by the strong Impressions it made upon their Minds.
     "AND these frightful Apprehensions were not a little increased by the Predictions of Astrologers, from the Conjunctions of Stars, and the Appearances of Comets; for although but little Regard was given to such Things by Persons of Thought, yet Experience daily shewed, what Influence they had with the meaner Sort, whose Spirits being manifestly sunk by such Fears, rendered their Constitutions less able to resist the Contagion. Whosoever duly considers it, can never imagine that this Pestilence had its Origin from any Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, in Sagitarius on the Tenth of October, or from a Conjunction of Saturn and Mars in the same Sign on the Twelfth of November, which was the common Opinion; for all the Good that happens during the like Conjunctions is assignable to the same Causes.
     "THE like Judgment is to be made of Comets, how terrible soever they may be in their Aspects, and whether they are produced in the higher Regions from a Conglomeration of many Stars, and returning at certain Periods; or whether they are lower, and the Production of sulphureous Exhalations, kindled in our own Atmosphere; For there is nothing strange in the Accension of heterogeneous Particles into a Flame, upon their rapid Occursions and Collisions against each other, howsoever5 terrible the Tracks of such Light may be circumstanced. The People therefore were frightned without Reason at such Things, and the Mischief was much more in the Predictions of the Star-Gazers, than in the Stars themselves: Nothing could however conquer these sad Impressions, so powerful were they amongst the Populace, who anticipated their unhappy Fate with their Fears, and precipitated their own Destruction" (p. 4).*

Let me guess. You’re thinking one of two things: “Well, they were uneducated, especially with regard to planets, comets, and the microscopic sources of disease” or “Sounds just like the masses today, scapegoating whatever or whomever they deem guilty.” You could, of course, hold both thoughts simultaneously. After all, there are still astrologers among us, and the general population, regardless of attempts of science teachers everywhere, still shows signs of seventeenth-century ignorance. Plus, scapegoating is the first refuge of a frightened mind.

Want an example? CNN anchor Deb Feyerick asked Bill Nye whether a passing asteroid was caused by global warming. Look through Twitter, and you’ll see tweets connecting global warming to earthquakes (posted on Moonbattery at http://moonbattery.com/?p=88041 ), such as “…..so can we agree #globalwarming is real now…hurricane after hurricane.. earth quake after quake.”

Look around. Find those—to use the words of Dr. Hodges—with whom ready scapegoating doesn’t “obtain.” Find persons of “more Judgment.”

Don’t you find it interesting that after Newton, Einstein, and van Leeuwenhoek so many of us live in ignorance about the physical nature of our world?  

Maybe not; maybe you think panic and scapegoating are normal. After all, not only do we seem to have missed all those science lessons in school, but we also have national TV announcers and people on Twitter imposing their ignorance on a 24/7 cycle. Every time some planetary conjunction occurs, especially during a syzygy, fright and scapegoating run rampant, and astrologers probably have as strong a following today as they did centuries ago.

Tired of all the scapegoating? You’ll never stop it among “the common People,” but you can be person of “more Judgment” if you want to eliminate scapegoating in your own life. 
 
*Hodges, Nath., M.D., Loimologia: Or, an Historical Account of the Plague in London in 1665. Printed for E. Bell, at the Cross Keys and Bible in Cornhill; and J. Osborn, at the Oxford-Arms in Lombard-street, 1720, a translation of the original version in Latin and published in the seventeenth century, available online at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40106/40106-h/40106-h.htm  

Some rocks exhibit jointing. That is, they have vertical or near vertical separations that split the rocks in checkerboard or near-checkerboard patterns. Typically, joints form as a landscape rises, occupying more volume and accommodating that increased volume by many splits. The joints are zones of weakness, a feature that is apparent at many waterfalls, including Niagara Falls and many of the falls in the shales of the American Northeast. Flowing water can dig as it flows over the breaks. The result is an ever-widening gap and more force on the down slope side of a joint. Eventually, rock breaks away, undergoes further erosion, and becomes the site of a waterfall.
 
