Titian put on canvas his interpretation of the moment the young hunter Actaeon chances upon Diana and her maidens bathing by a forest pond. Startled, Diana—though the action is not depicted in the famous painting—splashes water on Actaeon, turning him into a stag. As the Greek myth goes, he flees only to be shot by his own hunting friends who are unaware of his true identity. Hunter became prey because of an accidental intrusion that offended a goddess’s sensibilities but that did her no harm.

For Actaeon, a single unintentional transgression determined the rest of his short life. His own hunting friends suddenly did not recognize their friend. Everyone saw him not as the complex young man, but as a deer to be hunted.

Look around. In a media-driven, social-networking society anyone can become Actaeon. The simplest action, even if accidental, suddenly becomes a worldwide phenomenon that changes forever the perception of a character.

Ever make mistakes? Yes, everyone makes them. Ever turn someone into prey for an accidental intrusion on your sensibilities?

TO MY SEVERAL READERS: THE NEXT NEW BLOG WILL APPEAR ON AUGUST 25. AT THE END OF AUGUST I WILL OPEN A CONTACT SITE FOR A BRIEF TIME TO ELICIT YOUR COMMENTS.

“He who feared he would not succeed sat still.”  Were you ever the one in the chair? Are you still in the chair? Time to stand up. Pride keeps you sitting.

Short anecdote: The old professor was a priest who taught us German. In deference to our professors back then, we stood beside our desks when we were called upon to answer a question. A classmate stood dutifully one time, but, in responding to the old priest, spoke his answer very quietly. “What?” the priest asked. “What are you saying?”

And then with the blunt manner in which he made most of his statements, the old priest said, “It’s pride that’s making you whisper your answer. You’re unsure of your answer, so you think that by whispering it, that somehow, if the answer is wrong, no one will notice. Because of the whisper, you have to say the answer twice or more, unwittingly attracting more attention to yourself just because in the first answer you were afraid you wouldn’t succeed. Pride. That’s what it is. Plain and simple.”

Are you still sitting? Are you still whispering? Does your fear that others will see you fail keep you from trying? Pride. That’s what it is. Plain and simple. 

You might recall that there is no final answer to the square root of two. Even when you try to get an answer, you run up against an unpredictable series going on indefinitely. Although you can get close to a definitive, final answer, you can never reach it.

The square root of two is an analog for relationships. You can figure and refigure, check and recheck your answers, but the very next answer is an unpredictable one. Just when your savings seem to be growing, a recession sets you back. Just when you think you have mastered the intricacies of a game, you hit a slump or twist an ankle. And just when you think you have a person figured out, she or he does something surprising. The square root of two is always there, waiting to surprise you.

Find some joy in unpredictability. You’re human, not a machine. So, when an unexpected number occurs in the sequence, as it most surely will, add it to the series of your life and solve for the next number. The square root of two is an irrational number, meaning that you can’t put it into an exact fraction (99/70 is close, but it doesn’t win a cigar), and such irrationality mimics life and, in particular, relationships.

When the next “unexpected” event crosses your “expectations,” don’t fret; just smile and think, “Hey, it’s the square root of two.”    

Place, as I repeatedly say, is primary. It can also be sacred—even for “nonbelievers.” Because religion mantles the planet, both believers and nonbelievers can identify certain places that some group considers to be sacred: local houses of worship, for example. Internationally recognized “sacred sites” include the Temple Mount (Har haMoria or Harem al Sharif), St. Peter’s Basilica, the Great Mosque of Mecca, the Mahabodhi Temple, Stonehenge, and Varanasi. To those and other religious sites, you could probably add places that have become sacred by virtue of what took place on or near them or what they memorialize. Every country or region has such sacred ground.

For Americans, Gettysburg attracts nearly three million annual visitors, and other Civil War sites also attract large numbers of people. Some Revolutionary War battle sites or events also attract many people, as does the Alamo. At many of these sites people wander through museums with artifacts and walk past monuments to the people who fought for one cause or another, people who gave limbs or life in defense of their cause and who, because of their sacrifice, made the ground sacred. In Washington, D.C. the memorials include the Vietnam War Memorial, where some 50,000 names etched in stone command silence.

Around the world the reverence for sacred ground manifests itself wherever people remember events or people who shaped their culture or country. The sacred ground might even be a sports arena like the Boston Garden or Wrigley Field. In Pittsburgh’s Oakland one can see the remnants of a brick wall preserved by the city because it is the barrier over which Bill Mazeroski hit a World Series winning homerun against the New York Yankees in 1960.

In 1939 a great athlete called the end to his career in Yankee Stadium. Lou Gehrig called him self “the luckiest man.” He had played baseball on ground made sacred by the those who preceded him and those with whom he played. And he was, himself, one of the reasons that Yankee Stadium became “sacred.”

