​Homo Sapiens? Glub Sapiens?
 
Where in the universe are we? Where in time? Where in experience? And where in purpose? Big picture: We live in a giant galaxy filled with no-one-knows-how-many worlds dotted across 100,000 light years. Bigger picture: Our galaxy is just one among an estimated two trillion galaxies spread across tens of billions of light years.
 
Let’s hypothesize: Out there somewhere there’s a planet with Earth-like climates, including one with very short summers and very cold winters. On this planet intelligent life occupies most, if not all, those climates, even the one with short summers and very cold winters. I don’t know, let’s coin a name for such a place. Hmnn. Got one. Let’s call that part of the planet with very cold winters “Siberia” or maybe “…” (I can’t think of two names for a “Siberia”).
 
There’s gotta be a “Siberia” of some sorts on one of those worlds that is also inhabited by intelligent life. What did their news stories cover recently? “Dozens of Glubs [I don’t know what to call them] tried to warm themselves by drinking cheap alcohol today, but they consumed not ethanol, but rather methanol, essentially antifreeze. Forty-nine of them died.” Sounds preposterous from the perspective of light years’ distance. But alcohol is available throughout space, isn’t it? Astronomers at the Jodrell Bank Observatory recently discovered a vast 300-billion-mile-long cloud of antifreeze.* I’m guessing there’s more throughout the universe. I don’t think it would be hard for Glubs to find or produce methanol.
 
Forty-nine Siberians are dead because they drank “bath essence containing methanol.” Forty-nine! (We’re back on Earth, now. We’re talking real Siberians in 2016)
 
We all do dumb stuff on occasion, you know, the stuff we regret doing either because it caused us grief or caused someone else grief. But—excuse the expression here if you are an atheist—Lordy, 49 people, looking for cheap alcohol, drank methanol! ** “Well,” you say, “they were Siberians. Siberia is a cold place, with an average January temperature of -25 degrees C (-13 degrees F). Drinking the stuff of antifreeze seems to make some sense.”
 
No! It doesn’t. Moving to the western shore of the Caspian or the eastern shore of the Black Sea to seek warmer conditions makes more sense. Antifreeze!
 
Okay, I know that drinking cheap forms of alcohol has more to do with addiction than it does with temperature and that the deaths could just as easily have happened among alcoholics at a Black Sea resort. I guess it’s just the immensity of unnecessary death that disturbs me. These people were not collateral “damage” in war, weren’t soldiers at war, and weren’t victims in some crime wave. They chose to drink methanol—sorry, “bath essence.”
 
So, where are we in the universe? Apparently, because there’s life on Earth, we live in a special place in the universe where we get to choose not living in that special place.  
 
So, where are we in time? Some 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang (give or take a week), we find ourselves in what the anthropologists, paleontologists, and geologists are calling the “Anthropocene,” the Time of ‘Man,’ Homo sapiens sapiens. Yes, the time of “wise, wise ‘man.’” Or, maybe we find ourselves living in the Age of the Asinine, as it might be in the Linnaean system, Homo asinalis.
 
So, where are we in experience? Apparently, we live lives without historical knowledge of all the dumb things humans have done for millennia.  Then we have to ask ourselves if we are also without the ability to recognize current experience. If one’s neighbors are dropping dead after drinking bath essence (yet, not freezing in Siberia because they drank methanol), shouldn’t that be a bit of a clue about the results of such behavior? If not, did they all gather to drink methanol from a funnel at an antifreeze party?
 
We say we cannot suffer more of these tragic incidents; yet, we will. Where we are in the universe, in time, and in experience is never enough to keep us from doing dumb stuff. All of us are guilty of doing something dumb in some way.  “Intelligence” on other worlds is no guarantee that life there will avoid doing dumb stuff, also.
 
