Try counting the books and articles devoted to the Golden Ratio or to the Golden Spiral. Okay, don’t. I didn’t think you were interested, anyway. But some people are, and their interest derives from their belief that there is an underlying order, a mathematical one, in the universe. So, in mathematics and biology texts, there’s mention of the ratio and spiral with all kinds of examples, from sunflower petals to nautilus chambers. 
 
Probably, we can blame Galileo for the fascination with numbers as reality’s descriptors, but we can’t forget the Pythagoreans for playing an historically longer role in shaping our quest to find meaning in mathematics. Pythagoras and Galileo expressed what many of us think: Underneath ostensible chaos lies an order. Life makes sense because it rests on something describable. With mathematics, we can see Nature’s underlying order, or, at least, that’s what some of us believe thanks to centuries of indoctrination stemming from guys like Pythag and Gal.
 
But even in the so-called Golden Spiral exhibited by the chambers of a bisected nautilus, we really don’t find a precise order. Chambered nautiluses are organisms, and organisms are subject to chance even in biological or chemical development. That’s probably good news, because it means that there’s a bit of individuality built into the “system.” 
 
Yet, there you are, looking in the mirror to find some mathematical symmetry in your face, standing at a ninety-degree angle in front of the mirror to see whether or not you match some ideal shape, or living by comparison to some unreachable ideal. Face your face; one half is a bit different from the other half, one eye a little more open than the other, one cheekbone a bit higher. But that’s okay.
 
No ideal is ideal. Everything, including the beautiful spiral chambers of the nautilus, is an approximation. You are an approximation; everyone is. Somehow, most of us have learned to find happiness in our asymmetry. Of course, for some, that means that we just acquiesce to our level of imperfection, that we yield to the mediocre, to the ordinary.
 
So, let’s say you want to attain perfection, want to have that perfect face or body, and that you work hard and spend lavishly to acquire some Golden Shape. Say you won’t compromise. At what level will you find happiness in your Golden Ideal? Will it be in five decimal places of accuracy? In ten decimal places or even eleven like the accuracy of quantum electrodynamics in describing the hydrogen atom? It really doesn’t matter how many decimal places of accuracy you have toward the ideal. They’re all approximations. Otherwise, they reach infinity, and, as we all know, you can’t be finite and infinite.
 
Find some reasonable level of approximation in your search for the Golden Ideal; resign yourself to that level as satisfactory for a finite being whose beauty, just like that of the spiraling chambers of the nautilus, is an approximation, a close one, but still an approximation.  

Carrying a Grudge? Stuck on a problem? Still emotional about a perceived past offense?
 
Would you be happy if the world worked simply? Could you be happy with something like the unconventional title of this blog, a period (Yes, the punctuation mark), as a solution or resolution? Got a problem? No problem. Period. Or, . Have a goal? Again, no problem. Period.
 
Of course, the world doesn’t work that way. We’re steeped in complexity while we desire simplicity. Even when we look at a single cell, we find complexity. And the atom? Don’t get me started. Didn’t really know they existed until Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and a group of really smart people figured out that Democritus was right. And we’re still not completely settled on the simplest components. Now what if—though they have no proof—string theorists are correct? Is that the simplest level of the universe? If we can’t get a handle on the simplest forms of physical makeup, how will we ever get a handle on philosophy, on motive, or on the Unconscious? At some point we’re going to have to settle on something we can use as a basis for daily living, for personal identity, for interpersonal relationships, and for lingering problems.
 
“Too much! It’s all too much,” you think.
 
We have complex human problems for which we seek simple solutions. But every simplicity seems to open like atoms to quarks within, and maybe as yet unproven strings inside. 
 
The only way to put a period to any problem is to settle on a level of solution. Many searches for simplicity usually end up revealing previously unknown complexity. “Good enough!” is the simplest level of solution we can attain in most of our personal and interpersonal problems. The reason? Time. 
 
We’re finite in case you haven’t noticed. Since human problems are usually complex, we can choose to settle on the simplest level of solution that time permits. Otherwise, we keep finding molecular, then atomic, then smaller and smaller subatomic component problems. If you keep looking for that ultimate solution, you’ll spend your time like the string theorists. They “believe” strings underlie the universe, that they make up the simplest level of physical existence, and they chase after them in complex formulas. But they have no proof. They don’t even have an experiment that they can run to demonstrate their final level of solution about the makeup of the universe. They write articles and books on strings to argue their hypotheses: They just “know” that strings are there and that other dimensions, however hidden, underlie everything. So, their formulas become increasing more complex. Careers have been spent in the search. Will increasingly more complex math in this search for the simplest resolve their problem? Maybe. Will they have the time?
 
