Think about one of the main controversies of the nineteenth century: The Age of Earth. Still under the influence of Bishop Ussher’s declaration about a 6,000 year-old planet and cosmos, the majority at the time, even in universities, believed that any delving into Earth’s origin was not only useless, but also blasphemous. In 1868, Scientific Americanpublished a statement that echoed this pervasive view on Earth’s origin: Looking into the origin and “mysteries” of “the first creation” would produce “not a single useful result.”* And that statement was made in the 30-year-old shadow of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology and the decade old publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, both books that cast doubts on a 6,000-year-old Earth. 
 
“Not a single useful result” has morphed into very specific, though still incomplete, knowledge about the origin of Earth and the universe. If the nineteenth-century author of the Scientific Americanstatement were around today, he might, seeing his surety thrown into doubt, exclaim, “Noooooo!?”
 
Since the 1965 discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, COBE, WMAP, BOOMERanG, and the Planck satellite have given us a rather precise date for the Big Bang, now set at 13.82 billion years ago (give or take a week). Quantum mechanics has given us a relationship between the tiniest and the biggest, and LIGO has revealed that gravity waves exist. In the near future, we’ll probably know whether or not the Big Bang produced its own gravity waves, now at a lower frequency than LIGO could detect, and we’ll have a better handle on the nature of the universe as a result, and possibly learn even more about the origin of Everything. 
 
So what? The what emphasizes a lesson we all know but often forget: We don’t know what we don’t know. I can’t fault the 1868 author for not knowing, but I can fault him for not seeking. Such is the nature of being sure: Potentially, it locks us in ignorance and prevents us from discovery. 
 
Surety. It affects much of what we do. It certainly governs our decisions, even decisions to throw ourselves into circumstances governed by randomness, such as gambling and behaviors inimical to our wellbeing. But being sure is an understandable mental state. It provides security in the knowledge of who we are; it grounds personality, behavior, and relationships. It is the nature of trust in ourselves and in others. The problem is that in being sure, we fail to be open, we fail to seek. And being sure in relationships might dull the future. If we know that our relationship is governed by surety, then we can become complacent. This isn’t a matter of fidelity. Rather, it’s a matter of allowing ourselves to be encapsulated in predictable responses and behaviors that deprive us of our creativity and openness. It’s everyone’s version of the 1868 author’s view that nothing useful will come from a pursuit of the unknown.  
 
Now, we all realize that science is a movable feast and that its menu changes as we discover and invent. Those who were around to read the 1868 Scientific Americanwould be drop-jaw, open-eyed amazed to see TV, jets, rockets, and moon rocks in our museums. Certainly, they would be astounded by the complexity of knowledge and theoretical pursuits of modern cosmologists, such as those of the late Stephen Hawking and the still living Thomas Hertog. With the late Hawking, Hertog published a new view of the Big Bang, Inflation, and a smooth universe based on some aspects of string theory that makes some sense of a theoretical multiverse that might be falsifiable.** Are the two theorists sure? Not completely, but Hertog argues that their work opens the door for more seeking, particularly for the Big Bang’s low frequency gravitational waves. Is there a useful application? Well, remember, we don’t know what we don’t know. 
 
Keep that in mind. We don’t know what we don’t know. Keep the expression in mind for science, and keep in mind in your dealings with others. Oh! Yes. And keep it in mind for yourself. As my wife insightfully once told me long ago, “You don’t really know who you are until you are.”  And you really don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.
 
*Schlenoff, David C. “50, 100, & 150 Years Ago: 1868 Earth’s Origin.” Scientific American, April, 2018. p. 79.
** “Professor Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory on Origin of Universe,” SciNews online, May 3, 2018. http://www.sci-news.com/physics/stephen-hawkings-theory-origin-universe-05971.html
Report on S.W. Hawking & T. Hertog. A smooth exit from eternal inflation? Journal of High Energy Physics 2018: 147; doi: 10.1007/JHEP04(2018)147
 
 

A number of people claim no belief system, that is, no belief in God or in gods of any kind. “There’s just us,” they confidently say. That’s it. So, as Michael Shermer recently advocated in a Scientific American essay, we need to have an ethical (moral?) system based on reason and science. Sounds like a sound humanism. As unbelievers believe and historically demonstrate, the moral dictates of any religion are always associated in some way with individual humans or anonymously written scriptures that had to involve some human hand. With respect to religions, those hands are usually ancient ones and such morality is the product of people who realized a need long ago for societal control and, with respect to the altruistic peripherals of most moral systems, also a need for some principles that govern human interaction—and possibly human-rest-of-the-planet interaction, what those in the know call environmental ethics. 
 
