In the Great Chain of Being a hierarchy of value prevails throughout all existence. There’s God at the top followed in descending order by angels (with their own hierarchy), humans (with their own hierarchies), animals (hierarchies in pecking orders and in predator-prey relationships), plants (native and invasive species), and rocks (inorganic matter (no hierarchies save abundance). A perspective that probably originated with the rise of very ancient, maybe even Paleolithic, myths, the “Chain,” as enhanced and perpetuated by Christianity has dominated western thought for at least a couple thousand years. Yesterday, the metaphor broke down, first by unplanned error and then by planned mayhem.


The Charge


Human beings don’t deserve their high ranking on the Great Chain of Being.


Evidence from Fifth Inning of the Fifth Game of the World Series


A star centerfielder who made a great catch at the outfield fence then botched a routine fly ball, and a shortstop made a bad throw to the third baseman. Add to those errors a mental lapse by the pitcher when he failed to cover first base on a routine ground ball fielded by the first baseman, a play the pitcher had practiced since he played Little League. The three errors allowed the Dodgers to tie the score and go on to win the game and the World Series.


Errors by the New York Yankees, some of the best baseball players anywhere among entities in that third link in the Chain revealed why humans can’t occupy a higher link. Our ability to make mental mistakes, to have accidents, and to err in many ways and at unexpected times reveals a fundamental weakness. Our link is a weak one at best.


Testimony of Witness


Wendell Pierce, actor, posted this comment:


“Unfortunately, I just left the Yankees game because I was talking to a Dodgers fan and people were throwing things at me. Unruly, obnoxious people can ruin everything. The worst experience ever. The game and experience is [sic.] of no significance now. The spirit of sports ends with the ugliness of humanity.”


Evidence from Post Game Activities


And then mobs in Los Angeles revealed why the human link is weak. Looting, burning, and other breakdowns of social order followed the win. The mayhem was, I believe, easy to predict because it had occurred before when teams in other cities won championships. Mobs of humans destroy social order, objects, and one another. And the motive for mob activity is irrelevant as the January 6 mob showed; in fact, politically driven mobs have overturned whole societies as the history of revolutions reveals.


The Verdict


Order and hierarchy are temporary. Human beings are unconsciously and consciously error prone. One might assume that among imperfect and finite beings, something will go wrong at sometime, but to the unforced errors, we humans add the error of our ways, no doubt best exemplified when we gather in large numbers.


The Sentence


Humans are sentenced to life in the Prison of Error and Mayhem with no  prospect of parole.

Background: A comedian at a Trump gathering made some disparaging remarks in a really bad joke about the island of Puerto Rico, referring to it as an island of floating garbage. The joke bombed, but it sparked controversy, and President Joe Biden responded by calling Trump supporters garbage.


A Trump follower decides to go trick-or-treating in D.C. His first stop is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. A rather feeble old man comes to the door of the large white house and asks grumpily, “What’s that you’re wearin’?”


The trick-or-treater says, “It’s a Glad trash bag.”


“Glad?” The old man asks quizzically  “What are you supposed to be?”


“Garbage.”


“Hrumpff. What’s that basket you’re carryin’ for? Candy?”


“No. It’s for deplorables.”


“Hrumpff. Sorry, I gave all the candy to illegal aliens.”

I find strange the practice pf mostly Left-leaning commenters to make much of “offensive words.” My reaction comes from some very early experiences with co-workers in my first jobs as garbage man, construction worker, and jackhammer operator (8 hours per day with the subsequent diminution of my hearing—What’s that you said? Huh?). Yeah, those guys (May I say “guys”?) were rough-speakers. F-bombs fell around my naive mind like Ukrainian drones attacking a column of Russian tanks. They effectively destroyed my innocence.


There went my youthful innocence as no one was spared. I mean NO ONE: Every race, creed, skin color, and gender (There were only two genders at the time). Rough language prevailed, so rough that today’s humorless snowflakes would be driven to boycott, cancel, file law suits, impose fines, and threaten or even carry out imprisonment.


Poor Tom Brady (Well, Not Poor in an Economic Sense)


During a discussion about Josh Allen, the talented QB of the Buffalo Bills, Brady said he had acted like a “spaz.” Brady said, "Sometimes he played like a spaz, like a grade-schooler on a sugar high, but now he’s controlled the chaos. He’s like a storm coming into town and you don’t want that storm coming into this town.” The term spaz, derived from spastic, has been used to describe and to define the uncontrolled actions of people afflicted with neurological disorders. Hmnn. Brady’s use of the term generated a ruckus among sports news writers and commentators.


Having had a minor stroke in February, I might be included in that category of “spastic” because for a couple of months I had difficulty controlling a spasmodic shaking in my left hand that has since abated because of physical therapy. BUT I TOOK NO OFFENSE AT WHAT BRADY SAID.


I know Brady meant no harm. He might not have used the most precise term to describe Allen’s play during the Bills’ loses, but on-the-spot comments are often punctuated with inaccurate language.


Drawing comparisons is one way a “color commentator” complements the dry descriptions of the play-by-play reporter. Language we might have heard as children and sometimes overheard in background conversations can surface during such out loud streams of consciousness, especially during ongoing comments made under pressure. Brady, like all people in front of microphones during sports broadcasts, probably had a greater fear of silence than of saying something he never thought offensive. He gets paid to talk, to fill airwaves, to fill the assumed void in the minds of football fans unable to assess what they see on the field of play even with the play-by-play commentary.


Ask me to show you a person who has never regretted using the wrong word, and I’ll show you the guys I worked with on those hot humid summer days when we all drank water from the same galvanized bucket and galvanized long-handled ladle. Dip and sip; maybe we spread germs, but we shared them, also, adding to our long term immunity. And my teammates and I did the same on the football and baseball fields. Thirsty? Go to the bucket to drink on those hot days made hotter by physical activity. Imagine the sense that even though we might have thought each other individually guilty of a different race, creed, gender, political leaning, or educational level, we thought all were related enough in our humanity to drink from that common long-handled ladle. (It wasn’t the South of segregated water fountains)   


Probably more troubling to me than the online rapid reaction to Brady’s use of spaz are the multiple stories that sprang from it in the main news outlets. I asked myself, “Do the criticizing reporters and commentators have no contact with everyday people? Did they grow up in vacuums outside of which real people dwelt in the “beyond”? How verbally safe was their universe?


Is it possible that the very people behind malicious defaming comments in false news stories are hypocrites? The media seem to have no problem with saying something that destroys a reputation while they shame people for a word or phrase uttered in haste or under pressure. Think of MSNBC’s labeling the thousands who went to hear Trump speak at Madison Square Garden as Nazis. Think of the writers at the NY Times, for example, who had the time and resources to research and revise their stories about Russian Collusion, but chose instead to write methodically about a lie. Think of Harris’s calling Trump a Nazi and the echoing of that term in the sycophantic punditry. Is the appellation Nazi not as offensive or even more offensive than spaz? Yet, Nazi met mostly silence in a mainstream media ready to attack Brady for a hastened expression used with no maliciousness toward people with neurological disorders.


