Basic Question: Do you ever think about what you have done to Earth?


Every generation rediscovers. Here’s an example: “Humans have ‘large, negative impact on wildlife,’ researchers find.” That’s the header on an article by Erin Blakemore for the Washington Post.* You bet they do; humans, can’t trust them with your wildlife.


Not that this is a profound observation by the researchers Erin cites. I don’t have to go out on a limb here to say that my driveway, house, sidewalk, and landscaping have altered the ecology of critters who used to live among the trees I had to clear to build on a wooded plot of land. Multiply that effect by my predecessor 100 billion humans over 200,000 to 300,000 years, and you realize that Erin and “researchers” have come late into the Anthropocene, the “Age of Man” (and yes, man is a synonym for human, for the PC crowd). From the first fire to the most recent fireplace, we’ve been altering the planet and altering the distribution and type of life our environs house.


It All Started Long Ago


Where are the megafauna of the past 55 million years? The Megatherium or giant sloth that weighed between two and four tons? The Paraceratherium that, at more than 30,000 pounds would dwarf a modern elephant at 12,000 pounds? Or the giants of the elephant family like the mammoth (Mammuthus)? Probably many of them dead because of spear points. Some, it seems, also died because of natural changes to their ecologies, but to argue that the warming of the present interglacial period was the cause of those extinctions ignores the role of humans. Many of those species of megafauna critters had survived through as many as 11 or more cycles of cooling and warming during which the ice advanced and retreated over 2.5 million years.


And birds? What happened to the Dodo? The Elephant Bird? And not just flightless birds: Our windmills kill the fliers. Our cats do, too. And then there’s the buckshot that brings down ducks and geese, speeding cars that hit low-flying birds, and infiltrating pesticides that poison their nestlings. We’re in the business of altering life. We make extinctions; it’s what we do; it’s what we have always done. And only of recent have we garnered the willpower to form policing agencies to lessen our impact on all the wildlife we encounter on land, within the sea, and in the air. Goodness! The windows on my house have killed a least a dozen birds in each of the last five decades.


What’s Your Alternative?


Own or rent? It really doesn’t matter, does it? The place where you live, even if it’s a cardboard lean-to on a San Franciscan sidewalk, is a manifestation of the Anthropocene’s main characteristic: Humans altering the natural environment. You can attempt to diminish your ecological footprint, but you cannot eliminate it. And since you have eight billion contemporaries, the cumulative effects are staggering. In just a century or two of the Industrial Age, we’ve done more than those previous 100 billion humans had done over 200 or more millennia. We’ve impounded and redirected more water, displaced more rocks for the resources they contain, and poisoned more land than our predecessors collectively did.


So, how does Erin’s story about the negative effects of humans become news? Anyone who has gone to a museum to see a mammoth, Dodo. or giant sloth recognizes that the diversity of species has changed. Why does Erin seem to suggest that the researchers have discovered something profound? It’s old news; it’s obvious news.


Policing, the Only Alternative


Face It: We kill more than birds. We kill one another quite regularly and frequently and in great numbers during our wars. There are even those among us who would unleash nuclear weapons in sufficient numbers to threaten our own species’ existence. And in all our actions there is a potential for collateral damage.


Because of our actualized and potential effects, the prevailing question is “To what extent do we police ourselves?” I know that we cannot police windows as we police hunting with licenses and game wardens. My house will continue to kill birds that see my many trees reflected by the glass. I’m not, however, going windowless like a mole in a burrow or a Hamas terrorist hiding in a tunnel.


Human activities require some kind of policing because our very existence depends on some level of environmental exploitation, but not on over-exploitation. And whenever self-policing fails, then some degree of imposed policing appears to be necessary to keep today’s wildlife from going the way of those extinct megafauna.


That need for policing is where we humans balk. We want a world with other life-forms as long as they don’t interfere with personal needs and desires. We know we can’t eliminate needs like food and water, so our only control is over desires. And in that control we prefer self-control over other-control. Not many of us would accept a world in which windows are banned for the sake of bird safety. Not many of us are willing to go without enhancements like air conditioning and paved roads.