Are we all slightly at fault in this? Even though each of the 49 Siberians made a personal choice to drink methanol, all of us are part of the group Homo asinalis, and it’s only our hubris that makes us call ourselves “wise.” Where’s the wisdom in a group of beings that after millennia of existence still can’t solve personal problems and still can’t avoid doing dumb stuff?
 
*  http://www.universetoday.com/8098/deep-space-alcohol/
** http://finance.yahoo.com/news/49-dead-siberia-drinking-toxic-bath-essence-075402928.html

We know what glaciers do. We know what they did. They leave evidence of their work in a landscape reshaped in many ways: U-shaped valleys, ponds and lakes, mounds of rocks, soils, and sands, and more.
 
Sometimes that evidence is constructive: Glaciers can deposit vast amounts of rock debris, sands, and soils in large piles or in hummocky terrain. Sometimes the evidence is destructive: Massive sheets of ice can gouge a land, even one underlain by tough igneous rock.
 
Golf. In Florida. Coastal plain along the Gulf of Mexico, long a nonglacial environment, a mostly flat surface now interrupted by golf courses, those hummocky landscapes with imported sands reminiscent of glaciated lands. But why?
 
Scotland was at one time covered by glaciers. Scotland was the birthplace of golf. Made the connection? Yes, people design golf courses to look like Scotland. People play on artificial Scottish landscapes.
 
Ask a golfer, “Why do golf courses look the way they do?” You’ll probably get the answer, “All the humps and traps on the course make the game more challenging.”
 
Yes, the bumps in the landscape and the sand traps do add difficulty. It’s just the difficulty of playing on a natural Scottish landscape.
 
In our personal lives and social interactions, the same reshaping applies. And because there have been millennia of humans reshaping what it means to be human, of human constructing and deconstructing, it’s difficult for us to know why we shape our lives and societies as we do. Many of those changes occurred at a glacial pace much longer than an individual could observe during a lifetime.  
 
The golf courses are there. We use them, even when the model for their use could not have been naturally emplaced. We play golf on the Gulf in a subtropical climate where no glacier can form.
 
Today, you’ll have the thought, “I need to change this (whatever).” You might be correct in your assessment; maybe something seems worth changing. Just ask yourself why you want to change. What is the nature of the replacement, the reshaping? Are you mimicking some human landscape made long ago under different circumstances? Are you putting a golf course on your personal Gulf plain? Golf along the Gulf. Interesting.

I’m a kid in a candy store. All around me there are multicolored packages and rows of tempting bites. I feel a promise of pleasure. Imagine. Simple things like candies and brightly colored packages fill the inside of my head with fireworks of sparkling neurotransmitters.
 
Unfortunately, I’m also older than a kid, so I probably won’t gorge myself on any particular candy. But think of unrestrained youth. Eat one, then another, then another of the same candy (or cookie, or doughnut). The sugar builds and builds.
 
The beginning of the Second Movement of Beethoven’s Seventh is like that. So many sounds that are the same note, but building, always building. Becoming more complex by the addition of instruments. Becoming louder. Sparklers turning into the brain’s fireworks. Both brain and mind sugar.
 
Almost too much, so Beethoven softens the music, even returning to almost inaudible repetition of the theme after which he renews the buildup. Beethoven, knowing that the brain and mind need a break from anything of great intensity, pulls us back from the candy counter, says “whoa,” and steps in like a parent concerned that too much sugar isn’t good for anyone.
 
Intensity is a blast of fireworks in the brain. But just about everyone realizes that some bright explosions are best seen against a background of near nothingness. In the inexperienced or uncontrolled brain, the lure of all that candy, all those bright flashing lights, and all those loud sounds, is desirable. Then, seeking high intensity, the brain becomes so saturated with flashes that it cannot discern one from another. The process is exhausting. Strobe lights and lasers over a dance floor. Too much sugar. Too much light. Too many sparks. Too many loud versions of the same theme. “Quick! Someone turn down the volume; someone dim the lights.”
 
