Wisdom. It’s tough to achieve. We pride ourselves on our self-acclaimed status as Homo sapiens sapiens, “wise-wise Man,” but wisdom has historically been elusive. And today, it might still be out of our reach. Much of what we intend results in its opposite. 
 
Remember Johnson’s War on Poverty and how it was supposed to eliminate poverty? Didn’t do what it was supposed to do, did it? Ditto his Vietnam policy to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. But this isn’t a criticism of the late President. It’s just a note that regardless of his good intentions, those two policies and actions might have done the opposite of what he intended. Lots of people live in relative poverty today, especially in the inner cities. Lots of them are caught in the cycle of getting paid not to succeed personally. Lots of children are still growing up in schools governed by policies based on the social values of the moment rather than on the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of our species. What do you call something that does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do? Think big examples: The French Revolution that led to public mass murders by guillotine, the Russian Revolution that led to democide by Stalin and the suppression of free thought, or the German and Cuban Revolutions that led to doctors like Mengele and Che becoming torturers. Your mind is wandering now, isn’t it? You just thought of other examples of “something that does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do.”
 
So, let’s swing to the CDC and organizations that back vaccinations for children and for people who have already had and survived the disease called COVID-19. Given that cytokine storms have undone so many during the pandemic, does it really make sense in the absence of firm data to vaccinate people who might already be carrying antibodies? Is there such a thing as too much immunity? Does anyone know how getting “more immune” affects, for example, the lungs and heart? Are those scanty data on incidents of myocarditis sufficient for decision-making? Now, lest you think I’m an anti-vaxxer, I should tell you that I have been vaccinated against COVID-19. So, obviously, I’m not speaking from some fear of vaccines—I even went for a flu shot last fall and will go for one this fall. 
 
At MedPageToday, you can read an opinion piece by Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH and others on whether or not the CDC’s policy on teen COVID vaccination is prudent. * The article centers on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and its decision “to endorse a two-dose mRNA strategy for all ages.” The authors are concerned about “vaccine-induced myocarditis,” a condition that Israeli medical authorities noted in young people who had received a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Fifty-six or of 62 cases of myocarditis in young men occurred after they received the second dose. Although the ACIP was aware of the potential threat of myocarditis in children, it nevertheless issued an emergency use authorization for children ages 12-16. Now, to be fair (as they say), I should note that the Times of Israel “reported that israel’s health ministry would consider just one does in teens to balance getting most of the benefit of viral protection against mitigating much of the risk of myocarditis.” However, there’s no support among medical advisors in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands for the double vaccinations for children under 18. 
 
As of the week preceding the article by Prasad et al., the CDC reported more data showing that “more cases [of myocarditis occurred] in young people than older people…and higher incidence after dose two than dose one.” The rate of the side effect seems to be “one in 15,000 to 20,000 for boys ages 12 to 24.” Now remember that we’re talking about intended consequences versus actual consequences, of things that do the opposite of what they’re supposed to do.
 
According to the authors, the ACIP used rates of COVID infection from the past rather than current rates of SARS-CoV-2 spread, that the authors say is “substantially lower…[and the ACIP] did not differentiate between healthy kids…and kids with pre-existing medical conditions….” The result is that the ACIP had adopted a one-size-fits-all policy. Now here’s where things get “Johnson-like, French Revolution-like, Russian Revolution-like, Cuban Revolution-like: “If a 15-year-old recovers from COVID-19 and has high antibody levels, and this 15-year-old then receives one dose of mRNA vaccine causing hospitalization from myocarditis, the CDC would still contemplate proceeding with dose two once the ‘heart has recovered.’” Think of this conclusion in the context that the number of cases of myocarditis has a good chance of being underreported. Add in the authors’ note that “The CDC is not factoring in natural immunity.”
 
Is it not true that if one takes any philosophical, psychological, or social system to its ultimate conclusion, one runs into its opposite? Today’s ubiquitous censors of free speech seem to be an example. Or take the current American rise in crime that somehow just “happened” to coincide with “Defund the Police” policies enacted in cities like Baltimore, New York, Portland, Seattle, and a few others. Someone could argue that those are localized examples of unintended consequences. But with the organization that governs an entire country’s health policies, any unintended opposite consequences can negatively affect more than lives in specific locales. 
 
Homo sapiens sapiens? Not if one considers all those things that were supposed to do one thing but that ended causing their unintended opposites. What do you call something that does the opposite of what it’s supposed to do? Certainly, not "wise." but definitely "human." 
 
 
*Prasad, Vinay, Ramin Farzaneh-Far, Wes Pegden, Venk Murthy, and Amy Beck.  29 June 2021. CDC’s All-or-Nothing Approach to Teen COVID Vaccination Is All Wrong. MedPageToday online at.  https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/93340?xid=nl_vanayprasad_2021-06-29&eun=g1239050d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=VinayPrasad_062921&utm_term=NL_Gen_Int_Vinay_AYWDRL_Large_ActiveAccessed June 29, 2021.

When you finally sit down to write that autobiography we’ve all been waiting to read, will you include those minor and major conflicts you resolved to ensure your life was peaceful? Will you convey lessons you learned that we might study to make our own lives peaceful?
 
The cosmological argument that the universe is fine-tuned for life and its famous Darwinian analog that life is fine-tuned for conflict make up one of the great paradoxes of the universe. The universe is good for life that is bad for itself. All the delicately balanced force strengths on the one hand are countered by all life-forms out of strength balance on the other hand. The harmony of material existence in general is broken by disharmony among species all vying for resources, for space, and, in the human realm, for prestige. 
 
Even without the assumption of a fine-tuning Conscious Creator, we can make a reasonable guess that the universe is somehow fine-tuned for life because of balanced forces. We can also reasonably argue that the chances for extraterrestrial life are good, especially in a universe so vast that it holds an estimated two trillion galaxies. From what we have observed, we can say that fine-tuning of the fundamental forces isn’t limited to the Milky Way or to our Solar System. 
 
We can also reasonably assume that if extraterrestrial life exists, it is as prone to conflict as it is on Earth. Conflict might be a universal condition of any realm of life; maybe conflict is a universal Law. It is an oxymoronic, maybe even an ironic, universal condition: All life might operate on lawless Law, or a Natural Law of Lawlessness that is a non-numeric constant. Of course, to say the possibility that life everywhere exists in a state of conflict, is to assign a numerical value to it; to say “chances are” about anything is to give it a statistical, and therefore, a numeric value. As you look back to write that future autobiography, can you assess the probability that you “had” to encounter some of those conflicts?  
 
The paradoxical condition that couples an underlying fine-tuning of instruments of forces to an overlying cacophony played on those instruments by life might justify pessimism. Your story could detail how peaceful equilibrium is always temporary. Conflict, not peace, drives life in general, but maybe you are one of the lucky, someone who has lived the anomalous life of peace. For most people, peace requires the effort to alter the natural state of conflict. In every age people have striven for peace either because a peace into which they were born by chance was interrupted or a conflict into which they were born demanded peace for the sake of safety. 
 
The back-and-forth between conflict and peace makes the Biblical accounts of Adam and Eve’s conflict with God and of Cain and Abel’s fraternal conflict the models for almost all stories, even yours. I’m not suggesting that you are responsible for plunging all humankind into a state of Original Sin or for fratricide, but rather that all autobiographies, if honest accounts, will detail either conflicts between authorities and those they control or conflicts among equals. Every tale centers on resolving some conflict great or small that, if not resolved, plays out in sequels.   And the sequels of life’s many real conflicts have been playing out for more than three billion years on this planet and maybe longer on other worlds around distant stars in this physically fine-tuned-for-life Cosmos. But it’s your life that interests us at the moment, it’s your encounters with conflict and your peaceful resolutions that will make your story notable and worth the read.
 
