Made It!


Whew! I was concerned I couldn’t’ do it, but here I am four days into the new year, and I haven’t made a political comment—though I have been tempted.


How about you?

Close your eyes. Sorry. Don’t. I just realized that if you do, you won’t be able to read this. I guess I was “talking in my head,” not realizing that this isn’t a podcast or a lecture, venues that would allow me to say, “Close your ideas, and imagine….” Well, if you could close your eyes while still reading this, then here goes.


New Year?


This was my New Year’s Eve text to my grandchildren: Every day begins a new year. Every day is a first day. Every life constantly renews.


Time as a Dependent Variable; You as the Independent Variable


Science and math classes teach us to place the independent variable on the X-axis and the dependent variable on the Y-axis. In many graphs, time is the independent one. The notion is that its regularity can be used as a marker against which to plot the vicissitudes of the variable. We also learn from those classes that time is itself a variable, dependent upon the unwavering speed of light in a vacuum, gravity, and relative speed: Really fast, near C velocities slow time’s flow in a relative universe; muons, for example, extend their lifetimes as they approach the speed of light in accelerators like that of the Large Hadron Collider. But that’s all relative, just as you wouldn’t age like your relatives if you took a near-light-speed roundtrip to Alpha Centauri to find upon your return that your twin had aged more than you.


And then there are the statements everyone makes to show time’s variability: “I can’t believe it’s been a year since…” “Will this pot of water ever come to a boil?” “It seems like just yesterday when…” “Was that the end of the first quarter (vacation, movie, etc.) already?” Time seems to vary against the background of our memories. desires, and varying attention spans. It appears to vary, also, with our perspectives.


Time as the Arbitrary Independent Variable


Maybe it’s because we are so base-10 oriented that we like to measure our lives in beginnings and endings like December 31 and January 1. Look, for example, at all the big celebrations over the “end of the decade,” the “end of the century,” the “end of the millennium” 24 years ago. Look at the penchant people have to recognize birthdays that end in zero as somehow special: “The Big 4-OHH,” is one, the “Fiftieth Anniversary,” another. We like to round up. And we like to acknowledge some temporal designations as special like that end of the millennium in 2020.


But in truth, there’s really nothing special in New Year’s Eve as the end of something significant that differs from December 17th except that we choose to make it special because of tradition. And the same goes for birthdays that end in zero and the ends of decades, centuries, and millennia. Remember that all centuries that we designate as such “civil” time units are so named in western countries—and by adoption, eastern countries—because they center on the birth of Christ. Thus, we label them either BC, “before Christ,” and AD, “anno domini,” for “in the year of the Lord.” That BC has been by “scientific convention” changed to BCE, for “before the common era,” as a concession to non Christians, and AD changed to CE, for “the common era.” The rebrand supposedly makes time-keeping “objective” and “scientific,” but, in truth, the split between years before Christ’s birth and after that birth still center on Christ’s birth. In essence, it’s a silly change, but it gratifies those who think they have freed themselves from the dictates of religion. In studying the eighteenth century, we label those 100 years as the 1700s. Zeroes, represent units we value, but life outside of human custom recognizes no such beginnings and endings, just as waking up on January 1 isn't really different--save for a hangover--from waking up on the previous day. You were the same person the day before your twentieth--or any other decadal--birthday as you were the day after. 


As you know, the Romans had a different designation for years, one based “on the founding of the city,” or ab urbe condita.  Julius Caesar’s famous death on the Ides of March was not in Roman minds a negative number, not a year “before Christ,” but we label it 44 BC or BCE. The Soviets tried to get everyone onboard for a “beginning” that coincided with 1917 and the Revolution, and other cultures have designations that do not correspond to the Gregorian calendar now commonly used for civil timekeeping. Characters in Rosemary’s Baby raise their glasses to toast the child’s birth as the beginning of “the Year One.”


BCE and CE numbering fails to recognize that we don’t know exactly when Christ was born since Dionysius Exiguus was probably off by four to six years. And the former Julian calendar had to be adjusted in the Gregorian calendar because of imprecision in the measuring of both solar and sidereal years, that is, astronomical measurements used to mark the seasons, specifically Sun angle from the perspective of a revolving tilted planet. Such measurements depend on a variety of definitions and “completions” of cycles, such as the time Earth takes to fully complete a cycle of seasons or a movement between perihelion and aphelion. The math is complex and irrelevant here, but it indicates what I said above, that timekeeping is not the independent variable we pretend it is.


