Politics.
 
In one sense, that word is a standalone comment. Nothing further needed. Simply say the word and from the depths of the brain a reaction emerges in facial expressions, dismissive derision, and vehement argumentation. It’s always been that way. Emperors, kings, and popes have felt the force of the word become reaction: Assassinations, coups, challenges of every kind. Politics, nothing further needed than the word.
 
Politics.
 
The twenty-first century version doesn’t differ in kind from any past political interactions. But in degree? Well, that’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it? For those living in the present and living without respect to history, the politics of the day comprise a “Time of Signs,” an end-of-world-as-we-know-it scenario, maybe even the apocalyptic end. But historically, there are always analogs: The overthrow of the Soviet Union; before that, the overthrow of the Tzar; before that the overthrow of…let’s go way back, the overthrow of Roman emperors like Carausius (293 B.C.), Aemilianus (253 B.C.), Julius Caesar (44 B.C.), Avidius Cassius (175 AD)… in total 28 emperors lived in such politically tumultuous times that they were assassinated. And we could go through the politics of every century during the past four millennia to find similar contentiousness.
 
These times aren’t a “Time of Signs” as some say. I know, you might ask how I could know that. No one, not even the famous Nostradamus, can really read such “signs.” What’s apocalyptic short of an all-out nuclear war or a comet/asteroid impact? Billions of people have been killed in the turmoil of the last 250,000 years. An uncountable number of political leaders lived—and died—in turmoil. For each of them, yes, the times were end times: Personally apocalyptic. But the species continued, even proliferated.
 
Yet, in the politics of every place and every time, people see signs that portend the ominous. Two world wars indicated the widespread nature of modern politics. Maybe more people are aware, and more are stirred emotionally through widespread media, a process that began with gossip, town criers, newspapers, and now electronic media. Read in Asian newspapers about the politics of the Americas; read or view electronically in the Americas about European or African politics. Local politics have become more global over the past century. That’s the sign of the times. And when more people are involved, the chance of greater turmoil increases.
 
Political turmoil. It is the sign of every time. It rarely abates. And that’s evident in political debates.

You know how you can look back and point to key decisions or events that seemed to change the course of your life? Sure, you do. All of us can say, “If I hadn’t done such-n-such, I wouldn’t be where I am today”; “If I hadn’t missed that opportunity, I would be rich.”
 
I’m thinking of Susan Boyle’s first audition on Britain’s Got Talent that I recently saw on YouTube. Had Susan not seized the moment at age 47, she might have remained anonymous, a good voice in a village, maybe occasionally performing in the background for a wedding reception. (Margaret: "Who was that lady singer?" Henry: "There was a singer at the reception?") Her performance was one of those special moments that launched a professional career and worldwide fame. Did she know the significance of that moment at that moment? True, she was elated, but she could not have seen that step one leads down a path of many unforeseen steps along unexpected twists and turns.
 
In your own life, did you know at “that moment” that it was “that moment”? Probably not, even if you were pleased and suspected great (or bad) things to come. It’s in retrospect that we assess any moment’s significance. And that principle applies to today. Are these historic times?

​NOT YET. Will they be among those times that others down the path of time will point to as ultra-significant? You have to live to know.
 
In every political season, the hyperbole rings like a cathedral’s carillon over the rooftops. “These are historic times”; “These are the times that will decide the future”; and similar statements made in every free society.
 
Yet, we truly live the butterfly effect, an incident here or there exploding into a larger context, as in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 that set World War I in motion and cost millions their lives. But aren’t all times times that decide the future? Although we can in our knowledge of history anticipate the possible ramifications of today’s events and actions, we cannot predict their exact probabilities. In our daily lives, we are very much like the physicist who wants to know where the electron is going, but who is limited to saying that it has a probability of being “somewhere” in this vicinity. In the moment, our macro lives mirror the quantum world.
 
So, what are we to conclude? Try this. The future isn’t singular, but it’s also not multiple. There is simultaneously, like Shrödinger’s cat in the unopened box, a future that is both alive and dead. As for a future determined by today’s “moment,” you can hypothesize, but, in reality, you’ll just have to wait to see. Historic times? Aren’t all times potentially historic?

I suppose you consider yourself to be a “free thinker.” And why not? Who can prove otherwise except by showing that your thoughts precisely imitate the thoughts of others, are tethered to their ideas? But if you were pressed to characterize, define, or identify how you are a free thinker, could you? After millennia of “thinking” by other humans, are we not all simply plagiarists? And in asking that question, I suppose you see where this “free-thinking” stuff is going: Free thinking is not free when it repeats in whole or in part thoughts previously thought.
 
Of course, there is another direction for defining “free thinking”: Bucking the trends of the status quo or rejecting the “norms” by which the rest of—or most of—the world thinks and behaves. Behaves? How does behavior fit into the “free-thinking equation”? Well, isn’t behavior an outward manifestation of unconscious and conscious thinking?
 
Is free thinking—if I draw on circumstances around the world in 2020—the product of anarchy or anarchy’s mother? Is the defiance of the irreverent, the satirical, the rebellious, or even the politically incorrect a foundation of free thinking? Or is that foundation based in ingenuity and inventiveness? In artistic creativity? Does free thinking lie in willful and unwavering independence from all groups and philosophies fixed by time? Does it lie in any form of contrarianism? And can free thinking really be “manifested in behavior” that breaks from any and all philosophies or inculcations? Is freedom based on originality?
 
And who are free-thinkers if originality is the measure? Is Plato, who nearly 2,500 years ago laid the foundation for all who followed, or was Plato, I ask, the freest of thinkers because he was, if not the first, then one of the first philosophers? Is Aristotle freer because he broke with some of Plato’s main concepts? Or, in modern times is Heidegger, who sought to “rethink” philosophy and break the bounds of the Greek tradition, a truly free thinker?
 
