“Frailty, thy name Is progressive” is not what Hamlet said in Act 1, Scene 2, but in the context of political correctness and snowflake sensitivities, it might be his line today. I just read that London’s Almeida Theatre added a “trigger warning” to its production of Macbeth.*  Seems that the play by William Shakespeare contains “violence, suicide, fake blood, and smoking.” Who’da thunk it? What’s next? A warning that Halloween films are more about bloody chainsaw murders than about handing out candies?


Do you find our milieu odd in its insistence that people can’t take care of themselves? Do you find it bewildering that ordinary uneducated people during the English Renaissance could go to a play at the Globe without worrying that their feelings might be offended? And do you think it odd that people in theatre, for 2,500 years known as cultural rebels, have suddenly become protectors of emotions, decorum, and the psyches of their audiences? Now the lighted  marquees warn theatergoers with rankings, such as PG-13.


I remember crying as a child when I went to see Bambi. No one told me ahead of time that there would be so much death and destruction: Deer killed, a forest burned, the loss of parents. What little kid could survive the emotional onslaught? Oh! I guess I did.


Progressive times? I think not.


Regressive times? I think so.


What’s next, a warning for theater-goers that the very nature of theatre is, in itself, offensive?  Here’s my rewritten advertisement for Almeida Theatre’s production of Macbeth:


    Got a hankerin’ to see some blood? Lookin’ for some betrayal? Want to see witches stewing stuff in a cauldron? How about a good bloody coup, a regicide by stabbing? A crazy sleepwalking woman who thinks she can’t clean blood from her hands? How      about a gory decapitation? Come to the Almeida Theatre Monday night for a show to your liking. It’s called Macbeth, and it’s been around frightening audiences for more than 400 years.


The regressive political correctness of our time has instilled in many a super sensitivity to the very nature of imagination and pretending. Strangely, the complaints about “offenses” to the psyche come from many who align themselves with “progressive causes.” Think of those who complain that entertainers dress and wear makeup that is culturally inappropriate. I just don’t remember such complaints when Shakespearean actor Sir Laurence Olivier played Othello. If you remember your history of Shakespearean times, you’ll recall that men played women during Queen Elizabeth the First’s reign (Remember the film Shakespeare in Love?). Or what about Peter O’Toole and Alec Guiness playing roles dressed in Arab throabs and serwals? Guys from the British isles dressed as Saharan indigenous people? Shameful. Offensive.


So, the very nature of acting a role is now offensive unless the “actor” personally qualifies by culture and race as a mirror image of the character portrayed. Only Moors should play Moors. Only women should play women. Only redheads should play redheads. No longer can actors “act”; they can no longer pretend to be someone else. And their performances, once thought to be outside the sphere of cultural decorum, now must adhere to a new decorum.


And no longer can there be tales like Bambi that portray violence, loss, death, and destruction or tales that use actors pretending to be members of another culture or race. The West has undergone a regression in imagination in the name of progress.      


Note:


*https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/10/29/british-theatre-adds-trigger-warning-to-shakespeares-macbeth/   Accessed October 30, 2021.

Come with me and you'll be
In a world of pure imagination… —Willy Wonka


I’ve often wondered how many bakers and cooks stay slim. Is it something in their genes? In their will power? As a kid, I peddled past Schaller’s Bakery on my bike, slowing down to take in the smell of fresh-baked bread that wafted into the street. I thought of the bakers constantly enveloped in that olfactory paradise as having a pretty good job. What I wasn’t thinking about was the sensory adaptation response that I also experienced anytime I went into the bakery or into a donut shop and how that wonderful smell, though a potent attractant upon first encounter, dulls with overexposure.


It makes sense that our sense of smell deadens with continuous exposure to an aromatic. If our neurons fire with a stimulus and maintain their activity on that stimulus, they won’t be able to respond to the next stimulus. It seems to be a safety mechanism built into our senses. Wrapped in the smell of a bakery in a peak response that does not diminish with time, a baker might be tempted to continuously sample his product, gaining weight through over consumption. But more importantly olfactory nerves devoted exclusively and intensely to one smell would not be able to sense the smell of smoke should the bakery catch fire. Humans can’t stay in some state of sensory peak without losing the ability to respond to new stimuli.


Apparently and according to Willy Wong, there’s a consilience among animal studies: Simply put: peripheral sensory adaptation response systems are similar across the animal kingdom. The modes of sensory reception, such as chemoreception, mechanoreception, photoreception that are wired to the brain lose their effect over time. Thermoreception, however, appears to differ though the pattern is closer to the other modalities for rising temperature than it is for cooling temperatures.


Wong points out that the base for receiving a new stimulus is the steady-state spontaneous rate (SR) that is present before the reception of a new stimulus. I’m in that SR on my bike before I peddle past Schaller’s. When I encounter the bakery smell, I quickly rise to a peak rate (PR) of response to the olfactory stimulus. That intense state then weakens to become the subsequent steady-state (SS) response. The formula for this is in words is:


    The Final Steady State equals the square root of the Peak Response times the Initial Steady State.


I suppose that in driving through Hershey, Pennsylvania, each of us would experience what I experienced as I peddled past Schaller’s Bakery. Our olfactory sensors in Hershey are leavened by a suffusion of chocolate. Willy Wong explains that how we respond in Hershey differs little from how a Drosophilia responds in a fruit factory. The smell would drive us to sample the chocolate, but with continued exposure, our desire wanes. We just can’t keep eating either fresh bread or chocolate because our physiological responses to those stimuli decrease after we rapidly reach our peak rate of response.


So, let’s take this to another realm of neuronal activity, to, as Descartes might say, that duality of mind and body. Unlike our senses, which dull over time in response to a stimulus, our mental responses appear to obey another pattern with respect to ideology. Once stimulated by an idea, we appear often to maintain a steady diet of thought with respect to politics, philosophy, and theology.


Once stimulated by an idea, we carry a high level of response well past the place or moment of stimulation. And unlike the localization of a smell, such as just outside or inside the bakery or the chocolate factory, our intellects appear to bike along a street that has multiple Schaller’s bakeries or Hershey’s chocolate factories. There’s a bakery or chocolate factory on every block we pedal past. Thus, our neurons peak as we tie everything to a single ideology. This seems to be a universal pattern among so many of us today as almost all topics become ideological stimuli.


Would that our minds could learn from our senses and grow tired of the dominant stimulus. The lesson would translate to our emotions, dulling them to the stimuli that drive so many of us to anger on block after block as we pedal our way along the streets of our lives. In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Willy sings, “Come with me, and you’ll be/ in a world of pure imagination.” Once we reach our peak mental response, we enter a factory of imagination, where what is real for us isn’t necessarily real for those around us. We carry that stimulus as a constant whereas others might respond to it only momentarily and then pedal on, not to return to the sidewalk outside the bakery or chocolate factory.


