Anne Boleyn performed in a masque on March 1, 1522. That makes me want to comment on the recent circumstances regarding Scarlett Johansson’s removing herself from an acting job because of protests over her “gender.” Ordinarily, I don’t comment on current news, mostly because my purpose in writing these little essays is to inspire others to consider or reconsider their perspectives on matters philosophical and psychological. I have, however, commented on matters centered on current and past lifestyles in an attempt to find some universality in our species. What was I saying? Oh! Yes. Ann Boleyn. She performed in a masque.
 
Now, you might wonder what Anne and Scarlett have in common other than their being women and having performed on stage. Well, during Anne’s time, women couldn’t be actresses unless they were nobility and their performances were part of masques. As the genre’s name indicates, the actors and actresses wore masks, many representing allegorical figures. Today, women act across the spectrum of dramatic forms and perform across the spectrum of venues. 
 
That masques involved masks isn’t much different from the masks worn by Greek actors. We still use the masks of comedy and tragedy to symbolize theatre and theatric performances. But even without a physical mask, all actors wear masks of another sort, psychological ones. After all, the essence of acting is—How should I put this?—acting, that is, pretending to be someone else, wearing the persona of another, generating make-believe. Actors and actresses don’t give autobiographic performances; they give biographic ones. 
 
Ann Boleyn’s performance in a masque was allowable in England during the sixteenth century because she performed at court. Nobility could do that. Commoners, however, weren’t allowed to have women act in their public plays. For the depiction of women, boys played the roles, wearing periwigs and lead-based makeup. Boys played Shakespeare’s women—the movie Shakespeare in Lovemakes the point for those who never read or studied Shakespeare and Elizabethan drama. Imagine: Boys who aren’t women played women! Imagine: Women who have given in the last three centuries many of the best acting performances ever to grace stage and screen wouldn’t have been allowed to practice their art had they wished to act in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth century. 
 
Enter Scarlett and her signing on to play a transgender person in a film. Protests loud and clear made Scarlett acquiesce to the demands that she be removed from the cast because she isn’t a transgendered person. Okay, maybe the protestors have a point of sorts. Who would know better the feelings and the experiences of a trans than an actual trans? That’s a good point. But then, why have George Clooney play an astronaut when he’s never been to space? Why have Tom Cruise play a spy when he’s never been a spy? And so on.
 
Apparently, by today’s standards of political correctness, no one can know anything of substance about anyone else who might be part of some self-identifying group. So, women can’t play a trans by the logic of our time. You realize what this means, don’t you?
 
It means that we can have no human unity. We can’t put ourselves in others’ shoes. We can’t truly empathize. We’re all basically lost in little self-contained cells walled off from those who don’t have the “credentials” to be what we are or to belong to our self-proclaimed classification. It means there can’t be a meeting of minds and hearts, and that, by extension, peaceful coexistence is a mere myth.
 
Let’s go back about three centuries from Ann Boleyn’s wearing a mask to the time of Ramon LLull (1232-1315).* This famous Catalan mystic was a well-traveled writer who influenced both his contemporaries and those who came after him. Ramon had a mission: He wanted people to understand one another, even to the point of using a common language. He believed that in commonality humans could find peace and harmony. Ramon’s goal was to invent or discover Ars inveniendi veritatis (“the art of finding truth”). He spread his philosophy, his  Ars, from the Iberian peninsula to the Middle East and across northern Africa. He wanted to unite Muslims, Christians, and Jews in language and thinking.
 
Of course, he failed. All of us—all groups—still huddle in closed groups, some even suggesting that someone who is not genetically Asian, for example, would have no right to wear Asian style clothing, as was the charge against a Caucasian Utah senior who wore a “Chinese” dress to a prom in April, 2018.** Think about that in this context: King James II of Aragon followed Llull’s principles and established a Majorcan school for the study of Oriental languages so that Llull’s  Ars could reach more people. And think of this: Ramon Llull was stoned to death. And for what? Trying to unify people of different perspectives and languages? 
 
So, those who have sought unification like Ramon Llull have not achieved their goal. Women who sought equality have not achieved their goal. Actors and actresses have no right to pretend even when they are sympathetic to those whose lives they portray. Drama is dead. Literature is dead. Sympathetic and empathetic emotions are dead. Humor and pathos are dead. Thinking is dead. Unity of humans, regardless of their gender or self-designated classification, is dead. 
 
Is there some strange irony here? Scarlett Johansson played a totally “transformed” human in Lucy. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that she just didn’t undergo a sex change; she underwent a “total” change. And, maybe in yet another irony, Scarlett, who played Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl, lost her head acting position in the movie she was forced to abandon.  
 
 
*Also known as Raymond Lully, he was born in Majorca.
 
**There’s a story on it in the Washington Postif you care to look it up.

Have you noticed that in retrospect almost every conversation might have “gone better”? Only on some occasions do we say “the perfect thing.” Ah! Revision. Would it were prevision. Makes me wonder whether or not my attitude toward most past conversations should be subjunctive. After all, changing what I said in the past is impossible and irrealis. 
 
Alas! In many of our off-the-cuff remarks, in quick responses, and during verbal attacks, most of us say what we later wish we could resay. And then there’s the faulting of others for “not saying what should have been said.” Of course, “should have been said” is an order; “might have been said” is an alternative. 
 
“Well, when you were talking to him, why didn’t you tell him that he can’t just lay a guilt trip on you every time you go shopping. You were with him. Why didn’t you mention his nights with his friends or days on the golf course? You should have told him.” Or, “You had the meeting with the politician. Why didn’t you ask him about our potholes?”
 
Every “wish I could have thought of that” and “wish I had said that” is based on an unreal condition, and advice given to others about “what they should have said” is similarly unreal. What good does saying “If I had been there, I would have said” do? What purpose does it serve other than to cast some feelings of guilt or regret for what was “unsaid”?
 
