Peace might be the exception, not the rule.  
 
Tens of millennia ago humans walked across a land bridge to occupy Australia. * That bridge of migration is currently under water that separates Papua New Guinea from Australia. The early settlers came from the Northwest, moving southward to spread throughout the continent over an estimated 5,000 years. For some, the travel stopped at the place now known as Port Moresby, now isolated from Australia by the sea and located on Papua New Guinea. 
 
For the state departments of a number of countries, Port Moresby is on a travel advisory. Yes, you guessed it: Crime, violent crime is the problem. Fueled by widespread poverty, the crime makes living in a tropical paradise a living Hell. But, I suppose, the circumstances in Port Moresby are little different from, say, living in Chicago during weekend shooting sprees. The crime index for Port Moresby is 80.95; for Chicago, 64.88. Need more comparisons?
 
Port Moresby is second in crime index only to Caracas. It’s ahead of South Africa’s Pretoria, Durban, and Johannesburg, Brazil’s Natal, Fortaleza, Rio, and Recife, and even ahead of Kabul, Baltimore, and Detroit. Weekends in Chicago are, by comparison, mere flies in the ointment. Port Moresby, after tens of thousands of years of occupation, has like so many younger settlements around the world, not discovered a walkable path to peace. By the way, in case you’re curious, on the other end of the crime spectrum index lie Zurich (16.4), Quebec City (14.76). Taipei (13.45), Doha (12.04), and the safest, Abu Dhabi (11.54). Darwin, also on that ancient path of migration that peopled Port Moresby, has a crime index of 56.21, about the same as that of Las Vegas. **
 
Port Moresby, if you remember your World War II history, was a key objective of the Japanese military, and it became MacArthur’s headquarters. Its people sided with the dominating force, but they had little choice. The point here is a simple one: Port Moresby is, if not the center of Hell on Earth, then it is surely one of its suburbs, and it has been so probably not just during a world war, but for untold millennia. This is how encyclopedia.com describes it: “Beyond the village, oral traditions and early historical records suggest that Motu engaged in warfare or conducted raids intermittently against other neighboring peoples and even sometimes against other Motu villages. Such warfare, endemic in this area, was eventually suppressed by the British administration after its establishment in 1884.” 
 
The 1942-43 battles for control of Port Moresby by allied U.S. and Australian forces against Japanese forces went to the Allies after the famous naval confrontation known as the Battle of the Coral Sea and battles between Australians and Japanese on the infamous Kokoda Track. That “track” is itself a road through Hellish violence, and its making belies the statement above that the British “suppressed” the endemic violence of the area. The Kokoda Track is a narrow trail cut in 1899 by Henry Hamilton Stuart-Russell to connect Port Moresby to the North Coast. As Stuart-Russell progressed through forests and over mountains, he met resistance by the indigenous Motu. In the skirmishes between British and Motu, the British killed many of the latter who were unfamiliar with firearms and who believed their shields afforded them protection. Thus, even if the Motu might, after thousands of years of off-and-on violence, have established a peaceful region, they always faced the threat of violence from outsiders. Port Moresby and its surrounding area attract violence the way carrion attracts flies. 
 
Tens of thousands of years of violence with only intermittent periods of peace: Which human condition prevails? Is peace the exception and not the rule? Is peace the exception in Caracas, Kabul, and Detroit? Is it the exception everywhere?
 
Notes:
*Flinders University. Mapping the ‘superhighway’ travelled by the first Australians. Phys.org. 29 April 2021. Online at https://phys.org/news/2021-04-superhighways-australians.html   Accessed April 30, 2021. Stefani A. Crabtree, et al., Landscape rules predict optimal superhighways for the peopling of Sahul. Nat Hum Behav (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01106-8
 
**Numbeo, Crime Index by City 2021: ​https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp  

Where to begin? Where to begin? This problem we humans have with appearance and reality is ironically, a real problem. Well, if not real, then persistent and by persistence becomes real. How do we distinguish between the two especially when we usually observe only partially, and even on the so-called rigorous level of science, we see in degrees of refinement or resolution. 
 
Maybe what I just noted, the level of resolution, is at the heart of our problems with appearance and reality. Think pixels as an example. Those QLED TVs have resolution that when first viewed elicits a “Wow, that looks real” response. Note our desire to make our simulacra indistinguishable from whatever we wish to simulate. Black-and-white grainy images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 can’t compare with the full color 2021 images of that little helicopter on Mars. We’re now so accustomed to seeing in high definition that we expect to see it; we are disappointed by a grainy view. 
 
Some appearances are not the realities we initially believe them to be though we accept them as such. Mirages, for example. They are, of course, “real” appearances insofar as they are observable by multiple people, even people looking from slightly different perspectives. Rainbows prove their ephemeral nature, but appear real by lingering. I think of a spring evening’s drive along the National Road eastward toward Chestnut Ridge in the distance. I was following rain that was approaching the mountain; the low Sun had broken through the dissipating clouds behind me, and a rainbow, a bright one, arced before me. As I drove for miles, I could see the rainbow, always, of course, receding from me. As you know from your own experience, I was incapable of reaching it, of driving under it or through it as though I were passing beneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. I knew the rainbow’s nature, but I also knew that it was a reality that drivers in my lane could share. I assumed that those drivers, like me, knew that the refraction of light off millions or billions of discrete raindrops separated by gaps differed from the more tightly packed atoms in the Gateway Arch. It’s a matter of resolution, the solidity of a “real” object like that arch merely the result of our inability to see gaps between atomic nuclei 100,000 times smaller than their electron clouds, the former like a pea in the middle of a football field with nothing between it and the cloud in the end zone.  
 