Any advice from this?


Sure, the next time a recurrent ideological stimulus fires those emotional responses, think of yourself on a bike pedaling past a bakery or chocolate factory, and realize that the stimuli don’t waft from all the storefronts along the streets you pass. But should you return to the ideological stimulus in the bike ride of your mind, to that place in your pure imagination where the intensity of feeling derives from a single smell, think of how your senses respond to overexposure to physical stimuli. The thought might lessen your desire for ideological bread or chocolate. 


Note:

*Wong, Willy. 22 October 2021. Consilience in the Peripheral Sensory Adaptation Response. Front. Hum. Neurosci., 22 October 2021 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2021.727551 Online at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2021.727551/full

The late Professor Paul Jacoby taught philosophy at Seton Hill College, now Seton Hill University. The previously all female school, located in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, is situated on a hill (that seems obvious, doesn’t it?), one of seven hills in the community (making Greensburg one of at least two urban centers built on seven hills * ). The physical setting is significant here because it plays a role in the following tale about Paul, a consistently mild-mannered man, short, bald, and rather quiet in social settings. Call him unflappable and reserved. I assume that years of wading through thick volumes of philosophers like Schopenhauer and theologian-philosophers like Aquinas and Spinoza made him a patient man.


From the hill on which he lived Paul drove to the school every day, descending from his hill and then winding up the school’s long bending driveway colonnaded by two rows of bark-pealing sycamore trees. At the top, he parked in an assigned place on a terrace behind one of the buildings. On one warm day, just as he was pulling into his parking place with his driver’s window down, he passed a family visiting the campus. As he made the slow turn to park, the father asked him for directions. Distracted by the question, Paul hit the gas instead of the brake, and drove off the terrace down a short embankment. The startled family looked on wide-eyed as Paul opened his car door, climbed the hill with briefcase in hand and said, “I’m sorry, what were you looking for?” Yep. No apparent concern about what happened and definitely no apparent concern for his wrecked car. I want you to think of that incident as my introduction to the process of “letting go.”
   
Attachment to Ideas
Listening to “Live and Let Die,” the eponymous Bond film song by Paul McCartney and Wings, I realized that I had recently followed the advice in the lyrics with regard to some recent blog entries and that almost like Paul Jacoby, I let those blogs die—as in I did not publish them, but left them as wrecks on my hard drive.


Sometimes what we do just isn’t worth the effort we spend; sometimes the ideas we have add nothing to the treasure chest of the intellect. Be happy I never posted those essays. Fortunately for you, they were wrecks you never had to witness.


So, I wrote and scrapped. I let go. After spending time writing, revising, and revising again, I realized that what I wrote recently in several essays wasn’t what I thought I was writing. It’s not easy to let go of something that took time to develop. For many of us, holding onto what we do  and the possessions we have is a matter of pride. But as we all know, in the long run pride begets grief either for the proud or others. Of course, I have to ask myself whether I am proud when I say that by dropping those several essays to focus on other matters, I am like Paul after he dropped his car over the embankment—suffering no loss because I relinquished any attachment to the ideas in those essays.


Attachment to Ideology
Letting go is difficult, especially letting go of a favored idea, ideology, or belief. In this, I think of the recent push among some politicians to move the United States toward socialism. In short, I think of Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed “Social(ist) Democrat.” Having dubbed himself “social Democrat” when he moved from the elephant to the donkey, Bernie sticks with his appellation. And he has “evangelized” a large following among America’s youth. Surrounded by the wealth created by a modified capitalist system, many of America’s young people have lined up behind this hoary-haired pied-piper politician.


Now, I confess that I haven’t been inside Bernie’s head to discover how he came to the conclusion that socialism in any form is a good thing. I have read on page 8 of his book Our Revolution, that he calls Hitler a “right wing lunatic.” ** I find that interesting. By almost any standard of reasonable assessment, Hitler was a lunatic, true, but his party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, auf Deutsch: Nationalistiche Deutcshe Arbeiterpartei. Bernie makes the point on the same page that the Nazis were responsible for killing one third of the Jewish population and for a sizable proportion of the fifty million plus people killed during World War II. So, I’m just perplexed by Bernie’s somehow adopting a political philosophy that included genocide of Jews and by his joining as a college student at the University of Chicago the Young People’s Socialist League (18). I’m also surprised that with the numbers of people impoverished, enslaved, and killed under socialist regimes in the twentieth century, that Bernie thinks socialism is good for humanity. Though too young (b. 1941) to have witnessed the savage democide of Russians by Stalin, he was old enough at 18 to know what happened when Castro took iron-fisted control of Cuba with the help of his own doctor of torture and “Mengele-like” Che. Bernie was also old enough to have witnessed both waves of migration that brought more than 300,000 Cubans to the United States as they fled Castro’s communism in the 1060s and 1980s. Surely, in the years since those and other socialist-driven atrocities, he has become aware that Venezuela lost millions of citizens who fled the socialism of Chavez and Maduro. And surely, Bernie has seen how a mandated redistribution of wealth by the few always ends up in making an oligarchy of those in charge, people who believe they are exempt from their own rules and who reap benefits they deprive others from having.


But Bernie and his young proteges in Congress continue to hold onto the promise of socialism, believing, I guess, that “this time it will work.” And, as he and they continue to push for redistribution of wealth, they become models of hypocrisy because they do not deny themselves material possessions, and they do not redistribute what they have. Certainly, Bernie can’t live in his three homes simultaneously. What about all those poor people living on the streets of American cities and all those poor people crossing the border by the tens of thousands? He could redistribute a few bedrooms, couldn’t he? Do it for the children, Bernie. Do it for the cause you hold onto so tenaciously, the political view that you can’t let go.   


Ideologies are among the possessions that we can’t let go. I, for example, can’t let go my opposition to socialism. Am I one to “live and let die,” a cold-hearted person whose license to kill means license to kill healthcare for all, universal wealth distribution, and free education? How could I be so cold? I’m not rich; shouldn’t I favor a little redistribution? Maybe I don’t have to have a yacht like the very rich, but I might enjoy some government-provided rowboat on the water outside Bernie’s lake house.


Everywhere I look I see socialism as an avenue for special classes of individuals to separate themselves from the masses just as in the old Soviet Union there were those relegated to block housing while some privileged few enjoyed a vacation in the family dacha. The elite among the ruling class enjoyed world travel whereas the typical Soviet citizen was locked behind what Churchill called the Iron Curtain. The very class division that socialists like Bernie claim their political ideology will eliminate is engendered by socialism. But then, Bernie might argue that “someone has to decide,” and that he and his class of self-appointed leaders know what is best for the masses. But as he holds onto his ideals, he ignores that unaccountable government officials with unlimited funding often use the money for their own interests—as  evidenced by the General Services Administration’s party in Las Vegas in 2010. *** Ah! Bernie, Yes, in a perfect world, we will all share everything, treat each other with respect, and never fall prey to Greed.