As a kid, you knew there were three dimensions. As an adult, you recognize time as a fourth dimension. And you do pretty well at that level of simplicity. There’s a practicality to your dealing with the physical world on the simple level of four dimensions. And there’s a practicality to solving human problems to a certain level, to saying, 
“Period.That’s good enough for now, because Now is all we have. If we keep dwelling on the matter, we might be searching for something we don’t have time to discover.”
 
Can we get to solutions as simple as E = mc^2? Human problems aren’t physical ones; they can’t be reduced to something like Einstein’s G = 8 pi T.*  If a solution to a human problem works now, settle. Get to a reasonable level, and then admit that you have to put a period somewhere. Otherwise, you’ll have an interminable string of words. That interminable string is what those who carry grudges and those who dwell on their past problems keep lengthening.  
 
*Just to give an example of the complexity of simplicity, I’ll refer you to a 323-page online manuscript by Kevin Wray entitled “An Introduction to String Theory.” You can find it at https://math.berkeley.edu/~kwray/papers/string_theory.pdf. Good luck wading through the formulas, but know that when you have finished reading all 323 pages, you likely won’t say, “Gee, that was simple.”

The Journal of Astrobiology. Nothing like getting ready for something that might happen. The journal might be the first instance of a science in preparation for itself. Call it an anticipatory science. The scientists associated with the journal must say, “We haven’t found any definitive evidence of life out there, but just in case, we’re going to publish scientific articles on the subject. We’ll be prepared when we find it.” 
 
If you have read this blog, you’ll ask, “Aren’t you the one who advocates anticipation? Haven’t you written repeatedly, ‘What you anticipate is rarely a problem’? Certainly, you’re not criticizing someone for anticipating. So, what kinds of articles does the journal publish?”
 
There’s one on the London Scale for astrobiology, another on the role chaos plays on extraterrestrial planets in habitable zones, and one on energy options for humans living on Titan—this last a particularly interesting one in the context of our never having sent anyone farther than our moon, and that was decades ago. Anticipatory science. 
 
Of course, the term astrobiology has merit. If we’re going to find life elsewhere, we should look for its markers. We need to know whether the conditions of life on Earth can serve as analogs for life anywhere. And we could argue that we have a tradition of similar sciences. Wasn’t the search for the Higgs boson at great cost, time, and effort, anticipatory? 
 
Nevertheless, there’s something that touches on science fiction in a ‘scientific’ article on energy options for humans living on Titan, the Solar System’s second largest moon. Quick fact: Titan has methane clouds, ice, and liquid. We’ve taken pictures of its surface thanks to the Huygens probe and its mothership, the Cassini spacecraft. Need some energy there? Burn methane. Want to go there? Probably not. The atmosphere contains dangers other than methane. Cyanide gas is one of them. 
 
Yet, there’s something we can anticipate should we figure out a way to get there. The early Earth and Titan share the presence of organic chemicals and abundant energy sources, like volcanic activity and lightning. Bigger than Mercury, Titan can be thought of as planet-size, but it has only half Mercury’s mass. It’s cold there, about -180 C, but it might still have liquid water. Definitely, it shows evidence of nitrogen. So, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, three of Earth’s essential elements for life are available, and if there is any water, then oxygen is also present. Add some sulfur and phosphorus from volcanic activity, and walla! H-O-C-N-S-P and LIFE as we know it.  
 
Titan is one of Saturn’s moons, so astronauts needing an energy source seems out of the realm of probability for a foreseeable future. We haven’t sent people back to the moon; can’t say when we might get to Mars, and certainly don’t have the means to send anyone as far away as Saturn. When we do achieve the technological sophistication to travel through the Solar System, will the journal still be in publication? Will someone check the archives to say, “Wait, I think I remember an article on energy sources we can use on Titan.” 
As pressures mount on Earth’s biosphere, will we have the resources to explore a largely methane world that at its closest is more than 740 million miles away when we are in syzygy with it? Of course, if we do go way out there, we know we can stop off at Mars to pick up a cheap, but once expensive, used car—Elon Musk’s Tesla launched on the Iridium rocket—to drive around the methane lake country of Titan.
 
Let’s step away from that future launchpad for a moment to reconsider an anticipatory science in a more realistic context: Your life and mine. All exploration is anticipatory, isn’t it? Think about Columbus and the New World or Peary at the North Pole, of Cousteau or Piccard and Walsh underwater, and of the Curies or Gell-Mann in the lab, all anticipators. And you and I can fall into that category as we anticipate our own futures, as we explore our probabilities and possibilities.
 