During a series of Seinfeld episodes, George Costanza’s desire to write screenplays about “nothing,” or stories in which “nothing happens” sparks a quizzical look in the faces of the potential producers, with the exchange:
 
George: “I think I can sum up the show for you in one word: Nothing.”
Producer: “Nothing? What does that mean?”
George: “The show is about nothing.”
Jerry (interrupting): “Well, it’s not about nothing.”
George: “No, it’s about nothing.”
Jerry: “Well, maybe in philosophy, but even nothing is something.”
Some banter follows, and then...
George: “No stories.”
More conversation ensues...
Producer: “What kind of stories?” 
George: “No. No stories.”
More conversation, and then…
Producer: “But why am I watching it?”
George: “Because it’s on TV.”
Producer: “Not yet.” *
 
What did you learn about plots in literature class? Yes, a key component is the denouement, that essential resolution of conflict. Life never writes a story—even a search for Self—without conflict of some sort. Would you really sit to read or watch a “story about nothing,” a story in which “nothing happens,” as George proposes? Would someone read your autobiography if it were “about nothing,” “about nothing happening”? Life’s plagiarizers, that is, authors, mimic reality. Even science fiction writers. And in fine-tuned fictional tales, denouement completes the story; without that plot element, all stories are mere episodes strung together, an unending line that frustrates because it lacks a discernible ending or because it demands from the reader or viewer his or her own conclusion. We like line segments, not unending lines. We want to see your life’s segments in that autobiography. We don’t want an uninterrupted line. Ask yourself, has anyone ever resolved the question about the lady or the tiger posed in the “unfinished ending” of Frank Stockton’s famous short story? 
 
In case you forgot, Stockton tells the tale of a king whose method of justice requires the accused to choose between one of two doors, one hiding a tiger and the other, a beautiful woman whom the accused had to marry. A commoner and the king’s daughter fell in love, an unsatisfactory circumstance for the king who subjects the young man to his form of justice. The princess, learning the secret of the doors, discovers that the beautiful woman behind one of the two doors is someone she hates. Exchanging glances with her lover as he approaches the doors, she signals which door to choose. Her choice, of course, lies between having her lover killed by the tiger or married to her rival. And there the story “ends,” giving rise to interminable arguments among middle school readers about which door the princess directed her lover to open. ** 
 
Stockton’s tale frustrates his readers, but it does mimic our world of so many unresolved conflicts. Widespread conflict goes on, and on, and on, the time-line of every life, yours included, the X-axis on the graph, underlying spikes of conflict on the Y-axis.   
 
Although every generation’s plot reaches a denouement in the deaths of those caught up in conflict, sequels are common in our species’ history. Fighting in the Middle East has surpassed the three millennium mark; the story continues with new characters. No denouement has been written into the plot save one that some future generation might write, possibly—no, probably—long after the demise of all the current characters. Each generation appears to face those two doors behind which some new or continuing conflict waits. 
 
That humans continue to seek peace the midst of conflict is reason for optimism. Other species do little other than survive the conflicts at hand and pass on no lessons to the next generations. In spite of millennia of conflict, we renew our search for peace every generation, sometimes achieving it in surprising ways among belligerent groups. In each age many people discover that conflict breeds conflict to their disadvantage and harm. History shows that conflict is the epitome of lose-lose interactions. Even winners suffer loses. Peace, in contrast, is win-win, at least temporarily. 
 
As you fine-tune the story of your life, include denouements for each conflict.  Do not, like George Costanza or Frank Stockton, write a story about nothing or one without resolutions. 
 
“Why should I read your autobiography?”
“Because it’s been published.”
“Not yet.”
 
 
*You can see the episode’s segment at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwapf5DnUrs   Accessed June 27, 2021.
 
**You can read the story in its entirety at https://www.commackschools.org/Downloads/Lady%20or%20the%20Tiger,%20The%20(easy%20version).pdf   Accessed June 27, 2021.

In short, you really can’t predict when and how your words and actions will influence others.
 
For four decades I attempted to teach well, failing, no doubt, many times. I think I might have been one of those professors whose students had little ambivalence: They seemed either to dislike (hate, maybe) or to like (love, maybe) my rather odd teaching styles. Over the decades I discovered that I never knew ahead of time whether or not a lesson, a lecture, or a lab exercise would spark some interest in my students. I assumed that if the information was part of a logical, coherent and unified lesson or set of lessons, the students would see their value.
 
Although I entered each class with internal enthusiasm and a drive to do well by my charges, I found that sometimes the words just didn’t “come out right” and that I “seemed to lose my audience.” Now, losing an audience makes any performer question his or her ability. Of course, all members of all audiences carry into the arenas of entertainment and learning their own life’s and moment’s baggage. Some audiences, as many standup comedians have discovered, are hostile, and some classes are the same. Seemingly naturally, human emotional chemistry keeps us from interacting with some people in a mutually beneficial or, at the very least, cordial way. Also, as I aged, I found myself becoming more easily judged negatively by younger students, possibly solely on the basis of my appearance and their associating me with other “older people.”   
 
But I was often wrong in my assessment of the relationship between student and professor, and I discovered that by being pleasantly surprised after class one day. After a class that I thought went poorly because my presentation in my own opinion, to put it in the vernacular, “sucked,” a student approached me to say, “That was really interesting, Professor Conte. Where can I learn more about it?” Understand this: I had no idea that such a poor lecture had done anything other than bore the students. 
 
So, in your own life, recognize that you never completely know when and how you might influence others. 

First, the hypothesis: Self-proclaimed intellectual aristocrats are often little different from those they label and deride as unintellectual mental bourgeoisie and proletariat.
 
Second, a not-too-detailed, but true anecdote from an afternoon some decades ago: I was sitting in the stands of a college baseball stadium on a southern NCAA Division I team’s campus. Teams were vying for the conference championship on that beautiful late spring day. The home town’s team drew many fans and onlookers, among them MLB scouts, long-time university supporters, parents of players, college students knocking off classes, players’ girlfriends, and some professors escaping office hours. 
 
Sitting with a parent of a visiting-team player, the two of us were enjoying the game, ignoring the crowd’s frequent loud razzing of the visiting players we were there to support. No big deal, all fans are used to loud comments aimed at visiting teams by home town fans. Razzing is ubiquitous in the sports world. The practice probably transcends time: Roman fans in the Coliseum and Aztec fans in every tiachtll yelled similarly, from booing to epitheting. As I said, no big deal. Games are temporary events by any standard of serious human interaction, events readily forgotten except in the minds of coaches, players, and the truly-committed die-hard fans. 
 
Before the game, my friend and I found seats in what we later realized was a section favored by home team fans. As we watched in the midst of antagonistic noise, we engaged in conversation about the players and the plays. But after one of the visiting players for whom we were rooting  hit a monster homerun, monster because it cleared not only the outfield fence, but also a netting strung between tall utility poles on the side of the adjacent field, my friend said in laughter and exclamation, “Holy cow, he put that onto the next field!” That’s all, nothing else. It was the first statement made by either of us that might have been audible to anyone around us. However, two college professors, a man and woman, were sitting in front of us. They looked at each other as one said, “Oh! Looks like we’re sitting with a bunch of hecklers.” And they got up and moved to another section of the stadium. Talk about needing safe spaces! A professor myself at the time, I was rather amazed at how thin-skinned the two were. My friend, also observing the couple’s actions, looked over to me in puzzlement, saying simply, “Hecklers? He had to have hit that ball 450 feet.”
 
Wait! Don’t draw any conclusions yet. This might get a bit complicated.
 
Third, something of a personal nature: Sometimes I think I’m sitting in the audience of a daily concert. The music? Why it’s by Camille Saint-Saëns. Specifically, his La Danse Macabre. The concert? It’s the 24/7 news and punditry. There’s no letup in actual nastiness and judgment from those who, upon hearing what doesn’t please them, run to some safe space, a stage on which they can pound on tympani when speaking about those they don’t favor and lightly pluck strings in a pizzicato when speaking about those they do favor. In the stands of life in these times of 24/7 news and pundit shows, the concert’s melody is backed by contrasting pizzicatos on violins and reverberating thunder from tympani. So much of the music is a repetitive phrasing. And then there are crescendos too numerous for such a short piece. Pianissimo building to fortississimo in a moment and back again, all depending on points of view. When the subject is the perceived “enemy,” anchors and pundits do the Dance of Death. That’s typical of a work by Saint-Saëns. (Think Symphony No. 3, the Organ Symphony) And it appears to be typical of the 24/7 news cycle. 
 