Joints also occur in rocks that have no running water to gouge and enlarge them. It is through joints, for example, that water can seep into limestone and dissolve it, forming caverns. Look at the ceilings of most limestone caves, and you will see an elongate joint where water first entered what was formerly solid rock. And joints occur in sedimentary rocks underlying highways and neighborhoods. Their presence weakens the rocks and exacerbates the potential for landslides and rock falls.
 
To prevent disastrous collapses, civil engineers drive rock bolts from one side of a joint to the other; they pin the two sides together. Rock bolts can be seen along highway road cuts and also at Niagara Falls. Hey, jointing and erosion have made the falls, but if further erosion continues, the famous falls will move farther upstream toward Lake Erie. What would happen to the tourism at the current site of the falls?
 
So, the engineers have done what they can to save the falls on the Canadian side. The rock bolts should hold for a few decades—at least that’s what the engineers think. You don’t have to rush off to see the horseshoe falls today; they will be there tomorrow. But forces of Nature being what they are—that is, unrelenting—even the bolted units will break away. We can slow the process, but we can’t warrant it forever.
 
We might ask whether or not joints and rock bolts serve as an appropriate analog for the human makeup. As we develop, we occupy larger volume both physically and mentally. Let’s ignore the former, which becomes a source of a never-ending diet for reducing it. Instead, let’s think about the latter, that mental volume. As we gain knowledge through experience and education, we increase our perspectives. That increase usually comes at a cost. New knowledge often involves some little break from old knowledge. New information can make formerly uniform thinking into a jointed mix of ideas, little separations from ideas of the past. In some instances, those little ideas add up to a profound separation, and a segment breaks off to be completely eroded away. Paradigm shifts are like that.
 
Because we find some security in the relative unity of our knowledge and ideas, we often find ourselves engineering to prevent jointing. Some of us will do anything to bolt our mental states. We want to keep them from inevitable erosion by the ineluctable flow of knowledge and ideas from elsewhere. For security’s sake, we try to preserve the waterfall where it now stands and where we and others can find familiar shapes and processes. However, just as the Lockport Dolomite of Niagara Falls is under constant attack from unstoppable waters acting on its joints, so we are under an information and knowledge attack. People in ancient, medieval, and even early modern times could never experience the flood of information and knowledge that flows past us through the Web and TV. And unlike the single river that cuts and widens the joints at Niagara, the current discharge of information is like the confluence of many rivers at a waterfall, all increasing the force against any weaknesses already present.
 
You can attempt to bolt the mental rocks to hold old ideas together, but you might try allowing some of those separations to occur. What will you lose if new knowledge simply moves a spectacular waterfall from the site of old breaks once so desperately bolted? If anything, the new waterfall will become a site for your own personal tourism, a new wonder in your personal world. 

If you scuba dive just off the western side of St. Lucia, you enter and exit the ocean beneath two volcanic peaks called the Pitons. They are picturesque and towering, especially from the perspective of the ocean, but also from the nearby famous resorts. The Pitons put a noticeable texture on the landscape for the scuba diver who might have risen from a depth of 50 to 100 feet, where fish swim among corals on boulders fallen from the Pitons, making channels of movement and color through which a scuba diver can lazily swim.
 
Of course, one doesn’t have to scuba dive to see the natural beauty of the Pitons. But from the perspective of the ocean’s surface—or just beneath—they impose a dwarfing view. They stand rigidly as conical peaks while the swimmer bounces with waves and currents. And they also serve as a lesson about transience and permanence.
 
Someday, the Pitons will wear away, falling to erosive forces like rainwater and gravity. They will shed themselves of substance as sediment or collapse in landslides. Sure, they will last longer than the individual scuba diver—even generations of scuba divers. But their transient nature far outlasts the transience of human life. Bouncing around and pushed by currents beneath those inspiring peaks, the scuba diver encapsulates the transience of human life.
 
Even though Earth itself is impermanent, it serves as a background against which we see our own temporality. We might argue that our impermanence is starkly contrasted with infinity, but we can’t see infinity. We can’t even imagine it. You know that because you’ve tried unsuccessfully to picture the indefiniteness of both space and time.
 