With regard to those old grainy films like the moon movies of Armstrong-Aldrin, I might note that the brain fills in gaps, a point you well know and experience daily. That blind spot in each of your eyes means that you must, even if just over a tiny part of your field of vision, fill in the missing pieces. What you see, that is, the appearance you accept, you have a role in making. But after a half-billion years of evolution, your brain is capable of closing gaps and turning appearances into realities, or at least, into views you can accept as realities. That we can be fooled by optical illusions is an argument against the infallibility of seeing, of flawlessly distinguishing between appearance and reality. Think, also, of black-and-white movies with damsels and dancers dressed in dazzling colors you cannot see but can imagine. Before the age of Technicolor, Hollywood did not make elaborate sets and costumes in black and white; set and costume designers used colors only they could see but the audience could only imagine. 
 
In an age of ubiquitous videographers, we have much to see in both high definition and full color. Or should I say, we see much in HD and color from a distance, such as videos taken from a space station or from rovers on the moon or on Mars. We also see more than our predecessors ever saw, from places on Earth where we never stood and at times when we were otherwise occupied. We have access to videos of events that took place in our absence. 
All those videos give rise to questions about what appears to be reality, especially as we see controversial videos. Do we have the best resolution? Do we share a view as the drivers in my lane that spring evening shared the appearance of the constantly receding rainbow? It’s a modern problem, isn’t it? Not only do we have to ask whether or not we trust our eyes, but also whether or not the video captures a “reality.”
 
Our ancestors who lived prior to the 1832 invention of the phenakistoscope didn’t have to fill in the gaps of simulacra though they had the mechanism known as the persistence of vision. The brain’s holding onto a past image allows us to see a continuum of action that appears when a series of still images runs in sequence before our eyes just as it allows us to fill in a scene with blind-spot gaps. Today, we’re all about persistence of vision, about holding onto appearances to make them “real.”
 
And even when we don’t fill in a gap during an initial viewing, we can rely on replays, now enhanced with computer graphics that enable us to have multiple perspectives, godlike perspectives that cross both time and space. And short of having access to enhanced computer compilations of events from different angles, we always have multiple videos from different eye-witness videographers. We get to choose the perspective we want. We get to choose the appearance we want. Seems we can drive beneath the rainbow. We can even have a deceased actress or actor appear in a film thanks to artificial intelligence and ironically to our ability to dissociate our minds from reality. 
 
Nowhere along the human spectrum does the problem of distinguishing between appearance and reality become more significant than in social interactions. Uncounted billions of humans have over the life of the species found themselves subjected to judgments based more on appearance than on reality. Filling in the gaps to make the world around us isn’t just a visual mechanism. We also fill in the gaps associated with emotions and behavior. Regardless of our blind spots, we see a continuum, not a grainy view interrupted by gaps. 
 
It’s in smoothing out the images of the outside world through not only the persistence of vision but also the persistence of belief and emotion that frequently drives us to accept appearances as reality. What we see in others is often just a vision in our mind’s eye. As social beings, however, we have the ability to share such appearances and thus to make them, like that rainbow seen by all the drivers headed in the same direction I was headed, a shared reality. 
 
Whatever road you drive, you will have others in your lane, others who see what you see. You, in turn, see what they see. Just hope that as you can recognize the difference between mirage and reality, between appearance and reality, and between a rainbow and a Gateway Arch, that the others in your lane can also make the distinction. 

“Sam, did you hear about those French people living in a cave for 40 days?” *
 
“No, Gwendolyn, I didn’t. Who volunteers for such stuff? And why 40 days, is it some biblical thing, like wandering with Moses for 40 years or taking your canteen to walk with Jesus for 40 days? You know, that number 40 has biblical significance, don’t you? It represents a period of trial. Think the 40 days of Lent for a modern equivalent. Or, now, I’ll think of 15 cave people who drop the last letters of words and names. Did they build les maisons in the caves or sleep on the cave floor in a pile of bat droppings? And what’s the deal with not pronouncing that final ‘s’ in maisons?”
 
“Well, you don’t say ‘I-k-now,’ so what’s the deal with not pronouncing the ‘k’ or the ‘w’ in the word know when, as the French would say without pronouncing the ‘s,’ ‘tu parles’ or without saying the ‘z,’ ‘vous parlez’? How did we get on French pronunciation? I was asking if you knew about the experiment that involved 15 people living in a dark cave.”
 
“Okay, Gwen, so 15 Frenchmen went into a cave to live. Big deal. What was the point? Native Americans, heck, people all over the world lived in caves before we learned to build les maisons we live in today.”
 
“I was reading the article, Sam, because the cost of the experiment run by the Human Adaption Institute was $1.5 million. One and a half million bucks! They called the experiment 'Deep Time.' What’s wrong with people. Over a million bucks to stick people in a cave that cavemen, not just the Homo sapiens sapiens ones, but the Neanderthal ones, also, did for free. I remember going on one of the Mammoth Cave tours during which the park ranger explained how a Dr. Croghan put tuberculosis patients in the cave because the air in there was supposed to cure them.” **
 
“How did that work out?”
 
“Not well, as you can imagine. There’s an interesting quotation from one of the people who used to serve the en-caved people. Alfred, a guy who served meals to them, said, ‘I used to stand on that rock and flow the horn to call them to dinner. There were 15 of them and they looked more like a company of skeletons than anything else.’ That was back in the winter of 1842. After five of his experimental cave dwellers died, Dr. Croghan ended the experiment. You can still see two of the stone maisons in the cave. This is 2021. What the heck were the people at the Human Adaption Institute thinking? Or, should I ask, ‘What the heck were the people of the institute ingesting?’”
 
“What did they eat, by the way?”
 
“Get this. Get this. With their food the French cave-dwellers also swallowed little capsules with thermometers that transmitted data to a portable computer. That is, the thermometers transmitted until they pooped them out. A million and a half bucks! A MILLION AND A HALF! How many poor people actually living in caves today could have had an apartment with electricity and running water for that amount? Did you know that the L.A. Times once ran a story that there were 30 million Chinese currently living in caves? Talk about a breeding ground for tuberculosis! And it’s not just the Chinese. There are not 15, but fifteen hundred people living in caves in Coober Pedy, Australia. Twenty-first century, and people are still living in caves. And not only those who have no alternative housing, but 15 volunteer Frenchmen!”
 