We have our own versions of the Journal of Astrobiology. We have analogs. We apply them. We look to future discoveries on the bases of past experiences and knowledge. And, like those other explorers and anticipators, we stumble on surprises, some New World blocking the path to our intended destination while simultaneously offering unforeseen opportunities and challenges. We keep self-publishing our hope-filled articles, even those that are probably as far out as touring the lake country on Titan. 
 
As of now, we really have no exact science of personal future. All our publications are based on our past or someone else’s past. If you want to start a journal that can benefit humans still bound to Earth, gather the wise to write articles for The Journal of Personal Futures. 
 
Silly? Far-out fiction? Could an editorial staff base its publication decisions on more than wishes, shoulds, maybes, and oughts.  Could there be peer reviewers? We’ve tried peer review for generations. “Well, when I was young, I did….” “If you keep going down this path, you’re going to end up….” 
 
I hope you can get startup funding for The Journal of Personal Futures. Just out of curiosity—and maybe out of hope—I’ll subscribe and await eagerly the first issue.

In elementary school, we all learned the rock cycle: That igneous rocks form from molten mineral matter that cools and solidifies, that those rocks can be broken into particles of varying sizes that wind, water, and ice can move and eventually deposit as sediments, that those sediments can be naturally cemented and lithified as new rocks, and that all rocks, both new and old, can be subject to baking or re-melting as part of the cycle. Mixing, remixing, breaking, reforming, baking: The process goes on today as the 2018 eruption of Kilauea demonstrates. 
 
Among the stages of the cycle lie the sands. Recall that “sand” is a size class that encompasses “coarse,” “medium,” and “fine.” The composition is irrelevant to the classification. So, you can find a coral sand, a quartz sand, a feldspar sand, and a garnet sand. Beach sands come from whatever kind of material is available, typically material taken from highlands to the ocean by rivers, sometimes blown in by strong winds, and always mixed and sorted by waves in the littoral zone where beachgoers frolic. 
 
Sands of pink coral (Bermuda), of black basalt (Hawaii), and purple garnet (New England) motivate first-time beachgoers unfamiliar with the origin of sands to comment and snap pictures. In some places, mining companies sort sands for specific minerals, such as garnet, which is a relatively hard substance used for grinding and polishing (think dark-red sandpaper).
 
Sands of a specific composition aren’t analogous to “birds-of-a-feather” in that they aren’t driven by some instinct to gather in one place. What the highlands have to offer, the rivers take to the sea. What the wave energy sorts, it does so by density; lighter materials settle out of quieter water. You can see the effect of energy domains on beaches by looking at the swash zones (where the water rolls up the beach face after the most inshore waves have broken) and the dunes (where winds deposit finer and lighter sands). Here's the point: Sands don’t do anything on their own. They are “done to.” Their sorting and distribution is a passive process for the sands. 
 
As part of the rock cycle over periods of hundreds of thousands of years or longer, beaches can become sandstones of particular composition and hue. What was once part of a rock, that then was broken and eroded by wind, water, and ice, and then was transported to a lake or ocean, can undergo its own lithification—a return to rock. Again, the materials are irrelevant here. Broken and naturally cemented sea shell fragments, for example, make up the coquina rock walls of the Fort of San Marcos in St. Augustine, Florida. 
 
The parallel human social cycle is in some ways similar to the rock cycle and in other ways different. Look at our so-called races. They’re often self-sorted. Only in times of forced displacement are we passively gathered as birds-of-a-feather, as sorted by seeming similarity. Forced displacement is undeniably a part of our species’ history, but willing migrations often lead to initial, often temporary, “beaches” of a shared color.
 
Fortunately for our species, we can choose to mix sands, gathering in a single place a variety of compositions and colors as in the ethnically diverse neighborhoods of Brooklyn, N.Y. That community demonstrates not only how humans might initially be sand-like in their settlement, but also how they eventually can choose to become a conglomerate, a mix of sizes and colors. And because we can see the process of mixing today, we should be able to understand why anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn said that there is no “pure race” on the planet. 
 
We’ve been human rocks, sands, beaches, and re-lithified materials for all our existence. Check your DNA. You’ll find that you have incorporated “sands” of various materials and colors from distant sources. It doesn’t matter how isolated and uniform your particular beach is at this time; all such sands have been subject to transport willingly chosen, passively accepted, or actively forced. 
 
Want to end racism of any kind? Teach children that they are part of an ongoing cycle and that they are the product of past cycles. They might see a commonality in their human nature. Wishful thinking? Probably. Like you, I have my doubts about the effectiveness of such an education. History teaches us that in each phase of the cycle, most humans believe their current status is destined and final, so no required “human geology class” guarantees any change in attitude or understanding. In any cycle, many in every generation—in each part of the cycle—will fail to comprehend the most fundamental tenets of such a class: That we have common origins, histories, and DNA, and that all stages of the cycle are temporary.

