What really matters to you? Can it be destroyed? Or, consider this: Can you gain somehow from the destruction of what matters to others? Is there something in ‘what matters’ to any of us, regardless of what it is, that can be conserved and transferred just as every chemical reaction conserves mass in a balanced equation? What of reputations? What of ideas? Is there a Law of Conservation of ‘What Matters’? Does ‘what matters’ to you energize others to destroy it and to convert it into their own energy, particularly as energy spread at the speed of the Internet or Social Media? Could we use Einstein’s M=E/C^2 in some way? Maybe like this:
 
            Et =WmC^2 or, converted to show Wm on the left side of the equation:
 
            Wm = Et/VS ^2
 
where Wm equals ‘what matters’; Et equals the energy of trolling; and VS equals viral speed with which trolling spreads around the world, essentially at the speed of electromagnetic waves.
 
Of concern to some because of the accident at Chernobyl, a Russian floating nuclear power plant called the Academik Lomonosov will sit in Arctic waters to supply energy to a remote region of the country. It isn’t the first floating power plant; such plants have been in use off and on for a half century, the first, I believe, having been used at the Panama Canal. I suppose the nuclear engineers have done their homework and have designed a safe system that will be nothing like the failed Chernobyl plant, but I can see why some environmentalists have concerns: Were an accident to happen in the Arctic, radiation could spread across the Northern Hemisphere. However, if cold water is the cure for overheating power stations, well, then the Arctic Academik Lomonosov will always sit in the pharmacy, that is, in failsafe icy waters.
 
I’m not one to be too concerned about that nuclear power plant. There’s been ample incentive for the Russians to take every precaution in its design. Certainly, they don’t want to make their mineral-rich region another danger zone that excludes the Russian people from the country’s natural resources.
 
When I read about the Lomonosov, I was intrigued by the name of the power plant. Mikhaylo Vasilyevich Lomonosov was an eighteenth-century genius who, separately from Lavoisier, gave us the Law of Mass Conservation. Reading about his namesake floating nuclear power plant made me think of all the energy put into social media and another type of reaction and principle of “conservation.”
 
The Law of Matter/Mass Conservation, as defined by Lomonosov, is easy enough to understand because we see it in everyday chemical reactions and in obesity. We can test the “law” or “principle” with a scale: Merely weigh the original constituents before and after a reaction. Most of us have had to balance a chemical equation at some time or other, even it were merely in an equation called a cook book recipe.
 
Conserving mass/matter isn’t an invention. It’s the way Nature works, and it appears to be inviolable. However, conserving ‘what matters’ is a human endeavor with mixed results, especially more mixed in an age of social media and chat rooms that house a seemingly very large population of “trolls” who focus their energy on personal destruction.
 
Although I try to ignore the reactions of Internet trolls, I do know they exist, and I see in their reactions an attempt to apply a law of chemistry to their personal philosophy and psychology. I think trolls believe they can “transfer” what matters to another into what matters to themselves. They practice a destructive “chemistry” in the lab of the Internet. They appear to think that just as burning a log produces carbon dioxide, water, and ash, conserving the matter of the log in different substances, so trolling conserves by turning the ‘what matters’ of others into their own ‘what matters.’
 
Internet trolls practice a destructive chemistry that does not, regardless of their belief, transfer the good of others into an equivalent matter. Just as over-the-backyard-fence-gossips have tried to destroy ‘what matters’ in other lives in the belief that some substance from the destruction adds to their own mass reputation, so trolls seem to believe they conserve ‘what matters’ in its altered state. But, in truth, destroying ‘what matters’ to others isn’t analogous to the chemical principle by which mass/matter changes, as in the burning of a log.
 
Like Chernobyl, the faulty nuclear power plant that for a number of years put out energy but eventually polluted its own surroundings and made itself useless to its makers, trolling has no guaranteed failsafe mechanism to protect a troll from the potential bad consequences of his or her trolling. If destroying 'what matters' matters to trolls, they will eventually discover that they conserve nothing but hate.  

How short are our memories of weather events that we survive? Unless we have been injured or suffered the loss of property or loved ones, we can move on with our lives. “Yeah. I vaguely remember some pretty hot humid days in my youth. But that’s summer weather in a temperate climate. What can one do about it; what can one do about weather extremes?”
 
At the end of June, 2019, Europe is abuzz about the heat. Paris temperatures hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Wow! It is just like summer. Almost immediately, newspapers carried the stories of several temperature-related deaths. “Global warming is upon us!” some scream—Maybe.
 
I’m thinking of Chicago, summer of 1995: More than 700 heat-related deaths that year topped the suffering caused by the city’s heat waves in the 1930s, mid-1950s and 1970s, and in 1988. That 1995 temperature event produced a heat-index (the “feels like” temperature) in the 140s F just north of the city. The same event took Pittsburgh, PA, to 100 and Danbury, CT, to 106, and also generated high heat indexes in those areas.
 
Have you noticed your own and others’ responses to weather extremes? Generally, they’re mid-latitude, temperate zone people’s responses. Someone in Saudi Arabia, Mali, or Berkina Faso would probably say, “Welcome to the club of high temperatures; you’ll get used to them.” Of course, that’s a simplification. We do have physical limits beyond which humans don’t survive. People in places like Paris, Chicago, and Danbury aren’t acclimated to such high summer temps. When the heat increases, they focus on their discomfort. The present becomes more highly present. It’s tough to think about the future, near or far, with sweat on the brow. And comparing present discomfort with past discomfort is like trying to feel the pain of long ago caused by a stubbed toe.
 
During those times of discomfort, our limitations generate a focus on the present. Everyone is forced into self-awareness. And many succumb to the “end-of-the-world syndrome” in thinking that the present conditions are the worst conditions. It always amazes me when I hear people speak of summer temperatures as though they never lived through a previous summer. And I could say the same for people with regard to their responses to wintertime cold spells. Seems that every extreme weather event occurs in an historical vacuum.  
 
