Hey, what are you thinking? You saw the title above, and then the image popped into your head. And the image had an accompanying attitude.
 
It’s the old “book-by-the-cover” thing. Deep down, we live on the surface. That’s apparently a cultural reaction, and it’s a relative matter, as you probably know.  
 
Think dermatologists. They can recognize by appearance something about what might be going on beneath or inside the epidermis. Years of schooling and experience with skin enable them to assess the nature—and health—of not only the outside, but also the inside of a body down through the hypodermis. But when dermatologists suspect an ailment, even one that might lie beneath the surface, they take samples: Biopsies confirm or quash suspicions.
 
We can learn from dermatologists. It’s okay to get a first impression; the process might yield a warning that danger is imminent. The encyclopedic cultural knowledge that everyone carries makes having a first impression unavoidable.
 
It’s not okay to live long by first impressions, however. In the absence of imminent danger, take the time to do “psychopsies.”  

Is abnormality normal? The current “Bible” of mental disorders is DSM-5, the fifth version of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. All the experts refer to it, but, if you are like me, just a layperson struggling with what it means to be human, you might be amazed to see the current count of disorders: Something like 297. Two-hundred ninety-seven disorders. That’s like one for everyone. Well, not quite, but spindle my neurons, that’s a big number. Choose your disorder or make one up.
 
Apparently, you could actually make one up. DSM-1 (Or I in Roman numerals), didn’t have as many disorders. We’re either learning as we go, or we missed or ignored many before. Maybe there’s another alternative: We’ve become so specialized that disorders have subdisorders, much the way geology, for example, has various disciplines in mineralogy, petrology, sedimentology, structure, paleontology, history, geomorphology, and a few more, all with their own subcategories of subjects.
 
Oh! The Humanity. Really. Think about having a disorder for almost every behavior. No wonder we can’t define normal. And if we can’t define normal except in having some general notion about what it means to act “normally,” then shouldn’t all of us fall somewhere in the list, either old or developing, of “disorders”? Things were so much simpler when we just relied on shorter lists, such as the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, and various codes (Hammurabi’s, Napoleon’s, the Bill of Rights).
 
So, you must have some sense of what is normal, but you must also have some sense that your “normal” isn’t necessarily someone else’s “normal.” And dividing and dividing and dividing in one subcategory after another doesn’t seem to do anything other than separate us into smaller and smaller groups with our own peculiar “normality” or “abnormality.” And that’s just within a single culture unit like Western Civilization though the DSM people would probably argue that they deal in disorders (and orders) that apply universally. Except. Except that all cultures define “normality” in their historical context, and that includes long religious, philosophical, and political traditions.
 
Nevertheless, the effort to find “universal” disorders is probably worth the effort. In their discovery, such disorders probably unite us in some way. It’s just that the unification of humanity on the basis of disorders that occur in every culture is a rather negative approach to our supposed commonality.
 
Time for you to make your positive list of what unites us in this group called humanity. And when you finish—hopefully without having to go through five versions like the DSM—please share it. I, for one, am curious about what is “normal.”

1: “Surely, you’ve thought of this before. I can’t be the only one stumbling in darkness.”
 
2: “Thought of what?”
 
1: “Morality. Moral life. Ethics even. I’m not sure in this context I know what to call it.”
 
2: “Context?”
 
1: “The whole universe.”
 
2: “I don’t understand. Where’s this going?”

1: “Well, here we are, intelligent beings that discuss ‘morality.’ The topic is often on our minds, especially when we witness an act we consider to be ‘evil.’ If Dr. Frank Drake was correct in his equation, there are bunches of other kinds of intelligent beings scattered throughout the Milky Way.* Then, what about all those other galaxies? Two trillion in the most recent estimate. They all have millions to billions of stars with who knows how many planets. If Drake’s formula holds true, there’s intelligent life out there; bunches of it. Is it moral? Does that life weigh the ‘immoral’ against the ‘moral’? Does it recognize ‘evil’? Is ‘higher’ intelligence destined to construct a moral system or be part of one? And if so, from what does morality derive? Some ‘moral imperative’ that runs throughout the universe?”
 