“I see this has you pretty worked up, Gwen. Certainly, there must have been some science behind these experimental cave-dwellers.”
 
“Yeah. Big science, Sam. The ‘scientists’ wanted to monitor sleep patterns, social interactions, and behavioral reactions. Couldn’t just go ask 30 million Chinese cave-dwellers or 1,500 cave-dwellers in Coober Pedy. Had to spend a million and a half bucks on something that actual cave-dwellers do free—well, that is, except for swallowing a tiny thermometer. And the 30 million in China and 1,500 in Coober Pedy just don’t live in caves for 40 biblical days of trial; they live there year ‘round, every year, every decade. And surprise, surprise. What happened? As you could guess, the French people in the experiment lost track of how long they were in the cave. Geez. Even Dr. Croghan’s tuberculosis patients had watches, and that was way back in the mid nineteenth century. And then, when the French cave-dwellers emerged, they supposedly looked ‘visibly tired.’ Surprised? Me neither. But, million-and-a-half-buck experimenters included a ‘chronobiologist,’ I guess some guy who works with biological clocks to draw some conclusion. I actually don’t care. Adaptation Institute, Adaption, whatever. What about the people thrown into the Black Hole of Calcutta? What about people thrown into a dark trailer to be smuggled across the U. S. border with Mexico? What about those times when I was so tired, I fell into a deep sleep and awoke not knowing for a moment how long I slept or even where I was?”
 
“Sounds as though Dr. Croghan’s turberculosis experiment missed the mark on all he could have studied.”
 
“No. He and the others in Mammoth Cave knew that they were in sync. What’s that they say about college girls living as roommates? Of course, people living together sync their lives, whether they live in darkness or in light. By the way, did I mention that they laid out the dead tuberculosis patients on a rock now known as Corpse Rock? So, anyway, Dr. Croghan didn’t run a high-tech experiment just as the Chinese cave-dwellers aren’t running a high-tech experiment with poopable thermometers. What Croghan and the others noted about living in a dark, damp cave was what any of us would have noted about human interactions without spending a million and a half dollars. In fact, aren’t we always observing sleep habits, synced lives, and behavioral adaptations? I guess all the twenty-first century cave-dwellers around the world  don’t know they are running an experiment in human adaptation, or adaption, or whatever. Bet all those real cave-dwellers couldn’t wait to find out what the French discovered after spending a million plus bucks.”
 
 
Notes:
*Brito, Renata. Out of the Cave: French isolation study ends after 40 days. Phys.org. 24 April 2021. Online at https://phys.org/news/2021-04-cave-french-isolation-days.html  Accessed April 24, 2021. The story was reported by the Associate Press.
 
**If you would like to read about Dr. Croghan’s experiment, see the National Park Service’s story at file:///Users/Taylor/Downloads/Tuberculosis%20in%20Mammoth%20Cave%20(U.S.%20National%20Park%20Service).html
 
 
 
 
 

The discovery that grasses can “borrow” or steal genes from neighboring vegetation through an unknown mechanism plants an idea in my head: What if, now bear with me, what if humans could do the same? * And what if, again, just speculating here, what if we discover someday that the saying “It’s in my genes” proves to be more accurate than we now imagine? Would, mind you, I’m running through a stream of ideas, would it be possible to breed a peaceful human type that enhances peace by both nature and nurture? 
 
I suppose you’re going to argue that nurture plays a more important role than nature in making a peaceful society. If you adopt that argument, you side with William Golding’s theme in his Lord of the Flies, that humans are basically savage and that the only control on that savagery lies within a civilization. I say “within” because we have a history of accepting violence against people of other civilizations through war, an event that justifies killing outside the arbitrary boundaries of socially and politically unified people within the society at war. Something in there, in that group of blood and social relatives says, “Okay, as long as you don’t hurt anyone in the ‘family.’” So, assuming you have adopted the Golding psychology of inherent savagery, I think the only recourse you have to explain peace is nurture. Train little humans to be peaceful as they begin their life’s journey through the maze of conflicting ideas and behaviors that are characteristic of any society’s accepted membership. What do we nurture today? Don’t we define a group, define outside groups, and train kids it’s okay to hurt the latter but not the former. Has there ever been a year without a war somewhere?   
 
But, as I was asking above, but what if, just what if, there could be a peaceful nature, maybe one that unfolds as an expression of a gene? What if peace came from biology and not from culture? 
 
That Golding thing I mentioned, is that your view? Are you peaceful because of civilization’s, that is specifically, because of your civilization’s restraints? Are you a veiled monster like the neatly uniformed sailors who rescue the savage raggedly-dressed boys-run-wild at the end of Golding’s novel? Neat but savage: Isn’t that what the sailor represent? They’re at war, you know—but not at war with their shipmates. Do you accept society’s limitations, its restrictions because you see that deep-down savagery that would emerge without such controls? 
 
Golding published his novel in 1954, just a year after anthropologist Siegfried F. Nadel published “Social Control and Self-Regulation.” Nadel begins his article with:
 
            “No one will quarrel with the assertion that social existence is controlled existence, for we all accept a certain basic assumption about human nature—namely, that without some constraint of individual leanings the coordination of action and regularity of conduct which turn a human aggregation into a society could not materialize” (265). ** 
 
Nurture. See. Not nature. At least in Nadel’s view. And in his studies of various peoples in eastern Africa, Nadel used the Nuba as an example of what I wrote above. As K. E. Read expresses it:
 
            “[Nadel] pointed out that among the Nuba the evaluation of a crime such as homicide and the sanctions which it provokes, varies according to whether it occurs ‘within the clan or outside it, in or outside the political unit.’ Homicide within the Nuba kinship group or clan is an unpunishable offence, in the sense that it does not provoke forceful retaliation by the members of the clan or its segments. Between clans, however, punishment is exacted in the form of blood feud and revenge” (202). ***
 
Sounds like the Hatfields and McCoys along the West Virginia-Kentucky border of Big Sandy River in the nineteenth century, doesn’t it? Acceptable violence, that is, acceptable violence as long as it is perpetrated on someone outside the clan. So, I return to my speculation: Are we deep-down Golding-style savages restrained only insofar as we adhere to society’s nurture?
 