Of Crows and Roads


When I first moved to the countryside in western Pennsylvania, I was able to see a yearly migration of thousands of crows that arrived in October and disappeared in the spring. They went to cornfields during the day and settled in trees at night. Their migratory paths changed over the months as they moved from roosting spot to roosting spot in the area and from field to field. And then, in the late 1980s the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission began work on the Mon-Fayette Expressway, a four-lane toll road that paved over those farms that the crows visited each day. Today there are just a few crows that fly around my woods. The thousands that returned as regularly as the swallows return to Capistrano no longer come to the area.


We change things. That’s what we do.


But policing, as I say, is a touchy thing. No one spoke up for the wild crows during the planning for the road. I venture to say that no one on the PA Turnpike Commission was really aware of the annual migration to a rural township. The new road was the focus, not the birds. Every road alters the nature of Nature, even the dirt paths we made 200 to 300 millennia ago, the Appian Way during Roman times, and the Inca’s Atacama Highway.


The Environmental Dilemma


What might have been a more interesting headline for Erin and the Washington Post is, “Environmental policies that negatively affect the environment.” Want to build more windmills? Expect to kill more birds. Want expensive energy alternatives? Expect more people to die in cold and suffer more in heat as energy becomes more expensive and less available.


A World without Barns


Life adapts, doesn’t it? But most adaptation has been a relatively slow process, requiring generations because species evolve; individuals don’t.


A friend of mine who lived in the nearby mountains said that as he and his wife sat outside one night surrounded by the forest, she asked about the “barn swallows.” He was surprised by her question: “Where do you suppose the barn swallows lived before there were barns?”


Barn swallows, a widely distributed species, lived mostly in caves before humans provided them with alternatives according to Cornell’s “All about Birds” website. ** That means some human activities are supportive of and not detrimental to wildlife. And surprising estimates reveal the deer population of North America to be greater today than it was in 1800, maybe as much as 30 times greater than it was when America was a young country. Not everything we do is detrimental to wildlife. And that fact raises a question about ethics.


Are All Changes to the Environment Unethical?


Should you feel guilty about your contributions to environmental change?


There appear to be two major ethical approaches to Nature, one which is anthropocentric and the other which is biocentric, that “bio” representing all life that is not limited to human life. Environmental ethicists can argue over which approach is “better,” “more ethical or moral,” or more rational. On one extreme lie the proponents of the hierarchy of life that ranks humans above all other life-forms. On the other extreme are those who rank all life at equal value, believe in equity, and even suggest that not only do animals have rights, but also the land has rights.
It’s not necessarily an Either/Or. Picture a sliding scale or spectrum of perspectives between anthropocentricity and biocentricity. Where on the scale do you put yourself?


Dams


In western Pennsylvania, long wall coal mining has disrupted the surface features through almost instantaneous subsidence of the overlying ground. The subsidence in some instances has caused some previously free-flowing streams to pond behind surface “wrinkle” dams that alter the local ecology. With different organisms occupying the altered trophic niches and spaces, that question about what would happen if we eliminated barns becomes one centered on returning the landscape to its former state.  Does one eliminate the pond and the organisms in that pond in favor of restoring stream flow and introducing previous occupants, or allow the new ecology to flourish?


Do we do our best to restore mammoths to their dominance by merging mammoth DNA found in frozen mammoths to modern elephant DNA? Would restoring all of Nature to its state of some 300,000 years ago be “good”?


The Equity Argument


I don’t have pets, but my children and grandchildren do. And, as would happen in family life, pet stories abound. Fido did … Among the stories that intrigued me recently was of dog observing the owner packing for a trip. The dog began tossing the clothes out of the suitcase as the family member put them in. The best guess is that the dog associated the practice of packing a suitcase with a family member’s frequent business trips. It might be pure projection and anthropomorphizing on our part, but we suspect the dog did not want the person to leave for that short trip. Does that seeming awareness elevate the dog on the hierarchy of life? We know that people ascribe human feelings to their pets and interpret pet actions as mimicking human behavior. Should we apply the equity we afford pets to wildlife? To domesticated species? To predators?


How Do You and I Answer for Our Actions?


You and I have daily decisions to make with regard to our use of the planet. But we shouldn’t conflate our needs and desires. You need fresh water. You need food. You need shelter. You can’t have any of the three without some exploitation. It’s only in our desires that we have a real choice. It’s only in regard to those desires that we challenge our ethics.


