Reductionism is the nature of the times. We live in the Age of Reduction.  We want people to put things in the simplest terms, to make ideas brief and accessible. Got a problem? No problem. As the Eagles sing, “Get over it.” Now think about how reducing ideas might play out in reality.

You can’t simplify without making things more complex. In fact, every simplification is a complication of sorts. Take factoring as an example. What if I want to factor 10. It’s 2 times 5, right? Twelve? That one is 3 times 2 times 2. The parts are smaller than the whole in that reduction, and, since there is no factoring of 2, you’ve reached bottom. But the answer isn’t simpler; it contains more parts, and, with regard to 2, well, let’s just say that trying to find something that is multiplied by something else to make 2 has kept many a mathematician up at night. ‘Where’s this going?” you ask.

Any time we reduce an idea or an argument, we end up with more parts or with discarded parts, or parts that, when reassembled in whatever fashion, alter the concept of the “whole.”

I know what you are thinking. “You are missing the point, Professor. Just having a view of the parts of any ‘whole’ isn’t a complication. It helps one to understand the ‘whole,’ just as understanding subatomic particles helps in understanding an atom.”

That might work with matters in science and logic. But look at emotional arguments, for example. The “whole” is a premise for an argument, but most people descend into attacking or defending its many parts. The tactic is understandable in this context: Each side tries to reduce the other’s argument. But in doing so, each arguer has a more complex task. When emotions are involved, reduction leads to complication.  

It takes a simple mindset to make things complex.  

More of the same doesn’t necessarily lead to more of the same. Let’s start with an example. One carbon atom linked to four hydrogen atoms makes methane, gas so light it floats in air. A single carbon atom can combine with four hydrogen atoms or with three hydrogen atoms and another carbon atom that can be linked in sequences or chains called hydrocarbons. Want longer hydrocarbon chains? Just add more carbon and hydrogen atoms. C3H8, for example, is propane. Get larger numbers, and you have not gaseous hydrocarbons, but liquid ones. Chains with 7 carbon atoms bound to 16 hydrogen atoms to C11H24 make the liquids we call gasoline. Get really long chains with 20 or more carbon atoms, and you produce substances like paraffin and tar. The longest chains make asphaltic bitumen, stuff so hard that it is used for roads because it doesn't break down under the weight of passing trucks. More of the same doesn’t necessarily lead to more of the same.

And that’s what happens with addictive substances.

Wu Liu and others recently reported in Nature/Letter (online, Oct. 14, 2015) that the group had discovered 47 human teeth in the Fuyan Cave in Daoxian. So? Well, the teeth appear to date from at least 80,000 years ago, and they might be as old as 120,000 years. The teeth seem to put previous ideas about the history of human migration from Africa in doubt. If the southern China find is legitimate—and it seems to be so—then humans arrived in Asia before they arrived in Europe.

You might say, “This doesn’t affect me.” But it does, or it has. You are the product of 200 millennia of human development and migration. You don’t know your distant ancestors. You don’t know, even if you have had a DNA test offered by the Human Genome Project or some other organization, the complete history of who you are physically. If you live outside Africa, you might see that your DNA can be traced through the Middle East, for example, but you can’t know who those ancestors were. And, although there are geographical tracks for human migration, you might be the product of that one unidentified small group that broke off from the rest, travelled not by land, but by water, and rejoined the DNA of origin. In that sense we are all orphans, and it is that sense of being an orphan that probably drives so many to seek some information about their ancestry.

Here we are 200,000 years later trying to figure out our past. It’s a research project that we probably will never fully complete. We get a few fragments here or there, some bone, some teeth, maybe a few stone tools. The teeth that Wu Liu’s group found were encapsulated in flowstone in a cave. Flowstone is named for its appearance, not its movement. Like stalagmites and stalactites, flowstone forms very slowly. Its enveloping presence allowed the group to date the teeth, but they gave a range of ages that spanned 40,000 years.

Now think of that range in comparison. If modern thought and technology goes back to the time of the pyramids, that range is a drop in the temporal bucket. Forty thousand years is greater by a factor of 10 than all the time since the Egyptians were making their big tombs. Ancestral humans, living in a cave, losing teeth 80,000 to 120,000 years ago! Now I wonder. Were their concerns just like ours? Did they have their equivalence of dentists. Maybe Liu’s group found the equivalent of a dentist’s office. “Ug, come here; make Ug feel better. Use rock to fix tooth. Be gentle; don’t worry. Ug can ask others. Fix many mouths; no complaints.” (I’m assuming that pronouns hadn’t been invented)

Maybe losing teeth is a bond through history. Certainly, losing tools seems to be what ties us to Homo habilis. Now look ahead. You have teeth and tools. Think you will leave them as the only record of who you are? Some distant descendant is going to wonder who you were and what you were like. Some distant descendant is going to wonder about the trail of your DNA through his or her history. And some distant descendant is going to wonder about the things that concerned you during your “ancient” life. Wouldn’t it be interesting if your concerns were very much the same as those of your ancestors and your descendants?