And if that’s so, if, as I was speculating, we are deep-down savages, wouldn’t it behoove us to look for some mutant among us, some deep-down incarnation of peace, that one in a 7 billion with a peace gene, so we could borrow, steal, rent, or, as the phytologists say with regard to grasses, laterally transfer that gene? Wouldn’t it be great that if such an incarnation of peace were available, that we could do what grasses do, that is, that we could transfer the peace gene into people, all people? And once implanted in the DNA of this generation of humans, wouldn’t that gene find expression in the next, a mutation preserved because it is a favorable one, favorable because it extends the life of members of the species on average in the absence of inter-clan conflict and inter-civilization war? Why, wouldn’t such a gene even prevent domestic violence? 
 
Apparently, ubiquitous grasses became ubiquitous because they had the ability to somehow incorporate genes from other plants that were favorable to the survival of the grass. We don’t know how they do it, but we know that grasses do, in fact, borrow genes. Now if only we could figure out a way…
 
Okay, I know I’m just speculating. And there’s a counter argument. If we are, in fact, controlled by biology, even the biology of peace, then what’s that say about our belief in mind, or psyche, or freedom, especially the freedom we call free will? Could we through lateral gene transfer make humanity an analog of gentle Golden Retrievers? Then what might happen to the aggression that drives us through some Will to Power that also leads to invention? Would civilization have become civilization without invention? Is there some savage drive toward success in a risky world that was populated by large and dangerous carnivores? Is our savagery a survival mechanism? 
 
I think of Carl Sandberg’s “The Grass”:
 
            Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
            Shovel them under and let me work--
                                    I am the grass; I cover all.
 
            And pile them high at Gettysburg
            And pile them high at Yres and Verdun.
            Shovel them under and let me work.
            Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
                                    What place is this?
                                    Where are we now?
            
                                    I am the grass.
                                    Let me work.
 
There’s a lesson in the grass, but I don’t think we’re capable of learning it. 
 
Whew! So many questions and so few answers. Well, just something for you to think about.
 
Notes:
 
*University of Sheffield. Naturally GM: Crops steal genes from other species to accelerate evolution. Phys.Org. 23 April 2021. Online at https://phys.org/news/2021-04-naturally-gm-crops-genes-species.html   Accessed April 23, 2021. Hibdige, Samuel G. S., et al., Widespread lateral gene transfer among grasses. New Phytologist. 22 April 2021. Online at https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.17328   Accessed April 23, 2021.
 
**Nadel, S. F. “Social Control and Self-Regulation,” Social Forces, Volume 31, Issue 3, March 1953, pp. 26 5-273 https://doi.org/10.2307/2574226
 
***Read, K. E. “Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuku-Gama” in John Middleton, ED., Myth and Cosmos: Readings in Mythology and Symbolism. Garden City. The Natural History Press, 1967.

It’s easy for any of us to dismiss others for their apparent small-mindedness. But in calling someone else petty, do we miss something about our own pettiness and about the brain’s intermittent obsession with trivialities?
 
When my wife, first child, and I moved into a rental at the beginning of my four decades of teaching in a college, we lived across the street from a retired electrician and his wife and next door to a nearly hundred-year-old and still very vital couple. The latter two tended to their house and garden the way NASA tends to its spacecraft like long-lived New Horizon, Voyagers I and II, and Pioneers X and XI, that is, maintaining upkeep so meticulously that the objects last for years in the best condition possible. Next door, the Ks had plastic covers on their decades-old living room sofa and chairs, windows so clean they could have been featured in a Windex commercial, and a garden that produced crops of peppers, tomatoes, beans, and squash so abundant that they exceeded the Ks’ canning needs and found their way to our kitchen through the couple’s generosity. And across the street, the Ls were equally generous, with Mrs. L providing her fresh breads and Mr. L providing wisdom by example and word. Like the Ks, the Ls also kept a very neat house, well-tended to daily. One might say that both families lived rather mundane and simple lives. During our five years as neighbors, the Ks weren’t travelers though they had migrated decades ago from Russia. The Ls did travel, occasionally to Florida, where Mr. L collected shells that for a hobby he encased in solid plastic cubes which, I think, composed the crop he grew in his basement workshop, the analog of Mr. K’s garden across the street, all his shells neatly arranged on shelves.  
 
You will, of course, wonder, “Where’s he going with this? What’s it have to do with pettiness?” 
 
Both elderly couples lived lives characterized by patience. Both had started life before WWI; both had lived through the Great Depression and WWII, and both had an identifiable appreciation of the moment. Their consecutive todays were episodes for focus. I suppose they had had their share of running headlong into tomorrows long before my wife and I were born. And I suppose that they, like so many others, had their moments of pettiness. Maybe impatient running toward the future and emphasizing trivialities are characteristics indicative of all youth, but in their later years the Ks and Ls lived in the present and seemed unperturbed by nuisances as much as anyone can live with such a focus. They seemed to have left behind most of the petty concerns that might once have occupied their minds. 
 