Maybe the question I asked at the outset should be: Do you ever think about what you have done to Earth that you didn’t need to do (or didn’t need to do to the extent you did)? Or: How have your desires changed the planet?

Dear Deer,*


I wanted you to know that I’m going to be in the woods tomorrow, probably near the path you and the other deer have made, you know, all those does you’ve been partying with. And, just a thought: Wow! Have you been partying. You’re the Bucks Buck; got your rack in just about everywhere. Anyway, I thought it might be best to warn you ahead of my hunting time. Now, forewarned, you have time to hide as much as possible.


I could have sneaked up on you a few years ago, but I let my hunting license lapse. So, like that lady who ran for President, you’ve had time to go without concern, well past hunting season. Consider yourself lucky that the guy who controls the hunting licenses has quashed all previous efforts to hunt you, you lucky buck.


To most American hunters, I’m not very good at hunting. They say I’ve let deer walk boldly past me and that I’ve never taken a clear shot. Instead, they think I’ve shot and missed because I have an obstructed view. Well, I have a reputation to uphold, so I’m giving fair warning, I’m out with a loaded gun today, not one with blanks.


David




*Missive from Hunter’s hunter

You might think that pyramid-building ended in Mexico more than half a millennium ago with the demise of the Aztec ruler Montezuma or even longer ago in Egypt with the death of Pharaoh Khufu. But no, we have our own modern-day pyramid-builders. Well, they might be better designated “pyramid modifiers.” The pyramids they seek to reshape aren’t made of earth or stone, but rather of people. Three modern leaders have pharaonic desires to reshape their countries’ population profiles or population pyramids.


More than a Century Ago


My maternal grandmother had nine children. Those were the days, weren’t they? The days of large families! The population pyramid actually looked like s pyramid with lots of kids at the bottom and a few old people, their numbers thinned by a hard life and ineluctable aging. Then those nine kids had just 19 offspring, more, obviously, than the number needed for simple replacement, but in no way individually matching the output of their mother. That second generation averaged 2.1 children. Keep in mind that 2.1 just barely adds to that second generation’s combination with spouses. The point is that the population pyramid, even that of one family, changes through generations.


And in North Korea and Russia, the changing shape of the pyramid has the dictators calling on women to increase the birth rate, obviously with the help of men. *


Both dictatorships have seen a decline in birth rates. To the decline in Russia that economic conditions imposed, one can add those tens of thousands—maybe many more than a hundred thousand—killed in the Ukraine invasion and those tens of thousands who emigrated from the country to avoid conscription. So, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin want more kids; in the instance of the latter, the suggested number is eight or more per woman, matching the birthrate of my grandmother’s generation. And why?


Why? For more soldiers, I assume. Can’t fight wars with a top-heavy or upside-down pyramid. War is for the young, not for the old. For Putin, it would mean more bodies to throw into HIMARS explosions and drone strikes. More bodies to dig and fill the trenches of warfare and to occupy tanks. More bodies to end their lives in needless aggression.


What Happened in the Good Old Days?


Barring war, famine, epidemic, and the indifference of affluent peoples, a population pyramid actually looks like a pyramid. Those events that reduce populations of given age groups change the shape. Wars decimate the 18-40 year-olds. COVID decimated the senior citizens.  In countries where lots of kids are useful, the bottom of the pyramid is a substantial and wide base. In populations of affluence and high tech, fewer kids are needed to run things, and the pyramid looks more like an obelisk.


The world pyramid for today’s eight billion people sits on a foundation of 337,082,468 toddler males and 319,557,714 toddler females (ages 0-4). At the very top of the pyramid sit 130,481 centenarian males and 547,105 centenarian females (no doubt those numbers change as you read this). **


Apparently, city living and affluence combine to make our species less fertile, but no doubt there are many controls on fertility and longevity. Apparently, also, Russia and North Korea find themselves in a population bind, and China, which recently rescinded its one-child policy, now finds itself headed to an increasingly older profile. (Is that the reason COVID killed mostly old people? Sorry, that’s too much conspiracy-thinking, but killing off the old certainly saves the resources of the declining numbers of young)


I remember reading in my youth that American families had 2.8 children, Tom, Dick, and Harr. Well, of course Harry with a “y” did exist, but we’re talking averages here. At any birthrate, look around. How many women of child-bearing age are bearing? How many families have six, seven, or eight children?