And where in all of this history of thought and “thinking” do you stand? Are you immersed in a view of the world that goes back to ancient Athens? Are you, like Alexander the Great, merely the pupil of Aristotle, echoing his way of thinking? It was Aristotle, as William Butler Yeats notes, who “played the taws/Upon the bottom of a king of kings” and whose thinking spread through Alexander’s victories across an empire, spreading Hellenism down to our own age.* In playing the taws on his young student/future conqueror’ bum, did Aristotle beat knowledge and a way of thinking into Alexander? Nevertheless, was not Alexander an example of a free thinker when he cut the Gordian Knot?
 
Can we define free-thinking on the basis of individuals who cut the Gordian Knot of past thought, as Copernicus did with Ptolemy, Newton with Aristotle, and Einstein with Newton? Had they remained tethered by a Gordian Knot to past thought, we might still believe in a stationary Earth, an erroneous explanation for relationship among objects in motion, and a separation of time and space.
 
Why should I broach the subject of free thinking? Am I not one of those who similarly classify themselves as free thinkers like you?
 
Actually, no, or at least, not quite. Were I to adopt a label for myself, it would be “analogist,” and not “free thinker.” Sure, there are some aspects of my thinking that differ from others, such as my thinking in the subjunctive mood in the previous sentence (“Were I to…”), but generally, the grammar and syntax of thinking isn’t free, and the subjunctive, even incorrectly used, is on everyone’s tongue (“If I were you…,” an unrealistic, or hypothetical, conditional, usually expressed incorrectly nowadays as “If I was you…”). The mood comes with a subscription to a way of looking at a world that doesn’t exist, the irrealis, shaped by language. Language, despite arguments to the contrary, does influence worldview and serve as the primary mechanism for shared thinking.** In my expressions, I might seem to be a free thinker to someone who never uses the subjunctive mood. My use might indicate that all my “original” thinking, my “free” thinking lies in imaginative hypotheticals. But all of us are constrained by grammar and syntax; all of us toy with hypotheticals and unrealities that bear some semblance in our minds to the theoretical and real that we believe separates us from the masses. I cannot, however I try, “be you.” Were we to communicate solely through the language of mathematics, we might lay claim to a truly real, free and original thinking in every new formulaic expression though math’s symbols have themselves become rather commonplace.
 
Does free thinking entail behavior that veers from widespread cultural practice? In “behavior,” I include fashion, meaning dress, makeup, or body ornamentation as well as lifestyle. Outside of the spoken and written words, behavior is also a kind of language, one that all of us learn to interpret. Behavior, sign language, and body position and movement (body “language”) are outward manifestations of thinking. Could these reveal free thinking? Maybe. Many modern choreographers have astounded audiences with their narratives written in dance. But generally, all the human body has to say through appearance and movement has been said. This morning, for example, I encountered a story online about a female celebrity who has been posing semi-nude on social media during the pandemic. Is she seeking attention? Expressing a thought? Although I have no way of knowing her motive, I assume that she believes her behavior is a mark of free-thinking individual in an otherwise clothed and restricted population. She might, in fact, be demonstrating a “freedom” of sorts; yet, were I to go to the deepest part of the Amazon’s tropical rainforest, I would encounter whole tribes of people who live a life without clothes and think nothing of their commonplace nudity. Free behavior is cultural in a worldwide context; the celebrity’s behavior is quite ordinary outside her western society’s restrictions on public nudity. Is free thinking manifested in any such behavior? Or is her pictorial “statement” nothing more than a juvenile-like defiance as though in her middle age, she has discovered that her sexuality both intrigues and offends?
 
Have all the fields of free thinking, of original thinking, already been plowed? Do we merely hoe rows already hoed? At best do we merely harrow clumps of thought into smaller and smaller clumps that we claim for our own, sod broken from sod? Are we thought-vassals of long-dead overlords to which we owe allegiance, service, and goods from their lands that we occupy only at their pleasure? Would Plato and Aristotle be pleased that so many in the western world think in a manner consistent with their philosophies? Do we serve in a philosophical system of feudalism not only as their disciples but also as their court jesters? And how far does our compliance with our overlords’ thinking go. Are we obliged as one medieval vassal was every Christmas to make before his lord “unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum” (a leap, whistle, and an audible gaseous expulsion) ***
 
So much of what modern society professes as free thinking is actually unum bumbulum.
 
 
*William Butler Yeats. “Among School Children.” The stanza (VI) reads in full:
Plato thought nature but a spume that plays
Upon a ghostly paradigm of things;
Soldier Aristotle played the taws
Upon the bottom of a king of kings;
World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras
Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings
What a star sang and careless Muses heard:
Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird.
 
**You decide: You can read Guy Drutscher’s Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, or John H. McWhorter’s The Language Hoax: Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language.
 
***Bishop, Morris. The Middle Ages. New York. American Heritage Press, 1970.

The lives of all humans are firmly planted in the soils of time and place. Both seem fundamental to existence, but for each of us time is place-dependent. As I have noted, if I ask you to think of ten minutes ago, you cannot do so without linking your memory, your past time, to a place. Even if you try to ascribe your time to an action and say, "This is what I was doing ten minutes ago," that "doing" occurred in a place. And if we go to the origin of the Cosmos, we again find time dependent upon place; there was no time until there was a place for its unfolding. That gives place, at least to me, a primacy.

Place can also be sacred—even for “nonbelievers” who might disdain the word "sacred." 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 (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 not by virtue of some religious leader or event, but by virtue of a purely secular action they now memorialize. Every country or region has such sacred ground. Every memorial stands on 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. And outside the historical sites that elicit reverence, memorials serve as symbolic proxies, many of them in cities far from the sacred ground they represent. In Washington, D.C., for example, such monuments include the Vietnam War Memorial with 50,000 names of the war dead etched in stone commanding reverent silence.

