Here’s an idea: Someone should write a blog totally devoted to you. Why not? Aren’t you the prime representative of humanity? You have its DNA, its physiology and structure. You have the potential for moral (and immoral) action. You have memory and computing power.
 
You can empathize; disdain if you want; analyze; synthesize; create; destroy; envision; politicize; organize; inspire; include; and ostracize. In short, you are the leader that the alien from outer space asks to see. You are humanity’s model. There should be a blog devoted to you.
 
Daily, we could go to the blog about you to discover human nature, human potential, and human accomplishment. Daily, we could learn—and you offer much for us to learn.
 
“Foolish writer,” you ask, “don’t you know that blog appears daily for all to read?”
 
“You mean?” I ask in return.
 
“Follow me around. I am that daily blog.”

If you listen to Smetana’s Moldau, you understand in his recurring theme the chief characteristic of a river: Flow. Wade into a river or drift on a raft to experience flow, but you will notice something about the process. It varies in the same river.
 
We’ve been hung up on the idea of flow for a long time. It’s the philosophical notion espoused by Heraclitus and rejected by the followers of Parmenides. The latter use the argument that what we perceive as change has nothing to do with the persistence of immutable being, that change is a matter of appearance. So much for the philosophical stuff. Let’s apply: Even if change is appearance rather than essence, does it really matter whether or not it is for philosophers real or imaginary? We really can’t get by dealing with appearances. If change is, in fact, our reality, how can we identify its characteristics? Where is change most rapid?
 
Think rivers. Wade across a shallow one and find yourself pushed downstream. Something is going on. The persistence is the constant push. Crossing the flow requires some compensating force against that flow. The river’s change is, as far as the crosser is concerned, a reality. Being is changing: The constant is the inconstant.
 
So, too, you. You want to recognize yourself in the flow of life. You want to see a constant, an identifiable you. But you must always act on appearances. You don’t really have a choice. You continuously cross the river of appearances.
 
Now some more about flow. If you measure the flow rate of a river, you will find that it is different in different parts of the river. Go out to the middle and underwater a bit (there’s actually a depth and position for peak flow), and you will find the fastest flow. The river flows more slowly along the banks and the riverbed (the so called “wetted perimeter”) than it does in the middle at about 40% of the stream’s depth. Those who measure river velocity do so by taking into account the variations in the stream’s depth, making an average assessment that is related to the stream’s discharge (total water running past a point).
 
The river’s banks and bed are restrictive. They impede flow. And isn’t it the same with your own changes, your own flow? Out in the middle, away from others, you are free to move at whatever rate you can, but in friction with others, you slow. Others impede your free flow. They act as a force to “keep you in place,” to make your velocity zero. They are your “wetted perimeter.” Even in fast flowing mountain streams you can witness almost—and sometimes completely—still water along the banks.
 
Not every flow in your life occurs at the same rate. It might be a good time to ask yourself in what part of the channel of your existence you find the freer flow. Maybe that is where you need to concentrate the discharge of your desires and goals. Maybe that is where change is more than appearance. Maybe that is your reality.

Since we are always “in a place,” we are always bounded in some way. Borders define place. Now here’s an irony. “To terminate” has acquired the meaning of “kill.” And we speak of those who commit suicide as terminating their lives. Why irony? Death, as far as we know, is boundless because it is placeless, but terminating implies fixing boundaries.
 
We can’t fix boundaries outside of “place.” Those who would terminate their lives would bind the unbounded. Call it what you will: juxtaposition, oxymoron, contradiction, irony.
 
Would that we could explain to those who seek a termination that the process ends in the endless. Would that we could explain how much we are bound to boundaries and how much such binding defines us and gives us meaning.
 
The farthest horizon is still a finite boundary. And everything that horizon encompasses has an identity because it belongs bounded. You belong. I belong. The person who would terminate belongs. We have meaning in this place, in this bounded existence. 