Frenzied news reports, always suggesting that we’re on the edge or that political adversaries are more than just political; they are life-threatening at the very least. They can’t be tolerated, especially when they voice anything, even something that is obviously true. And the tolerance for the favored group runs through the news cycle like those quiet measures in Saint-Saëns’ music played on piccolos and plucked violin strings. Pounding tympani while discussing the opposition, few are willing to admit that the other side has accomplished something worth praising, even lightly praising—sometimes not even mentioning. And few are willing to pound the tympani on the obvious failures or miscreants in their favored group. And in the audience are those whose inabilities to tolerate have been over the past century emerging like those crescendos. 
 
That homerun was by most standards a monster hit. The statement by my friend was a statement of fact. Outsiders, as in the case of the two of us, saw and noted that we were macabre to the hometown folks who ironically performed their own La Danse Macabre in their moving to find some refugium, some safe space, where nothing threatening might be heard and where everyone is of one agreeing voice. And so what one sees these many decades later is the macabre manifesting itself in name-calling (i.e., “heckler), in ad hominem attacks, in failing to recognize a truth, all while tolerating the heckling in the opposite direction. We live in a world of defensive ad hominin responses and people fleeing to safe spaces where only the likeminded occupy the seats. And strangely, as we all perform a real La Danse Macabre on our way to personal extinction, we can’t tell that what we do and say is often a mirror image of those we find macabre. 
 
Like a musical piece by Saint-Saëns, say the Organ Symphony, each news cycle ends in a whimper that suggests, “Why did we make all the fuss?” “Nothing was resolved to our liking.” and that says, “I guess what we were concerned about wasn’t quite as serious as we suggested or as worth remembering as we thought.” Life goes on; the orchestra plays another night; a new audience listens to new—yet similar—crescendos and pounding tympani. And when the home team loses because it committed an error? Well, there’s no “we were wrong,” but rather a move onto the next dance macabre. “We stand by our reporting. To retract would make the state of affairs not quite as macabre as we suggested. This is serious, folks. We need you to feel the horror. Onward to the next story, onto the next bit of macabre reporting to prove our point.” 
 
And those who make a truth-containing exclamation, such as the comment on the homerun, are dubbed as mindless hecklers, or in the vernacular of today, “conspiracy theorists.” There’s no rational debate with point and counterpoint, no attempt to measure objectively. The thin-skinned run from two postulates: 1) There can be homeruns that are definable as “monster hits” through objective measurements; and 2) there can be reasonable or logical responses to facts that do not entail ad hominem attacks or fleeing to some safe space where no one contradicts anyone because everyone in that section of the stands is of one mind. 
 
Fourth, a discussion: Just a few minutes of watching any news channel can depress even the most lighthearted and rational among us. Certainly, watching the news isn’t a day’s happy outing at the field, at least not happy for the thin-skinned who do not hold the tenets of the hometown editors. 
 
And if we do not hold the tenets of the dominant culture, the culture whose members fill the stands of the home team, we find ourselves in the section of fans that consider us, however muted and reasonable our arguments and however verifiable our facts, to be hecklers to be shunned and avoided if not derided. In that daily concert of news, every pianissimo gives immediate cause for fortississimo led by a conductor whose sweeping gestures signal performers to increase the volume, to pound on the tympani. Volume and repetitiveness substitute for reason. 
 
Weren’t there less macabre times? Could we go back to them? But even if we could take that time machine on a trip to pre-modern information technology, we might find ourselves in the midst of negative information and hecklers, albeit usually more localized. Just a couple of hundred years ago, bad news took weeks to months to traverse distances that today are crossed in a split second. More recently but still years ago, there were just a few “town criers” telling us the news on a few networks. Yes, bad things have always happened, and yes, we were informed as those in control decided to inform, but today, almost everyone is in the orchestra, almost everyone has practiced what the conductor of common thought directs. 
 
Paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages show us the repeated themes that frighten in the Dance of Death. Back then, time and distance protected the mind and emotions from the onslaught of negative and distant affairs. Today, we can know of a tiff or an assault by people we would never encounter personally. Today, we can hear or read incendiary comments by celebrities, politicians, and people with an agenda supporting contrary values and beliefs. Today, we can watch the dance of Death half a world away and watch it 24/7. In the Middle Ages, one had to walk by a tapestry or painting to see the dance. Now, we see the dance everywhere and all the time.  
 
Where does one go for relief? Is relief even the right word here? It might be if we consider the word’s origin and historical meanings. Apparently, the word entered English in the 14th century, derived from the Old French word for “assistance,” and from the Anglo-French relif. Its literal meaning was “a raising,” or “something lifted.” Eventually, the word came to mean “alleviation of distress, or hunger, or sickness” and by extension, some mitigation or removal of pain, grief, and even evil. From the late Middle Ages on, it was used as a term during war and famine. Towns under siege looked for “relief,” and starving people looked for the same. We can think of our twenty-first century analog in the COVID-19 pandemic, as the entire world population looks for “relief.” That the word is associated with lifting is evident in the art term “bas-relief which takes the etymology back to the Latin infinitive relevare, meaning “to raise” or “to lighten.”
 
Depressed by the news? You need relief. Again, where does one go for relief? And what kind of relief should we seek. If we rely on others to provide relief, we ask them to sculpt our lives, to raise them slightly from the background. Bas-relief has no undercut surface that separates the image from the matrix surface. It’s part of the background. 
 
One could, of course, leave the theater to find some place where the orchestra, however loud, can’t be heard. That is a viable option. But seeking such a “safe space,” is temporary. There are similar orchestras playing similar music everywhere. Why should orchestras playing music one doesn’t want to hear determine how one thinks or feels? 
 
So, if finding a safe space isn’t a permanent solution, what should one do? What should you do? Here’s a list: 

1. Acknowledge that like those with whom you disagree, you also play pianississimo when you must address your own failures and misdeeds and play fortississimo when you address the failures and misdeeds of others.
2. Recognize when you choose to emphasize the macabre in others and when you choose to ignore the macabre in yourself.
3. Lest you become a hypocrite, add tympani and brass to the measures of self-criticism and pizzicato strings and light piccolos to the measures of criticism directed at others.
4. Listen to the discordant music of those you oppose to find some measures of harmony and melody or some rhythm to which you can dance.
5. Recognize that all humans eventually perform La Danse Macabre when they partner with Death, that every concert ends, and that every audience is replaced by a new audience at the next performance. (The following image is Dance of Death replica of 15th century fresco; National Gallery of Slovenia)
6. ​Recognize when a homerun is a monster homerun regardless of who hits it

Make a list of what you assume to be true, the axioms of your life. For example, I sat with a cup of coffee this morning to list my own assumptions. I might, with another cup of coffee or in a discussion with someone, decide to revise my following list of 30 assumptions. Certainly, thoughts derived during a single cup's consumption aren't the most thoroughly developed of ideas.    
 