I don’t believe that arguments based on how many people died under socialist rule, how many people were kept from achieving their individual goals, or how many people were imprisoned by socialist governments would have any effect on Bernie’s belief in the efficacy of his ideas. The car might have plunged off the terrace many times in the twentieth century, but Bernie isn’t letting go. He’s sticking with the car, with the ideology. Bernie is no Paul Jacoby.


Paul Jacoby as the Model of Humility
Okay, so Bernie is no Paul Jacoby, but then, neither am I. I lack humility; I hold onto many ideas I’ve had for decades. What ideas have I let go? What have I sacrificed by junking a few blogs? Those unpublished essays I wrote in the last two weeks and sent not to my website, but rather to the cloud and the hard drive are insignificant not only in your life, but also in mine. In fact, maybe because I still have access to those ideas, I might be tempted to go down that embankment to retrieve them sometime soon, arguing that “Well, if I thought it, it must be good.” See? Pride.


Letting go is hard. It’s hard to let go of possessions and even harder let go of  ideas. I suppose letting go of emotions is equally as hard. So, I find myself being a hypocrite, able to point out the folly of Bernie’s ideas, but incapable of pointing out the folly of my own. I’m asking him to leave socialism behind while I leave little of my own ideas behind.


Maybe I could benefit from Paul’s example. He seemed to live in the present moment. The car went over the embankment, but in the next moment he was concerned about what the parent needed. It’s in the present that ideologies prove their value. It’s in the present that ideologies manifest themselves in efficacious action.


In which moment has socialism been of practical benefit to individuals as individuals? With regard to the everyday needs of individuals, a socialist philosophy means nothing regardless of its loftiness and ideals. Those 162 million people who died under socialism in the twentieth century can’t be brought back to life. Those millions who sought and still seek to escape socialist governments do not seem to have Bernie’s ear. Maybe he can’t hear them as he sticks with the car as it rolls over the embankment. Certainly, he isn’t walking up the embankment to discover their specific—and very individual—needs.


Notes:


*Come on, now, did I have to tell you “Rome”? Rome’s seven hills are Quirinal Hill, Viminal Hill, Capitoline Hill, Esquiline Hill, Palatine Hill, Caelian Hill, and Aventine Hill, in case that comes up in conversation at dinner tonight. The Eternal City makes them famous. Greensburg’s hills have local names and ward numbers. I attended, for example, Fourth Ward School, then Sixth Ward School, and then Eighth Ward School, the latter two on hills named “Ludwick” and because of the dense Italian population, “Dago Heaven.”


**Sanders, Bernie. 2016. Our Revolution. New York. Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press.


***https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/gsa-official-las-vegas-conf-scandal-finally-gets-charged/   Accessed October 28, 2021.

Do you like to play? If you do, why? If you don’t, why not? Oh! I see. You want me to define play. In this, I’m not the philosopher or lexicographer you might be seeking. There are articles and books on the subject, some of them richly insightful, some richly confusing. I can ramble on, however, possibly defining play to your semi-satisfaction. But even if I fail to define to your satisfaction, I will have by the end played a game, and you will have played one, too.


The late philosopher John Walsh, long-time professor and a colleague of mine at California University of Pennsylvania, * centered his philosophy of play on the work of Martin Heidegger. For Jack, as he was known, understanding the nature of play was an avenue into understanding the nature of humanity. He took, as Heidegger took, an existential approach to the subject and taught his students in a kind and mild manner. Jack’s emphasis on play, or leisure, was not a travel agent’s take on how to vacation. Rather, he focused on how play was an integral part of being human, or rather, how play makes us human. Maybe for you Heideggerians out there, I should say that play is an integral part of Dasein, roughly “being there,” or rather “becoming in the present.” I’m guessing, but I believe that Jack Walsh would say that in losing ourselves in play, in the game, we are totally involved in our present, and in our present we are always “becoming.”


That’s philosophy for you. It leaves you wondering whether or not you reached a definitive understanding. It makes you wonder why one should philosophize. It makes you think that the reason for 2,500 years of philosophical ambivalence, confusion, theses and anti-theses, and neologisms is that philosophers play intellectual games. Of course, we become absorbed by play, but what’s new in introducing Dasein into the conversation? Unless one wades through Heidegger’s Being and Time—not an easy task, I can tell you—the existential framework that my colleague used in his approach to play and leisure is esoteric. To explain play less metaphysically and more physiologically, should we switch from philosophy to neurology and biochemistry? Is philosophy the art of explaining mind whereas psychology coupled with biochemistry the science of explaining brain? In taking a psychological approach to play, am I not taking sides in that old dualism? Am I not favoring body over soul?


Have I become an agent of materialism?    


Play is in itself not an exclusively human phenomenon. You have probably observed playful young animals, their antics contrasting with more laid back adults. The phenomenon is prevalent in many mammal species and is part of the socialization process; play is behavior. You have also noted that maturation appears on the whole to quash playfulness or alter it significantly. As some zoologists note, often the play of young predators prepares them for the realities of surviving by hunting. For young prey animals, romping might prepare animals in the absence of threats for escape during threats to come.


In humans the energetic physical play of youth often turns into bowling, riding a golf cart, or playing cards. For football fans, what they once might have done physically turns into the emotional and mental play of cheering, betting, competing in fantasy football, and, importantly, firing those mirror neurons that tie us to what we observe. We can play vicariously. For most of us, play doesn’t go away; it simply morphs. Or should I say that we, the players, morph? We might consider challenges as play, even risky challenges, such as rock climbing, running great distances, and gambling. I would be remiss, of course, not to mention playing electronic games, including versions that pit humans against AI. And play opens us up to invention, to new kinds of play in seemingly endless varieties: Curling, pickle ball, foot volley, and the various X games stand as evidence that play is a creative process.


Some might complain that play distracts people from serious concerns and that it is a time-waster, a nonproductive activity. In some social settings, people perceive it as a lower form of human endeavor that sidetracks us from nobler pursuits like those framed by the title “humanities”—including philosophy—or by the term accomplishments. As a distractor, play is seemingly non-utilitarian though, ironically, those financially invested in sports teams know the economic utility of their investment. And among professional athletes play becomes a matter of mastered techniques that enable the talented to excel among other talented people. For psychotherapists, play appears to be a useful curative endeavor for the neurotic, the overworked, and the work-obsessed. “You need a break. You need to lighten up. Let’s go play such-n-such.” Play has many purposes, and among them are two goals that we don’t readily associate with play: Destruction and Death.