​In December, 2014, J.C.A. Jordens and others reported in Nature (2014; DOI: 10.1038/nature13962) that Homo erectus made geometric designs in shells found at Trinil on Java. The designs are between 430,000 and 540,000 years old. Euclid should have been a paleoanthropologist.
 
What is our fascination with geometric design? We have a seeming affinity for it while we reject its study. In high school we might say, “Well, some adult must have some use for this somewhere.” Later, some who made such a statement might become physicists that constantly seek to understand the universe by studying and describing its non-Euclidean geometry. Others might devote their adult energies to work on the geometry of 3D imaging for purposes as diverse as medical diagnoses and architectural designs.
 
We will probably never know the exact purpose of the geometric scratches that H. erectus made on those shells. For our purposes, however, the shells are highly instructive. Those simple scratches that appear to make letter Ms or Ws (depending on the orientation) tell a story of intelligence and creativity about five times older than the creators of the next oldest “writing.”
 
Someone had some time on his or her hands; life was not so grueling. Someone had a moment both to design and to carry out that design. Such a design was probably (I’m guessing, of course) shared. That makes those geometric scratches the first written language, produced, we have to admit, by a predecessor species. Embarrassing, isn’t it? Here we are 500,000 years later thinking that we’re the end all and be all of consciousness and self-awareness when, in reality, we stand at the end of a very long chain of thinkers and doers. And we’re still either putting geometry to very practical use in our daily lives or obsessing over its connection to our universe.
 
Say we don’t blow ourselves up in a nuclear holocaust. Say that no asteroid or comet larger than a football field hits the planet. Say that diseases or pests don’t eliminate humans. Oh! Let’s throw it all together: Say that nothing interferes with the continuation of our species or some evolutionary offspring for the next 500,000 years. What then? Looking back, paleoanthropologists will see some bones that date to our present and find a number of strange markings on tombstones and cornerstones. They might even discover in some remnant drainage ditch a geometry that suggests careful design. “Hey,” the researchers will remark, “We think we have good evidence that an ancestor race was intelligent and creative.”
 
Will it be your bones and your geometric language that they find? Want to leave your mark? Start scratching, and leave durable clues why you scratched.

Are you aware that Aristotle thought that cold traveled to warm areas? He certainly would have failed a course in thermodynamics. But if you remove yourself from modern science and forget the definition of heat, you might derive the same misunderstanding when you sit on a cold metal bench in winter. The cold might seem as much to be entering your body as heat might seem to be leaving it.
 
We seem to rely on notions regardless of their degree of truth (or falsity). As long as they appear to explain the world satisfactorily and as long as we don’t encounter contradictions, notions work. We are, in reality, not often very precise, and that especially applies to our idea of what other people are. As long as the notions seem to hold, we are happy in our judgments. Cold, regardless of what thermodynamics teaches us, does seem to flow into us on that cold metal bench.
 
A simple issue like a mistaken thermodynamic principle might seem worth little note, but since so much of what we do is based on erroneous notions, the Aristotelian cold-to-warm principle serves as an analog of much of our thinking.
 
Cases in point:

1. The gambler’s fallacy: So, the slot machine has not hit for a bit. Isn’t it bound to hit soon? Sorry. It’s all about random numbers. Chance is chance. The notion of potential success guarantees nothing.
2. Karma, or what goes around comes around: Yes, maybe there will be some (Hitler, for example) whose comeuppance comes up, but poetic justice isn’t a guarantee in the real world, and many bad guys pay no identifiable penalty for their actions.
3. Urine is yellow, so there must be gold in it: Don’t laugh. Before modern chemistry alchemist Hennig Brand thought he could get a precious metal from pee. He did get phosphorus. Happy accident. But random accidents guarantee no similar accidents.
4. Gypsy moths in North America and rabbits in Australia could be good for the economy. Yes, those were the notions, but invasive species always upset the ecological status quo that evolved over thousands, or even tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Why would anyone think such purposeful introduction is reasonable? No individual act occurs in a vacuum in a complex world.
5. Running shoes protect your feet. You can find a contradictory study at the Journal of Royal Society Interface. “Running shoes actually made…muscles work harder to keep the arch stable.”