When times were tough on the farm, farmers had more children. When times are tough in a modern urbanized society, urbanites practice birth control. It’s economics both ways.


The Baby Boom


We’ve seen the baby boomers of post WWII grow and age. If one was born in 1946, he or she is now 77 and near the top of the pyramid. But that burst of newborns was not the product of dictators dictating. Returning soldiers settled into family life. But in 2023, Kim and Vlad see a need for more bodies, probably because the former has starved the general public and the latter has sent the young to die in a particularly useless war.


Will they force a baby boom in their countries? And if they do, will both dictators live to kill their young in war and once again radically alter in a short time their population pyramids?


And What of America?


On October 6, 2023, 12,000 migrants crossed the American southern border. During the Biden Administration more migrants (illegal, by the way) have crossed into the United States than any time since the surge into the country brought my teenage grandmother to America’s shores.


Unlike the current surge, however, that surge between 1880 and 1920 took people through places like Ellis Island and Fisher Island and eventually through the naturalization process. And much of that population adopted American culture and language. Neither of my grandmothers who were born outside the US spoke with an accent that I could detect, and their children spoke idiomatic American English tinged by a western Pennsylvanian dialect.


But no doubt my grandmother’s generation did much to rapidly change the pyramid of her era. She had, after all, nine kids. Those kids then worked their way to a more affluent lifestyle in the 1940s and 1950s and had fewer kids each than their mother. My third generation of family members on my maternal side, my cousins, were born shortly before and during the Baby Boom. Both first-generation and second-generations are gone now, no longer part of the pyramid, the last of those dying several years ago, but many of them living into their nineties. On the other side of the family, my paternal grandmother had four children, three surviving into adulthood and producing with their spouses a total of five, counting, of course, yours truly.


In the third generation’s average four score years, the population of the world rose to its current eight billion and the country into which we were born rose from under 150,000,000 to over 330,000,000. And now that population is rising because of migration’s addition to the 3.791 million kids born every year. (By the way, that rate of 2.8 kids per mother in the 1960s has dropped to 1.9 kids, or Tom, Dic….)


So, Khufu Joe has altered the American population pyramid through his open border policy. And he’s adding more every day—12,000, as I said, in a single day. And his legacy of pyramid-building will last as long as Khufu’s as those 12,000 added in one day will on another day add more to the pyramid, and their offspring will add more, and their offspring will add more, and their offspring will….And in all these additions, those coming into the country will fit into the age layers where others have died so much so that, depending on the migrants’ ages, they will replace or add to the pyramid’s layers.


Generations from now, nay millennia from now, Earth’s population will look back in amazement at the pyramids Joe, Kim, and Vlad have built. They are each modern pharaohs.




*https://mothership.sg/2023/12/kim-jong-un-crying-national-conference-mothers/  and https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-war-putin-urges-russians-8-kids-amid-demographic-crisis-2023-11




** You can see the world’s pyramid at  https://www.populationpyramid.net/ if you put your cursor on the blue or red bars, you’ll see the population.

It’s a track meet with two racers: Usain Bolt, who ran a 9.58 -second 100-meters and Florence Griffith-Joyner, who ran a 10.49 -second 100-meters. Both were very fast, but the stopwatch seems to indicate a 0.91 second difference. Stopwatches. Hmnnn. What do they know? Probably misogynistic devices designed by men to prove their superiority; that’s my guess. Why can’t we just have opinion? Why can’t we just say who we believe had the faster time? Objectivity!? It’s overrated. The obvious is also overrated.    


On Your Mark


“It’s disappointing to me that although the title of this hearing implies a much-needed discussion, we’re likely going to be forced to listen to transphobic bigotry,” said Rep. Summer Lee in hearings on the state of Title IX and the inclusion of trans-athletes in women’s sports.


Get Set


Former college athlete Riley Gaines was poised and ready for the contest.


Go


Right out of the blocks, Riley said, “But unsafe, unfair and discriminatory practices towards women must stop. Inclusion cannot be prioritized over safety and fairness, and ranking member Lee, if my testimony makes me transphobic then I believe your opening monologue makes you a misogynist.” Slam, bang!