The presence of the present that our comfort index forces upon us contrasts with the presence of the past that we force upon ourselves by regret, grudge, and nostalgia. It’s as though we carry emotional weather with us, whereas we leave weather conditions behind. Is it because we know that weather is temporary? Every heat wave and cold spell will pass no matter how extreme.
 
In contrast, regret, grudge, and sorrow establish a presence of the past that heat indexes can never match. Shortly after the passing of a heat wave, we get over the presence of the present; we can even resume thinking about the future. But the presence of past emotions can be a constant. Which is worse? A present discomfort that is temporary or a past discomfort that is permanent? For many, the presence of the past can be worse than the presence of the present.  

Is there a trick to successful living? If one peruses the bookshelves in both small and large bookstores, one might think so. Self-help books fill a section, new volumes on the shelves, older ones on sale tables. If one has the patience, self-help comes cheaply. Of course, having the patience means postponing the help until the price falls.
 
I’m not knockin’ self-help books here. To do so would probably be hypocritical. After all, what is the purpose of this website other than being a point of departure for my readers’ thinking? And self-help book authors do what I cannot do, provide the magic of a formula for life. Learn their various formulae, learn how to live. That certainly seems better than a 1,001 nights of thisisnotyourpracticelife.com (which, by the way, this website exceeds in number).
 
As each of us looks around, we see that others might have solved the mystery of living, found the magical algorithm of doing whatever one is supposed to do whenever one is supposed to do it. Others apparently are still looking to discover the trick; still others don’t even know such tricks are possible. That seems to put humans in three categories: Magicians skilled in their craft, audiences amazed and befuddled by what they do, and people who don’t see magic in anyone or act. Most of us probably fall into that second category; I know I’m there.
 
Magicians know their tricks, of course; they know that what appears to be isn’t what is; that’s the point. They perform a trick, one they practice until they master it, like pulling a rabbit out of a seemingly empty black top hat. “Hey, where’d that come from?” the audience asks.
 
Honestly, I don’t know how they do it, but I can imagine the practice sessions during which the magician sees rabbit poop in the hat. To me that would not be something unexpected. Cats might learn to use the kitty litter, but rabbits? So, I’m guessing that the trick, though ostensibly magical for the audience, isn’t all that it seems to be, that the magician has the same kinds of problems we all encounter. It’s just that the magician probably knows what to hide from the rest of us, and the experienced magician knows to look before re-donning the hat.
 
It appears to be the nature of the audience—maybe you and definitely me—that once a magician performs a trick, people want another trick. Thus, hundreds, if not thousands, of self-help books. Magic understood isn’t magic. That is, once we learn the formula for success or effectiveness, we seek a new formula. That’s our nature. We tire of one magician’s tricks and look to another’s. For the audience, for the self-help book reader, the hat will eventually contain some rabbit poop; the formulae for successful living will fail in this or that particular circumstance, engendering a search for another show, another trick, another book.
 
Our curiosity eventually drives us to look into the bottom of the inverted hat after we have pulled out the rabbit. Maybe the trick to life lies in seeking a new magician with new magic tricks or in reading different self-help formulae. We seem to practice until we master only to realize that practicing is all we can master. This, as I say, is not your practice life, but practicing is all we can ever hope to do to keep life magical. 

Mindfulness is today’s buzzword. Apparently, mindful people live “better” lives than “unmindful” people. It makes sense. “Think before you act” is good advice. “Consider the ramifications of your actions,” also. And just plain, “Think (be mindful) of others,” helps to avoid pain and strain in the mindful and others. Those mindful lives are manifestations of the second of my favorite expressions: What you anticipate is rarely a problem. Like those other expressions, the “anticipate” one arises from a fundamental assumption: Self-awareness is not only possible, but is also practical. It has a function. Self-awareness! Isn’t that a form of consciousness?
 
“But,” you argue, “there are different kinds of anticipation. Don’t dogs anticipate the return of their owners? Why else sit and stare at the door? Don’t they anticipate getting food once it’s proffered? Surely, anticipation isn’t the culmination of all forms of consciousness? Wait! Are there different forms of consciousness? Is the problem-solving ability of animals an indication of consciousness? Does a dog’s figuring how to get to food on the other side of a fence imply self-consciousness? The dog does "anticipate" getting to the food. Is problem-solving unrelated to consciousness in general? Many animals problem-solve. What of a raccoon’s ability to take off a garbage can lid? This consciousness problem is the proverbial can of worms, but in this instance the problem is the problem: Are worms conscious? And to go back to the word anticipation, I am now thinking that if it determines our relationship with the future, then don’t grizzly bears anticipate when they stand facing downstream to catch salmon swimming upstream? Isn’t that evidence of anticipation, of consciousness in non-human species? Shoot! You have me going off in so many different directions on this. Why did you bring it up?”   
 
I saw something in Walmart today, and that got me to thinking, but I’ll mention that at the end. To address your complaint about “so many different directions,” I’ll point out that if you read through the many articles devoted to understanding the origin, purpose, and effect of consciousness, you will probably say, “I’m more confused now than I was before I began to read about the subject.” You won’t be alone. I am as confused as anyone by my self-awareness, by consciousness, and by corollary ideas, such as mindfulness. I know there are people who can direct others to be more mindful, people who can impart skills necessary for mindfulness, but practicing mindfulness isn’t necessarily a key to understanding its nature, especially when understanding means defining in absolute terms. Is mindfulness “total awareness”?
 
Is “total awareness” possible? If not, then how much awareness makes one mindful? And if I can ask, “How much?” am I indicating that there are degrees of, kinds of, and levels of awareness. “Much” means a quantification, and that opens another can.
 