Games centered on destruction and death have become entertainment. The presumed bloodlust of Roman fans in the Coliseum watching people hack one another to death has been transferred into a video game like Dark Souls III. Play centered on destruction and death occurs also in literature and film. War Games, Shooters, War Book, Lord of the Flies, and currently, Squid Game are examples. Squid Game? Hunger Games? What, I wonder, would Jack Walsh say? As one educated in the humanities, he probably knew of The Most Dangerous Game, that popular 1924 short story published three years before he was born. That story by Richard Connell found expression in movies, a TV series, and multiple imitations during his Jack’s life. And that 2021 Squid Game fad? Now preteens and teens are playing versions of the game, and some people are hurting the losers. Why didn’t I think to ask him about such “play” and its role in defining humanity? In playing a “game” in which people destroy and kill, are we demonstrating our existential state of becoming? Of being human? Isn’t this what Dasein is all about? Did Heidegger, who associated himself with the Nazi Party, know that Hitler and his henchmen “played” war games in preparation for actual war? Should we overlook Heidegger’s Nazi association and think of him instead as an avid and accomplished skier? Skiing is a form of play, isn’t it? Is there a better example of “being there,” of “being in the world,” of Dasein, than the intensity of skiing down a mountain? Focus on the present, or fall off a cliff.


As a veteran, Jack no doubt knew that generals conduct war games. On tables with toy soldiers or weapons or on computers to simulate fields of battle, military leaders turn play into preparation for death on scales that dwarf the fifty million plus killed during World War II. Recently, I stumbled on a report sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of the Army called Striking the Balance: US Army Force Posture in Europe, 2028. ** The cover of the report is a photo of a map with toy soldiers. Since World War II, the United States has maintained a military presence in Europe, initially as a shield against hegemony by the former Soviet Union and continuously as one against a perceived threat from Russia. To maintain the “defensive” posture, the Army constantly runs scenarios of hypothetical battles (and full scale wars). From the perspective of swivel chairs behind desks and conference tables and in conjunction with AI, the military plays multiple war games. In the United States the Pentagon frequently reanalyzes both its strategies and, to give the military some intellectual credit, the socio-political reasons to strategize. It’s chess on steroids. The Striking the Balance report enumerates such reasons for strategizing. Here is one of the report’s conclusions:


    “The risk involved in any US-Russian conflict is so great that Russia would never conduct a sudden surprise attack based solely on the conditions of US/NATO military vulnerability. Therefore, any conflict would be preceded by a crisis period of days, weeks, or months of heightened political tensions that would buy some time for focused intelligence gathering and military preparations.”


The statement isn’t in itself a game, but it suggests that playing hypothetical war games is an essential part of military life and that at some time before 2028, the United States military might have to apply strategies it played out numerous times.


Let’s say you have a favorite team. I follow the Pittsburgh Steelers, for example. The team’s successes over the past half century have come with numerous failures. Six Super Bowls out of eight played during a period of more than fifty such championship games isn’t a high success rate, but it is a better championship record than that of all but one team, the Patriots, which also has six. Prior to every football game, a team plays out scenarios of the game, seeing where the other team’s weaknesses lie. Teams watch films of games that an upcoming opponent lost to find those weaknesses.


Now imagine countries that have had many wars. Russia is such a country. From a typical American’s perspective, Russia poses an Either/Or threat. Either NATO contains it to prevent a reconstitution of the Soviet Union, or Russia re-establishes something akin to the Soviet Union. But see the situation from the Russian perspective, also an Either/Or, and like the American perspective is centered on Winning vs. Losing. As the Striking the Balance authors point out, the Slavic peoples who became the Russians have had, like the Steelers and the Patriots, many losses. The Vikings, the French, and the Germans all invaded Russia. The Japanese defeated the Russian navy. And there have been numerous other wars and conflicts that Russians perceived as existential threats and encroachments on their homeland. Think of the millions of Russians killed in WW II; and think of largely Russian populations in “peripheral countries” the diaspora in Latvia and eastern Ukraine. So, as NATO and US Army generals play war games to defeat a Russian hegemony, so the Russians play them, and probably not just against the West, but also against any perceived threat from the East as China becomes more militarily capable. Now you might say, “But strategizing isn’t playing. It’s an essential path to victory.” No, it’s a game. It’s a form of play. But the score isn’t kept in touchdowns, points, or runs. Victories and defeats are summed in deaths and acreage conquered.


It is unlikely that any neuroscientist would be able to put electrodes on the heads of generals as they play their actual war games, but I would like to see whether or not the neurons active during such strategizing are the same that spark in my brain as I actively participate in a game or watch one. It is unlikely also that anyone will be able to sample the generals’ neurotransmitters to assess levels of dopamine and serotonin in an attempt to quantify pleasure that war games afford military leaders.


During the final stages of the Gulf War, General Schwarzkopf gave a news conference that is now available on the Web. In the conference, the general reveals the war strategy that the French, American, Saudi, and other coalition members used to defeat the Iraqis. In watching the exchange between reporters and the general, I had the feeling that Schwarzkopf experienced a flush of those pleasure neurotransmitters that come with a game well played and a victory assured. Was the general experiencing what we all experience in play? His war game played out just as he had planned. He achieved victory. The game was in the final minutes with time rapidly running out on the Iraqis who had no chance of victory. Certainly, Schwarzkopf’s brain was flushed with those neurotransmitters of pleasure.


So, are psychological, neurological, and biochemical explanations of play “better than” philosophical explanations? And is “pleasure” the end? Here’s a statement I find germane to the discussion. In Psychology Today online, Dr. Marianna Pogosyan writes, “Pleasure is not so much about dopamine and the opioids themselves but about how the brain communicates between various regions. The neurotransmitters change the wiring of the regions and how they engage with each other.” *** Does that mean play is a state of brain rather than a state of mind? Is it a purely physical “being in the world”?


I wish Jack were still alive. I would love to ask him.


*As of this writing, the university is to become Pennsylvania Western University or PennWest University under a consolidation of three Pennsylvania state universities.


**Clark. J. P., C. Anthony Pfaff, et al. June, 2020. US Army War College. https://publications.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/3729.pdf


*** https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/between-cultures/202107/the-new-neuroscience-pleasure

Welcome. Let’s begin with a Meditation Moment: First calm yourself…B r e a t h e. In. Out. Slowly now. Slowly. Hear the air. Second, Picture yourself in the center of where you are, sitting, standing, staring at a computer screen or smart device. View whatever surrounds you. Sweep vertically; sweep horizontally. Front, side, back, side, front, swivel that desk chair 360 degrees to take in all panoramically by the camera of your brain. This is your HERE. This is your NOW. Right now you are floating on a calm river. Floating.