Imagine yourself in the press box commenting on games these days. “What word am I allowed to use?” “Is what I’m about to say offensive to someone somewhere among millions of viewers?”


Am I arguing for crude expressions and insensitivity? No. Definitely, no. We can adopt language that doesn’t insult, defame, or belittle--when we have time to think and when we recognize an obviously offensive term.


But in an age when some claim that there are hundreds of genders and when criminal perpetrators can’t be described by their dominant features, then we might as well relegate ourselves to sign language (Oh! No, here come the comments about deaf people—sorry, hearing-challenged people like me) “Officer, the mugger was a human being whose skin was not as light as mine. How old? Well, he—Sorry, the perpetrator was not my age, was a different age, and was not my height, was a different height. Hair? I’d say yes. Color. Well, not mine. I hope this helps you capture the perpetrator.”


We’ve all be subjected to the whining of the easily offended. They have already changed how we speak. The people I played with as a child and worked with as a teen and young adult all grew up with the expression “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  As the Eagles sing, “Get over it.” Brady meant no harm.


Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this victim of that
Your mama's too thin and your daddy's too fat
Get over it
Get over it
All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit…
You wallow in the guilt
You wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter bringin' everybody down
Bitch about the present blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick it's little ass
Get over it

I asked ChatGPT to devise a dialogue between a person in favor of gender transitioning and a person opposed to the process. AI gave me a polite conversation peppered with numerous “I get what you mean” and “I understand what you’re saying.” All very polite and civilized.


Polite AI, Impolite Humans


And that’s where AI fails. Where? It failed to imitate a real conversation between two dissenting humans in our contentious times. It kept emotions in check because it has no inner brain desperately holding onto its identity and belief. The AI dialogue was polite, ideal. It was a model of rational, congenial discussion. It was even compassionate. The politeness, the frontal-cortex driven conversation drove its makeup. But most humans are just not that detached from their emotions, emotions that surface on touchy subjects like gender, gun control, abortion, and war. In all likelihood, a conversation between people on opposite sides of a controversial issue would more likely be peppered with “That’s crazy,” You’re crazy,” “Your mother was a Commie,” or other such statements. Rationality? Calmness? On point comments? Maybe at no time and no place have controversial topics engendered purely reasonable discussions. Certainly, in our own era, online comment sections are full of vitriol, and TV opinion shows…Hey, are you talking over me right now?


The Last Refuge of Cool Rationality Isn’t a Refuge at All


What about science? Surely, dialogue in science is rational and devoid of feeling. Ah! Think again, Grasshopper. Deep-seated emotions run in every inner brain, and they are always looking for a way out or a way to break through the outer brain like bats exiting a cave. Anyway, buckle up, cowboy, there’s much to be said here.


Take scientific controversy in any field. The opponents on issues are just as emotional as anyone else as Hal Hellman reveals in his 1998 book on the subject. Like everyday arguers, scientists make slanderous comments and write libelous passages for public view. In 1800, for example, Edward Drinker Cope of the University of Pennsylvania accused Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale University of incompetence, plagiarism, and destruction of samples in his effort to dominate the paleontological community. Each wanted to be known as the fossil expert par excellence, leader of the pack, so to speak. Marsh countered with his own accusations, saying that Cope had stolen some of his fossils and was mentally unbalanced. (121 ff.)*


Who cares? Of all the topics that humans keep in mind, paleontology has to be nearly, if not exactly, last on the list. I’m going out on the proverbial limb here, but among the one to two thousand daily visitors to this website nary a one of them, including you, probably awoke this morning in a dither about fossils. But the Cope-Marsh battle made the front page of New York’s Herald, a major newspaper in1880. As Hellman writes, “The Herald sold lots of newspapers; subsequent issues over the next two weeks continued to carry charges and countercharges.”


I have to tell you that I was affected by the irrationality of Cope-Marsh disputes though both died long before my time (Cope in 1897 and Marsh in 1899). Here’s my story; then I’ll get back to the handling of controversial topics, the inner and outer brain, and slander, libel, and lies.


When I was eight years old, I asked my dad to take me to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, a story I’ve told before but find germane enough to repeat here (Forgive the old professor; he means well). We took the sark green 1949 Ford and spent a few hours wandering around the museum. In the Hall of Dinosaurs, one of the world’s premier collections, we saw the Brontosaurus. Diplodocus, and other dinosaurs. As I looked at the Brontosaurus, I commented to my dad that the head didn’t seem right. Oh! Had I only published!


Because Marsh was obsessed with beating Cope and being first, he had placed a carnivore head— that of Camarasaurus—on his headless Brontosaurus skeleton, setting the stage for all museums to copy. In fact, Marsh had not found a new species for his incorrect head, rather he was looking at the headless skeleton of an Apatosaurus. Carnegie Museum followed Marsh’s mistake by placing a Camarasaurus head on its own “Brontosaurus” in 1932, and kept it mounted there until 1979, when it relabeled the skeleton Apatosaurus and gave it the appropriate herbivore head. As I said, I should have published in 1951, but eight-year-olds have short attention spans and limited experience, so the world had to wait for professional paleontologists to discover what I instinctively knew as a kid.


The point is that emotions, like Marsh’s desire to be known as the best and to degrade the reputation of his opponent, are the drivers of most arguments and many mistakes. Rational questioning is questionable in most controversies. Slow methodical discussion isn’t the conversational mode in modern times. That’s what we saw during the COVID pandemic, for example.


COVID


With no evidence that six-foot separations and one-way aisles in grocery stores and the wearing of masks had staved off a single infection and in spite of the demonstrable immunity of most children, governors—mostly Democratic—shut down small businesses and schools and mandated draconian rules for social interactions, including putting little kids in masks. And no one on the Left seemed to tolerate any questioning, any skepticism. People called other people “murderers” for going out in public and for not being vaccinated; people wore masks outside while walking alone, even outside cities, in the woods, for example. Rationality? It’s not easy to come by in any controversial issue. And, yes, I understand that placing the wrong head on a fossil does not rise to the level of responses to a pandemic. Nevertheless, there are parallels. As history shows, ensuing generations don’t learn the lessons of their predecessors. So, next pandemic, next set of angry people arguing for and against mandates, not discussing mind you, but shouting, condemning, belittling, defaming, slandering. No AI calm and polite discussions, no rationally driven observations that the vaccinated head of NIH got COVID as did numerous vaccinated political figures dictating an economic shutdown that laid off millions of workers. Ridicule of those who had questions and vitriol spread faster than the virus.


Poor Alfred, All He Wanted Was to Share His Evidence


Or take the case of Alfred Wegener, a climatologist who suggested with evidence that the current continents were once part of a supercontinent he called Pangaea. When he attended a conference in the United States, he was harangued by geologists who attacked him personally because 1) he contradicted their prevailing view on how mountains form and 2) he was a climatologist and not a geologist—damn his evidence however reasonable. Now, to be fair to his opponents, Alfred did not know the mechanism of continental drift, which is seafloor spreading, and that gap in knowledge created doubt.