Last spring a couple of cardinals kept attacking their reflections in my windows every morning for a month. Annoying as the process was—they didn’t return to do it this year, fortunately—it was also a point of departure for thinking about consciousness. Obviously, cardinals aren’t self-conscious as we are; otherwise, they would recognize themselves in their reflections. However, because cardinals have little trouble surviving in the wild and can adopt relationships with other cardinals they recognize, I assume that they have “awareness” of some sort. On that point, I’ll note that great apes recognize reflections for what they are, but other life-forms, even some other primates, don’t.
 
When I think of physicists’ explanations for the origin and nature of the Cosmos, I spiral into a vortex that I suppose will lead me to a moment that separates an unconscious universe from a conscious one, just as the singularity of the Big Bang led to the separation of the four fundamental forces. I know, as you know, that the stuff of the universe is “physical,” but my “knowing that it is physical” isn’t purely physical. Neurons might work by electromagnetism, biochemistry, and quantum processes, but thoughts and awareness aren’t physical. As many have noted, each of us is the Universe conscious of Itself.
 
If, as the physicists tell us, quantum effects produced the Cosmos and if they still produce virtual particles that fill the apparent void, how is it possible that those “effects” resulted in consciousness? What properties of virtual particles coming into and going out of existence demands a universe that is conscious of itself? When I ask that last question, I find myself in danger of circular thinking, of falling into the trap of saying that the universe is as it is because we are who we are. I can’t fault myself for this circularity because it seems to have been a problem for many philosophers who were far smarter than I; instead, I blame myself for not getting off the carousel. No one has as yet definitively explained consciousness and its origin, so I should look for other, more linear rides in the amusement park of life. We can explain the advantages of consciousness, but we can’t explain its origin or exact nature.
 
But darn! Just in saying I am getting nowhere in my understanding of my understanding, I find myself back on the merry-go-round—though it is more “frustration-go-round” than “merry.” For example, why are those cardinals capable of surviving without the self-awareness that I show in recognizing my reflection. What goes through their brains when they dip to drink from a pond and see their reflection? I haven’t noticed whether or not cardinals “attack” the water as they “attack” my windows. If they were to attack it, would they ever drink to survive?
 
As the experts tell us, self-consciousness is a slow process; we act before we know we act, as experiments have demonstrated: My brain seems to decide to move a muscle before I know I decided to move a muscle. Or, take the common experience of many drivers who have driven a few miles only to ask themselves how they drove those miles apparently unconsciously. Did the right side of the brain go off in dreamland while the left side took the wheel? Of course, I can “consciously” decide to perform some actions, but look how slow that process is. Whenever we ponder, we act consciously, but pondering is too long-term for ducking a foul ball sent into the stands at a baseball game; it’s too slow for swerving a car, too slow for typing, and too slow for responding to the wave of another in a chance meeting on a busy sidewalk. Even in your reading this, you center your consciousness not on understanding itself, but on understanding something consciousness can deal with.  It seems that consciousness is a problem for consciousness.
 
So, how do I go about thinking about human thinking. In the context of evolution? Okay, then for a very long time, at least back into our cousin Neanderthal pre-us time, hominins have shown a high level of “awareness” as evidenced by burial rites. That pre-us time might extend to all the Homo species. Surely, we can argue that any religious interpretation of life is a mark of consciousness because such an activity bespeaks of belief that there is more to life than biology and that after death some form of the person continues “consciously.” But then, should I ascribe the same kind of analysis to a herd of elephants seeming to show grief or puzzlement over a fallen member of their family? Leave that for another post because I’m back to my circular thinking.  
 
Remember Descartes’ circular argument for God? It’s something like this: I am finite; God is infinite. A finite being can’t have an infinite thought unless and Infinite Being gives it. Therefore, God exists. Well, I have a feeling that almost all explanations of consciousness are similar; either they involve some circularity or they make distinctions that don’t show much of a difference. For example, Leibnitz noted a difference between cardinals and humans—not exactly in those terms, but in the sense that perceiving is different from self-perceiving. Cardinals (he never wrote about them) perceive. Humans perceive and self-perceive. Wonderful. Where’s that get us? (Knowing that gets you a venti café mocha at Starbucks for about $5.60. Try it: Tell the barista that you are self-aware and ask for the drink—then hand him $5.60)
 
If we already know that some organisms seem to be aware without being self-aware, is there something else we can learn to expand our knowledge on the subject? If, for example, we read articles in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, Consciousness and Cognition, will we discover something new? Or, will we read through pages and pages of erudite writing only to find out that different assumptions, approaches, and conclusions still leave us with one question: Can we define consciousness as precisely as we can define an equilateral triangle in plane geometry? But if we can’t define exactly what it is, can we at least say how it entered the universe?
 
Does the very nature of the universe require a rise of consciousness? Now I’m almost at the reverse of Descartes’ thinking and definitely at the boundary of an anthropic principle for the origin of the universe: Consciousness is a fundamental component of the universe because it was created by a Consciousness. And that argument gets me nowhere, except to say that all explanations that ascribe the rise of consciousness to natural “physical” processes are just as woefully inadequate as explanations that rely on an Infinite Consciousness imparting some special favor on a favored few and very special favor on the genus Homo. But as for the rest of the Cosmos? Obviously, self-awareness isn’t a requirement for existence. Planets aren’t self-aware. Viruses, bacteria, and most members of all phyla seem to lack self-awareness. And not all consciousness appears to be equal. The stuff apparently comes in degrees even among the self-aware, apparently. Just ask yourself at this moment: “Am I self-aware right now?” No? Why? Were you too busy thinking to be self-aware? What? Now you are self-aware? And now the self-awareness is gone again because you just have to get through this essay; you’ve already committed too much time to it not to see where it’s going.
 
Have you ever attempted to “enhance” self-awareness with hallucinogens or extreme risk-taking? Have you enhanced your self-awareness through a whisker-close escape from accident or death? Have you expanded consciousness in a scenic spot? With a guru? In total solitude? Think of what I just asked. Does consciousness lend itself to enhancement and expansion? If so, what does that tell us about consciousness? Is it elastic? Is it variable, and if it is, are its apparent variations really all part of the same “thing”?
 