2: “The Drake equation reminds me of that joke once declared to be the greatest joke. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson went camping in the wilderness. In the middle of the night Holmes woke up Watson. ‘Watson, Watson! Wake up.’ The bleary-eyed Watson awoke to Holmes’s question: ‘Look up Watson, and tell me what you observe and deduce. Watson, still a little asleep, responded in the knowledge that he was in the presence of one of the sharpest minds of his time: ‘I see thousands of stars, and I deduce that just as our sun has planets, some of those stars must have planets orbiting them, and on some of those planets there must be life, and some of that life must be intelligent. So, I deduce that we are not alone in the universe.’ To which Holmes said, ‘No, Watson, someone stole our tent.’”
 
1: “Funny.  But I was trying to ask a serious question. Is a moral system endemic to the life of all higher intelligence? If so, then why? Is it related to species survival? Is it deeply connected to social life?”
 
2: “No, because ‘immoral’ lifestyles can be found in every social gathering. Our problem is that you and I probably can’t agree on what moral means. Doesn’t it vary from culture to culture?”
 
1: “I guess I want to know why morality, immorality, and amorality are important issues, why they take up so much of our time. Is all morality related to the protection of individual members as a way of continuing a species? Or is there another reason for morality? Is morality an extension of empathy? And if it is, does that not mean that morality has little to do with intelligence and much to do with raw emotion? Not too long ago I hit a starling with my car. Not on purpose, but the darn thing just flew in front of my grille. In my side view mirror, I saw it lying on the road behind me, and then I saw another starling fly down, flit it wings repeatedly, leave briefly, and then fly back, flitting again while looking at the lifeless starling. Was there something of a sense of value in the starling that ostensibly ran parallel to my own sense of empathy for the stricken bird? Or am I just thinking too anthropomorphically? Is my own empathy the root of my moral system? Was there a moral sense in the flitting, living starling that made it seem to be saying, ‘Hey, get up. You can’t lie in the middle of a road. Let me help.’ That living bird truly appeared to be ‘concerned.’ When I think about that incident, I ask myself if my moral concerns for other humans are different from the bird’s in either kind or degree.”
 
2: “Well, we know some birds can invent and use tools. So, they appear to be rather intelligent as we define intelligence. And we know that some birds appear to mate for life. You know, problem solving and loyalty seem to indicate both intelligence and a moral sense. And since starlings fly around in groups, they seem to have a social structure. I’ve seen them give up places on an electric wire, probably to a bird considered somehow to be more deserving. But let’s go back to your original thoughts. So, you’re asking me whether or not I think there are moral beings elsewhere in the universe. I keep wondering about whether or not we have moral beings here, given all the ‘man’s-inhumanity-to-man’ stuff going on. And then I assume you also want me to think about what really underlies any moral system.
 
“Heck, why not go back further than just concerned starlings. Think brains. Supposedly, certain social animals share with us von Economo neurons, those brain cells which look like spindles and that are located in three specialized brain regions, the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex, and the Fronto-Insular Cortex; at least two of those areas seem to be associated with socialization. Just a few other animals seem to have those spindle cells, all of them rather farther along the intelligence scale and none of them starlings. Animals like dolphins, whales, and elephants. Maybe animals that have those neurons show empathy because of them, but I don’t think starlings have von Economo neurons. Am I forced to be moral because I have certain neurons that are ‘social’ neurons? Oh! And one more thought. If my social sense derives from specialized brain cells, does it also mean that morality is predetermined by biology? Do alien brains act like ours? Obviously, great apes, whales, and elephants do some human-like stuff.”
 
1: “Maybe so. Just being a social being doesn’t seem to be the key to being moral, however. Bees are social. Would you ascribe a moral sense to them? All those intelligent organisms scattered over trillions of galaxies might seem stranger than bees and yet be intelligent social organisms imbued with a moral sense, or like bees they might be social without being ‘moral.’ That’s the focus of much of our science fiction: Monsters that are either amoral or immoral or superior beings that arrive to save the day like Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still (original film). In the film he arrives to warn that as we become dangerous to ourselves, we begin to pose a threat to the survival of other life-forms. He notes that intelligent beings “out there” devised an ethical or moral system that protects all from annihilation. So, is morality’s purpose inextricably tied to survival?”
 
2: “If I infer properly you suggest that morality is driven by empathy in social beings looking for ways to survive. What I propose is that deep down we might be moral (or not) in part because of von Economo cells in just three brain regions associated with socialization. Morality everywhere might be a biological endowment. Given the right brain structures, intelligent beings will be moral beings—even if they reject their penchant for morality.”
 
1: “I know. It seems a bit of a stretch that empathy and survival are the roots of morality.”
 