Shermer makes what seems to be a reasonable point, but there are two assumptions behind it: Some moral system is necessary or desirable, and science can be a source of morality. 
 
What if the “scientific” and “rational” ethical system says I’ll cooperate as long as cooperating serves my desires or purposes? What if the ethical system speaks of a large utility, the “greatest good for the greatest number,” as J. S. Mill and others of his ilk would argue? Does that principle support a rational ethics? Certainly, the “greatest good” imposed by a mob to the detriment of individuals has a dubious morality at best. Say that you aren’t a member of the “greatest number.” Wouldn’t your reasoning be different from those that belong to the “greatest number”? Can your individual moral system be a universal moral one, or are you as an individual merely subject under the “greatest good” to a dominant force?
 
“Okay, so what are you offering in place of an ethics based on reason?” you ask. “Surely, you can see the superiority of reason over belief.”
 
I guess my first question centers on reason itself. What constitutes rationality when we know such thinking has an underlying unconscious component, possibly even a hormonal one? Can we be confident that in matters of human interaction we manifest pure rationality? Are we free from influences that we can’t enumerate, let alone articulate? If we get to the Golden Rule rationally, do we also arrive at its supporting details in human affairs? And if one argues that “doing as one wants to be done to” is the moral rule, then what do we do with those who want, through their “reasoning” to be undone to. (I know, you’ll say such people are aberrations, that they have psychological or emotional issues that psychologists can identify)
 
I wish I could trust reasoning as a failsafe mechanism for living ethically, but my experience, if not my reasoning—I think—tells me that I am imperfect. And if I am imperfect, well, I don’t need to point out that all those around me are, in my egalitarian world, just as imperfect. What they consider reasonable can fall under suspicion as a culprit for unethical practices according to my reasoning and experience. 
 
“So, what are you saying? That those who are atheists have flawed ethics, whereas those who have religion have perfect ethics.”
 
Of course not. I think I know “good” atheists, altruistic atheists, if that counts. Also, we can see many instances of religions gone wild, the eternal spring of wars between opposing versions of a single religion, for example, like Catholics and Protestants or Sunni and Shia. Those historical manifestations of ethical systems at war probably led to the simplistic request of John Lennon in “Imagine” (“nothing to live or die for”). I guess, but I don’t know, the Beatle believed that having no religion would generate a Golden Rule in nonbelievers. 
 
We can’t trust that there is a scientifically-based ethics, can we? I think that is what Shermer and others might argue, maybe one based on sound principles of psychology and social science. But are either of those bodies of knowledge absolute? Or, are they often found to be “best guess” and “appropriate” for the time? Tell me, quickly, what version of psychology lies in your brain? Tell me, quickly, how to understand definitively the Unconscious and its relationship to reason. And tell me that there’s a machine-like objectivity we can follow.
 
This might seem way off the beaten path toward an ethics, but I think of a YouTube presentation by Dave Killian, an engineer at Snap, Inc. (Snapchat). Killian and his colleagues used cloud computing and storage to handle the flow of data that spiked over New Year’s Eve—when the highest number of people simultaneously use the app. Using DynamoDB as part of AWS and Google Cloud seemed very reasonable, seemed failsafe objective. But as Snap’s cloud servers had to handle Paris, then London, and then New York, the engineers had to do some tweaking. Why? They were learning as Earth turned cities into the New Year. Snap’s engineers decided to go with experiments instead of theory and analysis. They had a so-called objective system that, before they encountered real-time and real-world phenomena, seemed reasonable.
 
And that might be the problem we all have with any reasoned ethical system. Ultimately, it’s a matter of human adjustment, not a matter of pure reason, which, by the way, those Snap engineers used because of gut feelings about data traffic on New Year’s Eve. 
 
We never know when the “data traffic” of ethics might spike. We might think with Michael Shermer that science and reason will provide a failsafe system superior to religious morality in the absence of a belief in a Higher Being, but in a diverse real world, reason varies from person from person, not because of a failure of logic, but rather because we are more, as humans, than reason—Kant notwithstanding. 
 