Around the world the reverence for sacred ground manifests itself wherever people remember events or people who shaped their culture or country, such as World War I’s Battle of Verdun, where nearly 300,000 soldiers died in 1916. The sacred ground might even be a sports arena like the Boston Garden, Wrigley Field, or the Estadio Monumental. In Pittsburgh's Oakland neighborhood one can see the remnants of a brick outfield wall preserved by the city because it is the Forbes Field barrier over which Bill Mazeroski hit a dramatic World Series home run against the New York Yankees in 1960. That brick wall stands on "sacred ground" in the memories of the team's fans. In 1939 a great athlete called the end to his career in Yankee Stadium. Lou Gehrig called himself “the luckiest man” because he played baseball on ground made sacred by those who preceded him and those with whom he played. Gehrig was, himself, one of the reasons that Yankee Stadium became “sacred ground” for so many baseball fans.

The other day I went to see a local baseball game. Parents, grandparents, and friends with coolers filled with snacks, sandwiches, and drinks sat on aluminum bleachers, on portable lawn chairs, and on blankets spread on a grassy hill to watch teens play a game that Gehrig, one of the game’s great players, said he was lucky to play. As I watched the boys dive for balls on the dirt infield, make clouds of dust as they slid into second base, and landscape the the pitcher’s mound or the batter's box with their spikes 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 in a concretion 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 foul lines and on 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. To that child, the mass of dirt he held high was sacred ground. 

Bound as we are to place, we acknowledge its significance by the role it plays in the unfolding of time. As we recognize people and events that have influenced the course of humanity, we proclaim a specialness to this or that place. But in doing so, we often ignore the sacredness of ground on which each of us lives our daily lives. Yes, place is primary, but it is also meaningless without us, even the "least" of us. Your neighbor, your countryman, the rich and poor, and even your distant enemy all walk on sacred ground. When all of us can ascribe sacredness to one another, all places will become sacred. 

I admit that my brain houses a list of stereotypes in its filing cabinet. Fortunately, I don’t open that drawer very often, and when I do, I might not access the folder with the list. But I have opened it on occasion, only to find I must strike another stereotype from the list.
 
Take a drive from North Carolina’s Outer Banks to the Blue Ridge Parkway. You’ll begin at sea level, drive across the Coastal Plain, the Upper Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, and then climb the mountains. Along the way, stop and chat with anyone, say, someone you meet at a local diner. You will, at the end of your trip, look back with a sense that North Carolinians aren’t cut from the same cloth. They appear to differ from lowland to highland. But you will discover that their differences aren’t as sharply defined as you predetermined from your filing cabinet list of stereotypes.
 
That’s not to say that there aren’t some stereotypes that, in the main, hold true. I probably embody some; you, too. They are largely inevitable because stereotypes derive from our inability to see all the details of anything or anyone simultaneously. Stereotypes are shortcuts for busy minds, and they add psychological security to any personality. When the world outside the individual is easy to understand, the world inside has less turmoil to face. Call it pigeonholing.
 
An example from a tale I told elsewhere but want to repeat here: During a field trip to study the geology of North Carolina with college students and a colleague, I stood on the precipitous overlook at Linville Falls with students when a group of children ran to where we stood. It was a chaotic group, with some crawling on the low wall that separated visitors from plunging to their deaths on the rocks below. My colleague, a geologist who had fallen from a cliff once and who feared for the children’s safety, yelled, “Who’s in charge here?”
 
Now the stereotypes: The chaperones, some teachers and parents, trailed the students on the path to the precipice. Should I say, “waddled behind”? Apparently unaware of the potential danger the kids were in, they immediately took a defensive position when my colleague confronted them about letting the kids run toward a cliff, jostling one another as they ran. And then, they took an offensive position, asking, “Where are you from?”
 
I said, “Pennsylvania.”
 
They looked at one another and said, “Yankees.”
 
At the time of that field trip the Civil War had ended 125 years earlier. But our stereotypes remained—and probably still remain. We were Yankees, and by their response, they were… Not sure, here: Hillbillies? Rednecks? Mountain people (or foot-of-the-mountain people)? Backwoods folk?
 
Was I some carpetbagger? How could this be? I immediately perceived myself to be “more cosmopolitan” than they, but then, that was my perception, a perception no doubt influenced by my own need to defend my psyche, a response from my innermost brain.
 
So, the Civil War, as I discovered that day, isn’t over. Those stereotypes from nineteenth century America are children compared to the old adults of stereotypes that have persisted in the Middle East for millennia. Is there an observation to be made here?
 
Individually, we probably stereotype because the process saves us from accounting for the overwhelming number of details associated with any human or group. Each of us generates our own set of stereotypes to file in our brains. But each of us also inherits through cultural inculcation sets of stereotypes. These latter stereotypes are relatively easy to dismiss through personal experience with individuals from stereotyped groups. The former, however, those stereotypes that we personally manufacture through our experiences limited by time and space, are more difficult to erase. Those are the stereotypes we have buried deep in our brains. To overturn them requires a form of self-denial born of self-realization.
 
We discover usually by chance that inherited stereotypes are false or inadequate perceptions of reality. Sometimes, we make a concerted effort to see through stereotypes by studying what they are and how we acquired them. Those stereotypes we manufactured, however, don’t easily yield to either chance or purposeful discovery 1) because we aren’t generally open to prove ourselves wrong and 2) because we aren’t generally motivated to see the world from a different perspective.
 
It is difficult to go beyond the stereotypical. But it can be done.

