“If only I had seen it coming…”

“If only I had known…”

“If only I had been…”

Every “if only” abstracts. You know the word. Abstraction derives from the Latin ab, “away” and trahere, “to draw” (as in “pull”), and from abstractus, “drawn away.” We sometimes associate the word with an artform, for example, the paintings of Kadinsky, such as “Brownish” and “Fragile.” Disembodied, un-embodied, dreamlike for some, childlike for others, abstract art elicits from the bewildered viewer in a museum statements, such as “Geez, I could do THAT!” and “What is THAT supposed to be?” You know the cognate noun abstract, also, the little biddy paragraph at the beginning of a professional paper that is supposed to summarize the entire document. An abstract is a bit of a tease, some unsubstantial serving of meat without potatoes and definitely without side dishes.

Sometimes, we abstract our lives, and we verbalize the abstracting with “if only.” We take ourselves out of the only universe we know, the “real” universe, and we pose an alternative reality, a fiction of the past, verbalized in past perfect tense or in some subjunctive form, like “If only I were (armed, smart enough, trained, more agile, more muscular, thinner, skilled in, etc.).” The “if onlys” we have expressed all abstract us from reality.

The next time the expression if only crosses your mind, think of abstract art, parallel worlds you can never realize, or your first-grade stick figures. Every attempt to draw you away from the realities of your past and present makes an abstract future.

You meet someone. “Where are you from?”

Why do you ask? Why is it so important to frame your initial meeting by another’s place of origin or residence?

You travel somewhere. “Where are you from?” You’re not the only person who asks such a question.

We’ve seen the stereotypes: Texan, West Virginian, Dane…. The list is as indefinite as there are places. You, regardless of your denial, are also subject to a stereotype associated with your “place.” You carry it with you wherever you go. You are the embodiment of place as is everyone.

Been in prison? Embodiment. Been in a monastery? Embodiment. Been in a mental health facility? Embodiment. You know I could go on. 

You and I—all of us—are mobile embodiments of place. We carry the stamp of place with us even if, in our home communities, we seemed to be oddballs, misfits, or people who just couldn’t “get it.”

Now the mirror: Look and ask. Where am I from? Does it show? 

We know we can’t change the past. Even if we could, as the paradox tells us, changing the past would change what we are, possibly even eliminating us from the present. No, the past is done. Or is it?

Memories of details fade, but altered recall can come upon us like a cloudburst. We walk in showers of past causes and their effects all changed by present attitudes, intervening experiences, knowledge, and desires. We shouldn’t be surprised if two people remember an event differently.

Life in the present isn’t always what we think it is. We know we lack full awareness of any circumstance, a condition that can be easily demonstrated. Until I point out to you that you can feel your chair, you focus on these words and not the pressure on your elbows, back, and butt. In all your past “seated” experiences the seating itself rarely resurfaces; yet, it was part of the experiences just beyond your conscious focus. When consciousness arises, it has a focal point.

It’s that point that acts as the center for a memory, but it is never the full memory that precipitates into your present. Just as clouds form when water vapor condenses and grows into droplets on unseen dust particles called condensation nuclei, memories form and grow like drops. And just as water drops can pick up other substances before they encounter the ground, so memories acquire foreign matter on the way to the present. Memory drops can tie fictions to history and lend a degree of falsity to remembrance. False memories, we know, have been problematic in more than a few witnesses.

As a memory cloud obscures details of past realities, it can protect us from past unpleasantness, blurring the points of tragedy and failure while enhancing the shape of successes. But there is a downside, and it has to do with those aspects of every “present” that remain in the background just outside conscious focal points.

Sometimes the cloud washes us in disfigured memories. In their altered forms they condense as amorphous substances that precipitate as monsters in present consciousness: Phobia, Grudge, and Bias. The three come to us from the past made complex by our inability to be totally aware in any “present.” Yes, there might be some small condensation nucleus on which each of these monsters formed, but they grew large by the inclusion of unseen substances, matter peripheral to consciousness. You might never know the exact details of their growth, but as you sit there reading this, you can realize how they have been with you all along much like your unfelt chair.