I can’t stop thinking about Kant here. Now there’s a guy who did his best to link reason and morality through his “categorical imperative.” It’s a moral principle, a guiding principle. For Kant immorality was irrational. If I understand him correctly, then I see Kant as a proponent of some universal moral principles that underlie all moral systems. One of his tenets seems to be that through reason we can devise maxims that apply universally. Here, I’m thinking as you are, “Can’t Kant see that universal maxims have counter maxims, dueling maxims as they are called?” (Honor your father and mother, but don’t let anyone tell you how to live YOUR life). There’s probably no better example of opposing rationalities than stands on abortion, for example. And, where, I would ask anyone who claims that rational morality is possible, is “pure reason” involved in the argument? 
 
So, controversial as it is, let’s look for a moment at abortion and rationality. Let’s say you believe that abortion is not even a moral issue. It’s a physical issue that speaks to the autonomy of a particular woman, and it is simply an amoral decision. Her independent will is all that matters, proponents would argue. A fetus is just unwanted matter that, if carried to term, brings with it an undesirable change in lifestyle, just as a particular brand of lipstick is unwanted matter and leads, if worn, to a change in physical identity (“Yuk, black lipstick makes you so Goth”). The physical issue also has a moral side, some would argue, one that says an autonomous woman has the right to protect her life as she intends to live it. Then, on the other side of the issue are those who would argue that autonomy of the woman is irrelevant because it violates the autonomy of the independent DNA in the fetus. After all, they would argue, isn’t DNA accepted as a proof of guilt or innocence in the justice system? How can we hold that DNA defines an individual in one instance but not in another. Isn’t that a form of “dueling maxims”? 
 
Michael Shermer writes, “We should[italics mine] continue working on grounding our morals and values on viable secular sources such as reason and science.”* Gotta love it when a proponent of reason throws in a “should.” When’s the last time you accepted all the “shoulds” others advise? How many “universal shoulds” have you encountered and followed? (Other than you should brush your teeth three times a day and floss regularly)
 
So, in my effort to stir your own thinking, I’ll end with questions for Michael Shermer and Kant. Just what specifically are you recommending as the rational and scientific morality by which humans should live? If reason can be influenced by emotion without an individual’s recognition of the latter’s role in deciding, how viable is it as a secular source of morality? And then, with regard to science as a viable source of morality, how does one deal with a subject like abortion scientifically without considering DNA as an accepted determinant in the Courts? Is there a moral system in nature, you know, Michael, one that can be applied to animals, plants, and, as appears in the same issue of Scientific American, mixotrophs, those seeming combinations of animals and plants?* Or, what happens when our science changes as we stumble on something new? Do we simply change our morality? Everyone knows that we don’t know what we don’t know, so is it possible that what we believe to be “universal” and a “moral should” might not be universal and applicable? And if our science changes, does our moral system change?
 
*Shermer, Michael. “Silent No More: The Rise of the Atheists.” In his “Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye” section of Scientific American, April 2018. Volume 318, No. 4. p. 77.
**Mitra, Adilce, “The Perfect Beast.” Scientific American, April 2018. pp. 28-33.

“So, there I was, being a blob and just reading ‘round the stuff online, and I happened across the stories centered on London’s mayor calling for a knife ban. And, like you, I thought, ‘Has the rise of technological society come full circle?’ You have to think Homo habilis, that ancient ancestor and early tool-maker, might be turning over in the grave. I can hear members of the extinct group discussing the London mayor.”
 
“Grunt, look what’s written in the morning rock. The mayor of London wants to ban sharp things. You better hide that piece of rock you were chipping. What’s that? How are you going to skin the giant sloth? Look, Grunt, why do you think the Great Overseer gave us fingernails?”
 
“Urg, really? Think with your small brain about it. Banning sharp things? Did you not pay attention in Cave School when we learned about all the tools that could be invented. I subscribe to Popular Future, so I know what will one day be possible. We might even be able to send a man to the top of the mountain and back. Someday, we’ll know what that white stuff is up there. It can’t be saliva as the old people say. Anyway, I know that someday people will have new sharp things, maybe made of obsidian.”
 
“Hey, I read the same mag. There’s a guy who says that someday we’ll have tools made of shiny hard stuff we’ll get from the ground and throw into fire. We’re just on the verge of what he calls the copper age—just a couple of thousand millennia from now, or so. The same guy says that we’ll spend the next two million years refining tools. Two million years of tool development with new materials, shapes, and even uses—uses beyond simply skinning a sloth. And now we see that the London Mayor wants to ban the very reason he has a city called London, the use of tools of all kinds, especially if they are pointy or sharp. Talk about a full circle!”
 
“No, Urg, I didn’t see the morning rock, so I have to ask. Why does the London mayor want to ban sharp things?”
 