Are you thinking about buying that second home, condo, or time share?
 
What’s that old saying? “Buy real estate because they ain’t makin’ any more of it.” Something like that. Well, “they” are, actually. But the new real estate isn’t easy to get to. You’ll need a rocket.
 
Affluent humans have long built or bought second homes. Think of those Roman villas outside Rome, for example. You, for all I know, might want or already have a condo or second home on the Italian Riviera, the coast of Florida or Costa Rica, on the banks of some mountain lake, or in the Maldives. Just curious: Have you thought of Venus, maybe on a hill overlooking the Baltis Vallis?
 
Venus is definitely warm. Not a skier’s paradise. There’s no winter ice and snow. Actually, it’s hot enough at its surface to melt lead; Venus never has a cool breeze, let alone a cold spell. Well, maybe it’s a bit too hot, but apparently not too hot for Dimitry Rogozin, who recently referred to Venus as a “Russian planet.”* Think Dimitry is onto something? Is he looking to invest in a land deal for dachas?
 
You know it has to happen. What with the Chinese and others launching rocket after rocket to do what NASA and the then the ESA have been doing for decades, some country will inevitably plant a flag as NASA did on the moon. But, unlike Neil Armstrong, the next country’s astronaut (or cosmonaut) to land on an extraterrestrial body won’t claim the land for all humanity, but rather like Columbus say, “I claim this land for ________ (put the country’s name here).”
 
Neil Armstrong was probably an exceptional explorer because of his “one small step” statement. He was first; he was uninhibited by any locals; he could have said he claimed the moon as a territory of the USA. He could even have said, “I claim this satellite for Janet, my wife.” Tribes, countries, and empires have long made such claims. Look at recent history in the South China Sea, arguably international waters, where the Chinese government actually made an island and then claimed it as their own. Look at the artificial islands of Dubai. Humans are generally land-hungry. Humans are natural colonizers. Humans are, at heart, often avaricious. And hungry for more land, we disprove the old saying about "not makin' any more real estate." 
 
Dimitry’s land claim for Russia is not surprising. Venera 7 was the first spacecraft to land on another planet and send data back to Earth. But his claim raises questions. Should the USA lay claim to Eros and Japan to Itakawa and Ryugu while the ESA claims Comet 67P for its member nations? And what constitutes setting a foothold on a new body? Does spacecraft Cassini’s suicidal dive into Saturn and those intentional and unintentional crash-landings on the moon by Russia and the USA between 1959 and 1965 qualify as a foothold? Dimitry is certainly aware that the longest lasting Russian Venera lander survived only a couple of hours on the Venusian surface before succumbing to its atmosphere’s high-pressure acidic attack. Yet, in that short visit, the Russians beat everyone to squatter’s rights. See a problem with Dimitry’s claim? Well, Germany and France could also lay claim to Ryugu. And the USA and others have also sent spacecraft to Venus. Remember Magellan, the spacecraft that mapped the Venusian surface? If so, then recall that the Americas are named not after Columbus, but rather after Amerigo Vespucci, the cartographer who mapped them.
 
Squabbling over land claims wouldn’t be a new development for humans; just look at the battles among the Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish over the already occupied Americas. Look at the battles between the Celts and Romans, or between them and the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, who, by the way, unsuccessfully tried to fend off claims by the Danes and the Normans. Or observe the current tension over the borderlands between India and its neighbors, Turkey and the Kurds, and...  
 
Among the Seven Deadly Sins is Avarice. Show some people that something is available by one means or another, and one of them will want it. Territory is a highly prized “something.” Apparently, Dimitry wants Venus because the Russians had that short-lived landing and many other Venera spacecraft missions. We could give him the benefit of doubt with regard to avarice. Maybe he was just being cosmopolitan and simply expressing his desire to discover extraterrestrial life for the sake of all humanity. Life on hot Venus? Yes, phosphine has recently been detected in the Venusian upper atmosphere? Isn’t that a possible sign of life? Maybe his motive is altruism, therefore, and not avarice. He knows, no doubt, that living on Venus is impossible. What could be his motive sans a plot with a dacha?
 
But back to avarice. We can’t seem to get through a year without some country making a claim on another or on what was previously considered property commonly owned by all humanity, like the seafloor. Sure, we might see humans establish colonies on the moon and on Mars in this century, maybe sooner rather than later. Will we then see an inevitable push for ownership?
 
That people have cooperatively lived in Antarctica without making claims to the land seems to be the exception in a long history of human colonization. But that harmony among peaceful researchers might one day turn into a land grab for resources exposed after the predicted ice melt. As for now, the cold and ice of Antarctica appear to be the analog of the heat and sulfuric acid of Venus. We can’t have what we can’t get to, and maybe that’s the only constraint on an otherwise avaricious species.
 
 
* https://news.yahoo.com/russias-top-space-official-tried-132218710.html

Tip: Buy property in Greenland—now.
 
Living at 1,040 feet above sea level, I have little concern that my house will be inundated by sea water 80 years from now (would that I could be around to prove I’m correct). A new report estimates a sea level rise from ice melt to be in the neighborhood of 40 centimeters by century’s end. Whew! After 80 years my house will still be over a thousand feet above sea level. My children’s, children’s, children’s children, should they choose to live where I now live, will not frolic in the waves on the oceanic shores of Appalachian Plateau and will not have to worry about a storm surge’s washing away the old homestead. But then, that 40-centimeter rise is just the “worst case scenario” according to Dr. Tom Slater of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds.* The rise could be less.
 