Do you find it interesting that our brains allow us to handle both reality and unreality as though they were equal? Unreal conditions pervade our perspective all the time. “If I were to win the lottery, I would….” Even more interesting is that each of us has a better chance at winning the lottery than we have of changing what we said or behaving as we did. Changing the past is the ultimate “unreal condition,” the ultimate subjunctive.

Our knowledge diet can have the same effects as our food diets in an affluent “educated” society: We can become fat on accepted “facts” and lazy, our minds apparently satiated with all (we think) we know. “Too bad the ancients didn’t have all the knowledge we have at our disposal,” we think. “Wonder how they managed with minds deprived of the essential knowledge nutriments on which we have grown so wise?”
 
On 7/4/2018, I published a blog in which I noted the discovery of a distant planet doesn’t amount to much noteworthiness because getting details on that celestial body would remain only a distant and largely unreachable goal. Ross 128 b is very far away by comparison with Earthbound and nearby objects, though in astronomical measurements, it is fairly close by. Now, I feel like one of those people who said heavier-than-air machines would never fly or like someone overweight person discovering a new diet book at the bookstore. 
 
As funding for a complex of telescopes linked as interferometers becomes available, a new technological advance will give us an unprecedented look at the sky, revealing details that were lost in the cruder resolution available today.* So, maybe the discovery of Ross 128 b will, in fact, yield new knowledge of a specific nature, possibly even revealing that the planet can, or even does, support life of some kind. 
 
And that’s not the only “egg on my face.” Because I’m not a paleoanthropologist, I don’t pay very close attention to the up-to-date discoveries made by field researchers—except when such discoveries make the international news or I stumble on one of their professional journals. But paleoanthropological advances are just a stone tool’s or ancient tooth’s discovery away, and such discoveries make me ponder the depth of our hominid and hominin history. The 2005 discovery of Homo naledi, for example,made me realize that hominins might have had some kind of “religion” because the South African cave bones were H. naledi ’s only, possibly—but not assuredly—purposefully emplaced in some sort of burial spot.** Previously, I had dismissed that level of mentality and socialization in organisms outside the lineages of Neanderthals and present-day humans. Now, the discovery in China of stone tools dating to more than two million years ago makes me wonder about my accepting earlier ideas about human development.*** Sure, I knew about chimps and birds using “tools,” but the finding that some predecessor primate chipped away hard stone for a specific purpose in Asia revealed the level of and limitation of my knowledge. I have a suspicion that even the “experts” were dismayed that their pantries of artifacts lacked such tools until 2018. 
 
Apparently, both technology and discovery will continue to humble the proud and bring low those who cling to what they know. The ostensibly ancient site at Meadowcroft near Avella in western Pennsylvania and other such sites around the world should be a lesson that we have much to learn about the distribution of people, their histories, and their ancient itineraries.*** In other words, regardless of how much we think we know, we always seem to discover more.
 
The point should be clear. We will always be on the cusp of new knowledge, and we can’t take the position that the highly respected and brilliant Albert Michelson seemed to hold in 1894 that “it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice.” Just 11 years later, Einstein published his papers on special relativity, the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and mass-energy equivalence (E = mc^2), all of which put many of Michelson’s “grand underlying principles” in the garbage can. 
 
So, yes, I need to keep an open mind and consider that “most of the grand underlying principles” of any field of knowledge might need some tweaking (or overturning) and that I don’t know what I don’t know. And I guess I should apply that openness to what I don’t know about other people, also. If nothing else comes from having to change one’s mind because of the revelation of something previously unknown, I can learn the lesson that all humans should nourish themselves on a diet of humble pie.
 
*See among other articles, “Very Large Array” (located at Socorro, NM) on the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s website at https://public.nrao.edu/telescopes/VLA/; and articles on the LoFAR Array in Chile, the Murchison Widefield Array in western Australia, and the KAT7 & MeerKAT in Northern Cape, South Africa.
** “Homo naledi: new species of ancient human discovered, claim scientists” and similar articles. The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new-species-of-ancient-human-discovered-claim-scientists
***Zimmer, Carl. “Archaeologists in China Discover the Oldest Stone Tools Outside Africa,” The New York Times, Science, online at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/11/science/hominins-tools-china.html and other articles on the discovery.
**** Meadowcroft Rockshelter in numerous online articles and a book, but a good introduction can be found on Wikipedia. The discovery threw into doubt the primacy of the Clovis culture and pushed the settlement of North America back by millennia. 

Ortho  derives from the Greek for “right.” Doxy derives from the Greek for “opinion.” Note that many claim to have the “right opinion” and ostracize those who disagree. Almost everyone appears to proclaim an orthodoxy that others “should” follow. There’s a danger to freedom in that practice. As Ben Franklin wrote, “There is no one orthodoxy which is the enemy of democracy. All of them are.”

Do you hold an intractable orthodoxy? Do you make exceptions to your orthodoxy when you apply it to your own beliefs and behaviors, but maintain that orthodoxy with regard to the beliefs and behaviors of others? 

From the outset, let’s get this straight. When Einstein said, “Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott,  aber boshaft ist er nicht,” he wasn’t making a religious statement as much as he was making a philosophical one. Translated variously, the statement yields, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not,” but there are other versions.* Einstein believed the world was knowable, that what occurs or occurred, occurs or occurred for an identifiable reason that we have the potential to discover. He saw the world as subject to discovery, a world in which phenomena are the product of previous phenomena, a determined world. Thus, the “God does not play dice with the universe” statement attributed to Albert. 
 
Albert just couldn’t accept a universe that had randomness and unfathomable mystery about its physical makeup. Essentially, he was disturbed by his own invention of quantum mechanics because it resulted in “uncertainty.” Add in the consequences of relativity, and Einstein’s “new” science meant that black holes not only existed, but that they also swallowed both matter and information. What goes into a black hole can’t be retrieved in any determined way, and if anything comes out of a black hole, it is beyond predictability, a point also made by Stephen Hawking.** There’s much we seemingly can’t determine, but that’s not an argument that nothing is determined. 
 