I remember mentioning to Mr. L some petty faculty problem covered in long hours of heated debate either in a department meeting or in the faculty senate, and receiving his slow-paced advice to be patient. From my perspective today, I cannot recall what that problem was, but I remember Mr. L’s advice to be patient. Apparently, up to that point I had not fully learned that pettiness arises in every enclosed society from a workroom full of big-box employees complaining about bosses, work schedules, and procedures, to the offices and hallowed halls of every college, where people argue over chairmanships, intellectual territories like courses, promotions, tenure, and procedures. I believe I have even observed similar pettiness among members of religious groups, and certainly, I have seen it in political and special interest groups. In academia pettiness is often the product of hubris and the drive toward self-aggrandizement linked to in-house struggles for recognition and award. Impatient pettiness is an inevitable offshoot of pretense that grows like Mr. K’s garden vegetables. Those who work in ivy-covered ivory towers plant seeds of petty discord that in the garden of academia’s campuses grow pumpkin-size, the vines extending into standing committee rooms, faculty offices, campus coffee shops, and over long conference tables in administration buildings. Although I retired from academia, I believe from what I read and hear that similar pettiness continues unabated as a new generation of professors replaces my generation. 
 
No doubt, in my youth I succumbed to such pettiness that I acknowledge years later and in memory of Mr. L’s advice to be patient. Am I still occasionally petty? Of course, but I remind myself every so often that whatever seems to be urgent is often petty and that in a hundred years, I’ll look back and laugh about what I now consider seriously. I also remind myself of that famous line at the end of Voltaire’s Candide that one should “cultivate” his garden. I suppose that had I, like Mr. K next door, spent time tending to my “garden,” I might have spent less time concerned with trivial matters either immediately past or future. I think of all those committee meetings and arguments I sat through, all those in-house reports I wrote for the department, the college, the Chancellor’s office, and all those faculty concerns that added to naught, concerns that no doubt still occupy the minds of the present generation of professors. Big-box company employees do the same; I’m sure of it. People in office cubicles, also. And, Holy Mother Milk of Magnesia, probably among the cloistered. My experience, limited as it is, tells me that petty concerns have always been the lot of humanity—all humanity, but particularly humanity in closed groups. 
 
What’s the source of pettiness? Rather, maybe I should ask why we are so petty. Is pettiness the inevitable product of big brains that have the capacity to do much but that are offered only limitations imposed by others or self-imposed? Do natural or social limitations inevitably result in pettiness in a brain equipped to seek solutions to life’s riddles? Is the impatience associated with trivial concerns rooted in self-importance or in the desire to see that others are aware of our significance? Isn’t that vanity? Certainly, in academia the latter seems to be the driver of pettiness, especially since promotions are mostly in-house processes based on arbitrary traditions started centuries ago. I think of Carl Sagan’s not getting tenure at Harvard and Eric Segal’s not getting tenure at Yale. Pettiness serves as an underlying driver in the enclosed society of academia because few people are held accountable by objective and external Inspectors General of any kind. Pettiness emerges from the recesses of educated, but narrow minds. 
 
Of course, I could argue that in tending one’s garden like Mr. K or shell collection like Mr. L, a person has time to think and that given a time for thinking, petty thoughts occur. Watching a garden grow or liquid polymers solidify isn’t a guarantee against pettiness. Staying in the present without pettiness is a difficult task for a complex brain in a quiet environment. However, both the Ks and the Ls seemed to have managed to maintain a life undisturbed by the petty concerns in the world around them. With my weaker mind, I sometimes need to engage in a risky task to focus, maybe not high-wire walking, but at least something that requires undivided concentration like using a circular saw. Using power tools puts pettiness on the proverbial back burner. A loss of concentration on the moment as the blade spins can result in injury or a board of incorrect length. In all those closed groups of incessantly arguing academicians and complaining big-box employees, real risk is rare. In its absence, the mind plants the seeds of trivialities.   
 
As petty thoughts emerge in consciousness, the brain does have the recourse of considering them in context. A hundred years from now, that petty incident, someone else’s behavior, or a conflict which appears important will, in fact, be amusing—or pitiful. You’ll look back a century from now, wish you had been more patient, had more wisdom, and considered the significance of your past concerns. Maybe that’s what the Ks and Ls had done in less than a hundred years. 
 
In looking back, I see that many of us have knowledge, but few have wisdom. Few of us have patience, also. Those with great learning, like my university colleagues, proved frequently to be petty individuals. Allowing myself in my youth to become wrapped in that pettiness was a difficult behavior to change. Having great knowledge does not guarantee the wisdom that patience yields. Becoming patient is not an easy lesson to teach the young or those who imprison themselves in the trivial concerns of a closed group. 
 
If you try to recall your own encounters with trivial concerns, you might notice that the details and emotions of the time have faded. You might ask, “Why was I so worked up? Why didn’t I just walk away to let others waste their time on matters that I can only vaguely remember?” See, you don’t even have to wait a hundred years to look back on your past concerns and laugh.
 
 
 

Human: “I see you coming in for your morning coffee and scone, but I don’t know your name. I’m Average Joseph, but my friends call me Av.”
 
Alien: “I like the coffee. I’m Doe Everyman; mine call me Ev.”
 
Av: “Live around here?”
 
Ev: “Nearby. You work nearby?”
 
Av: “Yeah, at the newspaper down the street. I cover the national news.”
 
Ev: “Oh! So, what am I going to read about in tonight’s edition?”
 
Av: “This might sound silly, but aliens. Seems both the American military, the Navy, specifically, and the Australian military spotted some UFOs. They both released films. Now, the US government says it will release its information on UFOs this summer. Finally, we’ll know about those allusive aircraft.”
 
Ev: “I wouldn’t expect much. They might have seen allusive illusions, not real spacecraft with aliens. Human brains, and thus, humans, seem ready to accept almost anything. Thus, the success of scammers.”
 
Av: “No. I think we’re going to see some proof this time. Those videos, pictures, and witness reports seem legit.”
 
Ev: “Okay, so you think we…er, so, you think aliens are here, I suppose. Maybe living among us. How about that guy over there? Or that woman? The guy is always wearing a hoodie every time I see him. Maybe he has a third eye in the back of his head. The woman, you’re a reporter. Ask to see whether she has three breasts. She’s always in a very bulky sweatshirt, even in summer.”
 
Av: “Ev, you can joke, but what if aliens are here, maybe to take over the world?”
 