I assume:
 
1.That I can discern the differences between most falsehoods and truths, and I can also discern the difference between Falsehood and Truth.
2.That, in contradiction to #1, I rely on emotion as well as on reason in that discernment, so that in relying on both emotion and reason, I open myself up to errors, including the possibility that #1 is a fiction I tell myself to establish psychological security.
3.That I am subject to external influences and internal drives, some of which are endemic to my species and others endemic to my physiology and neither of which I always recognize.
4.That I am at times, therefore, subject to—driven by—unrecognizable motivations.
5.That no matter how astutely I argue, I will miss the mark of becoming infallible; as a corollary, I believe that others, too, always miss that mark, giving me a way to challenge and defeat the ideas and arguments of others.
6.That because of #5, all the tenets and conclusions of philosophy and psychology are subject to unending debate or refinement.  
7.That regardless of my assumption that I can discern between both truths and Truth and their antitheses (#1) and because of my assumption that I cannot be infallible (#5), I am ultimately a relativist no matter how I strive to find or live by absolutes.  
8.That as a relativist (#7), I can always find a justification for any action because I cannot avoid arguing on the basis of a situation, that is, on the basis of the circumstance at hand or in light of my limitations (#7).
9.That I am, regardless of my attempts to be otherwise, shortsighted.
10.That my shortsightedness can sometimes be countered by happenstance, making me in retrospect look to be farsighted.
11.That like minds can join readily, but that unlike minds only rarely join.
12.That because of #11, human social and political interactions occur in mental mazes with few and difficult-to-find intersections.
13.That out-of-body experiences, while rare, are possible not because of floods of neurotransmitters, but rather because mind is not limited to the boundaries of the brain.
14.That because of #13, #11 is possible.
15.That a complete explanation of Nature is impossible; and, as a corollary, since I am part of Nature, that I will always remain somewhat mysterious to others and to myself.
16.That I am the Cosmos temporarily and partially conscious of itself.
17.That a complete explanation of consciousness is impossible.
18.That humans and animals can be simultaneously aware of circumstances and perceive them similarly.
19.That as a result of that simultaneity of awareness, both humans and animals can act in concert.
20.That free will, though impossible to demonstrate irrefutably, shapes personal and human history and drives all forms of entrepreneurship.
21.That I have a physical reality regardless of my knowledge that matter is itself inexplicably composed mostly of nothing.
22.That place and life are intertwined and that they mutually affect each other’s form and function.
23.That place is more significant than time.
24.That physical laws on which the Cosmos operates are endemic to this universe and are, therefore, part of this universe.
25.That the Cosmos did not, as Stephen Hawking argued, come into existence from nothing because physical law demanded it since by definition nothing could have no physical law.
26.That the Cosmos did have a beginning and that contrary to the belief of some physicists that the universe is part of an infinite regress of “branes” or previous universes (the old “it’s turtles all the way down” story), any such explanation is untenable.
27.That although much in the universe seems to make the appearance of consciousness either unlikely or unlikely to persist after its establishment, that the universe, having originated from nothing had to have a conscious creator.
28.That all attempts to explain a Creator fall prey to relativism (#7).
29.That a belief in a Creator, regardless of my admitted relativism, is more acceptable than any belief or argument that the laws of nature demanded Being’s being.
30.That an evolving Cosmos with its endemic evolving life is an undeniable reality as evidenced by historical and current phenomena and processes.

“You remember Mark Twain’s Prince and the Pauper?”
 
“Never the read it, but saw the movie when I was a kid.”
 
“Which one. There was a popular version with Errol Flynn, the Mauch twins, and Claude Rains. I saw that on TV one rainy afternoon. I also saw the one with another famous cast: Raquel Welch, Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston—yeah, the guy who played all those people in robes and armor in El Cid, Moses, Ben-Hur—George C. Scott—yeah, famous for Patton—and Oliver Reed of Oliver, and both Three and then Four Musketeers, plus Gladiator. Lots of actors have played the characters. Twain’s story has been so popular that there have been about as many adaptations as there are elements in the Periodic Table. Even Mickey Mouse, Garfield, and Barbie have versions. Oh! And not just Hollywood versions; there’s a Bollywood version and even a Netflix version. And I read that Thomas Edison made a version in 1909. As I said, as numerous as the elements, all these versions bombard us like unstoppable cosmic rays.”
 
“I think I saw the one with Raquel Welch.”

“Raquel Welch? Who could forget? What do you mean ‘I think I saw’?”
 
“Okay, I know I saw Raquel Welch. Fantastic Voyage, One Million Years B.C., Lady in Cement…”
 
“Let me guess. You’re a Raquel Welch fan.”
 
“Are you related to Richard Conte? He starred in Lady in Cement with her and Frank Sinatra.”
 
“Not to my knowledge, but then don’t most of us who share the same name have some common family background by biology or marriage, kinda like the elements, look different, but are all made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Some underlying Conte thread. But I have to confess. Raquel Welch, “The Summer of George” episode of Seinfeld! You know, actors and actresses are like elements and their isotopes. You recognize Raquel Welch no matter what part she plays, from comedy to tragedy, from movies to TV and stage. But as an actress, her characters are different from her real character; the outward stuff always hides the inner realities. Fans’ assumptions about actresses and actors are always based on incomplete knowledge. Did you read her bio? I’m thinking about her becoming a big star on the basis of a role as a microscopic human being in Fantastic Voyage or on the basis of her saying only three lines in One Million B.C., a movie about the past that cast her into the present. Who could forget that animal-skin bikini?  But I digress.”
 
“Look at us. Started talking about Twain’s story and ended up with drooling over Raquel Welch.”
 
“Geez. The mind unravels on a single thread of thought. But that’s like all our thinking and discussing. One thought leads to another. Start out with hydrogen and end up at uranium all in the brilliance of some burst of explosive digressions.”
 
“Prince and the Pauper.”
 
“Right. I was thinking about how Prince and the Pauper, about two kids who look alike but who had different backgrounds ended up being in the same place and apparently playing roles that showed similarities and differences.”
 
“Why?”
 
“It dawned on me that the singer-songwriters Prince and Cyndi Lauper are in some ways the same and some ways very different. And that got me to thinking about Twain’s story and about a recent discovery about cosmic rays.”
 
“Your mind never fails to fascinate and exasperate.”
 
“Well, both Prince, sorry, the Late Prince or however one’s supposed to say his symbol-name, and Lauper arrived on the music scene about the same time, definitely both stars of the 1980s. Both talented composers. Some might say they had meteoric rises to success, but I prefer to think that they hit the music world like incoming cosmic rays, both causing bunches of imitators to mimic their compositions. You know what I just thought of?”
 
“No.”
 
“You know how Twain’s story is about guys who look alike and how the roles have been played by twins like the Mauch brothers? Wasn’t Prince or Love Symbol from the Twin Cities area?”
 
“Yeah. Your mental thread’s unravelling again.”
 
“Sorry. Anyway, Prince and the Cyndi Lauper—had to say it—could be a story written by a group of physicists. So, both are musicians. Both have been popular musicians. Both shaped the music industry. Both came on the scene like cosmic rays. But both were different forms of popular musicians. I know, I’m pushing the metaphor. Anyway, though many in the so-called serious world of music might have dismissed their work as mere pop music, both of those songwriters made their mark on the world of music, Prince in Purple Rain and Lauper in Kinky Boots, which tells the tale of two people who seem radically different but who discover their similarities. Just like a cosmic ray producing other cosmic rays, so the music of Prince and the Cyndi Lauper did the same, producing so many similar trends from their original songs.”
 
“Whoa. That isn’t entirely true. Isn’t one of Prince’s songs the center of a plagiarism case in Italy?”
 
“Oh! Right. But there’s much in his music that is original. Okay, so the ISS has a gizmo called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. It can detect cosmic rays and measure their energies. So, without going into it too much, this AMS device on the Space Station discovered that iron cosmic rays don’t have the identities they were thought to have, that they are very much like the so-called cosmic rays of helium, carbon, and oxygen, the so-called ‘lighter’ cosmic rays. And I don’t think anyone knows the reason any more than anyone could tell the difference between the Prince and the Pauper in novel or film. They look alike but are different; the iron cosmic rays were thought to be different but look the same, or act the same as lighter elements’ rays as detected by the AMS. Same and different. A heavy element acting like a light element.”
 
“You made me engage in a conversation about Twain’s story and Raquel Welch just to tell me that iron cosmic rays act like lighter element cosmic rays?”
 
“Well, not completely. You know how on the surface we are different? How we distinguish among ourselves on the basis of obvious physical characteristics?”

“Yeah.”
 
“So, I was thinking about how unexpected similarities bind us, make us twins in a sense. How it took a special detector on the Space Station to find out that iron cosmic rays have energies—actually, the ‘rigidity dependence of the flux’ in iron is identical to the fluxes of helium, carbon, and oxygen cosmic rays. What we thought was so different wasn’t. Now, what if we had a detector that showed us more of our similarities than our differences?”
 
