Suave in Calm High Places
 
Suave, Latin for “pleasant” or “sweet,” is the word Lucretius (99-55 BCE) uses in his De Rurum Natura to talk about two ways of life: One of constant struggle and the other of sweet calm. Here’s a translation:
 
            “Sweet it is, when on the great sea the winds are buffeting the waters, to gaze from the land on another’s great struggles; not because it is pleasure or joy that any one should be distressed, but because it is sweet to perceive from what misfortune you yourself are free. Sweet is it, too, to behold great contests of war in full array over the plains, when you have no part in the danger. But nothing is more gladdening than to dwell in the calm high places, firmly emplaced on the heights by the teaching of the wise, whence you can look down on others, and see them wandering here and there, going astray as they seek the way of life, in strife matching their wits or rival claims of birth, struggling night and day by surpassing effort to rise up to the height of power and gain possession of the world.”*
 
Living by contrast is rather common. When we are embroiled in strife, we look to the high calm places with longing. When we are enveloped by sweet peacefulness, we look about to see turmoil either to pity or to sigh indifferently. We live a self-imposed contrast that raises two questions: How do we strive without incurring strife? And how do we live in the calm high places without being bored?   
 
In reality, strife comes to all of us, but those who struggle night and day “to rise up to the height of power and gain possession of the world” are the authors of many problems, including their own. No one has ever acquired possession of the world for long, not Xerxes, not Alexander, not Attila, not Tamerlane, not Napoleon, not Hitler.  
 
Places of strife are as ubiquitous as the air, and calm high places are, of course, an ideal, as are unfailing wisdom and all-wise individuals. But we hold onto the notion of that ideal sweet calm place, particularly during times of strife. As John Dryden framed it in verse,
 
            “How blessed is he, who leads a country life,
            Unvex’d with anxious cares, and void of strife!
            Who studying peace, and shunning civil rage,
            Enjoy’d his youth, and now enjoys his age:
            All who deserve his love, he makes his own;
            And, to the lov’d himself, needs only to be known.”
 
Every place, even one in some ideal “country” setting, has the potential for strife as soon as two or more gather. You could climb into the mountains of Nepal, find the proverbial wise man sitting on a rock at the top of the mountain, and listen to or share wisdom. As you descend the mountain, you will probably say to yourself, “Was I at peace because of the thin air of the place? While I was up there did I miss, just a bit, of course, the daily turmoil to which I have become accustomed?” Are you guessing that the only sweet calm place is within? That’s what many “wisemen” have told us.
 
Were we born for strife but taught some unattainable ideal of calm? Are the calm high places beyond reach or beyond any extended visit? If you get there, if you find that calm high place, will you stay?
 
*Suave, mari magno turbantibus aeuora ventia,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;
Non quia vexari quemquamst iucunda voluptas,
Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri
Per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli.
Sed Nil dulcius est, bene quam munita terere
Edita doctrina sapientum temple serena,
Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre
Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae,
Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
Noctoes atque dies niti praestante labore
Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri.
​

As in the somewhat ambiguous lyrics of Greg Laswell’s “Dodged a Bullet,”* you think you “dodged a bullet,” but in reality, you “shot the gun.”
 
Ionia. Ancient Greek settlement. Philosophy. The rise of Western Thought. And, believe it or not, a root of a problem even for you more than two thousand years later.  
 
Almost daily you enter a battle between observation and inculcation. You face on a personal level the problem that ancient Greeks faced: Being the product of a culture that influences how you perceive the world while simultaneously living and observing. It’s a battle for “truth” (or should I say, “Truth”?). From the time of the Ionian philosophers, Western Thought has used the intellectual weapons they provided.
 
You aren’t the first one engaged in such a battle; practically every thinking person has entered the same battlefield. Initially armed only with the weapons of the past, you—and all others—want to, or wanted to, make sense of the world you experience. In the battle, you think you dodge a bullet while you simultaneously shoot the gun. You impose meaning, accounting for your observations in a manner consistent with the method of thinking you learned.
 