Gold Medal


Winner: Riley Gaines in a contest with another woman.


Out of the Mouths of Babes


Is there any argument a Democrat makes that is not wrapped up in some form of identity politics and ad hominem reasoning? Is there no Democrat issue whose stance can be braced by logic? Is there no Democrat who believes in unequal talents and skills among humans? Were all current Democrats given Participation Trophies when they were children?


I have two sons. When the younger of the two was three his six-year-senior brother was already into sports and on his way to the first of two appearances in the Astrodome for the national championship of Punt, Pass, and Kick contest run by Ford and the NFL. Trophies began to accumulate on the family shelves, trophies won by the older brother.


My mother, well-meaning as she was, bought a little trophy for the younger son. When she gave it to him in the belief that it was some kind of esteem-builder, he said, “But Grandma, I haven’t done anything.”


It’s that kind of honesty we need to see in our politicians and academic leaders.


Is There Any More Evidence Needed?


Rep. Summer Lee was on the Braddock High School Track Team. I can’t find any information on her track performances and neither can AI. I assume there’s someone at Braddock High who remembers whether or not she was a track star, but I just don’t have the interest to pursue the matter. Maybe she was outstanding. Maybe she wasn’t.


Maybe she ran track for the boys’ team. Such cross-participation is not unheard of. When a local high school team shut down its women’s tennis program, one of the stars of the team and a Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League girls’ champion switched to play for the boys’ team. She won the WPIAL championship for the second time, defeating all the male challengers. So, in some sports girls can definitely hold their own against boys. But there comes a time when…


In fact, that time has already come. In 2017, the FC Dallas U-15 boys academy team beat the US Women’s National Team. Yeah, if you hadn’t heard, Summer, fifteen-year-old boys beat the best women’s team in the…world. I’m now wondering whether or not Summer ran track against the fastest males in the WPIAL. And I’m wondering whether she entered the shower in the locker room with male athletes. Hey, soap exhibits no animosity to gender, just an animosity to dirt. Why not share?


Did Title IX Achieve Equity?


Reality is the last consideration in a Democrat politician’s mind. Title IX changed college sports in significant ways. It put girls’ softball, basketball, and volleyball on a par with men’s wrestling, baseball, and other sports. That was great for women, and it gave many of them a chance to win scholarships that supported their academics. In NCAA Division II, however, complying with Title IX meant reducing support for men’s sports, relegating some of them to minor status in most colleges and even eliminating them in some. The university where I taught gave up its successful wrestling program just after it produced a national champion. It then dissolved the men’s tennis team which had fifty consecutive winning seasons and began a women’s tennis team. The scholarship money dried up for other men’s sports, also. So, the good that Title IX did came at a cost, a tradeoff that made equity a significant factor.


In major universities, the scholarship drought affecting men’s sports wasn’t as severe. Major college football teams can harvest tens of millions of dollars to more than $150 million annually, enabling those schools to support many teams. But Division II and III teams didn’t fare as well because their small crowd support never made those schools’ basketball and football programs into cash cows. The product of IX was a series of cuts to men’s programs on the basis that the percentage of women at a school should be the percentage of women receiving aid in a school’s athletic programs—even though there’s a disparity in the numbers of athletes on men and women’s teams: Football teams might have 75 players; basketball and volleyball teams just 15.


Title IX says nothing about reducing boys’ sports programs, but to achieve its stated goals, individual colleges had to make choices detrimental to men’s sports. (What if we just shorten the 100 meters to 91.48 meters but still call it a 100-meter race for women? Yep. There goes that 0.91 second difference between Bolt and Griffith-Joyner.)


Where Does Summer Pee?


If Riley Gaines is “transphobic” as Rep. Lee says, then the congresswoman (congressperson? congress-human?) needs to answer the restroom questions: Are the restrooms in the Capitol labeled in any way, and does she use one marked “Men” as frequently as she uses one marked “Women”? And if she uses exclusively the women’s restrooms and excludes biological males from using the same facilities, is she a misandrist?


Would Summer entertain having males who are 6’10” and weigh 245 to 260 pounds play against the women’s basketball team? And why do I even have to ask such a question?