“Nice thought, but not the reality of human interaction. It took a bunch of scientists and engineers to make your Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, put it on the Space Station, and read its data. * That was a pretty big effort. And even with all those bright minds at work trying to explain their findings, no one has a clear idea why a heavy element like iron acts like a light element like helium, how the two seem to belong to the same class of cosmic rays and not to different classes as people previously thought. You’re not going to get ordinary people to go through that effort just to get a similar result of not understanding how different people can be so much the same, can have so much in common. It’s easier in our everyday world to classify on the bases of differences, like number of legs, spiders with eight and insects with six—the obvious stuff, people with certain features, the Neanderthal-inherited European bigger nose and lighter skin color, the people with more almond-shaped eyes, and so on. Of course, I guess you can say it’s just as easy to group by similarities, putting all the insects together, for example.”
 
“But it’s the hidden similarities that I’m thinking about. Twins appearing to be the same, but different. People appearing to be the same, but different in reality, like Edward the VI and his lookalike Tom Canty in Twain’s story. Okay, let me say it another way. Iron seems different from other elements in both real and superficial ways. It’s heavier than helium, carbon, and oxygen, but deep down, it’s the same because it’s made of the same subatomic stuff. And now we know that its cosmic rays should be grouped with those lighter elements’ cosmic rays rather than with heavier elements’ cosmic rays. What’s expected by the surface appearance or characteristics is contradicted by what’s deep down, and what’s deep down actually makes iron similar.
            “It’s a strange, a confounding universe. So much that seems different is very much the same and so much that seems the same is very much different. Prince and the Pauper, Prince and the Cyndi Lauper, and iron and helium cosmic rays. I guess the universe really is a place of paradoxes. Maybe it’s just one big Paradox, one filled with irony for those with a sense of humor and seriousness or despair for those without a sense of humor.”
 
“As usual, or should I say, ‘yousual,’ you go around the long way, like some cosmic ray wending its way across the galaxy, across the whole universe, just to make a point. But I have to say that with this one, you do what cosmic rays do when they enter the realm of Earth’s atmosphere, you make secondary rays of electrons, positrons, muons, and pions: I guess those secondary rays are my thoughts about human similarities and differences and how they aren’t necessarily what they seem to be or are expected to be.”
 
“Oh! Yeah. Sorry, I lapsed back into that thought of Raquel Welch in her animal-skin bikini.” ** 
 
Note:
*Lopes, Ana. 17 Mar 2021. AMS reveals properties of iron cosmic rays: The properties are unexpectedly different from those of other primary heavy cosmic rays. CERN. Online at https://home.cern/news/news/physics/ams-reveals-properties-iron-cosmic-rays  Accessed June 19, 2021.
 
**Yes, you can see that picture of Welch in the bikini. It’s online at https://www.thatmomentin.com/one-million-years-b-c-and-that-animal-skin-bikini/

“We’re all a bit too involved in our cultures to see how they influence our perspectives. Even when we look in a mirror, social commonality influences the view. There’s just no mirror into which we can peer without seeing some culturally derived distortion or manifestation of Self. 
     “But even if there were a perfect mirror that yielded a perfect reflection, one even more precisely ground than those big telescope mirrors, the act of seeing lies mostly within, all of us seeming to have developed cataracts in the brain’s visual centers. Those wavy lenses interfere with clear seeing and prevent us from recognizing commonality’s control over individuality. Maybe if we had eyes in the back of the head closer to the occipital lobe’s neurons, we might get a better view. Then that common expression, “Just be yourself” we hear given to teenagers and to TV characters in quandaries over their desires for affections, might be realistic advice.
     “We see what we’ve been trained to see in ourselves through four brain centers involved in vision, one of which is the memory-active temporal lobe that helps us understand what we see. And since enculturation is a matter of memory, the temporal lobe’s job in vision is to assign meaning based on experience and training. I recognize objects through memory. Apparently, I recognize Self similarly.
     “We think we’re wise old owls, capable of seeing through obscurity and darkness. Sure, owls do have good night vision. But there’s a price they pay for those large eyes. Unlike us, owls have to move their heads because their eyes are fixed in place by sclerotic rings. Culture likewise fixes our vision centers and lessens our ability to see peripherally and to move our perceptions, so we often accept the ostensible reality as the independently-confirmable reality. With regard to Self, we frequently remember rather than observe.”  
 
“Selfies. Selfies show us who we are,” you say. “I can take a pic of myself and see what I look like. I know who and what I am through introspection, and though I acknowledge I might be blind to my connections to my culture just the way I can’t hear my dialect or in hearing it, think nothing of its identifiable distinctiveness, I understand my nature; I see ME. I see through the shroud of culture. I see myself.”
 
“Really?” I ask, “When you look at a Selfie, don’t you still see what your culture has told you is important to see? What if I said every Selfie is actually a group pic that reflects family, tribe, and region? What if I said that the only true individuals are feral children, kids raised by animals? They don’t do well in society because they lack all those connections you have developed over your lifetime. Some feral children, after being found, fail to acquire even the most basic of cultural skills, the use of verbal language. You can find lists of such people online. Wikipedia has an article on feral children, both real and fictional, the latter including the hoaxes and fictional characters like Tarzan.”
 
“Meaning? Are you saying I’m not an individual?”
 
“You ask a pertinent question. No, I’m not. There’s some individuality in there, something recognizable in the mirror or in the Selfie or in the eyes of others, particularly as vision wends its way through that temporal lobe to the back of the brain. But all of us are reflections of our culture. Those who see you, see as they’ve learned to see either as members inside your culture or as outsiders. Even hermits have a cultural heritage, albeit one they believe they have rejected and left. I suppose the only exception to our group nature is that rare feral child I mentioned. But then, too, there are those species traits, the ingrained patterns of movement, neurological responses to physical stimuli, species abilities, and limitations that are all part of an evolutionary history. I can’t, for example, run on tree branches like a squirrel. A feral child named Saturday Mifune, found in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, was supposedly raised Tarzan-like by monkeys; at 17 he reportedly still moved monkey-like and couldn’t talk, and he had no human socialization skill, none whatsoever. But with regard to those non-cultural aspects of human life, note that he moved ‘monkey-LIKE.’ Consider the word after that hyphen, like. With longer straighter legs than his monkey parents and guardians, his greater natural ability for bipedalism, and structurally slightly different attachment between hip and femur, different number of lumbar bones, and that opposable thumb, Saturday’s movements were imitations at best and distinguishable as such. Yet, he was steeped in monkey culture. Observers could distinguish his human nature from his adherence to monkey culture and his anomalous human behavior.”
 
“Yes, I get it. I know what you are saying. Saturday looked human, right? He had human genes, human biology. I’ll grant that all humans have much in common on some fundamental species level. And biology is different from psychology. I’ll also agree that culture shapes behavior, attitude, idea, and that it informs observation. I’m also going to grant you that each of us reflects a cultural heritage and that because of our connections we are identifiable by our culture, by our viewpoints, even by our mannerisms. Everyone carries some tribal mannerism. That’s always evident when we look at brothers or sisters and see something they have in common or have in common with one or both parents, like basic appearance, for example, or gait, or facial expression. I’m sure we can identify commonality because we speak of idioms, of idiomatic expressions, many of which are not translatable beyond some literal meaning. 
     “But everyone adds some difference to the picture. Everyone sees someone different in the mirror, sees those variations however subtle they are. Your Saturday Mifune didn’t have the opportunity to acquire those community skills and mannerisms as a kid, and we all know that among kids reared in a human culture that those exposed to only one language as a child usually end up having an ‘accent’ when they learn a second language after the brain shuts neurons off to certain sounds. I saw an experiment once with a baby and an English-speaking adult who were tested to see if they could tell the difference between homophones and homonyms easily recognized by a native Inuit-speaking adult. The baby could tell the difference; the English-speaking adult could not hear the differences. Probably, Saturday Mifune’s brain had shut down unused neurons that might have been trained by human culture. As always, I have to ask what brought this topic to the surface of your mind. What made you start
 
“Complementary cognition.” *
 
“What’s that?”
 