“He says they can be used to kill people. Somehow he doesn’t know our history, how we used to throw pebbles and cobbles at animals to kill them. How we used to bludgeon to death our rivals before we could stab and chop them. But then, if he did know, he would probably ban round things, things that can be thrown, maybe even cliffs off which some animals or people can be thrown. I can see the mayor realizing that fire is also dangerous. So, ban fire, right? And fists. No closed hands in public. I just have to ask a simple question way back here on the path to Homo sapiens sapiens: Why go through two and a half million years of technological development if you intend to end up where we started?”

Why do you think the great philosophers don’t agree on the most fundamental of questions, you know, the questions you asked when you were four years old? “Mommy, why…?” You can add all the basic ones on your own. There are variations, of course, but they ultimately reduce to a single question about being, or, in Heidegger’s philosophy, Being. Those other questions, at least most of them, are so easy, the “what?” questions. “What’s this?” “What’s a cloud?” “What’s a star?” But the question that always underlies all the what-questions is a why-question, and it has to do with being (Being). 
 
Thousands of years of thinking and writing, from the earliest philosophers and theologians to our contemporaries, and we still can’t agree on an answer, or at least on a satisfactory answer that enables us to say without doubt, “Oh! Now I understand.” Is it because—as Martin Heidegger might argue—great minds have always thought alike, and because they think alike, there’s little chance for some philosophical paradigm shift that provides the new insight? I’m thinking Copernicus-like thinking, Newtonian-like thinking, and Einstein-like thinking. Thinking that overturns the cycle of thought that always sees any kind of philosophy generate its antithesis just the way political philosophies like Marxism and Capitalism seem to go round and round generation after generation. Heidegger claimed to break the cycle, but if he truly had broken it, there would be no need for post-Heideggerian thinkers—yet, there are many of them. 
 
Think Bishop Berkeley had the answer? Remember? He was probably the precursor of thinking that led to the Matrix and the question “Is it all just in my mind?” “Do I think existence?” Or, the story The Lathe of Heaven, less well known nowadays, but twice told in film and a story that has reality change because of someone’s thinking (or, in this instance, dreaming). Hey, didn’t you recently have a dream after which you awoke to say, “Wow! That seemed so real.” Are you dreaming now? Have you just written another of my blogs? (You’re making me feel so useless; it’s bad enough that I exist only in your cyberspace world)
 
Anyway, back to being (or Being). Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are you here? What’s that you say? “Randomness,” “chance,” “purposelessness fulfilling itself.” That last one is a great oxymoron, isn’t it? And that’s one of the problems that philosophers have always had: oxymoronic thinking. Don’t they all devise thinking systems that ultimately run to their antitheses? “What?” is relatively easy to answer. “How?” can be challenging, but thanks to science, answerable. But “why?” is still a mystery.
 
Seems great minds think alike because they have failed to provide the definitive answer we all seek, the answer to the question “Why?” 

Writing tip: Be sure whatever you write or speak has unity, coherence, and EMPHASIS. That’s not bad advice, but it’s not easy to follow. Of the three essay properties, the last is, in my view, currently THE MOST IMPORTANT. At least, it seems so nowadays. We do a lot of SHOUTING in our society. Hard to carry on a conversation that gets opponents to any kind of compromise.
 
Epithetic monologues replace dialogues. Therein, a communication problem lies. Such monologues are ostensibly coherent arguments in the minds of their writers and speakers, but they seem to be very little more than agenda-driven insults to their opponents, the very people they desire to sway. One side, dismissive of the other, resorts to ad hominem or ad populum attacks. As we all know, hard feelings arise when the only argument for a cause is a loud one based on the supposed shortcomings (Dare I say, “idiocy”?) or bias of an opponent.
 
Not that unity isn’t also a problem. Have you noted that in any political discussion, few pundits stick to a single topic? Someone will ask a question. The respondent answers another. From the medieval Generydes we have a term for the process: “Beating around the bush.” The analogy lies in the practice of some hunters to make noises around a bush while others wait to catch fleeing frightened birds. The trouble is that pundits are not bird-hunting in their political discussions; they always seem to be simultaneously advocating, attacking, and defending. Everything, including the proverbial kitchen sink, goes into the argumentative mix.
 
The lack of unity of purpose and related topics and the emphasis on emphasis affects coherence—at least in the minds of the opposition. Most political discussions appear to break down into a series of non sequiturs. What seems to be an orderly, related set of facts (or fictions) for one side seems neither ordered or related to the other. There’s a disjointedness that permeates most TV political discussions. Although unstated, the question “Why is my opponent telling me this information at this point in the discussion?” probably rattles round the brain.  
 