The Obvious-phobic Party


The obvious is the obvious—but not, it seems, to Democrats.


Take the border as the chief example. The moment Biden entered office, the rush to the US border began. Now, not only have millions entered illegally, but also thousands of pounds of fentanyl have entered the country—with the resultant deaths and overdoses in the hundreds of thousands. But the obvious isn’t obvious to Democrats who refuse to close the border. The obvious—cities like New York becoming overburdened by migrants requiring food, clothing, and shelter—was never evident to the Democratic leaders of those cities at the outset of the Biden policy. The obvious seems never to have been obvious to Democrats.


Instead, the Democrats play the name game, and they never seem to run out of names: Racist, misogynist, transphobic, Islamophobic, gender phobic, xenophobic, fascist… All terms that have nothing to do with the realities their policies and practices have engendered.


Every issue is an identity issue for Democrats who ignore the obvious. If they had invented watches, time would be read in “abouts”: it’s about noon. It’s about three. She ran the race in about the same time that he ran it, so let’s call it even. Seems fair, right?
And fairness is the motto of Democrats—except when and where women are concerned.

We are the clay, and you are the potter.—Isaiah, 19B; 63: 2-7.


Are you the potter or the clay?


Mud, Mold, and Cast


Any bowl can serve as a Jello mold. In fact, any container can; just an old can (clean, of course) will do. The Jello is the “clay” or “mud” that in liquid form assumes the inner shape of a container. The resultant “hardened” or “congealed” Jello “cast out” of the mold is a “cast.”


Potters are said to “mold clay” on a potter’s wheel. For the unconfined spinning “mud” the potter’s hands act as dynamic top and sides of the “mold” and the wheel as the bottom of the mold. So much for today’s class, children. * Now, get out there and shape your lives—unless you don’t believe in free will and personal responsibility.


The Liberal Interpretation of Isaiah


If we have free will, then we are our own potters. But for many young liberals, free will is a dubious property at best. They’ve been taught that they have been molded, that they are a cast, and that society in general and close influencers in particular are the potters.


And they have some evidence that people are not their own potters.


Experiments have shown that brains can initiate behavior from milliseconds to as much as ten seconds before minds become conscious of decisions to act.** Plus, statistical tabulations aplenty show how easily humans can be grouped by common actions and beliefs. Generally, people know where bad neighborhoods lie, for example, where crimes are most likely, and where safety is assured. Such profiling is itself a partial argument against free will. The counterargument, of course, is that one is often free to avoid bad spaces. “Want to go to that shady bar for a drink after midnight?” “No thanks.”


Yet, the reality of pre-conscious brain activity foreshadowing an actual behavior is a perfect corollary for liberals who seek to transfer blame from individuals to the societies that molded them: “Look how he grew up. You can’t blame him for his actions.”*** Essentially, the Liberals’ Isaiah says we live lives others have cast. We’re more cast than mold.


A Not-So-Liberal Interpretation of Isaiah


But if we accept the premise of free will,  then as individuals we are responsible for our actions. We are the potters of the lives we have shaped for ourselves. Is it possible that the lag time between brain activity and actualization of that activity is a mechanism that allows us to reject impulses? To exert “free will”?


Under the premise of free will we easily divide our lives into what we have the potential to be and what we have actualized through our own efforts. Of course, the “clay” that makes up our lives came to us by inheritance from a universe 13.8 billion years old (give or take a week). And the species into which we were born has certain limitations exceeded by other species.


We didn’t create the “clay,” but as creative potters we have molded it within the context of the clay’s physical (and mental) properties. Yet, even in the belief of free will, we can acknowledge that we’ve allowed other hands to assist us in molding the clay, maybe in imitation of that scene in Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore at the potter’s wheel, four hands instead of two.


Two Main Political Philosophies Derive from Perspectives on Free Will


Although it is easy to differentiate between liberalism and conservatism on the basis of accepting or denying free will, neither liberal nor conservative holds exclusively that free will only exists or that it doesn’t exist. When conservatives group liberals because of their beliefs, they act as free will deniers. When liberals place blame on individuals, they act as free will advocates.


It’s a matter of purpose. Democrats who wish to blame individual Republicans for apparent inappropriateness or even evil, see no problem in accepting free will. Republicans who wish to blame a Democrat mindset for detrimental policies approved by politicians in lockstep see no problem in denying free will.