“It’s a different hypothesis that its three proponents say is an ‘explanatory framework for why language and many aspects of cooperation evolved.’ They call it ‘a new theory of human cognitive evolution,’ though I would call label it an hypothesis.”
 
“Tell me.”
 
“Helen Taylor, Brice Fernandes, and Sarah Wraight published an article on what they call the evolution of complementary cognition. They say that humans have cooperatively adapted and evolved through what they term a ‘system of collective cognitive search.’ To call it a theory is to jump ahead of the research game, that’s a bit of hubris on their part. But as an hypothesis worth pursuing, I think they might be onto something.
     “What they propose is that you and I as individuals are ‘individually specialized in different but complementary neurocognitive search strategies’ and that we ‘regulate search for adaptive information at the group level, adapting cooperatively.’ They say this is an emergent system of collective cognitive search they call Complementary Cognition.”
 
“So far I’ve heard ‘blah-blah-blah.”
 
“Well, I can’t give you their whole argument. Essentially, because we live in a complex world with high variability and uncertainty, individual humans couldn’t possibly have found the answers to success and survival on their own; they needed some form of cooperation, some kind of group search for solutions that provided ‘efficiency and capability in search.’ It’s this ‘system of collective cognitive search’ that has enabled us to pool our individual abilities to solve problems’ that accounts for the success of our species on this challenging planet.”
 
“What’s this search stuff?”
 
“It’s a process of exploring and exploiting resources. The three authors go into it at length, but I like to think of it simply as not eating poisonous fruits like yew berries.”
 
“Yew berries?”
 
“Somehow a long time before I existed, someone discovered, maybe by becoming very sick or by watching someone else get sick that yew berries, holly berries, mistletoe, and belladonna are bad for humans. That collective discovery was passed down—unfortunately, not to everyone. The people who tried nightshade were part of a ‘search’ that produced a common wisdom and mechanism for survival.
            “I can’t think of a better example than the Life cereal commercial of the 1970s. Three brothers are sitting at a table with Life cereal in a bowl. The two older brothers argue about trying the cereal for the first time. They get the idea that their three-and-a-half-year-old brother Mikey, a picky eater, should try it. Mikey tries the cereal and they exclaim, ‘He likes it! Hey, Mikey!’ I guess ‘Mikey likes it’ is the best example I can give for complementary cognition. With regard to all those poisonous foods we don’t eat, I guess someone said, ‘Don’t eat that. Remember what happened to Mikey.’ By the way, that commercial ran so often over more than a decade that it became a part of the American idiom. And Mikey, played by John Gilchrist became the center for a conspiracy theory: He supposedly died when he swallowed a mixture of Coca Cola and Pop Rocks. He didn’t. But the story is the kind of ‘search’ that the collective does in order to survive. Sure, there are many false cognitions. Some keep people from succeeding and whole populations from succeeding, such as the ‘tough guy, anti-learning culture of many inner-city youths.’ That’s a pop-rock-Coke search gone terribly wrong and one that doesn’t lead to adaptive success. And there are many famous Mikeys and influencers out there who convince large groups to adopt a strategy of life. I’m thinking of comedians who get audiences to laugh and applaud over jokes about being an addict, and peer groups that convince themselves to act in ways detrimental to their survival, like the Heaven’s Gate community or the Jonestown community that committed suicide.
            This Complementary Cognition ‘theory’ is an analog of Darwin’s notion of evolution through natural selection. The authors say Darwin identified a ‘search process by which successful adaptations are inherited and updated.’ You and I are a product of an unknown number, certainly a very large one, of searches by our ancestors, and even today, you and I participate in similar searches, though the risks have been lessened by all those Mikeys who learned the lessons of survival and resource exploitation the hard way.”
 
“No doubt, as usual, you are going to draw some lesson from this.”
 
“I think that Taylor, Fernandes, and Wraight might consider exploring Complementary Stupidity in their follow-up studies. Whereas it is apparent that we have conducted ‘searches’ that have led to successful exploitations of resources, it is also apparent to me that we are just as prone to complementary stupidity from false searches, like the experiment of Nazi Germany that destroyed so many lives. That nation’s group search for some ideal form and its group think led to its destruction. What intrigues me is that the complementary cognition they provided by failure like the complementary cognition provided by the failed Soviet Union hasn’t been passed down as an irrefutable sign to the current generation. 
            “So, I might accept their hypothesis that they call theory that collective ‘searches’ in biological and societal evolution have enabled or species to survive, but I don’t accept that all such collective ‘search strategies’ ultimately lead to survival solutions. You know that old expression that you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time? Maybe you can. Certainly, that was what happened in Germany—okay, I exaggerate. Yes, there were some Germans who saw that collective cognition wasn’t going to end well. The question for us, today, is whether or not we can act both individually and collectively realize those ‘searches’ that will not lead us to better lives. Whenever we fail to recognize detrimental searches, we’re mixing Pop Rocks and Coke, yew berries and nightshade, anti-intellectualism and crime, heroin and meth, and Communism and Socialism. Just because someone called Mikey likes it doesn’t mean it’s good. But I'll grant that we need--and have needed--many Mikeys to try something in order for our species to survive.”
 
*Taylor, Helen, Brice Fernandes, and Sarah Wraight. 16 June 2021. The Evolution of Complementary Cognition: Humans Cooperatively Adapt and Evolve through a System of Collective Cognitive Search. Cambridge University Press, Online at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/evolution-of-complementary-cognition-humans-cooperatively-adapt-and-evolve-through-a-system-of-collective-cognitive-search/F198B30682343E92C7E9C986332D380A   Accessed June 16, 2021. Although I find some of what the three write to be, in part, mere neologism, I believe they have an approach worth considering in regard to individuality and enculturation. Complementary cognition seems to me to be an undeniable part of human interaction and a process that has led to both positive and negative results. You know, the old “If famous So-n-So jumped off a cliff….”

Primer: Snails might be known for their lack of speed, but they are also known for their ability to reproduce in great numbers. After they invade, they can dominate an ecological niche and wipe out a native population. 
 
After invasive rosy wolf snail species were introduced to the Society Islands, it wiped out most of the native snail species, but not one labeled Partula hyalina. The white-shelled P. hyalina survives in the sunlit edges of forests because the rosy wolf can’t tolerate the sunlight. Essentially, P. hyalina hides from the predator in the daylight. *
 
Antithetical Analog: After invasive Communists introduced themselves into American academies, they became as proportionally numerous as the rosy wolf and devoured positions once occupied by Capitalist-leaning, free-thinking professors. But unlike the rosy wolf snails in the Society Islands, this invasive academic species of Communists adapted. At first sticking to the shadows, they proliferated and now appear to have adapted to the light, where they hide in plain sight. That is bad news for the Capitalist-leaning professors who are the reverse analogs of P. hyalina. Because of cancel culture predation, they now have to hide in relative darkness lest they lose their jobs or undergo censure on the road to eventual extinction. 
 
*U. of Michigan. 15 June 2021. Snails carrying the world’s smallest computer help solve mass extinction survivor mystery. Phys.Org. Online at https://phys.org/news/2021-06-snails-world-smallest-mass-extinction.html   Accessed June 15, 2021. 

 Ever feel you are the de facto or default “little guy”? You’re the powerless one in the path of forces well beyond your control? That you can see what others who should be able to see similarly just don’t see what is obvious to you? Helplessness isn’t uncommon. In a world of constant verbal turmoil, where those who want to stir the fires of civil unrest can do so with a click on a computer, yes, in that world of social media and media stages for those who veer too far right or left in your reasoned opinion, you might feel you have little control and that those who should exert the control you seek just fail by simple mental inertia. You see that one of the problems is, in fact, inertia in a large society encompassed by a bureaucracy for every aspect of human endeavor. Imagine a conversation between a frustrated guy who found out that research that could be used to prevent a potential outbreak or to control its effects wasn’t being fast-tracked and his friend who understands the nature of bureaucracies, even health agency bureacracies. 
 
Frustrated Guy. “What’s a layperson to do? I don’t have access to a lab, don’t have expertise or time to run year-long or multi-year multifaceted or double-blind experiments, and don’t have the power to force government health-care bureaucrats to pursue some research that they don’t favor.”
 
