“If you keep going, you become an accomplice to death” is the lead to Pavel Filatyev’s story reported in Der Spiegel. * Filatyev, a recent Russian deserter, left the “special operation” in Ukraine after seeing atrocities by and incompetence in the Russian military. He recorded his thoughts in Zov. Among them is his bewilderment at the Kremlin’s use of “Special Operation” and its exclusion of the word war. I can't believe my ears when I learn that it is forbidden to say the word war. Seriously. War? What the hell else is this supposed to be?” Welcome to Propaganda and Groupthink, Pavel.


Pavel Filatyev was in close proximity to the horror of the fighting. He saw. He felt. The war had meaning on a personal level. That’s why he left. And it’s not as though he didn’t know what war was. He had been a Russian paratrooper and had reenlisted because his economic circumstances had taken a downturn. But…


The Kremlin’s disregard for life, even Russian lives, and its attempt to control the minds of the Russian people is nothing new. One need only go back to the way Russia fought Germany in World War II by throwing millions of soldiers at the Germans to overwhelm them with numbers.


Those of us who have never been in a battle can only imagine the horror of the moment. We might have empathy for the battle’s participants regardless of their affiliation, but that empathy occurs in another place, somewhere that is not in the proximity of suffering, wounding, and killing. Outside the boundary of battle, passing empathy, persistent indifference, and irrational rationalization prevail among those personally unaffected by the conflict. And chief among the indifferent and irrational  rationalizers is Moscow’s Orthodox Patriarch Kirill. The Patriarch sermonized thus:


    “If someone, driven by a sense of duty, the need to fulfill an oath, remains true to his calling and dies in the line of military duty, then he undoubtedly commits an act that is tantamount to a sacrifice. He sacrifices himself for others; and therefore we believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed.”


Ah! The benefit of distance. Think the Patriarch, a Putin ally, has ever been to the front?   Think he has seen dismembered bodies lying on the battlefield? Has he stood over dead civilians like the woman and child Russian soldiers killed by shelling their car? Has he walked the rubble of destroyed cities? Has he watched Russian soldiers shoot retreating Russians sick of being forced into the “meat grinder”? Has he considered that Ukrainians seemed largely settled within boundaries they called their own? Did they attack Mother Russia in February, 2022?


From his distant ecclesiastical throne, Patriarch Kirill compared soldiers’ sacrifices to those of Christ. Somehow he failed to see that there is a difference between a “just” and an “unjust” war and between a person forced to fight or face imprisonment and a willing Christ harming no one. Patriarch Kirill apparently places those Ukrainian soldiers’ sacrifices in a different category: Their defense of their homeland unjustified and the killing of thousands of Ukrainians a religious duty that will earn Russian soldiers their place in Heaven.


But the Patriarch isn’t the first among religious leaders proclaiming the salvation of soldiers. Think of the Islamic leaders who foster terror attacks and threaten entire countries. Think of Popes who sent crusaders to the Holy Land. What, we might ask, is wrong with the moral compass of religious leaders who cannot condemn outright the deaths of innocents?


If I had to guess, I would say that such leaders fail as peacemakers because they are removed from the physical realities of war. From a distance, they see noble acts; they see sacrifices made for their cause. The horror of war is remote. And as I have often written, “That which is not personal is meaningless.” I suppose I could add that when nothing is proximate, nothing is meaningful. Pavel Filatyev saw and understood because he was there.

*Der Spiegel online 5. Oktober 2022, 16.56 Uhr  

Traffic jam ahead. Turn left at the next solar system, follow the detour.


Travelers in this splotch of the universe, beware. The paths through Space-Time in the Solar System appear to be crowded with fast-moving objects, many of them coming from outside the neighborhood. (Will someone please build a wall?) Oumuamua, that elongate object that whizzed past us not too long ago, appears, according to some Harvard guys, to be just one of maybe four quintillion such objects. Anyway, that’s what Avi Loeb and Carson Ezell * say is possible: Traffic of Beyond Monumental Proportions, traffic that makes California’s freeways, Washington D. C.’s Beltway, and Pittsburgh’s Parkway (strange term for a road on which no parking is permitted), all look like uncrowded paths in a county park during a weekday in winter. Yep. Four quintillion vehicles of some kind. That’s a bunch of zeroes after a “4,” 18 of them.


Sorry, I don’t know the math that led them to their numerical result. They’re both astronomers, so I assume they used some numbers and stuff to derive their result. I’m sure, however, that they didn’t rely on simple observation, because the only one of the four quintillion such objects ever observed was Oumuamua, “Scout” in Hawaiian.


But unless one of those four quintillion objects is headed my way, I don’t care. If the chances of  seeing one are so rare that we have spotted only one since the invention of the telescope, then the chances of being hit by one seem remote at best. Anyway, seems that there are other invasions that might have a more direct impact on my life—and yours.


With light pollution making stars less visible to the naked eye and with so many of us looking at earthly rather and celestial things, none of us will see the other Oumuamuas that are out there. And since very few humans will rise above the light-polluted night skies, visit a “dark zone” like Tierra del Fuego or North Korea (where there is a population but just not one with much electrical lighting), chances of seeing such a visitor are “none to slim,” and not slim to none.


But you will likely encounter a visitor from another country during the current mass migration through a porous border. And that encounter will occur even though the number of human visitors pales by comparison to Loeb’s and Ezell’s celestial travelers. The estimated U.S. southern border encounters of 2.5 million is 0.000000000000625% as many visitors as those traveling through the Solar System from other solar systems. Yet, the likelihood of your encounter with a border-crosser seems greater than encountering an object like “Oumuamua.”    


*https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/there-may-be-4-quintillion-alien-spacecraft-buzzing-in-our-solar-system/ar-AA13qQNM

A philosopher and a physicist talk about death, self-awareness, knowledge, and place in a rambling conversation. (That’s a heads-up for you if you’re short on time—and you are when you consider that you are a finite being)


Phil: What do you envision as death?