Yes, I also have an anecdote that ties me to that controversy. I remember asking my dad in the kitchen what we lived on. He said “Earth” (I was maybe five). I said, “What does it look like?” He lifted an apple from a bowl on the table—he ate an apple every evening till he died at age 97— and pointed to a position analogous to 40 degrees north latitude, and said,  “We live about here.” Because it was rounded, I asked why we didn’t fall off. He said, ”Gravity holds us on.” And he went on to say that there were people living near the bottom of the apple. And they, too, don’t fall off. Sometime later (I have no idea exactly when) he showed me a world map. Having a mother who worked puzzles on a card table during winter nights in those days before television, I said almost immediately that the continents looked like pieces of a puzzle if they were pushed across the intervening Atlantic. Again, I should have published. If I as a child could suspect a link between continent shapes, one might think that Wegener’s educated opponents might have suspected he was onto something worth scientific examination. His Pangaea showed the match of puzzle pieces. They just needed to use their outer brains to recognize that coastlines not only on opposite sides of the Atlantic, but also across other bodies of water, did indeed show a fit that was suspiciously coincidental.


But the men at the conference didn’t just present counter arguments. They were unkind to the mild-mannered Wegener whose continental drift hypothesis became accepted sea-floor spreading theory a quarter century after he died. Why the vitriol? People would rather adhere to their past beliefs than challenge them even in the face of evidence like Wegener’s fossil and rock connections.


Marsh and Cope, Wegener and American geologists: In his Great Feuds in Science, Hal Hellman recounts ten similar controversies, beginning with Galileo’s defense of Copernicus’ geocentric Solar System, a defense that got him put in virtual house arrest for ten years. Other issues have also led to contentious dialogues and socially harmful repercussions: Newton vs. Leibniz, Voltaire vs. Needham, and Darwin vs. Soapy Sam (Bishop Wilberforce). I’ll make a small wager that you were somehow involved in contentiousness over the COVID pronouncements, especially over restrictions imposed on the general public but not self-imposed by the political leaders, and over contradictory medical advice (Fauci: No need to mask; wear a mask; wear two masks).


In his epilogue, Hellman writes, “Resolution of such issues is particularly important, for without it, society is hard put to make reasonable and widely acceptable decisions concerning what, if anything, to do about the problems inherent in such controversies”(194). Yep. Try having a discussion with someone across the political divide concerning how to spend tax revenue, how to approach the issues of abortion, immigration, school choice, public education, inner city gang violence, homelessness, the Middle East, climate and energy, the “deep state,” fake news, MAGA, bail-free releases, no punishment for stealing under $1,000 from a retailer, riots on and takeovers of college campuses and city neighborhoods by anarchists, or any other issue of the day. You will be lucky to have a polite conversation, one emanating from the frontal cortex. Like Mr. Hyde, the vitriol will emerge from the inner brain. Just watch opponents on pundit shows to see the talk-overs and shouting.


All because we are, as Dr. Christian Conte points out in YouTube videos and in his Walking through Anger, attached to our ideas as a toddler is attached to toys. Experiments with pre-toddlers and toddlers have shown that they become upset if you take a toy they have been holding because they don’t distinguish between themselves and the object (like a ball). Recently, I observed my great granddaughter at age 18 months say “mine” and gesture with her hand to her chest when anyone took something she perceived to be the object of her attention. Sharing is something adults teach to kids. Sharing ideas is something many adults never learn.


Is Entropy the Cause? Rationality Is Humpty Dumpty

Being rational requires effort, balance. We're all perched precipitously on a wall high above treacherous rocks.
 
Is it because we live with entropy? Order is under constant attack in the universe. In fact, as the physicists tell us, the Cosmos is on a path to disorder. Societies long in the making can disintegrate in a flash. It’s only the constant attention to rational order supported by the constant repression of inner urges that keeps a society together and functioning for the greater good. But as we know, individuals act on individual perspectives and desires and only consciously determine to act cooperatively. Sharing points of view isn’t easy as all the controversies among supposedly learned intellectuals have revealed.


The Toddler Remains


Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget wrote about “object permanence.” In his studies of babies and toddlers, he found that babies live in “the now.” Objects in infants’ proximity or in their grasp exist. Removed or hidden objects don’t. This is a matter of distinguishing between mine and other, as I see it. It is also, if I can make a controversial leap, the essence of holding onto ideas, which are surely analogous to objects in the brain’s inner selfish center of self-preservation and identity. You take something from my idea, you mistreat it, and you affect me personally. Take a toy from a baby or young toddler, and the toddler cries or gets frustrated or angry. Take something from my adult world, and I respond similarly. The attachment to toy isn’t, in my mind, much different from attachment to idea (or reputation).


And so, to go back to the beginning of this little musing, I’ll conclude that polite conversations on controversial topics aren’t as easy as Artificial Intelligence might suggest. Maybe the reason for the difference lies in the embodiment of our minds. We have physical brains in a physical body that developed in a physical world. We have a history of personal identity development that includes a selfish period, or self-centered period. We have a personal tie to objects that at the onset were not “permanent” but that became permanent. And we seem to have transferred that physical permanence to an understanding of idea permanence. “MIne,” my little great granddaughter proclaimed as someone picked up one of her toys. “Mine" Cope, Marsh, Voltaire, Needham, Darwin, and Soapy Sam the Bishop proclaimed.


And what about you? In any discussion about a controversial issue, do you say “Mine”?


*Hellman, Hal. 1998. Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever. John Wiley & Sons.

Kamala Harris’s word salads, non sequiturs, and promises make me think of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence. Two lines in particular: 


Words are very unnecessary.
They can only do you harm.


With regard to her campaign, each time she speaks she does herself harm in the eyes of anyone with a modicum of commonsense and logic. With regard to the country, each time she promises a “new way forward” she makes anyone with a memory ask, “From what, your own policies and actions?” 


Had she acted to stop the border crisis instead of exacerbating it, tax money spent on illegal aliens would have been available for American citizens. And that point draws in three more lines from the song:


All I ever wanted,
All I ever needed,
Is here in my arms.


Yes, we had the money for domestic causes. It was “here in our arms.” 


So, what can we expect from Harris if people elect her? 


More words without actions. More unnecessary words, such as her answers now mocked even by the liberal writers of Saturday Night Live skits. 