The most sophisticated jet is now in service. It would amaze Wilbur and Orville. It flies fast, lands like a helicopter (heliocopter in their terminology), and carries ordinance. Plus, it is virtually invisible to radar. The Israeli Air Force recently used their F-35 in their intractable conflict with various Palestinian groups backed by either Hezbollah or Hamas and most likely Iran. But this is not the story of the F-35; rather, it’s the story of the Wright brothers, motive attribution, and the nature of intractable problems.
 
Orville and Wilbur wrote a book detailing their development of the first plane, and it reveals the trial and error methods by which they arrived at success in 1903. I don’t need to recount all the details they include in The Early History of the Airplane, but there are some steps they took that might be instructive for us.
 
Take the brothers’ problems in developing a wing. The brothers discuss how a multitude of variations in wing shape, thickness, and design affect the wings usefulness for flight. “The shape of the edge also makes a difference, so that thousands of combinations are possible in so simple a thing as a wing.”* So, the brothers admit, “We had taken up aeronautics merely as a sport. We reluctantly entered upon the scientific side of it. But we soon found the work so fascinating that we were drawn into it deeper and deeper.” And they tested, and tested, and tested.
 
But wing design with respect to air pressures wasn’t their only problem. Imagine that you are the brothers and that you want to use a propeller that is “suitable.” At the time, no one had invented one for horizontal flight, but propellers drove steam boats through water. “What at first seemed a problem became more complex the longer we studied it. With the machine moving forward, the air flying backward, the propellers turning sidewise, and nothing standing still, it seemed impossible to find a starting-point from which to trace the various simultaneous reactions…After long arguments we often found ourselves in the ludicrous position of each having been converted to the other’s side, with no more agreement than when the discussion began.” Eventually, they realized that “the propeller should in every case be designed to meet the particular conditions of the machine to which it is to be applied.”
 
Literally, the Wright brothers worked for years to understand the mechanics of flight, years of work that culminated in that first flight of 12 seconds. Acknowledging their initial limitations, the brothers write that the flight was “very modest compared with that of birds, but it was, nevertheless, the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in free flight….” Hardly an F-35, but there might not be an F-35 had the two not experimented and gambled their own lives on the safe rise and landing of their first plane.
 
So, what’s instructive for those of us for whom flying is merely a matter of choosing first class, business class, or coach? Trial and error isn’t the fastest way to achieve an answer, but it can work. Like the Wright brothers, anyone in a negotiation can find himself or herself in the “ludicrous position of having been converted to the other’s side, with no more agreement than when the discussion began.” Have you noticed that political arguments, when taken to the extreme seem on occasion to end in reversed positions with no resolution? Have you also noticed that with respect to common goals, neither opposing side is willing to admit that the other side makes valid points and agrees with many underlying tenets? Push something far enough to the Left, and it takes on the characteristics of the Far Right. Push something far enough to the Right, and it takes on the characteristics of the Far Left. But neither side appears to attribute compassion to the other side, even when they agree that they have a mutual problem.  
 
The Wright brothers seem to have had “friendly arguments.” They were, after all, brothers, and they were after the same thing. When we look at the seeming intractable positions of Democrats and Republicans, Israelis and Palestinians, or any divided ethno-religious group, we don’t see the same cooperative banter that benefited the Wrights. The reason for the difference between the Wright brothers and Americans of one political party or another and those others caught in intractable conflict lies in motivation attribution and an unwillingness to try each part by trial and error. The Wrights found, for example, that wings appeared to work counter to intuition. So, they had to experiment, but they were willing to experiment even if the outcome meant that one brother was correct and the other was wrong. No doubt brotherly love played a role in their successful first flight.
 
In a study by Alan Waytz, Liane L. Young, and Jeremy Ginges, the authors spell out the differences between two people bound by brotherly love and parties separated by seemingly intractable positions. According to the authors, “American Democrats and Republicans attribute their own party’s involvement in conflict to ingroup love more than outgroup hate but attribute the opposing party’s involvement to outgroup hate more than ingroup love.”*
 
And that’s precisely what we hear in daily arguments by pundits and apologists. The problem is that in their intractable stances, neither group can produce a solution that will fly. So, the Israelis, for example, have acquired something that does fly, and fly very well; the problem is that an F-35 resolves a conflict to the satisfaction of only one intractable side. But this is not a judgment; it’s just an acknowledgement that motive attribution asymmetry for love vs. hate perpetuates intractable conflicts.
 