 
What of notions about fame? About wealth? About moral choice? What are the unproven and disproved notions upon which you operate daily? Your question: “How can I even know when I am operating on a notion? Life ‘comes at me fast,’ too fast for examining everything in depth, too fast for experimentation, and too fast for thorough foresight.”
 
Even the wisest of us, like Aristotle, will rely on notions as truths by which to live. If you think “the weather is so frigid that the cold is penetrating to my very bones,” you won’t suffer because of an erroneous thermodynamic notion; you'll suffer because you are cold. But some notions are injurious: Those that violate two principles of ethical living. The first principle is that you do no harm to yourself. So, the notion that you can continue a habit like smoking without inimical consequence runs counter to research findings on smoking’s dangers. The same principle applies to any habit or risky act that is unhealthful or potentially dangerous. The second principle is that you do no harm to others. The notion that you can operate without considering the effect of your actions on others can lead to their distress, and their distress can bounce back to you. 

Question your notions. 

In 1552 St. Francis Xavier traveled to China and initiated two centuries of Jesuit missionary work. Some of those missionaries returned to Europe, carrying information about someone called K’ung Fu-tzu, whom they called Confucius. K’ung Fu-tzu was originally named K’ung Ch’iu; he earned his reputation as master philosopher or wise man through decades of writing and teaching. (K’ung Fu implies any persistent hard work, not just that associated with martial arts)
 
Today, there are many Confucius institutes, including one at Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black university. So, here’s what to think about: A European guy from the Iberian Peninsula goes off to India, China, and Japan in the sixteenth century and more than four centuries later descendants of Africans have the opportunity to study in the context of an oriental wise man’s philosophy. In many ways people really do transcend time and place. We are related by more than our DNA.
 
Unfortunately, some people can’t see either the physical or the intellectual connections that bind us. For them place is a separator.
 
Francis had no way of knowing that his introducing Jesuits into the Orient would, in turn, introduce Confucius to the West and ultimately bind people from disparate cultures and geographies. Maybe we, like him, might also carry an introduction of a way of thinking that could have a far and wide influence. Surely, there’s a wisdom that many of us believe could enhance the lives of our own and future generations.
 
If you find a wise guy in some unexpected place, don’t be hesitant to do a little introducing. True, you might never know how your introducing wisdom to others might positively change the world and unite people. Some persistent hard work at spreading wisdom, your own K’ung Fu, can alter lives you will never know. 

In a June, 2016, online report for AAAS, Jessica McDonald overviews a University of Warwick study on how cyanophages interfere with the sequestration of inorganic carbon by the photosynthetic ocean bacterium Synechococcus.
 
First, a background: Carbon dioxide, the stuff plants use to turn sunlight into food, is a greenhouse gas. By absorbing it during photosynthesis, plants store (sequester) the carbon, effectively cleaning it from the atmosphere until some process like fire or decay cycles it back into Earth’s blanket of air. Viruses called cyanophages naturally exist in ocean water, where they enter photosynthetic bacteria and disrupt this process, lessening the amount of carbon the bacteria can sequester. Why study this? Without the infection, would bacteria reduce the greenhouse effect? This study warrants more study, doesn’t it?  
 
Who would have thunk it? Instead of looking at big time carbon emitters, maybe we should be looking more closely at big time carbon absorbers.  Big time? Yes, microbes, as Jessica McDonald reports, sequester about half Earth’s carbon dioxide.
 
Second, a note: If you consider how difficult it is for humans to interrupt a flu epidemic spreading over a continent, you might realize that it is virtually impossible to control viruses that are free to roam in water that covers 71% of Earth’s surface. Microbes can grow wherever sunlight strikes ocean water, and cyanophages simply take advantage of the situation, just as flu viruses take advantage of human cohabitation.
 