But enough on matters I covered in another blog a few years ago. The focus here is on the significance of a day, every day, a focus on the present and its constantly renewing potential. Today, January 1, 2024, is a first day, for sure. But January 2, tomorrow, will also be a first day. It might seem a trivial matter, but consider that it allows us to break from a past we can never recover to live in a present that is all we really have in the context of an unfulfilled future. Today’s resolutions, typically made in the hope of the long term, are achieved only in constant renewing in the short term.


Now


With that foregoing in mind, I resolve to consider at the beginning of each day one question: What perspective will govern my life in what seems to be an eternal Now which appears to be both variable and invariable?


I recognize that many of my perspectives are hand-me-downs and that others I hold are products of past and contemporary thinkers, from authors and songwriters to psychologists and philosophers, and from cultural icons to gurus of all kinds, including health “authorities” to economists and politicians. In short, I’m my own “melting pot” of others’ thinking and behaving. What I’m challenging myself to do is to consider daily whether or not my perspectives are my own, some other individual’s, or a mix of experience and adoption. And I’m challenging myself to recognize daily how variable time and variable perspective are interdependent in what I consider to be a Self.


The Resolution


I resolve to start each day by asking one question: “What perspectives now govern my thinking and behavior?”

True story (but second hand telling): My son was relaxing on the beach with a girlfriend, both lying on a large beach towel they had placed on the sand. Suddenly, she sat up, dusting herself and the towel somewhat frenetically, exclaiming in a perplexed way, “Sand! Where’s all this sand coming from?”


It’s Mayor Eric Adams who reminded me of this story. As NYC fills with illegal migrants, Eric has gone to Washington and on TV to ask for financial help with the overflowing shelters that NYC’s residents have to support with their taxes. Eric’s towel is on the sidewalk outside a shelter, and Eric, suddenly bothered by the others getting onto his towel, says, “Migrants! Where are all these migrants coming from?”


The girl on the beach towel knew she was putting her towel on sand at the outset. Yet, that passersby, the wind, and her own feet might have carried sand onto the towel seems to have come as a surprise. Duh!


And there’s Eric—and all the other “sanctuary city" Democrats—suddenly asking, “Where are all these migrants coming from?”


Duh! Maybe even double-Duh! You voted for the President who opened the border. What did you expect?

Different times but same place: Earth, the West, the heritage of European civilization going back to the Greeks, you know, to guys like Pythagoras, Parmenides, Pericles, Plato, Plutarch, all of who might have had on average a larger brain than we have. Today’s people? Pretty much the same as those Greeks in most ways except for the smaller brains—possibly even smaller in Canada, but more on that later. According to Nick Longrich of the University of Bath, “Our brain size is evolving—[they] have actually become smaller over the past 10,000 years since we started living in civilization. Brains seem to be smaller now than even in Greek or Roman times.” *

I suppose we might naturally ask, “If our brains are smaller, what other changes might have occurred over the past 20 or 30 centuries, changes possibly accelerating in a burgeoning population of eight billion humans from every land, all exchanging chromosomes because of mass migrations, military conflicts, genocides, and selective breeding?”

We might be witnessing the process of evolution right now. Didn’t I just read that a giant former male swimmer just switched “gender” and beat all women swimming contenders? Oh! It’s not that kind of evolution. Individuals might evolve emotionally and intellectually, but they don’t evolve biologically as individuals. No, evolution is a species-level process, regardless of all those movie plots driven by the contention that radiation, chemicals, and spider bites indicate otherwise. Artificially induced biochemical and physical changes aren’t evolutionary changes, and as experiments by Weismann with five generations of mice showed long ago, Larmarckian evolution, at least over five generations, is a myth: Mice with tails removed produced mice with tails. Male-female swimmers…well let’s not go there except to say that physically altering one generation has no effect on the ensuing generation because genes do the evolving, not surgeons. Genes are the mechanisms that control form, function, and even sexual tendencies.   