You have to stay up late to see a meteor shower, but sometimes the loss of sleep is worth the effort. High above you occasional flashes of burning grains brighten your upturned face.

Every so often, a bigger grain burns up, and sometimes a fireball briefly makes your surroundings as bright as a lighted stadium during a nighttime game. Ah! Celestial phenomena! Sparks and streaks of light high above you. Appearances without substance, at least without substance you can touch. Save the one that is big enough to survive the burning and land. Mass determines whether or not the appearance becomes earthbound and touchable. Mass determines whether or not the appearance knocks down standing objects and digs a hole, in some way changing what it strikes.

In the daytime, when we can’t see the flashes of light that still pass through the atmosphere, we occupy ourselves with other appearances. Most are just tiny flashes that we encounter at work or play: Small events that don’t warrant much attention in the bright glare of everyday concerns. But sometimes more massive phenomena catch our attention, and these are the things that seem very tangible. These are the appearances that affect our emotions. They are capable of changing the surface of who we are; they become, in some instances, usbound.

Day or night you are always in a shower of appearances. Most of them are meaningless flashes, occurring as an entertaining light show. Then there is that every-once-in-a-while phenomenon that alters you, the appearance that makes it to your very being. Something like a personal tragedy or perceived wrong. The appearance becomes tangible; it is more than a show, more than passing entertainment.

Here’s something to know about meteor showers. Most are regular phenomena: The Perseid Meteor Shower, the Draconids, and others that are generally harmless. The appearance of their appearance is calendar-like: On August 10 and 11 each year the Perseids will show up. Just go out to see them. But the big fireballs are always a surprise, especially the ones large enough to hit the surface.

Whoa! Does that mean you can’t prepare for phenomena with more mass? Yes, somewhat. But it doesn’t hurt to stay on the lookout for “appearances” that have the mass to change your life. Just like Earth, you’re going to get hit sometime. You might not be able to do much to prevent an eventual collision with an unexpected bolide, but by paying attention, you’ll get a little forewarning and possibly some options.

The Golden Retriever called Sunshine is a pleasant and obedient dog, quietly playful, and very friendly. When she needs to leave the house, she goes to the door and raises her paw to the door handle until someone lets her out.

Sunshine’s family needed a new storm door last week. When the installer put the door in, he needed to make an adjustment before he could insert the full glass panel. For a day, the door was just the hinged frame without anything in the middle. Sunshine went to the door as usual, poked her nose slightly through the space where the glass would normally be, and then reached her paw toward the handle. She would not cross the plane of the open space. Instead, she waited until someone opened the “door.”

Okay, Sunshine is a conditioned dog. She had never seen a door through which she could step. She has always known the glass barrier that some human had to open, and, even though nothing but air separated her from the outside, she did not cross the nonexistent glass. She waited for both help and permission to go through the unopened door.

Don’t be Sunshine.

Place is both the original and the final frontier. At any moment you are an explorer. In every place you discover more about yourself as you discover more about your surroundings. 

The human eye has a blind spot; we “see” more than we see. It’s the brain acting on place that “sees” patterns. Look at a cumulus cloud. See the elephant? Of course, you know it’s not an elephant. You know that what you see is the incomplete rudiment of a shape upon which you impose a meaning.

Now look around. What catches your eye? In the same place and from the same perspective, what would catch the eye of another person? Force yourself to “see” the same place with a different emphasis, a different sense of what is important. Look what happens. The place that was ordinary becomes extraordinary, at least temporarily.

So, when you go into that “same old place” where you are unhappy, try re-seeing. You might find that you’ve just entered a “new place” and crossed into a new frontier.

It’s hot, really hot. You’re sweaty. You’re losing water like a biological Niagara. What would you rather have, gold or salt?  

In the mid-fourteenth century the widely traveled Moroccan geographer Ibn Battuta visited Timbuktu and other Saharan locales now situated within Mali. One of the sites he visited was the salt mine at Taghaza, and he noted in his Rihla (The Journey) that in the desert city gold was exchanged for salt on a one-for-one basis. Salt was worth its weight in gold. That made the area of the salt mines one of great riches, and that was before Timbuktu became an important way station for caravans.

As I asked above, what’s your choice? Of course, you choose the thing you need. Salt has been important to us since our biological beginnings. Well, sodium has been. We get the word salary from the Latin word for “salt,” indicating that from ancient times, when Roman soldiers were given "salt-money," there was recognition of salt’s importance. Like humans, other animals seek it from many sources, but they don’t have our ability or ingenuity to mine salt that formed from evaporating water in ancient seas or get it from salt pans and salt flats in great quantities. 

Today, the modern athlete thinks not just of salt, but rather of electrolytes; thus, the popularity of sports drinks. The people in Battuta’s era just thought “salt.” There was no Gatorade to buy or spill over a coach’s head after a victory in a camel race. The Sahara was a great place to demonstrate the human need for salt and the price one might pay to have it. Medieval Mali became a place of wealth.

Now look around. You might not live in the Sahara. If you do, you probably need some salt, and you are willing to pay for it. But let’s say you don’t live there. For what do you exchange your gold? Is it as necessary as salt?