What does “to make sense” mean? Think about your sense of “sense.” Hypotheticals: 1) You are a burglar. You know there is a risk in burglary. You know that you might even get hurt, captured, or killed in the process. But you burgle. It makes sense to you. 2) You are a casual drug user. You know that you might suffer some immediate unwanted side effects, such as impaired driving, and you know that some studies show some long-term negative effects like diminished mental faculties, but the pleasures outweigh the risk. You continue your use. It makes sense to you. 3) You are a bit overweight. You know that extra weight carries a probability of health risks. There’s that dessert. It makes sense that just one piece of pie is not, in itself, dangerous. You eat. It makes sense. 4) You use your credit card excessively. 5) You commit to a TV marathon. Well, you’ve seen the first three episodes; that’s a commitment you can’t abandon. It makes sense to see the rest.

You know there’s risk in just about every human action. You and I choose those actions that we believe make sense. Someone else looks at the two of us and asks, “What are they thinking?” Or, after a negative consequence of our actions, “What WERE they thinking?” The questions imply that the observer thinks our “sense” is or was “senseless.”

So, look at your actions today, and look at your decisions. They will all make sense to you at the time of your acting and deciding. To you, that is. And at the time, that is.

Play along here. Just because something is true doesn’t mean that it is TRUE. Start with an example. In the middle of the eighteenth century Christian Goldbach suggested that every even number is the sum of two prime numbers. So, 8=5+3; 14=7+7; 22=11+11. I know what you’re thinking. Eight is also the sum of 4=4; 14 is the sum of 6+8, and 22 is the sum of 10+12, and all those latter examples show even numbers as the sum of even numbers. By thinking what you did, you make one of two points. The first is that just because something is true, it isn’t necessarily true in all instances. The second point that I would make is that just because something is true, it isn’t necessarily TRUE. What?

Let’s go back to Goldbach’s suggestion. You can start today and run sums until you are exhausted, and you won’t likely find any even number that isn’t the sum of two prime numbers. You can say that as far as you are concerned, Goldbach hit on something. But you might never be able to prove that suggestion is correct. Merely running through an indefinite series of sums isn’t a proof. What if, upon your complete exhaustion, you fall short of going to the very next even number, that key number that isn’t a sum of two primes? See what I’m getting at? Just running the sums isn’t a proof of the principle. Just finding things that are true isn’t necessarily finding things that are TRUE.

It doesn’t matter if we want all even numbers to conform to Goldbach’s suggestion. We can never know whether or not there is an exception. When it comes to culture, we run into the same kind of conundrum: How do we know that what is “true” is “TRUE”? We take anecdote, limited data, and hearsay as TRUE when they might be, in fact, merely “true.” Indefinite examples aren’t proof of anything.

For almost everything in our lives, we are stuck with the “true,” and not the “TRUE.” That makes predictability a problem, especially when it comes to behaviors. That predictability problem makes life both more dangerous and more interesting. Somewhere along the number line of life there’s an even number that isn’t the sum of two primes, or everywhere along the line all even numbers conform to the rule. Until we know what is “TRUE,” we have only what is “true.”

Commonsense says stay away from threats. When we have to look over our shoulders to see whether or not there is an imminent danger, we divide our energies, lose focus, and miss goals. Problem is that nature and humans can make any time or place dangerous. So, we’re geared to be on the lookout. Sometimes that makes us a bit over anxious and unnecessarily wary.

Is it possible that our wariness has an appetite for danger? Risk-takers and thrill seekers appear to demonstrate that when times do not seem dangerous, some people even look for a bit of danger. Of course, there are degrees of danger. Take, as an example, a low-level threat. As T. S. Eliot has his poetic character Prufrock ask, “Do I dare to eat a peach?” On a popular TV food show called Man v. Food the host Adam Richman risks the “dangers” of eating foods so hot they rank very high on the Scoville unit scale of spicy heat. Danger-seekers and voyeurs of danger-seekers: Are we so bored by a time of peace and safety that consumption of food thrills us? Does even the smallest of perceived dangers whet the appetite?