Harris has proved herself to be a woman of inaction. Imagine such a person on the world stage trying to negotiate with foreign leaders. Imagine her speech to the UN. No, don’t imagine. Here it is:


World diplomats, I address you today because I am here today to address you. This is a significant time in world history. It’s called the present. It is the Now in which we meet to discuss the world and its pressing problems like climate change and raising up the people in need of our help. It is a time of unrest around the world, and by world I mean this planet which is one of nine planets if you count Pluto, but some say that Pluto isn’t a planet and that’s why the United Stated has NASA and a Space Force because we have to avoid a conflict in space that might affect the planet and change climate which is an existential threat. We have to join together to stop the world from warming. Otherwise, hurricanes will get bigger; it will rain in the Sahara where water is now scarce—and we need clean water that I intend to make available to all who need water because water is important. {she laughs] We can’t survive without it though I prefer sparkling water that I just found out has carbon dioxide in it. [she laughs] So, I’m proposing a worldwide ban on sparkling water because every time we open a bottle, some of that carbon dioxide escapes in those little fizzy bubbles and enters the atmosphere just the way those bubbles go up your nose when you take a drink. [she laughs] Scientists tell us that carbon dioxide is changing the global temperature. My administration will do all it can to stop an economy based on sparkling water and fossil fuels.America will join other countries to stop terrorist groups like Perrier whose only goal is to destroy the planet with fizzy water. America will stand behind a worldwide regression because we are progressive and want an opportunity economy for all the people of the world, all eight billion people who live on every continent and lots of islands, well except for Antartica that is a continent at the bottom of the world where it is as cold as Pluto, and all the water is frozen. In conclusion, I want to leave you with this thought. [she laughs] Together we can do what we do because we act together. Thank you [she laughs].  


Words are very unnecessary.
They can only do you harm.—Depeche Mode 

VP Harris might be the analog of physicists’ hypoothetical monopole. Well, if not her, then her policies.


You know magnets (bar, horseshoe, geo) as coupled. North poles are accompanied by South poles. They’re inseparable, as Pletrus Peregrinus de Maricourt reported in his 13th-century Epistola Petri Peregrini de Maricourt ad Sygerum de Foucaucourt, Militem, de Magnete (“Letter on the Magnet of Peter Peregrinus of Maricourt to Sygerus of Foucaucourt, Soldier”). Yes. Take a bar magnet with its North and South poles and cut it in half to find two bar magnets each with its own North and South poles. You can keep halving, but you will never reach a monopole particle, the smallest bar magnet with only a single pole. Nevertheless, physicists postulate and look for the hypothetical monopole as predicted by Paul Dirac and others: An isolated magnetic charge that is uncoupled, a North without a South or visa versa. The math that favors the existence of such an entity has never been indisputably linked to reality through experiment. The physicists have been looking in the wrong place. I believe. They should be looking at politics instead of at products of accelerators and cyclotrons, specifically at the politics (and policies) of Kamala Harris.


But First, Something about Magnetic Fields and Flipping Poles


The biggest local bar magnet you experience is Earth. Our planet has a geomagnetic field. With its iron solid inner and liquid iron outer cores, Planet Earth maintains two main magnetic poles and a number of smaller magnetic fields. You can locate the direction of the main field with a compass. Earth’s current north magnetic pole is located in the Northern Hemisphere, but it has lain in the Southern Hemisphere many times, and it is now drifting and weakening, possibly closing in on another flip. 


Don’t confuse Magnetic North for Geographic North: compasses point to the magnetic pole, not to the home of Santa. If the two were identical, then Mr. Claus would be living in a mobile home, an RV traveling from KOA to KOA on a trip farther eastward at 28 miles per year from its current location at 86.50°N, 164.4°E. You can account for the difference  between geographic and magnetic North by knowing the “declination,” the difference in degrees in direction to either as measured at different places on the planet’s surface. Geographic North is always on a meridian line from your location. The declination of Cairo, Illinois, and Cairo, Missouri, is negative west, for example; at Cairo, Egypt, it’s positive east. Before you start following your compass north know your approximate location to get the declination that enables you to correct your path.


When (It’s inevitable) the field flips, the polar reversal will nullify all current magnetic directions and declinations.


Harris and Her Promised Field Reversal


If Dirac had looked to politics instead of physics, he might have predicted the rise of Kamala Harris to presidential candidate, a monopole of promise and no reality. In the Cosmos, the hypothetical becomes the real in political candidates; the experiment dictates the math, at least it does so in Kamala Harris. The causes of inflation—inordinate government spending, shutdown of energy, and regulations up the you-know-what, plus tax money for illegals—that Harris, coupled with Biden, brought on a charge with no opposite, no counter. But now as candidate, she promises to “reverse” what she caused; she’s looking for a S to her N, and she claims to know how to redirect the field.   


She wants a “new direction.” “New”? Based on…


Has she flipped like Earth’s magnetic poles? Suddenly, she recognizes a border crisis. Suddenly, she’s aware (slightly) of crime and the dangers criminal elements pose when they run amok among the innocent. Suddenly, she’s aware of inflation. Sorry. She’s going nowhere round and round in a cyclotron looking for something that doesn’t exist.


And her math, if it’s the old math of her Biden-Harris years, is a disturbing formula for an open border, high prices under inflation, runaway spending charged with government giveaways, and fentanyl deaths. The Biden Harris Administration had but a single pole, one that points to its own failures and nowhere else.


She really is a pole that points to herself. When asked on The View whether or not she would change anything Joe Biden and she did over the course of their administration, she said, “Nothing comes to mind.” (And, as expected, she received no pushback from the highly ideological women on the show. Really, “Nothing comes to mind?” Maybe that’s because like the hypothesized monopole, there is only a hypothetical mind in her head.


Now, I’m going to be kind here and accept that she does have a mind though her incessant cackling and convoluted word salads drive me to think otherwise and that looking for her mind would be analogous to continued circling in a cyclotron with nothing to show for the circling. Yet, she speaks of “a new way forward.” Wouldn’t her “new way forward” imply a need for change and failures? I see that, but Democrats who support her apparently don’t. They will continue to look for something that exists only in hypothesis. “Well, if we elect her, things will be different this time.” (It’s the same thinking that socialists use when looking at socialism’s failures. “We’ll put someone new in charge because the policies are right, but the were implemented by the wrong people”)


Analogs: the Music of Magnetic Shifts and Harris’s Proposed Policy Flips


Remember the expression “music of the spheres”? The reference  is to the “celestial spheres” in Ptolemy’s cosmology that was overturned by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. Essentially, the outermost sphere pushed by the Prime Mover (AKA God) rubbed against the second sphere, and the rubbing moved all the concentric spheres in sequence down to the one closest to Earth. The sound of the moving spheres was that celestial music. Well, it seems that there’s also a more homebound music. Studies of paleo-geomagnetism give us a “music” driven by Earth’s changing magnetism (geomagnetic field), the process of change is accounted for in polar reversals captured in volcanic rock, and scientists converted the shifts into sounds. See https://studyfinds.org/sounds-of-earths-magnetic-field/ . “Scientists reveal the haunting sounds of Earth’s magnetic field flipping. The magnetic reversals are complex, as the video shows.


The music of Earth’s magnetic pole reversals is chaotic, a cacophony. If Harris becomes President, a similar cacophony will play incessantly over at least one continent, the one on whose surface the United States of America now lies.