Not everyone is concerned with self-awareness, of course, and even those who are so concerned are only temporarily so. Too many cares get in the way. Too many phenomena to be conscious of to think of consciousness itself. Got to run to Walmart, pick up some stuff for supper, the car, the clogged drain, and the beach. We find ourselves on the carousel of life, and when we think about thinking, we ride carousels constructed by physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. Even trying to be mindful doesn’t fully explain why we are capable of being mindful or how mindfulness might take many forms. Does self-awareness, I ask, also occur in the form of wallowing in self-pity? Surely, the self-pitying concentrate on the Self.
 
No, I agree with you. if I may presume: You’re thinking that I’ve offered you nothing concrete here, only questions. Don’t worry; I’m not offended. My musings show two things: There’s not enough space here to fully examine the topic, and even if I were to devote both time and cyberspace to it, I probably don’t have the wisdom to satisfy your curiosity. Even Socrates could only offer this: “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” He wasn’t talking about cardinals, of course; those birds seem to live successfully without thinking about living, but who’s to fault them—or the viruses, bacteria, and alligators? Socrates wasn’t addressing those whose consciousness isn’t self-consciousness. Instead, he was addressing humans because they can be mindful, can be self-aware. His statement left much for debate over the past couple of millennia.
 
As I walked through Walmart today, I saw a magazine on “mindfulness.” I didn’t stop to pick it up because I was fulfilling a mundane mission. I didn’t even look to see whether or not it was one of those special issue publications by some established periodical like National Geographic, Scientific American, or Psychology Today or was an issue of a magazine called Mindfulness. But there I was hurriedly pushing my cart toward a distant checkout counter when the title made me think of myself and draw a quick conclusion: If that magazine finds an audience in Walmart, then humans truly are more self-aware than other organisms. For those who advocate “mindfulness” or “self-awareness” for a better world, there’s hope for the Cosmos and the future of self-consciousness on a shelf in Walmart.  

In Plato’s Apology, Socrates defends himself against his accusers, and it is in that work that he utters the oft-repeated expression, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I haven’t done a study, but I would guess that a very high percentage of tweets echo some variation of this thought, continuing our seemingly universal drive to find that perfect aphorism, a phrase that captures the essence of a good life: Words to live by.
 
Does tweeting wisdom indicate a desire to be like Socrates? Do we attempt to enshrine ourselves on Twitter and to enter the Pantheon of respect? I don’t know, but I think I might be guilty of thinking I have some wisdom to impart. So, in case you never saw one of my tweets, I’m providing a sample list here:
 
Worth repeating: What we anticipate is rarely a problem.
This is not your practice life.
 
Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean there’s nothing in it worth your effort to understand.
It’s important to remember that we are all interrelated.
Human variability doesn’t negate a common humanity. 
No personality is a singular entity.
Make your destiny an expanding perspective.
Without you the universe would be a different place and have different destiny
Daily you build the edifice of your life.
 
If you can, exude peace rather than impose it.
No wall is stronger than one built by self-knowledge, integrity, and belief in one’s own worth.
All humans experience hurt. Consider that when you think you see greener grass.
Consider that grass on your side of the fence might appear to be “greener grass” from another’s perspective.
Enviable grass on the other side of the fence represents constant hard work. Envy effort, not result.
It’s important to see the substance and not the appearance of others.
Only our pride makes us think we are multidimensional, but our intellectual opponents are one-dimensional.
In crossing life’s barriers, we change, but we also change the barriers.
 
Following a beaten path? Do some intellectual off-roading today.
As authors of our lives, we always have the potential to revise.
Let no one choreograph your dance of life.
Our life-pendulums swing between being a part of to being apart from.
Dry the tears of those in pain.
Variance is a principle in the lab of life.
Every stress provides an opportunity to experiment in the lab of life.
For the purposeful, a heart well-tried by trouble powers the drive to succeed.
Cherish mystery in relationships; you can never objectify why they work.
 
During the blackness of grief we continue to absorb light. In time, color will return.
There is a way to eliminate hate: Just don’t think it.
What we do, we own.
Resilience is a chief characteristic of successful people.
Negative behaviors are litter on an otherwise clean and beautiful beach. Keep your beach clean.
Ability is important, but persistence gets the job done.
Change “Have a great day” to “Make your day great.”
Those who bicker are like fan blades. Relative positions don’t change even during the fastest spin.
To make progress in a canoe of disagreement, people must face the same direction when they paddle.
Ideological perspectives tinged with emotions foil rational discussions.
In a frenetic cacophonous world, make soothing sounds the earworm to which your pulse dances.
If you want a more peaceful world, be judicious whenever you decide to hit “Forward” or “Retweet.”
Your ideological adversaries are not disembodied avatars on social media, but rather real people.
 
All issues aren’t issues for all. New Golden Rule: See others’ issues as you want them to see yours.
We hybridize ourselves as we adapt to the changing nature of place.
What will you do today to consecrate a place by work nobly advanced?
How sure are you, really?
We’re always sure until we discover that we aren’t.
How confident are you that you can interpret minds and motivations correctly?
We fail to assess the personal meaning of others’ “strange” behaviors while we accept our own.
Breaking free from the inertia of culture is a matter of mind.
 
New ideas lie at the limiting boundaries of what we believe.
Individuality protects us from mob mentality.
Provide support for those teetering on emotional imbalance.
Eliminating ennui doesn’t have to involve unnecessary risk. 
Like medicines, every choice comes with side effects.
Within any society, individual drives drive individuals.
Chill out. Your life isn’t as complex as you lead yourself to believe.
 
Beware lest you believe mere wish or will can alter unalterable realities.
Like toddlers rejecting a spoonful of medicine, adults refuse to open up for alternative reasoning.
Knowledge of natural phenomena and processes is a key to a safer and more secure life.
 