Are you an uncontrolled Beethoven, one who doesn’t know that those around you need a bit of a break from anything high intensity? Even requiring simple, repetitive actions can build to an unsustainable intensity. You aren’t a robot immune to unrelenting intensity, and no one else is. Beethoven consciously varies the Second Movement’s intensity. He varies his work. Vary yours. Vary that of those who must play what you compose.
 
Know what will happen? What you compose will become an earworm in the brains around you. Ah! Beethoven: dah dah dah daaah dah; dah dah dah daaah dah; dah dah dee daaah dah; dah dah dee daah
 
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+beethoven%27s+second+movement+of+symphony+number+7&&view=detail&mid=130FEB70B0F94C85D13B130FEB70B0F94C85D13B&rvsmid=2680F28F1344039E71022680F28F1344039E7102&fsscr=0&FORM=VDFSRV 

Or
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffYKCNY6kUk 

Look around. Is there anyone that you know who has not had a problem of some sort? Of course not. “But,” you say, “what about So-n-So? I can’t think of anything that’s been a problem for him (or her).”
 
“What?” I respond. “Are you kidding? Just because you don’t know about some problem doesn’t mean one doesn’t or didn’t exist. Humans have problems. It’s our nature. Just in battling our own nature, let alone battling Mother Nature, we encounter problems.”
 
Nemo fuit quin vulneraretur. “There was no one who was not wounded.” And there is no one now who is not wounded or carries a wound.
 
Why should I use the Latin? After all, who except priests and some professors of the “classics” can read Latin? It certainly isn’t a requisite in most high schools. Good question and point. So, then why use it?
 
In Latin the word quin introduces clauses of “characteristic.” I just want you to know that being wounded or having been wounded is characteristic of everyone. Behind every protective shield, shell, hardness, or seeming imperturbability, lies pain. True, there are degrees of “being wounded,” just as there are degrees of and kinds of responses to wounds. But neither degree of pain nor degree of tolerance eradicates the pain that is—or once was—there.
 
Look around. Is there anyone you know who has not had a problem? No? Then realize you are not alone in yours. “Quin,” that is, it’s a human characteristic.

I don’t blame you for being skeptical. You are surrounded with doubtful claims and fictions of every sort. Hard not to be a bit cynical about the world as is. But you aren’t living in the first Age of Doubt.
 
You know the story of the sword in the stone? Remember? Arthur pulled the sword from the anvil and stone and became king. Fiction? Probably, but the story foreshadows our own doubts about today’s many claims, both true and false. People have always demanded proof when something just doesn’t seem right, when something counterintuitive seems to occur, when the matter at hand doesn’t quite fit into a template. Proof and trust: One is embedded in the other like the famous sword in the stone.
 
In chapters 5-7 of Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur young Arthur has to pull out the sword a number of times because no one believes him. His first attempt: Sent to retrieve his stepbrother Sir Kay’s sword at home and finding no one to help, Arthur remembers there is another sword outside the cathedral, so he takes that one to Sir Kay. “Hey! Where did you get this sword, Arthur?” his stepfather then asks. No one saw the first extraction, so Arthur has to demonstrate for stepfather and stepbrother his ability. He puts the sword back. They try and fail to extract it. He does so again. Subsequent attempts: The knights of the realm don’t believe a kid can do what they have failed to do, so he performs the trick at Christmas, at Candlemas, at Easter, and again at Pentecost. (“How many times do I have to do this in front of witnesses?” you can imagine his asking)
 
All right, that story of skepticism is fiction (unless an “Arthur” knew some trick the others didn’t, much like a modern magician performing a seemingly impossible task in some Vegas stage show). If there was a real King Arthur, he lived a long time ago, maybe at a time not long after Rome fell and lost its grip on Britain. Arthur’s story traveled around Europe and back to England, where Caxton published Malory’s account in the fifteenth century about a millennium after the days of any “real” Arthur.
 
