NASA uses “clean rooms” for important projects, such as the building of the James Webb Space Telescope that, as of this writing, is currently under construction. Clean room: Yes, filtered air and people wearing white suits and operation-room masks. You get the picture.
 
That we can make a clean room is a technological wonder in itself. Think of all the stuff on us, in us, and in the air around us: Clay particles too tiny to see with a light microscope, bacteria, parts of bacteria, pollen, soot from volcanoes and factories. This is a “dirty” world, one that keeps putting dust on the coffee table and collecting as dust bunnies in college dorm rooms.
 
We ignore the dirt over which we have little control unless it comes to our attention in some big way. Even the dust gathering on the coffee table is visible only after it accumulates sufficiently for us to see a dulled finish. Accumulations are key to our observations.
 
And that appears to be the key to our observations of all things human and societal. An isolated behavior is a mote. Accumulated behaviors are a layer.
 
Could we see a mote if we wanted to see one? Of course, but the effort required is considerable. We would have to look from various angles and with some considerable magnification. Layers accumulate subtly. Changes in behavior that appear like a dust layer on the coffee table occur one mote at a time. We don’t notice until the dust bunny hops in the corner, energetic by the sweep of a door’s opening.
 
NASA looks for the motes before they accumulate, goes to great lengths to keep them out. Why would builders take any chance with an eight-billion-dollar experiment like the James Webb Space Telescope? Why? Well, let’s just say that every once in a while you clean your sunglasses or prescription lenses. 
 
Observing requires clear vision. Clear vision means no dust on the lens. No dust on the lens requires some screening for particles that could accumulate, to eliminate the possibility of a dust buildup. The dust is there, all around, but those concerned with its potential accumulation act before the buildup occurs.
 
We need some clean rooms to filter the motes of inimical behavior. The care NASA takes to make an eight-billion-dollar device an effective instrument is a model for the care all of us might emulate in the formation of an instrument far more valuable: An individual. Of course, we will have to look from all angles and under some considerable magnification, but if we can just keep one behavioral mote at a time from settling, we can keep the accumulation of inimical dust from covering what we value most. 

How do you handle something that is “one of a kind”? With care?
 
Of Earth’s thousands of minerals, about 100 are very common. Quartz, the dominant mineral in beach sands from Maine to Texas, is a combination of silicon and oxygen, and it should be common because its component elements dominate the composition of Earth’s crust.
 
Unlike silicon and oxygen, two elements that are probably not on everyone’s list of common stuff are thorium and molybdenum These two combine to make a mineral called ichnusaite. Ichnusaite is the rarest of minerals. Mineralogists know of only one specimen from Sardinia. Just one, and it comprises a very small set of overlapping sheet-like crystals about 300 microns long. For anyone metrically challenged, let me say that’s really tiny.
 
Minerals form as substances of specific composition under environments with limited ranges in temperature and pressure, and they form only when there is both space to form and sufficient atoms to join in their crystalline structure. Those that we use for gems are specimens that formed under ideal conditions. But Earth is a messy place, so many natural crystals aren’t “pure.” An “ideal, perfect” diamond is a carbon mineral, not a combination of elements like quartz, but individual diamonds contain other elements as evidenced by variations in color. Some boron atoms, for example, lie within the crystal structure of the Hope Diamond, imparting a blue color.
 
I don’t know whether or not the single specimen of ichnusaite is composed of just thorium and molybdenum. Maybe it is. To discover whether or not it is a “pure” mineral requires destroying a small sample of it. The size of the specimen doesn’t give anyone much to work with. Beside, what might be accomplished by altering the only specimen? Could there be other elements incorporated in its crystal sheets? Sure. Thorium’s destiny is to turn into lead through radioactive decay, so we could assume that process is already altering the mineral’s composition.
 