But those Pitons. You can picture those. You know they are part of a volcanic island that rises from the seafloor, and because you know that, you know that they have a point of origin in both time and space. They are fixed at the moment and for centuries, but they, like the scuba diver are also bouncing in both time and space, and their future is not unimaginable. Looking permanent and strong, they will succumb to destruction both slow and rapid. For their own time, however, they serve as a background against which a scuba diver can see his or her own impermanence.
 
The endurance of Earth’s features can be interrupted by natural processes like earthquakes, eruptions, and erosion. Maybe you live in an area where Earth’s own impermanence is evident through abrupt change, say near the slopes of an active volcano or in an earthquake zone. Generally, however, most landscapes undergo gradual changes.
 
Look around today with this in mind. The places with which you are familiar will change. Highlands will become lowlands; lowlands will be raised into highlands. The changes will be turtles and snails to your rabbit and cheetah existence. All the more reason for you to realize that this is not your practice life.  

​The name Sri is widespread, and it occurs in some form in a number of languages, including Telugu, Javanese, Sinhala, and Burmese. Its meanings make it a fitting honorific, that is, a prefix used as the first part of a name. Those meanings vary but they have an underlying relationship: “Grace,” “Splendor,” “Luster,” “Beauty,” Wealth,” and “Prosperity.”*
 
Would you be opposed to having Sri prefixed to your name? Are you Jane? Then, Srijane. Martha? Then Srimartha. The point? When others call you not Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms., but Sri, they will be honoring you for that grace, splendor, and luster they see in your life. Is there someone you know to whose name you would affix Sri?
 
*See etymology of Sri in various sources, even Wikipedia. It also appears in A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo-Aryan Languages, Oxford University Press, 2010. 

Roland Omnès, author of Quantum Philosophy, begins his book with a dialogue with pre-Socratic philosophers, writing, “Physics has found its primitive objects: space-time and the elementary particles of matter, but at the price of accepting that its principles and its foundations should be irrepresentable to the eyes of the mind” (xix in Prelude).* Whether or not one can actually see is not an impediment to the impediment we all have with regard to “seeing” the “primitive objects” that  make up our universe. The figurative “eyes of the mind” are all blind to such objects.
 
That’s what the physicists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries did to us: They gave us an “irrepresentable” world, a world we can describe only in relationships, only in mathematical terms. The well-informed among us, the mathematicians, have the rest of us at a disadvantage. Familiar with “irrepresentable” entities, they use their special languages to describe and predict, and only with the help of some models, graphs, and computer displays do we come close to “representing.” For centuries, we have relied on the tangible and experienced as the roots of understanding and representation. Now, at the very best we rely only on probabilities, where, for example, an electron can be found or how a photon makes itself known to our actual eyes. And we don’t, as Richard Feynman says in his book on quantum electrodynamics, know “why” the world of the elementary “things” like photons works the way it does.
 
If I ask you to describe an atom, chances are you will draw a little “Solar System” of nucleus and electrons. Yet, we do know that such a model is a gross oversimplification. But a little Solar System is easy to represent in the mind’s eyes. We so depend on representation, but the world the mathematicians and physicists have given us just isn’t representable. And on top our knowing that the fundamental makeup of the world is a matter of probabilities, we have to deal with our difficulties in thinking and language because of people like Kurt Gödel, who taught us that axioms cannot be proved by their own logic. That hurts. We like to think axiomatically. We just love our fundamental assumptions. They provide us with what is representable.
 
There’s been somewhat of a mind’s-eye crisis for more than a century, enough of one for Morris Kline to title his 1980 book, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty.** Most of us are either ignorant of the uncertainty or merely vaguely familiar with it—having either paid attention to the science teacher in the classroom or gone off into a dreamland of our own probabilities. As long as the practical, representable world works for us, we’re happy. The idea of a world based on irrepresentable probabilities of the quantum doesn’t enter into our daily dealings.
 
But we do deal with uncertainties in events and human behaviors. And, of course, there are the uncertainties that become very representable in our representable daily world, such as the famous onstage tiger attack during the Sigfried and Roy performance in Las Vegas. Controlling large predators is chancy, and no one can really explain “why” the tiger attacked its longtime trainer (though I would argue a simple explanation: It’s a tiger). And, of course, there are those fender-benders and more serious car accidents. Electrons rapidly traveling about nuclei don’t collide, but slow-moving cars in parking lots do.
 