Phys: Well, I haven’t thought about this for a long time. What do you mean? That the body ceases to function?


Phil: More than that. Is there a status for “death” as there is a status for “life”? As you are self-aware in life, will you be self-aware in death?


Phys: Again… Okay let me ramble. If I’m alive, then I am an energy-exchange system with varying amounts of biochemical-electrical activity, and since I’m human, maybe even if I were in the so-called vegetative state of a coma, I can have brain activity and thoughts, possibly dreams and insights. I don’t know whether or not people in a coma are self aware, but I have heard anecdotes that they are sometimes aware, but just not capable of reaching out; but people in such a vegetative state still act as an energy-exchange system. Anyway, to go back to your original question, if that’s the status of “life,” “being alive,” or “existing,” then the status of “death” or “being dead,” or being “in death” is the opposite of that; I death I would be an energy-exchange system only as long as part of me remains, the molecules in my decaying bones. If I had to define, then I would say death is the nonexistence of what I currently am, so if I’m dead, then I, the self-aware energy-exchange physicist to whom you now talk, won’t exist—I will neither obtain nor use energy save for that give en off by decaying molecules. There will be no “I.” I think of the Gary Larson Far Side comic panel in which lifeless rubber chickens lie motionless on the ground under the sign “Rubber Chicken Farm.” Rubber chickens are unaware, but since nothing is at absolute zero, then I have to admit my analogy is weak because even rubber chickens have the energy of their molecules. Anyway, being dead makes me as “life-less” as a rubber chicken—and just as intellectual, or astute, erudite, or self-aware as one.


Phil: Whoa. I got the point about the rubber chickens up until you talked about absolute zero.I can see your mentioning energy because it suffuses the Cosmos and provides the fundamental means for our having this discussion. If I understand you, then death is a lack of energy, save for the slowly decaying body’s vibrating molecules. I guess then that you don’t believe you will somehow continue as a perceptive being after you die, that you will be self-aware, or even be aware.


Phys: No, when I’m gone, I’m gone. Don’t look for me on the attic stairs at Halloween or suddenly appearing on some reality show to cause the TV investigators’ “scientific instruments” to sense something. What is it that those investigators want us to believe, that the “spirit world” is the world of electromagnetism? That seems to be how they define the status of being dead because the “ghosts” leave an electromagnetic signature either on an oscilloscope, on some photosensitive paper, or on a digital memory card.
    In short, I believe I am now; I won’t be then.


Phil: But isn’t there any wish in you that you will somehow continue, and continue not just as some Heraclitean Eternal Fire or “part” of the Hindu Moksha Loka, but rather as a being with an identity, a recognizable continuation of you in a spiritual form, maybe even a self-conscious one? Surely, you realize that you aren’t now just an entity composed of matter and energy. What about your thoughts and your memories.


Phys: Biochemo-electrical signals of firing neurons. That’s all. And as far as wishes go, I recognize that humans have long had a fondness for unreal conditions, say being able to fly without mechanical aid, or being loved by one and all, or…


Phil: But what about our communicating if we are isolated entities? How do those signals get from my neurons to your neurons? How do we somehow “know” what someone is thinking without a word being said?


Phys: First, we’re really not isolated. In the energy-exchange system, we also exchange information. That’s our new buzzword in physics, you know. The universe is itself information, and we debate whether or not it can be destroyed in a black hole or re-emerge from one in Hawking radiation. So, as part of the universe each of us is a composite of information. Second, context, that’s pretty much at the center of our communicating. Similar circumstances produce similar responses in different brains. And coincidence, I might add, plays a role. Say you and I both have the feeling that a football player is about to fumble, or throw an interception, or run for a long touchdown. Knowing how many football circumstances we have personally experienced or witnessed and knowing the possibilities of each football scenario, it seems likely to me that at some time we will both have similar thoughts. And it won’t be a matter of some out-of-body communication. No, we will both surmise a highly likely scenario because we belong to a group of millions of fans who have watched thousands of football games. At sometime two fans in close proximity and watching the same game will have similar thoughts. It’s not a matter of some nonmaterial world having reality. It’s a matter of coincidence. It’s like running into an old friend and saying, I was just thinking about you. Wait! I have to tell you this anecdote. My good friend, Dick, and I were talking one day, when I asked him, “What ever happened to Tony?” Dick said he didn’t know. He hadn’t seen him in years. That evening, Dick called to say, “Guess whom I ran into today?” I replied, “I don’t know. Tell me.” Dick then said, “Tony. Literally, I was in the grocery store parking lot looking for a place to park when I turned down one parking aisle, Tony and I crashed into each other.”
    Was that an out-of-body premonition or just a coincidence in a population of billions of humans? I’m going with the latter. Tony just happened to come up earlier in the day. In a world of millions of drivers going to similar places, the two were in the same place at the same time. it's a small world--though as the comedian Stephen Wright says, "I wouldn't want to have to paint it."


Phil: So, upon your death, all those personal and seemingly nonphysical phenomena will simply cease to exist simply because you would no longer be an energy-exchange system? Don’t you think you’ll somehow continue? And I don’t mean in someone’s memory or in a book you wrote, video you made, or statue you sculpted.


Phys: Nope. Dead and gone. That’s all she wrote. Well…let me clarify. As long as some book, video, or statue exists, it is a form of information about me. That, however, will also eventually disappear from the energy-exchange system though any of those remnants of me might last for centuries, even millennia—like the accouterments of some Neanderthal surviving in a grave until and after a paleoanthropologist discovers them. In some instances, like the famous Australopithecus, Lucy, I might last for millions of years—but even Lucy’s bones will eventually fade to nothing. If Lucy, or Neanderthals, or some ancient human had been self-aware, then all this consciousness devoted to all the worldly matters has just been whisked away like some dust beneath a broom’s swish. I will be like the statue and empire in Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” pretty much laid to waste and buried by the shifting sands.