Our predispositions can turn hallucinations into harmful realities.
How fast you can recover from insult defines your character.
Does your “moral field” shift just as Earth’s magnetic field shifts? Check your moral compass.
Do you find it strange that anarchists organize?
Replace ADD with Distraction Deficit Order (DDO).
We memorialize what we deem significant in a particular place and time. 
In spite of our biological cosmopolitanism, we often remain in ideological parochialism.
Is there an innate penchant to destroy or to build beyond necessity?
Rather than fear them, consider our differences as manifestations of cosmic complexity.
Why is inexactitude a virtue in defense of our ideas but a vice in others’ defense of theirs?
Affinity for a group doesn’t provide an ethical reason for defending its wrongs.
 
With regard to opportunity, saying “Yes” offers no guarantee, but saying “No” guarantees failure.
Looking for a Loch Ness monster or an ancient alien? No belief turns speculation into fact.
To understand yourself, analyze the forces that shaped you.
Don’t mistake shadow for substance.
As word alchemists, do we seek to turn “base metal” into “gold” or “gold” to “base metal”?
In comparingour “fails” to the “fails” of others, we usually don’t see an equivalence.
Pride causes us to mistake knowledge for wisdom.
 
Try making commitments without caveats.
Experience doesn’t guarantee the validity of truths to which you obstinately cling.
Be careful not to conflate attribute and person in your effort to simplify others.
In the morning ask, “What is it that I don’t want to ‘leave out’?” to avoid a night of regret.
Complexities make long-term weather forecasts chancy at best, human forecasts even more so.
Ask yourself whether in following, you are relinquishing leading.
 
Cultural simplification inhibits individual diversity.
Ask yourself how (and why) you conform to your culture’s conventions.
Alternative truths aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.
Scapegoating is the first refuge of a frightened mind.
We overlook or common value when we deem others to be less significant.
Directly or indirectly, we set in motion more than we can possibly foresee.
Predicting actions caused by human faults is more complex than predicting seismic events along geologic faults.
Most of the architecture of our lives is an agglomeration of lean-tos.
What to be called Homo sapiens sapiens? Earn the designation.
A gas guage indicating empty isn’t necessarily precise. Keep going to discover the next station.
 
Youth never comprehends the passage to age through experience.
Regret and pride vie for control of the past. Anxiety and eagerness vie for control of the future.
Does your reliance on clock and calendar hint at a need to connect in a disparate society?
Try applying the same accuracy to the measurement of your life that your apply to the lives of others.
Satisfying your ego will never be as gratifying as feeding your soul.
We economize explanations by economizing assumptions. Scientifically, that’s good; socially, bad.
Do the Haves and the Have Nots engender feelings of envy or compassion?
Angry in the “heat of the moment”? Remember that “important” is a relative qualification.
Stubborn adherence to idea is akin to wearing klompen. Yes, you can kick hard, but you hurt your foot.
Character inertia resists the forces of peer pressure and mob-think.
If it comes first in a series, a 40-watt bulb can outshine a 60-watt bulb. Be the first bulb.
Seems silly to say, but every moment you are a creator of a future universe. Create wisely.
With every decision, you are writing the narrative of your life.
 
The prize goes to the first who can define “normal human” to everyone’s satisfaction.
In labeling others, we ignore their complexity and reveal our simplicity.
Seek to understand the medium through which you obtain information before you judge on its basis.
“A watched pot never boils.” So, you, dominated in composition by H2O, should resist any rapid emotional boiling.
Reasons for strong emotions are like bubbles: They are only seemingly substantial.
Do we argue with reflections of ourselves just as birds attack their own images in windows?
We have a better chance of reaching the belligerent when we approach from below.
 
When core ideas lack plasticity, ideologues can’t bend. 
Are you the analog for your analyses of other people?
Every future produces perspectives that are not available in the present.
Have social media made our time an Age of Exacerbation?
What we know depends on how we know. Change the how, change the understanding.
Because evil’s easy, good’s a struggle.
Reject what stirs the inner brain to frenzy; accept what stirs the outer brain to reason.
 
You really don’t know who you are until you are.
Don’t stay locked in a tradition that predisposes you to a limited interpretation of the world.
The first step toward self-knowledge is identification of assumptions.
Regrettable past moments are ash. If you dwell on those moments, you make an ash of yourself.
Before you get huffy about being misunderstood, remember how many times you didn’t understand.
Considering your most ordinary behaviors and thoughts sets you on a path to self-awareness.
A consensus doesn’t make a speculation into an absolute. 
Anyone can speak wise words, but only the self-disciplined can actually live wisely.
Like the rock cycle, a human cycle has remixed the materials of our species. There is no pure race.
 
Before you take the “measure” of another, understand both your measuring units and what you intend to measure.
Our deductions about the lives of others often reveal traces of our own lives.
Every year is 1984. PC is the foundation of every society, but it doesn’t have to govern your thought.
The garbage we produce and the energy we consume indicate our personal eco-friendliness.
See dignity in those who overcome hardship and exhibit resilience in the face of personal adversity.
You are a civil engineer making for the next generation a straight road through life’s wilderness.
Have you discovered how to be self-reliant in the midst of seven billion people?
Identify the purposes of your actions; then identify their consequences.
We are all reductionists when we observe the lives of others.
 
Knowledge and belief are muses that guide us. Which one prevails when you depict the world?
Regardless of your level of regret, you cannot unsay what you now regret saying.
If the behavioral and physical artifacts of your past where in a museum, would you visit?
Does your argument with another rely more on its consistency than on its truth?
In nostalgic longing, we fail to realize that we are one reason that things are different today.
Are you providing wisdom the next generation needs to avoid the problems your generation now encounters?
The dual nature of presumption: It tells you, “You can”; it tells you “You can’t.” What’s it telling you today?
Afraid that what he might see would upset his beliefs, Libri refused to look through Galileo’s telescope. Don’t be like Libri.
Worry turns nonevents into events.
Think of society, politics, and religion as fields or fluids of varying resistance.
In our Age of Distraction, we face a challenge to be both self-aware and other-aware.
 