Friend. “Let me guess. You are probably thinking about how slowly biological research advances when you need a rapid response as the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated. But no one has the funding to pursue research that would eliminate potential disasters.”
 
Frustrated Guy. “Yep. Sure, we got vaccines faster than usual in 2020. The panic-mode drove us under Operation Warp Speed to dive into previous research to find those RNA-based vaccines. But think of how long those RNA studies languished without coming to fruition until the pandemic struck. It took a pandemic to overcome that inertia. Where’s the NIH been? Where’s WHO been? What about preventing the next one?”
 
Friend. “Yeah, no doubt another one is just around the corner.” 
 
Frustrated Guy. “I just read that camels are carrying MERS-CoV and that it is just a few mutations away from becoming a pandemic. * All it’s gonna take is for an African dromedary to go to the Middle East and make the return trip. It’ll pick up the more contagious and deadly version of MERS-CoV, carry it back to Africa, and spread it to Saharan people and from there to the world.”
 
Friend. “Whoa. Camels?”
 
Frustrated Guy. “Dromedaries, not Bactrian camels. Gotta get your hump-count right.”
 
Friend. “Okay, I’m hooked. What’s this about?”
 
Frustrated Guy. “Three things, really. Hard to keep epidemic diseases straight nowadays, but if you remember, in 2021 MERS-CoV was found in Saudi Arabia, a dangerous form that has the knack of killing 40% of those it infects. Well, it seems that the disease has a refuge in dromedaries that might have gotten it from—you guess—bats. Anyway, that’s the first thing to think about. The second one is something that investigators—even people in the Congress—are seeking answers to, you know, whether or not some gain-of-function research was the cause of COVID-19. Now, here’s the scary third thing. I just read that some researchers took variants of MERS-CoV found in African and Middle Eastern dromedaries and discovered that if they genetically engineered one of the African variant’s amino acids, it becomes more transmissible. That’s gain-of-function research. So, here we are in 2021 thinking, ‘Woo! We’re getting to the end of this thing.’ And while we’re breathing more easily without masks, there’s a group out there experimenting on something that might put masks back on our faces.”
 
Friend. “All those scary movies like Twelve Monkeys and Outbreak are becoming real-life.”
 
Frustrated Guy. “Yes. If people are correct in saying that a lab developed COVID-19, we’re already living those movies.”
 
Friend. “So, what’s this that got your wire spectacles so twisted?”
 
Frustrated Guy. “Well, I was thinking about how bureaucracies work, how they are big, and how once any human gets put in charge of something there’s a mess-up waiting to happen. And there’s no one for the little guy to blame. Bureaucracies, like governments, protect their own, protect their interests. That’s what got me to thinking I about diamidobenzimidazole.”
 
Friend. “Diamid what?”
 
Frustrated Guy. “I know. It’s a mouthful of letters. So many letters that you need a toothpick to get them out of your teeth. Anyway, it’s been shortened to diABZI-4.”
 
Friend. “What is it?”
 
Frustrated Guy.  “It’s a compound. It’s a carbon-hydrogen-nitrogen-oxygen compound. I don’t know all the subscript numbers. It’s a potential so-called STING agonist; it has something to do with stimulating interferon genes—that’s what STING stands for. I guess it can be used to prevent a virus from infecting because it ups the prophylaxis effect; and I hear its effective, or might be effective against COVID-19 and maybe that dromedary-spread disease. It’s anti-viral.”
 
Friend. “Sounds good. What’s your problem?”
 
Frustrated Guy. “It’s not available now, and it reminds me of experiences I’ve had with the biases and inertia of bureaucrats. I’m going to go around a mountain of digression here to get to that. Years ago, I went to a Department of Energy conference in Morgantown, West Virginia. There were presentations on a number of energy problems—we were still energy dependent on OPEC and other oil producers. Anyway, entrepreneurial small companies presented their solutions to problems like what to do with nuclear power plant waste. One set of guys proposed enclosing radioactive wastes in glass or in glass-like substances. They had it all worked out, even had samples and diagrams of the process. But as in all government gatherings, some favored theory, group, or process got the stage. The glass guys got little attention though I thought they had something worth examining and debating at length. Now here’s another digression—a digression within a digression, but I digress. I was on the phone with someone from the National Science Foundation, also years ago, asking about oceanographic institutes where I might go to do research during a sabbatical leave. The guy on the phone started to list institutes in a hierarchy of prestige. Now, I know that doesn’t sound interesting or related to the energy conference, but to me it reveals that those who work in government agencies have their biases and preferences. In other words, if someone has a potential solution to a problem that the government could support, the first obstacle is the person in charge of the funding. That person doesn’t necessarily make decisions on the basis of pure science or logic, but rather on the basis of reputation. People with ‘track records’ of research get to stay on the tracks until they disappear at the ‘vanishing point’ by retiring or dying.
            “So, when someone with a novel idea comes along, like putting the nuclear wastes in glass, the presenter gets the proverbial short shrift—though I don’t know that shrift, or confession, is the right term. If the powers-that-be aren’t in favor of the idea, the idea dies of neglect. So, when a group of people now say that diABI-4 has promise as a viral prophylaxis, if that group of people doesn’t have the right reputation or isn’t associated with the ‘right’ lab, then the government funders put the proposal on the bottom of the pile.” 
 
Friend. “Bureaucrats. Can’t live with ‘em; can’t keep them from proliferating. Certainly, can’t get them to act swiftly and efficiently. All that paperwork. But what can you expect from agencies grown larger than small countries? Look at all the government waste. Heck, I just heard that more than 300 million bucks of stimulus money can’t be accounted for and might have been stolen by foreign interests.”
 
Frustrated Guy. “And now we have to consider that Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS-CoV, is hiding in dromedaries AND in some lab. Back in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, it was deadly. If it mutates and makes its way back to the African continent by way of some traded dromedary, it might start another pandemic. Right now the trade in dromedaries is a one-way street, going from Africa to the Middle East. But what if it reverses? Why should we have to wait to develop this kind of STING therapy?” **
 
Friend. “I guess that’s why we are called the ‘little guys.’ For all our supposed sophistication, we aren’t much better prepared for an epidemic than those fourteenth-century victims of the Black Death. For all our affluence, we find ourselves at the mercy of some accidental or purposeful release of disease. Accidents are inevitable, but so are actions by people and whole governments with malicious intent.”
 
Frustrated Guy. “And now that we know after the mainstream media shut down reporting on the surmised leak out of a Wuhan lab, where research was conducted with funding indirectly funneled by the NIH, gain-of-function research is the suspected likely cause of the pandemic, what are we supposed to do with gain-of-function research on MERS-CoV found in dromedaries? Do we ask the governments of many countries to shut down that research? Or do we ask governments to expedite research into STING therapies? And in either request, do we expect a response? You know that we’re likely to be dismissed because we are the ‘little guys’ who need to mind our own business while the ‘professionals’ handle what we don’t understand. Geez. We laypeople can’t say the word diamidobenzimidazole any better than a first grader learning to read phonetically. I think you can understand my frustration.”
 
Friend. “I do, and I don’t have a solution. Maybe I’ll just stock up on toilet paper, masks, nitrile gloves, and canned goods in case someone lets MERS-CoV with its variant amino acid escape a lab and enter the general population. Then I’ll turn on the TV and watch people with an agenda whose supposed job is unbiased investigation refuse to hold accountable those responsible because of some political viewpoint. And I’ll watch health officials stand before cameras to say, ‘Hey, don’t look at me. These things happen. We want everyone to wear as many masks as there are blades in a Gillette razor.’” 
  