But what’s to come? Where will you be an hour hence? And, since even a calm river moves, will you allow it to carry you where gravity takes it? Will you defiantly exhibit your free by turning upstream whenever you pass the unexpected confluences of tributary waters and cataracts or encounter tight meanders where you might ground on point bar deposits?


What kind of mediation is this? Who profits from speculation about the future that cannot be known, tomorrow’s downstream white water or chaotic seas churning today’s calm waters.  What kind of meditation guru am I to ask where you will be? Shouldn’t I help you float in the Eternal Present and not ask you to pilot your ship through the turbulence of storms and rapids you cannot truly know until you encounter them? Doesn’t speculation about the future engender the opposite of what meditation is supposed to do?
___


You know how some people—theoretical physicists and wannabe theoretical physicists—go on and on about multiple universes, parallel worlds, and alternate realities? Well, maybe they are onto something about multiple universes, but even if their arguments are valid, at least, mathematically valid, I still don’t know whether I have some doppelgänger writing blogs that are antithetical to those I have posted on this website. Those other Donalds out there will always be only as real as conjecture. If I exist as doppelgängers in alternate worlds, then even in the deepest meditation, I cannot fully know my NOW. I might fall short by 10 to the minus 600+ Donalds. So, if I’m bound to this universe and no other, does that mean I live a predestined life?


Barring a fully deterministic universe, all of us seem to have choices as we progress toward our future. Our NOWs lead to personal tomorrows. At each moment, you and I do something that leads to something else but not to all possible “something elses.” Of course, there is nothing profound in that statement, and there are many ways to state it. We could argue, for example, that every NOW imposes a limitation on the future because, as Robert Frost writes in his “The Road Not Taken, once we choose, we’ll never be able to re-choose. And thus, the lands and waters we travel today determine the lands and waters we will travel. Free will means that the world might not be fully deterministic, but even if we accept free will, we have to acknowledge that personal determinism is a reality: The Present initiates the Future. If there are “many worlds,” we can know only one, and that is the one we determine by what we do in each NOW. Your future is the probable one, not the merely possible one, not the many possible futures.


I suppose it was a conjunction of events I watched from my room in the Westin in Savannah that got me to thinking about the relationship between NOW and future. Outside the large windows that afforded me a view that distracted me from my laptop, a wedding party was gathering under partly sunny (pessimists say “partly cloudy”) skies on a mid-October Saturday morning. Framed by an arch of flowers under which they stood (lower right in photo), a bride and groom, their backs to the wide river, were absorbed by their NOW. They achieved that goal of meditation; nothing outside of the NOW mattered. The well dressed onlookers sat in white folding chairs facing the couple, and like me, the attendees could see the river and across the river the busy touristy River Street.


And then, astonishingly quietly from my perspective behind the room's windows, I saw a moderate-size and half empty container ship sail by, carrying its load of unknowns concealed in those metal boxes, one possibly holding something I might have ordered on Amazon. The largest of these vessels can carry as many as 20 thousand 20-foot containers, but even this half empty moderate-size container ship was large enough to block the view of River Street. The backdrop of this couple’s wedding became for a few minutes not their romantic history, not their flowered arch and attendant wedding party, but a mass of metal coming from who knows where to head upstream into port. Could there be a more analog-rich setting?


1.     Every couple enters that commitment with matters unknown. Each of us enters into any long-term relationship with a personal history that determines our present and our future. In marriages, young couples are constantly receiving new containers in their port of shared experience. Essentially, “I didn’t know that about you” lies in many to-be-opened containers. In the first years of any marriage, the container ships ceaselessly arrive, every present moment serving as a port for offloading a new container to open.  2.    Container ships sail both into and out of ports. Their destinations of sea-bound ships are unknown to those along the riverside like the attendees at the wedding. Ships that leave port carry their cargo down the Savannah River as all of us carry our history on the river of time that discharges into a wide sea of possibilities. The contents of their thousands of container boxes are like the memories locked into our neurons, some to be revealed in the NOW whereas others to be revealed in some future port. And some, for good or bad, will be lost on a stormy sea, containers forgotten and never to be opened.  
3.     Even the pilot standing in the pilot house about eight floors  above the main deck cannot know all the contents he carries. He might have the ship’s manifest, but in steering a thousand-foot vessel, he has no time to read it. In any relationship, members ask their partners to carry their unopened containers toward some distant port. All relationships carry such cargo; all partners discover the contents of some containers only after they arrive in port.  
4,     Seeing the stacks of containers before the pilot house, those along the river might ask, “How could the pilot  know where the tip of the bow lies from such a vantage point? How can the pilot navigate the river’s meanders? The containers are stacked in columns like tall buildings.” As is the pattern on the Savannah River, tugboats accompany the ships, serving as a safety against a disaster and a possible aid in navigating meanders, such as the one just downstream from Savannah’s Talmadge Memorial Bridge.  
5.     For me, seeing the tugs assist the container ships opened my brain’s neuronic containers, immediately reviving memories of Little Toot, the fictional personified tugboat whose story was written by Hardie Gramatky. As a toddler, I made my mother read that book over and over at bedtime. She told me later that I had memorized every line—now lost in some corner of my hippocampus—of the tale, allowing me say the lines as she read them. Gramatky begins his story with a playful Little Toot and ends it as a tale of maturation and salvation (no spoiler alert needed). At the beginning of the story, Little Toot is preoccupied with the present, ironically sailing in figure eights, lemniscates, the symbol for infinity, on the ever-moving water. By the end of the tale, Little Toot becomes guide and savior handling the concerns of the present and preventing a disastrous future. Every tug on the Savannah River plays the role of Little Toot.  
6.     The wedding couple that day began their voyage downriver toward a sea of unknowns. Would they weather the storms they would, as all of us must, encounter? Would the containers of their past experiences be sufficient to help them through rough seas together? Would the new containers of shared experiences help them survive rough times together?
7.     Do the containers of experiences the couple loads onto their mutual ship determine their destination? Will one or both steer the ship? Will either be able to see the bow from a pilot house with all those containers stacked before them?  
​8.     Each ship is destined to sail in a universe packed with possibilities, but each ship is destined to arrive in ports predetermined by what it carries. Into what ports will the young couple sail? That they might have doppelgängers on similar ships sailing through other universes is irrelevant. What is relevant is the pre-loaded cargo they carry and the containers they load before they sail on each voyage. And yes, they will have more than one voyage. Time’s river like the Savannah keeps flowing with ships arriving and ships departing, both the Heraclitean river and the cargo changing. Container ships keep sailing into and out of port, offloading, loading, offloading, and loading. 