Ev: “Might not be a bad idea. Humans certainly haven’t done a very good job at stewardship.”
 
Av: “What do you mean? Maybe I should do an opinion piece. You know, get your opinion and then go around the coffee shop to see what everyone thinks.”
 
Ev: “Well, consider your…I mean, our ironies. I’ve read news stories and seen TV specials on how people are destroying the planet, not just the global warming stuff, but also all those fragile ecologies. Brazilians are burning down the rainforests. People are filling the ocean with plastics and now, with COVID face masks and nitrile gloves. Yet, there’s article after article and report after report on sustaining the planet, and government agencies are always making more environmental regulations. There’s a whole industry devoted to sustainability, lots of college professors, rich people with private planes, and little kids concerned about dolphins and polar bears. Amazing! People are obsessed with sustainability, the same people who don’t give their nuclear weapons a second thought. Talk about irony! And, of course, hypocrisy. So, yes, aliens could probably run the planet better than people, that is, unless they are also subject to all the human faults, what do you call them, I mean, what do we call them? Sins.”
 
Av: “Really, I think I get your point. So, the skeptic in me wants to ask, ‘What if aliens were living among us? Wouldn’t they already be part of the problem? If they were here to save the planet, ala Michael Rennie in the original movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, wouldn’t they have announced their presence and given us solutions to our wayward ways?’ I should put those two questions in an article. But in my opinion, no, instead of being here to help, I think they would be here for conquest; yes, that’s their motive. Here’s a planet like a house with squatters, ready for new legitimate occupants. They don’t have good intentions; otherwise, they’d already have made their presence known and told us their purpose for being here.”
 
Ev: “You humans, I mean, you reporters think that aliens would operate and think the way humans operate and think. Anyway, those videos could just be optical illusions. All this could be moot. All those alien abduction stories just so much nonsense. Probing bodies stories, also. Heck, anyone can pick up Gray’s Anatomy in the bookstore or watch Grey’s Anatomy on TV. No need for probing abducted people; if aliens are smart enough to travel across the vast reaches of space, certainly, they’re smart enough to read or see broadcast TV.”
 
Av: “Go ahead. Joke. But I’m going to report on the government’s release of documents. Maybe the aliens don’t care about the planet, either saving it or conquering it. Maybe they are just passing by like Oumuamua; maybe they come by for a drink of water; or again, maybe they are truly just curious.”
 
Ev: “And I’ll look forward to your report, but on that last point, if they are curious, why not get out and kick the tires, do something to touch whatever puzzles them like the astronauts and pre-humans touching the monolith in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, maybe even show up at this coffee shop and converse with a human? Heck, I could be from somewhere out there. How would you know I was an alien if I looked like a human? Maybe I’m in disguise. Maybe you are, Av. Maybe the reason you are a reporter is to find out more about humans to report to your home world. Being a reporter is a perfect way to mingle among humans.”
 
Av: “Nah! Now you’re joshing me. Anyway, it’s been nice talking to you. I’m here on my way to the paper every morning, so I guess you’ll be seeing me around.”
 
Ev: “Seeing you? I’ll be watching…I mean, I’ll watch for you.”

If you go to Mono Lake on a clear night, you will see Castor and Pollux, the Gemini, reflected from the water’s surface so clearly that the sky appears below as well as above. You know, however, the difference between actual sky and reflected sky, between real and phantom.  
 
Mirages are common phenomena. We’ve all seen them, if not in a desert or on the ocean, then on a highway in summer, when differences in air temperature between road and air bend light to make a blue sky appear as a puddle on the road ahead. The optical phenomena fool the inexperienced brain, but not the experienced one. Image isn’t, as we come to know, always reality.  
 
Phantoms and hallucinations, however, step into the dimension of reality in ways peculiar to individuals. Amputees experience phantom limbs, and there are even auditory analogs of hallucinations. Random sounds, such as those produced by the tracks of heavy equipment running over rocks, can sometimes echo in our brains as a call of our name. “What?” we ask in the presence of puzzled companions whose brains never heard and interpreted the random sounds as language. And, of course, there are those troubling personal hallucinations in brains affected by diseases and mind-bending drugs. 
 
The brain needs to interpret the information it gets from the senses because acting on the premise that a phantom , hallucination, or mirage is real can be hazardous. Think of the lingering hallucinogenic effects of LSD on brains as an example. Years after taking the drug, a woman I knew fell down a flight of steps and injured herself because she experienced an alternate reality, a different place and position, that momentarily substituted for the stairs on which she actually stood. We’ve seen or heard of those with deteriorating brains also think hallucinations are real. For those in such degenerative states, alternate realities and dream-like brain states aren’t rectified by rationality or knowledge. Whatever appears to be real is real for them.  
 
I recall an incident during which my ninety-year-old grandmother said, “Look at the big spider crawling on the floor.” It was a bare floor; the spider was in her brain. There was no phenomenon we could share, something like a rainbow, a nonexistent puddle on the road ahead, or a lake in the desert. All of us could look at the surface of Mono Lake under the clear desert air to see the reflection of the Dioscuri; none of us can look into the brains of the hallucinating to see exactly what they see. We can share mirages, but not phantoms and hallucinations. 
 
Fleeting phantoms, hallucinations, and mirages pop into human reality, appearing suddenly like some gods and demigods in Greek mythology, as Castor and Pollux appear, for example in Euripides’ play Helene. There might be a lesson in the phenomena of unshared phantoms and hallucinations. In that play by Euripides, Helen(e), yes, that Homeric “Helen of Troy,” was never abducted by Paris. Instead, Helen(e) was taken to Egypt, and a phantom Helen fashioned by Hera went to Troy. Menelaus, King of Sparta and Helen’s husband, went off with all those Achaean warriors in those thousand ships in the wrong direction, all chasing after a phantom on the shores of Illium. Humans, it seems from the drama, will act decisively on what they think is real as much as on what they absolutely know is real. 
 