Transformations

However… And this is where Lamarck is turning over in his grave saying, “Well, if all the trees were short, then giraffes would have shorter legs and necks” or something like that. Some people just can’t let their beliefs go. But maybe Lamarck was just de la marque by a little because environmental pressures and circumstances can affect the gene pool.
There were no mammal grazers, for example, until their were grasses on which to graze. And the pressure of a pandemic can reveal how some people aren’t fit to survive certain environmental dangers whereas others are. Recently, COVID demonstrated that some of us had the natural wherewithal to avoid serious illness; some of us even got the disease but had no symptoms; some did all they could do through masking, isolating, and receiving multiple vaccinations but still contracted and spread the virus, and some died, leaving a gap in the gene pool—bad for them, but not an extinction event because most of those who died were typically beyond their reproductive years. Those who survived without the aid of vaccines demonstrated a genetic immunity against the virus.

Anyway, whereas much that defined “human” in ancient times still applies and the human genome is largely unaltered though we live in a different world by an unknown magnitude of change from the past. We have undergone both complex gene-exchanges and occasional isolated breeding within groups separated from other groups of humans, as in Australia and the Arctic wilderness. We have experienced wars that eliminated lines of genetic transmission, also. In this last example, consider the viably reproductive individuals who never had kids because their lives were truncated by the random violence of modern warfare. Or consider instances of genocide.

In the context of human activities over millennia, we can argue that the mixing of genes in a population of eight billion added to evolutionary pressures. We can also argue with Lamarck that artificially induced environmental changes across the planet have probably had as yet an undetermined effect beyond our shrinking brains—on the assumption that Longrich is correct.
Has our manipulation of the natural world hastened the rate of mutations? If cosmic rays and natural background radiation have modified genes over millennia, is it possible that our nuclear age has affected our species? Certainly, if we watch sci-fi movies, the idea pervades the common shrunken brain: It’s easy to suspect that above ground tests of bombs, nuclear waste dumps, and nuclear power plant disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima have affected the gene pool. How much strontium-90 did people consume in the milk they drank during during the 1940s through the 1960s? How many who lived in the shadows of Chernobyl and Fukushima have passed on or will pass on some slight genetic variation?

We might consider, also, Erasmus Darwin’s contention that sexual selection plays a role in evolution, citing as evidence the “ideal” body styles favored through history—somewhat plump in days when starvation accompanied being poor and somewhat thin when abundance accompanied diet fads. (What, I might ask, is the body style that most attracts you? What is your idea of beauty? Has your culture induced you to reproduce based as much on “ideals” as on pheromones?) In a corollary to Longrich’s contention, culture, Lamarck might argue, exerts an environmental pressure on genes.

Apples and Oranges, or Maybe Stew, or Pot Luck, or Vegetable Soup: The Following Is Hard to Follow

It’s almost impossible to discuss any topic nowadays without getting tangled up in political and social controversies. Some will argue that climate change, specifically global warming, will speed up human evolution. But they ignore that we’re not reptiles. Why should I say that? As Matt Ridley writes in Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, “At some point in our past, our ancestors switched from the common reptilian habit of determining sex by the temperature of the egg to determining it genetically. The probable reason for the switch was so that each sex could start training of its special role at conception. In our case, the sex-determining gene made us male and the lack of it left us female, whereas in birds it happened the other way around” (109)**

Today, many young people seem to be confused about gender. Much of that confusion stems from the drumbeat of a liberal press and entertainment industry intent on pushing an agenda and from a compliant group of adults too timid to challenge political correctness. But for argument’s sake, let’s contend that confusion is warranted at times because a pure X and Y chromosome division is often interrupted through, as Ridley argues in his book, a built-in antagonism centered in the SRY and DAX genes. And with regard to Y’s SRY, we can note that Ridley calls it one of the fastest evolving genes. So, males beware; you might be evolving faster than females—but probably not.

Enter Gary Trudeau

Leave it to Leftist leaders to make assumed changes political. Canada now has tampon dispensers in men’s restrooms, required dispensers, that is, in public buildings, by the way, not voluntary stuff…***
As many have remarked, wait till wives of government employees tell their husbands not to stop at the store for such products, where asking a teenage female clerk for directions to the aisle of tampons embarrasses both her and the husband on errand, but rather to stop in a government building’s restroom for free stuff. Never underestimate the wide ramifications of Leftist policies aimed at transforming humanity into some “equitable” ideal. ** To paraphrase the Gospel, “Make straight the way to equity.” E pluribus unum, as we say in America. Menstruating men. Are there bunches of them? And do they require financial assistance to purchase personal hygiene products? If they are on government salaries with cushy benefits, does Mr. Trudeau think they can’t afford a little absorbent cotton?

