The Old Timer says, “Yep, in my knees I can feel the rain’s comin’. You know, they’re the first to go. Why, when I was younger, I could run with any of them. Now, I’m thinkin’ I might trip down steps. It’s gotta be arth-ah-ritis, maybe rheumatism.”
 
“Can’t you take something? Like get a pill or a shot? How about new knees?”
 
“No, I ain’t goin’ under no knife, and I watch those pill commercials where the guy lists side effects at the end and says quietly and fast, ‘May cause, among other things, death.’ Why list those other ‘things’ when the last one is death?”
 
“Surely, there’s something you can do for your knees.”
 
“Nope. Good weather forecasters, though. See, I just felt a drop.”
 
Obviously, that conversation belongs in a grade B skit (I think). No one really talks that way (I think). Just because one is elderly he or she doesn’t have to give up in a hopeless cycle of knee pain in the rain. But then I realize I’ve witnessed not only versions of that conversation outside Walmart, but I have also witnessed its intellectual corollary. Not that Walmart is an integral part of attitude, but I have heard similar conversations there. Probably, I hear them at Walmart because the store attracts so many people. Chances of running into the full spectrum of humans are as good there as at a crowded NFL stadium.
 
Anyway, back to that corollary. Knee problems are common because of our lifestyles, diets, and longevity. Many athletes are destined to suffer from arthritis. We equate fitness with running, and running stresses knees. Old runners are marvels of survival, but many of them run in pain, not wanting to relinquish their youth or figure to inactivity. But is there a parallel in thinking? I’ve seen my own perspectives decay. When I’m truthful with myself, I recognize that carrying certain philosophies too long puts wear on the logic of my life. And often, I’ve seen in myself and in others that remedies—both quick replacement surgeries and slow medication—have consequences, have side effects that can be serious or worse than the intended cure.
 
And that brings me to political perspectives, not just to philosophical ones. The arthritis of the mind infuses thinking with an insidious pessimism. Look around. Have you noticed the tendency to complain appears to dominate attitudes? Have you noticed that people are being worn down by negativism, even nihilism? Have you seen mental sponginess give way to bone-on-bone brittleness?
 
Take heart, dear soul. Unlike arthritis of the knees, the arthritis of the mind is curable. It requires some effort, of course, and it produces some side effects. No one has to run on deteriorating perspectives. No one has to rely on mental knees that served well during youth but that suffered the loss of sponginess with advancing years and hard wear and tear. No one has to go to Walmart, encounter an old friend, and complain about what can’t be.

There’s nothing short of brain deterioration that actually stops the mind from youthful sponginess. Read, think, challenge, and your mental knees will remain spongy. Read, think, and challenge to ward off pessimism. The side effects of reading, thinking, and challenging can be new knowledge, altered perspectives, optimism, and purpose.
 
Yes, there is a danger. It’s possible that one might grasp at some folk herbal that has not undergone rigorous testing, some snake oil thinking or perspective that provides initial hope based on hearsay. Such oils abound among replacement perspectives. It's also possible that one can grasp at old folk medications that never proved successful except in the rumor mill. But if you have some age and experience on those mental knees, you also have the wisdom to examine what you are taking for a cure. You can think about the history and the logic of any cure before you subscribe to its claims of being a purely natural remedy with miraculous results.
 
Recovery from mental arthritis is rarely a matter of replacement surgery. Even when it is, it requires methodical follow-up therapy. The medicines of reading, thinking, and challenging don’t work fast in most instances; they require continuous effort. 
 
What would the guy in the commercial say about side effect of reading, thinking, and challenging? “May cause renewal, and in some cases is known to cause the death of pessimism.”
 
I think that regardless of the effort required, I’ll take my chances with any cure whose side effect is the death of pessimism.

If you had to pick a planet, you could do much worse than Earth. However, there’s been some recent talk of living on the moon—in tunnels. Let’s see how that might play out.
 
Mammoth Cave was the site of an experiment that housed people with tuberculosis in what was believed to be an environment conducive to their recovery. The experiment failed. For people dying from consumption, living in a cold, dark, and damp environment was a bad idea. Mammoth Cave was also proposed as a site to store crackers as a food source for those who survived a nuclear attack. Not quite sure what bright government official thought people could survive on a diet of Saltines, but since air from outside gets in just as water from outside gets into the cave, the government gave up on storing crackers in Mammoth Cave. Anyway, as any surface dweller knows, living underground has some disadvantages on Earth though there are many critters—and maybe some humans—that love that environment and are adapted to life below the surface. But permanent spelunking?
 