That there is only one specimen is the point here. No one is going to care if you alter one 300-micron grain of sand on a beach. Probably some would take note if you altered the only specimen of ichnusaite by taking it apart to see its composition. Destroying one-of-a-kind leaves none of that kind. Yes, I know, there are some who would opt for the destructive analysis regardless of its obvious consequence.
 
Why is it that we don’t treat individuals as we do the only specimen of the rarest mineral? We call ourselves “individuals” for a reason: Each is one of a kind; each, rare; each worth preserving without destructive analysis.   

Rock and fire, thing and process: The ancients used both without understanding the nature of either. Rock and fire, two of the earliest, if not the earliest, technologies were largely mysteries to our ancient ancestors. Rocks were blunt-force tools, chippers, scrapers, blades, and missiles. Fire was threat and furnace, protector and destroyer. Rock and fire, thing and process. No need to know about atoms becoming molecules becoming minerals becoming rocks. No need to know about rapid oxidation. Useful thing and useful process. Those ancient ancestors were the ultimate utilitarians: We can; therefore, we use.
 
And aren’t we just like them in many ways? If a thing is readily useful, we use it; likewise, a process. Maybe you’re a computer expert, knowledgeable in both hardware and software. That’s good. You understand both thing and process. Maybe you’re very bright and educated, so you pretty much understand how things came to be and why processes occur physically or chemically. That’s good. But like our ancient ancestors and our seven billion contemporaries, you still run up against a thing and a process that can befuddle you: Words in the process of high emotion.
 
Seems that all our words in high emotion are igneous, that is, born of fire, deep magmas exuding as lavas. And when they harden, as the fire dies, as the heat dissipates, they are as durable as a diabase tombstone, black, impenetrable, and hard. They tend to last long after the process has been spent. Emotion, the process, produces word, the thing. We still don’t quite understand the process. It’s not an analog to real fire, not a simple combining of oxygen and carbon. It’s more than rapid oxidation, but like that process, it both consumes and produces. With fire the consumption destroys, but it makes carbon dioxide. With high emotion, anger in particular, the process destroys relationships and makes enduring enmity like runes or hieroglyphs carved into black diabase. 
 
Rock and fire. We've long had a handle on thing and process. We’ve been using them both since ancient ancestors walked our planet. Yet, today without truly understanding the personal nature of either, we continue as a species to use both just as our ancient ancestors used them.

We know that we live in an age of political correctness. Stories of speech suppression emerge every so often, some of them ironically centered on college campuses. You, also, might have a personal story of censure. But how seriously should we take the stories? How seriously should you respond to censure?
 
There have probably never been societies without censure. It’s apparently in our social nature to suppress ideas we don’t favor. Birds of a feather might flock together, but if we could only hear what all that chirping means…
 
Of course, everyone is offended by something. It’s how we react to the offensive that determines our ability to get along. In an age of Twitter, when instantaneous comments fly across the world before the tweeter can rethink the tweet, the offensive becomes an even larger issue than it has been throughout history. We just don’t offend a few neighbors or friends anymore. We offend a whole segment of society, maybe a whole continent full of people.
 
So, we know the new rules of the game. Someone can express an opinion or hold an intellectual position that someone else finds “offensive,” so the offended, in response, derides, debases, or defames the verbal or intellectual offender. It’s the way of the world. It’s not going to stop any more than the persistence of the Seven Deadly Sins. In many instances the back-and-forth is a matter of two deadly “sins,” Envy and Pride. Envy offends. Pride defends.
 
There is a new math of sin in the land of social media.
 
          Envy + Pride = Wrath.
 
If you read the exchanges in social media, you see the sum almost daily. Envy offends. Pride defends. Wrath results. That’s the balance in that equation. Take away either envy or pride and the equation changes:
 
          Envy = Focus on Another
 
          Pride = Focus on Oneself.
 
Both might still be “sins,” but in the new math, we have eliminated Wrath.