 
*Waytz, Adam, Liane L. Young, and Jeremy Ginges, “Motive attribution asymmetry for love vs. hate drives intractable conflict.” PNAS, November 4, 2014, Vol. 111, No. 44, 15687-15692.
http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/44/15687.full.pdf 

Remember Robert Frost’s poem “Fire and Ice”?* Here’s a slightly different version based on recent RNA research:
 
Some say the world began in fire;
Now some say ice.
From what I knew of volcanic mire
I sided with some who favored fire;
Hot water and mud seemed just the place
For ancestors of the human race.
But now I doubt what I once knew
And have begun to think anew.
For replication, ice
Is also great
And might suffice.
 
For a long time I believed that hydrothermal vents were ideal places for life’s emergence. Found on the ocean floor and therefore enveloped by water, the vents spew dissolved mineral matter into a medium already potentially rich in hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus compounds. With just the right chemistry, some energy source, such as the heat from the vents, and other environmental conditions like clays (muds) that could provide crystal growth patterns on which to piggyback, life could arise as RNA and eventually DNA learned to replicate. I thought heat was essential for the two processes of replication and encapsulation, the latter important because life exists in containers like cell membranes and the skin that keeps you inside.
 
Now, there’s been an experiment that reveals a potential relationship between life’s initial replicative process and colder environments.** The experiment by James Attwater and others aimed to answer how primordial life formed by replicating folded RNA. The scientists engineered a ribozyme that can achieve this task, and the environment for this replication was in a brine between ice crystals, that is, in an environment vastly different from hot hydrothermal vents. 
 
We pride ourselves on our scientific understanding that seems to increase yearly. We’ve come a long way from Democritus and Aristotle, a long way from Francis Bacon, and a long way from the discovery of the microscopic world by Antony van Leeuwenhoek. But in spite of our advances, we’re still somewhat at a loss to explain those first processes by which life grabbed its place on Earth. So, maybe we should still temper our pride with a bit of humility. We know all we know, but some of what we know isn’t really quite fully knowable. For all our supposed sophistication, we’re still in the dark about those abiotic and biotic processes of long ago, processes without which we wouldn’t be able be here.
 
If we walk through a university library, we’ll see an accumulation of knowledge that indicates that we have come a long way from our earliest fumbling ignorance of materials and processes. We might express pride in that knowledge, but we are left with some very fundamental questions that still humble us. We don’t know how life started. We have guesses, some better than others; possibly some we will discover to be accurate. But it seems that every time we try to answer the most fundamental questions, we generate a new set of unknowns. 
 
We might be proud of what we know, proud of all those books we’ve accumulated. Our ignorance, however, is a great motivator to discover those unknowns. We might believe that all will be ours someday and that we will acquire wisdom with knowledge. I have my doubts. I still can’t answer the question about whether or not life began in fire or ice. 
 
 
*Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.  
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. –Robert Frost
 
**Medical Research Council. "Scientists crack how primordial life on Earth might have replicated itself." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 15 May 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180515131551.htm>. 
James Attwater, Aditya Raguram, Alexey S Morgunov, Edoardo Gianni, Philipp Holliger. Ribozyme-catalysed RNA synthesis using triplet building blocks. eLife, 2018; 7 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.35255

Have you noticed your familiar neighborhood becoming more familiar? There’s a reason. Seems that the latest census of ages tells us that as a planet we’re populated with increasing numbers of old people—well, older people, that is. As we run toward greater affluence and service by robots, will we become one of those communities we see in science fiction, a group bereft of the young?
 
According to a report in MedPage Today by Todd Neale (July, 2009), in 2008 there were 506 million seniors worldwide. That number is expected to increase to 1.3 billion in 2040 say Kevin Kinsella and Wan He of the Census Bureau’s International Programs Center. By 2030, one fifth of U.S. citizens will be senior citizens, and ten years later, the projected worldwide population of older people will comprise 76% of the populations in developing nations.*
 
I’m sorry to be the one to break this news, but truth is that you’re getting older. That, of course, is good news for you, and one day you might be the oldest person on the planet—a dubious status, since no one holds that position for long.** So, you’re part of the aging population problem. What are you going to do about it? 
 
The planet’s life-forms have often undergone demographic changes, but no life-form has been more in control of those changes than humans. We war; we die young. The old survive. We become affluent; we abstain from the economic strain of children. The old survive. We contrive medical fixes to centuries-old maladies; we live longer. The widespread use of clean drinking water alone has probably contributed more to prolonged life than any other cause. 
 
So, yes, your neighborhood is changing. The world neighborhood is changing. Barring another world war, the absolute numbers of the young will increase, but the percentage of the old will also increase with or without that war.
 