Einstein gave permission to Professor Oswald Veblen to use his statement over a fireplace in a new math building, and then later sent a further statement about its meaning: “Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.”*** In both the original form and in Einstein’s explanation, there lies a revelation about how most people, even probably most scientists, rely on mystery to explain mystery and how we all—or most of us—come back to some degree of teleology in our explanations. “Nature hides” shows us that outside of mathematical formalism, we are awash in a sea of teleological verbiage. 
 
Take the commonly heard expressions about “natural” disasters that incorporate some teleology. We’re always at a loss for explanation when we suffer a personal loss. Destruction, injury, and death by natural events elicit attempts to find meaning or to tie intention to place or event. For example, in answering questions about the eruption of Kilauea she was monitoring, Jessica Ball, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said, "The volcano is doing what it wants to... We're reminded what it's like to deal with the force of nature."**** “Doing what it wants to?” 
 
Why the personification of a volcano? Why give it intention even if the “intention” is an unintended consequence of casual language and not causality? Ball, I think, would probably say that she merely meant that every volcano is a product of forces acting on matter and that its eruption along a fissure is the result of magma rising beneath Kilauea and randomly breaking through a weak spot.  She would also note that magma is there because the Pacific Tectonic Plate is moving over a hotspot, a deeply rooted mass of molten and semi-molten material that contains volatiles. In other words, there’s a cause, an identifiable cause. The movement of the plate and the location of the hot spot determine the volcano’s growth and activity. The specific eruption from a fissure isn’t predictable, but the eruptive nature of the volcano is. Kilauea does what it does because it is what it is, a surface vent for a hot spot magma chamber. We know why it exists and why it erupts. Mystery solved, at least the big part of the mystery is solved. Maybe when we have better technologies like improved seismic tomography, we’ll even be able to say which fissures will erupt, how much they will spew, and even when they will erupt—but I doubt that. There are too many hidden variables.
 
You witness hidden variables play out almost daily in your life, don’t you? That’s one of the reasons that I try—but often fail—to take my own advice: “What you anticipate is rarely a problem.” We can’t anticipate the effects of hidden variables, such as weaknesses in rocks that split to become fissures that under pressures from escaping volatiles allow lava to spew onto the surface and destroy homes. What if those weaknesses begin as microcrystalline fractures? There’s a level of detail we will never reach, both in Nature and in our personal lives. And in the absence of such details and in retrospect with regard to a past event—like an eruption or a house fire—we look for some explanation, for something, some act, some force, some cause, that determined the event. We might not speak teleologically on purpose, but in identifying causes or ascribing them, we exhibit a deterministic view of the universe. 
 
We desire identifiable causes. “My house burned down. God is giving me a test,” or, “I know there is a greater purpose that I just can’t see.” And just as we hear such statements from those who have suffered personal tragedies, so we also, regardless of any faith or lack thereof, have a desire “to explain.” A world without explanation, a world without information, isn’t a world most of us easily accept. Maybe Sartre and some other existentialists and maybe some avowed atheists today say they “believe” the world is meaningless, but then, in my observations, I see them act in “meaningful ways” or argue “meaningfully.” In a world that is “meaningless,” why seek meaning? Note that those who argue for meaninglessness proclaim themselves “rational” and their arguments “meaningful.” So, obviously, for them the idea of meaninglessness applies to whatever “part” of the universe and existence they determine is “meaningless.”
 
In the meantime, we hear people ask, “Why me?” Surely, anyone who claims to be a “purely rational scientist” or an atheist could never ask such a question. The only answer they can give that remains true to an indeterministic world (or life) is that in all the possible events that could occur, such as a personal tragedy, there’s a probability that one such event could happen “to me.” That puts such “believers” into one of two categories: 1) Right place, right time or 2) Wrong place, wrong time. 
 
Is the universe still mysterious? Is life still mysterious? Of course. Do the quantum physicists have a point when they speak of “uncertainty,” even if what they generally are referring to is a measurement of position and momentum? Even when they refer mostly to a “probability” associated with a “wave function” identified by mathematical points and discrete (discontinuous) units? Describing the physical universe might now be a matter of mathematical formalism as far as physicists are concerned, but do they apply the same indeterminism to their daily lives? How does that principle of probability and indeterminism apply, for example, to rearing of children, handling of relationships, and assessing truth, all of which require an uninterrupted continuum in our minds? How do people act in the practice of living regardless of their avowed philosophical stand on a world that they deem to be either deterministic or indeterministic, continuous or discontinuous? What if the believer accepts Augustine of Hippo’s notion that the Creator created the probability and possibility for forms to exist and then, as the Deists of the eighteenth century thought, simply set such a universe in motion to tick like a wound clock? An indeterministic world is discontinuous, whereas a deterministic world is continuous. 
 
“Malicious He is not,” might be a statement acceptable to both believer and nonbeliever. The optimistic believer desires an explanation of “things as they are” on the basis of a benevolent God. The nonbeliever believes the universe is indifferent in its hidden variables and probabilities, but not purposefully malicious.***** For the latter, “things happen” because they probably can happen. But isn’t that a kind of masked determinism if there are hidden variables, workings of the “clock” hidden in the mechanism inside?******
 
Can we really apply the probability and discreteness of the micro-world, the quantum world, where the “spin” of a subatomic particle seems to change in “steps,” rather than in a continuum of slowing down or speeding up? Hawking uses the analogy of a spinning top that to our eyes gradually slows. Quantum spins change in little jerks from one spin to the next. We act in the macro-world of our everyday lives in ways that seem continuous, believing in some kind of determinism in which the past affects the present and the present affects the future. And if determinism is at work in a world of continuous causes and effects, what or who determines? 
 