I’m not advocating your hoarding gold here. I just want you to think the next time you are ready to exchange your gold for something. Picture whatever that something is in the arid land of Mali, maybe in Timbuktu. Then ask yourself, “Is this as valuable as salt?”

All right, let’s say that Pocahontas did not save John Smith. It is still a nice story, and it makes us think that there are people who prize mercy for the innocent above their own interests. Stepping in to stop an injustice, to stop a senseless waste of life, or to stop cruelty for the sake of cruelty is noble. Obviously, there are dangers in the act. Stepping in or speaking up for mercy can jeopardize social status or health, but risking either ennobles an act of mercy. Regardless of the veracity of John Smith’s tale about Pocahontas, the idea that she risked getting her own head bashed by Powhatan became legend enough for retelling over four centuries, including a retelling in a Disney movie. That persistent retelling says something about human values.

Something with a similar outcome as the saving of Smith happened three centuries before he told his story. In the fourteenth century Edward III besieged Calais. The yearlong siege ended in August 1347, when the city’s governor Jean Vienne sent six of his city’s burghers out to beg for mercy. After devoting a year to the siege, Eddie really wasn’t in the mood for mercy though his own knights asked that he spare the men. As he was about to have the six men executed, his wife, Philippa, spoke up. Risking her standing with her husband, she pleaded for mercy for the six strangers. Edward, moved by her plea, acquiesced and spared the men.

Okay, Philippa didn’t put her head in a Pocahontas-like move between those of the burghers and Edward’s sword, but she didn’t sit idly by, either. She spoke up, and six men lived. You might never face so dramatic a circumstance as the fictional one of Pocahontas or the actual one of Philippa, but on whatever scale it occurs, what will you do when you encounter a need for mercy?    

During childhood we acquire a number of survival skills. With sufficient learning and growth, we become standalone beings no longer fully dependent upon elders. If you had to, you could forage for food and find or build a shelter. That standalone nature of human life applies in some of the worst circumstances like famine, abandonment, and war. Harsh realities necessitate independent action.

Yet, in the absence of such dire conditions many in an affluent society fall into emotional dependence. Are you one of them? Does your emotional wellbeing depend on acknowledgement? Do you feel unappreciated?

Even if you have had a relatively soft life, you probably know from news stories about victims of crime, war, and false imprisonment that life can be harsh. Would you say that the victims of crime and war are unappreciated? They are, of course.

So, what’s this stuff about being “unappreciated” just because someone or some group will not acknowledge your worth or your efforts? Isn’t there a perspective you can take that throws some new understanding on your feelings? There is, of course.

Feeling unappreciated at work? At home? In school? At the club? On the team? If so, think of explaining your dire predicament to someone chained to a cold, wet floor in a prison overseen by abusive guards. Explain your predicament to someone who lost a child to a terrorist. Explain your predicament to someone whose family was annihilated by a bomb.

Still feeling unappreciated? You still have that standalone ability that enables you to survive harsh realities. Maybe you just allowed yourself to forget that you can stand alone. Maybe the only appreciation that matters is self-appreciation.  

In his first-hand account of the Civil War, the Rev. Wayland Fuller Dunaway, D.D., wrote of 1860 that “the intensest excitement prevailed, while passion blew the gale and held the rudder too” (Reminiscences of a Rebel, 1913, Project Gutenberg EBook #24341). Those were disruptive times. Dunaway himself became a captain of Company I of the 40th Virginia Regiment, interrupting his youthful dream of studying law at the University of Virginia and becoming a lawyer. The war changed him as it did most mid-nineteenth century Americans. It was the gale that passion blew, and it infused in Dunaway a “martial spirit.” With thousands of other Confederate soldiers he took part in the bloody battle at Gettysburg, but unlike so many in the famous failed advance called Pickett’s Charge, Dunaway survived.

Passion blew the gale of war in every year of the past millennium and in every human millennium before that. And every war changed the lives of its willing and unwilling participants. War is, of course, the strongest of human gales, and passion always controls the rudder in its violent sea.

How is it that passion blows such gales and makes such choppy seas? Oceanographers know that the greater the distance over water that a wind blows and the greater the duration of windy conditions, the greater the waves grow. Tsunamis aside, most ocean waves are wind-driven waves. They start to form with the gentlest of breezes and grow in wavelength and wave height as winds pick up strength. Wars often start that way, something starts to move the air of passion, something like a threat or a perceived threat, possibly an insult to a way of life or a rising economic jeopardy. Passions stir. They steer the rudder and head the ship directly into the increasing winds.

Is that not how even the smallest confrontations also occur? Something seemingly small grows into something of a gale; a little disagreement becomes a big one. An argument becomes a fight. And those involved lose control of the rudder. The ship runs windward. Control is out of the hands of the captain. The once-innocent Dunaways are often done away by the gale over which they have no control.

What is your personal plan when passion blows a gale and takes control of the rudder? Will you be, like Wayland Dunaway, among the first to enlist on board a vessel you can’t control?