Notes:
*Yirka, Bob. 8 June 2021. MERS-CoV just a few mutations away from becoming a pandemic threat. MedXpress. Online at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-mers-cov-mutations-pandemic-threat.html   Accessed June 8, 2021. See Ziqi, Zhou et al. Phenotypic and genetic characterization of MERS coronaviruses from Africa to understand their zoonotic potential. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021)  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2103984118
 
**Fessenden, Jim. 11 June 2021. Research identifies potential antiviral compound for COVID-19, flu, other viral infection. MedXpress online at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-potential-antiviral-compound-covid-flu.html   Accessed June 12, 2021.  See also Fiachra Humphries et al. A diamidobenzimidazole STING agonist protects against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Science Immunology (2021) DOI: 10.1126/sciimmunol.abi9002   Accessed June 14, 2021. 
Also consider this. A group of doctors and medical researchers pleaded with Congress to get the government moving on Ivermectin as a therapy for COVID-19. They were met with political responses and scoffed at. But then the National Library of Medicine released this statement in February, 2021: "Ivermectin, a US Food and Drug Administration-approved anti-parasitic agent, was found to inhibit severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) replication in vitro...There were no severe adverse drug events recorded in the study. A 5-day course of ivermectin was found to be safe and effective in treating adult patients with mild COVID-19." The doctors seem to have been vindicated. Politics and bureaucrats blocked and mocked, and while they did so, people died. Real people with real loved ones who might have been saved by a rapid and unbiased response to the advice and research of the doctors. See Ahmed, Sabeena, et al. A five-day course of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 may reduce the duration of illness. PubMed.gov. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.11.191, Online at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33278625/​

If the mind had a mechanism that automatically shut off anger, keeping it in check, the world might—nay, would--be more peaceful. But there’s a catch. Conflict isn’t always a matter of emotion. Sure, emotions play a significant role in individual and group conflict, but reason also plays a role, especially in larger conflicts. Although there are psychological mechanisms useful in quashing anger and calming the inner brain by connecting it to the outer brain, such as Dr. Christian Conte’s successful Yield Theory, * there is a need for some mental mechanism that keeps those larger conflicts driven mostly by the outer brain from growing larger.  
 
Conflict engendered by the frontal lobe is often the driver of violence between and among nations, especially when the leaders of a country reason they have something useful to gain through conflict with another country, such as its energy or metal reserves or maybe some maritime or continental trade route. Frontal lobes can justify almost any action through a philosophy of utilitarianism. 
 
World War II’s Pacific Theater battles were a consequence of an island nation with few natural resources invading other countries. Japan’s invasions of the Asian mainland and various islands was motivated in part by a need for oil. Its attack on Pearl Harbor was its reasoned response to a major obstacle to its acquisition of resources, especially in the context of sanctions imposed by America after the invasion of China. 
 
Utility can drive a runaway rationality that justifies conquering and enslaving. It has been used to justify slavery and serfdom since the rise of agriculture and widespread commerce, and, as in the case of the Pacific Theater in the mid-twentieth century, to justify conquests of foreign lands. No doubt, utility will provide the rationale for future conflicts that will, like those of the past, grow large as reasons pile on reasons till the tower collapses. Japan needed resources for its growing population and military. Japan conquered resources. The United States reasoned differently. Japan attacked. The United States reasoned a response. And so on and so on until the reasonable conclusion in 1945 was to drop atomic bombs “to save lives” under the premise that an invasion of Japan would cost a predicted million casualties. Thus, in utility, “only” the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were killed. Seemed to be reasonable actions to Truman and the US military.
 
In a study of cell growth published in Science by Marco D’Ario and others, the researchers revealed that eukaryotic cells can assess and maintain sizes endemic to their species by regulating the amount of KRP4, a protein. The protein “inhibits the progression to DNA synthesis.” ** In short, to keep their size “normal” and symmetric in a plant species, cells regulate their growth by waiting for KRP4 to accumulate or by waiting until excess KRP4 is diluted. Cells, in effect, adjust their “growth period before DNA synthesis.” The process avoids both stunted growth and runaway growth; KRP4 serves as a control on homeostasis and on mutant forms. It is neither emotional nor reasonable; it is simply a cellular process that governs size. 
 
We need an analog of KRP4 on a global scale. The United Nations doesn’t effectively serve as an analog because it reacts to, more than anticipates, conflict already ballooning. In contrast, cells anticipate. They control mutant growth before growth begins. Is it not strange that on the simplest level of organized life, there is an effective control on growth that doesn’t exist on life’s most complex level of human interactions? 
 
D’Ario et al. showed that KRP4 serves as a repeatable mechanism that dampens cell size variability and runaway growth. There’s utility in that. And it might be praiseworthy for humans to find a similar mechanism to keep battles from becoming wars. In the absence of historical knowledge, we might expect the frontal lobe, the seat of utilitarianism, to reason that an expanding war is detrimental to the species. But we have a history of warfare based on rational utilitarianism that reveals the “utility” of one nation, which seems rational, can run counter to the perceived utility of another country. That circumstance has occurred over and over on a planet with geographically unequal distributions of resources that are made more unequal by national, and therefore, artificial borders. 
 
Because of historical and ongoing incidents of hegemony based on unequal distribution of resources, some people argue that there should be no borders, no ownership. Their argument, however, seemingly based on a general utility and a rational way to eliminate conflict, fails by omission: It leaves out the role played by that other driver of conflict, the inner brain. Those who believe that borders are the root causes of conflicts believe that reason is the key to peace. Millennia of warfare generated by utilitarian reasoning don’t play a role in their worldview. That’s a naïve perspective.  
 
Utilitarianism’s appeal as a rational system misguides; we have evidence in slavery and war. In the American South before and during the Civil War, one argument for the continuation of slavery was the practical need for cheap and abundant labor on large plantations. It was, of course, a time before rapid advances in technology made machine labor available. Slavery, however unethical and immoral, was “utilitarian.” But the inner brain always plays its role. Working in the cotton fields was one matter; serving as household butlers, maids, and sex slaves, another. The former was driven by utilitarian reasoning; the latter, by the “utility” arising from the selfish inner brain. 
 
Reason. Emotion. Both can generate inhuman conditions, injustice, injury, death, and war. Both have their utility. Both allow small cells of action to grow either geometrically or exponentially. Both establish patterns of behavior that can be detrimental. Both have convinced theologians that war can be justifiable and that destroying, injuring, and killing in a “justifiable war” are moral acts. Thus, out of Buddhism, we have a 2,000-year history of monks trained in martial arts, supposedly originating in part from the reasoned need to defend monasteries like the famous Shaolin retreat from bandits. Seems reasonable; seems utilitarian. We have the biblical wars between the Jews and their civil and religious adversaries, such as the followers of Ba’al. We have the religiously motivated conquests of Islam. We have the religiously motivated Crusades and the wars in the Americas perpetrated by the Conquistadores. We have the religiously motivated wars of the Europe’s Reformation Period. We have the centuries-long wars and battles based on slight religious differences in England and Ireland. We have today’s jihadists. We reasoned in each of these circumstances from a combined moral and utilitarian justification in a feedback loop between emotion and reason always with the same dire consequences. Recall the famous lines from Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est.” After describing the horrible death by chlorine gas of a soldier in World War I, Owen writes in the context of seeing the man die, “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/Pro patria mori.” *** 
 
Those who argue that they see utility in a borderless socialist world in which everyone has an equal share of resources must in their minds dismiss as inconsequential the machinations of nations, individuals, or groups intent fulfilling their perceived, reasoned needs and desires. They fail to consider how individuals have turned emotions and even faith into reasons for conquest and enslavement. They fail to see that utility is as utilitarians define. And they fail to realize that without a foolproof system of checks, such as that which individual cells employ with KRP4, runaway war is likely inevitable in every generation.      
 
 
Notes: 
 
*Conte, Christian, Ph.D. 2019. Walking through Anger: A New Design for Confronting Conflict in an Emotionally Charged World. Boulder. Sounds True Press. 
 
**D’Ario, Marco, et al. 11 Jun 2021. Cell size controlled in plants using DNA content as an internal scale. Science. Vol. 372, Issue 6547. Pp. 1176-1181. DOI 10:1126/science.abb4348.  Online at  https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6547/1176   Accessed June 11, 2021. 
 
*** Basically, “It is sweet and proper (or fitting) to die for one’s country.” Owen got the line from Horace. The year before the First World War, the Latin quotation from Horace’s Ode III was inscribed on a chapel wall of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, England.