The cold, dampness, and dark of Mammoth Cave just don’t make the place good for permanent habitation. So, some are saying, why not live underground on the moon? Sure, it’s cold there, too, and also dark underground, but dampness wouldn’t be a problem, and definitely there wouldn’t be any influx of outside air from that airless surface. That’s the plan now. Yes, the plan is to live in tunnels under the moon’s surface. Supposedly, life underground will be free from the threats solar radiation and incoming bolides—threats mostly quashed on Earth by a protective atmosphere.
 
A half century after we landed on the moon, we’re interested once again in going back, not just for a brief visit, but for a long stay. Why? Everything about the project is challenging. Will a number of people be able to sustain themselves in an underground habitat on an airless body with only frozen water to draw from rocks containing the remains of comets? Will a number of people be able to live in peace in an artificially lighted tunnel? And what if one of those passing celestial objects hits the tunnel’s roof and punches a hole? Who plugs the leak fast enough to prevent the loss of oxygen?
 
President Kennedy inspired the nation to go to the moon “not because it is easy, but because it is hard.” Okay, that motivation seemed to work in the 1960s and Cold War conditions, but now? Just “because it is hard” doesn’t seem to be a particularly inspiring notion. Permanently living on the moon would be extraordinarily hard.  
 
Has anyone in NASA or in the world of dreamers ever noticed that we have a planet and ready-made “natural” tunnels. Mammoth Cave is, not to brag, mammoth. We could put lots of people in there. Then what? One needs to ask the same question with regard to living beneath the moon’s surface. Okay, you get there; you dig, and you solve all the technical problems at a cost many times that of those first moon landings. And then what?
 
I thought the idea of seeking shelter was to make life easier: On Earth, for example, shelters keep us free from drenching rain, or scorching heat, or dangerous animals and bugs, from lightning strikes, from winds, from…. All extraterrestrial bodies that we currently know seem to require 24/7 efforts for humans just to barely stay alive. And I haven’t even mentioned the effect of the moon’s reduced gravitational pull on the human body. Remember, astronauts have to exercise hours each day just to maintain their basic muscle and bone mass in microgravity. They would weigh more on the moon than in a space station, but only one-sixth of their earth-weight. How long would it take for a lazy underground astronaut to lose muscle and bone mass in a body that evolved on the bigger Earth? So, think before you sign up to live in a moon tunnel.  
 
Regardless of its many potential threats, Earth is a great planet on which to live? Aren’t you glad you chose this one?

“You’ve seen this new nano-tech stuff, haven’t you?” I ask.
 
“Yes, it’s going to change much of what we do. I am excited about the medical applications.”
 
“Medical…? No, I was thinking about commercial signs. Big ones. Like Times-Square large.”
 
“I thought we were talking about nanotechnology?" you query. "The little stuff measured in billionths of a meter.”
 
“Well, that, too, I suppose. But now we’re going to be able to turn entire skyscrapers into flashing signs thanks to U. of Cambridge scientists. They invented a pixel a million times smaller than the pixels in your IPad or IPhone. * As the authors write in their abstract, ‘Here, we present scalable electrically driven color-changing metasurfaces…Their…ultralow energy consumption…[offers] vivid, uniform, nonfading color…[in] in films which are a hundredfold thinner than current displays.’ We don’t have to understand the technology they used to make the pixels, just the application. Put these little babies on a building, and you can cheaply turn it into a giant flashing advertisement screen with bright colors. We’re about to make the world one big Times Square.”
 
“You think that that’s possible? You realize what that means. We already have so much light pollution that we can’t see the stars on the horizon unless we get outside our brightly lighted cities. We’re going to have to go to more remote places to see the wonders of the night sky, maybe to Patagonia.”
 
“Yeah, but those little twinkling sky lights that amazed the ancients can’t compare with modern color displays that can flash mesmerizing images. Isn’t it soon going to be a virtual world, anyway? I mean, look at the children, their faces reflecting the glow of smartphones and tablets, their bespectacled eyes bloodshot from electronic games. Who needs the reality of the universe when one can hold a virtual universe in one’s lap? And now, the pixels will be so much more vibrant in a thin, lightweight and bendable surface. Again, kind of bragging, the Cambridge inventors say, ‘These unique characteristics highlight its potential for active plasmonics in real-world applications including color-changing wallpapers, smart windows, traffic management systems, electrical signage, and many types of display panels.’ We’re about to be surrounded by colors so intense we’ll think we’re in a HD cartoon, ironically, to use one of their words, in real-world applications.”
 