In The Biggest Ideas in the Universe, Sean Carroll relates the theoretical physicists’ joke about a spherical cow. As it runs in paraphrase,


    A farmer with a milk production problem asks a theoretical physicist for a solution. After pondering the problem, the physicist returns to say, “Assume a spherical cow…” (26-28). *


Cows aren’t spherical, and therein lies the joke. And contrary to Platonists and Neoplatonists’ philosophy, no “ideal cow” of any shape exists, just as there is no “ideal tree” that serves as a model for all other trees. ** In a universe filled with multiple versions of stuff from atoms to elephants to stars, theoretical physicists pare problems to Occam-size solutions and acceptable approximations. Remember Occam (AKA Ockham)? John Punch framed his famous advice as Occam’s Razor; in Latin, it’s “Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem,” or, "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.” Simply: “keep it simple,” the axiom advises. That spherical cow is akin to a derivative, a simple way of defining something complex.


Assume a Spherical Cow


If there is any American town that might be the ideal place for French-speaking migrants to settle, it should be Charleroi, Pennsylvania. The town was settled by Walloons in 1890 and incorporated in 1891. The Belgian transplants brought with them the art of glass-making, a profession that logically led to the emplacement of one of Corning Glass Company’s leading employers, and for decades Charleroi has been home to Corelle Brands, which makes Pyrex.


Perfect for French-speaking Haitian immigrants, right? A liberal proponent of sanctuary cities might think so. It’s a simple solution to the problem of Biden’s and Harris’s rapid mass migration. Millions of immigrants in a 3 1/2 year period? No complex problem. Send them into American towns and cities. Simple solution.


But Reality Is filled with Real Cows, Not Ideal Cows


The last census put the population of Charleroi slightly above 4,000. To that number the town can now add 2,500 Haitian immigrants who entered the country through the open border of Biden and Harris. Good boost to the population, right?


Hold on. Charleroi has been in a steady state of decline since the Jimmy Carter years. The local steel mills, zinc plant, fabrication plants, coke ovens, and coal mines have either shut down or undergone a significant decline in production. With that decline Charleroi became a typical “rust belt” town with fewer job opportunities and loss of businesses. Its restaurants and shops have dwindled in number and its once-crowded sidewalks have nary a pedestrian: A once-thriving community has become a “ghost town” with a failed revitalization effort. Its tax base is only a fraction of what it once was, and the current main employer, Corelle, has announced a shutdown with the loss of 300 jobs, a move that will further reduce local government resources. The reduction means less money for police, fire-fighting, education, and infrastructure.


More decline. Fewer resources. More decay in housing and infrastructure. Charleroi seems to be far from the liberal ideal American town. So, what is the liberal plan? Specifically?  Mix in some 2,500 non-taxed residents. Place their children who might not speak English in the Charleroi school system. Does the district have more than one French teacher? Does it have the resources?


Don’t get me wrong. I have no doubt that the Haitian immigrants will eventually revitalize Charleroi though it might never reach its heydays of vital industry. There’s already at least one Haitian-owned store on Charleroi’s south-bound one-way main street, but no such store on the north-bound parallel street, which remains largely a line of empty former stores.


Haitians emigrated from a land in chaos and corruption, made so by years of ineffective leadership and the devastating earthquake that killed more than 100,000 (maybe 300,000) in 2010, just two years after Tropical Storm Fay and hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike, all in the summer of 2008, caused nearly 800 deaths. So, fleeing Haiti for affluent America makes sense in the minds of Charleroi’s new Haitian population. But among American towns, Charleroi is an analog of Haiti, ranking low in economic opportunities. Haitians left a country so poor that only 33 other countries are poorer. Their new abode is a town with 2,460 housing units and a pre-Haitian population that includes 20% above the age of 65 and an employment rate of only 53%.


Assume a perfect sanctuary city…


Leftists are model idealists, people holding ideals of ideals. The cows in their world are spherical and the trees are ideal. Infinite migration is good, and tax dollars are endless. It’s one thing to postulate that open borders and sanctuary cities are ideal ethically; it’s another to deal with the specific problems generated by open-border policies and a rapid influx of people from different cultures. Some 2,500 Haitians have been introduced into into an essentially mono-culture of fifth- and-sixth-generation English-speaking Americans who cherish Friday night football games against long-time rival Monessen High from across the Monongahela River, and who have only a single grocery store located a couple of miles outside the town. Will Kamala Harris provide this community with a specific “opportunity economy”?


No doubt liberals see open borders as good. They assume, for example, that by giving away free stuff, they’ll ensure that migrants will vote for them and their ever-broadening socialist policies. That’s the ideal, but many immigrants have fled socialist governments, so that ploy just might not produce the desired results in the long term. There is no Occam’s Razor solution to human problems.


Ideals and spherical cows are unreal. Try teaching that to a liberal. Maybe I should have called this little essay “What Shape Is a Cow in the Mind of a Liberal?”


*2022. An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC


**Here’s an aside: I’m always amazed at the human ability to recognize individual entities and place them in classes. Just about everyone recognizes a specific animal as a dog, cat, or horse though there are many variations of each. I can’t name all 160,000 species of moths, but I can recognize one when I see it and can distinguish between a moth and a butterfly. Plato would argue that there is an ideal lepidopteran form on which each of the 160,000 moths and almost 20,000 butterfly species is predicated. I can’t picture it anymore than I can picture “tree.” Oak, hickory, white pine all pop into my head at the mention of “tree.” Specifics, not ideals, populate the mind. i challenge you to think of "tree" without thinking of a specific tree. I do, however, recall seeing a baby white lion just after its birth and thinking it looked like a puppy, a similarity that disappeared as I watched it grow and take on more cat-like features. And as for trees, I might mistake a woody bush for one, but somehow I usually know one when I see one.

In Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a supercomputer known as Deep Thought takes 7 1/2 million years to discover the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. That answer, if you haven’t read the book (spoiler alert for philosophers, physicists, psychiatrists, and temple priests) is 42. That’s it. Simple. From those dialogues of Plato to Heidegger’s Being and Time, those physics works from Aristotle through Galileo to Newton to Einstein, and those psychology/psychiatry works from Burton to Freud to Dr. Christian Conte, yes, all those works thoughtfully considered over lifetimes of deep thought and experience were unnecessary. 42. That’s it. That’s all they needed. That’s the answer. *


Enter Kamala Harris


Kamala Harris is an analog of Deep Thought. She’s discovered the answer to every question. That answer (spoiler alert for anyone living in the vacuum of outer space) is Donald Trump.


Questioner: Why did you allow more than 10 million illegal aliens, including murderers, rapists, and gang members to enter the country?


Harris: Donald Trump.


Questioner: Do you regret leaving Afghanistan so abruptly that you left billions of dollars in military equipment, a military airbase, women deprived of education, and thirteen of our soldiers dead?


Harris: Donald Trump.


Questioner: Do you think you could have done more to prevent more than 100,000 fentanyl deaths?