In the few minutes you spent reading this, you have been in port and you have set a probable destination, and in loading another container in this port, you turn your present second by second into your next present. Doppelgängers and their ships take on different cargo and sail to different ports. If other universes are similar in any way, however, it’s in time’s arrow, the present always moving toward the unknown and turning possibilities into probabilities, and then ultimately into present and past realities. Your ship sails on the the rivers and seas of what was and is. You and I are both container ships. We do pilot to specific ports, but not through waters unthreatened by storms. And when we share piloting with another, we carry containers of unknown contents. And like the pilot stationed high in the pilot house, we can't fully view of the bow because stacks of intervening containers tower before us. We set our eyes on the water at some distance in front of the bow, hoping no sudden change occurs to the conditions we believe we preview. If we are fortunate, a tug, a guide, helps us whenever we navigate into and out of harbors and along narrow channels. Each ship sets sail from a port with pre-loaded cargo. For the wedding couple on that day in Savannah, the wedding itself was a port from which the couple will sail to other ports, each destination chosen on the basis of what the ship carries or intends to transport. And just as the pilot steers into water beyond the bow, so the couple steers with an eye on some predetermined port, a future they see off in the distance while sailing through the immediate waters obscured by what they carry. And as they sail, they come to realize that the voyage they vowed has to be altered to meet the conditions immediately before their bow.

Here’s the BBC headline: “Covid-19 in Wales: A third of positive cases are unvaccinated.” * I guess we’ve reached the point of terminal nonsense, dare I say, terminal stupidity. Well, I suppose it was bound to happen, what with all the West’s educational alchemy motivated by  “math is racist” and math is ethnocentric, and, for example, Oregon’s 82-page pamphlet A Pathway to Equitable Math instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction. ** Math ain’t numbers no more, kiddo.


But I suppose we’ve destined ourselves for number manipulation as a tool of ideology. You can read in Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction *** and in Kit Yates’s The Math of Life and Death **** that numbers, statistics in particular, are ideological tools and, sometimes, weapons. Definitely, tools of propaganda, also. Take that headline above. What did you infer upon reading it? That anti-vaxxers are paying the price of their anti-vaccine stance in their own phlegm?


Or did you infer by that BBC headline that in Wales TWO-THIRDS of COVID-19 cases are AMONG THE VACCINATED POPULATION? Why is the number given as it is for any reason other than to put some blame, some mark on the social standing of the unvaccinated. Could the BBC not just as easily have opened their story with the headline: “Vaccines Prove Ineffective, as Two-thirds of New Covid-19 Cases in Wales Demonstrate”?


Maybe the BBC reporter or editor “larned meth in Organ, teached by some racist.” Or maybe the BBC people just didn’t pay much attention in math class, concentrating instead on their “communication studies.” Here’s a line from the story: “Nearly 13% of hospital patients with confirmed Covid were unvaccinated.” But isn’t the point of vaccination, if not complete protection, then protection from hospitalization and ineluctable death? What is that 87% of hospitalized, but previously vaccinated, population supposed to think? That they wasted their efforts to acquire immunity?


No doubt the BBC headline will leave an impression in the minds of those pushing vaccine mandates, such as “elites” like Arnold Schwarzenegger and others who are vexed by the unvaxxed and who label the unvaxxed as terrorists and mass murderers. Are these unvaccinated people occupying hospital beds that could be used for victims of cancer and other diseases? But what about that 87% of hospital beds occupied by the vaxxed who are infected?


As someone who has been Pfizered twice, I have no problem with anyone’s choosing to get the vaccine, but I can understand those who choose not to be vaccinated. Some people just prefer to avoid medicines for various reasons; some specifically fear their effects: The J & J vaccine is a likely cause of about 30 cases of TTS with four deaths, so news of those vaccine-associated deaths weighs heavily on the minds of the unconvinced. ***** But statistically, four out of millions seems to be insignificant unless you are one of the four recognizing on your death bed that the vaccine you took to save your life was ending it.


If the general population is inadequately schooled in math, those four deaths plus some mixed messaging from health authorities and sensational reporting by the media will in the minds of the populace make vaccination seem as dangerous as the disease it’s designed to prevent. The way the Press handles numbers can have far-reaching effects. In addition, unanswered questions or confusing instructions make people frame their own answers in their amygdalae. Here’s a passage from a blog I wrote when two people with Ebola were transferred to the United States in 2014:


    By the end of July, 2014 an outbreak of the Ebola virus killed more than 700 people in western Africa. Ebola sickened hundreds of others, including two American missionaries dedicated to helping the infected. Both Americans, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Whitebol contracted the disease. As I watched TV coverage of the ambulance deliver Dr. Brantly to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, I thought of the significance of “two.” In the American Press, reports on the Ebola Virus were generally tales of a distant land prior to the transport of Dr. Brantly. With the announcement of his transport to the United States and similar plans for Nancy Whitebol, the news coverage changed.


“Two” became, in the midst of 300 million people, more than just “two” in its potential to become, if not infinite, certainly indefinite. Fortunately, the transfer of Dr. Brantly seems, as of this writing, to have occurred without incident. But the transfer was done via plane and ambulance, and the ambulance traveled a highway in the midst of other vehicles. Just what if there had been a collision with another vehicle? The helicopter camera revealed what seemed like a normal traffic composition as a minivan with a carrier box paralleled the movement of the ambulance. Was there an unsuspecting family headed to summer vacation in that van in the lane next to the ambulance? Was the driver sleepy? What if the security system had been breached, potentially releasing the deadly virus into the general population? How would the significance of “two” have changed? Two people, missionaries, both dedicated to helping others, could, hypothetically by the accident of their infection and a breach in their isolation, unintentionally do indefinite harm. Would the disease spread geometrically, exponentially? ******


Nothing makes the heretofore meaningless more meaningful than personalizing it. Someone hears “four people died from the J and J vaccine,” and suddenly it becomes, “Oh! My gosh. I had that vaccine” or “Oh! There’s no way I’m going to get that shot.” We think with our flight, fight, or freeze brain, and not with the frontal cortex when matters appear to affect us directly. It’s easy to stand back and be contemplative when whatever is going on is going on elsewhere. What is personal is always meaningful. It’s easy to become pessimistic when a possible—not a probable—danger threatens.


And news media love to play on our fears; thus, the BBC headline above. Often the source of faulty guidance and fake news lies in the math accepted by the editor, reporter, or newscaster. Often, the math is faulty because it confuses absolute and relative numbers.