And, of course, you know the villain. Yes, carbon dioxide, which, as you also know, makes up more than 400 ppm of our atmosphere at present, a very high level by comparison with past levels. Take, for instance, the atmospheric carbon dioxide content of 14,000 years ago, when the air over Greenland’s ice sheet warmed by as much as 14 degrees Celsius in just a few decades according to Jo Brendryen of Norway’s University of Bergen.** What was the carbon dioxide component of the atmosphere at that time? Supposedly, 240 parts per million. But way back then, the Eurasian ice sheet melted in just a few centuries, according to Brendryen.
 
Whoa! I’m trying to understand. If 240 parts per million is associated with the melting of the Eurasian ice sheet, how is it that the 250 parts per million of the nineteenth century did not cause a similar melting at the end of the Little Ice Age and at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Surely, either the numbers are wrong or the cause of glacial melt is more complex than the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
 
Could the orientation of Earth’s tilt to the plane of its orbit somehow be involved? You know, that Milankovich cycle stuff about the shape of the orbit and the wobble of the axis of rotation. If so, we’re about 13,000 years from a complete shift away from Polaris and toward Vega as the North Star and the simultaneous tilt toward the sun during perihelion. We’re headed toward a summertime when the Northern Hemisphere “leans” toward the sun during the planet’s closest approach to our star. Seems reasonable to suggest that at 13,000 or 14,000 years from the last apex of the cycle, we’re about halfway through the Milankovich cycle of 26,000 years. If we keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere, that cyclic tilt during perihelion ought to coincide with about a million parts of carbon per million parts of atmosphere. We will be Venus.
 
I guess we’re just lucky that our ancient ancestors, fresh off a period when they completely replaced the Neanderthals, weren’t sophisticated enough to start the Industrial Revolution at the time of that melt some 14,000 years ago. They would have exacerbated the natural heating cycle. Seas would have risen dramatically. My house’s location would have been only 800 feet above sea level, not ocean-front property, but surely within a short drive to a surf lapping on the Piedmont.
 
I don’t want to downplay the effects of a worst-case ice melt scenario. There are real people who live along shorelines and who will have to move or suffer repeated storm surge damage. And because there are more people living in coastal cities than there were 14,000 years ago when there were no coastal cities, entire societies will be affected by a change in eustacy. That is, if the worst-case scenario plays out. It might, but it might not.
 
Of course, the economically prudent course of action would be to play it safe, to do whatever is necessary to reduce any cause of ice melt and to maintain the average temperature of the past 150 years—lower temperatures might precipitate another Little Ice Age like that of the 14th through 19th centuries. Seems that we’re in need of a delicate balance on a planet of climatic vicissitudes.
 
So, let’s convince the people living at elevations higher than the projected sea level’s worst-case scenario to stop doing whatever they are doing for the sake of their lowland neighbors.  Good luck with that, of course. Seems that we cannot get even the lowland neighbors to stop doing whatever they are doing that exacerbates the “problem.” In general, humans act, whether they want to admit it or not, like a herd of cats.  
 
Here’s another idea. Get everyone who lives along the coast to move inland now. Why wait for rising seas to cost them property and lives? Why spend money on levees and sea walls? And while we’re at it, let’s get all the people who live in earthquake and eruption zones to move, also. And those severe summer heat and winter cold areas? Why should anyone live there?
 
I’m beginning to think I live in an earthly paradise on the Appalachian Plateau. Sure, there are some high heat days in summer and some bitter cold days in winter, but precipitation is moderate, sometimes a little more than usual, sometimes a bit droughty. Big snows fall occasionally; big rains, also. But earthquakes are rare here, usually the product of crustal rebound as a once depressed crust rises like carpet fibers in a footprint. No active volcanoes here to worry about. Tornadoes do hit on occasion, but are typically infrequent though straight-line winds do knock trees down and shingles off roofs almost every year. Floods? Well, yes, but only in the narrow valleys of the Cheat, Youghiogheny, Monongahela, Allegheny, and some of their tributaries. Those rivers rise at times to the elevations of train tracks that trace their courses, usually after spring snowmelt and rains and, naturally and occasionally, after some whopper rainstorm like Hurricane Agnes in the 70s and the 11-inch deluge in the 80s. Some landsliding is also a worry for homeowners perched on steep hills, where alternating layers of friable and indurate rocks differentially weather; but otherwise, it’s relatively stable ground around here, even with the undermining of the past century. But speaking of the mining, I should note that my house sits in a region rich in fossil fuels, coal and natural gas, so should I need to heat my house during excessively cold winters or cool it during excessively warm summers, I don’t have to go far for an energy supply.  
 
Hold on. Forget what I just said. I’m thinking that if I extol the virtues of life on the Appalachian Plateau too much, then all those coastal people might move here along with all those people from earthquake and volcanic zones and all those people from Tornado Alley and the denizens of the American hot-and-dry Southwest. This is not paradise. Repeat: THIS IS NOT PARADISE. Our roads, for example, have lots of curves and ups and downs; tough to get good gas mileage or to go easy on brake pads. And every 17 years the cicada emerge. Fresh sea food is also pricey.
 
You don’t need to move here. What are the chances of the worst-case scenario’s happening in your lifetime? Remember that the ice melt and sea level rise of 14,000 years ago apparently didn’t have any connection to carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. And what are the chances of a devastating earthquake, tornado, hurricane, flood, landslide, or volcanic eruption occurring where you live? You know you don’t intend to change your lifestyle, anyway, and even if you did, you probably couldn’t convince others in your region to change theirs, especially if they didn’t live within that 40-centimeter elevation next to the ocean that might or might not be inundated in the next 80 years.
 
Wait it out if you are young enough. You have 80 years till the seas rise 40 centimeters. But if that rise does affect you personally, think Greenland. There’s going to be a lot of land exposed by the melting. It must have been pleasant during a previous warming a millennium ago. After all, didn’t the Vikings establish villages there? Go buy yourself a piece of a Greenland ice field and wait for your property to reveal itself which, apparently, it inevitably will. You now have a real estate opportunity to pass on to your progeny.  
 