That should bring us to consider the filters of life. Filters? Yes, think of those five mass extinctions through which only certain organisms lived to pass on their genes. Had the mammals not survived as the dinosaurs didn’t survive the extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, we wouldn’t be here. Life proceeds through filters with meshes both large and small. You’ve been through a number of them. That you can note the loss of members of your family, friends, acquaintances, and contemporaries is evidence of your having made it through filters.
 
Yes, there’s a mesh somewhere and sometime in your personal future that is a sieve too fine for passage, a solid wall just like the one the dinosaurs and unknown numbers of other organisms have encountered. So, I’ll reiterate: This is NOT your practice life. And because you’re older—and wiser—I guess I don’t have to elaborate on the thought.  
 
*Neale, Todd, “World’s Population Grows Increasingly Long in the Tooth,” MedPage Today, July 20, 2009 at https://www.medpagetoday.com/geriatrics/generalgeriatrics/15147and Kinsella, Kevin and Wan He, “An Aging World, International Population Reports,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute on Aging, U.S. Department of Commerce, online at https://www.medpagetoday.com/upload/2009/7/20/aging.pdf
**Unfortunately, there’s no way to stay the “second oldest.” Both youth and old age are fleeting states of existence.

“Sorry. I was just thinking out loud.”
 
“About what?”
 
“I think I’m getting tired of all the muddles.”
 
“What muddles?”
 
“Political, mostly. And they’re everywhere. Europe, Africa, Asia, Middle East, North America. One muddled squabble after another. There’s no end.”
 
“But political squabbles have always been with us. People without power want power they never had or once had and then lost.”
 
“True. I know that. But in the so-called modern world, the muddles have become wider and even more unresolvable. And I think I know the reason. That’s what drove me to ‘think aloud.’ I remembered something John Wilkins wrote as a justification for his claim that the moon might have inhabitants.”
 
“Not familiar with that.”
 
“Picture this. It’s 1638, four years before Galileo’s death and Newton’s birth. Johannes Kepler had already devised his laws of planetary motion—in fact, he was already eight-years dead. Word was around that Galileo had discovered moons around Jupiter. The Inquisition was in a dither about the overturning of Ptolemy’s Earth-centered universe. People were beginning to question and think. Think anything they wanted to think. Look at all those diverse civilizations the explorers had discovered since 1492. So, 1638: John Wilkins published a little book called The Discovery of a World in the Moone. Yeah. He speculated that the moon had life.”*
 
“What could that possibly have to do with today’s political muddles?”
 
“It isn’t his specific speculation I was thinking of. No, it was one of his propositions, his first one. Wilkins argues this way for his cause, ‘That the strangenesse of this opinion is no sufficient reason why it should be rejected, because other certaine truths have beene formerly esteemed ridiculous, and great absurdities entertained by common consent.’ He calls that statement his ‘first proposition.’ I find his proposition somewhat apropos of the current world muddles.’
 
“And my reasoning is this. Of course, we now know that there aren’t any moon people, that our airless satellite is just a little rock that orbits our planet. And we’ve been looking for proof of life elsewhere so far without luck, though Mars seems to have once had all it needed to produce life, and a little piece of Mars, the meteorite ALH84001 found on Antarctica’s ice, became a cause celeb in 1996 when a NASA scientist published an article and a picture in Science. ‘Hey, that looks like a bacterium,’ we all said. Anyway, back to Wilkins, his proposition, and today’s political muddles. 
 
“Apparently, not only social media, but also mainline news outlets adhere to Wilkins’s proposition: ‘Just because what I say is strange and lacking verifiable evidence doesn’t mean that it’s not true. Look, no one believed Columbus. No one wanted Galileo to be correct. If I want to say something strange that I can get others to accept, then, who’s to say I’m wrong?’ Wilkins writes, ‘Grosse absurdities have beene entertained by generall consent.’
 
“And that leads me to Wilkins’s second proposition: ‘That a plurality of worlds doth not contradict any principle of reason or faith.’ You see, Wilkins argues that the absence of evidence isn’t an issue. If one can’t find a contradiction to a speculation, then that opens the door to accept the speculation as valid. It’s like saying, ‘She’s having a secret affair.’ If it’s secret, how would anyone disprove it? The possible or even the remotely possible evolves into the probable and then into a reality in the news or social media. That second proposition of Wilkins ties into his sixth proposition: That there is a world in the Moone, hath beene the direct opinion of many ancient, with some modern Mathematicians, and may probably be deduced from the tenents of others.’ You see, if someone famous says it, well, you gotta give it some credence, don’t you? So-n-so says it; it’s at least probable if not true.”
 
“So, you were thinking aloud about how today anyone can claim anything regardless of a lack of proof or evidence, and once the claim is out there, it becomes the truth by common consent?”
 