In Euripides’ play, Menelaus discovers the difference between his phantom wife, whom he rescued from Troy, and his real wife after he is shipwrecked upon the shores of an Egyptian ruler named Theoclymenus, who wants to marry the real Helen. Helen, believing Menelaus died at sea acquiesces at first, but then discovers that her husband is still alive. With the help of Theonoe, the Egyptian king’s sister, the reunited couple escape to make their way back to Sparta. Then Theoclymenus, angry with treacherous Theonoe for aiding their escape, is ready to kill her when Castor and Pollux intervene to explain that it is Heaven’s wish that Menelaus and Helen find their way back to their homeland.  
 
But what of the phantom Helen whom Menelaus rescued? She disappeared into thin air according to a report a messenger gives to Menelaus after he is reunited with Helen. Hmnn.
 
Let’s go back to that thing I wrote above, you know, about humans acting on what they think is real as much as on what they absolutely know is real. Happens to all of us, doesn’t it? Concluding and acting on the basis of a phantom, hallucination, or mirage frame much of our public passion, especially when get angry, get wrapped up in a mob, or vote under the influence of unrelenting propaganda. Often there are no Dioscuri to intervene on behalf of Heaven and reality. Our actions have detrimental and sometimes tragic consequences because the appearance of the gods on the surface of our lives is just a reflection of the sky. Castor and Pollux don’t suddenly appear to save us, even when we act compassionately as Theonoe did when she betrayed her brother in an attempt to save Menelaus and Helen. Our actions, however motivated by what is real or unreal, always have irreversible consequences.    
 
And then, finding out that the reality we thought we knew has disappeared into thin air like the phantom Helen in Euripides’ play, we take one of two paths: The first path is one less traveled because it involves admitting that we chased after a phantom, that we were wrong. The second path is more traveled because it involves continuing as though the phantom was real, the hallucination a reality, or at the very least a clear reflection of the heavens like the Dioscuri mirrored in Mono Lake at night. The former path is the road to reality or to a different future; the latter, the road to human folly that is paved in rock-hard pride. Walk down that second path, and you might find yourself, like the woman on LSD, falling and injuring yourself. 

Yes, I, too, watch TV. Sometimes binge-watch. And one TV series I watched was Billions. During one of the episodes an artist was paid by a billionaire to paint under contract. The artist, a formerly free-spirited and creative mind, found himself drawing not a picture, but a blank. He had painter’s block, the equivalent of writer’s block. Neither is an uncommon experience. The creative force is one that requires constant renewal. A new Muse has to show up in the brain to inspire. There are parallels, also. Those who meditate, spiritual leaders, and philosophers also experience occasional creative dryness. Maybe you have. Are there tricks to restore creativity? Sure. You can probably find some on YouTube, in self-help sections at the bookstore, or in seminars. Try this one:
 
Go metaphor, archetype, or stereotype fishing. Find a poem, an epic, a discipline, or foreign culture to examine for its metaphors and images. Take a metaphor that is new to you, though common to others, and apply it to a) your local society, b) your philosophical or moral system, or c) your observations of your own and others’ intensity of feeling or apathy. Now, I’m not guaranteeing the process will lead to a creative burst, but doing nothing but pining about such dryness does little to irrigate the parched brain. Read through this to see whether it opens any floodgate: 
 
If you live in the United States, you have a shared metaphorical system that distinguishes among “Northern Life,” “Southern Life,” “Southwestern Life,” “New England Life,” and among others, “Upper Mid-western Life.” You might call such designations stereotypes, but you know that almost everyone generally understands the terms and their associated images and that they have become part of the American cultural metaphor. So, how is this going to help you release those creative waters?
 
As I noted in another essay, during a field trip to North Carolina with geology students, a colleague of mine saw an elementary school group dangerously close to a cliff. Because he had fallen from a rocky precipice, injuring himself enough to be hospitalized, he shouted angrily, “Who’s in charge here.” Chaperones of the group, chatting as they walked slowly, were unaware of the dangers the children faced; but instead of trying to rectify the situation and protect the children, they defensively asked, “Where are you from?” When he said, “Pennsylvania,” their response was a disdainful, “Yankees.” Wrapped in the metaphor of Civil War mentality of their ancestral culture, they did nothing to prevent the children from continuing their chaotic play near the precipice. They were more determined to follow the dictates of their past than to act to save the children of their present. Now, you might say, “That’s not me,” but consider the universality of such thinking that prevents clear thinking about reality as it is. Take as an example the Mapuche of Chile and their thinking that runs parallel to American thinking. Mapuche is “people of the land.” Those who consider themselves members of the larger group distinguish among the Picunche (north), Huilliche (south), Puenche (east), and Lafkenche (ocean, because such people live along the coast). Although all groups in those “zones” are identified as “Mapuche,” any non-Mapuche group, that is, some group of foreign origin—not necessarily from afar—doesn’t fall into the category of “che” (people), but rather into the category of “winka” (outsider). Consider, then, the extended metaphor of this thinking. For Mapuche, all indigenous populations are “Mapuche,” and all “non-Mapuche” are winka. Winka are “colonizers.” No doubt the North Carolinians who said “Yankees” saw my colleague as “Winka.” *
 
As I said, I can’t guarantee that what I just wrote will get you thinking. But the specific tale isn’t the point here; it’s not necessarily going to flood the irrigation ditch with water for your new crop of creativity. But the methodology might. Start looking actively for metaphors, stereotypes, and cultural thinking or behavior that are unfamiliar to you. Look at them closely, and then apply them to your own thinking or behavior or to the thinking and behavior of those around you and members of your national or regional culture. 
 
In a sense, I guess I’m asking you to become a winka, that outsider who sees things differently from those enmeshed by stereotype, metaphor, or cultural patterns. 
 