2: “Now you’ve got me wondering. I’m thinking…Yes, socialization is a survival mechanism, isn’t it? If so, then regardless of where intelligence develops, it, like our intelligence, will do what it can to survive. And what better way to survive than to build a protective moral system? Of course, I can counter my own argument with those suicide bombers whose ‘morality’ includes murdering innocents. If morality is relative, doesn’t that lead us to another problem?”
 
1: “That takes us back to the beginning of this conversation. Do you think that intelligent life elsewhere would be moral life? And if you do, do you think that there is some underlying moral principle that applies to all moral systems regardless of where they are?”
 
2: “But what could underlie all moral systems? Look at the various religions on our planet. Sure, there are similarities; look at Christian and Buddhist principles. All that peace and love stuff. What about the Ten Commandments? What about one of those commandments, the one that says ‘Don’t kill anyone’? We could argue that murder seems to fit into the ‘moral’ system of terrorists; look at what the suicide bombers and the perpetrators of recent genocidal atrocities claim as a moral position.”
 
1: “That’s why I’m asking you: Is there a moral principle that underlies all moral systems, even those devised by social, intelligent alien life-forms? Come on, think. If we could understand the moral system of aliens, we could point to that common core. Of course, chances of our running into aliens are slim, regardless of how numerous such beings might be.  When I think about it, I realize I cannot even discover a common core in all of Earth’s so-called moral systems save survival, thus the emphasis on peace and empathy in so many religions, but not, I’m afraid, in all—as religious wars and genocide attest.
 
“We claim intelligence, and we claim morality, but we have difficulty understanding one another’s moral systems. When hard pressed, we might even have difficulty defining the essence of our own morality. Do you think you are an intelligent moral being? Why?”
 
* N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

Regardless of your scientific or religious bent, you have some sense that the universe as it is had some form of a start. True, you might think that science allows you to think eternal universes, but that’s irrelevant. Even in the instance of a couple of branes banging into each other to form a new universe in a multiverse system, the universe you know had some sort of start. The Big Bang is one kind of beginning. Creation by a Creator is another. Again, in either case, the key word is beginning. And if I may put on my Neoplatonic hat, I believe I know what both beginnings have in common. Give me moment.
 
Evidence from the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature as we know it (from two satellites, COBE and WMAP) tells us that the Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago—as I like to say, give or take a week. A count of years by Bishop Ussher’s researchers, gives us a different starting point: 6,000 years ago. So, neither has a common start if we check how long the clock’s been running. Nothing common there. Where else can we look for commonality?
 
By your own life you know that the universe is a bit different today from the universe of yesterday. Your grandparents’ grandparents had their moments of joy and sorrow that are long gone. Your similar moments are part of the current universe. Obviously, the universe is a place of change. And for those who would deny that there were life-forms like dinosaurs living and becoming extinct long before humans walked the planet, the same changing nature of the universe should still be evident. After all, we have the bones of the critters that no longer walk the planet we walk. Forms that were and that no longer are.
 
Now, I’m not trying to convince either side to accept the other’s view of the beginning. I think it’s important to note that both sides will acknowledge the one constant throughout the history of the cosmos, the constant of change. Forms—here’s that Neoplatonic thing—come and go. And all forms current and past had some beginning and some change. So, what is it that regardless of our scientific or religious bent, we can recognize in a beginning?
 
The potential for new forms.
 
And that brings me to your personal cosmos. In your present, you provide the capacity for new forms to exist. So, does that make you a Creator of sorts? Yes, because the things you do in the present, which is all the time you really ever have, are the beginnings of what is to come. You are currently setting things in motion. Your grandparents’ grandparents did their creating, making a world and setting in motion the unfolding of a cosmos that included your form. And in some distant future, your grandchildren’s grandchildren will look to that beginning that dates to you.
 
Whatever you do sets in motion the existence of some future forms, forms of any kind: Physical, intellectual, social, spiritual. Every present is a beginning. Every present is a creation. Every present sets in motion processes that lead to new forms.
 