Phil: You don’t desire to be “one with the universe,” maybe in possession of all that knowledge you have sought? Maybe finally seeing and knowing what the Standard Model is? Seeing a quark up personally because you transferred into a different realm of existence, albeit one that doesn’t require an energy exchange? You don’t think you might be a bodiless consciousness who can discover whether or not String Theory is just a mere hypothesis dreamed up by people who knew from the outset that they could never devise an experiment to prove it scientifically?


Phys: Some things will just remain a mystery. I don’t have the 18th and 19th century scientists’ view that all the universe is knowable even though I have spent my life trying to discover the ultimate meaning, that is, the what, how, and why of the universe. I’ve witnessed the finding of subatomic particles we didn’t know existed a half century ago. The Standard Model is our best approximation of the universe’s inner workings, but every so often someone discovers a heretofore unknown particle that throws a loop into CERN’s loop—makes some doubt the model. I don’t think we’ll have ultimate answers because our very looking disturbs what we observe. And I know that much of what we think of as understanding is merely a change in metaphor that suits our needs.


Phil: But you will have spent most of your lifetime trying to find those answers, trying to understand not only how the universe works, but also why it works. Why, if I might take the most pessimistic of existential positions, would you pursue that which can’t be caught? Why chase after knowledge that will disappear as you disappear? You say you and your culture will just lose it all anyway, so why bother? And if you think that others will continue your work, then you miss an important point about humanity: We tend to destroy things. Right now as you physicists attempt to acquire knowledge, there’s someone or some group out there plotting to destroy the civilized world. Heck, you even have a Russian leader threatening nuclear war at this time.
    Know what just popped into my head? Cement. Yeah. Cement. The Romans used it—I think with diatomaceous earth—to build the dome of the Pantheon. Then the making of cement fell out of use and had to be rediscovered. The same can happen to our physics, our chemistry, our medicines, and our technology. Want another example of lost information? Consider the ancient city Nineveh, now called Mosul. ISIS wrecked monuments that lasted millennia. Sculptures and bas relief writing that survived thousands of years were destroyed in a week of smashing. So, why bother with anything, if I can adopt your pessimism, to accomplish anything or to learn anything?
    By doing your research, you suggest there’s a purposefulness to human existence. That somehow we will endure. Isn’t the idea of an Afterlife just a continuation of what you daily practice?


Phys: Research into the workings of the universe will have been a good career, a good way to pass my limited time. It will have given me some purpose, true, the purpose to make life easier, safer, and more meaningful for those who come after me—even if they don’t remember my specific contributions. In their using what information I discover, I will live on—for a while, anyway. Then, as I said, “That’s all she wrote.”


Phil: But to what end? Temporary acknowledgement? Fame of some kind? An identity based on what you do rather than on who you are? Are you saying you have some ethical purpose by saying you want to make life easier, safer, and more meaningful for others? No matter what you say, that statement shows purpose, and purpose isn’t matter or energy; it’s nonphysical even though it produces matter, that is, it allows you and others to use energy. Is purpose a physical part of the universe? Will your purpose continue in others after you die? And if you acknowledge that you can have a purpose and that it can continue, which is, as I said, nonphysical, can you also acknowledge that the universe itself might be purposeful? And if it is purposeful, to what end? I say that knowing you physicists say it will last trillions of years.


Phys: Look. I was born into a culture. The culture set by historical standards those actions it deemed over centuries to be worthy. You philosophers started to question the nature of the universe at least 2,500 years ago, and you really ended up just arguing generation after generation until scientists picked up the questions and discovered some of the answers. In finding those answers, I earned a living and got to see the world by going to international conferences, where I had a chance to meet new people with new hypotheses. Besides, your argument about purpose is circular. It’s like the argument for a “fine-tuned” universe. Saying that the universe with all its delicately balanced forces was fine-tuned for life ignores a chance happening in one of many universes. There might be other universes that are incapable of supporting life, some with imbalances in force strengths that make life impossible.
    And I have to add that your religious counterparts, the theologians, have also argued the same matters for millennia. Again, to what conclusion? Have they advanced the meaning of an Afterlife or simply provided different metaphors?


Phil: And that’s it for you? A temporary existence begun 13.8 billion years after the origin of this universe?


Phys: Sure, but I’m happy while I’m here, and I know that there’s no way to prove that I’m THERE—wherever—when I’m not HERE. I can’t prove anything about an existence—sorry, a nonexistence—that is impossible to observe. And that’s why I haven’t thought about death for a while.


Phil: Still, regardless of your “this is all there is” thinking, you must wish to continue?


Phys: Oh! I can’t say that that thought hasn’t crossed my mind. I think I’m of one mind on this matter with the late Carl Sagan. In his Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, he wrote:


    “I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking. I want to grow really old with my wife, Annie, whom I dearly love. I want to see my younger children grow up and to play a role in their character and intellectual development. I want to meet still unconceived grandchildren. There are scientific problems whose outcomes I long to witness—such as the exploration of many of the worlds in our Solar System and the search for life elsewhere. I want to learn how major trends in human history, both hopeful and worrisome, work themselves out: the dangers and promise of our technology, say; the emancipation of women; the growing political, economic, and technological ascendancy of China; interstellar flight. If there were life after death, I might, no matter when I die, satisfy most of these deep curiosities and longings. But if death is nothing more than an endless dreamless sleep, this is a forlorn hope. Maybe this perspective has given me a little extra motivation to stay alive. The world is so exquisite, with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better, it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look Death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”

Phil: Yet, there seem to be individuals who claim to have connections with those who have died and connections with God. Sagan’s “endless dreamless sleep” is no more provable than an afterlife of consciousness and self-awareness. As a “scientist,” he simply guessed.