 
*U. of Leeds. Sea level rise from ice sheet track worst-case climate change scenario. Phys.org. 31 Aug 2020. Online at https://phys.org/news/2020-09-emissions-cm-sea-experts.html     Accessed September 18, 2020.
 
**Galey, Patrick. Eurasian ice sheet collapse raised seas eight metres: study. Phys.org. 20 Apr 2020. Onlne at https://phys.org/news/2020-09-emissions-cm-sea-experts.html     Accessed September 18, 2020.

An analog for 2020:
 
Having trouble sleeping? Need some respite? Would restful music help? Go to YouTube. Search for Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Surely, with a title like that, the piece must suffuse a room with elevator music, the sound version of a warm bath. You’ll find numerous renditions on YouTube, all pretty good.
 
But a warning if you think “moonlight sonata” is spa music: Sure, It begins with the sleep-inducing Adagio Sostenuto, but then Beethoven moves it into the transitional Allegretto, this latter section not really one to put you to sleep. You’ve been duped, big time, suckered in, given the old bait and switch. Moonlight becomes bright sunshine after the Allegretto. This moonlight thing isn’t going to put you to sleep. The piece explodes into the rapid Presto Agitato.
 
You can ingest all the valerian you want. You can take melatonin. Even drink warm milk. When the Presto Agitato hits your eardrums, you aren’t going to sleep. You will be agitated, your heart will race; your pulse will pound; your sleep will transition into the wakefulness of the Indianapolis 500.
 
Much of life is like Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. There’s an occasional promise of quiet restfulness, a meditative OMMMMM, but then the interruptions come, sometimes producing racing hearts. This year began that way, not much going on in early January. Just a hint in an allegretto that something was going wrong in Wuhan and that some passengers on cruise ships were getting sick. And then we entered the Presto Agitato of March: a COVID-19 death or two in the Northwest, a case of the virus following a traveler home to Chatham County in North Carolina and the disease entering New York from Europe, also. And then riots, West Coast fires, hurricanes and tropical storms, and political anger boiled the blood like an egg on a car hood during an Arizona summer. Talk about agitato!
 
You don’t have to go to YouTube to listen to Moonlight Sonata. In 2020, we are all members of the orchestra playing Beethoven’s work.

​Sure, we can recognize someone from his or her backside, walk, gestures, but it’s the face that says definitively, “This is So-n-So.” It’s the face that foreshadows behavior. It’s the face that shows the mind. Clams don’t have faces. But lots of organisms do. So, although we can’t tell what a clam is thinking from an expression, we seem to be able to tell what dogs, cats, and a number of other organisms are about to do by interpreting their facial expressions. Maybe we make the mistake at times of ascribing human expressions to animals, but often we get the message. “I’m not going to attack.” Of course, anthropomorphized versions of animals ignore that dogs seem to think a show of teeth is a threat if the teeth barer is another dog or animal, but they seem to recognize after millennia of life with humans, that smiles revealing teeth aren’t signs of impending attack. Nevertheless…
 
ONE: “I had a little turtle when I was young. A number of my friends also had them. I cannot remember whether or not I named it, whether or not it lived long, or whether or not it died in captivity or after some accidental or purposeful release into the “wild” of my neighborhood. I was pretty young.”
 
TWO: “One of my relatives wrote his M.A. thesis on turtles. He had an enclosed maze in the lab, a box that he could rotate. Into the box he would put turtles one at a time, all diapered. The science building was next to a river, and he wanted to see whether or not a turtle would orient itself in the passageway that led to the river, even though the turtle couldn’t see outside the maze. You know, I can’t remember the results, but I think the turtles generally walked down the passage oriented toward the river. Strange. How could a turtle sense the direction to the river without seeing it? I should go look up that thesis to see what he discovered—or thought he discovered. Interesting because that relative is now suffering from Alzheimer’s, meaning that he probably couldn’t recognize my face.”
 
ONE: “Turtles. I get one occasionally walking from the stream that cuts through my property. I call him ‘Fluffy.’ Anyway, Fluffy has come and gone over the years, and since I didn’t mark his shell with some lasting paint, each summer’s Fluffy might not even be the original Fluffy. When the turtle appears during summer, I usually orient him toward the stream and away from areas where the power mower might do him harm. By the way, I don’t know if Fluffy is a he or she. Just sayin’. Fluff’s able to survive in the woods and stream on my property or has a bunch of offspring that look just like Dad (or Mom).”
 
TWO: “Did you see the recent study that shows tortoises orient themselves toward ‘faces.’”?
 
ONE: “No, enlighten me.”
 
TWO: “Elisabetta Versace and others wrote a paper on how tortoise hatchlings tend to orient themselves in the direction of a ‘face,’ not actually a ‘face,’ but something like a smiley face, just a couple of dots for eyes and a dot for a mouth. Kind of amazing. Versace found that the tortoises ‘faced’ the fake ‘faces’ 70% of the time.”*
 
ONE: “So, what’s the big deal? Sounds like the M.A. thesis on the turtles in the boxed maze.”
 
TWO: “Turtles are solitary critters. They get no maternal care. We already know that human infants spend considerable time looking at their mothers’ faces, but turtles…They hatch and go. Mom’s not even around. How is it that such critters are fond of faces from the outset? Must be something innate about faces. Could be that faces are on the head and that faces show either friendship or menace. Could be that faces reveal danger, for example. Versace says that the tendency to orient toward a ‘virtual face’ is written in the genes. That would mean an ancient development of the most fundamental level of life.”**
 
ONE: “I can understand that. Look, don’t we humans put a great emphasis on faces? Think. We have all kinds of stereotypes: Frankenstein, Alien, model, villain…Just thought. I wonder whether or not there is a list of stereotypical faces.”
 