Nothing happens in Nowhere. Something happens in Somewhere. Your life plays out in many “somewheres.” To maintain the continuity that is recognized as “You,” you map the “somewheres” of your life both unconsciously and consciously. Place distills us. What goes in comes out differently. And often, we distill place as Tennyson’s famous line in “Ulysses” reveals, “I am a part of all that I have met.”
 
Place is often the mechanism of personal revelation. If you want to see the effect of place on people, go to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Observe the people. They exude a reverence in the presence of 50,000 names etched into the gabbroic rock. The site’s visitors have the potential for reverence in them. Somehow the site brings it forward.
 
If you want to see the effect of place on people, go to the Grand Canyon. Go to Carnegie Hall. Go to the Parthenon. Go to…
 
Go anywhere. Throw the experience, learning, and emotional makeup of anyone into the cucurbit of place, and watch the distillation of personal essence. Watch the distillation process in you.
 
As you move through your day, watch how each place elicits from you a distilled and distinct essence of who you really are. 

Beauty. Isn’t that what you’re after? I don’t mean personal beauty although that might be on your mind, and certainly, if you are in any way just a little vain, such beauty might be an obsession. That personal physical beauty is for the most part a matter of fashion. In an age of famine, a good layer of fat would be relatively beautiful. In an age of plenty, skinny is in, at least according to most of the fashion magazines, Hollywood producers, and ballet choreographers. You can, as far as I’m concerned, search for any fashionable beauty you want for yourself as long as the search isn’t harmful. Starving yourself in pursuit of “beauty,” for example, is probably not good for you, though lower weight seems to prolong life when nutrition is balanced. Beauty.
 
So, what kind of beauty, other than personal beauty, are you after? You have multiple answers. You seek beauty in natural surroundings. You seek beauty in artificial environments. You might seek it in the images to which it was presented to you when you were very young, in things like a patch of forest or a stretch of beach, where you vacationed. You might seek it in furnishings reminiscent of the colors and shapes of your first or most memorable dwelling. The face of a baby or loved one. A thoroughbred. A sunset. A mountain or canyon. Start making a list. Beauty.
 
Maybe you seek it in relationships, enduring ones that make you feel both happy and secure. Could it also be found in that old poetic standby, Truth? You know, as in “truth is beauty and vice versa”—okay, that isn’t an exact quotation. Or, does beauty lie in something old, like ancient ruins that give you a sense of history, of human accomplishment, and of artistic vision? Oh! Yes. Don’t forget great art and architecture. “You have a beautiful house, and the landscaping…Well, I just can’t say enough about it.”
 
And then when you’re sure you find beauty, you exclaim: “How beautiful!” But your companion doesn’t see it because, as some say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and your companion just doesn’t behold what you behold. Beauty.
 
Why do you continue searching for beauty when only you can see it? Surely, there’s a common ground, an absolute Beauty. Think of the consequences if there isn’t. No Absolute Beauty means we live relative lives. You probably think that’s good in at least one sense: Perceiving Beauty makes you an individual. But then, what about another sense? Variable Beauty means that nothing is stable, nothing enduring, and nothing common. Variable Beauty means that there is no Place in the universe where Beauty without question resides. What your ancestors considered beautiful might have been different. What your offspring consider or will consider might also be different. Beauty. Tough to pin down. Tough to agree on. Tough to define.
 
Yet, there you are in pursuit of Beauty. If you find it, will you be able to share it with another?

​You have to excuse Claude Bernard. He lived in a century a bit before we knew much about microbiology, the relationship between what we are on in our tiniest parts to what we are in total. If he didn’t quite understand how the human body worked, it wasn’t his fault. The information just wasn’t available; he didn’t have the technology and the million biologists who have since studied the body.
 
Yet, Claude did have at least one insight that kick started our knowledge of how our bodies work. That idea he termed milieu intérieur. You probably eat some “health food” or drink some “medicinal tea” because of the idea. You probably have heard someone say that humans need to put their bodies in holistic balance. The health foods, the teas, the holistic herbs and medicines, and the study of physiology begin with Claude’s idea. When the individual’s interior environment is in good repair, when things are working in harmony, the individual can move with relative independence in a potentially threatening world of external organisms. Your health and mine largely depend on our interior condition.
 