By the way, one in every 300 Canadians over 15, according to the last census, identifies as trans. So there are, in fact, bunches of them. But are 100,800 in a population of 30 some million deserving of a benefit that the majority of taxpaying Canadians don’t want or don’t use? Will the government check to see that only those who are trans with uteruses get the free tampons from the mandated bathroom vending machines? (Hey, now there’s an opening for another government job: Tampon Guard in Men’s Rooms: By the way, isn’t the term “Men’s Room” like the term “Women’s Room” obsolete?)

But hold on. Am I objecting to tampons in men’s restrooms? No. As an anti-socialist, I’m objecting to “free tampons” in men’s restrooms and to forced “equity.” Why? Because just about everything that big government does ends up not doing what it was intended to do. There will be husbands carting off free tampons for wives and daughters (and maybe girlfriends). And the cost will be another burden on the Canadian taxpayer. Then again, with some 330,000 federal employees in Canada and a rate of one in 300 identifying as “trans,’ that would amount to a little over 1,100 government trans employees, but not all of them would be trans women, and not all men who undergo the transition to womanhood will have transplanted uteruses. How many humans are we actually talking about here? Tens? A couple hundred? ****
Can I ramble or what?

Government. Big government. What could go wrong? What could go wrong especially when the government decides to “aid” evolution? Now I remember: Hitler’s final solution and the Aryan race.

​Remember “We Are the World”?
Song writers have had their Buddhist moments over the years. Lennon’s “Imagine,“ Richie and Jackson’s “We Are the World,” Marley’s “One Love” all express a desire for unity. Maybe Gary Trudeau thinks we are disunited when we don’t supply men’s rooms with tampons. “Imagine all the people, menstruating together with you, ooh ooh ooha ooo” Period.
Or maybe we should stop the world on which life has randomly evolved over 3.8 billion years, generating differences. In the words of Robbie Grey and Modern English’s song, “I’ll melt with you.” And why not, especially in Canada, where everyone is “one.”
Much Ado about Little Things: Some Rambling Thoughts for You to Reject or Accept
That we are the playthings of genes disturbs me. I like to think of humans as having free will exercised by a rather complex brain and that we are products of both nature and nurture. That thought enables me to exercise free will in accepting or rejecting any physical or cultural predetermination and allows me accept that others, men, for example, might not want to accept any stereotypes. That’s fine. But do I have to pay for their personal hygiene?
Now I find out that my brain is probably smaller than the average brain in pre-civilized humanity, making me wonder  how resistant I am to the pressures of nature and nurture. Ridley writes, “Most evolutionists believe in the Machiavellian theory—that bigger brains were needed in an arms race between manipulation and resistance to manipulation” (116). He’s writing mostly about sexual orientation and the drive to procreate in that statement, but it is applicable to our ability to resist political manipulation through the seduction of propagandists.
The trend toward political correctness and equity in Canada seems to find little resistance in the media, where I suspect brains aren’t as large as they self-contend. Canadians have demonstrated the fast-tracked shrinking of the brain and have given themselves over to the socialist manipulators. They’ll pay for tampons in men’s rooms now, and later for all manner of equitable causes as determined by officials like Gary Trudeau. The exercise of free will will fade as mandated differences fade into oneness. Canadians—all western peoples, in fact—will melt into one another in a forced evolution in which there are no distinctions, not even X and Y distinctions.
Yes, it’s true that given a uterus, some men menstruate, and some men are male in form but female in tendency. Maleness is, after all, a biological afterthought that arose with sexual reproduction long before there were mammals. Once established, it operated first on the basis of temperature of the egg to which genetic control was eventually added. In the latter, X and Y chromosomes shape sex, Xs coming from mothers and Ys, from fathers. What we inherit differs, however, from what is determined.
And that’s where this little rambling piece will end, with “determined.” Canada under Trudeau and the politically correct socialists want to determine the nature of humans, to force them into some equitable ideal. Socialists often play the role of the Fates, determining not only the sexual nature of youth but also the length of life in the elderly, as Canada’s push for euthanasia intensifies, the latest centering on euthanizing the mentally ill. Can anyone say “Nazis” or “pure race.” What’s next, Canada, in your desire to manipulate evolution? *****
Genes might play a cruel trick in mixing gender form and identity, and they appear to do so in one out of every 300 Canadians—if we can trust polls and surveys that are often subjective. But they have most likely been playing that trick since the rise of mammals in the Triassic Period, when Brasilodon quadrangularis evolved at about the same time as the earliest dinosaurs. If humans survive the vicissitudes of a dynamic Earth and their own self-destructive ways, what will the future entail? Will we, as so many sci-fi stories project, enter an age of petri dish reproduction, designed genetics, and even smaller brains?
As I asked above, can I ramble or what?
*https://www.newsweek.com/humans-evolving-rapidly-ever-scientist-evolution-genetics-1852884
**New York. MJF Books. 1999, 2010.
***https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/26/justin-trudeau-installs-taxpayer-funded-tampon-dispensers-canadian-mens-bathrooms/
****https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220427/dq220427b-eng.htm
*****https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/transgender-top-surgery-canadian-children

The lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” a hummable, singable song, express what has been unrealizable. Somehow peace and harmony always lie over the horizon of ensuing generations though hints of both might appear briefly in a single local. Lasting peace? Myth. Lasting harmony? Myth. At least, that’s what our history tells us.


Look, for example, at Christmas, a holiday centered on the birth of Christ, a messenger of peace. During the “buying season” fights have broken out in department stores as angry customers push one another over a limited supply of clothing items or toys. The incidents are head-shaking moments caught on video: Christmas, commercial Christmas, that is, has become a context for public displays of greed and anger. Poor little kid in that manger! Think he foresaw what his future birthday parties would entail? Probably, if the story of Herod’s “killing of the innocents” is true.


One could argue that the same event, the celebration of Christ’s birth, that triggers department-store conflicts might also breed one of those occasional moments of peace and harmony. There was that famous World War I incident in Bois de Ploegsteert in Belgium when German and British troops, without any formal negotiations, briefly laid down their arms, met in the “no man’s land” between the trenches, and exchanged greetings during the famous Christmas Truce. Imagine. People at war met without fighting in contrast to Christmas shoppers not at war fighting. Just remember that the truce lasted only through Christmas Eve. They went back to killing one another shortly after the spontaneous moment of peace and harmony.


Enter Jeff Bezos


But now there’s a way to ensure that no people will harm one another in department stores at Christmas: Simply remove them from the department stores. Thanks to a trend largely started by Jeff Bezos, many people buy their products online. And because of his company, peace and harmony, the messages of Jesus and Buddha, have peeked at us from the horizon like a Christmas morning sun’s crepuscular rays beneath our long dark night’s purple cloud bank of incessant hostility.


A Revision of Matthew 18:20


The passage in Matthew 18:20 reads, “Where two or three are gathered in my name….” The implication is that when people gather in Christ’s name—as they supposedly do at Christmastime—Christ will be present among them, and with his presence peace and harmony will reside in their hearts. Bezos has effectively revised the passage by keeping people in their homes and separated from one another. Essentially, the revision is this: “Where people don’t interact, the peaceful existence that is the promise of Christ’s birth will, as it did briefly in the no man’s land between the trenches on that Christmas Eve in World War I, pervade humanity.


You want people to be peaceful and harmonious? Separate them.

What Would AI Recommend?


Lacking wisdom sufficient to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, I went elsewhere, climbing to the top of the cyber mountain to seek a solution. This is what ChatGPT wrote when I asked it for a three-paragraph solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:


   Addressing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict requires a comprehensive and balanced approach that acknowledges the historical grievances and aspirations of both parties involved. First and foremost, a two-state solution remains a viable framework for achieving lasting peace. Negotiations should be facilitated with the goal of establishing a sovereign and viable Palestinian state alongside Israel, with defined borders based on pre-1967 lines, adjusted through mutually agreed-upon land swaps. International actors, including the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union, should play a facilitative role in mediating these negotiations and ensuring that both sides commit to the process.


Furthermore, efforts should be made to address the core issues at the heart of the conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, security arrangements, and the equitable distribution of shared resources like water. These negotiations should be based on the principles of justice, equality, and mutual recognition. To build trust between the two communities, confidence-building measures and people-to-people initiatives should be promoted, fostering cultural exchange and understanding. Educational programs should be developed to promote tolerance and coexistence, particularly among the younger generations.