Third, a lesson: In our hubris we like to think we are in control. That applies widely: We can both make and disrupt civilizations, and we can alter natural settings. Even when we think we see holistically, however, we can miss something apparently little and insignificant, but ultimately big and highly significant—like those cyanophages that in the U. of Warwick study decreased Synechococcus’ ability to store carbon by almost 5 times their normal rate.
 
Fourth, something like a conclusion: If, because of tiny viruses, we cannot completely control the physical world, the one we can touch, see, and alter, why do we think we can thoroughly control the world of mind and emotion? No, we won’t stop trying to stop behavioral emissions just as we won’t stop trying to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. However, as we continue our attempts to control others, we need to realize that something seemingly little and insignificant might be at work within, something of an infection. Unseen “viruses” might be at work disrupting the normal absorption of advice or therapy aimed at ethical change. Warrants more study, doesn’t it?    

For thousands of years in different media from philosophical writings to animated cartoons we’ve heard the tale of Atlantis. There is even a billion dollar resort in the Bahamas that purports to recapture the spirit of the “lost city.” Say “Atlantis,” and brains draw on a heritage of images, including those associated with a sophisticated society, dramatic architecture, and a watery burial. Hints of its existence have inspired explorers to search for its missing riches and explanations for where and why it disappeared.
 
Ask someone about Atlantis, and you will probably get a stereotypical summation of mythical images and possibly a reference to Crete and the end of Minoan society. You will also get references to a volcanic eruption in the Aegean where now the tourist attraction called Santorini occupies part of Thira’s ancient caldera. Atlantis? Who knows?
 
We know the tales accumulated over more than two thousand years without really knowing anything factual about Atlantis. If we could only find it, if we could only put a pin in a map, or find it through Google Earth, or book a flight to it, then we would know about a real Atlantis.
 
The discovery of ancient civilizations always seems to captivate us. For some reason, traipsing around in tropical rainforest to look for lost cities when we know the dangers presented by fungi, bacteria, insects, reptiles, and mammals doesn’t deter the archaeologically minded. Nor does digging in Saharan sand bother those intrepid explorers. They dream of peering through a hole somewhere to gaze on long hidden wonders and express, as Howard Carter did when asked by Lord Carnavon whether or not he could see anything through the tiny hole he made with a chisel, “Yes, wonderful things.” He had discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb.
 
No one will probably ever discover a “true” Atlantis, though many might argue for this or that candidate ancient ruin as they vie for the designation “The Discoverer of Atlantis.” Is there another Atlantis or Tutankhamun’s tomb each of us can discover with a little mental digging? We all have the ability to peer into a personal past to reveal a hidden treasure locked behind the walls of or sunken in the depths of memory.
 
If some Lord Carnevon were standing behind you as you look into your past, asking whether or not you see anything, will you, like Carter, exclaim, “Yes, wonderful things.”

Fossils and the rocks that bear them reveal much about the conditions and lives of ancient organisms. Paleontologists, the people who study fossils, seek outcrops of rock when they search for fossils. Why dig when you can just walk up to an exposed fossil-bearing layer of sedimentary rock, tap it with a rock hammer or chisel, and free some fossil from a tomb that predates the pyramids by hundreds of millions of years?  
 
Fossils are not ubiquitous. In fact, it’s tough to become a fossil. The agents of decay and the forces of erosion make preservation chancy. Think about it. Let’s say a robin expires over your yard in the early morning and drops to the ground below a bush. Rodents, crows, insects, bacteria, and fungi all want their share of the “grocery store” that just dropped into their neighborhood. What’s left? Not much. Preservation is a rare process unless certain circumstances prevail, such as a lack of oxygen (as in a bog or deep stagnant water), a lack of humidity (as in a desert), rapid burial in muds (as in a mudflow underwater), or rapid freezing (as in high latitudes or altitudes). Some kind of preserving entombment is essential, but even that entombing material, having turned to rock, can, with its fossils, be eroded and destroyed.
 