Let’s say you go to the doctor after a blood test, and the doctor tells you that according to the statistics, your blood test indicates that you have a 33% chance of developing a cancerous tumor. You panic. You’re one-third of the way to destruction, you think. But you also have a 66% chance of not developing any cancer. Why do you focus on the negative and not on the positive? Why did the BBC editor choose to say that in Wales a third of COVID cases occurred among the unvaccinated? Couldn’t that headline just as easily have been “In Wales, vaccines appear to be failing”? Couldn’t the headline have been “After millions of doses of J and J vaccine, only four people out of about 30 who developed TTS from the vaccine succumbed to the blood-clotting ailment”?


Here’s what Yates writes in The Math of Life and Death: “In medical trials one commonly sees positive outcomes reported in relative terms, to maximize their perceived benefit, while side effects are reported in absolute terms in an attempt to minimize the appearance of their risk” (p. 133). Yates points to the study of tamoxifen as a prophylaxis for breast cancer. The report revealed that those undergoing such treatment had a 49% decreased chance of acquiring breast cancer. That sounds good, right? But tamoxifen was associated with an increase in uterine cancer, a fact somewhat concealed in the use of absolute numbers: “Annual rate of uterine cancer in the tamoxifen [group of the trial] was 23 per 10,000 compared to 9.1 per 10,000 in the placebo [group].” (134) Hey, that’s not too bad; it means that only 13.9 additional women out of a population of 10,000 developed uterine cancer during the trial period, but 49% fewer women developed breast cancer. Percentages and absolute numbers: The sensationalizing media chooses whichever is the more frightening, whichever is better suited to support preconceptions and agendas.


Maybe the lesson here is that all of us could undergo a math review, specifically, a statistics review that will enable us to distinguish between what misleads our amygdalae and what informs our frontal cortex.






*https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-58680204.amp


**https://katu.com/news/local/debate-emerges-over-racism-and-white-supremacy-in-math-instruction


***O’Neil, Cathy. 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction. New York, Crown Publishing.


****Yates, Kit. 2019. The Math of Life & Death. New York. Scribner.


*****https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/575417-fourth-person-dies-from-rare-blood-clotting-syndrome-after-receiving-jj


******When “2 Is Infinite: Part One”

A man (original biological parts and all) named Piet and a woman (original biological parts and all) named Sandra sit to discuss all things worldly at Hopper, a coffee shop at Schiedamse Vest 146 in Rotterdam. (Recorded here with my apologies for any unidiomatic uses of idioms. See idioms in “Notes”)


Piet: “According to its webpage, Erasmus University Rotterdam professors research urban life. Their goal, at least their goal as indicated in a short video on the university’s website, centers on their ‘Vital Cities and Citizens Initiative.’ The Initiative identifies four central themes that play an important role in urban ‘vitality’: 1) Inclusive Cities and Diversity, 2) Resilient Cities and People, 3) Smart Cities and Communities, and 4) Sustainable and Just Cities. *


“Ah! ‘Inclusive.’ Now where have I heard that before? And Diversity? And the terms smart, sustainable, and just? Could there be a set of terms more indicative of the times? Could there be a set of terms more indicative of pipe dreams in the heads of Utopians?”


Sandra: “Hold on there, these are professional intellectuals. Your questions imply a snarky ignorance. Look, the website describes their research as interdisciplinary and holistic, involving ‘different areas of science, such as psychology, sociology, public administration, educational sciences, communication, art and culture, history, development studies and anthropology.’ Cities have problems, and these researchers look for solutions. I was kiplekker voelen ** this morning, but I can see this conversation will probably upset me. Sometimes I want Iemand achter het behang plakken when we talk. When you aren’t fully aware of something, it’s best to stay quiet. These Rotterdam professors are smart, Iets onder de knie hebben, as we say, and there’s nothing under your weak knees.”


Piet: “So, you prefer we talk about…what? The coffee here? The latest fashion? Gossip? Praten over koetjes en kalfjes; I prefer to discuss such matters because I see them as signs of the times and keys to understanding human folly. I’m not dismissing the noble nature of the university’s ‘Vital Cities and Citizens Initiative’; I’m dismissing the futility of the research. Those researchers can say, ‘We zullen dat varkentje wel even wassen,’ all they want; they won’t, in fact, get the piglet washed. Cities are innately dirty places that require constant maintenance just to keep themselves from falling apart. Too many variables interact as one generation replaces another and as economic conditions change. Think of America. Is Detroit the only place that makes cars? It got that reputation when it was the center of the industry, when it dominated, but is it the center of car making today? There are car assembly plants all over the U.S.: Illinois, Tennessee, Texas, California, Alabama, Ohio. The one-time auto worker population of Detroit changed, and as it did, so did the city. You think the Erasmus U staff of researchers can revitalize Detroit? And I’m not talking about tearing down old buildings and replacing them with a Motown Museum and shops complex that makes essentially nothing. You think what the Rotterdam intellectuals discover through research is much different from what an unemployed auto worker already knows?”


Sandra: “Met de mond vol tanden staan. I don’t know what to say to answer your narrow views of things. First of all, that auto worker has a very narrow perspective centered on his work or job loss. He’s not a mover or shaker, not someone with an overview. Second, there are city planners who can adopt strategies for revitalization.”


Piet: “Frankly, Sandra, my view can be summarized thus: No vital industry, no vital city. When jobs leave, cities succumb to decay, the natural entropy of the universe. And attempts to replace areas with economic vitality with retail shops and restaurants won’t revitalize in the long run. Besides, I’ve noticed that in ‘revitalizing,’ cities redo neighborhoods, you know, like putting a stadium where a ‘vital’ neighborhood filled with gainfully employed citizens once lived.  Sure., cities can be temporarily given a ‘new life’ with investment, but initial investments have to be followed by long-term investments by stakeholders, the people who live in the cities. Seems to me that such revitalizations make things better until things get worse; plans are good in the short term, but because all cities change as populations and economic opportunities wax and wane maintaining ‘vitality’ is chancy at best. Look at downtown shopping areas that were replaced by suburban shopping centers and malls. And with regard to those new centers of vitality, note that many of them fall into decay after about a quarter century, that is, in about a generation. And no one can account for the variability in urban residents and their makeup.  I’m thinking of a comparison between environmental and ecological niches and cities or even neighborhoods. Old ethnic neighborhoods disappear to be replaced by newer ethnic neighborhoods, all succumbing to the waning of a population of similar people whose children move out.


“The buildings might remain through several generations, but the residents change, just as in nature when some species go extinct, others take their place on the food chain. New prey replace old prey; new predators replace old predators. And older ecologies give way to newer ones. These researchers will never run out of work because cities will change character as they are working to consolidate their vitality. Residents will age and either move or die. New residents will move in. What was once vital will no longer be vital.”