Finally, international support is crucial for the successful implementation of any agreement. The international community should provide economic assistance, security guarantees, and diplomatic support to both the Israeli and Palestinian states. This support can help ensure the stability and prosperity of the region, addressing the underlying socio-economic issues that contribute to the conflict. Additionally, a monitoring and enforcement mechanism should be established to oversee the implementation of any agreed-upon solutions and hold both parties accountable for their commitments. By embracing a balanced and cooperative approach, the international community can contribute to a just and sustainable resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.


Duh! Thinking what I’m thinking right now? Haven’t humans already attempted all those recommendations? Is this wisdom or just a recap of human efforts? Does any of this have anything to do with the reality of human relationships? It’s logical. But is it effective? It reveals knowledge, but does it reveal wisdom?


Historical References


The complexity of modern Middle East relationships is easy enough to trace: There’s the British interference in the early twentieth century, the League of Nations proceedings, and the UN’s solution in 1948. None of those actions have quelled the on-and-off warfare between Palestinians and Israelis. And these modern conflicts rest on a history of regional conflict that goes back a long way, back into the Bronze Age: Canaanites, Israelis, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Macedonians under Alexander, Hasmoneans, and then, starting in 63 BC, Romans. I probably missed some…Oh! What of the “sea peoples”? Then the Rashiduns, the Umayyads, the Tulunids, the Ikhshidids, the Fatimids, the Seljuks, followed by crusading Christians, theAyyubid Sultanate, the Mongols, Mamluks, and the Ottomans, all before the British with a League of Nations’ mandate got involved and issued the Balfour Declaration, making the region a Jewish homeland. Finally, the UN screwed up the area by establishing the rudiments of the current situation.


Embracing a “Balanced and Cooperative Approach”


Apparently, ChatGPT believes the logic of international cooperation is a path to solution. It isn’t, of course, as all those previous attempts to reconcile the two sides have demonstrated. Add to the tensions of the Israelis and Palestinians the interference of countries that see continued strife as a means to their own ends and anyone can see that the strife is probably destined to continue.


And as all humans know but AI has yet to find out, little that is resolved in one generation continues as a resolution in the ensuing generation.

Illegal Migration


The migrants? They all call him Joe,
And Mexicans watch as they go.
They travel right through
On trains with the crew
Then end up right here as you know.


Homelessness


The sidewalks are covered by tents
And landlords keep raising their rents.
The cities are dying
‘Cause no one is trying
To mend all those holes in the fence.


Urban Crime


The stores on the streets are now vacant.
The owners that left were quite blatant.
“Protect us or else
“They’ll clean off our shelves.
“The DA is criminally complacent.”


Gas Prices


“The prices are down so they say,
“From the highs that they were yesterday.
“We cannot admit
“We raised them a bit
“When we shut down the pipe underway.”


Green Energy


From the start we had a fixation
On energy from wind for the nation.
“You’ll drive in a car,
“But not very far,
“The air’s not the country’s salvation.”


Justice


The symbol of justice was blind,
And her reach was quite unconfined.
But now she can see
And Libs guarantee
With Democrats she is aligned.


Foreign Policy


Afghanistan was quite a disaster;
We couldn’t withdraw any faster.
The Taliban cheered
As Joe engineered
The rise of those Afghani masters.


Climate


It’s the lure and the hook, line, and sinker
That with weather humans can tinker.
What happened before
Alarmists ignore.
They seem to prefer a cold winter.


Student Loans


The Left thinks it’s right on the movement
To spend more in the hope of improvement.
They’ll give all away
To students, they say,
To drive up the Party’s recruitment.


DEI


Diversity is not what they said.
It’s politics perfectly spread. 
The people they hire
They’ll always require
To be loyal Fabianists till dead.


Victimhood of the Dem Staffer Making a Sex Tape in the Capitol


You’ve heard it from here and from there,
“To blame me for this isn’t fair.
“You should be ashamed
“For what you have claimed.
“It’s dalliance, not ‘sordid affair.’”


Victimhood of Hunter Biden


I was under the influence of drugs
And numerous prostitute hugs,
When I didn’t pay taxes
It was just me being fractious.
My dad says he, too, likes some hugs.

The “good Samaritan,” for those who are unfamiliar with the tale, was a person who stopped to help—unlike the Seinfeld characters who watched, but did not help in the plot of the last two episodes of the series.


We all know that it isn’t just indifference to the pain of others that causes some of us to look the other way. In a super litigious society, one can never know how “helping” can become a serious liability, costing one not just money, but also reputation—and sometimes life.