Look at the history of science. After Apollonius, Hipparchus, and Ptolemy devised a scheme to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies, just about everyone accepted their “science” until Copernicus and Kepler not only questioned their geocentric worldview, but also used some math to overturn a thousand years of belief.
 
So, here’s a battle plan. Question the Mind’s Eye that sees through the Body’s Eye. If you have an explanation that works, you might be no different from those followers of geocentric thought. The Ptolemaic system accounted for most of what people observed. Eclipses of the moon were accurately predictable, but the cost of that prediction was the absence of an underlying truth and faulty predictions of solar eclipses. The ancients assumed that the planets ran in circles. The Ptolemaic system accounted for “strange” movements by imposing circles on circles, the epicycles as they imagined them: Think of the carnival teacup ride. Each teacup makes its own circle on an orbit about a central axis. And from the adjacent or opposite teacups, the movements seem at times to go backwards, contrary to what you believe is intuitive thought. In reality, the intuition is the product of inculcation. Will you realize, as Kepler did, “Hey, the planets aren’t moving in circular paths at constant speeds as everyone believed and taught. They move on ellipses with speeds that vary with distance from the sun”?
 
You observe all those about you and apply an inculcated science to explain their behavior. For the most part, the system seems to supply the truth; you judge and predict on the basis of a method you learned. You essentially “shoot an idea gun,” using the bullets you were given by your culture. You hit most of the targets, but then you run into that exception, an eclipse you couldn’t predict. The reason? You follow a system that describes the movements on the basis of an idea. But what to do with that person or group that eclipses your beliefs? How do you explain that person who just doesn’t act as you might predict.
 
It’s that Ionian problem of trying to explain your observations. Do you rely on what you learned? Do you impose meaning on the world you observe? Or do you find a new way to interpret your observations? You’re constantly taking aim at truth and meaning with an idea gun someone else loaded. Want to win on the battlefield of truth? Empty the chamber of your weapon and reload on the basis of your actual observations. You already know that the inculcated system of belief you inherited can’t account for human variability, for the exceptions, for the “eclipses” that seem unpredictable. You’re not bound to shoot for the truth with only the ideas others have given you.
 
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPiFIejACyg

Iron rusts. Train tracks are iron. Shiny tops on train tracks indicate that train cars have worn away any rust and polished the metal. Shiny rails mean used rails. Trains pass over them, probably frequently.
 
So, why was 21-year-old Liberty University student Jonathan Gregoire killed by a train on the shiny rails of a trestle over the James River outside Lynchburg, Virginia? Did he not see the shine? Did he not think trains pass over the narrow trestle that has no civilian walkway? It’s a train trestle built for trains, not for people. Was there a clue that the trestle was not people friendly? There is no walkway, no guardrail, and no sign saying, “Use nonexistent pedestrian bridge.”
 
Some beaten paths are not worth following. If you walk on frequently used train tracks, you will at some time likely encounter a train. Jonathan died almost to the day three years after 18-year-old Hannah Williams, also a student at Liberty University, died on the same trestle. Two terrible tragedies in one place! Two heartbroken families; friends bewildered. Great potential without kinetic realization.
 
Trains are big, and, like big moving things, they demonstrate the physical principle of inertia. Once moving, trains are hard to stop. Both Jonathan and Hannah probably sat in some classroom somewhere when a teacher said the word inertia. Lessons are paths. 
 
Although it is impossible for any individual to know the collective experience and wisdom garnered by humans over 200,000 years, certain lessons are worth following: Those that help us eliminate unnecessary risk. Sometime in their lives, some loved one probably said to Hannah and to Jonathan, “Okay, be careful.” Someone has probably said the same thing to you, and you have said the same thing to others. Sometimes shiny paths lead to risk.
 
In many instances, we make decisions to follow paths that are well beaten, but somewhat, or even very, risky. Hannah beat the path on the trestle three years before Jonathan. Had they both lived, they would be the same age, and, going to the same school, they might even have become friends. I do not know whether or not Jonathan knew Hannah or knew anything about her death. Somewhere in the back of his brain he did know the principle of inertia, and he definitely could see that, once on the tracks, a person would have only two options other than jumping over 100 feet into the cold James River: One could run toward a speeding train or try to outrun it. Even if his knowledge of both inertia and the limited options for someone on the trestle did not inspire caution, he could still see the rails. They were shiny.