So, you cannot necessarily find fossils in your neighborhood unless your neighborhood was once such a preserving environment that was also a place where organisms lived and died. And, if your neighborhood lies on rock that is very, very old, say older than about 610 million years, then chances are its only fossils are microbes. Big life, that is, life larger than microbes, is fairly recent on a planet whose age is about 4.5 billion years.
 
You might, however, have a house that overlies an ancient fossil tomb. Oh! How disrespectful! You built on a gravesite, and you either don’t know about it or you don’t care. Certainly, you aren’t going to let some paleontologist into your basement to start digging.
 
Your house is also in a place that was once different but known by other humans whose lives you will never know. They passed over the landscape of the past and left no record of their passing. Similarly, over the course of your life, you pass by places that are more or less significant to you without giving them a thought or leaving a record of your passing. Such places are throughways of your life, and the people along those throughways are less or more significant. You also pass by cemeteries, where the science of entombment has been practiced for hundreds of years. If you look at the “outcrops” of rocks on the cemetery landscape, you get little information about the lives of reposing humans. You see dates of birth and death and in rare instances, some epigram meaningful only to unknown relatives. In a sense, the strangers you pass are little different from the fossils over which you live and walk, unless you decide to dig for knowledge about their lives.
 
Fossil-hunting doesn’t always yield fossils. Sometimes paleontologists show up at a promising outcrop only to find that it lies in the backyards or basements of a newly constructed housing plan. Strangers who ask to dig around a swing set will probably never receive a friendly permission. We don’t like such intrusions, but just maybe, on occasion, someone will grant the permission to dig. One never knows until he or she tries.  
 
You don’t have the time or permission to dig into the lives of all those whom you pass on your throughways. Like so many organisms of the past 600 million years, you share an environment with similar organisms that you don’t know. Like you, each is destined for some kind of burial. Once that burial comes, only a paleontologist can try to read the pattern of life of the organism. Why wait? All around you the history of your time is being written by the lives of similar organisms. You have an opportunity to acquire deep insights into their lives and their environments before entombment. You won't get permission to dig on every property, but you'll never know which site is open to you unless you ask.

You lack ubiquity. Sorry, someone had to tell you. I hope I didn’t upset you by the remark, but you’ve been running around fretting over all your responsibilities and your current unsatisfactory state. “I can’t be everywhere at once,” you complain. “How am I supposed to do everything everyone demands of me? Where can I find some peace and comfort?”
 
Early in life you quickly learn you have limitations on your presence. If you were ubiquitous, then you would know what was going on everywhere, and there would be no gaps in your knowledge. You could find everything because everything would be where you are. That might be a little boring because your life would be completely balanced as you simultaneously experience joy and sadness.
 
In a place of turmoil? Well, as a ubiquitous being, you would simultaneously be in a place of peace. In desperation? Then also in satisfaction. In a place of loss? Then also in a place of discovery. In sadness? Then also in a place of joy. Sound good to you?
 
You’re not ubiquitous. There will be hard-to-find places. You will find yourself in a place of turmoil without simultaneously being in a place of peace. You will find yourself in different degrees of desperation without being in different degrees of satisfaction. You will be somewhere, and the place you wish for will be elsewhere. Resign yourself to the localism that determines your limitations. You can’t get by that existential fact, but you don’t have to see your localism as a limitation.  
 
The limitations to your presence in places that are disheartening do not restrict your searching for those that are heartening. You lack ubiquity. That’s true. You do not lack mobility; your present locale is only one of an indefinite number of locales. You can, through effort, change places as you look for some degree of change. Some places are hard to find, but that doesn’t mean they are impossible to find. Your destiny as a non-ubiquitous being is to keep looking. No place that you find will be the ultimate place, just as no emotional state has to be your ultimate state. Somewhere out there is a place you wish to find or a new place to discover. You won’t know unless you keep looking.