Phys: All those “connections” are unsubstantiated by science, of course, even those two miracles required to substantiate the holiness of a canonized person can’t be repeated in a lab, can’t be verified by experiment. It’s all anecdotal. In the end, I have to say that much of what we humans call knowledge is storytelling, mere anecdotes we find satisfactory and all differing slightly from one culture to another and from one period to another.

​Phil: Okay. I get it. You want proof. But proof that seems to you to be only one way of knowing isn’t really the only way of knowing. What about our various emotional states?

Phys: I’ll bite. Let’s say the emotional state of love. The impossible-to-answer questions a guy hopes a girl never asks him are “Why do you love me?” And “How much do you love me?” That’s just as unanswerable as String Theory, which is definitely beyond definite proof—though maybe with a more powerful CERN we’ll discover strings someday. Love is one of those human things that requires faith. And such faith can mislead as every divorce proceeding demonstrates.

Phil: I can’t be as dismissive as you are about continuing after death or in a state of death. When I was little, I thought of the state of death as being “in heaven,” and that, which I have never, even then, localized as a “place,” meant to me that I would have no boundaries, including no boundaries on knowledge. All those scientific mysteries that you have worked to understand would be open to me, or rather, I would be open to them. I would know the how and why of existence and would not be tied to the finite concerns I now have. Then, when I aged, I began to think that maybe knowing everything because I had no earthly limitations, wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing. A constant state of Oneness, means no challenge, no growth, and no purpose; such a condition would be in my estimation boring. I certainly don’t want to go purposeless after spending a whole finite lifetime finding and fulfilling purposes. Of course, there’s no way to imagine an eternal state. I certainly want to continue as an identity, but I know the limitations of my current identity. It certainly doesn’t lend itself to being infinite and omniscient. Generally, I align myself with those who believe in a personal afterlife, a continuation. And no, it’s not a “place” with endless grapes and 72 virgins—who, sorry to tell my Muslim friends, would most likely be Catholic nuns. No, I think of it as placelessness, a different kind of existence from what I know. In death I would have an existence that is the antithesis of the one fundamental phenomenon common to all who have ever lived, that of being in a “place.” Place, even imaginary place, defines the status of being alive. I cannot think of God being relegated to any “place.” Heaven to me is ubiquitous, though that term is itself a contradiction because I can’t assign even the word everywhere to a status of being nowhere.

Phys: And thus, you see my pessimism about the status of being dead. Even your basic tenet of placelessnes is unimaginable. Your brain always runs into some boundary because you can’t imagine the infinite or the eternal. You even have trouble thinking of timelessness.

Phil: True, all philosophers and theologians have those difficulties, but again, we are more than rational as the experience of love indicates. It demonstrates that faith is part of existence, and faith is immeasurable, non-quantifiable, as you scientists say. Yet, faith seems to be a way of knowing. And you can’t say you don’t have any faith because you have it in your experiments and your results.

Phys: Sorry, I think we’ve exhausted this conversation. We’ll never agree.

Phil: I don’t know. The persistence of philosophy is predicated on the “belief” that we will someday agree. And the persistence of physics seems to be similarly grounded on some faith in an eventual agreement. 

Drs. Wakanda and Jones, both graduates of the University of Minnesota’s medical school, talk.


Dr. Wakanda: Did you see what happened at our alma mater during the white coat ceremony?


Dr. Jones: Something about changing the Hippocratic oath, I believe.


Dr. Wakanda: Yes. Let me read two lines: “We pledge to honor all Indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by Western medicine. Knowing that health is intimately connected to our environment, we commit to healing our planet and communities.” *


Dr. Jones: It’s about time. Too much white privilege has dominated medicine for a long time. And we all know that many of the illness we treat are the product of a polluted planet. So, good for those school officials.


Dr. Wakanda: You find nothing wrong in the change?


Dr. Jones: No. Most doctors are white like me. It’s time to re-evaluate the profession and its methods and goals. Heck, with regard to the planet, even religious leaders like the Pope have recognized an obligation to save the planet.


Dr. Wakanda: Yeah, most American doctors are white. I just saw the stats. Fifty-six point two percent. But that’s not a big majority. Do the math, Jonesie. Forty-three point eight percent aren’t white. That’s a hefty number of doctors. And look here, this is the list as of a couple of years ago:  **


    American Indian or Alaska Native          2,570
    Hispanic                                               53,526
    Asian                                                  157,025
    Black or African American                   45, 534
    Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders         941
    And some other categories or unknowns make up the rest, namely 133,715 doctors.


Dr. Jones: Well, look at that. But still your list shows 516,304 white doctors.


Dr. Wakanda: Yeah, again. But how many of the 347,777 non-white or “unknown” doctors practice “indigenous medicine”? In my native land of Wakanda, after which I’m named, there are medicine men and witches who practice “indigenous healing.” And I’ll admit that some of it works for some ailments, taking ginger, for example, to help the stomach.


Dr. Jones: Right, maybe we should be prescribing some gingerale for an upset stomach instead of a synthetic chemical.


Dr. Waklanda: So, you’re in favor of “indigenous medicine” in general?


Dr. Jones: I’m just saying that like the University, we should be open to treatments used for generations in indigenous cultures. They have passed the test of time.


Dr. Wakanda: But note what the University made the students say: “We pledge to honor all indigenous ways of healing….” Would you include any Cheyenne medicine dance?


Dr. Jones: Well, no, but indigenous people did use plants and minerals to heal. Think of the people who went deeply into Mammoth Cave to get epsomite off the cave’s walls. Were they using it as a medicine? It is after all, magnesium sulfate, and don’t our modern pharmacies stock it? Epsom salt, as you know, can be both a magnesium supplement or a laxative. Seems to me that the native Americans millennia ago recognized it as a “medicine.”