Want to slow down today? Take an imaginary walk with a turtle.
Regardless of the odds against you, bet on yourself, and then persistently and creatively succeed.
Incivility has manifested itself in every generation.
True wisdom lies in anticipation, not in hindsight.
Make lives, not stones, the monuments to your life.
It’s the nature of humans to alter Nature. Everyone alters the planet.
Pundit shows mimic 18thcentury broadsheets: Same number of words, little news.
Before you let envy control you, recognize the talents and strengths of others.
 
It’s hard to measure a proton in the simplest element; yet, we seem sure in measuring people.
Juvenal said long ago, “No one ever reached the climax of vice in a one step.”
Bothered by stories of questionable veracity. Today the past is apparently malleable because people keep revising it.
Peace follows understanding.
The immediate consequences of our actions are apparent; the long-term consequences, not so much.
Those who extend ancestral animosities into the present jeopardize their children over quarrels of thee dead.
We judge our past by our present. Too bad we can’t judge our present by our future.
When “bad” things happen, we often ascribe choice to others, but fate to ourselves.
A diet of junk www won’t change us physically, but it will change us philosophically and culturally.
As mountains rise, they undergo simultaneous erosion of their older and weaker rocks. In rising, shed your older and weaker characteristics.
What rubric serves as the basis for your assessment of your life?
Every trough in the wave train of your live is accompanied by crests.
 
Staring at 24/7 punditry is like looking at the sun; it blinds rather than enlightens.
Group elitism is an obstacle to the free exchange of ideas.
By analyzing, we understand; by synthesizing, we invent.
“Peace to men of good will” or “peace and good will toward men”? Your choice of version defines you.
Is your search for identity framed by a single philosophy or an amalgam?
What metaphors do you employ to make your identity appear to be continuous?
Compromise is a superconductor of ideas that works when cooler emotional temperatures prevail.
 
Do you harbor unconditional trust in an ideology while harboring skepticism for an opposing one?
Two simple principles: Research for you conclude; think before you judge.
Are we driven to propose causes for every effect and to invent apparatus to detect those causes?
Social and political beliefs mimic mouse glue traps.
Inference is often a manifestation of self-satisfying confirmation.
Hidden variables manifest themselves when you least expect them; that is, when you are sure.
What allegorical characters would play roles in your life’s story?
In seeking an easy life, we sometimes make life harder for others.
 
Does your moral philosophy rest on irrefutable knowledge?
Don’t mistake your model of reality for reality itself.
There’s no better way to assess our humanity that by examining our empathy.
Social media have made the world a neighborhood of backyard fences for exchanging gossip.
Like astronauts in free fall thinking they move in a straight line in curved space, we can’t see the path of our lives curved by obsession—or addiction.
Its ability to recognize what it doesn’t know separates the human brain from all other brains.
Every generation generates an anti-conformity that becomes a conformity that generates an anti-conformity that generates a…
Recognize that members of groups with which you share a worldview can hold differing and contradictory ideas.
 
Discover the cultural models that influence your behaviors.
Thought that passes through a bottleneck of panic or ignorance emerges as narrow ideology.
Advocates for utopian societies can learn from the tale of Eden: A single rule was too much to follow.
Emulate those with greater talent rather than envy them.
You can escape inertial everydayness by thinking, reading, and exploring.
If you consider yourself to be multidimensional, what makes you think others are one-dimensional?
Inevitable rifting occurs in both continents and political parties.
Are alcohol, drugs, socialism, politics, and political correctness the anodynes of the 2000s?
 
Ever changed your worldview? Was the transition a smooth slide or a series of steps?
Mentally map the world as it is and not as you imagine it to be.
Be selective when you emulate; choose on the basis of real, and not imagined heroism.
Decide on the basis of reason and not impulse.
We imagine most of the troubles we believe we suffer. The possible isn’t always the probable.
Before you decide in hubris that you are an original thinker, study the influences of your past.
In an Age of Selfies and egoism, many ironically want a more powerful and intrusive government.
True love does not equate to need.
 
Many of political arguments are tiresomely ad hominemand ad populum.
Grey hair can cover a head filled with folly as easily as it covers one filled with sagacity.
Mental maps are shaded with attitude and emotion.
In your search for identity, start with a look at your mental maps.
Which do you prefer? A cacophony of pessimistic naysayers or a polyphonic fugue of optimists?
Just brush the teeth you want to keep.
Feeling intimidated? Remember that in the amusement park of life, all ride the Wheel of Fortune.
 
In a busy world in which the number of clicks prevents further investigation, we adopt myths.
Sometimes differing explanations are reiterations in neologism and new imagery.
Are personal identities as numerous fractions between two whole numbers.
Today might be the rest of your life. Act accordingly.
Before you complain about weather forecasts, review the accuracy of your past life-forecasts.
 
The natures of Nature and humanity require each of us to stay alert and inventive.
A diet of facts doesn’t necessarily equate to a diet of wisdom.
Emotionally, are you like a controlled fireplace fire or bonfire, or like an uncontrolled forest fire or smoldering log?
Can morality be universal like the concepts of math?
Called a name by someone? Not to worry. Your complexity belies simple labels.
Complacency endangers all perspectives.
Regardless of its dangers, Earth is a great planet on which to live. Aren’t you glad you chose to live here?
Reading, thinking, and challenging prevent an arthritis of the mind.
Do you agree with Socrates that knowledge is the root of virtue? Or do you think opinion is?
For a quick psychological profile, ask what you love.
How has what you love changed you?
Until you fully understand the context of your own or another’s life, you act in the midst of unknowns.
 