The Romans and Carthaginians had fought two wars, called the Punic Wars. After the second, Carthage posed no real threat to Rome. As the story goes, every time Marcus Porcius Cato the Elder spoke to the Senate, regardless of the topic at hand, he ended by saying “Ceterum ceneo Carthaginem esse delendam” (“For the rest, I hold that Carthage must be destroyed”). Those two previous wars between the powers had reduced Carthage’s influence in the Mediterranean. But Cato persisted. “Ceterum ceneo Carthaginem esse delendam” became an earworm. People heard it over and over and over. When Romans believed Carthage had violated a provision of their mutual treaty, the Third Punic War did ensue.

Yes, there are real threats, and yes, we need to be wary. But we can’t let Cato’s refrain become an earworm. Maybe some Carthaginians pose no threat. Not all foods are as dangerous to our ulcers as a peach or to the lining of our stomachs as a habanero. Not all dangers are equal. Each of us needs a Scoville-like scale that allows us to judge the intensity of a threat.

So, the other day, I wanted to hang a picture, but like so many occasional carpenters, I had misplaced not just one, but two hammers. Hmm. What to use? Fortunately, to pound the single nail I needed to pound, I found a substitute: A piece of granite I had picked up in a quarry. Guess what. It worked. How far have we really come?

Progress. That’s what we’re all about, right? And look! It has taken us in the Americas less than 20,000 years to effect enormous changes. But I am getting ahead of myself.

We certainly do seem to have come a long way since those first centuries and millennia in Monte Verde, Chile. We’ve gone from tools made of rocks, through hammers, to nail guns. And we have gone from constructing simple fire pits to building skyscrapers. As a species, we have long had the ability to use a technology to build stuff.

We know that dating the time of ancient people is difficult and that archaeologists have running arguments about where people first settled in the Americas. The rock shelter called Meadowcroft in western Pennsylvania is arguably the oldest site of habitation in North America. It predates the so-called Clovis people, and bears evidence of dwellers some 16,000 years ago. The logic of human migration to the Americas would suggest that upon crossing the Bering Land Bridge, people occupied North America before they moved across the isthmus to South America. But the discovery of artifacts from Monte Verde, Chile might overturn that logic because those artifacts now suggest a South American habitation 18,000 years ago. Did the people of Monte Verde jump over North America? Why didn’t they leave a record of their passage southward? Maybe they did, but we just haven’t found it yet. Maybe something happened to what they constructed.

As archaeologists know, stone tools last a long time. That fact enables them to peer into the distant past. The Monte Verde people, as archaeologist Thomas Dillehay appears to have shown, cooked and left stone tools. It seems that these ancient people had an ice-free corridor between the high mountains and the coast, where they could hunt, make fires, and chip away at some hard minerals and rocks to make stone tools.

Anyway, here we are 18,000 years later, also occupying the Americas like the Meadowcroft and Monte Verde people. Let’s look at ourselves: Sophisticated residents of two American continents now dominated by descendants of people from all over the planet but mostly by people who first crossed from lands on the shores of the eastern Atlantic rather than from the shores of the western Pacific. Two waves of influence have shaped the continents: Those who settled the land ten to twenty thousand years ago whose culmination of influence might be recognized in the ruins of Mayan, Incan, and Aztec cities, and those who settled the land in the past 500 years whose influence is manifested in modern structures. That’s a big gap in migrations, and it was a big gap in tool making and building stuff. In those intervening millennia, we improved our technology and built lots of stuff.

Well, yes, technologically, we seem very different from our ancient ancestors. But our needs and behaviors haven’t changed much. Yes, they used rock hammers to pound something, if not to build, then to break. In our contemporary world we also do a bunch of building and breaking. Much of the latter we do through war. So, over the centuries, we have broken what we have built in a cycle that probably will never end. Look at the ruins of cities both ancient and modern if you want examples. As a species, we seem to be enamored equally by making and breaking. And our ability to do either has been enhanced by our technological advances.

We don’t know whether the people of Monte Verde crossed through North America to get to South America. If they did, they might have built stuff on the way south, stuff they or some other group also destroyed. Make and Break. Is that our destiny? 

Trust in a relationship doesn’t imply verification, but it appears that many people seem to need some verification. That need can be a relationship’s undoing. Remember President Reagan’s “Trust, but verify”? The late president made that remark in the context of an international agreement on weapons. In fact, the need to verify negates trust. I don’t want to invoke Yoda here, but if the little green creature were philosophizing on the subject, he would say, “Trust, or do not trust; there is no verify.”