*I suppose there’s nothing wrong with the common expression “Jello mold” that people apply to the “Jello cast.” With regard to misused English words, well, there’s no reason to cry over spilled milk. No one’s going to change idiomatic expressions used for more than a century.
**Smith, K. Brain makes decisions before you even know it. Nature (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/news.2008.751
***Thus, the arguments used by college students driven to justify the attacks by Hamas in October, 2023.

I’ve never watched The Bachelor, not even a minute of it; haven’t in fact ever channel-surfed by accident to it while it was on. I do know it was at least once shot on location at a swanky hotel in my area. Never mind. But I did see a recent commercial for The Golden Bachelor during a football game broadcast on ABC. It shows a guy crying over something he did with someone sometime somewhere. Don’t know for sure, wasn’t really paying much attention as I waited for the return to the game. But those tears of regret on an elderly gentleman made me wonder about all the need to display oneself on TV, on SnapChat, on TikTok, on FaceBook, on…


Here’s an aside: Do I even need to see the food you’re about to eat at a fine restaurant? Is this a perversion of the old postcard from vacationing friends? “Having a wonderful time; wish you were here” becoming “Look what I get to eat while you’re sitting at home eating leftovers.” Do we need to display every event in our lives? Or every emotional low?


Rub Some Dirt on It


Some might say I’m just too old school, the school in which we were told to “rub a little dirt on it” when we got hurt. I mean, com’on now, everybody gets hurt sometime; everyone has some regret, or, as Scotty P spells it in his tattoo in We’re the Millers, “ragrets.” Anyway, this bachelor guy piqued my interest by his videoed reaction to something he did or said to a woman, especially because, though younger than I, he appears to be a senior citizen, thus, “the golden bachelor.” Surely, he must have grown up in a time before safe spaces, PC cops, cancel culture, and people offended by pronouns. Surely, he grew up in some tougher time. What’s this need to wear emotions on a sleeve?


My knowing someone who has starred in a couple of realty shows has given me the insight that the golden bachelor’s tears could have been edited out or edited in—the choice lay in the director’s hands after the scene had been shot. I suppose that in this Age of Hurt Feelings, the inclusion of those tears was meant to establish the humanity of the man, particularly his vulnerability and sensitivity. I’m pretty sure that by comparison, I’m an insensitive boor.


“Ragrets”


It’s not that I don’t have “ragrets” over this or that. Sure, I’ve been human. But nothing in my upbringing motivates me to mimic Gerry save crying at a funeral, where I might also think, “If only I could have…” or “I never told her (or him)….” Of course, I have regrets over either consciously or unconsciously not treating others with the respect they deserved, or in not working even harder to uplift others in their moments of doubt or despair. I have some regret over not perfecting skills, gaining more knowledge, or working on projects that I thought of only in passing. But “water under the bridge” stuff can’t be sent upstream once it’s flowed past the bridge supports. I can’t get back the unproductive time I spent.


From what I saw in the commercial, Gerry made a public display of regret in a confession to a stranger whose role I can only guess was as some program moderator. His “confession” was filmed for public viewing. But there’s a reason that confessionals are private booths. Gerry’s tears don’t substitute for just going to the offended party to say, “I’m sorry” because he has no way of knowing whether his apology reached the person he offended. Was he thinking it was like some jumbotron proposal during a game? But jumbotron proposals are made in the presence of the person to whom they are directed.   


The Truth Will Out in a Nosy Society


This morning I saw this headline: “The Golden Bachelor’s Not-So-Golden Past: Secret girlfriends, a juiced-up résumé and the selling of a septuagenarian stud: The secret history of America’s senior sweetheart, Gerry Turner.” * Yeah. Who needs to read an article whose headline fully describes what it’s about? Apparently, I do, so even having never seen the show, I read the article. Lord! I’ve joined the world’s gossip groups.