So, example: A scuba diver enters the ocean, a seemingly continuous medium. An unpredicted discrete particle comes along; a shark appears and bites. The rescue team asks, “Why did you swim where there were sharks?” The expiring diver responds, “I didn’t think there was a chance of an encounter; the water was clear, and everywhere I looked was shark free.” The relatives ask, “Why him, Lord? Why us?” A vacationing marine biologist on the beach asks, “When will people learn that entering the water is like throwing dice?” You read about the shark attack in the next day’s paper, and then you respond with your own question, “…?”
 
What you ask indicates your philosophical stand on a universe that is either or both continuous or discontinuous that is either or both deterministic and indeterministic. 
 
 
*Isaacson, Walter.Einstein: His Life and Universe. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007, p. 297.
** http://www.hawking.org.uk/does-god-play-dice.html
***Einstein to Oswald Veblen, Apr. 30, 1930, AEA 23-152. Pais 1982, p. 114, as quoted by Isaacson (Einstein, see * above) on p. 298.
****Sylvester, Terray and Jolyn Rosa, “Nature: Scientists defy ‘force of nature’ to unlock secrets of Hawaii volcano,” Reuters, July 8, 2018, online at https://www.yahoo.com/news/feature-scientists-defy-force-nature-unlock-secrets-hawaii-101351141.html
*****The “callous indifference” John Stuart Mill refers to in his essay “Nature” (see my essay entitled “Pillow Cases, Chins, and Your Place in Nature,” posted on 7/6/2018).
******Gosh! Even a clock seems to throw us into a quandary: What keeps the time, the slow unwinding of the spring mechanism or the second hand’s 60-per-minute discrete jumps or ticks?

Paleontologists recognize their science is as much one of gaps as it is of fossils. It’s not easy to become a fossil. An organism dies. It decays. Scavangers do their work. Hard parts go missing, become mineralized, or fall apart. Environments change. Gaps become fertile ground for imagination and assumption. Paleoanthropologists have the same problem. Take the last half dozen years or so as an example. Homo naledi became a news item that drew interest similar to the previous hoopla over Homo floresiensis, the “Hobbit” that lived an island life. What to make of both? What to assume? 
 
We’re always dealing with gaps of one sort or another. And that’s because we live in a universe that seems to be simultaneously continuous and discontinuous. Take naledi, for example. Now estimated to have lived from more than 200,000 years ago to less than that, the species appears to provide another look into human evolution. Yet, there’s much about the fossil group that we don’t know. One of those gaps centers on why H. naledi ’s fossils seem to be aggregated in a cave largely without any other animal fossils. We can, at this time, only fill in the gaps with conjecture.
 
Did H. naledi  bury the dead by tossing them or carrying them into South African caverns called Rising Star? Was the aggregation purposeful in the same way that H. sapiens buries its dead in cemeteries? Was there a practical reason for the aggregation, such as tossing bodies into places where they wouldn’t attract scavangers and predators that might attack the living H. naledi? Did an ethics or religion serve as motivation? Maybe the paleoanthropologists will stumble on other H. naledi  sites that will resolve the question. In the meantime, we have gaps and conjectures.
 
And like those gaps associated with our ancient lineage, each of us is a mix of continuity and discontinuity. Each of us suddenly remembers an incident long gone through the brain’s random explorations of its past. We recognize gaps in our own existence; yet, we believe we are an example of continuity, the same person “more or less” over the course of our lives. That “more or less,” however, indicates some bias in our own fossil record. 
 
The story of H. naledi ‘s discovery serves as an analog for our own study of those around us. An accidental find by two spelunkers, the fossils of H. naledi  were difficult to retrieve. The paleoanthropologist directing the project had to recruit people to squeeze through narrow passages in the cave complex to retrieve the bits and pieces of bones. He could study up close only what they brought to the surface. Now, extend that bias in your own life to the bias in others’ lives. Our fossils are memories buried deep in the narrow passageways of axons. If you have partial memories, they have partial memories in the recesses of a cave system more complex than any visited by spelunking paleoanthropologists. Your past and theirs are skeletons with missing bones, missing details. They can enter the cave of memory to retrieve what they can to give you to study, but you can only go on what they bring up from the cave floor to assess for motive and meaning. 
 
Self-assessment is a difficult task that requires in the absence of all the details a good bit of assuming. Assessment of the lives of others is an even more difficult task. We can use our knowledge of people as a guide, but we can never quite get past those unfillable gaps, particularly when the present and false memories can further prejudice our conclusions as is the case with fossil sites that have been disturbed in the time between burial and discovery.  
 
It seems that we are often just as much at a disadvantage in our analysis of motives as paleonathropologists are with regard to motives behind H. naledi‘s aggregated remains. Once again, I’ll note that assumptions and axioms appear to play a key role in our interpretations of the world and people around us, but that dependence on assumptions and axioms shouldn’t keep us from continuing to explore the cave of our own or of others’ memories in search of motives. 
 
*Greshko, Michael. “Did This Mysterious Ape-Human Once Live alongside Our Ancestors?” National Geographic ,May 9, 2017. Online at https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/05/homo-naledi-human-evolution-science/ 
Netflix now has Nova’sDawn of Humanity, the story of H. naledi ‘s discovery, Online at https://www.netflix.com/watch/80080271?trackId=14170286&tctx=3%2C1%2Ce7ecfae2-8459-4a95-bb9b-b21c22ecab93-10970539%2C1ef6a308-0d85-4c17-a3ab-424248b7420f_3165660X3XX1530966612423%2C1ef6a308-0d85-4c17-a3ab-424248b7420f_ROOT
Lee Berger is the paleoanthropologist and lead researcher of H. naledi  fossils.
 Berger, Lee R.; et al. (10 September 2015). "Homo naledi, a new species of the genus Homo from the Dinaledi Chamber, South Africa"

"The arguments about your place in the Big Scheme of Things have not really changed much, especially during the last two centuries. Are you or are you not 'natural'? Are you or are you not a part of Nature? Are you, because of your intellect and tool use, 'outside' of Nature? Does any attempt to place you 'outside' Nature rely on oversimplifications of complex relationships?"
 