Let’s adopt the anthropic view for a moment. If anything in the makeup of the beginning were different, I wouldn’t be writing this, and you wouldn’t be reading it. It was a very delicate balance in the beginning that allowed the fulfillment of potential forms that compose the current cosmos. I’ll borrow from John Leslie here. In Universes, Leslie writes about the fundamental forces:
 
            “…force strengths and particle masses are distributed across enormous ranges. The nuclear strong force is (roughly) a hundred times stronger than electromagnetism, which is in turn ten thousand times stronger than the nuclear weak force, which is itself some ten thousand billion billion billion times stronger than gravity.”*
 
He says with regard to stars, “Gravity…needs fine tuning for stars and planets to form, and for stars to burn stably…It is roughly 10^39 times weaker than electromagnetism. Had it been only 10^33 times weaker, stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.”** Know what he is saying? At the outset, the cosmos (the Creation) had to be balanced precisely for the forms that now exist to exist.
 
And so also with the personal cosmos you create in your present. Any “imbalances,” any ratios with greater or lesser numbers will result in a “different” cosmos. You really have a great responsibility. Here you are in the here-and-now establishing the rules for forms, setting up the potential for a future than can exist only on the basis of what you do today.
 
You are the future’s Big Bang, the future’s Creator. You won’t be around to see all you put in motion, but you might still want to consider carefully what you do. Each of us stands at the beginning. Each of us establishes the potential for forms to exist—or not to exist.  
 
*Leslie, John. Universes. London. Routledge. 1989, p. 6.
**p. 5.

A fifty-year-old maple tree that hung over my deck died. For years it provided shelter from the summer sun, cooling the deck and those who sat beneath the tree. It added a certain charm to the deck, making it a comfortable place for both family and guests. Among the tens of trees on “my property” that tree was my favorite because of the quality it lent to “my deck.”
 
It is a commonplace assertion that humans are generally territorial. We like to call someplace “my place—my desk, my office, my yard, my deck, my house, my neighborhood, my county, my state, my country.” If aliens ever land spacecraft, we will say, “my planet.” Each of us holds mental maps of “my territories,” maps that put boundaries around places over which we feel some ownership and through which we receive some comfort. We also feel a need to protect whatever lies within the boundaries we have mapped, and we feel loss whenever part of the territory disappears or changes.
 
In sports, a team maps territorial boundaries that members protect against trespassers. In American football, the end zone is the object of such protection; in soccer it is the goal; in basketball it is the net, and in baseball it is home plate. But every place, regardless of the sense of ownership that a person or a team might hold, can have more than one “owner.”
 
What we own is important to us, but no object or place is restricted to a single mental map that defines its boundaries or areas of importance. In American football, the end zone, as I wrote above, is highly significant to a team and its fans. Yet, as the game progresses, a team protects the other end zone, and immediately everyone maps a new territory as worthy of defense. Other parts of the same field can become the centers of mental maps. For the half time band, for presentations of awards, or for acknowledgements of accomplishments, the fifty-yard line is more significant than the end zone. It’s the same field, but, given the purpose of those who use it, the map of the field differs.
 
So, too, do the maps of your place of business, the map of your home, and the map of your neighborhood differ from user to user. The tree at the corner of your property and next to the neighbor’s driveway becomes a welcoming signpost that beckons the neighbor to “turn here to reach home.” For the neighbor, your tree is a part of a mental map that belongs to his or her zone of comfort.
 
The old tree that hung over my deck has to go. I don’t have a choice. The tree surgeon is on his way to cut it down. When he finishes, the deck will change in my mental map, going from shady to sunny. I can sit in the sun and regret the change, or I can sit in the sun and welcome the change. The place I call my deck will change. The mental map of my house will change. That change is inevitable, as is the change that will occur to every neighborhood, community, office, county, state, country, or region. Nothing is permanent; no territory immutable.
 
Place is important to us, but attachment to it can become a boundary that limits how we adapt to change. Attachment also precludes our understanding that others can also map what we map though their maps have other purposes, other qualities, and other associated feelings.
 
For me, it’s time to remap the deck and to find joy in my new map.

Are you linked “in series”?
 
Ever notice that you associate one name with a field of knowledge. Pythagoras. Freud. Newton. Others you can think of. All of them lights so bright most of their followers cast shadows. Out of every school of thought there were many who adopted the system, practiced its skills, and perpetuated its knowledge. Pythagoras gave us the Pythagoreans, but you are probably hard pressed to name others in his school. Philolaus ring a bell?
 
Occasionally, someone in the field of endeavor also appeared to shine as brightly as the first in the series, but usually, that person did so because of something new, some startling new take on the old system. Euclid gave us geometry, but then Riemann gave us another kind of geometry, one that influenced Einstein. Freud gave us psychoanalysis, but then Jung gave us another form of psychological analysis. And those who stepped out of line a bit, like Riemann and Jung, started a new series of imitators or perpetrators that, also, cast shadows of anonymity under the bright light of their founder.
 