Harris: Donald Trump.


Questioner: How will you decrease inflation in your opportunity economy?


Harris: Donald Trump.


Questioner: Will you spend taxpayers’ money on transgender surgeries for prisoners and illegal aliens?


Harris: Donald Trump.


Questioner: Would you do anything differently from what you did during the last four years?


Harris: Donald Tump.


*Many have tried to make sense of Deep Thought’s answer, derived it said from 6 X 9 (which, as you know, is 54) as the product of a base-13 multiplication: When asked why he chose the number 42, Adams said it was random; it had no significance other than it was insignificant.  Many theories were proposed, including that 42 is 101010 in base 2, that light refracts through a water surface by 42 degrees to create a rainbow, or that light requires 10^−42 seconds to cross the diameter of a proton. Nope. None of those. Deep Thought’s answer is as nonsensical as every answer by Kamala Harris.

Those who read A Hitchhiker's Guide, get the joke. Apparently, there are many in the media, like Colbert, the women of The View, and Stern who either don't get the joke or who get it, but are so obsessed by hatred for Trump and by ideology that they ignore the joke that is Kamala Harris. Strangely, SNL, having missed the comic opportunities of the Obama-Biden years and the Biden-Harris years, have suddenly become aware of the treasure trove of comic material embedded in the empty head of Harris. That it took so long for SNL writers to recognize the opportunity for comedy provided by the "opportunity candidate" seems reminiscent of the 7 1/2 million years that Deep Thought took to arrive at its answer. For those of us desiring comedy that applied to everything and everyone, a seeming span of millions of years has passed during which no Democrat was ever the butt of jokes. All those wasted Biden stumbles, all those teleprompter errors, all those off-teleprompter gaps and gaps (like Harris's '32 more days, 32 more days, 32 more days") were missed opportunities to reach a wider audience. 

Are you and I predisposed to think the way we do because of the language we speak, or are we so disposed because our brains dictate how we think? It’s not an easy question to answer, but its answer might reveal something about our political and ethical perspectives. Yes, answering the question also means addressing whether or not we are the products of Nature or Nurture. Is it cart before horse or horse before cart?


Horse and Cart


Does your thinking depend on your language? That’s not an easy question to answer. When I read Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher, * I was convinced he was onto something. But now I’m not so sure that language is primary and brain is secondary. And the reason for my doubt lies in the nature of constructed languages, that is, in languages formed through conscious efforts of an individual or group and not through an organic growth of a culture. I’ll get to that later. My doubts about the veracity of Deutscher’s premise arose in St. Lucia, where I heard locals speak Creole to one another and English (mostly) or French (a little) to tourists as well as to one another  without exhibiting from my perspective thinking that varied from my own on the way the world works and on the way people interact.   


Why should any of us be concerned about the relationship between language and thought? Well, for starters, there’s that censorship thing. And the brainwashing stuff: You know it in the 1984 form “think this way and no other way” (Orwell’s Newspeak). There are negative ramifications for variance from the societal norm. Don’t counter the politically correct crowd lest they ostracize you. So, we now have a growing list of banned words and phrases, a list that can get people fired simply because those who hear what they don’t want to hear choose to be offended and to make much of their fragility. (Ah! Where are the realities of war, famine, and natural disaster when you need them for perspective? Which offends more, a pronoun or a bullet? Who in a foxhole or trench worries more about pronouns than about bullets and bombs?)


Consider that controlling language entails controlling behavior. And controlling language includes the entire context of an organization, such as the military, where DEI has become a driver of advancement, stagnation, and demotion. When an organization includes positions for overseeing compliance to acceptable terms and phrases, it loses its perspective on its primary function. The military’s chief purpose is to break things and kill people with malicious intentions and behaviors, not coddle the fragile minds in its ranks. (That sounds like something Patton would say, but consider that assigning one soldier of a unit to language propriety means having one less soldier focused on thwarting an actual enemy intent on doing harm)


Language and Thought Control


Speaking of the military, I should note that the current Pentagon appears to be committed to constructing social language as much as it has long been committed to constructing military language (which is replete with acronyms like AWACS, AAFS, and DAWIA—don’t ask, the list seems interminable). Thus, the military has a CDIO, that is, a Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, a DET, Defense Equity Team, and LGBTQIA+, which it officially defines as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, and all of the other gender identities and sexual orientations that are not specifically covered by the other seven identities [?] and orientations.” Yep, that the US military personnel have to keep all that in mind probably makes its enemies shake in their boots. “Look, Yakov, they have more acronyms than we have; they have political correctness, too. We’re doomed. Run away! Run away!”    


How organic is language? How contrived?


We know, with regard to the second question, that people in charge of political movements coin words and phrases, such as “MAGA,” “opportunity economy,” and various catchphrases designed to win votes. In contrast some words, phrases, and sentences, in regard to the first question, are organic, such as "Let’s go Brandon," which developed from a reporter’s misunderstanding what a crowd was saying in unison.” One can never predict what organic words or phrases will affix to common speak, nor can one predict the durability of such linguistic units.


Every generation of teenagers adopts a set of organically evolved terms. And nowadays, with the proliferation of social media, new terms arise yearly, if not monthly or even daily. It’s hard to keep up LOL. Clickbait. But we also recognize that the core of every language can persist for centuries. Twenty-first-century students, given a level of maturation that frees their minds, can still read and understand Shakespeare, Milton, and other writers now long dead. Even Chaucer is not beyond the reach of the modern mind when one overcomes his spelling.


“Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
                  When April with its sweet-smelling showers
 The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
                 Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
                 And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
                 By which power the flower is created…


But with regard to language cores, we are in the midst of a conscious, or contrived, alteration of pronouns with the accompanying grammatical number disagreement (John—they). In our Orwellian times, there are language fascists who insist on restructuring language to meet their personal feelings while disdaining centuries of organically formed English. Fascists? Consider that though Canada did not enact a law against using “faulty” pronouns, some Canadian legislators did consider writing it into their legislation. In a compromise, the legislators said that the misuse of pronouns “borders” on hate speech, but does not in itself rise to ethnic, religious, or race hate.


That movement in Canada, mirroring the movement in the US, begs a question I asked above: Are we predisposed to think the way we do because of the language we speak, or are we so disposed because our brains dictate how we think and use the most familiar language? Will politically correct language reshape our thinking, our perspective, our very understanding of the world? Changing how we think is the goal of language fascists.