I note by way of further introduction, “Bees appear to have first appeared during the Cretaceous, the period when flowering plants also first appeared. Apparently, the appearances were interrelated, but it is a chicken-or-egg story. Plants that needed to be pollinated and pollinators that needed nectar did, of course, and still do, have an important life-sustaining relationship. There are other pollinators, so it’s easy to come down on the side of plants first, bees second. Obviously, there’s some synchronicity, some conjunction of the stars, some fulfillment of universal life force at work in symbiotic relationships, or so many might argue. And there’s something else. We see bees on flowers and we think, ‘That’s Nature.’ We see an expansive landscape, mountains and whatnot, and we say, “That’s Nature.” We look at a city, and we say, “That’s not ‘natural.’ That’s ‘artificial.’
 
“But what about pillow cases? Did they arise before humans developed chins? How could one ever encase a pillow without a chin? It might be an unresolvable question, though no one has ever found the remnants, a fossil, of a 200,000-year-old pillow case, or even a pillow of that antiquity. We do have ancient mandibles, however, very, very old mandibles, older than any antique pillow case.  So, it’s easy to come down on the side of chins first, pillow cases second. And chins are ‘natural,’ aren’t they?”
 
“There are organisms without them, hagfish, for example. What, is this your attempt at humor?” you ask. “Pillows and pillow cases are definitely not part of Nature; they are artificial.”
 
Stumbling to get back to some coherent thought, I add, “Actually, I think it makes a point about evolution and the interrelationships among organisms and even our place ‘in’ Nature. 
 
“Every once in a while, someone or some group becomes super obsessed with saving the environment and labels humans as the ‘enemies of Nature.’ Whereas it is definitely true that humans have caused extinctions and altered ecologies, it is also true that humans evolved the way other organisms evolved, unconsciously. Extinctions have occurred throughout the history of life. That’s not a justification for 19th-century train travelers stopping to randomly shoot bison in the American West, but it’s a note that other organisms and ‘natural’ processes have also caused extinctions. 
 
“With regard to humans, there wasn’t a Neanderthal who said, ‘I think I’ll become human.’ Individuals, you’ll recall from biology lessons, don’t evolve; species evolve. So, conscious evolution has been out of the hands of individuals, though we’re good at hybridization. Evolution exhibits an unconscious randomness at work. No one over the past 300,000 years has created a new hominid species though we could argue that various genocides restricted the gene flow. You might have in your genetic makeup the makings of a new species, but you won’t live to know that you do, and most likely, no descendant species will be able to identify you as the species ‘founder.’ Even those who play around with the human genome might make a ‘monster’ but not a species. Your life and those of your contemporaries might also give rise to some companion species, also, one connected just as bees are to flowers (and vice versa). 
 
“If you walk through the home décor section of Macy’s, you’ll see pillows, pillow cases, sheets, bedspreads, duvets, and shams. You can ask yourself whether or not anyone you know is pillow-less or pillow-case-less. No? Everyone you know has a pillow? Every pillow in a case?
Yet, there are all those pillows and pillow cases in Macy’s, and pillow makers and pillow case makers keep making more.* It’s as though there is a ‘bloom’ just like the algal blooms of the ocean that occur unexpectedly here or there and that kill fish and drive whales to beach themselves. Something in the nature of supply and demand will eventually bring pillow users and pillow makers into near equilibrium just as a dwindling supply of nutrients or a change of seasons and temperatures leads to the demise of the algae. It is possible for pillow cases to outnumber by an unknown quantity chins that rest on pillows, just as there can be more flowers than bees. Maybe there’s a comfort and cleanliness gene that drives us naturally to make both pillows and pillow cases.” 
 
“I’m still not following. Where are you going with this?” you query.
 
“There are complex relationships among organisms, including prey supply and predator demand, and most attempts to identify them lead to a reductionism. That’s especially true when we consider our supposed ‘role’ in some ‘Grand Scheme,’ in ‘Nature,’ for example. That is, in ‘Nature’ with that capital ‘N.’ I’m thinking about the rise of environmentalism that extends to blaming humans for the destruction of natural settings or, if you wish, ecological units. That kind of thinking places you and me ‘outside’ Nature. We see reports all the time that we are ‘destroying’ Nature, altering it. And we are proliferating at seeming Malthusian rates: Seven billion of us! Haven’t the ‘experts’ estimated that Earth has a ‘carrying capacity’ that limits the sustainable population of humans to under 35 billion? What happens when we get close to that number? What happens when the chins outnumber the pillow cases?”
 
“But we ARE altering Nature,” you say. 
 
“And when you say that, do you imply that we are separate from Nature? Or, do those who say humans are altering the planet, as in ‘global warming,’ imply a separation between Nature and us? Are we changing the planet?
 
“Yes. And haven’t bees also altered Nature? Haven’t plants? It’s not just the organisms with chins. All organisms alter the nonorganic environment; all organisms have the potential to alter other organisms. Where were holes before worms evolved? All burrowing animals alter the substrate on which or in which they live. Burrowers have been altering their substrate for at least a half billion years.”
 
“So?”
 
“Hey, I’m not the first to bring up the subject that humans are somehow separate from Nature and ‘invasive.’ You can go back to John Stewart Mill’s nineteenth-century essay on Nature to get the essence of the separation problem.** There are 1) those who want to be ‘one with Nature,’ an ideal of Romantic poets and 2) those who want to use Nature to further the needs of humans. That’s a longstanding division since you can read about ‘man’s dominion’ in ancient scriptures. The question goes back to bees and flowers and pillow cases and chins. Did they evolve somehow in conjunction for an apparent mutualism? Did humans not evolve as every other organism evolved, fitting in, in the eyes of extreme environmentalists, at least briefly in the world ecology and only now in the deep tropical rainforests, where tribes live ‘naturally’? Yet, there are those who claim that humans ‘are THE problem’—whatever that means. Remember the cry for ‘zero population growth’ a few decades ago and still made by some?  
 