Dr. Wakanda: So, as of right now, we’ve identified ginger and epsom salt as part of the indigenous medicines that have some practical application. But without any clinical work, how much did the indigenous healers administer to the patients?


Dr; Jones: But we could go through a whole list of indigenous practices, including the administering of herbs.


Dr. Wakanda: Sure, but when we find that an herb works for something, we do so through clinical trials, not through word-of-mouth as passed down from shaman to shaman. I’m willing to put aloe on an irritated skin, but using it doesn’t justify abandoning hydrocortisone or some anti-bacterial topical ointment, nor does it justify using aloe for skin cancer.


Dr. Jones: I’m not saying…


Dr. Wakanda: So, that other part of the revised Hippocratic oath, the part about the environment, what’s that really mean? Does it mean that “white medicine” that advises against polluting water or drinking polluted water is a newfound way of saving the planet and its inhabitants? What’s the point here? What happens when one tries to mention every possible politically correct term or include every possible ethnicity is that someone might be left out. Consider “do no harm” as meaning “do no harm to anyone.” Why doesn’t the newly revised Hippocratic oath contain specific mention of Australian aborigines? Why doesn’t it mention Hutus or Tutsis in particular? What of Andean Peruvians? Or let’s take the indigenous practice of chewing betel leaf. That’s an “indigenous practice,” isn’t it? But there’s some evidence that suggests an association between chewing it and getting oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. Yet, indigenous peoples in numerous Asian countries continue to chomp on it.


Dr. Jones: Well, as a white person, I can testify that I have a tendency to ignore traditional healing and medicines though I can see your point about indigenous medicine practices.


Dr. Wakanda: My point is that “do no harm” requires a clinical approach. Yes, some traditional medicines might work, but many are a worthless as elixirs of petroleum that charlatans sold in the nineteenth century as cure-alls. Think about all those old commercials and advertisements that associated doctors with smoking. One that I recall said, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” *** So, that was a version of an “indigenous” practice." Should we respect it?


Dr. Jones: Well, that’s different. We didn’t know about tobacco and cancer or about betel leaves and cancer back then.


Dr. Wakanda: My point. It was modern medicine—supposedly “white man’s medicine” that exposed the dangers of indigenous and word-of-mouth practices.     


Dr. Jones: Well the people at our alma mater had good intentions. They wanted to show their inclusivity and reject their white privilege.


Dr. Wakanda: Even though I am one of their representative graduates? Have you noticed my skin color? I’ll leave you with this: “Do no harm” means “do no harm to anyone.” It doesn’t distinguish. It is inclusive.


*https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/10/14/minnesota-medical-students-take-ideological-oath-including-among-other-things-to-honor-all-indigenous-ways-of-healing/


**https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/interactive-data/figure-18-percentage-all-active-physicians-race/ethnicity-2018


***YouTube: More Doctors Smoke Camels than Any Other Cigarette. See also https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS965US965&sxsrf=ALiCzsZAvIcRvcUFZ06g6zlxOJMPqMioxw:1666442919386&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=four+out+of+five+doctors+smoke+camels&fir=v43N9yPlYsQyWM%252Cvb5_bPIVS0p6jM%252C_%253BAbBswfK2vewjKM%252CTllqAFsPhIP61M%252C_%253BmF8v0DBEcHD2uM%252C04U1P-ebtUe1ZM%252C_%253BUxqFeU-MGRqB9M%252CTllqAFsPhIP61M%252C_%253BVgtB11kzkKnfRM%252CUYkBfBpDkgbZsM%252C_%253BwwIQl46eyTmVMM%252CUYkBfBpDkgbZsM%252C_%253BFEeRSrhQXkViGM%252Cvb5_bPIVS0p6jM%252C_%253BKPfAlgjRsqdTFM%252C6h2QLqT9A03cgM%252C_%253BFDdrstG348ZM9M%252CUYkBfBpDkgbZsM%252C_%253BnmsSRse-Vj4crM%252CGRiy6gO_VFr9FM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kSGGuOvIn4JjRcet_41AR_LtN2vtw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj8g_7R7_P6AhUCElkFHXtvAWoQjJkEegQIExAC&biw=1460&bih=1251&dpr=2  One advertisement boasts for its brand that “20,679 Physicians say, ‘Luckies are less irritating.”         

Birds of a feather flock together. But not just birds. Just about everything short of magnets—which are well known for their polar fields in which like charges repel.


Even atoms “flock.” The periodic table of elements reveals this by arrangements of periods (rows) and groups (columns). And the stuff from which atoms are made, quarks, for example, just don’t want to go off on their own—at least not since the super hot origin of the universe. You never hear a physicist saying, “Have you seen my pet quark? I hope it hasn’t run off again.” Quarks flock inside protons and neutrons.


It appears that the subatomic “flocking” of quarks extends through much of the rest of Nature. Mineral classifications do the same for molecular crystals as the periodic table does for the elements; there’s a whole series of feldspars, for example, all of them silicate minerals with some slight differences, such as the inclusion of calcium, barium, potassium, or sodium in a general tectosilicate structure. And, since I mentioned “silicate,” I should note that continental rocks are in general richer in silicon than oceanic rocks. Continents are generally composed of lighter materials (in color and weight) than ocean floors; thus, they “stand higher” or float higher than ocean floors do over the mushy asthenosphere and dense mantle. And where’s the  heavy iron and nickel? Those heavy elements flock mostly in the planet’s two cores, an outer liquid one and an inner solid one. So, without much further ado about elements, minerals, and rocks, I’ll simply add that “sorting” is a natural process that you can see anytime you go to the beach, where the fine sands of dunes have been sorted by wind from the larger grains in the surf zone, to a prairie where prairie dogs gather, or to a forest of fir.