And to the end of preserving that interior condition, to the end of a holistic, healthful life, we have studied, experimented, developed, and consumed that which we believe to be healthful. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Who wants to argue against holistic harmony within especially when that harmony warrants health?
 
Claude lived in the nineteenth century. As human history and prehistory go, he was a relatively recent human, a grandfather of a grandfather of today. In that short time since he died in 1878, we have taken what he postulated and developed on his principle modern medicine and ways of living that have enhanced, saved, and prolonged life for billions of our contemporaries.
 
What Claude did for enhancing life by postulating an inner harmony seems to have no analog in philosophy, regardless of what adherents might say. If societies are analogs to bodies, they fail in achieving harmony. Two hundred thousand years of societal conflict have continued through our time. Take the massacre at Nataruk near Lake Turkana in Kenya, where archaeologists found the remains of 27 people killed 10,000 years ago. Or take the massacres of today. There doesn’t seem to be a milieu intérieur for society. Something within, something not in sync, something of a traitor among us seems always present. The inner peace of any society is constantly in jeopardy. From Plato’s Republic through More’s Utopia, Machiavelli’s The Prince, Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, to the works of Hobbes, Jefferson, and Rousseau, we have yet to find a governing principle that leads to a practical advance of inner societal harmony comparable to Claude’s principle of milieu intérieur. Conflict arises regardless of the social principles at work.
 
True, something will eventually go wrong with the body. Some hormone will be out of balance, or some organ will function less efficiently. But Claude gave us a principle by which we can mitigate many imbalances, and, as it has been the basis of medical research, that principle seems to apply universally to the human body. Nice if we could find a similar political principle, one that works universally, that keeps us all in harmony. That principle, should we ever discover it, would open the world to a truly new milieu. 

Did you go to the gas station to fill your tank today? Were you amazed that the station had gasoline? No? Took it for granted? Hmmm.
 
In 1922 the United States Geological Survey estimated that the country would run out of oil by 1942. Just wouldn’t be any more of the stuff in the ground. After all, Americans had been drilling for and extracting petroleum since Col. Drake dug that first well in Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. Couldn’t be much left, could there?
 
Nevertheless, there you were today, standing at the gas pump, pumping away with nary a thought except about its cost. Yep. The stuff just comes out of the pump whenever you want. How could the Geological Survey have been so wrong?
 
It wasn’t just oil. Coal and natural gas would be gone also according to those making the estimates. Again, how could those guys have missed the mark? And missed it by a bunch of years? They could not even have comprehended in 1922 that more than 250 million vehicles would burn oil as gasoline in the United States alone this year. Obviously, that 1922 projection of a twenty-year supply was way off.
 
Predicting is a chancy business for people locked in the present. New technologies make yesterday’s predictions seem naïve. Yet, regardless of the lessons of the past, that there’s much for us to discover just as we discovered many new reserves of oil, we keep making dire predictions.
 
Will we, as the Geological Survey once predicted, run out of oil? Probably. We do live on a finite planet. Everyone can guess that we can’t keep eating a cake and still have that cake. But interestingly, we seem to have found ways to discover new oil reserves while changes in technologies have allowed us to acquire energy from sources the Geological Survey would not have known in 1922. True, you can’t eat a cake and still have that cake, but you can eat a cake and have a different one, even in a finite world.
 
Dire predictions seem to have been with us since before the augurs told Caesar to beware the Ides of March. But through the centuries there have been some who never stopped discovering. We could take this fact as a personal lesson. Do I have to tell you? Okay. The next time someone says you can’t do something, that you won’t have the resources, take that person to the gas station and let him or her watch you fill up your tank. 