“But I mentioned Mill. In ‘Nature’ he writes, ‘Everything in short, which the worst men commit either against life or property is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural agents.’ He uses hurricanes as an example. And he says that whereas humans might have some feelings for or against their destructive ways, Nature injures or destroys with ‘callous indifference.’ So, we alter and destroy, and ‘Nature’ in general alters and destroys. And then some new organisms evolve to fit into the altered environment. Look what photosynthesizers did to the atmosphere that supported anaerobic life-forms a couple of billion years ago. 
 
“Did you know that some people believe humanity is the enemy of Nature? Murray Bookchin expresses it this way: 
 
Implicit in deep ecology is the notion that a ‘Humanity’ exists that accurses the natural world.
 
“Bookchin, who probably owns at least one pillow case for every pillow he uses, recognizes that humans belong. As he writes, ‘[Nature] is not viewed [by ‘deep ecologists’] as an evolutionary development that is cumulative and includes the human species.’*** 
 
“Whew! That means I am as much a part of Nature as the common worm. It changes its environment. I change mine.”
 
“But you’re ignoring the widespread destruction that humans cause,” you argue.
 
“No. And I don’t favor destruction when it is avoidable. I would love to see a live Dodo or Elephant Bird. But I also don’t side with those who regard the rest of Nature as superior to or even equal to humanity. In many instances, humanity has improved upon Nature. What did people put their heads on before there were pillows? Rocks? Piles of dirt? Nothing? Just letting their necks bend till they became stiff? Look, bees might have aided the evolution of flowers—and vice versa—but bees didn’t invent flowers. Someone a long time ago said, ‘I’m going to invent a soft bunch of something for my head.’ Someone else said, ‘I’m going to invent a case I can rewash to keep dirt from accumulating in my headrest and, consequently, on my head.’ Inventing. It’s what we do better than any other form of Nature because every other ‘improvement’ is the result of a rather unpredictable and often slow evolutionary process. We evolved with certain abilities. Yes, we can destroy on purpose and destroy without design. We can’t anticipate every outcome. 
 
“But consider worldwide efforts to ‘repair’ Nature. That’s not something Nature would do. Nature acts, as Mill writes, with ‘callous indifference’ when it destroys. ‘Nature’ doesn’t ‘care’ about a lost species or ecology. Erupting volcanoes don’t care that they wipe out whole forests. Floods don’t care about what they drown. ‘Nature’ might provide us with scenic views, but it also kills indiscriminately. 
 
“Picked up a dead woodpecker from my deck this morning. It flew into one of my large glass windows that reflect the trees around my house. Am I to blame for killing the woodpecker? Then, is a gopher to blame when a galloping wild horse accidently breaks a leg as it steps into the gopher’s hole?
 
“There’s an invasive reductionist thinking in almost every aspect of our lives these days—maybe in past days, also. Our relationship with ‘Nature’ is complex, but so is every other organism’s relationship. How far do the reductionists go? Bookchin notes David Ehrenfeld labels the smallpox virus an ‘endangered species.’ As Bookchin says, maybe ‘deep ecologists’ like Ehrenfeld should preserve the virus by keeping it in his blood.
 
“Let’s end with a note on the almost unfathomable complexity of relationships.  Science Advances Research  online site contains an article entitled ‘An herbivore-induced plant volatile reduces parasitoid attraction by changing the smell of caterpillars.’****  It contains the following statement:
 
Herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs) can mediate tritrophic interactions by attracting natural enemies of insect herbivores such as predators and parasitoids (Abstract).
 
“In short, plants are autotrophic, caterpillars are herbivores, and certain parasites are carnivores. There’s a tri-trophism at work, and in a complex relationship, the caterpillars avoid the volatile indole that they cause a plant to release unless the parasites are present. When the parasites are around the caterpillars seem to use the plant compounds to change their ‘smell,’ reducing the effect of parasites. Now, that’s complex very complex. And that’s the way ‘Nature’ works, somewhat heuristically as one organism or process affects organisms in the local ecology in a kind of trial-and-error approach. 
 
“But of course, we humans are capable of conscious heuristics, though we, like all the other life-forms, are also subject to callous indifference, such as the stray cosmic ray that strikes our DNA or the per-chance encounter with a virus. And we’re also subject to runaway ‘blooms,’ both ‘natural’ blooms and supposedly ‘artificial’ blooms like all those pillow cases in Macy’s. 
 
“Think about that the next time you change your pillow case. We all know that mites are ubiquitous and that washing one’s pillow cases reduces their number. We also know that in using pillows and pillow cases, we have provided a new environment for mites to flourish. You have choices: Be completely ‘natural’ by laying your head on a rock; be somewhat ‘natural’ by using pillows and pillow cases without washing them because it would decimate the mite population; or be as completely ‘artificial’ as you can be by bleaching your pillow cases  to kill mites even if it means accepting a world in which you consciously attempt to destroy a mite ecology and a world that is overrun by more pillow cases than there are chins."  
 
  
 
*The MyPillow company and other pillow companies keep making more pillows, necessitating more pillow case makers to make more pillow cases.
**Mill, John Stuart Mill, “Nature.” 
***Bookchin, Murray. “Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology,” in Pojman, Louis P. Ed. Environmental Ethics, Thomson/Wadsworth, 2005, pp. 212-222. Originally in Socialist Review, Vol. 88, no. 3 (1988) pp. 11-29.
****Science Advances Research Article online at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthias_Erb/publication/325190151_An_herbivore-induced_plant_volatile_reduces_parasitoid_attraction_by_changing_the_smell_of_caterpillars/links/5afe699e458515e9a5764ba0/An-herbivore-induced-plant-volatile-reduces-parasitoid-attraction-by-changing-the-smell-of-caterpillars.pdf

The European Space Agency has discovered yet another planet, this one a ball about 11 light years away and labeled Ross 128 b.* It’s very close to its sun, but that sun is a stable red dwarf, so the planet might not be baked. Too bad, we’ll never really know much about it. Can’t get there. And that’s about it, folks! Have a nice day.
 