Run the beautiful experiment of your life with the least distraction.
Beware thinking that the only significant reality is the one your Ego appears to impose on the world.
Think creatively by associating process and matter in untried ways.
Which category defines you: Mild, riled, or wild?
Hearts deadened by exposure to tragedy can be revived.
Your brain is like an older neighborhood: It appears the same, but its occupant-ideas have changed over the years.
Be cautious that your classification scheme for humanity isn’t inflexible.
With regard to our past, we’re like train engines that drag the cars behind us toward our future.
On massless insult affects people more than trillions of subatomic particles that daily pierce them.
In a universe of matter lumped together, expect lumps: you live in a vegetable soup universe, not in a clear broth cosmos.
PC Noahs save a limited number of ideas on their philosophical arks without considering that variants ensure survivability.

In the Age of Political Correctness and Safe Spaces, we are approaching the extinction of ideas. Let me draw an analogy. Remember the story of Noah’s ark. Two by two they went, two of each species—impossible of course to put all those critters (maybe between 5 and 50 million species) into a hand-built container. Anyway, regardless of our not knowing exactly how many species there are on the planet, regardless that some species are hermaphroditic, and regardless that some species are capable of cloning themselves, Noah would have to have saved viable populations. And two of each kind just ain’t enough critters.
 
To put more flesh on that analogy before I make the point about idea extinction, I’ll tell you about research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences by four people in the know. * According Melissa H. Pespeni, et al., the potential survivability of purple sea urchins under the stresses of ocean acidification and warming is enhanced by the group’s wide geographic distribution and genetic variability. With numerous individuals, the species harbors the ability to adapt rapidly to changing environmental conditions. More individuals make for a better chance of survival; some rare segment of DNA inherited by some individuals in the group could provide protection and ensure the species’ continued existence.
 
So, what’s this have to do with ideas and their extinction? Every idea system—call it philosophy if you want—embeds multiple variations within itself. Founders find their students tweaking their thoughts; Neoplatonists tweaked Plato as Plato tweaked Socrates. Given enough tweaking, thoughts can become their antithesis and philosophies can even come full circle. The embedded variations are like those rare purple urchin gene segments. They ensure some survivability.
 
Unfortunately, today’s Noahs—ironically many of them supposed intellectuals—choose to put only a couple of selected individual thoughts on their philosophical arks, ignoring the restrictions imposed by a minimum viable population. In that biblical story, Noah doesn’t do any genetic testing for genetic robustness that equips a species with survivability. Given the same tale in a modern setting, geneticists would seek those animals whose DNA ensures variability in a world of ecological variables. Today’s analog? Just as a biblical Noah did not look for the hidden and rare genes deep in animals’ biochemistry, so many ostensible intellectuals don’t look for a variation of thought that might save philosophies from extinction. To survive a species needs to be present in a number that insures against diseases, accidents, slow ecological changes, and catastrophic events. That is, species survive when they have inherent polymorphisms that shield them from stochasticity. That principle applies to ideas, also.
 
As the researchers explain, urchins will probably survive changing pH and temperature conditions because their huge population contains individuals with rare genetic variants. As the present generation of safe-space seekers and political correctors will someday discover, their lack of variability will undo what they seek to protect in their philosophical arks.
 
* University of Vermont. "Why Noah's Ark won't work: For ocean species to survive climate change, large populations needed." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 12 June 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190612084337.htm>.
Reid S. Brennan, April D. Garrett, Kaitlin E. Huber, Heidi Hargarten, Melissa H. Pespeni. Rare genetic variation and balanced polymorphisms are important for survival in global change conditions. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2019; 286 (1904): 20190943 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2019.0943
Online at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190612084337.htm
 
 
 
 

“Whose idea was it?” he asks.
 
“Idea about what?” she asks in return.
 
“Putting a net in the middle of a tennis court. The game would be easier without it.”
 
“But what would be the challenge? What would be the game?” She then goes on to say, “Games require challenges of some kind. In the case of tennis, there’s the triple challenge of net, boundary lines, and opponent. Games mean taking some kind of space, virtual or real, and imposing some laws, again, virtual or real. Games can also incorporate obstacles: Hurdles in track, for example, sand traps, hills, and trees in golf, fences in baseball, confining squares in checkers, chess, and Scrabble, and nets in tennis. In a lumpy universe, I’ve learned to accept nets in the middle of courts.”
 
“What?”
 
“Well, think about it. You’ve seen images of the universe made from the data acquired by the COBE satellite and the WMAP sensor. Those images reveal that three hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, the universe was not uniform. The microwave background, or the Echo of the Big Bang, was uneven from the get-go. The universe was lumpy from the start. If it had been uniform, you couldn’t exist. Think clear broth vs. vegetable soup. You live in the latter; nothing individual would be distinguishable in a universe of broth. You are a matter lump in a lumpy universe that includes lumps of solar systems, galaxies, and groups of galaxies, and, of course, nets in the middle of otherwise smooth tennis courts.
 
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that uniformity is impossible in the universe as it is. Obstacles abound; inviolable boundaries exist; rules apply. Winners and losers are the stuff of the lumpy universe. Why expect a tennis court with no obstacle and no restrictive boundaries when the entire universe encompasses boundaries and obstacles of one kind or another.
 
“Realistic expectations derive from realizing that we live amidst lumps and that the universe is at best uneven. Smoothness anywhere is a local phenomenon. Uninterrupted space is impossible over any distance or time. All of us will encounter some lump or obstacle through, over, or around which is our only option if we want to advance or project something. And the physical lumpiness of the universe appears to have its analog in our intellectual and emotional journeys. There’s always a net or an obstacle of some kind in the middle of every apparently smooth surface,” she declares. 