TWO: “Good thought. Let me look it up. Oh! Found face shapes on the Web: Square, triangular, oblong, round, and oval. Here’s another: Pear. Geez. Here’s a site that lists nine shapes for male faces. So, someone’s put some thought into face structure.”
 
ONE: “No, not stereotypical structure. I meant with respect to danger or benefit.”
 
TWO: “Am I reading this correctly? When I pull up stuff on faces, I see ‘384,000,000 results.’ That’s more than I want to know. Don’t we all just know when a face shows anger or happiness?”
 
ONE: “Probably, but we all know that pathological liars can fool just about anyone. Actors, too.”
 
TWO: “Amazing, isn’t it? Hundreds of millions of years of faces, and we still have to guess what they tell us. And when we look in the mirror, do we interpret that face correctly? Do we ever see what others see?”
 
ONE: “Maybe like the tortoises staring at a smiley face, we just read the details we want to see. Eyes in the right place, nose where it should be. Mouth just so.”
 
*https://phys.org/news/2020-09-tortoise-hatchlings-resembling.html
 
**Photo credit: Gionata Stancher.

Given the option, would medieval people have rejected the use of free and plentiful energy that spewed carbon dioxide because they focused not on their present needs but rather on someone else’s future? Let’s imagine the scenario: A farmer walking behind his oxen rejects the option of having a tractor; a monk illuminating a Bible by flickering candlelight rejects a steadily shining electric light; a woman beating clothes in a stream or wooden barrel rejects a drop-them-in-come-back-they’re-done clothes washer—all because they see an atmosphere with unvarying carbon levels as an environmental panacea. “I’m not getting one of those new-fangled things because I’m worried about a change in atmospheric composition two or three centuries hence.”*
 
You’re probably thinking, “No way. People are generally motivated by the here-and-now or by hope for whatever they believe lies no farther than just a pinch over the temporal horizon. All three medieval people would have marveled at and sought the technology once they understood how it could change their lives—even if they understood that they were producing a greenhouse gas in the process.”  
 
Is there some evidence that Earth is warming? Yes, though some might argue that a change of three quarters of a degree to one degree Celsius over a century might just as easily be ascribed to normal fluctuations in an atmosphere that has been much warmer and cooler. Should we be worried about the future—not ours but others’?
 
But I have to ask: Is there anything anyone can do to mitigate global warming or climate change? Ah! That’s the question for you to answer, and your answer involves choices. You can focus on your own present needs and desires; you can focus on someone else’s future needs and desires. You, regardless of the dire warnings of little Greta Thunberg who believes her childhood has been obliterated by climate change, will continue to live under the vicissitudes of weather and climate as you always have and you will at times say, “Gee, this summer is warm; this winter is cold; now, this is the weather I prefer.”  
 
No doubt, someone out there is saying that I’ve given a false set of choices. “There’s gotta be something in between, some compromise; you can focus on the present in the context of an unknown future,” such a person might say. “We do it all the time according to the week’s weather predictions by the guy on TV who is right about half the time.”
 
Well, we could listen to Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles, who said during the 2020 heat wave, ““It’s almost 3 p.m.,” Garcetti’s tweet read. “Time to turn off major appliances, set the thermostat to 78 degrees (or use a fan instead), turn off excess lights and unplug any appliances you’re not using. We need every Californian to help conserve energy. Please do your part.”** I’m sure that if you live in L.A., you would have immediately run to comply, especially since you know that Garcetti opposes fossil fuels and nuclear power that could produce at will an oversupply of relatively cheap energy. (I don’t know his stand on gerbil-wheel power)
 
Or let’s say that California Governor Newsome is correct in saying that climate change is the reason for California’s 2020 summer heat and wildfires. Seems logical, doesn’t it? That is, logical unless one counts the fires arsonists and gender-reveal partygoers started. But, accidental and purposeful human actions aside, shouldn’t we all concentrate on climate because the planet is warming? So, let’s grant Newsome his analysis and his rage against so-called “climate deniers.” But then…
 
We’re always on the verge of entering an unknown future. Fortunately, as rational beings with a scientific bent, we have the ability to look back to see the way forward. We know, for example and on good evidence (e.g., O-16/O-18 in shells and CO2 in ice cores), that the planet has been warmer and colder at times and that the carbon in the atmosphere has fluctuated prior to the rise of our species. But we also know that atmospheric carbon hasn’t always aligned with those temperature fluctuations. Currently, we know from recorded quantities of carbon dioxide in Hawaii that the greenhouse gas has increased more or less steadily over the past half century, with noticeable lapses during events like the Arab Oil Embargo. We also have plenty of sound evidence through tree-ring analysis that periodic droughts and heat waves have plagued humans for centuries, particularly in regions like the American Southwest. (Just ask the pre-Colonial Pueblo whose civilization appears to have declined during such a drought)
 
And then, of course, we know that hurricanes provide hard evidence that the ocean holds a great deal of heat and might be gaining more. It’s that heat transferred from the atmosphere to the seas and back that energizes storms. So, “warmists” predict an increase in the number and severity of hurricanes. “Why, just look at the number of such storms in 2020.” But the past isn’t really a clue to the future here. There were, for example, 15 hurricanes in 1916 and 4 in 1917. There were 9 in 2009 and 19 in each of the following three years followed by a lower number per year. Of course, regardless of the number of hurricanes, “warmists” will contend that the severity of the storms has steadily increased though 2013 had no major hurricanes. But we all remember Katrina in 2005, which developed during a year with 28 hurricanes, seven of which were major. Hurricanes and fires. What’s this world coming to? Bigger hurricanes and bigger fires lie on the horizon…Heck! They’re here now. We are in deep climate doo-doo., and I have yet to mention the rapidly rising seas.
 