Dealing with uncertainty can make people anxious, particularly those who want the mind’s eyes to see not only all that lies in the present, but also all that lies in their personal futures. Just as the fundamental makeup of the world is invisible, so also are many of the probabilities we face. And just like the physicists’ inability to tell us simultaneously the place and movement of photons and electrons beyond the probabilities of both, so we are whirling through a world in which our own probabilities are largely guesswork. That’s the way of our world.
 
Thus, I come back to my oft-repeated aphorism: What you anticipate is rarely a problem. Unfortunately, you can’t “see” all the probabilities of your life. And even in hindsight, to use the metaphor of Robert Frost, you don’t know the consequences of the “road not taken.” But there’s also a fortunate side to this. Yes, fortunately, you live in a world of immense probabilities. Every day—every second—is an adventure. Anticipate what you can, and deal the best you can with the rest.
 
You live in a large amusement park called the Cosmos. And you spend most of your time in its fun house, where you encounter mirrors that give both true and distorted reflections that can fool the mind’s eyes, and where you meet surprises at every turn. Would you spend money and time to enter a “fun house” with no surprises?
 
Face it. Deep down there’s something in you that doesn’t want to see ahead and to know all the probabilities. Such a cosmos would be boring. Even riding the same rollercoaster can become tiresome once the thrills become known and the ending is predictable—you do, for example, get on the coaster at a point to which it consistently returns. The amusement park of the Cosmos gives you no repeat thrill and no guarantee of a safe return.
 
So, in a world of “uncertainty” and “probability” that is also a world in which fundamental axioms fail to explain themselves, you are on a wild ride of an adventure whose outcome is just a guess. Enjoy.
 
*Omnès, Roland. Quantum Philosophy, Princeton, 1999.
 
**Kline, Morris. Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty. New York. Fall River Press, 2011 edition. 

Some conflict seems inevitable. We just don’t always agree on processes and conclusions. We can’t even agree on goals. But some of us—not saying I’m one of the special group—know how to get along in the most trying of differences. Apparently, President James Madison was one of those whose ability to disarm arguers peacefully might be worth an occasional imitation.
 
According to Joseph J. Ellis, Madison’s “diffidence in debate was disarming in several ways: He was so obviously gentle and so eager to give credit to others, especially his opponents, that it was impossible to unleash one’s full fury against him without seeming a belligerent fool; he was so reserved that he conveyed the off-putting impression of someone with an infinite reserve of additional information, all hidden away, the speaker not wishing to burden you with excessively conspicuous erudition” (53).*
 
Of course, in any conflict some issues do carry more “truth” than others, but there are truths that can coexist, if not as equals, then as acceptable alternatives. In the heat of argument, however, coexistence rarely seems to be an option. Such “heat” radiates from TVs when pundits shout their positions in a simultaneous cacophony. Just once, viewers might wish, someone might say to his or her opponent, “Okay, you win.”
 
What could be the result of such a statement? “Well,” you say, “that would be a concession. One person would relinquish a formerly held position and make the opponent seem to be victorious.”
 
“True,” I respond, “that would be the interpretation. Then what? What action will follow?”
 
“But what if the argument were about economics? Wouldn’t yielding mean that a potentially flawed economic system might replace one that is less flawed? What if one economic system hampered personal economic growth? Or wouldn’t a potentially harmful law affect innocent people? Let me give you an example. Legalized pot. Do those who don’t want to breathe it through secondhand smoking then accept by law what they deem to be harmful to their health? TV has been full of loud debates over both of these issues.”
 
“Actually, I don’t know much about either. Obviously, I prefer an economic system that enhances my personal wealth, and I don’t live in an apartment building with a number of pot-smokers whose by-products waft through vents, halls, and doorways. I guess there would be an imposition on the wage-earners and non-pot-smokers who don’t have the desire or wherewithal to move. But that’s only when debate turns into action, and that’s only when yielding one’s position leads to a kind of self-imposed acquiescence to some degree of harm.
 