As I wrote above, “flocking” isn’t just for the birds; it occurs in much of nature, including in humans, whose gregarious nature makes the species gather in groups from families to cities. We know also that people of like mind tend to group intentionally or unintentionally, the former evident in social media and on the Web. And why not? There’s comfort and safety in like-mindedness. There’s less flight or fight. The amygdalae are quiescent—except in addressing a common “enemy,” that is, a person or group that isn’t “of one-and-the-same mind.” The likeminded typically see the world in terms of “us or them.” And that leads to conflicts large and small.


We often hear some version of Rodney King’s plea, “Can’t we all just get along,” voiced whenever conflict becomes injurious. It’s a noble plea for unity, but truthfully, it’s an unrealistic plea. No, we can’t all just get along. Sorry to tell you that, but that’s my personal experience and the historic fact. Regardless of the idealistic wishes of those who form groups, the reality of human differences—even small differences in thought or interpretation—make variants that cause tensions. I’ve mentioned this before in the context of George Ripley’s Brook Farm, the experimental transcendentalist commune of the nineteenth century and in the context of the Franciscans which have subdivided into at least six different “flocks.” Unlike the rest of Nature, human nature just can’t maintain any particular flock for very long without some divisiveness. Even humans who want to stick together find themselves mimicking magnetic fields.


Group entropy that doesn’t occur among quarks and elements does occur among humans because each of us is more complex than the atoms of which we are made. Yes, we flock together over some encompassing idea, and we struggle as a group against competing ideas, but the nuances of any idea throws individuals initially bound to an ideology into a quandary. What does one do upon encountering an unacceptable change or subtle nuance not initially evident? Unlike bound quarks, we have a desire to live in a “free state” when we feel we are imprisoned by societal habit or force.


What we might notice is that when people bound by a particular social or political view discover they have differences with their flock, they take one of two positions: They suppress their disapproval first to avoid being ostracized or shunned and second to ensure being included by the other members of the group. Or they leave the original group to become independent outsiders and personae non grata.*


It might do all of us some good to ask about our relationship to the flock to which we belong, or, if we believe we have no flock, to ask whether our independence is real or merely ostensible.


*Think Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard.

Schopenhauer wrote, “Let no one tell you what is in [Kant’s] Critique of Pure Reason.” C. S. Lewis uses that statement to introduce his discussion of the second part of the Romance of the Rose. Lewis writes,


    ‘It is with a despair and an ‘astonishment’…that I approach the task of conveying to those who have not read it…some idea of this huge, disheveled, violent poem of eighteen thousand lines” (137).*


Thus, I begin this little note about how dependence on what others say or write has produced more harm than good. On a planet covered by 6.7 billion literate people (87% of world population) eager to voice their opinions, we have so much to hear and read that we can’t take the time to consume it all directly. So, we rely on others.


But relying on others makes us susceptible to deceit and unintentional falsehoods. Yet, even knowing that fact makes the dilemma of hearing about the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth as opposed to actually counting the teeth in a specific horse’s mouth very rarely resolvable. You just don’t have the time, and neither do I to go out to the barn or into the field to look into the “horse’s mouth,” that is into all that’s written or said. And in a world of “fact-checkers” who selectively check facts, trusting what others say about what “others” say or write is a gamble. Who, we constantly have to ask, is watching the watchers?


Our temporal limitations throw us into the position of having to trust our sources, say a Schopenhauer to interpret Kant or a Lewis to interpret the Romance of the Rose. As Ringo Starr sings in “It Don’t Come Easy”: “I don’t ask for much; I only want trust/And you know it don’t come easy.” How, after so many falsehoods promulgated by the mainstream media and by agenda-driven authors, can we trust what someone is telling us about another person? And in an age of photoshopping, how can we even trust what we see when others have produced the videos? Remember the lie about border guards on horses whipping migrants? It was promulgated by the President of the United States and the Secretary of Homeland Security even though the photographer himself said the picture was misinterpreted. Still, the Press ran with the story. Trust? I think not.


Of course, trusting the information of others has long been a human dilemma. I wonder sometimes if bees have the same problem when they follow directions to a field of flowers given by a dancing member of the hive. Think about it. Some bee flying randomly or discovering by some instinctive mechanism a meadow near the hive returns to perform a dance that somehow conveys information about distance and direction, enticing the others to seek out the flowers. Do they always follow the instructions in the dance?


Is it possible that a bee finds that upon returning and dancing, the other bees ignore the signals on the basis that the bee isn’t trustworthy. “Hey, he’s done this dance before, but it never leads us to flowers. I say ignore him.” With all our supposed wisdom, we humans often don’t respond with such distrust if the returning “bee” has a message that conforms to assumptions or underlying beliefs. “He’s one of us, and that alone makes his interpretation believable.” Need I point out the “Russian collusion” deception?


Think of riots—not just modern riots, but riots through the ages. Some rumor kicks off a mass hysteria response. Tens, hundreds, even thousands of people take their directions from the “reporting bee.” Want other examples? Think of runs on toilet paper, canned goods, perishables, and banks on the slightest rumors of impending hardships. Think of large societal movements based on fragments of thoughts. Most riots are not centered on a work of eighteen thousand lines like the Romance of the Rose that C. S. Lewis analyzes or Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason to which Schopenhauer refers, but rather on simple phrases or short statements that are often misinterpreted if not consciously designed to deceive. The riots in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 are testimony to the power of four words: “Hands up, don’t shoot” taken as the truth though no thorough investigation could confirm the veracity of its utterance.


In this rather fast-paced world of 6.7 billion literate people chattering, gossiping, misinterpreting, and even intentionally deceiving, we cannot be bees. We cannot accept that the dance we see conveys automatically a reality or a truth. But the nagging dilemma is that since we can’t investigate or analyze personally all that is thrown at us verbally, we either have to trust or to ignore the source and the substance.