Look at what I just did. I picked out some hurricane data that, depending on a point of view, could support either side of the global warming argument. “Look at the number of tropical storms and hurricanes that plague coastlines during 2020!” can be countered with “But the number and strength fluctuates. And the number of fires has fluctuated, also. Aren’t we just more cognizant because we have built our homes where hurricanes and fires affect more of us?”  
 
Gov. Newsome says, in the context of a self-imposed shortage of electrical power in California, that we must get off our dependence on fossil fuels because burning those increased carbon in the atmosphere and caused climate change. And that’s the point of departure for anyone today on the verge of entering an unknown future based on present decisions. What sacrifices are the people of the present willing to make in support of the unknown, but hoped for, future? In other words, what is anyone going to do short of a government takeover of individual lives and livelihoods? If Newsome had lived in medieval times, would he have readily foregone the development of fossil fuels? At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, would he have waged a political battle against technology? Would the Medieval Warm Period have affected his decision? Would the subsequent Little Ice Age that ended just before the Industrial Revolution have similarly affected his choice? If he lived through a thousand years of climate fluctuations, would his attitude be the same? Is he currently that “medieval farmer” who would plow with oxen instead of a tractor?
 
Lest you think I’m opposed to alternate energy sources and a reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, I should note that I’m for such a reduction simply because I can’t see the future. In other words, I take the wary position that “it can’t hurt.” I say wary for a reason. It is possible that Canada, Scotland, and northern European countries have a future because the increase in atmospheric carbon has postponed the next advance of glacial ice. If we entered another glacial advance like the last one, ice sheets as thick as two miles would bulldoze Canadian cities into central and northeastern USA.
 
Again, the question isn’t just whether anyone can do anything to mitigate global warming, but also whether anyone has the will and foresight to mitigate without some governmental restrictions that reduce the level of “civilization” that developed after the Middle Ages. Are you really willing to make major changes in your lifestyle?  
 
What motivates anyone more than the present? Who among Garcetti’s Angelenos ran to turn up the thermostat because cooled air jeopardized the future? Who ran to turn off their air conditioners because they were worried about the general welfare? And how many cursed a state whose government recently decided to close a fossil fuel power plant or two, leading to power outages that affected millions?
 
California experienced both drought and high summer temperatures this year (2020), and both environmental circumstances became the immediate focus. What happens if California undergoes an exceptionally cold winter and superabundant rainfall—like the periodic winter rainfall it gets when eastern Pacific semi-permanent pressure systems move northward or southward. Those Pacific pressure systems control the amount of maritime moist air that enters California. Can anyone alter El Niño or El Niña, two controls on those pressure systems? Will Californians get Peruvians and Ecuadorians to change the waters off their coasts?
 
When temperatures and rainfall change the comfort and needs of individual citizens, can the California Governor or Los Angeles Mayor make a valid argument that they, like some hypothetical knowledgeable and insightful medieval burgher or farmer concerned about the future, should alter the course of civilization? Do they make that argument while still maintaining their lifestyles? Whom do you know who is willing to abandon completely the free and easy access to relatively cheap energy on the promise of a “better future” for an unknown generation? Is ityou?
 
Yes? Did you say, “Yes, I would be willing to sacrifice my way of life for the people of the 22nd century”? Did I hear you say, “I’m turning my thermostat up in summer and down in winter. I’m going green energy exclusively. Fact, I already have an appointment to switch my house over to solar-wind-hydro-geothermal-gerbil power, and I’m covering my roof with soil and plants for added insulation. I’m going underground.”
 
Can anyone say “cave dweller”? By the way, good luck with that green power thing right now. I tried wind energy as my sole provider for a year but had to switch back to coal-fired energy because the price for a kilowatt hour with wind power dramatically increased in the second year.
 
Your actions might be more noble than mine since I wimped out after a year simply because it cost me twice as much for wind-electricity as opposed to coal-energy. I guess I’m selfish. I just can’t bring myself to spend twice as much as I need to spend for the sake of the 22nd century. I’m the medieval farmer who would have said, “Show me how to work this tractor thing.”
 
If you are more noble and altruistic than I, then that means you’ll probably be saying goodbye to this website and to every other website because accessing the web uses electricity, most of which comes from fossil fuels—if not on your end, then on my end. If you are more noble than I, you will make your financial decisions on the basis of Greta Thunberg’s future. Call me cruel and indifferent, but I believe Greta’s traveling around the world to spread her message probably involves emitting greenhouse gases.   
 
California’s drought might be a century-long phenomenon, maybe even longer. Previous droughts in the Southwest have lasted more than a century, so there’s always the potential for similar droughts and heat waves. Forest fires are inevitable even in times of “normal” seasonal weather conditions. Prehistoric fires didn’t, however, burn through a land with tens of millions of people, so, yes, weather conditions affect real humans. But eliminating relatively cheap and abundant energy from the power grid also affects real humans. Ask any who lost their power during California’s recent blackouts. Were those whose freezers lost power content to say, “Sure, I might have lost some food, but look what changing over to green power is going to do for people in the 22nd century and beyond. My groceries are a small price to pay for a green future.”   
 
 
*I thought hence was a nice touch; it seems to have originated in the late 13th century in the “High Middle Ages” right before the onset of modern technical thinking and devices.
 
**Garcetti’s comment elicited a number of mocking responses, including one that asked whether the “left-coast’s elites” who consider the middle of the country bumpkin-land, aren’t the backward bumpkins themselves since the country’s middle section seems to be electricity-rich.