How many sword extractions do you need to believe someone? “Prove it” is a reasonable demand. Science does that all the time. “Prove it,” then prove it again, and again. In science there’s no end to the demand. Anything worthy of the designation “theory” or “fact” is never completely final. Even when in the main a theory is proven, it often has questionable parts.
 
But what about nonscientific stuff? The everyday stuff? The stuff of relationships. Or what about the statements or acts of those entrusted with power or responsibility of any kind? Once the sword has been extracted not once, but twice or several times, do you still need to see yet another proof?
 
Time to ask yourself if you have asked some Arthur in your life to prove something multiple times even though each previous demonstration had the same result. In the story, Arthur willingly submits to the requests. When at Pentecost the knights apologize to him for making him repeatedly demonstrate his ability to pull the sword from the stone, they kneel and accept his claim to the throne. Arthur’s response? He forgives them.
 
And now it’s time to recall when you were asked for additional proof of something (Whatever: loyalty, behavior, belief). Did you willingly and patiently provide it? Oh! And when they who questioned you finally accepted your proof, did you, like the young king, forgive them for doubting you? If you didn’t, then why would you expect someone else to be a modern Arthur?  

Earth spins on its axis at varying speeds. Yes, varying. A car tire does the same on an axle. The tread of the tire, farthest from the spin of the axle, makes a turn through greater distance than the part of the tire that meets the rim of the wheel. Since the tread travels farther during one spin than does the part nearest the wheel, and since both make the turn in the same time, then the tread has to travel faster than the inner rim just to keep up with the rotation. Otherwise, the tire would break apart.
 
Earth is our car tire. The Equator is the tread from a bird’s eye view either over the North Pole or the South Pole. The Arctic and Antarctic Circles are analogous to the inner rim. Earth, like a rotating tire, travels at different speeds. People standing on the Equator, say at Quito, Ecuador, travel farther, and therefore faster, in a 24-hour period than people who live in Murmansk, Russia on the Arctic Circle. Quitoans travel about 500 mph faster than Murmanskans; that’s fortunate; otherwise, the planet would break apart.
 
At the end one rotation, both cities return to where they were. Returning is unavoidable on a rotating planet. But every return comes with a caveat: It can’t be exactly the same. After 24 hours we find ourselves in the same place that is not, silly to say, the “same” place. 
 
As the planet rotates, it also travels round the sun. So, even though Quitoans, Murmanskans, and you return daily to where you were relative to the rotation, you move at the same time through space. Your “same” is always different 24 hours later, even though the return is ostensibly a point on a circle because the System races around the galaxy and the galaxy moves through the universe. Add two more layers of change on your apparent daily return to a single point. The same place is never in the same place.
 
We’re often torn between wanting stability and wishing for change. We think there’s nothing like something well known to provide a sense of stability with an accompanying sense of security. And for us, unaware as we are of much of the movement in our lives, nothing says stability more than being in the same old place. But then, being in the same old place ferments ennui or dissatisfaction in our lives, so we seek change, not realizing that even our seemingly stable place is in constant movement.  
 
In a quandry? “Do I,” you ask yourself, “want stability that might lead to ennui? Do I want change that might disrupt stability? Do I want them both simultaneously?”
 
We’ve all experienced instability through unexpected change. That’s the nature of imposed change; it bespeaks insecurity. But what of self-imposed change? We can plan for it, anticipate its occurrence, and easily recognize it against the background of “what was” just as we recognize the movement of planets against a seemingly immovable background of distant stars.  But as we know from our personal histories, even planned changes come with a sense of doubt.
 
The “what was” is that secure, stable part of our lives that underpins our identities even when we think we are manifestations of change. Against the spinning background, we convince ourselves that we can return to the place where we were. Our sameness is, however, a myth. Maybe all of us should rejoice in change that occurs in the semblance of stability.   
 
You always have something to return to on a spinning world; in fact, you can’t really avoid returning. And yet, you never really return to the “same.” So, let me draw some sort of lesson from this. Maybe all of us should realize that during any time of ennui or disappointment the place where we are is always renewing itself. Look around. What seems the same is really different, and you, regardless of some temporary feeling you might have of going nowhere, are always on the move.