An obligation imposed by being “wise” is being skeptical. And particularly during today’s age of social media and electronically facilitated mass media communication, skepticism is warranted whenever we rely on others to tell us how many teeth a horse has or where a meadow of flowers lies.


*The Allegory of Love. New York. Oxford University Press. 1968 Reprint of the 1936 original work.

To be nagged or not to be nagged, that is the question (Sorry, I guess like Hamlet, er... Shakespeare, I implied, but really didn’t ask a question). Let me rephrase: To nag or not to nag. Or maybe: Do you nag when you want something? Do you dislike others nagging you? Does nagging work?


Anyway, I came across Jesus’ parable about nagging, and I thought I might apply it to today’s political scene, particularly to politics centered on climate change. The parable relates the story of a judge who had no fear of either God or people, but who was subject to nagging by a woman who wanted him to rule in her favor. To stop the nagging, he ruled for her position. The lesson in Luke 1: 1-8? Persistently ask God for favors because He’ll tire of hearing the pleas and grant your wish just to stop all the nagging—sorry, prayers. And in politics, the rule is the same: Just keep nagging the politicians if you want them to act in your favor. They’ll wear down eventually to grant your wishes.


Thus, we have an entire state (California) banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars in 2035. And why? Nagging. And like the nagging of little kids who just won’t shut up till they get what they want, so the nagging of climate activists have worn down otherwise rather well educated people into a position that millions of citizens don’t want to take because they have already experienced the brownouts, blackouts, and higher costs that come with banning fossil fuels. So, banning gasoline-powered cars might seem like a good idea at the moment, and it certainly will stop some of the nagging, but like the proposal to plant two billion trees to absorb carbon, banning gasoline cars will do little to preserve some climate“ideal” (whatever that is). So, is there an ideal climate?

The folly of the idea of an ideal climate reminds me of a scene in the comedy series Community in which John Goodman, who is in charge of the students studying HVAC at a community college, introduces Troy Barnes to the room that is the basis for the term “room temperature,” a room so comfortable that Troy says, “I can’t tell where the air ends and my skin begins.” * It’s the perfect climate controlled room. Will Californians achieve the ideal climate in a state that varies from desert to redwood rain forest to snow-covered peaks? Will all of California soon become San Diego or Napa Valley? Will the state finally see an end to those periodic droughts that have pestered people for thousands of years? 


Will those new electric cars that will replace the gasoline-powered cars have a noticeable effect on climate? Californians drive 14 million cars at present. State car sales amount to about 1.8 million vehicles yearly. So, if people decide to comply with the California law and buy 1.8 million new electric cars each year, then in just 7.77 years or by 2043 approximately, all Californians will be driving electric vehicles--if they choose to buy one, that is. Many Californians might opt to keep their old vehicles as long as they run and they can afford gas that might rise well above 2022's $7.00 per gallon.


But let's say Californians are gung-ho for electric vehicles. Eventually, California will have to deal with all the lithium, cobalt, rare earths, nickel, copper, and manganese that go into making electric car batteries--assuming that we can get the rare earths from places like China, Myanmar, Australia, Thailand, Madagascar, India, Brazil, Vietnam, and, of course, from our good friends in Russia. And for the country as a whole, by one estimate the copper demand to produce electric vehicles will exceed the entire annual production of copper in China, or about 1.7 million tons—that’s a lot of pennies--with California one of the leading consumers of the metal. 


So, again, what’s the effect on climate? Well, a typical gasoline car emits about 4.7 tons of carbon dioxide per year. (Naturally, the “typical” might not be the actual) The world’s anthropogenic carbon emissions are about 36 billion tons per year. California’s 14 million gasoline-powered cars will emit 65.8 million tons of carbon per year. That’s 0.00182% of the global carbon emissions. Wow! Imagine the effect, and it will only cost the price of an electric car for every Californian now driving a vehicle plus the environmental damage from mining the rare earths, copper, and other metals needed for the batteries, and the environmental cost of disposing of those metals, plus the higher cost of electricity, and, of course, the drain on the electric grid.


By the way, like California’s electric car mandate, the proposed climate solution involving the planting of two billion trees will probably do very little to change a worldwide trend because there are already an estimated three trillion trees. Do the math. An acre of mature forest might have as many as 170 trees. So, that adds up to a little short of 12 million acres of trees. Now that sounds like a lot, and it is, considering that Pennsylvania (Penn’s Woods) has 17 million acres of trees. So, two billion trees means planting trees on the equivalent of 70% of the area of Pennsylvania’s forests. And to achieve—what? Well, that’s adding 0.0006% more trees to the planet’s arboretum. And those trees will eventually die and cycle their carbon, possibly faster than expected because of California’s fires.


Won’t the trees sequester the carbon? For a while, certainly. An acre of mature temperate forest can absorb about 2.5 tons of carbon per year. So, 12 million acres of trees might be able to absorb about 30 million tons of carbon. The world’s output of anthropogenic carbon emissions equates to about 36 billion tons annually. Thus, the two billion newly planted trees, reaching maturity, should be able to absorb about 0.0008 % of the world’s annual carbon emissions—until they release that carbon upon their conflagration or their natural deaths and subsequent rotting.


And all this just from nagging, nagging, nagging about climate.


*YouTube: The room temperature room.

Selective righteousness is today’s bane and tomorrow’s regret.


Have you noticed the selective righteousness that permeates America’s political sphere? Over a couple of centuries, the selectivity has moved between Left and Right. Today, it comes largely in the form of silence about corruption by the Left—however blatant and damning— and noisy coverage of any flaw by the Right—however minuscule or marginally wrong. No doubt in the future it will probably swing the other way with minuscule or marginal improprieties on the Left interpreted as “crimes of the century” by the Right.