Take a frivolous commitment like fashion. We make a statement with what we wear, and then, growing tired of the same old “same-old,” we commit ourselves to another fashion. Fashion. The word derives from the Latin for the “act of making” and more recently from the Middle English word for shape. Much of what we do is driven by fashion and the pursuit of the fashionable, the shapes that supposedly enhance us and make others take note. “Look at her.” Or, “Look at him.” “Wow!”
 
We are obsessed with shapes, not just the simple shapes of triangle, circle, and square, but also the shapes of cars, buildings, mountains, plants, animals, and, of course, humans. The obsession makes us watchers in an airport, bus or train station, or, at dockside as an endless procession of shapes catches our attention. We don’t need to talk to the passing shapes; we don’t need to establish relationships with them; we just need to see them in their indefinite variety. More than seven billion people on the planet: it would be entertaining if we could see them all, the short, the fat, the lean, and the tall. We love shapes. We like to see them; we like to be associated with them; we like to make them. But…
 
We are shapers who easily tire of the shapes we make or see. The design of this year’s car holds our attention until the manufacturer reshapes the model. A tiny shape change in taillights, grill, or bumper makes us look with renewed enthusiasm at the ensuing year’s model. We are in love with fluidity while we cling to supposed constants. We call the new shape “this year’s model.” It’s a Buick, a Dodge, a Mercedes. The retired coal miner states, “I’m a Ford man; I’ve always owned Fords, ever since I bought my first car in 1949.” Yet, is a 1949 Ford related in any way to a contemporary model by anything other than the name? The water always changes, but we keep the river’s name. Fluidity. It is, after all, the time-like quality in our material world. Names are the constants to which we commit while we commit to chasing the fluid forms they designate.
 
Shapes and fluidity:  we keep them separate in our minds. But, as in the case of cars, for example, or dresses by our favorite fashion designer, we also mix them. “Oh, is that a Versace?” Or, “Isn’t that an Armani?” Fluid changes locked into a pattern of shapes that we recognize, just as we recognize a Ford, reveal our fixation with the unfixable. Fix it in time; nail down these constant shifts: By fixing the unfixable in the context of our changing lives, we think we defy the very nature of our terminal existence. We make continuities. We make constants.  Constants are important to us, even if they are fictional. We get ourselves into a dither without them, and we feel restless, as though we were the fallen multi-colored leaves of autumn blown about by a November wind.

Information flows, we think, from those who know to those who don’t. The image of the wise imparting to the unwise has been with us since before the first Athenaeum and with good reason. Picture Neolithic campfires as arenas where parents taught their offspring the mechanisms necessary for survival. For all of human history the process of information flow has largely been unidirectional like heat flowing from a warmer object toward a cooler one.
 
But imagine an Athenaeum with a turnstile that selects not only who goes in to learn but also who goes out. Imagine an ordered flow of knowledge that is two-way. That is, imagine that the learned accept an inflow of knowledge from any source INTO their elite world.
 
Apparently, the Second Law of Thermodynamics might not apply in all circumstances.* Entropy, that incessant and ineluctable drive toward universal chaos appears to be susceptible to at least a small and temporary reversal.  In 1867 James Clerk Maxwell hypothesized that the H-theorem might break down under the following circumstance: Suppose there were adjacent rooms connected by a doorway. If one room is warmer than the other, then heat will flow from the warmer to the cooler room, and never the reverse. Maxwell proposed that a small creature, now called Maxwell’s Demon, stationed in the doorway could let particles of a certain speed (and energy) pass. Maxwell’s Demon would halt or slow the increase in entropy, or even decrease it: With information, Maxwell’s Demon would create a perpetual machine that ensures learning in both rooms.
 