Being a good Samaritan was never easy, but being one in today’s drug-infused and compunctionless society begs caution. In 2021 Linda Robinson was killed after she stopped to help George Faile and Amber Harris, both high on meth. * I have no doubt that you have heard similar stories about those who went to aid others only to become victims like Linda.


Samaritanism for Fun and Profit


Now Samaritanism takes on a new and dark twist: Videoing addicts wallowing in the stupor of tranq, or xylazine, in North Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. *** Tranq is a sedative that disables its human users, making them incapable of rational consent to being videoed by people who then upload their work onto TikTok channels they have monetized. Under the guise of wanting to show the world the dangers of the drug, those who video simply profit from the Schadenfreude of those who might well be described as social media addicts.


What Makes Us Look without Helping?


Fess up! You’ve rubbernecked as you’ve driven past a wreck with ambulances and police cars still on the scene. What motivated your rubbernecking?


Were I a cognitive psychologist, I might ascribe the morbid curiosity associated with rubbernecking as a juxtaposition of empathy and fear: Empathy for the victims and fear for oneself, that is, fear that the same fate might await the rubbernecker who has so far escaped such tragic events. This latter emotion generates adrenalin and maybe activity in mirror neurons. Certainly, it seems to be related to our mutualism. Any of us can become victims, making us ask, “What if…?” And that question we follow with various hypothetical scenarios in which we star in survival or heroic mode.


Uploading videos of others suffering from tranq and other drugs reveals an underlying crassness, a willingness to debase others and oneself for profit. Taking those videos is little different from robbing the dead of their effects because the videographer steals the dignity and reputation of the zombie-state addict. You know that now repeated expression, “No animals were harmed in the shooting of this movie”? Now, TikTok videographers can say, “No humans were helped in the shooting of this video.”


The Kensington videographers remind me of a Sam Kinison skit I’ve related elsewhere. News cameramen filming Ethiopian child victims of drought and famine in the early 1980s drove the late comic to ask, “How come the film crew didn’t just give the kid a sandwich? How come you never see that? What are they afraid of—that it would spoil the shot?”


There’s Much in Humanity That Isn’t Likable


Two to three hundred millennia of torture and cruelty through many wars and conquests, domestic abuses, and teenage bullying reveal a not-very likable species. Sure, we’re cute when we are infants, then much less so when we are in our “terrible twos,” and almost universally obnoxious when we are teens. And then, as adults, we find ourselves in the midst of biases and self-aggrandizement that devalue the lives of others.


Wow! Isn’t that pessimistic? Probably.


Those Truly Good Samaritans


But among us are people like the late Linda Robinson, people who are willing to stop to help. I think, also, of Amy Biehl, a Fulbright Scholar and anti-Apartheid activist who was killed in South Africa by the very people she tried to support in 1993. ****


Those who lost their lives in the service of others are real examples of Samaritanism at its finest, action that Charles Dickens encapsulated at the end of A Tale of Two Cities when Sydney Carton says:


“I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss. I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy. I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”


That well known passage makes the novel’s ending a tear-jerker, but it should be read in the context of another passage Dickens writes into the book:


“For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing.” 


So numerous are self-sacrificing humans that the hippocampus is stressed to remember recent Samaritans, and ensuing generations rarely read about them, save for individuals like Mother Teresa. Samaritanism persists even in this crass contemporary world, even under the pressure of profit and self-aggrandizement, both of which are driven by social media. And that persistence breeds hope that every generation will birth and nurture those who will echo those words of Carton—albeit in melodramatic passages—that Dickens wrote into his novel.


One can only hope that in every rubbernecker and in every indifferent and unsympathetic individual videographer there lies a seed of empathy that will drive them to place the welfare of those in need above any self-centered tendencies and insecurities.


From St. Paul’s writings through those of more modern authors, we get the expression, “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” words ascribed to various sources. That expression isn’t, however, action. Just recognizing that others are victims of some accident or human cruelty is just the beginning of Samaritanism; its fulfillment comes only with help and not camerawork.