Sandra: “You’re pessimistic. If we don’t try…


Piet: “Try, sure. I’m not saying, ‘Give up.’ I’m simply saying that the researchers will not be able to put into practice their lofty dreams of ‘vital cities with vital citizens’ over the long term. Too many variables. Look, here we are at the Hopper on this pleasant street, staring into our fancy coffees. Back in 1940 the Rotterdam Blitz destroyed much of this city. That wasn’t so long ago, and there’s no guarantee that it won’t happen again. But even if there isn’t another all-out war, there are the little battles, the crime, for example, that makes some neighborhoods hostile to coffee shops—and to any and all other businesses save drug dealing.”


Sandra: “But I feel safe…”


Piet: “Sandra, sure; you feel safe sitting here with your coffee. I just saw that hate crimes here rose from 121 in the first quarter of 2018 to 156 in the first quarter of 2019. That’s here, in Rotterdam. You think the researchers can do anything about hate crimes among their ‘vital citizenry’?”


Sandra: “But we’ll be revitalized by immigration. As a port, Rotterdam has always been a site with diversity.”


Piet: “As all ports have been. I just looked up the figures. Only a little over half of Rotterdam’s residents are Dutch. And now 70% of Rotterdam’s youth came from abroad. You think that the researchers will be able to keep up with the changes those youth will impose either intentionally or unintentionally on Rotterdam society? That’s why I said they’ll never run out of work.”


Sandra: “But won’t they help to solve future problems by understanding today’s problems?”


Piet: “Time will tell. But think about this. Rotterdam is one of the Intercultural Cities. The Council of Europe actually has an index for that, the ICC, Intercultural Cities, index. *** What do you think the practical effect of that is?”
Sandra: “I don’t know.”


Piet: “Guess.”


Sandra: “Just tell me, my coffee is getting cold.”


Piet: “The Council calls the index a ‘powerful tool’ because it can be used by ICC city coordinators to 1) initiate a discussion…about what intercultural integration means, 2) raise awareness on the necessity of working horizontally between the various departments…,
And 3) identify and learn from ‘good practices’ by other cities.”


Sandra: “What’s wrong with that?”


Piet: “As an intellectual exercise, nothing. As a practical solution to city problems, virtually nothing. Just talk, and more talk, and more talk. In the meantime, cities either thrive or decay, or both simultaneously, with one neighborhood prospering and another declining regardless of all the discussions.


“You think all the discussing really helps?”


Sandra: “Sure.”


Piet: “Let me point out what one of the Erasmus researchers has said in answer to the question ‘How does your research impact society?’ VCC researcher Zouhair Hammana says, ‘I try to generate impact in many ways…last year I was interviewed for podcast about decolonialization in education and I wrote an article for the Sociology Magazine.’ He goes on to say he wrote a chapter for a book on ‘the good immigrant,’ and he gave an interview on radio. And ‘I mainly use social media to share my knowledge and beliefs and interested people also approach me on these channels.’ That’s it. That summarizes his current impact, but, of course, like so many others in academia, he wants to make an impact in the future: ‘It is my wish to contribute to systemic changes…I would like to extend my current research to observe society on a larger scale. ‘For example, buy shifting from diversity in education to decolonization of education.’ You tell me, Sandra, is there anything of actual consequence in that so-called research? And what does that all mean, anyway? Is it one of those cultural guilt trips taken by so many nowadays for sins of their fathers, for Dutch colonialism? But if the Dutch were so bad, why have so many immigrants moved to Rotterdam? Of course, as you say, I’m basically ignorant, with nothing ‘under the knee,’ as we Dutch say. But just echoing the terms du jour doesn’t mean much to me. Academicians, however, love to talk. Hammana has a colleague named Ryan Holmes, ‘who specializes in environmental economics and energy policy for the maritime industry.’ He ‘hopes to visit’ the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow that runs from October 31 to November 12, 2021. So that he can ‘connect with a wide range of people.’ Of course, he won’t spend any carbon getting there. Surely, he has a zero carbon footprint when he discusses in person with people he could email or meet online.


“And one more question. If cities are now in need of help, what will happen in the near future when 2/3 of the people live in them? I would like to know the practical steps Erasmus U researchers propose to make life for 4.5 billion city dwellers sustainable, just, and ‘smart.’”


Sandra: “I’m worn out. Drinking coffee with you is a task.”


      
Notes:


*https://www.eur.nl/en/research/erasmus-initiatives/vital-cities-and-citizens/vital-city-can-take-few-knocks


**https://girlswanderlust.com/top-25-funniest-dutch-expressions/
Literal translations do not express the idioms properly, of course, so see the website for the interpretations of:


Iemand achter het behang plakken: “To glue someone behind the wallpaper”
Praten over koetjes en kalfjes: “Talking about little cows and little calves”
Met de mond vol tanden staan: “To sit with your mouth full of teeth”
Iets onder de knie hebben: “To have something under the knee”
We zullen dat varkentje wel even wassen: “We will certainly get that piglet washed.”
Kiplekker voelen: “To feel chicken delicious”     




***https://www.coe.int/en/web/interculturalcities/about-the-index

Call me lazy, but I’m going to have you do the thinking here. So many topics, so little time, you know. I’ve posted about 1,600 of these little essays with nary a word from my readers, from you. It’s time to saddle up, Buckaroo. Time to delve into all that pent up thought energy, open the gate, and ride that bronco—sorry, bronc—out of the stall and into the arena of expressed thought. I could list the possible précis for you, but you need to go into the barn of your brain and pick a horse to ride. 


Hold it. Darn, your horse probably just pulled up lame. Not to worry, Old Three-hooves is available, already saddled and bridled, leaning against the side of the chute and ready to go, to mosey out into the public eye, supported on that one side by a wheelbarrow pushed by a rodeo clown  Just a warning, however, depending on the topic, Old-Three-hooves sometimes leans left and at other times leans right, rarely balanced, but when he is, he just trots in circles. But I know you well enough to trust you’ll know how to compensate. Here, take the reins—and no, Left-leaners ready to jump to conclusions about border guards, they aren’t whips.


Writing one’s thoughts is a comfortable and safe way to enter the public arena if you ride a docile or lame animal. No chance of injury to the writer on an old trotter ready for the glue factory, ready to be stuck in perpetuity, confined in the chute of narrow thinking, and nevermore to buck a bad rider. Confinement of thought seems to be the irresistible compulsion of the times; ride what’s tame; injury is certain if you don’t. Sit on your lame horse in a chute. There’s danger in the riding, in the bucking.

​
​The bravest roughies mount bareback wild horses. Those who worry about their personal safety stay out of the rodeo ring.