Really, the reality is that we are virtually alone because the distances among stars and planets are great. And you aren’t going to warp spacetime and travel faster than light. You’ll have to plod along, even if you go a million miles per hour. Let’s see, if I multiplied correctly (186,000 mph  X 60 seconds X 60 minutes), at a million mph you would fall short of light’s one-hour trip by 668,600,000 miles, a distance termed one light hour. That newly discovered Ross 128 b is about 65.5 trillion miles away (11 X 5,869,713,600,000 miles, or 11 times one light year). Even the closer Proxima Centauri b, which is about half that distance, is too far away to image in detail. 
 
That distance means we require an artist to depict the planet. Our most powerful telescopes, both radio and light receivers, can’t give us a photographic image we’re used to seeing. We get some data. The artist turns it into some image based on astrophysicists’ best guesses and the painter’s imagination.
 
We’re very far away from everything outside the Solar System, and even Earth’s sister planets require difficult travel, so far so difficult that we haven’t sent anyone to Mars. We—you specifically—are isolated physically. You are physically alone in the universe except for the crowd of similar and near-similar organisms on this planet. But the astronomers and astrophysicists tell us that the discovery of these distant worlds is “significant.”
 
“There’s nothing new there,” you say. “We all know that Earth is isolated from the uncounted other planets in the galaxy and throughout the universe. I get it. What’s your point?”
 
There are two ways of looking at our isolation. First, we can see the vastness around us and say we are insignificant. We live on a little planet that circles a sub-average star of middle age. Even small variations in that star’s energy output can makes us kaput in a blink, and as far as we know, no conscious being on some other world would care. We have a very tenuous hold on existence. If the universe is 13.8 billion years old and our planet is 4.6 billion years old, then we’re not only isolated in space, but also in time, specifically, the last 300,000 years. Even if other intelligent beings developed elsewhere, their existence might not coincide with ours—as in Star Wars. Being so isolated in time and space is a depressing set of circumstances for some. Second, we can see the vastness around us and say that because we can somewhat understand the universe, we are its most significant entities. This little planet is, for all our looking, the only place where the universe is conscious of itself. And you, yes you, are the center of that consciousness—at least for now. This moment is special because of those who are presently conscious of it. As long as you are alive, the universe knows it exists. 
 
Some people find despair in the former view of our isolation; some find joy in the latter. What do you find in your isolation? But before you answer, remember that “finding” itself favors the potential for the latter. Insignificance and  significance are both reflections of your consciousness. You don’t need an artist’s depiction of an imagined world. You have an artistic consciousness that literally makes the world around you, as well as Ross 128 b, in your image. You determine significance, and significantly, you also determine  insignificance . So, you have a choice—also an indication of significance—but either way, in despair or in “significance,” you are the artist who depicts the world both far and near.
 
Never being able to travel to another solar system isn’t necessarily a handicap. Maybe other conscious life-forms inhabit the universe. Most likely, they, too, are isolated. No one has yet demonstrated that travel among solar systems is possible for finite individuals. Both Newton and Einstein have instilled in us that the universe probably works the same way everywhere. The thermodynamics of a distant galaxy and solar system are most likely the same thermodynamics that operate locally. And the four fundamental forces in the universe prevail. That’s why we accept an artist’s depiction of a distant world orbiting a red dwarf as reasonable. It’s a “best guess” depiction, but it could only result from a conscious being applying the working of the local universe to the Universe at large. 
 
Maybe there is a canvas on Ross 128 b that depicts your world. You’ll never see that painting. Pick up your canvas and palette; you have worlds to paint and paintings to appreciate. Therein lies, as far as you will ever know, the demonstrable significance of a distant world: It lies in you.   
 
 
* https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2017/nov/15/potentially-habitable-world-found-just-11-light-years-away-ross-128-b

Highways. Seems we can’t live without them. The Romans were experts at building them. The famous Appian Way, for example. So were the Incas. Now us. It’s part of the need to connect and to transport all that we make. Highways also connect us to the past. Can’t build one in the United States without an archaeological survey. Don’t want to desecrate a significant burial ground or the site of a historic battle, politically significant event, or even a birthplace of someone like Abraham Lincoln. And we build highways everywhere, from coastal lowlands to mountain passes. The latter are germane here. The Pan American Highway allows us to travel along some high elevations, such as those of the Atacama Desert in Chile.  
 
Get this: Whale bones locked in rocks standing 1,800 meters (6,000 ft) above sea level. Remember Darwin. He climbed into the Andes way back in the 1830s, saw marine fossils in rocks, and—prior to Wegener and subsequent researchers—concluded that the tall Andes once lay at sea level and below. They had been and were still in the process of uplift and volcanism. Cerro Ballena, “Whale Hill,” falls into that process. What was once a sea level site became the cemetery for beached whales millions of years ago, suspected victims of a poisonous algal bloom. Smithsonian paleontologist Nicholas Pyenson and colleagues hypothesize the algal bloom as a cause of the mass death. How did anyone find the fossils in such an isolated desert? Highway construction. Going into the high mountains meant going into the deep past. The highway was also an avenue through time; it connected us to life-forms now long dead.
 
Poor unsuspecting whales. Same thing happens in our time. Whales, once land animals in their early stages of evolution, return to an environment they can no longer roam. Beached whales: Their plight brings out feelings of compassion and helplessness. How does one drag one of the biggest animals back into the sea? And the feelings extend to other marine mammals. Traveling through Rhode Island with geology and oceanography students a number of years ago, I saw the same feelings emerge in my students. We were the first on a scene of a beached dolphin.
 