The other day I went to see a baseball game. Parents, grandparents, and friends with coolers filled with snacks, sandwiches, and drinks by their side, sat on aluminum bleachers, on portable lawn chairs, and blankets in the grass to watch teens play a game that Gehrig, one of the games great players, said he was lucky to play. As I watched the boys dive for balls on the dusty infield, make clouds of dust as they slid into bags, and landscape the dirt of the pitcher’s mound or around home plate as they came to bat, I heard someone outside the confines of the field call, “Mom, Mom, Mom.” The call came from the younger brother of one of the players. He had Down Syndrome and was playing in a pile of dirt next to the bleachers. As he dug with his hands, he uncovered a lump of dirt about the size of a basketball. Fascinated by it, he lifted the heavy mass skyward in joy, calling to his mother as he did so.

The event seemed to go largely unnoticed by all because their attention was centered on the sacred ground within the fences and the “heroic deeds” of the players as they struggled for victory. I could not see whether or not the mother responded to his call or his action. Maybe, all present should have noticed. That mass of dirt held high was sacred ground. 

Consider as an example of infused attitude the mental maps of people who never visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The city’s once deserved image of smoke and soot from coke ovens and steel mills still finds its way into the mental maps of out-of-towners. In their imagination, it is the city of potbellied beer-drinking football fans that wave yellow towels at Steelers while they inhale thick, sulfur-rich smog.

In the heyday of steel and coal prior to the establishment of environmental laws, Pittsburgh was indeed the city beneath a shroud of smoke. Just up the Monongahela River from Pittsburgh lies the small river community of Donora, the site of a tragic and infamous smog event caused by an atmospheric inversion in 1948 that killed 20 people and sickened thousands. Word was out: Avoid the steel mill cities and towns like Pittsburgh and Donora. Breathing is an important life process.

In the 1950s smoggy Pittsburgh undertook its own renaissance. Federal and state environmental laws and regulations then reduced the visible smoke in the 1970s and 1980s. Eventually, many of the aging steel mills closed or downsized. All three events changed the place. Its population of laborers declined, and its number of white-collar workers increased. Its universities have flourished, and successive city leaders have initiated additional phases of renaissance, including the reclamation of “brown fields” (the dilapidated industrial sites). In 1985 and again in 2007 the Places Rated Almanac ranked Pittsburgh first among most livable American cities. That ranking does not make it paradise, but it would surprise those with negative mental maps of the city. Now “green fields” with high-tech companies in new buildings have replaced the old steel mills. Yet, the image of smoke and rust remains. The city’s tallest building is made from Core-10 steel, an alloy that is designed to protect itself by rusting, but uninformed visitors could easily mistake the building’s exterior as an example of decay.

Travel through Palm Beach, Florida. It is neat. The ocean is right there. The mansions lie behind gates, hedges, and walls. The streets are 99.99% litter free. Very few signs clutter the community. Many expensive cars line Worth Avenue. Think about the cars for a moment: Rolls Royce, Bentley, Mercedes, Ferrari, BMW, Jaguar, Lexus, and various limos. Think about cars when cost is irrelevant. Most communities are identifiable by their parked cars. Drive through any area and carry away no image other than that of parked cars, and you carry away all the stuff you think you need to know for an economic mental map.

We are often minimalists and caricaturists. Give us a few details, and we’ll map the world. Unfortunately, we accept our minimalist maps as full-blown realities because, in recall, in retrieval from the mental map library, we add details we never surveyed. We add our current attitude to our past maps. We impose the bias of caricature on people and places. So, Palm Beach to the casual observer and the outsider can be represented by a mental map with favorable emotions attached to it.

Neither Pittsburgh nor Palm Beach is, itself, a necessary model for the point here. Numerous cities can serve as examples. When we have little information, we impose details that reveal personal bias and generalization. Often, to the detriment of others we impose those details on the basis of an innate need for reductionism and pattern identification.

Lets use Pittsburgh and Palm Beach figuratively in the knowledge that caricatures are exaggerations that inhibit understanding and limit openness to opportunity. Want a job? Want to find new friends? Want to find nice neighbors? Want to find great universities? What if all these are better served in the area around a “Pittsburgh” than in a  “Palm Beach” area? Yes, a “Palm Beach” might be a great place, but is it a great place for you?  

So, you chip in something of value. Someone else does the same. The amassing treasure, however, is depleted as fast as it accumulates. There’s a payout; so the treasure has to be replenished. With money the scheme ineluctably fails. Ponzi schemes make early investors rich and late investors poor. 

When the treasure is love, however, the Ponzi scheme works. Early investors and late investors alike can profit. Go ahead, make that investment. 

You move even when you sit still. You live on a planet that rotates as it revolves around its star. The star carries it around the galaxy. The galaxy carries it within the local group of galaxies. The local group of galaxies moves in unison toward a distant attractor. Yet, there you sit, physically unable to feel any of this motion: At Earth’s equator the rotation is more than 1,000 mph; the orbital speed of our planet averages nearly 70,000 mph; the sun’s motion around the galaxy is more than 7,000 mph; the galaxy’s motion toward neighboring Andromeda is several hundred thousand mph; and there are other unfelt motions in the mix. Dizzying, isn’t it? No, not really, because you are unaware of the motion. Not even your inner ear is aware. You feel balanced and comfortable in your ignorance of the changes that envelope you.