Astronomers debate stellar distances. They can’t get into a Prius to visit our neighboring suns, so they use various techniques to measure the great distances in light years, or in multiples of light years called parsecs. Suffice it to say distant stars are far away.
 
One of the properties of place on Earth is that we know its whereabouts. We can make very accurate measurements of distances and locations. Going on vacation? Have to drive or fly 700 miles? You know the distance and the approximate time of the journey. Not so with some of those sparkly things in the sky. Take UW Canis Majoris, a blue supergiant star that is 200,000 times brighter than our sun and that has a diameter 13 times bigger than Old Sol. UW Canis is monstrous. We seem to know a great deal about it, but not so much about its distance. Some measurements place UW Canis at about 3,000 light years, whereas others place it in widely ranging distances, from 2,000 to as much as 5,000 light years away.  One to three thousand light years! That’s a big margin of error in the measurements, if one considers that each light year is about 5.8 trillion miles. Would you knowingly set out on a journey to some place of unknown distance, a place where the margin of error in distance is itself greater than your ability to cross?
 
How is it that we can know so much while at the same time knowing so little about something, especially, about its distance from us? It’s not as though that distant place is like someone from whom we’ve grown apart, someone about whom we know much except the measure of the intervening distance.
 
Maybe a journey across an unknown distance is worth the effort. We already know much about that place we intend to visit—or revisit. It would be interesting to see whether or not the place we think we know has undergone any significant changes and also whether or not we can learn something we did not know. Can't tell too much from a distance, especially an unknown distance.

So now, as of February 11, 2016, we know that Einstein was right. There is such a phenomenon as a gravity wave or gravity radiation.
 
“Big deal,” most people probably say sarcastically. “Why do I need to know that? I know enough about gravity to avoid heights where I can fall. I know that when it slips from my hand, my coffee cup drops to the floor. Gravity waves. Humpf. Big deal.”
 
Well, isn’t that the way with all new knowledge? Refinements in what we know seem insignificant in light of experience and practice. Little adjustments in meaning barely turn our heads. Ho-hum. Now we seem to know more than Newton did about gravity, but, hey, he lived a long time ago, and we don’t even know whether or not his being inspired by a falling apple is as much fiction as fact.
 
Does indifference to new knowledge do us any good? We acquire refinements of meaning daily as we learn a little more about one another. Should we pay attention to some little discovery? Does it make a difference in how we see one another? We see the “big picture,” don’t we?
 
When the gravity waves that LIGO scientists detected passed through Earth, you underwent a slight change in dimensions, stretching in one direction and contracting in another in response to the waves. Did you notice? No, of course not. The dimensional change was so small that you would have to use a very tiny fraction of a proton’s size as comparison. That was really a small-to-the-nth-power change in you.
 
Maybe that’s the way we change most of the time, small unnoticeable changes, even those caused by universe-altering events, definitely those caused by human interactions. But over time the changes add up and we find ourselves stretched in one direction and contracted in another, that is, changed in comparison to what we were.
 
Right now there are human versions of unseen gravitational waves altering your dimensions. Reading this? You are expanding or contracting. Observable change? Not necessarily. But, too late, the reading went through you like those gravity waves went through you. You might never have felt either, but both somehow affected you. Not that this reading is anything special, but all those other readings, all those other bits of radiating thoughts that you encountered have added up. Your dimensions have changed.
 
From 1.3 billion light years away, two massive black holes merged and produced a wave. You, standing on the shore of the present, minding your own business, were bathed in the penetrating waves. You, sitting in front of your computer, reading this or some other work, or you, sitting reading a book written centuries ago—though not as long ago as the collision of the black holes—get hit by the waves of thoughts that penetrate, possibly make a small change, and then pass on through you to others in your universe. Those gravity waves connect us to the rest of the physical universe. All readings—all communications—from silly to profound, both connect and change us. Want to avoid…Too late! Having been hit by this verbal radiation, you have already changed dimensions.