Maybe the problem of ineffective argumentation lies in the nature of TV programming. Driven by commercial needs, networks limit time for discussion to provide time for advertising. It’s the latter, of course, that pays the bills. Knowing that time is limited drives the brain to “get it all in” before the commercial break or the next segment. Or, maybe the problem pundits encounter lies in the inner brain that will do anything rational or irrational to save itself and the body that houses it. As an Emory University study suggests, “The study [of people on both sides of the political spectrum] points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making. ‘None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged,’ [Drew] Westen said. ‘Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.’ Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning.”*
 
Whatever the cause of our milieu of coherent nonsense—or incoherent sense—it’s probably just a continuation of whatever people have always done in political debates, but now, thanks to TV, it is a bit LOUDER.
 
*http://www.nbcnews.com/id/11009379/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/political-bias-affects-brain-activity-study-finds/#.WuxM2tPwa3I 

Question of the Day: How are tweets like dust?
 
Insidious dust. It gets everywhere. Good thing we don’t live on Mars. Its dust storms can be planetwide and last weeks. “When you come in from playing with the Martian children, keep the dust out of the airlock, Johnny, or no ice cream for you and your little green friends.” Then there are the serious effects of dust here on Earth. Lung ailments, for example, like black lung disease caused by coal dust. Plus, that obligatory, though less deadly, chore of dusting, especially the coffee table dusting right before a visitor’s visit. Also, remember to replace both the car and furnace air filters before dust makes them an impenetrable wall. And, Holy Bovine, there’s even dust in outer space, vast clouds of it millions to billions of miles long, sometimes even trillions of miles long.   
 
There’s another dust danger: Dust storms on Earth. You’ve seen the pictures, even if you haven’t personally experienced one in some arid or semiarid landscape. Maybe you’re thinking “temporary inconvenience for those hit by the storms,” but think “tragic dust storm.” In May, 2018, in northern India, dust storms killed almost 80 people in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.* The former is the home of the Taj Mahal, that “wonder” of the architectural world tourists flock to see. “Gee, in pictures it always seems like such a clean place, immaculate even, all that white, the reflecting pool, minarets against a blue sky. Who would think dust?”
 
There’s good reason to believe that the planetwide dust storms on Mars begin with isolated dust devils. Drive Interstate-80 through Nevada in the late summer if you want to see similar swirling soils and sands, or watch the dust fly when a wind hits a dry baseball infield. Dust devils are common here on Earth, but they usually don’t add up to become a regional unified phenomenon. On Mars, they do seem to accumulate into one massive dust storm relatively frequently.**
 
Now think Twitter. Think of that occasional tweet that, for whatever reason, begins to swirl through the minds of a few readers with a common point of view, a view that is antithetical to the tweet. Maybe like the recent Kanye West tweet that has swirled into a pretty big tweet-storm. We’re making ourselves into Mars; we’re becoming Martians. We can now turn what was formerly a little dust storm that interrupts a baseball game temporarily into a storm that sweeps through inner brains as tornadoes of anger and hurt. Dust devils that are truly devilish. Like the May Indian dust storms, devils that truly injure people.
 
For some, there seems to be no brain airlock to keep tweet-dust out. Want some protection from such insidious dust? Check your filter regularly.   
 
* http://www.adaderana.lk/news/47245/77-killed-as-powerful-dust-storms-ravage-north-india
**https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrJzBxt.epa4SMA_dYPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMDgyYjJiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=Martian+dust+storms+develop+from+dust+devils&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01#id=2&vid=771031dc7f42076b7f807b9ea4b20abb&action=view  

Since the arrival of the Spanish in the New World, people have laid cobblestones for street pavement. In eastern USA before widespread use of asphalt, many towns also originally laid down cobblestone and brick streets. Some of those brick streets underlie asphalt today. In some areas, the original cobblestone or brick streets are still exposed and useful. Unlike asphalt, they aren’t prone to potholes, though some stones or bricks might have sunk a bit with respect to their neighbors. 
 
In Antigua, Guatemala, the original cobblestone streets easily support car and truck traffic, even though the streets are now hundreds of years old.* The streets look as though they were laid just yesterday. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, some brick and cobblestone streets, once overlain by asphalt, were stripped and rebuilt with new cobblestones. There’s little denying the long life of such materials and their superiority over the more easily laid asphalt.
 