Lessons from That Little Island


Located among the Lesser Antilles, St. Lucia is a small high island, a dormant volcanic tropical island with a rainforest interrupted by banana plantations, some towns, and resorts. The volcanoes are currently only temporarily asleep if the 1995 eruption of nearby Montserrat’s Soufrière Hills is an indicator of potential awakening. In the 17th century, the French and English laid claim, exchanging control more than a dozen times in back-and-forth conquests to the detriment of Arawaks and Caribs, the precolonial inhabitants. To this mix of Native Americans, the Europeans added African slaves, resulting in the mix of English and French in the islanders’ own form of Creole, called Kwéyòl [kwejɔl]). The organic rise of Kwéyòl derived from cultural necessity, a language that separated slaves from owners, allowing the former to communicate in secrecy. Although I can only conjecture, that language probably had no one specific linguist artificially designing its words and syntax. Derived from many French words (Latin origin) but now including English derivatives, Kwéyòl has evolved under the dominance of schools in which English was the language of Educators. It’s Greek to me and maybe to you unless you know, for example, that “Lapli ka tonbé an chay an livènaj “ means “It rains a lot during the rainy season” and that “Sé timanmay-la ka jwé an savann-an” means “The children are playing in the field.”


I can imagine the early days of European colonization and its occupation by the French pirate François le Clerc (known as Jambe de Bois). That would have been the earliest start to the French influence on the development of Kwéyòl because French words dominate. After the incursion by the English and the rise of the slave trade, the transported Africans on St. Lucia and other islands in the Antilles developed their “secret” language. And just as Swedish and Danish derived from a similar root under the Vikings and in relatively close proximity, so the islanders carried their forms of Creole throughout the Antilles (both Lesser and Greater) over several centuries. Islanders in the Antilles can understand the various forms of Creole even when they do not speak another island’s Creole—much like a Swede and Dane understanding each other’s language while speaking their native Swedish and Danish.


Is Deutscher correct? Same language, same kind of thinking, same view of the world?


AARGH, ’Tis them Cuss Words That Unite Us: Universal “Effing”


Pirates like Jambe de Bois, AKA Peg Leg, probably had their slang and colloquialisms, and no doubt had as a matter of proving their manhood a language peppered with epithets, possibly one of them a predecessor to today’s seemingly universal “eff-word,” “universal” because it seems to be popping up in podcasts, movies, TV series, and videos made round the world. So, yes, “cuss words” are persistent hangers-on from century to century, with the mass of the language undergoing changes while the cuss words stay relatively the same. But does cuss word durability arise because cuss words embody basic human emotions? Do cuss words arise from the structure of the brain, neurotransmitters, and hormones? Do they embody simple, pared down emotions that are part of the human psyche regardless of culture?


Is it the emotion that produces perspective that comes out in language? Or, rather, the language that controls how emotions are expressed? Is this just another version of which comes first, chicken or egg?


What I noticed in a couple of stays on the island is that much of how I viewed the world was reflected in the St. Lucians’ view—and vise versa. How did that occur? How did the people of St. Lucia and I become so intertwined in our perspectives?


Yes, we have a common language in English, but I speak no Creole, the vernacular on the island.

1. Where is the bathroom? – Kote pwevit-la ya? (Coh-TAY pweh-VIT la YAH)
2. Do you speak English? – Es ou ka pale Anngle? (ess OO kah pahl ohn-GLAY)

And there are other differences between me and a St. Lucian that might influence how I think as well as how I express my thoughts.
.
I was reared in an affluent country on a massive continent and have lived about 300 miles from the ocean. I’m used to a seemingly endless land lying in different climates, from the forested land of my home to the treeless deserts of Nevada; my brain is used to the expanse, and it knows it from car and plane trips. St. Lucians can’t drive far and everywhere they drive is tropical. Everywhere is mountainous and volcanic on St. Lucia.


The relatively less affluent people of St. Lucia, dependent upon agriculture mostly and on bananas particularly, and now on tourism, also, see the sea everywhere they look, and except for luxurious resorts, see the entropy of decay under the tropical sun and little modern revitalizing industry. In contrast, even in the Rust Belt where I live, I see renewal and signs of revitalization, and if I wish, I can drive or fly to thriving hubs of growth and newness in both frigid and subtropical climes.


What could we have in common other than our basic humanity? Those cuss words?How could we possibly see the world in relatively the same way? And how is it that we actually think similarly when the expressions of our thinking differ?


Unifiers


There are uniting forces other than our being human as you might surmise. St. Lucians are dominantly Christian, half of them Catholic. So, the 2,000-year evolution of Judeo-Christianity plays a unifying role on island as well as on the continent. Both on the continent and on the island a common ethical system prevails—even among non Christians. Mores are similar. Right that is right on St. Lucia is right that is right on the continent, and wrong that is wrong is largely identical in both locations because both have adopted English and European judicial systems, such as English common law.


I suppose I could argue that in addition to the ethical commonality, the influence of European culture in general meant that St. Lucians were destined to develop a culture not unlike the culture of an American citizen of European descent. So, there’s that underlying European influence that ties our brains and shapes our minds—that’s the “nurturing influence.” The influence of eastern African cultures, left over from the days of slave trade, is probably no more important on St. Lucia than it is in most of the United States though Kwéyòl underlies the culture.  As Keith B. Richburg (2009) points out in Out Of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, a person of African descent living in America * (and by extension, on St. Lucia) has little in common with, say, an African living in Rwanda. So, I doubt that a modern St. Lucian has much in common with slave ancestors save that Creole language—a language that developed outside Africa. But then that circles us back to the question: Does language control perspective?


Modern Media as Homogenizers


Was unification of perspective between those on islands and those on continents acquired through broadcast entertainment and modern electronic communication since early in the twentieth century? From early AM radio to movies to modern social media, we’ve all been thrown into a cultural melting pot, the various media acting as mixers, as homogenizers. Are there people on the planet who don’t know Mickey Mouse? Probably, but they have to have been isolated. I’ve seen Sky News Australia and its commentary on American politics; across the world the same political arguments prevail in English. The civilized world, with the exception of totalitarian regimes, is intertwined. But, heck, isn’t Kim Jong Un a fan of Dennis Rodman? Didn’t Rodman visit him? What perspective on the nature of the world differed between them save the politics of freedom vs. the politics of totalitarianism? That worldwide homogenization of humanity produced by entertainment and sports broadcasts has enhanced common experiences and those biological imperatives that have always united members of our species.


The world exchange of cultures, once largely driven by that age of exploration, exploitation, slave-exchange, and mass migrations has been magnified by media of various kinds. Unifying perspectives have migrated through those media. I remember being on another island, Bermuda, in the 1990s and seeing among that highly literate society a woman reading a thick novel on a bus and a teenager shouldering a boombox as he walked in Hamilton.  And on the TV in Bermuda? The news emanated from a Chicago station, so Bermudans living on an island where guns were banned saw nightly reports of gun violence in a big city. Bermudans, highly formal in their daily lives of ladies in dresses and male store clerks in Bermuda shorts but wearing white shirts, ties, and sport coats were exposed to a place where formality was reserved for special occasions and circumstances and daily life was decidedly informal and often crude. Bermudan restaurant dress codes were largely ignored by American tourists in casual wear. Show informality and crudity over a period of two decades, and all Bermudans aged 20 and living on an island with pastel-colored houses with white roofs, will have been exposed to life in a crime-wracked inner city with graffiti and entropic neighborhoods.