“I’m not excited," you say. "There will soon be a generation of kids who will never know darkness. Makes me think of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’: ‘Hello, Darkness, my old friend/I’ve come to talk with you again/Because a vision softly creeping/Left its seeds while I was sleeping/And the vision that was planted in my brain/Still remains/Within the sound of silence…When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light/That split the night….’ Little did those two composers know the extent to which they were prophetic.’ Who’s going to know darkness in this brightly lighted world? Who’s going to know a nighttime horizon with stars? Who will even conceive that he or she could talk to darkness in silence?”
 
 
 
*Peng, Jialong, Hyeon-Ho Jeong, Qianqi Lini, Sean Cormier, HsiLing Liang, Michael F. L. De Volder, Silvia Vignolini. Scalable electrochromic nanopixels using plasmonics. Science Advances 10 May 2019, Vol. 5, no. 5 eaaw2205 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw2205. Available online at https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/5/eaaw2205

​The rail is a bird species that migrated by air from Madagascar to the coral atoll Aldabra, subsequently lost its ability to fly, and then helplessly awaited drowning when seas rose 136,000 years ago during an interglacial epoch.
 
From the perspective of a high-flying bird or astronauts on the space station, coral atolls look like rings floating in the sea, but regardless of their apparently serene beauty, all atolls are ephemeral features undergoing attack. They form as volcanoes build and breach the surface, and corals grow on their flanks. Like all surface features, all volcanoes eventually wear down by weathering and erosion, and those volcanoes that form in oceans are also subject to the constant attack of eroding waves and subsidence. The newly formed mass of rock weighs heavily on its sea floor base, pushing it downward. Subsidence actually begins as the volcano rises and continues into its dormancy. In tropical waters, the corals that build a ring around subsiding and weathering volcanoes eventually become the only part of the structure that stands above sea level—just barely so. They form a dry rim above a sunken vent.
 
You can’t blame the birds for not understanding the nature of their new-found home. Flying rails had no way of knowing that volcanoes weather and subside. In their migration, they landed on a pleasant rest stop and found life good there, eventually losing their ability to fly. Of course, they also had no way of knowing that thousands of miles away massive amounts of ice were melting and raising sea level thousands of years after their initial landing. They lived their simple, predator-free lives, walking around on their somewhat circular landscape.  
 
In one way, we’re like the rail. We move to a place, get comfortable, and become unaware that a changing world is filled with interconnections. In another way, we’re not like them. We can be blamed when our lives are inundated by influences from afar and by natural and inevitable changes in situ. The rail became flightless by natural adaptation. We become flightless by choice.
 
What I’m saying is that just as the rails went through a physical adaptation that made them incapable of surviving a specific threat by subsidence or inundation, so we seem individually to undergo a psychological adaptation that makes us complacent in our views and lifestyles. In general, most of us aren’t really very restless when we find a place to rest. We find our little coral atolls, make a nest, and say, “This is nice; think I’ll live here—for a long time.”
 
No, I’m not talking about the physical place—though that seems to apply to many of us. Rather, I’m writing about settling on an intellectual atoll that not only subsides, but could also at any time be inundated by perspectives for which we don’t prepare. Granted, I’ll certainly say, we can’t predict all the distant perspectives that come our way from around the world and from generations that precede and follow us. There could be some big “ice-melt-movement” occurring right now for which we are unprepared—and, no, I’m not talking about climate change. Rather, there might be some collapse of some way of thinking that sends its influence our way or some rise of perspective that can affect our little islands and our intellectual security.
 
Complacency makes all adaptations dangerous. None of us can afford the luxury of flightlessness when it comes to our thinking. What appears to be a substantial base for our perspective is always under some kind of threat. Get up little birdie; exercise those mental wings. Your island is slowly sinking, and somewhere over Earth’s curvature, possibly more distant than you can imagine, another perspective is gaining mass. It will, regardless of your feeling of intellectual security, threaten the way you think. You might need to do some intellectual migrating to keep yourself above water. 

Think of the following the next time you are upset by someone’s calling you a name or labeling you. *
 
Ah! The technology. Transporting, ala Star Trek, a person from one place to another would certainly be an accomplishment beyond today’s technologies and probably beyond all technologies yet to come.
 
Glitch: Although experimenters are probably close to transporting something really tiny, say a subatomic particle or maybe even an atom, chances are that transporting a macro object like you is virtually impossible. Too many things to keep track of. What are you, like a gajillion subatomic particles and atomic particles? Hey, you can look up estimates of how many subatomic particles make a human, but remember that estimates aren’t specific.
 