In high school biology class you learned that mitochondria and chloroplasts, which are parts of cells today, were once “most likely” primitive bacterial cells. Though incorporated in cells today, they must have had some initial independence because mitochondria have their own DNA. Somehow and long ago, animal and plant cells engulfed mitochondria and chloroplasts and made them essential. One might hypothesize that in the process other, less useful or more inimical forms of primitive life remained as outcasts rejected by our early cell ancestors.
 
Maybe the outcasts were eliminated on a world of violent extremes, such as Earth was 3.5 billion years ago. The planet had just come through the heavy bombardment of comets and asteroids as it swept its orbit with an increasingly greater gravitational pull, cleaning its path as it revolved around the sun like some robot sweeper taking care of an apartment floor in the absence of intelligent owners. One of those wandering celestial objects swept up by gravity might have been large enough to blast some of the planet into an orbit around itself—thus the moon.
 
Yes, Earth was a violent place back then, even without bolide impacts. It was also, by our standards, noxious. The planet’s young surface certainly had a mix of liquids and gases that would be toxic to most of today’s life forms. Can’t imagine living in a world where formaldehyde and ammonia were in the air with sulfur dioxide, acetylene, and carbon dioxide. Can you? Yet, it was in that kind of environment or shortly after that those early cells began to live harmoniously with and eventually become dependent upon self-replicators that are now apparently essential to their functions.
 
Imagine that! In a noxious and toxic world bombarded by violent intruders from space, cells, mitochondria, and chloroplasts found a way to live together.
 
Once cells established the symbiotic relationship with mitochondria and chloroplasts, they settled into billions of years of seemingly relative stability. Probably, however, some rejecting and incorporating continued and might even continue today.
 
I could argue that cells are still involved in the work of rejection, that the stability of cell makeup is one of the reasons that cells are open to attack by modern bacteria and viruses still trying to get inside. Invaders are always at the gates. Cell walls and membranes serve to protect, but they will never be, as the great walls of Troy demonstrate, fully immune from some kind of disruption. Cells have their Trojan horses.
 
Is there a lesson in this? Is there something we can learn from a tiny cell and its evolution? Is cell evolution an analog of society’s development? Of course, every analogy limps, so comparing the endosymbiotic evolution of cells to societal development fails at some point. We can note, however, that endosymbiotic evolution has provided cells with certain survival advantages. Is that the lesson?

In 452 Attila the Hun invaded Italy and was on the verge of conquering the entire peninsula. Then Pope Leo the Great went to intercede, met with Attila, and somehow convinced him to withdraw. A fifth century account of the meeting by Prosper of Aquitaine notes that Attila was impressed by the “high priest” and promised peace before withdrawing beyond the Danube River. A seventh century account by Paul the Deacon suggests that as the Pope stood before Attila, both Peter and Paul appeared, stood on either side of Leo, and raised swords over the Pontiff’s head while threatening Attila with death.
 
Okay, my guess is that you prefer Prosper’s account to Paul the Deacon’s story. First, you reason, Prosper wrote his account only a couple of years after the incident. Second, it’s a more human account. A humble and pious church leader beseeches a great conqueror impressed by the “high priest.” 
 
The other story seems, you say, less realistic. First, you argue, it wouldn’t be in the nature of two apostles to threaten someone with death as Paul the Deacon writes (even though you recall that in the Garden of Gethsemane Simon Peter supposedly in defense of Jesus cut off the ear of Malchus with a sword). Second, you aren’t really the type to believe that two people long dead would suddenly appear, swords in hand, to back up a request for peace. That scene is too imitative of scenes from Indiana Jones and similar films with deus ex machina endings. No, you argue that Paul the Deacon, writing in the eighth century, was far too removed from the event and far too steeped in Middle-Ages thinking to be realistic.
 