It takes time and lots of people to lay a cobblestone or brick street, but by comparison with the rapidity and number of people required to lay asphalt, the economics seem to work well for city streets. Of course, running over cobblestone or brick can be a bit bumpy and noisy by comparison with a newly laid asphalt. But the tradeoff is between durability and slight discomfort. The Appian Way, built thousands of years ago to serve Roman soldiers and commercial traffic is still useable, and it supported military vehicles during the Second World War.
 
Cobblestone and brick streets serve as analogs for the way we have paved our life’s paths, and they beg questions: Do we take the fast and easy way to pave or the long and arduous one? Do we take the time to lay individual stones and bricks, or do we use whatever machinery and materials we can to pave rapidly? And, what’s the tradeoff? Do we choose convenience over durability?
 
Is it better for us to use materials that develop potholes within a few years or materials that develop only some annoying, but small, pits over tens to hundreds of years? Is fast but very temporary better than slow but very permanent?
 
You would probably argue: “Depends. It depends on economics, needs, and availability of materials and manpower. Sometimes I just don’t have time to do the more permanent thing.”
 
Yes, you have probably built both kinds of “life paths.” Can you look back to see which has served you better? Which kind are you now constructing to lead you into your future? And from your youth till now, has there been a difference in your choice of materials?
 
*https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=pics+o0f+cobblestone+strets+in+antigua+guatemala&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fantiguadailyphoto.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2FCoobled-stone-streets-in-the-villages-of-Antigua-Guatemala.jpg#id=4&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fantiguadailyphoto.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F10%2FCoobled-stone-streets-in-the-villages-of-Antigua-Guatemala.jpg&action=click   

Apparently, animism is pervasive, and you might be an animist without knowing it. Not superstitious, are you?
 
Earth houses more than 3,000 kinds of minerals, some dull and others eye-catching glittery. Fool’s gold, pyrite, is glittery. Some people believe that gemstones, especially ones whose crystal structure refracts or reflects light of particular frequencies, have some intrinsic power. You can visit gemstone sites online or some gem dealers that push the notion that certain minerals exude healing or helpful power. There are even testimonials, reading something like: “I bought one of your sapphires, and my business suddenly improved,” “I am thrilled that my emerald has made decision making easier for me,” and “Within minutes of my putting on my ruby, I received good news I had been waiting for.”
 
Right, you’re thinking P.T. Barnum, “There’s a sucker born every minute. Who would believe that a gem can exude some power and spend money on one because it will somehow transfer that power to change circumstances or personality? Gotta be the same kind of person who believes that destiny lies in the stars or in Tarot cards. Someone who takes the coincidental for the related. Someone who ascribes coincidence to cause and effect.”
 
And you’re not like that. No, you wouldn’t put your destiny in the shape or color or brilliance of a gem. You wouldn’t ascribe power to a mineral, and you wouldn’t hang upside down to kiss the Blarney Stone.” Certainly, you wouldn’t buy the idea of a curse lying within the Hope Diamond, some power within a crystal skull, or some relationship, such as one astrologers assign to the life of a “Leo” and ruby, red spinel, rhodolite, or rubellite. No, you’re more sophisticated than anyone who falls for that. You don’t, for example, have a St. Christopher statue on your dashboard, and you don’t mind walking under a ladder. Certainly, you don’t think “deaths come in threes” or that actors should hear “break a leg” before a performance.
 
You think animism, you think primitive. But here’s a question we all need to answer, even those of us who think we’re above all that primitiveness, who believe we are “civilized” and “educated.” Why are you comfortable with objects and places? I’m not referring to places that people visit because of some aura the way people go to Sedona, or to the top of some mountain, or to some building. No, I’m talking about your favorite stuff, the stuff others ask about: “Why are you keeping this?”
 
Or we might ask, “Why are you doing this?” Why do you perform some little ritual before you go onstage, go to bat, give a talk, ride a plane, or run a meeting? Just habit? Really? Would you skip that little ritual the next time just to prove that you do not believe some power or spirit lies in the act or object?
 
There’s a bit of the animist in most of us, but disregard that for a moment to consider other questions: What is it about certain places that draw us in? Why can we find peace in one place rather than in another? Why do some places seem to satisfy us just by our being there? And why do we hold onto stuff that others see merely as junk we hoard?
 
Look around at your stuff and place today. What’s your relationship with things? Does it bespeak at least a minimal animism in your belief system?
 
Good luck.