The students went to the aid of the animal—or so they thought. Moved by some empathy that can connect many life-forms, including you and your pet dog, they moved in unison to “save” the animal. But two uniformed men stopped them from helping the dolphin. Seems there is a law on the books that says such help is an interference in natural processes. That put some emotional stress on my students. And that incident makes me wonder about the depth of human empathy. How far back does this connection to other mammals—or even other life-forms—go?
 
There weren’t any humans around to witness the beaching at Cerro Ballena when it lay at sea level. So, was there any empathy? Did the beached whales look around at their helpless pod through empathetic eyes? Were there whales unaffected by the algal toxin anxiously swimming offshore, looking at the beaching through empathetic eyes? What are the roots of empathy? Do we see it in elephants as they examine the bones of a dead pachyderm? Do we see it in water buffalo chasing away a pride of lions that are attacking an elephant or another water buffalo?** There weren’t any cameras around millions of years ago to record the event of Cerro Ballena, but we can see what our ubiquitous cameras reveal on YouTube, where people post their observations of one species seeming to show empathy for another species. There’s even a video of water buffalo saving a lion that other lions attacked. Imagine: A lion, the predatory enemy of water buffalo being saved by its prey!  
 
Does empathy derive from defense of life itself? Obviously, I can’t verify that “feeling” is involved in any other species, such as water buffalo. Such a notion wells up from my admitted anthropocentrism, and there are plenty of arguments (and arguers) against any such perspective. I’m pretty sure I saw cross-species empathy in my students. I don’t know whether or not I can interpret a herd of buffalo saving a lion from other lions similarly or validly. 
 
Yet, there’s this inescapable notion that if not all life, then mammal life can be connected by some intangible feeling of mutual care, especially when a video shows some cross-species act that saves or cares for a life in jeopardy. Now, I begin to wonder about those members of my own species who seem to have no similar feelings, such as the gangs and mobs around the world who attack, injure, or even kill the innocent. If I were to see an MS-13 gang member in jeopardy while I know that members of such a gang have been responsible for atrocities, could I empathize? Would I be the water buffalo that saves a lion?
 
What is the depth of my empathy? Would I take the high road of human compassion? And what about you? 
 
*https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/wild-things/algal-blooms-created-ancient-whale-graveyard?mode=magazine&context=1741
**Water buffalo save elephant baby under attack from lions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm7plUOkVk4
Water buffalo attack pride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqxTd995EYE 

“Did you catch all those studies of longevity?”
 
“No, what were they?”
 
“Confusing and contradictory, to say the least?”

“What do you mean?”
 
“Okay, just look at the following headlines from Phys.org.* 
October 5, 2016: ‘Maximum human lifespan has already been reached, researchers conclude.’ 
July 21, 2016: ‘Living past 90 doesn’t doom you to disease, disability.’
June 28, 2017: ‘No detectable limit to how long people can live: study.’
June 28, 2018: ‘Does human life span really have a limit.’
Now, what am I supposed to believe? What if no one resolves the issue until after I’m dead?”
 
“Well, out of the estimated 100 billion or so humans who have ever walked the planet, only about 7 billion of them, including the two of us, are currently walking around, and those pushing walkers don’t have the actuarial tables on their side.”
 
“True, but what with all the modern medicine and specialists, don’t you think that some group down the road is going to live into their 120s or 130s?”
 
“It doesn’t matter what I think. For everyone, the focus is very personal. And for everyone, there’s a chance that the fastest 100-meter centenarian sprinter might trip at the finish line, fall headfirst into a curb, and end that 100-year lifespan in very good health.”
 
“Yeah. I see what you mean. I could make living longer an obsession and get hit by a runaway truck.”
 
“Right. And here’s a personal tale. My parents lived into their mid and late 90s. They lived through the hardships of the Great Depression and World War II (he was a marine who fought in Okinawa). They became part of the postwar economy and the postwar proliferation of processed foods. They both smoked—unfiltered cigs for decades and didn’t quit until they hit their 60s. They ate salami, baloney, and had an occasional alcoholic drink. She didn’t drink water except in coffee. He did walk a mile to work and back, but his job was sedentary. Upon retirement, he played golf and walked the golf course, carrying his own clubs. No real change in diet over those last 35 years or so, but maybe a little less food. His diet included an apple every evening—you know what ‘they’ say about apples and doctors. Go figure. Into their mid and late 90s. So, what am I supposed to conclude? Good genetic makeup? No physical predisposition to cancer except for some removable precancerous skin lesions. Maybe a bit of hypertension but not too much except for her when she was in her 90s? Oh! I forgot, he had a pacemaker inserted when he was about 88, and his eyes and ears needed help doing what they do.”
 
“So, they were exceptions? How many of their contemporaries could they call when they were in their 90s?”
 
“Actually, more than a few. In fact, a surprising number. Just remembered. I saw a black-and-white TV program, maybe a Twilight Zone episode, I can’t remember, in which a guy who looked very old says, ‘I’m an old man. I’m 63.’”
 
“Yup. That sounds about right for the 1950s and early 1960s. So, what are you implying? That we all can live longer, and many people are living longer, than people in mid-twentieth century?”
 
“Yes. But that has nothing to do with the two of us though the proportion of people who are living into their 80s and 90s seems to be increasing. As far as you and I are concerned, someone else’s living nine or more decades is irrelevant unless it’s someone we care about.”
 
“What’s the point of this discussion?”
 
“You can read those articles on longevity and follow the instructions of those who claim to have found the secret to living longer, but there are no guarantees. Jack Lalanne was a fitness and diet guru for most of his adult life; he lived long and he prospered until he caught pneumonia and died. I guess there are actually several points: 1) There are no guarantees, 2) Everyone lives until he or she dies, and 3) This is no one’s practice life. Live long and prosper—while you can.”
 
 
* https://medicalxpress.com/news/2018-06-human-life-span-limit.html#nRlv