And then there are the problems of not knowing simultaneously the whereabouts of an electron and its motion, of even knowing what quarks are, and of knowing whether or not something like electron tunneling that possibly makes your neurons work might be screwed up by a transporting device that possibly alters the chemistry of your cells in disassembling you partly or entirely.
 
It’s good that you are so complex that we can’t put you in a machine, disassemble, and then reassemble you. Talk about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle magnified so many orders of magnitude that, well, I don’t want to figure the numbers. Nor do I want to speak at length of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, whereby you, in being reassembled might find yourself mixed up with other matter at your destination. And the energy required? Remember that if you pump some energy into an electron, it’s going to do some jumping and some photon emitting. The point here?
 
You are incredibly complex, and that physical complexity that I just wrote about doesn’t even come close to all those immaterial “parts” like memories and the whatnots of knowledge and skills. Scotty will never be able to beam you anywhere.
 
That complexity that is YOU, can serve as the basis for an unending optimism. You will always lie just beyond the reach of AI, beyond the reach of any mechanism that attempts to give the definitive YOU to the rest of the world. Your individual Uncertainty Principle makes you an irreplaceable part of the universe. Nowhere in this Cosmos can there be another YOU. That means that whatever you do has never been done and can never be done in the same way and that no macro entity can duplicate you. The total YOU can’t be cloned, can’t be shared, can’t be transported by disassembling and reassembling. On the other end of any “transporter” you would not show up. Not the real, complete you. You cannot. Be definitively labeled or named.
 
And that’s why you should never be upset by someone else’s attempt to disassemble and reassemble you with name-calling or labeling.
 

*Conversely, think of this the next time you call someone a name or label a person. 

“Could we agree on just the basics?”
 
“Not sure what you mean? What basics?” you ask.
 
“Well, I was thinking that we generally fall into two kinds of people from a philosophical perspective: Those who seek some underlying meaning to ‘it all’ and those who avoid thinking about ‘it all.’ The ‘it all’ being not just the physical universe but also the immaterial universe.”
 
“Now, I don’t want to put the proverbial fly in your ointment,” you interject, “but I have to say I’m a bit surprised that you think you can draw me into a conversation that gives me no choice. I have to discuss this stuff with you or be labeled as the ‘distracted one,’ the petty day-to-day busybody wrapped up in the moment or the very near future of doing—and doing thoughtlessly. I don’t think one has to be either a thinker or a doer. I can think when I do and do when I think. And I don’t need some philosopher to advise me about my daily life or perspectives.”
 
“Yet, there are those among us who never stop to see that what they do might be connected to all there is and that what they think might be universal without their knowing. Here’s what I mean. I’m sure the Egyptians knew their geometry. They built those pyramids that have outlasted virtually all other buildings in spite of attacks by weather, grave robbers, and archeologists. I tried building a wooden pyramid once, and, let me tell you, it’s a difficult task. Back to Egyptians and their geometry or any culture and its math. Before we standardized math symbols, every culture seemed to have its own way of expressing mathematical concepts and of solving problems. But—and here’s what I’m getting at—regardless of the symbols the answers remain virtually the same, only the level of refinement seems to have changed, as it has with pi. The underlying truth of a diameter’s relationship to a circumference is what it is and doesn’t depend on symbols, beliefs, or even uses for circles. Makes me want to say with Brian Regan, the comedian, ‘Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.’”
 
“So,” you ask, “are you going to say that there’s a corollary to math’s universal applicability in my life or perspectives?”
 
“If mathematical concepts have universal applicability, is there an analog in ethics (or morality) or in meaning in spite of apparent differences in cultures or social movements? Take infanticide, for example. Apparently, for various reasons throughout history, infants have been left to die. Maybe the most famous two such infants are Romulus and Remus, the former the legendary founder of Rome. Amulius saw the twins as a threat, as Herod saw Jesus as a threat, and ordered them killed—abandoned by the river Tiber. They were by chance or fate saved, as legend has it. But that’s the story and not the essence of what I’m discussing. Is there any overriding or underlying meaning that crosses cultures and time with regard to infanticide? Or any ‘cide’?
 
“Could we, for example, reason through or to an underlying meaning or ethics that would stand up against both the test of time and the test of culture? That is, is there meaning or ethics outside the moment, outside the perspectives we have through inculcation? Can we derive any universal meaning or ethical system by becoming Platonic and using reason?
 