“Actions—behaviors—do a bit more harm than words. So, we might ask ourselves whether or not the shouters have the power to impose their positions on one another. No? Then what’s the big deal about acquiescing with a simple ‘Okay, you win.’ You know, we don’t have to listen to shouting pundits. They can disappear with a click of a remote. So, what if one pundit said, ‘Okay, you win’? It certainly would be disarming. Would it be Madison-like? Probably not. The opponent and favorable TV audience would interpret the acquiescence as an insult. Why? Probably because it would shut down further discussion, further attempts to impose a way of thinking, further efforts to beat the point into the opposition’s head. Shouting debaters are very much like two boxers engaged in total offense without any defensive moves.
 
“Here’s an idea. Try it sometime. Say ‘Okay, you win.’ What can happen? In the absence of any consequent harmful action, you will have shut down the debate. Life will go on. Nothing human lasts forever: Empires have risen and fallen, and all of them have probably had their share of shouting debaters over issues no one now remembers. Where are the debaters of the Olmecs, the Mayans, the Incas, and the Aztecs? ‘Okay, you win’ won’t destroy a civilization when it is just a matter of turning off the shouting, disarming the shouter, and letting a peaceful quiet fall upon a once noisy room.
 
“However, I think the reaction of one who is told ‘Okay, you win,’ will more often than not be an angry ‘What do you mean?’ In the heat of argument, a cool-down that fast would be difficult. Imagine the TV debate host suddenly faced with the problem of a one-sided debate. Imagine the network bosses saying, ‘We can’t have a peaceful debate. It’s not good for business. People want to hear people shouting over one another. That’s good TV.’ Really, try it sometime. Try saying quietly, ‘Okay, you win,’ and say it with a pleasant smile—not a smirk. Bet you get that angry response—belligerence, to paraphrase Ellis—from an opponent who can’t accept an easy victory.
 
“One more thought. If you think ‘Okay, you win’ is insufficient, you can add, ‘I’ll be happy to hear the detailed details.’ As you and I both know, the devil is in the specificity, and no philosophical, political, or social position, when carried to its ultimate goal, is flawless. So, once again, simply say, ‘Okay, you win. Show me ALL the details.’
 
“Then, if you are so inclined, if your opponent reacts belligerently, you may smirk.”
 
    
*Founding Brothers. Vintage Books, 2000.

According to Terry G. Jordan, Mona Domosh, and Lester Rowntree, “ethnic immigrants never successfully introduce their culture in totality” when they move to a different country. “A profound simplification occurs” (331).* Makes some sense, doesn’t it? Carrying a culture abroad leaves behind the place in which that culture originated and developed (evolved?).
 
The geographers go on to explain that the home culture of immigrants meets both barriers to some traits and filters of those traits. The former block; the latter select. So, the next time you go to an “ethnic neighborhood” or “ethnic festival,” think hybrid. Among the variety of consequences of relocation are a weakening and upsetting of “an age-old balance, causing a rapid discarding of traditional traits and accelerated borrowing, invention, and modification—in short, acculturation” (332).**
 
 Of course, there are those who want somehow to recapture what they believe to be a cultural heritage, not realizing that those barriers and filters have altered the culture. “Ethnic” is partly myth, particularly for second- and third-generation descendants. Language is lost or modified. Customs vary. Even foods take on flavors unknown in the land of origin. Climate can be radically different from origin to new settlement, and with a change in climate comes a change in vegetation. Groups migrating from places with little change in seasons experience seasonal changes in the new homeland. How can any grandfather explain the sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds of a land unfamiliar to a grandchild? So, in new lands, cultures preserve simplified versions of their former character.
 
Now a story. I began my role as a college professor during the civil unrest of the late 1960s. It was a tumultuous time, but then all times, if in different places, can be tumultuous. During a discussion in class one day, an African-American student said, “It’s not like this in Africa. People get along there.” Of course, my initial question was, “Have you been to Africa?”
 