Take two light bulbs of different wattage. Your guess? The higher wattage bulb will outshine the lower one. Now think unequal wattage in two bulbs placed in series. Then what happens? I can put a 40-watt bulb at the beginning of the series and put a 60-watt bulb second. Normally, if separately powered, a 60-watt bulb would outshine a 40-watt bulb, but when it is placed first in a series, the bulb with the lower wattage outshines the higher wattage bulb. Simply put, to shine more brightly, the 60-watt bulb can’t come second in the series. Lined up first in a series along a single wire, the 40-watt bulb (which has greater resistance) gets more voltage than the 60-watt bulb.*
 
Jung worked closely with his mentor Freud for a while, but eventually, they disagreed on the nature of the psyche and its motivation. The breakup took Jung out of the series to become the new first bulb. Similarly, though Galileo had led the way for Newton in the understanding of gravity, the latter became a new first bulb, and in turn, Einstein started another series. 
 
In some ways we all begin somewhere downline in a series, and regardless of our potential brilliance, we cast shadows under the light of those who have set the standard for brightness. It’s only when we step out of the series that we can draw the power necessary to outshine those who have come before us. Place matters. 
 
Want to outshine others who might even be a little smarter or a little more talented? Be the first bulb.  

* V=iR

“Okay, class. Time to review before the test. Hmmm. Hey, I need everyone’s attention, and that includes you, Bill. Remember that we’ve been discussing forces and what Galileo and Newton told us about acceleration. Now, all of us have been in an accelerating car, and we all know the feeling. The car goes faster, and we seem to get pushed back into our seat. If we look at the fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, we see that they also seem to go backward as the car accelerates forward. So, what did we say was going on? Bill? Bill? Billllllll!”
 
“I dunno.”
 
“Let me remind you. Inertia, pure and simple. A body at rest tends to remain at rest, and a body in motion tends to remain in motion. That’s why the recently launched Tesla sports car will probably run through the Solar System until it crashes into something. Anyway, as you sat in your seat and the dice hung from the mirror before the car’s acceleration, you and the dice had a tendency to remain in place. And then, during the acceleration, you and the dice resisted the apparent force to move you. Now let’s make the car go around a curve. Remember that we said the acceleration is toward a point in the center of an imagined circle that would complete the curve in 360 degrees. So, the acceleration is toward the inside of the curve, but what do you feel? Bill? Bill? Billllllll!”
 
“I think I feel stupid.”
 
“Not to worry, Bill. Think. You’re going around a curve in your car. What does your body do? What would the dice do?”
 
“I would lean toward the outside of the curve. Right?”
 
“See, you do know. Now let’s compare. In a straight-line acceleration, you feel you are going in the direction opposite of the acceleration. Going backward. You can see you are going forward, but your body and the dice appear to go backward. And you can feel yourself ‘being pushed’ backward, even though you can reason that you are traveling forward at an ever-increasing velocity. So, your body’s response to acceleration is governed by its inertia, its resistance to being moved, a resistance you interpret as being pushed in a direction opposite the acceleration. Guess what? The same principle applies to going around a curve. You ‘feel’ a movement to the outside of the curve because acceleration is to the inside—toward the center of that imagined circle. There’s really no force pushing you to the outside of the curve. It’s a matter of your body’s inertia. Got it?”
 
“I think so. So, when I think I’m being moved by my peers to act in ways that are against my or someone else’s best interest, there’s really no force other than my own inertia that prevents me from moving into the ‘inner circle’ of peer pressure, political pressure, social pressure, or even religious pressure. Apparently, I have my own inertia to thank if I resist any acceleration toward inimical behavior by forces I perceive to be outside myself. Let me think…Oh! So, when I am encouraged to go with the flow, race toward some purpose by the social vehicle that carries me, I can interpret my own resistance as a preservation of the steady motion of my life because, just as in physics, I know that in free fall or in a sports car launched into space, I will tend to do what I am doing. But sometimes, I will perceive a force that really isn’t a true force because I misinterpret my resistance to do something as an external force acting on me when, in fact, I just have a natural tendency to be who I am, and that natural tendency is my character inertia.”
 
“Bill, what’s gotten into you? I’m astounded.”
 
“Sorry, I thought I was in psychology class or sompthin. Was there a question?”