We have an analog in what I will call the Second Law of Elitism. Seems that those who sit in the rooms of information, typically those who occupy the halls of academia, the avenues of big commerce, and the chairs of politics are very much like the warm particles gathered together. They deign to spread information into an adjacent room containing the less knowledgeable in order to “teach” them. The warmer of the two rooms doesn’t get warmer; in other words, the room full of information doesn’t get smarter in the process. Like a room full of energetic particles, a room of elite thinkers takes part in a one-way distribution of information.
 
Leo Tolstoy gave us a hint of this Second Law of Elitism in his 1894 nonfiction work The Kingdom of God Is within You:
 
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of a doubt what is laid before him."
 
Apparently, Maxwell’s Demon has his work cut out for him. Whatever ideas the “slow-witted man” has, they probably won’t make it through that doorway. The warmer room isn’t going to become warmer. In 1897 Tolstoy wrote in What Is Art?:
 
"I know that most men — not only those considered clever, but even those who are very clever and capable of understanding the most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic, problems — can seldom discern even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as obliges them to admit the falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much difficulty — conclusions of which they are proud, which they have taught to others, and on which they have built their lives."
 
Stationed between the adjacent rooms that house the learned and everyone else, Maxwell’s Demon could serve as a doorman who makes learning reversible, flowing in both directions. He can assess the energy in particles of wisdom in the room of elites and determine whether or not to let them enter the room with ostensibly less energy.
 
It doesn’t matter who we are, with whom we associate, or what we know. We all need Maxwell’s Demon to let information flow into our lives. Perpetual learning, though a violation of the Second Law of Elitism, is the only way to advance wisdom.
 
*G. B. Lesovik et al, H-theorem in quantum physics, Scientific Reports (2016). DOI: 10.1038/srep32815; Jung Jun Park, et al. "Heat Engine Driven by Purely Quantum Information." PRL 111, 230402 (2013). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.230402;
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-posit-locally-circumvent-law-thermodynamics.html#nRlv

Whether or not you run or walk up a hill, you do the same amount of work. Running, however, takes more power. Enough of a physics lesson. Now, the application:
 
We are often frustrated when we want to effect a change of attitude in someone else or in a group. In that frustration, we might be inclined to use more power than is necessary to alter attitudes. Is there a practical application of this thought?
 
Take anger. It is frequently part of an attempt to change someone. Ironically and unlike the physical measure of energy’s consumption, the application of more power through anger usually accomplishes less work. Let’s call it the Inverse Law of Anger: An increase in emotional power leads to a decrease in attitudinal change.
 
Remember, work means a change, and both walking and running up a hill accomplish the same amount of change. Power throws in the element of time. Maybe because we know the physical effect by experience—that is, that we can effect a change more rapidly in a physical setting by applying more power—we think the principle applies in the world of the psyche, the world of emotions.
 
But it most often doesn’t. A greater exertion of “emotional power” results in less work.
 
Slow and easy or repeated and steady can effect a desired change without the addition of more frustrating emotional power. That especially applies when one is trying to “push” something as incorporeal as emotions up the Hill of Attitude.
 
You can get that same change—albeit it might take longer—by the steady and less emotionally charged process. Ask yourself: "What’s the goal?" What’s the work you want done? Apply a steady force. You’ll effect the change you desire.
 
Just remember to apply the Inverse Law of Anger.  

Escaping the depths of prescribed thought is a matter of importance among those who fancy themselves to be individuals. Enveloped in an ocean of others’ thoughts and attitudes, those who fancy themselves to be individuals believe they breach the surface, lifting the veil of dark water to see un-refracted sunlight. But propelling oneself into the sunlit air above the sea is typically only a temporary act. And then there’s the problem of fundamental composition: Even those who fancy themselves to be individuals emerge from an ocean whose primary component, water, is the dominant component in their own makeup. I think of lines from the Guru Granth Sahib:
 
Thinking avails not, how so hard one thinks;
Nor silence avails, howsoever one shrinks
Into oneself. 
 