Before I continue, I’ll make a personal observation. Many young people—and a frightful number of older ones—don’t know that “Africa” is not a country, but a continent of many countries. It is also a land of diverse climate, vegetation, and geology. To an uninformed college student, “Africa” might mean a land whose people have dark skin. The differences in human appearance among residents from Algiers to Mogadishu, from N’Djamena to Kampala, and from Accra to Cairo would probably shock those running with stereotypes in their still rather empty heads. And as for “getting along,” think first borders. Why have them if everyone is of the same culture and makeup? Think second of Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi, where about one million people died during the genocides of 1993 and 1994. Think third that on the continent there is more genetic diversity than there is throughout the rest of the derived populations of other continents.  
 
Back to my brief anecdote. I simply asked a follow-up question to my student. “Are you aware of the many wars fought on the continent, some between tribes and peoples who have lived next to one another for thousands of years?” A website called ThoughtCo*** reports that a group commander of the Hutu in the Congo told the Daily Telegraph in 2008, “We are fighting every day because we are Hutu and they are Tutsis. We cannot mix; we are always in conflict. We will stay enemies forever.” And there they are, Hutu living in another country, a translocated segment of an original population, carrying their supposed perfect ethnicity with them. And now I wish I had done one other thing for my student. I wish I had thought to show him a picture of a Hutu and another of a Tutsi and asked him to identify which was which.  
 
Why tell this tale? Seems that we are still stuck on the concept of “ethnicity.” Seems that we don’t see ourselves or others beyond those “simplifications.” Is it just inexperience? Is it just mental laziness? Or, is it insecurity? After all, belonging to a “group,” an “ethnic group,” seems to give people a sense of identity, something to grab hold of in the winds of variation.
 
I don’t know when I heard the following story, so I don’t have the details, but it seems relevant here. In the American Deep South before the Civil Rights movement, a woman who was classified as an African-American was, by ancestry, just 17% of some African heritage. But what about the other 83%? How is it, also, that we called President Obama a “Black President”? Weren’t his parents genetically equal in their transmission of genes? Why do we keep insisting on these stereotypes? How insecure are we?
 
Every translocated culture has gone through filters. You are, most likely, a product of cultural filtering. We don’t all live in the Afar Triangle, still attached by roots of our ancient Australopithecine ancestor Lucy. Translocation—migration—and its subsequent filtering have been the lot of Homo sapiens sapiens for more than 200,000 years.
 
Ethnic neighborhoods and festivals?  
 
*Jordan, Terry G., Mona Domosh, and Lester Rowntree. The Human Mosaic: A Thematic Introduction to Cultural Geography. New York. Addison Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 1997.
 
**Ibid.
 
*** https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-hutu-tutsi-conflict-3554917

You are probably familiar with gravitational lensing, that cosmic process whereby a massive gravitational object like a galaxy, a black hole, or a group of galaxies exert a warping effect on light. Through lensing, we can see around an object. Light from a distant object bends as it passes the strong gravity, the image appears to occur on both sides of the intervening mass, like twin or even quadruplet galaxies, sometimes stretched into semicircular bands of light. The lensing also serves as a magnifier.
 
So, it shouldn’t surprise us that Hubble and Spitzer telescopes have been jointly used to see a lensed small galaxy as it was more than 13.3 billion years ago (give or take a week).* Thirteen point three billion years. Speak of a galaxy far, far away and long ago.
 
But it isn’t the discovery of this most distant object ever observed that interests me. It’s the lensing that does. Why? Because all of us undergo lensing by the people we encounter. Think of the stories you have told about people you met long ago, people whose lives are seen by those in the present through the lensing effect of your telling. How much refraction do those lives undergo by their passing by you?
 
And so, now, in the present, we see the stretched, amplified, parodied, and ostensibly warped lives through the lensing of others who serve as the masses that bend the light of the past and distant lives. Cosmic lensing changes the apparent shape of distant objects. Human lensing changes the character of distant and past people.
 
*http://www.americaspace.com/2012/11/16/hubble-and-spitzer-telescopes-combine-efforts-to-discover-most-distant-object-ever-seen/  

See also https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=gravitational+lensing+pics&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F1%2F11%2FA_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG#id=0&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2F1%2F11%2FA_Horseshoe_Einstein_Ring_from_Hubble.JPG&action=click