“Yes, that’s about it. We love speculation, even the most baseless speculation. We argue with Wilkins that ‘well, it could be true; you don’t know.’ The arguments aren’t really arguments in the strictest legal or logical sense. They are gossip of the highest order. ‘I heard that….’ Then, the news people or the social media pick up the story because they can’t allow themselves to be out of the loop. They use the word alleged a lot, but it conveys an idea with a wink, especially if it applies to someone with a philosophical or political stance not favored by those ‘in the loop.’ That throws everyone who is aware of current news into the middle of the muddle.”
 
“Finished thinking out loud?”
 
“Wait. I also thought of Wilkins’s third proposition, ‘That the heavens doe not consist of any such pure matter which can priviledge them from the like change and corruption, as these inferiour bodies are liable unto.’ Quick background: Before Galileo turned his telescope toward the moon and Jupiter, the prevailing thought was that the heavenly bodies were perfect because they were ‘closer to God.’ They had no flaws until Galileo saw mountains and craters on the moon. And today’s muddle? Well, this person of note or that person of note is flawed just like the rest of us common people. If we harbor secrets, don’t those in the spotlight also harbor secrets. Let’s expose them even if we don’t really know what the secrets are or whether or not there really are any secrets. We can speculate, can’t we? We can hypothesize. And isn’t in our current way of thinking one hypothesis as good as another? Who needs evidence when the slightest gossip or the need of the opposition prevails? People on the moon? Hey, if we haven’t found them yet, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep looking. They’re probably hiding in the middle of their own muddles.”

*You can read Wilkins's work online at the Gutenberg Project's website: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19103/19103-h/19103-h.htm

Can others influence your sense of taste? Of course, they can. From your baby days through your childhood, you ate what was available, and that meant, until you “knew better,” the choice always lay in the familiar. “Ethnic foods” are an example. People grow up with them, so how those foods taste is related to nostalgia. Yes, there were those foods that you initially rejected, but, hey, that was what was on the table, and you were hungry. You did resist occasionally: Liver and onions, haggis, maybe “pigs in a blanket,” and other foods for which one has to “acquire a taste.” Probably, you didn’t appreciate the taste of beer on that first sip, tequila, also; definitely the burning taste of hard liquor (and cigarettes) bothered your taste buds. 
 
So, why did you eventually acquiesce on tasting some of those foods? What might have influenced your sense of taste? Peers? Older people for whom you had an affinity? Lovers? 
 
I remember never wanting a green-pepper omelet for breakfast. Told my mother I’d pass in favor of cereal or an egg without the green pepper. Eventually, she stopped offering, and I forgot about the omelet. I lived in a close neighborhood with a number of similarly aged children, one who resided down the street in a house with two kitchens. There was a main-floor kitchen and a basement kitchen, the latter used during the hot summer months in a time before most people had air conditioning. My friend’s mother wanted her son and me to sit for some breakfast late one morning, and you can guess the menu: A green-pepper omelet. I devoured it. Later, I told my mother, “Oh! You should have eaten the breakfast Mary made Nicky and me. She put peppers in the egg. It was great.” 
 
My mother said, “I’ve been trying to get you to eat that for a few years now. What made you change your mind?”
 
I had no answer other than it smelled good and tasted even better. Today, I’ll add peppers to an omelet. Go figure. Well, you don’t have to go figure. Someone did the figuring for you and me in a study entitled “Relationship between the Influence of Others’ Opinions on Taste during Co-Eating and the Empathy of Individuals.”*
 
In one of the most poorly written examples of research I've ever read, the authors conclude, “The most important finding of our study was that taste changes according to the comments of other people who are eating together….” Before I address the finding and its significance, I just have to share the following sentence with you. Keep in mind that it comes from a peer-reviewed article. Citing the work of another, the authors write, “Clendenen reported that the amount of energy consumed increased when people dined with friends rather than eating together with other people, paying attention to the person they eat together.” [Italics mine]
 
Did these guys run their experiment on CANNIBALS? 
 
Okay, had to share that. Back to the point. Of course, I realized after my mother’s comment that the setting in Mary’s friendly basement kitchen that was cool on a hot day and filled with the smells of toast, butter, and the fried omelet, had influenced my willingness to taste and my readiness to accept the new experience. And eating with her son, a friend of mine, had also influenced me. That’s the way our brains work with regard to things we ingest.

So, we go out to eat at a new restaurant with friends, don’t we? The chef is acclaimed, the foods imaginative: Things you would never think of eating. Combinations of them that are off-putting until you gamble and acquire that “taste sophistication” the peers and the chef’s acclaim convince you to have. Of course, we’re influenced by those around us, and of course, we can adapt our sense of what’s good to eat--or do. 
 