Those who fancy themselves to be individuals often fail to see the unity in variation. Variation might be a breach, but variation is always “of something.” Something, some way of thinking is what is being “varied.” Is individuality merely a matter of cleverness?
 
Of a myriad cleverness, not one works.
How then to be True? How rend the Veil of sham, untruth?
 
Why do we fancy ourselves to be individuals? Is our motivation for individuality the unveiling of sham and untruth as we understand the thoughts of all those “individuals” who preceded us? If so, then mere cleverness doesn’t really help us breach the surface. Is there some way to escape the water when each of us is primarily composed of water?
 
Now it’s your turn: “Look, the world has changed dramatically, particularly after the Renaissance and the rise of modern science. We are no longer bound and submerged in a sea of ancient presuppositions. We are free to think as we wish. We’re ‘modern.’ We no longer dwell in a world of myth.”
 
Okay. You make a valid point. But you’re not the first. Martin Heidegger saw the problem in philosophy: Essentially, philosophy was largely Greek—ancient Greek—thinking. Philosophers temporarily breached the Adriatic of thought for two thousand years, but always their cleverness plunged into the water. Yet, even Heidegger’s form of existentialism had to be built on the fundamental component that enveloped all those between him and Plato and Aristotle: The question of Being.
 
Being is the underlying component. Being is the universal. What advance in understanding do individuals make that is not a clever variation of understanding? In every variation another individual attempts to breach the surface of a single ocean.
 
Want to breach the surface, to rise at least temporarily above the ocean? Answer the following: What untruths do you want to unveil? Is your attempt to “unveil” merely a matter of cleverness? Is your attempt to discover your individuality a matter of “shrinking into oneself”? Can anyone, even you, truly escape the sea in which we all seem to swim? Do you fancy yourself to be an individual? If so, how do you keep yourself from plunging back into the sea from which you believe you emerged?

Grocery store racks, newsstand racks, bookstore racks, mailboxes, and coffee tables display magazines that serve every subculture from scientists to beauticians. They seem to self-renew, appearing with different covers and topics weekly or monthly. It’s hard to keep up.
 
So, we don’t. If we do subscribe, we choose something that pertains to our individual subculture: Knitting, tools, guns, whatever. If we read magazines occasionally, such as we would by picking one up for a plane ride, we scan for topics of interest on the cover, pay with the idea that we’ll learn something new or find great entertainment, and then flip flimsy pages. Always new until we read them, the articles hold the promise of information that will enhance our lives.
 
So, we buy and read. And then we achieve a goal that we don’t want: We reach disappointment. The promise of the article leaves us with wanting more. “Cancer Cure around the Corner,” “New Car Runs on Thoughts,” “How To Rear the Perfect Child,” and more, from physical science through technology, to social science—all with the promise of enhancement.
 
Our popular magazines might reflect something positive about our minds. There’s machinery in the brain that desires optimism. “Whoa!” you say. “What about all those pessimistic people?”
 
Maybe we do end all our pursuits in some disappointment. Maybe some pessimism is also built into the brain. It might be the result of experience as though each of us has read too many promises in too many articles, all apparently ending in emptiness and the reality we knew before we bought the shiny cover.
 
There must be some desire for optimism, however. Magazine sales depend on it. The brain can seek renewal even with the history of failure. And every so often, we pick up a magazine in the hope of a promise fulfilled in some glimmer of complete understanding.
 
It’s in the renewing of our pursuit that draws us to magazines. It almost doesn’t even matter what the pursuit is. We pursue. The brain has its own subscription. The magazines just keep coming, piling up more promises we want to fulfill. Attracted by interesting covers and captivating titles, we look even if we don’t buy. We can’t help ourselves. It’s that little bit of underlying and irrepressible optimism that subscribes.  

Hard to believe I’m writing this, but I think Alice profoundly hints at a solution to problems civilization imposes on individuals:
 
Alice says, “Better look first, for if one drinks much from a bottle marked ‘Poison,’ it’s almost certain to disagree with you sooner or later.”
 
Her hint: Read before you drink. Her corollary hint: Avoid excess (Alice’s “much”).
 