“Where do you find meaning, not just for a question like the ethics of infanticide, but for all that you are and do? Do you simply reason? If so, then you stand in the tradition of an intellectual conflict, one typified by the stances of Bernard of Clairvaux and Abelard. As translated by Morris Bishop, Bernard said, ‘You will find more in forests than in books. Woods and stones will teach you more than any master.’ (276). * Abelard, a Scholastic, went to the statements in the Bible and to those of ‘inspired authorities’ for meaning and then used reason to refine his perspectives.
 
“So, here we are back to you. Do you daily go about doing what it is you do without asking yourself whether or not what you do—and what you think—has some universality like math?**  Remember, math seems to be applicable everywhere and in any culture’s symbols for math’s fundamental entities, ‘things’ like circles, pyramids, or even processes like those described by Newton. Or do you daily fret over underlying meaning, the universality of your ethical system, or even your perspectives on culture and life?
 
“The Scholastics, following their leader Abelard, sought meaning by giving arguments for and against their chosen topic, and then tried to find a resolution. Thomas Aquinas followed in that path to meaning, and so did Hegel, who wrote about thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Every Matlock or Perry Mason episode does the same, with prosecutors and defense lawyers arguing theses, antitheses, and arriving at a conclusion, a synthesis.
 
“If you are wont to avoid thinking about doing—any doing, from your daily chores to infanticide—then the question of your methodology is moot. But if you are inclined to question the universality of ‘it all,’ then how do you go about determining whether or not there is an analog of math, a universality in the midst of diversity of culture and through human history? I suppose it’s a matter of applicability. If there is an underlying meaning to ‘it all,’ and if there is such an analog in our daily lives, then what is the application that we derive from a Scholastic-like, Thomist-like, Hegel-like, Perry Mason-like synthesis of pro and con, thesis and antithesis?***
 
 
*Bishop, Morris, The Middle Ages. New York. American Heritage Press. 1970.
 
**I’ve quoted two guys on a similar topic before. First their statement, second the reference: “We can think of no instance in which the existence of mathematical concepts of one culture were invalid in another” (26). Rothman, Tony and George Sudarchan. Doubt and Certainty. Reading, Massachusetts, Helix Books (Perseus Books), 1998.
 
**With regard to that very specific topic, infanticide, I would simply point out that regardless of any mythical background, had Amulius and Herod been successful, neither Rome nor Christianity would exist. 

As Boethius says in Book V of his Consolation of Philosophy, "Let us follow Plato and say that God is eternal, the world perpetual, and the next blog will appear on May 7." (I made up that last one)

The online Swedish news report called The Local posts a daily word. That’s not an uncommon practice. The new gas pump at my local Sunoco gas station has a television screen that gives a “word of the day.” One can learn much by standing around watching others fill their tanks. And thinking of things flammable like gasoline reminds me of the Swedish word of the day on the eve of Walpurgis, the April 30 Swedish festival that involves bonfires.
 
Swedish, the website explains, has three words for “fire,” There’s a small controlled fire, which is eld, a large uncontrolled fire like a forest fire, which is skogsbrand or gräsbrand, a grass fire, and a brasa. Think bonfire: It’s both large and controlled. During the spring celebration of Walpurgis, bonfires chase bad spirits away and guarantee fertility—a bit strange in a country where mothers have their first child at an average age of 29. Sweden has one of the lowest birth rates.
 
Fertility rates and spring rituals aside for a moment, consider those three words for “fire”: one controlled; one uncontrolled; and one a combination. English has different words for rapid oxidation, also, from fire to conflagration, and the words also imply a level of control.
 
Apparently, the Swedes have small controlled fires of love if one judges by fertility rates. But to generalize the tendencies of lovers in Sweden by some dry census statistics probably doesn’t do the people justice. They are, as we all are, human with human relationships. Swedes run the gamut from eld to skogsbrand just as people in other countries do. It’s just that the slow population growth doesn’t speak for unbridled passion among the young.
 
I suppose if one is worried about world population growth and the prospect of overpopulation, then a brasa kind of love is more in line with goals. Yes, the Walpurgis bonfires can be large, but they are also controlled and limited to a single day in spring, April 30. Seems the Swedes can get as hot as anyone else, but they apply a rationality to when one lights the bonfire.
 
You’ve seen people “on fire,” and maybe you have been hot about something or someone. When you look back at the fires of your life, how many have been small and controlled (eld), large and controlled (brasa), or large and uncontrolled (skogsbrand)? I suppose, if you are one to carry grudges, we should add another term, en rykande ruinhög (smoldering ruins).  
 
Are you “on fire” now? If so, what kind?