Sometimes we just have to take someone’s word for facts we cannot personally check. Take neutrinos, for example. I’ve never seen one, but according to physicists, trillions of neutrinos pass through every cubic centimeter of my body every second. Ouch? No. I don’t feel them, the physicists tell me, because neutrinos react only rarely with matter and can pass through the planet just as well as they pass through me. It takes a highly specialized physicist with some expensive sensitive equipment to mark their passing, so I’m told. When Earth was awash with neutrinos from supernova 1987A, for example, a few of them whizzing through deeply buried detectors set off some bells and whistles and a flurry of scientific and popular articles. Yes, I take the word of physicists that neutrinos continuously violate my personal space and pierce me through the heart.
 
Neutrinos are almost “massless particles” or “oscillations” (they have three interchangeable “masses”) that are virtually impossible for us to feel. Apparently, they cause no damage as they pass through our bodies. We ignore them because they are, as far as we are personally concerned, inconsequential. Would that we could be so insensitive to insults. If we can ignore the “almost” massless particles that penetrate us every second, why can’t we ignore the “truly massless” insults that people hurl at us?
 
I find it interesting that human insult-detectors are many orders of magnitude more sensitive to the passing of massless insults than neutrino detectors are to the passing of neutrinos. The next time someone or some group throws insults your way, think of those trillions of neutrinos that ceaselessly pierce you without your so much as flinching. Then think of adjusting the sensitivity of your insult detector. You don’t need a detector that interacts with massless insults. 

Amtrak trains have cars with seats facing in opposite directions. You can choose your orientation: Looking back or forward. We’re all on Time’s track from and to, of course, and we all have that choice: Looking back or forward. 
 
You might prefer to sit facing forward, eager for opportunity or fearful of the unknown. Another might prefer to look backward in gratitude or regret. Since you are the only passenger on your train, you have free access to seats facing both directions. So, what’s your preference? 
 
What drives you to ride backward into your future and that has you focusing on your past? What motivates you to face forward and turn your back to the past? If you are like the rest of us, you will on occasion switch seats. Nostalgia vies with hope; melancholy, with anticipation; and failure or accomplishment, with goal.
 
In the highlands of the Allegheny Front above Altoona, Pennsylvania, trains go around Horseshoe Bend, a section of track that allows people in the front of the train to see the back of the train and vice versa. At times, all of us have the perspective passengers have when they round Horseshoe Bend, being able to get a clear view of where we’ve been or where we’re going. It is also true that the engine taking you into your future must drag the past with it. 
 
It is from the perspective of our past that we believe we see where we are going. From the perspective of planning our destiny we recognize limitations imposed by where we have been and what we have done or failed to do. As you move along the track of your life, imagine that you are always going around a Horseshoe Bend. Are you in the back of the train looking forward or the front looking backward? 

Remember the Great Chain of Being, the concept that all existence lies in a spectrum? No? Here it is in a nutshell: God, Angels, Man, Animals, Plants, Rocks. And on that chain there you are, a “little lower than the angels,” but above every other kind of existence, animate and inanimate, macro and micro, visible and invisible. Remember, too, that piece of fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? Fruit? Isn’t that supposed to be good for us? If you read Genesis, you see we’ve been eating the stuff even before parents and health officials said it was good for us. And yet, there was that piece of fruit that Eve offered Adam, the fruit that started all our woes.
 
Let’s imagine those early hominids and hominins gathering around the fruit tree for supper. It was just a matter of picking. Oh! There might have been a squabble or two over getting the juiciest piece; there might have been some grumbling about not getting enough. But generally, those early ancestors should have been happy: Fruit was free for the taking.
 
I’m trying to picture Homo floresiensis or some other ancient human species picking up some fruit in the wild of Southeast Asia and eating it. Contrast that with the recent sale of a Thai Kanyao durian for $47,786 (or 1.5 million baht) as reported in the Jakarta Post. * Could any of our ancestors comprehend the folly generated by modern affluence? In the Great Chain of Being, are we really as high up the links as we think we are? One and a half million baht for a piece of fruit?  
 
You know, I’d like to write more about this, to draw some lesson, to see into the psychology of paying nearly $50 K for a piece of fruit, but then I would have to ask myself about my indulgence in strawberries, fresh or frozen, in any season, regardless of my dwelling in Pennsylvania, where my local grocery store just sold me three bags of the frozen whole berries for $10. Am I not an example of foolish excess?  Still, $47,786 for a single piece of fruit is a ridiculously excessive expenditure, unless the purchaser was donating money to some charity and was simply using the fruit auction as a whimsical philanthropic method.
 
And then there’s this headline from the Jakarta Post: “Smell of durian prompts evacuation of Australian university.” ** Somebody left a durian near an air vent in the school’s library. The fruit’s pungent odor made people panic over a possible gas leak. Officials sent in the hazmat crew in gas masks.
 
Yet, regardless of a durian’s smell, people apparently go bananas over a single durian. It is not unusual for someone to pay hundreds of dollars (or, obviously more) for one durian. Again, yes, one piece of fruit.
 
I’m running side-by-side images in my head: Two hominids out for some fruit, one from very long ago and the other from our own times. And I’m picturing, also, how complex human life has become when a misplaced piece of fruit sends a small population of beings who lie only one link below angels on the Chain of Being into a panic. Ah! Man. This is the creature about which the Biblical psalmist says, “You made him a little lower than the angels…You made him ruler of the works of Your hands; You have placed everything under his feet” (8:5). What could one wish the psalmist had written instead? “You gave this creature an insatiable desire for fruit and the means to serve it in any form: Fruit rollups, fruity vitamins, fruit salads, fruit pies, and a great number of drinks, but You might have—just sayin’, Big Greengrocer—added a little prudence and reality-checking to that brain.”
 
$47,786 for a durian? Are we really that high up on the Chain when our lesser cousin species and ancient ancestors picked up the stuff free?
 
 
* https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/06/10/single-thai-durian-auctioned-off-at-a-staggering-rm199289.html
 
** https://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/05/15/smell-of-durian-prompts-evacuation-of-australian-university.html