*Faron, Louis C. “Symbolic Values and the Integration of Society among the Mapuche of Chile,” in John Middleton, ED. Myth and Cosmos: Readings in Mythhology and Symbolism. Garden City, NY. 1967. Pp. 180-184. 

If you are reading this, you made it through all previous filters, that is through all previous extinctions, even those associated only with humans, maybe a pandemic. Almost everyone knows about the five major extinctions or about the one that has received the most press, the extinction event that killed off the nonavian dinosaurs. But extinction is an ongoing process with untold millions of species coming into and going out of existence. And in all those extinctions large and small, that line of existence that led to you remained unbroken. Imagine a series of screens or filters stacked on a shaker, the type used by sedimentologists to obtain the fractions of particle sizes in a sample of silts and sands. Regardless of the size of the mesh, the particle called you made it through to the present.
 
You’re here. You made it. Be happy for yourself and your loved ones because they also made it through the filters of death. Think, however, how difficult your lifeline’s journey has been from the first eukaryotes to the animals to you. You’ve been either lucky or blessed, depending on your belief system. Regardless of your considering yourself the product of Fortune or Providence, you might smile today in the realization that nothing interrupted that line. 
 
Sure, it’s a reality that you had nothing to do with your ancestors’ escaping all those truncating events. And sure, it’s a bit puzzling that some of your contemporaries have chosen to do their own truncating through suicide. But surely, also, you have cause to rejoice in your living. Congratulations! You made it this far. Now don’t do anything to screw up this opportunity.
 
This is not your practice life.

Atmospheric carbon complexity just got more complex. * But what did you expect? The chemistry of atmospheres is a tough nut to crack because the main components of air 1) are invisible, 2) move under the influence of planetary rotation, density differences, and thermal radiation, 3) temporarily disappear into various "sinks," and 4) incorporate gases and particles from various sources both identifiable and unidentifiable. The reason for the added complexity lies in that last point: The recent discovery that bacteria on the ocean floor play a role in releasing carbon dioxide. Released into the water, the carbon dioxide makes its way to the surface, where it enters the atmosphere.
 
Here’s a brief primer: The ocean teems with life, much of it microscopic or just barely visible. This life does what the animals that make sea shells do, it incorporates carbon as the minerals calcite or aragonite in its hard parts, what micropaleontologists call tests that are, in fact, just tiny shells. Coccolithophores, which are single-cell algae, make beautiful little plates called coccoliths that break apart when the individual cell dies. Foraminifera, single-celled “animals,” make more robust, but still tiny, shells, visible to the naked eye, and that fall like the coccoliths to the ocean floor. Where the surface water contains abundant nutrients, such as phosphate, the tiny organisms grow, float around as “plankton,” and sink to the floor upon death. In some places, such as the north equatorial Pacific ocean floor, piles of tiny shells are tens to hundreds of meters deep, having accumulated over thousands to millions of years. It’s from carbonate sediments on the ocean floor that the newly discovered bacteria release the carbon now found to enter both seawater and atmosphere. Humans aren’t solely responsible for carbon dioxide buildup though we’ve added more of the gas in the short term than the organisms contributed.
 
Nevertheless, we now know that there’s yet another source of atmospheric carbon to consider in addition to methane releases from hydrates (ices on the ocean floor) and permafrost and forest soils, volcanic eruptions, and, of course, the anthropogenic emissions caused by burning fossil fuels. Yep, complexity just got more complex because we learned something. 
 
That bacteria play a role in atmospheric composition shouldn’t be a surprise. We do live on a bacterial planet. Heck, you have 39 trillion of the little critters living with your 30 trillion human cells. Bacteria have been found everywhere. They live in hot springs in waters above the boiling point, in deep crustal rock, in the atmosphere, and in and on all surface features and life-forms. In the time before the rise of multicellular life, Earth belonged to the bacteria; it was a bacteria planet, and it seems to still be a bacterial planet. Cyanobacteria appear to have been largely responsible for Earth’s various “oxygenation events” of a couple billion years ago and for exerting control over the planet’s variable carbon dioxide abundance. Having played a key role in atmospheric composition means having played a key role in global temperatures and in the rise of animal life, including you. See; you owe a debt to organisms, but no one expects you to thank a bacterium today. However, you might consider that this new discovery means that complexity befuddles the atmosphere modelers and models and that little surprises add up to noticeable consequences.  
 
Little surprises like the contribution of bacteria to the carbon content of the atmosphere are common. Because we tune ourselves to big events and tend to focus on the large, evident, and sensational rather than on the small and invisible, we interpret the world and life coarsely. Yes, you’ve been obsessed with a deadly virus, a form of semi-life smaller than bacteria, but that’s because the pandemic has had immediate and highly noticeable consequences. Plus, you have been bombarded by newspaper, TV, and online reports by people obsessed with sensationalizing the negative. Keeping you in a state of constant anxiety over big events prevents you from observing the little things, the tiny daily events that add up to a human and societal development. But the little surprises do have effects, usually, as in the case of the discovery of carbon-releasing bacteria, known only after the fact. Those bacteria have been releasing carbon dioxide for as long as there have been piles of tests on the ocean floor, that is, for millions of years. 
 
But what of those other numerous little surprises in your life? What of the discoveries in relationships, that, for examples, you share a philosophical position with a new acquaintance, share an ideal with another, disagree with a friend over some personal or societal event you had not previously discussed, or have a previously unknown common goal with someone you long disdained? Life’s little surprises add up like the gases produced by those tiny bacteria hidden from view on the ocean floor, but always at work.
 
Sure, we get caught up in the big stuff. We jump to conclusions or onto bandwagons of various kinds, our jumping often controlled by others with a plan of some sort. And in jumping to conclusions or onto bandwagons, we often skip over the effects of the tiny, ineluctable changes that we usually only learn in retrospect.
 
 
Note: 
*https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/04/deep-sea-bacteria-caught-releasing-carbon-into-atmosphere/  Accessed 13 April 2021 from E&T (Engineering and Technology)