In a song he co-composed with George Harrison called “It Don’t Come Easy,” Ringo Starr sings, “I don’t ask for much; I only want your trust,/And you know it don’t come easy.” Faulty subject-verb agreement aside, the song’s lyrics are an extension of Reagan’s famous statement. Apparently, many relationships do not adhere to the Yodaist (I made that up) trust philosophy. People seem to operate on the principle that there are degrees of trust, and that poses a problem for those who doubt the commitment of partners.

So, let’s take a look at relationships. 1) Relationships of lovers seem to fall into one of two initial versions. Some begin in the passion of the moment, born from a mutual, emotionally bound trust. Others seem less “born” than “evolved” or “developed.” The latter version seems, at least to those outside the relationship, a bit more cerebral than those grounded in heated passion. The two versions are not mutually exclusive, however. What begins in a momentary trust of physicality can evolve into a long-term relationship without suspicions. 2) Business and political relationships also seem to fall into two versions. Excitement about the promise of economic or political gain kick-starts the relationship between willing partners. Then as promises remain either totally or partially unfulfilled, trust diminishes.

Once lost, trust is difficult to restore because restoration appears to rely on verification. Verification might reassure one partner in the relationship or the other, but, again, such verification by virtue of what verifying entails, negates trust.

In a mutually beneficial or loving relationship there is no need to verify. 

You know all those science fiction stories about parallel worlds? There are even nonfiction works on the subject of other universes, multiverse, multiverses, and branes. The nonfiction stuff is serious business; it supports a number of university people who spend their days and nights writing scholarly articles on the reality of other universes. The subject sells books. And why not? Isn’t the possibility that there are many universes intriguing? Isn’t the possibility that there is another “you” out there somewhere or in some other dimension interesting?

So, today you wanted to get a drink of water. You went to the kitchen, opened the cupboard, took out a glass, went to the sink, turned on the faucet, and filled the glass with water. The whole process went smoothly. You did not trip on the way to the kitchen, you did not drop the glass, and you did get your drink.  But, in another universe, things did not go so well. You tripped, broke the glass, and did not get your drink. Things just did not go right for your doppelganger in Universe X.

But here’s the thing. Something did go right for you in this universe. Aren’t you glad you chose this universe instead of Universe X for a residence? Your thirsty doppelganger is cleaning broken glass from the floor as we speak. 

NASA estimates that dust blown off Africa carries 22,000 tons of phosphorus to South America each year, supplying the rainforests with this much-needed nutrient. The 22,000 tons are a small fraction of the estimated 40,000,000 tons of African dust that reach the Amazon yearly in strong easterly winds. And you thought your coffee table was a problem.

One might think that dust storms are inherently destructive, and they can be locally. The drought and dust storms of the 1930s devastated farmlands and drove many people away from Texas and Oklahoma. The Dust Bowl lost millions of tons of soil to “black blizzards” that darkened the skies to the east and caused respiratory illness where it fell.

So, your dusty coffee table and desolated farmland indicate that dust can be a problem. But one person’s problem…

Water condenses on dust particles (called hygroscopic particles) in our atmosphere, forming clouds and bringing rain. The dry air from Africa, moving in the Saharan Air Layer, can quash the development of hurricanes in the eastern Atlantic and prevent potential storm destruction in Caribbean islands and the eastern coast of the USA. Seems there’s always an entangled benefit to a problem, as the physicists would say, a superposition. Dust here, rain there. Barren landscape here, lush rainforest there. Dry air here, no storms there. The effects aren’t immediate as in two entangled electrons, but they can occur over the course of a year or so.

You can draw whatever conclusion you want from this entanglement in nature. For me, there’s a simple lesson: The natural processes of place determine both the abundance and quality of life. In our hubris, we tend to believe we can transcend natural processes that dictate the nature of place. Yes, we have inhabited, even if only temporarily, all of Earth’s landscapes, and we have turned desert into farmland, but only at a cost and only as long as we can maintain our efforts. In doing so, in altering one landscape to suit our needs, we often degrade another. If you dust your furniture, you have to shake the dust rag someplace else. The entanglement of places altered by natural and artificial processes is inescapable. Altered places are as linked as dust and your coffee table.