We have strange behaviors, such as drug use that leads to overdosing and death and food addictions that lead to obesity. And the shoes. Oh! The shoes. Three-inch stilettos, for example. And, if you are Dutch, klompen.
 
Crater-like depressions in foot bones examined by Leiden University bio-archaeologists seem to indicate nineteenth-century Dutch farmers suffered from a condition called osteochondritis dissecans probably caused by wearing Clogs. Klompen. Wooden shoes. No give. No Air Max.
 
Did they wear them because wood floats? They did live in the Netherlands. Or, were klompen as much a fashion statement as they were cheap and relatively practical. (Who needs a hoe when you can clomp your klompen on a clump of dirt?)
 
All of us have been slaves to fashion of some sort, and no doubt shoes have caused twentieth and twenty-first century foot problems just as nineteenth-century klompen did. As researcher Andrea Waters-Rist comments, “Look at what high heels do: the constriction of our toes, the strain it places on our joints. If bio-archaeologists were to come along in 100 or 500 years and look at the bones of our feet—would they ask, what on Earth were these people wearing?”*
 
And if anthropologists were to come along in 100 or 500 years and attempt to unravel the problems of our times and the stances we took, would they also find damage caused by our strict adherence to fashionable and inflexible thinking? All of us put on mental klompen at times. They’re inflexible, and we know that. But we wear those inflexible intellectual fashions anyway.  
 
On occasion, we should look at the base of our stance. Maybe we should insert some cushioning, flexible intellectual orthotics before we stand for or against something. Yes, the hard fashion might enable us to clomp on our opponent’s ideas, but if the shoe is wooden, it damages the foot inside.
 
*Sims, Jane. Western University researcher finds Dutch wooden clogs did physical damage. The London Free Press, Thursday, November 16, 2017 Online at http://www.lfpress.com/2017/11/16/western-university-researcher-finds-dutch-wooden-clogs-did-physical-damage    

 Two cafeteria workers:
“Look at these bags. They’re always trying to find the cheapest stuff for us to use. Well, I just put one inside another.”
 
“It has to be Bertha; she’s the one who does the ordering. And I think she thinks she’s the boss.”
 
Two professors:
“So what if he publishes many papers? Aren’t they mostly the work of his graduate assistants. He’s going after an endowed chair. When he gets one, he’ll have an unending supply of eager young assistants willing to have their work subsumed by his. Then he’ll show up to give an opening lecture from yellowed notes before he leaves the actual teaching to those assistants. He will claim he is too busy with his 'important' research.”
 
“You have to hand it to him. He knows how to milk the system for his own aggrandizement.”
 
Two mechanics:
“We’re not going to be able to fix these new cars without a new diagnostic computer, but he won’t get one for the shop.”
 
“I’m already lookin’ to get that job at the dealership. They have better tools, hours, and pay.”
 
Questions and comment:
Does it really matter what station in life anyone has? Isn’t “important v. trivial” relative? Bags or computers? The intensity of feeling can be identical regardless of the nature or venue of the objects (bags, diagnostic computers, endowed chair) under discussion. 
 
You and I:
You argue, “But just dealing with the accoutrements of any job isn’t the same. Someone at CERN might discuss the strength of a magnetic coil necessary in an experiment that will unravel the nature of the universe. Someone driving a garbage truck might discuss work gloves. There’s an obvious difference.”
 
I say, “Yes--To you!”
 
In the news:
On February 18, 2018, The New York Post (and other media) reported the arrest of a twenty-year-old woman who shot and killed another driver over a traffic incident.* Call it road rage girl gone wild. However you want to label it, the incident centers on the difference between the important and the trivial. Look at daily crime reports. More of the same, often resulting in the destruction of property, injury, and death.
 
The next time you observe others in conflict or think about your own conflicts, simply ask, “Is this important or trivial?” I know. You will tell me that in the “heat of the moment” anything can seem to be important. All right, you have a point. But what if we put the emphasis on how trivial something is rather than on how important it is. What if we have a Scale of Triviality as a base for our ethics and interactions? We have a tendency to think of rising levels of importance. Why not increasing levels of triviality. Train your brain to view the scale of importance upside down. Maybe the next “heat of the moment” won’t be very hot.