Our "civilized" problems stem from excess, but we should expect that. Civilization evolved from excess. People cooperated in various ways—some forced—to build ever more complex relationships based on the availability of materials, such as food, water, and mineral resources. The process snowballed, accumulating not only necessities but also superfluous materials we call luxuries. As behavior became “excessive,” counter behaviors evolved. Some saw excess as unhealthful, even unethical or immoral. Early on in the rise of civilization, humans developed opposing views on excess, the majority holding the perspective that “more is better” with the minority believing “less is best.” We still have those competing views. 
 
No doubt historians will call this an oversimplification (once simplified, can something be “more simplified”?). It is such, but consider Alice’s comment in light of an affluent society. Consider this in light of your own circumstance. You have a computer or access to one. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this. Do you have just one—or access to just one—electronic device? One pair of shoes? One garb? One of almost anything? One source of food? One means of transportation? One of anything superfluous to basic survival?
 
“It’s unnecessary to live a minimalist’s life,” you say.
 
And you are not wrong. Just realize that minimalists and those with less think you live a life of excess. So, how do you measure your level of civilization? Are you ‘more civilized’ than, say, someone who has no electronic devices, running water, or electricity?
 
Alice's message came to me through an experience I had in Guatemala, where I took an impoverished child and family to a mall to buy some items. After I bought one child two pairs of shoes and a package containing three pairs of socks, a social worker accompanying us looked at me and said, "Two pairs of shoes and three pairs of socks!" She meant the purchase was excessive. In the United States, I would not have thought that buying a package of three pairs of socks to be "excessive." 
 
But to avoid your categorizing this as an oversimplification, let me note that I saw drug dealers pushing excess drugs to locals in that same country, and I walked in a three-level glistening mall with up-to-date fashions and household items. Civilization provides excesses. It's what it does very well even though some live without much excess.    
 
If your excesses have led to a patterned life of minor or major addictions to things that are superfluous to basic survival, are you headed toward what Alice says will almost certainly “disagree with you sooner or later”? Civilization is itself a bottle that contains some poison, but how much we drink is an individual choice. 
 
Knowing when to stop "drinking" from that bottle is difficult because it contains "much." At the very least, follow Alice's advice and “look first” before you "drink" something that sooner or later is “almost certain to disagree with you.”

​The Geographic Mind
“I suspect that a driving force in the evolution of …complex cognition was strong long-term selection acting to enhance our ancestors’ ability to mentally map the location and seasonal variation of many species of plants in arid environments and to convey this accumulated knowledge to offspring and other group members. This capacity laid the foundation for many other advances….”
--Curtis W. Marean, “When the Sea Saved Humanity,” Scientific American, August 2010, Volume 303, Number 2, p. 61
 
“…human beings are innately equipped with powerful pattern-recognition algorithms, which sort similar objects in groups.”
--Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, New York, Metropolitan Books, 2010, p. 12
 
Is it through pattern-recognition and a geographical sense that you orient yourself in a personal world to make decisions and by which you map your successes and failures against a background of chaos and harsh reality?
 
You’re always making maps. Maybe that’s why your last strange dream was “strange”: It altered not only human relationships, but also changed the nature of place, mixing together the maps of that restless brain. Map-making is part of the complex cognition that Curtis W. Marean mentions.
 
Remember that expanding set of maps from womb to crib to room to home to neighborhood to village to town to city to country: Like the ripples in a pond expanding from a tossed pebble, those complex waves encompass ever more space. But in a world of vicissitudes, your cartographic waves return to wash over areas previously mapped, and each time the waves record a different pattern: A grown tree where once a sapling stood, a new house on a previously vacant lot, a pothole in an old road, and new occupants along a street. Meanwhile the initial waves continue to expand unless you decide you’ve reach a limiting shore, and a reflecting bounce of energy goes through somewhat familiar—but never the same—waters of the past. And like all waves, interference and enhancement are inevitable as crests or troughs merge, steepening, flattening, erasing, and replacing.
 
Mapping and re-mapping frame your past, present, and future.