While all that motion occurs, you move emotionally with the human cosmos, you know, that collection of relatives and friends for whom you care deeply. Like all those celestial bodies, you are caught up in movements of their lives and swept along in unfelt changes until some turbulence or acceleration calls your attention that you are not where you once were. Those once dependent on you have all the while been moving toward independence.

You have choices here. One of those is to accept the movement and realize that it is this very kind of motion that led to your own independence. You can rejoice in discovering change in a human cosmos. You can also marvel that in all the intertwined motions there is a unity that connects you and yours. You travel a great distance with all the “bodies” in your world. As separation occurs, you know that your journey has been fortunate: For a brief time in a vast universe you and others traveled in the same direction in close and interdependent proximity.

You will reach a time to watch them depart to become bright distant objects whose light, though distant, still shines on you and reflects your time together. They will do all right in a changed universe just as you did all right when you broke free from those who traveled with you.

Eventually, you arrive at a time when your own motions can bring you joy just as you found joy when you were bound to the motions of others.   

You can’t help noticing them because they stand in contrast to their human background. They are the tattoos of the mind, and they are superimposed on whatever we all are as members of the same species.

We know we share a commonness of species because of our ability to breed fertile offspring. We know we share some basic human abilities and needs. We know that in a crowd of grasshoppers, elephants, people, and chimpanzees, we can readily pick out the people because of their distinctive shape, posture, and movement. We know that even if we cannot understand one another’s utterances, we can recognize those utterances as language with grammar and syntax.

But then there are those tats. And they come in many forms. Some are colorful and stand out more brightly than others. Some are cut into the skin. Some are noticeable because of their position in a usually exposed area of the body. Tats. Yes. Some of them are burned into the brain, becoming part of mind and manifesting themselves in behavior. Mental tats. Cultural tats. Brands of a code adopted over generations or adopted within a generation, they aren’t an overnight whim etched in skin during a brief drunken visit to a roadside strip mall storefront. No, these are the tats that enable us to distinguish people from people in a crowd of people. They also enable us to distinguish one crowd of people from another crowd.

Tats of the mind take many forms: Religious, political, social, philosophical, and cultural. There is a similarity between tats of the skin and tats of the mind: Both are difficult to remove, and both fade into something slightly different.

Go look at your tats in the mirror. Don’t have any on your skin? Do what you can to see those on your mind. 

Math is a rational enterprise, isn’t it? Pure logic without the encumbrance of words. Reason’s pinnacle. So is science, right? Maybe all of us should devise our life maps on the rational projections afforded by science and math. Live, for example, a statistically happy life. Meet the mean, mode, and median, and then succeed in skewing the curve to an above-average, even superior, lifestyle as defined by what is rational and scientific, and countable in sets. What if, however, the math-science projection has a flaw? In fact, mathematical proofs cheat a little. No one writes all the details of a proof because such writing could go on ad infinitum. Instead, mathematicians use mathematical induction, with lots of implication: One statement implies the next. And now mathematics has evolved to incorporate numbers that are much too big for most of us to understand, like the Monster Group, that is, the 10^55 elements that vertex operator algebra has given us.

What did the ancients like Euclid of Megaris and Euclid of Alexandria do to us?

They didn’t just give us a way to describe geometric figures. They set in motion a way of thinking about the world that has influenced Western thought for more than 2,000 years. They gave us reason as a guide and made the principles of proof the value system we hold dear, not just for understanding shapes like squares and triangles, but for understanding the dots of life. We think in Euclidian terms. We are geometers of life. We prove by constant justification, and we justify by references to axioms, assumptions, and sets. We love to hear summaries of statistics about what people think, what they do, how they live, how they get sick, and how they die. It’s our intellectual inheritance, and, in our brain’s grid cells, a built-in pattern. Except...

Except, as Kurt Gӧdel explained, a “logical” or a “mathematical” system will always be incomplete because it cannot ultimately prove itself. So, when we make an informed and rational decision, we should remember that the system that provided the information and the rationality itself might—rather, probably will—have a basis in ignorance and assumption. We think axiomatically, don’t we? We accept certain axioms, and we go about proving our theorems of life. Take polls and statistics as examples. If you get Lou Gehrig’s disease, you are, statistically speaking, “not long for this world.” Now, think of a person who has that disease, like Stephen Hawking. Famous for his theoretical physics and popularizations of those physics, Hawking got the disease in his twenties. Decades later, he is, as I pen this, still theorizing, writing, and making public appearances. Wasn’t he supposed to die young and unaccomplished?

You are not a number. You could defy any numerical description or statistical projection. Euclid might say “No” from a “reasoned" argument. All the Euclidean thinkers might say, “No, you can’t; no, you shouldn’t; no, you couldn’t.”

You can respond, “Yes, you could, Euclid.”