*Lapin, Tamar. Woman accused of fatally shooting driver for cutting her off. February 18, 2018. New York Post online at https://nypost.com/2018/02/18/woman-fatally-shot-driver-for-cutting-her-off-cops/  

You’ve been invited to a buffet, a big buffet. Think cruise ship or Las Vegas hotel buffet. Choices and calories beyond your capacity regardless of your appetite or need. And the invitation was unexpected. You just found yourself at the buffet. You lacked the ability to understand your arrival, and you don’t remember your first run past the buffet tables. You were an infant, and the buffet you entered is a universe so diverse in composition and so abundant in consumables that you reason you’ll have to spend your entire life choosing in the knowledge that you’ll never finish and cannot come close to sampling it all. And you don’t know why you have been invited, whether or not you serve some purpose other than simply sampling, how it all appeared, and how the tables always seem stocked.
 
Overwhelmed by the sheer size that at first dazzled you with colors, shapes, and tastes, you ask, “Is there any meaning in all this?” You have run into an existential and seemingly unanswerable question. You might, like some existentialists or some dramatist in the Theatre of the Absurd, declare that absurdity rules. Like others, you might declare that choosing to work your way through the buffet is what gives it all meaning. If you choose the former, you will join a group of diners who exclaim as they eat, “The buffet has no chef and no purpose.” If you choose the latter, you will join a group that says, “It’s not for us to know; it’s just for us to eat. Buffets don’t stock themselves.”
 
The first group of diners call the second group fools. They argue that there is no evidence that the buffet has any purpose. They might ask, “Do diners serve a purpose? Or, are the diners just the remnants of an evolutionary line that started unconsciously with mouse-like mammals that ultimately led to the conscious diners now working their way through the buffet, diners whose consciousness can’t answer the question they ask? Could the world go on without diners? If so, then in continuing, doesn’t the world—the universe—indicate that the buffet serves no purpose?”
 
The second group of diners call the first group fools. They argue from various positions. One might be an argument from the Gaia hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. All the diners and the buffet itself belong to a synergistic and self-regulating system. The world, the buffet, is “alive”; it is its own type of organism. Even deep in Earth’s rocks there are bacteria and on the outside of the International Space Station, too. The buffet seems to be spread out everywhere, and the kitchen ovens, the suns, cook everything up for life to use. Two might be an argument that is purely teleological. A main chef makes the buffet, pulls the unsuspecting and unconscious off the street of Nowhere, and forces them to eat until they can eat no more.
 
In the arguments of both groups a dilemma arises: By acknowledging an underlying meaninglessness, does the first group somehow elevate its recognition of an unprovable absurdity to a profundity? “I profoundly state that nothing has meaning. The buffet just is. Eat.” By acknowledging an underlying meaning, does the second group lower its unprovable profundity to absurdity?
 
Are we living in an oxymoronic world? Do the groups have anything in common? Are all profundities ultimately absurd? Is there something of the profound in absurdity?
 
For the first group, despair comes easily. For the second, hope. Is there an alternative beyond just sampling the buffet in the knowledge that no one has ever sampled it all, no one can consume it all, and no one was even present during its setup. Making a profound statement about absurdity makes meaning. But making an absurd statement about profundity also makes meaning.
 
Thinking matter: As both groups sit with their full plates to enjoy the buffet, they engage in a conversation. “How is it,” asks the second group, “that you claim absurdity? How is it that matter became conscious to make any declarations at all, especially a declaration that that there is no meaning? Doesn’t your position have meaning? Is it possible that you are merely overwhelmed by the choices at this buffet? Would a limited buffet make more sense? If you could meet the chef, would the buffet make more sense?”
 
In response, the first group says, “What if the chef worked randomly? Couldn’t we acknowledge that without contradicting ourselves? You assume the chef has a plan, but look at all this food and all the choices. And new combinations keep showing up with new diners as old diners say they have had enough, are full, and ready to leave the buffet. Sure, the buffet seems to be endless, but for the individual diner it doesn’t make any sense because he or she eventually must leave the buffet.”
 
“You’re missing the point. The buffet is here. We don’t know how it got here. We don’t even know why we were invited—even if the invitation came randomly like some advertisement for Publishers’ Clearing House that offers a lifetime giveaway. We don’t even remember filling out any forms. But here we are. And even if we don’t know the answer to our question, we know that our question has meaning, and whatever has meaning can’t ultimately be absurd. Any meaning, even meaning that is deemed ‘absurd,’ isn’t absurd in its being a question posed by matter that is somehow conscious. That, we argue is the Profundity of Absurdity. Excuse us, we’re going for seconds.”