Is Language Irrelevant Here?


What did we humans do before language?


Silly question? Maybe not, but this is more about our relationship to language than to the origins of language.


Human emotions appear to be both limited in number and universal in nature. There are angry people in every culture, for example, and anger intensity from mildly miffed to outraged spreads across the human spectrum of ages, races, and creeds. Do angry people get angry in different ways in different languages? Deutscher might argue in the affirmative.


There was a survey of drunks many years ago, one whose source I cannot remember. Seems that drunks act drunk according to culture. Do we express ourselves differently because of our language? Obviously, each language contains idiomatic expressions that defy exact translation: “About to go down,” “ballpark figure,”  “cold turkey,” all express ideas that don’t have literal translations in other languages. But we can surmise that people in other cultures understand that there’s an anticipation of criminal activity or a surprise party, a financial estimate, and a cessation of an addiction that can occur abruptly. I do not expect, however, a member of an Amazonian tribe to understand “ballpark figure” without a lengthy description and an explanation of the analogy.


Did Volapük Alter Thinking?


In the second half of the nineteenth century German priest Martin Schleyer invented a language he called Volapük, a name meaning “world’s speech” he derived, according to Merriam-Webster, from vola “of the world” (genitive of vol world, modification of English world) + pük speech, modification of English speak. By 1889, at the end of its first decade, an estimated 200,000 people spoke Volapük, mostly because academicians in Germany and France pushed it through 300 societies and clubs and 24 publications. *


Think about it: Someone invented a language and within 10 years it spread through Europe and America behind advocates so enamored of it they held international conferences—at least three of them. But organizers of the third conference insisted on conducting affairs exclusively in the new language, and that insistence exposed its inherent flaws. Then it rapidly died except for those diehard academicians, whom Frederick Bodmer calls “the last refuge of lost causes” (463). In its death throes, Volapük even became the subject of lawsuits, as Schleyer defended his invention as proprietary, meaning that only he could make changes. And that just ain’t the way languages work. Necessities born of technology, current events, foreign influences, and even fashion require languages to adapt to changing times and speakers. To put one man in control defies the development of every language family, including Indo-European (454 languages), Austronesian (1,256 languages), and Sino-Tibetan (458 languages). Migrations, which take on a life of their own even if an individual causes them, have produced variations in languages and spawned new languages. The failure of Volapük led some of its one-time adherents to attempt other linguistic inventions, all such artificially constructed languages leading to the famous invention of Esperanto. But organic growth depends on continued use. That’s why there are “dead” languages.


But in all these invented languages, no new perspective on the nature of the world or the nature of humanity appears to have been born. The speakers still viewed the world as, say, you view it in your native tongue. Volapük was a mishmash of German and English imposed on a worldview already long in place.


What about Political Speak? Three Guys Make an Astounding Assertion


Although much of what those on the Right or Left say seems to point to different ways of viewing the world, all of us share a common biochemistry in brain functions. So, predispositions belonging to one group might merely be versions of a two-sided coin: Same fundamental structure (coin) with sides termed heads and tails. This is reflected in the thesis statement in Predisposition: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Biology of Political Differences by Hibbing, Smith, and Alford (2014):


    The central thesis of this book is that many people have broad predispositions relevant to their behaviors and inclinations in the realm of politics. These predispositions can be measured with psychologically oriented survey items, with cognitive tests that do not rely on self-reports, with brain imaging, or with traditional physiological and endocrinological indicators. Due to perceptual, psychological, processing, and physiological differences, liberals and conservatives, for all intents and purposes, perceive and thus experience different worlds. Given this, it is not surprising to find they approach politics as though they were somewhat distinct species.***


But…BUT…BUT…


The authors go on to make this assertion:


    Though traditional wisdom asserts that politics varies and human nature is universal, in truth politics is universal and human nature varies. Failing to appreciate these two points renders it impossible to grasp the true source of political conflict. Accordingly, before we present empirical evidence documenting the deep-seated psychological, cognitive, physiological, and genetic correlates of political variation, we first need to make the case that politics is universal and human nature is variable.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! WHAT?


If they are correct, then I am wrong. St. Lucians and I might only coincidentally see the world the same way. Far Leftists and Far Rightists might both be human, but that’s their only connection. They see the world differently regardless of language and geography. Americans speaking the same language and living on the same continent—even in the same community—might see the world differently as framed in the expression of their political views. So, a book paralleling Deutscher’s might be entitled Why the World Looks Different in Other Political Philosophies. Neighbors on the same street might have yard signs for opposing candidates.


And yet, language is still, I believe with Deutscher, at the heart of worldviews and political views. Take the issue of abortion. Many on the Left are pro-choice; many on the Right, pro-life. Their arguments depend on definitions. Is that organism in the womb a fetus, a parasite, a baby, a being different from or part of the pregnant woman, or a nonentity best described as just tissue? The language frames the view. Leftists refuse to say “baby.” Rightists freely use the term. And what of these following terms? In both groups we might see a linguistic consistency but a difference between both Leftists and Rightists.


Capital punishment
Imprisonment
Immigrant/Illegal immigrant
Terrorist/Freedom fighter
Free speech/Subversive speech


You might think of other terms that frame worldviews or that derive from perspectives. Then with each you have to ask the chicken-egg questions: Brain or language? Language or mind?


Sorry for running this so long, but in truth it still falls short of resolving my initial questions. But as I have said elsewhere in these essays, my purpose is to stimulate your own insights that in humility I acknowledge are probably greater and wiser than mine.




*August 31, 2010 by Metropolitan Books


**Frederick Bodmer. 1944. The Loom of Language: An Approach to the Mystery of Many Languages. New York. W. W. Norton and Company. Pp 460 ff.


***New York. Routledge. See also Scientific American Oct. 26, 2020.
“Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences”

"If you’ve never heard Knute Rockne’s famous halftime speech, I suggest you listen to it. Or…Or you can go to a gathering of Democrats listening to Coach Tim Walz’s “raw-raw-raw-by-jiminey-cricket-let’s get-out-there-and-win-win-win. We have a playbook; let’s follow it.”


“Uhhhh, Coach? The playbook you gave us is full of blank pages.”


“We’re going to follow it. That’s why we put in all the hard work. That’s why we practice. We’re going for the championship.”



“But, Coach, there’s nothing in the playbook. Shouldn’t we have a specific plan, one we can actually study and follow?”


“When you play football, son, you have a plan, a playbook, and you stick to that.”


“But, Coach…”


“Now get out there. We’re going for the biggest championship in the world.”

*See "College Football Hall of Famer Knute Rockne Gives a Stirring Locker Room Speech."  Here's part of it: 
​We’re going inside ‘em. We’re going outside ‘em. Inside ‘em, outside ‘em. When we get them on the run, we’ll keep them on the run. We’re not going to pass until that secondary comes up to the 12. Don’t forget men, that we are going to get them on the run and we’ll go, go, go, go! And we are not going to stop until we reach the end line!