The Hollywood Reporter article, written by Suzanne O’Malley and Barbara Lippert, reveals that Gerry wasn’t exactly who he said he was, that he was not a super successful restauranteur, for example, and in spite of his saying he hadn’t dated in 45 years, actually had a live-in girlfriend among others he dated, starting a month after his “beloved” wife died. Gerry, Gerry, Gerry. Seventy-two years old and you still don’t know that just about anyone can discover just about everything about another person. Nor did Gerry mention in his pre-show vita his successful life as a hot tub installer, or as a maintenance man at the Vera French Mental Health Center in Davenport. Not glamorous enough, I suppose. But, hey, I’m not knocking those professions because I believe there’s dignity in any kind of work, especially because I’ve been over the years a garbage man, a ditch digger, a carpenter, a janitor, a pneumatic-hammer operator, a local delivery guy taking cloth diapers in a time before paper diapers from the laundry to homes of newborns and picking up the soiled ones to return to the laundry, a road construction worker, and then all that “academic stuff” and environmental research associated with my main career. No, I have no problem with Gerry’s hot tub installation. Why didn’t Gerry acknowledge those last two jobs on his Bachelor vita? Had I been a fan of the show, I would have been impressed that he did the kinds of jobs I did when I was young. Work and dirt, Gerry. That’s what I appreciate.


Is this the sign of our times? Have we senior citizens become the generation we fathered and mothered? Nay, even grandfathered and grandmothered? Where’s that generational separation we talk about in local bars? Where are the “Kids these days” comments made with a shaking perplexed head? Where’s the dirt we used to rub on a wound?


Oh! No. I’ve Become My Children


You know that moment when you catch yourself saying or doing something that reminds you of your mother or father? That thought, used in so many TV shows and movies, can be summed up in “Oh! No. I’ve become my mother (father).” Now, it seems, we say it in reverse. “Oh! No. I’ve become my children (or grandchildren).” That’s what’s happened when older adults adopt the emotional weakness of the current snowflake generation whose need to display themselves to the world is irrepressible. Too much pressure among the retired? Too much stress? Too much work? Too many demands? Too many searches for identity and fame? As the Eagles sing, “Get over it.”


That’s what I think when I think of Gerry’s emotional display on that TV commercial. Sorry, Gerry. Your tears might have been real; you might be a very compassionate guy feeling empathy for someone you wronged over the past 72 years. But on TV? In front of millions around the world and not personally in the room with the offended person? Gerry, you’re now stuck in temporal nowhere because that scene can be replayed next week, next year, next century, and it will be played in the context of your uncovered deceit and in the context of a contemporary but younger generation of people who needed safe spaces and who were offended by pronouns or face paint or by “appropriation." A century from now, if the trend reverses, people will say, “Look at what the adults became in the early twenty-first century. Think they never heard of the healing powers of dirt?”


The Context of Deceit


Gerry’s reality wasn’t the reality his audience was led to believe according to the article by O’Malley and Lippert.


That Gerry isn’t the Gerry everyone thought he was because of his deceit (“I haven’t dated in 45 years” and “I’m a successful restauranteur”) is reason enough for taking his crying spell as an act. Reality programs aren’t really real because they’re edited. Someone chooses the “reality” you see. And that harks back to the first so-called reality TV show, An American Family, that centered on the Loud family. Such “reality” was at the time seen as novel, cinema verite, and praised as such by figures like Margaret Mead. ** After the Loud’s divorce, the show was itself the subject of documentary and fictional films that portrayed the sobering reality of the Loud family. Will Gerry’s story be retold like the Loud family’s story? Will people years after the Golden Bachelor’s final episode weigh in on the reality of the reality the way Jean Baudrillard wrote about the Loud family in his book Simulacra and Simulation? Will the viewers have viewed a simulation? Does Gerry live in the Matrix?


Were Gerry’s tears real or just a simulation put on for an audience eager to see more TikTok-like displays? I don’t know. I’m glad I don’t watch The Bachelor or The Golden Bachelor. I have to suspect in light of the deceit that Gerry is no Adam molded from dirt by the hand of God. I think that if any dirt is involved, it’s of Gerry’s making.






*https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/golden-bachelor-gerry-turner-ex-girlfriend-speaks-out-1235683869/


**Maybe Margaret was unaware of the Hawthorne Effect. Certainly, walking around in front of cameras is the perfect example of how observers can influence people they observe. And knowing that millions of observers will see behavior has to have a greater Hawthorne Effect on the observed person or persons than observation by a single anthropologist working alone with a pad and pencil.