That we can be influenced by others is nothing new to any of us. “To our knowledge, taste changed according to the comments of other people who were eating together,” say the authors in their abstract (197). So, what’s useful about either this blog or the study?
 
We’re all told to be self-aware, that self-awareness is a means to avoid problems before they occur. That’s why we say, “Drive carefully” to loved ones. But how do we become self-aware? Meditation? Therapy? How about looking at the most fundamental of our human endeavors: What we eat and how reject or relish foods? 
 
Self-awareness begins when we pay attention to the “little things” in our lives, the ordinary behaviors and thoughts, not with the big stuff, not with philosophy, for example. Want to know yourself? Ask why you eat what you eat?
 
 
Inaba, H. , Sakauchi, G. , Tsuchida, S. , Asada, M. , Sato, N. , Suzuki, K. and Shibuya, K. (2018) Relationship between the Influence of Others’ Opinions on Taste during Co-Eating and the Empathy of Individuals. Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science, 8, 197-206. doi: 10.4236/jbbs.2018.84013.

What do smart phones, aircraft engines, hybrid electric vehicles, machine tools, missile guidance systems, and petroleum refining have in common? 
 
Cobalt. 
 
That’s the metal Mesopotamians used four millennia ago to make blue glass. Had they known its potential uses, they might have started Apple; after all, they were near the Garden of Eden. Seriously (Why do people transition with that?), the ancients knew little about the potential for any metal beyond its use for cutting and stabbing, but that they found cobalt and made use of it is testimony to their relative technological sophistication. 
 
Why sophistication? Cobalt isn’t something that appears naturally in an isolated state. It’s locked in ores of other metals, copper for one, nickel for another. So, the Mesopotamians must have separated it from its ore, one containing either copper or nickel. How? Try melting it, but consider this: Cobalt melts at 2,723 degrees Fahrenheit (1495 C). That’s hot. Copper melts at 1,981 F (1083 C), and Nickel melts at 2,646 F (1452 C). See, really hot. Kitchen ovens reach 550 F by comparison. And extracting cobalt from the other two metals requires a bit of chemistry in addition to heat. That bespeaks of some sophistication, but you can prove me wrong by setting up your own backyard smelter. 
 
Cobalt isn’t ubiquitous in Earth’s crust. So, not every country has its share. The Democratic Republic of Congo has a bunch of it; China, Russia, Australia, Canada, and some other countries have some, also. DRC extracts about 64,000 MT yearly, more than half the world’s annual production. Because the metal is relatively rare, difficult to extract, and useful in modern tech like lithium-ion batteries (check your phone or tablet or electric car), cobalt’s price is high, and for a while it was made even higher by a civil war in the DRC.  
 
But there’s another cause of its high cost: Generally, getting it depends on our need for the other metals that are far more abundant in the ores than cobalt is. In other words, if the world demand for copper or nickel is high, then there’s greater motivation to extract cobalt. Because you are addicted to electricity running through copper wires, we have a greater availability of cobalt. And those pennies. What’s all this talk of taking them out of the U.S. coinage? What would happen to all those prices that end in $0.99? You need your copper, you get your cobalt. The latter depends on the former. But the former, the catalyst for getting the latter, is so common in civilization, that it seems to most of us a bit unnoteworthy. You don’t turn on those electric switches with the thought, “I’m blessed to have copper in my house.” But because of copper you are blessed with electricity that runs through wires and in your portable smart phone through those cobalt-bearing lithium batteries.
 
That cobalt’s availability is tied to copper’s need is analogous to our interdependence. Have addicts, need addiction counselors, the latter requiring years of training. And not everyone can be a counselor. We have to extract the high-quality ones from the matrix of society’s ore. And with increasing numbers of addicts, we need increasing numbers of counselors or greater numbers of people within populations who understand effective counseling methods.
 
Human problems seem to be straightforward, so we’re often reductionists. Think of “Get over It” by the Eagles, whose chorus runs:
 
            Get over it;
            Get over it.
            All this whinin’ and cryin’ and pitchin’ a fit;
            Get over it; get over it. 
 
What appears to be a simple solution like “Just don’t do drugs” isn’t as useful as copper, nor is it as readily available. If our current society doesn’t want to become an analog of Frank Herbert’s Dune society dependent upon the Spice (Melange), we need to extract more counselors from our common human ore or learn what addiction counselors know about the physical, psychological, and social malady of addiction. 
 
Those cobalt blue eyes in Herbert’s consumers of the Spice are the window glass through which we see troubled lives with no simple solutions to their problems. 
 
“Penny for your thoughts?”