But at the moment…


Ordinarily, I would provide some anecdotes to support my contention, but in the instance of selective righteousness, the anecdotes seem so numerous and well known that such a list of stories seems unnecessary. I would simply point to just nine categories (with hints) for you to fill with details:


    1.    Crime (Mayor Durban’s “summer of love” designation for CHOP)
    2.    Economy (11,000 jobs lost upon Keystone Pipeline’s closure in spite of the pipeline's having met every environmental law)
   3.    Environment (California incapable of meeting its citizens’ energy needs because fossil fuels are deemed a long-term danger)
    4.    FBI ($1 million offered to Christopher Steele to prove a phony document, but no second—and free—interview for Bobulinski to prove influence peddling by POTUS to benefit his family)
    5.    Open border (sex trafficking, tens of thousands of fentanyl deaths, rapes, abandoned children vs. closed borders except for legal immigration)
    6.    Candidates (Hillary Clinton’s email server vs. Trump’s “documents)
    7.    Foreign policy (Afghanistan’s women’s loss of freedoms they won under Bush, Obama, and Trump)
    8.    Military security (billions of dollars in military equipment and a secure air base given willy nilly to the Taliban who re-invited Al Qaeda into the country)
    9.    Housing ("sanctuary cities" rejecting immigrants in favor of keeping them in Texas)


Ah! The sins of one’s political opponent. They are so evident, aren’t they? ὑποκριτά, ἔκβαλε πρῶτον ἐκ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ σοῦ τὴν δοκόν, καὶ τότε διαβλέψεις ἐκβαλεῖν τὸ κάρφος ἐκ τοῦ ὀφθαλμοῦ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ σου or, in English: You hypocrite! First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye. --Matthew 7:5

Recently, my modem crashed, leaving me Web-less, a woeful creature mired in cyber-poverty. Suddenly, I knew what it must be like to grow up in Amazonian isolation, never encountering someone from the world “out there.” Isolated—well, except for family, friends, people in my neighborhood, town, county, and across the country with whom I converse by phone—I felt totally alone.


Not really, of course. But the absence of the Internet did leave a little void in my daily life. I could not, for example, post a blog, check out the latest YouTube video, run around the research communities and science sites online to read the latest on sundry topics, or send an email from the comfort of my desk. But not all was lost. There’s a lesson in every circumstance, even in cyber-poverty.


The loss of the modem taught me a lesson about what I have become: A person who added to an already satisfying and busy life a dependence I didn’t need. Yes, dependence—addictive and often unproductive dependence, a part of life devoted to passivity. That brief Web-less time gave me a chance to re-evaluate through questions:


    1.    Do I really need to see an indefinite number of YouTube videos that range from “How to solve quadratic equations” to “School board disruption by irate parents” to "The best way to cook a brisket"?
    2.    Can I really gain knowledge through incessant “new research” posted online that mimics Popular Mechanics in promising a “new future” (as though there were an “old future”) through an unending refinement of gizmos—and do I really want people piloting “flying cars” or driving “fusion cars”? 
    3.    Would I be better off if I didn’t read the news from various countries, most of it focused on negative aspects of humanity?
    4.    Can I get better enjoyment from an online book or one whose pages I can fill with marginalia?

And other questions. So much ran through my mind when that modem crashed—and it was only for one night.

If the story of Caroline Farrow’s arrest is true, say nothing about anything to anyone. Reject this advice at your own peril.


Kurt Zindulka reports (October 7, 2022) that Caroline Farrow, priest’s wife and mother of five was arrested for “posting offensive statements on the internet.” * Caroline, it seems, was opposed to certain views on gender issues. * So, the thought police showed up at suppertime and arrested her in front of her terrified children, two of who are special needs children. They confiscated without a warrant, the electronic devices in the house, including the IPAD that Caroline’s autistic daughter depended upon to watch Harry Potter for comfort. Yep, Ukraine is burning, tens of thousands of Russian youth are going to almost certain death, energy costs are soaring, the world is on the brink of nuclear war, and the most pressing problem in the UK seems to be some comments by a priest’s wife.


The story might be exaggerated; it might be untrue. And that’s a problem I encounter when I read stories that make me shake my head as I ask to what extent censorship in the twenty-first century afflicts us. Sure, there’s always been censorship; it’s a malady of civilizations that operate on tenuous and artificially maintained hierarchies. You don’t have to hear what you don’t want to hear if you have the power to suppress the opposition or to influence sycophants to ostracize, harm, or even kill those you wish to silence.


Could things be worse in supposedly free societies? Sure. Think of the censorship imposed by the Germans before and during World War II, the Chinese under Mao, and the Russians under Stalin-like Putin. If you don’t live in the UK, Russia, or China, N. Korea, Cuba, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan under the Taliban, or any other such repressive government, you might think the story of Caroline Farrow’s arrest is unimportant, but it tells a tale of unjust imprisonment that people in those countries have experienced for decades and even for centuries.


George Orwell wrote an old story. The fictional 1984 has always been a reality, and it will continue to be a reality. Nineteen eighty-four is every year. But previous 1984 societies have been relatively localized in country by country settings. With globalization and the far reaches of the Web, 1984 could well become a worldwide phenomenon and a way of life that enslaves all free thinkers.


Think I’m wrong? Try saying you have some doubts that global warming is more of an existential threat than nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in the hands of madmen. Try saying aloud any of today’s trigger words, phrases, or expressions.


If the story of Caroline Farrow’s arrest is true, abandon any hope. Seems that the priest’s wife has already entered Hell. As Dante wrote, “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”: The woke world IS Hell.   

​*https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/10/07/uk-1984-priests-wife-arrested-without-warrant-for-gender-wrongthink/