Of course, I don’t know your preference. You might be inclined to accept Paul the Deacon’s account as historical. That certainly would be a dramatic meeting: Two founders of modern Christianity bearing swords in defense of a Pope. I’m inclined to believe that most people would prefer Prosper’s account. He was, after all, a contemporary of both Attila and Leo. 
 
But there’s a reason beyond contemporaneity that I personally prefer Prosper’s story. I imagine Leo as a man of peace, not just inwardly, but outwardly as well. Some among us are just that. They exude peacefulness, and around them others become calm, more rational, more open to cooperation, and less inclined toward conflict.
 
You might disagree. You might prefer an outside imposition of peace by a third party—in this instance, two third-party spirits in the form of sword-bearing Peter and Paul. And you have good reason to argue thus: You recognize that regardless of the peacefulness of one person, another, more contentious person bent on conquering might not acquiesce. There are numerous historical and contemporary examples of innocent and peaceful people being cut down by other Attilas, just as the real Attila quashed the lives of many peaceful people in his path. Sometimes threats with swords impose peace.
 
Maybe those who prefer Prosper’s tale are unrealistic. Still, there’s that occasional example where peacefulness wins the day, where inner peace shapes the world around it.
 
Run into any Attilas lately? Try Prosper’s approach before you try Paul the Deacon’s.

Imagine it’s 1248. You are a stonecutter, and you have a job. Your community wants to build a church. You work, but the task seems overwhelming; years pass. As you age, other, younger stonecutters and masons join you. That new generation is just one of many that will eventually work on the church long after you are gone. Six hundred thirty-two years later, a distant generation finishes the project you started: Cologne Cathedral. The magnificent edifice is now a World Heritage Site.
 
Imagine being that stonecutter. You realize as you age that you will never see your work completed. It’s too massive. There are too many stones, and society always changes, often in turmoil; the work will be interrupted. You have, of course, no idea that what you started will take 632 years to finish.
 
Could you take on such a project? Could you begin something that you believe in even though you know that you could never finish it?
 
Maybe the thirteenth century stonecutter had no vision of the completed cathedral. Maybe it was a matter of doing the work to earn some food for self and family. No vision of the future. The work was daily. Get rock, cut rock, get more rock, and cut more rock. The only variety lay in the size of the finished stone and the weather conditions of the day.
 
You have choices. You can go big, dream of that completed edifice that will stand as testimony to your skill and effort, and distract yourself from the rock you must cut today; or, you can look at the rock before you, realize that you have some cutting to do, and get to work, one rock at a time with the realization that someday there will be an edifice standing as testimony to your work because removing a single stone from a finished wall weakens the wall. 
 
Some projects are big, and big projects can make each of us feel little. Also, there are architects out there who draw up the plans and overseers who manage all the workers. These are the idea people who will likely get recognition for the completed project. We also know that their recognition depends on the lowly stonecutter. Stonecutters turn plans and instructions into lasting works.
 
Maybe the “edifice” that memorializes the stonecutter’s work is a single stone. Without it, the building remains incomplete. Maybe the work at hand, the cutting of a stone, no matter how seemingly insignificant within a project that takes years to finish, builds a personal edifice that completes a grand individual design.

Handel composed a number of choral works. One of those, if you recall, is “For unto Us a Child Is Born.”* Put aside your affinity for or rejection of any religion for a moment. Put aside all belief at least while you read this.
 
In Handel’s work, the “child” is Jesus. Put that aside, also.
 
Would the music inspire, uplift, or satisfy if Handel had inserted your name in “For unto Us a Child Is Born”? I think so.
 
You were “born unto us.” The world changed on the day of your appearance. For 13.8 billion years the universe had no you. Then, in a paroxysm of pain, you entered the world with the opportunity to change it, to reduce the pain, to uplift, inspire, and satisfy. You were born unto us. I rejoice in your being here; without you the universe would be a different place and have a different destiny. 
 
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3vpAWW2Zc