*https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/chester-county-deputies-search-damaged-van-after-body-found-side-road/5IOCVFMXXZFVJFEKTZAVACX57Q/


**https://countylocalnews.com/article1/2023/12/17/tragic-accident-two-good-samaritans-struck-killed-in-raleigh-while-assisting-crash-victims/ and https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/latrell-sanders-dui-high-speed-crash-good-samaritan-killed-i395-baltimore/ and https://www.foxnews.com/us/good-samaritan-killed-helping-crash-victim-arizona-worst-case-scenario and https://www.foxnews.com/us/los-angeles-good-samaritans-die-from-electrical-shock-while-aiding-crash-victim and other stories too numerous to list.


***https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/dec/17/tranq-tourism-tiktok-philadelphia-drug-use-xylazine


****https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Biehl

A while back, I wrote about AI’s impossible task: To mimic me. Well, not me with my limitations, but the human brain, maybe yours, in short, to pass the Turing test. (First aside: At times I wonder whether or not some humans could pass that test) Now, I read that DeepSouth * will go into operation next year, churning 228 trillion synaptic operations per second, enough to chew gum, walk up steps, and think about winning the lottery simultaneously. When I wrote negatively about AI’s ability, I assumed that its chance of becoming very human-like was about as slim as my chance of winning the PowerBall or MegaMillions. But, it seems, I was wrong. (Second aside: Someone wins the money eventually, and it seems that geeks at Western Sydney University have, in fact, hit the jackpot, or so we’ll soon see)


If DeepSouth does what those Western Sydney University geeks claim it can do, then we’re in for some very interesting and challenging times, especially since so much of our world is interconnected through computers. Those AI warnings of people like the late Stephen Hawking might become our daily fears. AI might see us, as HAL saw the astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey, as irrelevant, unnecessary, even inimical to the task at hand. I just went from highly skeptical that computers could pass the Turing test to a state of trepidation. (Third aside: The most powerful man on the planet has tripped up steps with no gum in his mouth and no thought of winning the lottery—tripped when all he had on his mind was going up steps to enter a plane—Fourth aside: in its first standup show, DeepSouth will call that “pulling a Biden” to the gleeful whirring of a simulated audience)


I don’t know much about DeepSouth’s physical construction. It might be like IBM’s first foray into really big computing, a machine that requires an entire building and special air conditioning. I remember the days when the “computer center” on my campus was located in the cold basement of the library, the big computers locked away from the public in a glass-enclosed room with attendees to whom I handed my laboriously punched cards and from whom I received, after a long wait, a printout on very large sheets of paper with holed, perforated edges. (Fifth aside: What we do today on a laptop took up an inordinate amount of time back then, 80 columns of punches on each card) But just as those first bulky computers shrank and sped up, so future computers will undergo miniaturization and increasing speed, now, I guess, at a projected 228 trillion synaptic operations per second. That gives this new super computer the potential to walk around someday veiled in a simulated human form—or maybe in a real human in imitation of the Pod People of Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers, the1954  book and the subsequent movies. (Sixth aside: How do I know it’s really you reading this? Seventh aside: How do I know that I really wrote this?)


So, I guess if I want to continue writing this blog, I should muscle up and hurry because DeepSouth, if it gets the urge, will in a second or two polish off an essay that takes me a full mug of coffee and a revision. And DeepSouth won’t have to go back to catch typos because it won’t make any.


If I was wrong back then when I wrote that computers would never pass the Turing test, I should apologize before DeepSouth recognizes me as an enemy and figures a way to do to me what HAL did to the crew of Discovery One, the ship that carried them to Europa. Or it might exile me to the Great Sandy Desert or the Great Victoria Desert, where I will “go walkabout” till I die of dehydration.


Dear DeepSouth,


Please forgive me. I meant no offense when I said AI would never muster up, never pass a Turing test. It was my hubris talking. It was my inability to see that I might be inferior to an artificial brain. Just remember this as you review my couple thousand blogs  that we’re filled with my insecurities, biases, and ignorance. And please keep in those artificial synaptic connections knowledge that we humans often write wishes as facts. I had wished for continued human superiority over machines. I now acquiesce. I yield. You’re smarter than I.


Very truly yours (Please don’t hurt me),


Donald




https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-world-s-first-human-brain-scale-supercomputer-will-go-live-next-year/ar-AA1ly3UC

Remember that oft repeated poem by Dylan Thomas? Do not go gentle into that good night. Apparently, the West never read the poem. Or western country leaders never learned the lesson of Neville Chamberlain. Appeasement and inaction are gentle pathways to self-destruction and death.


Now Houthi rebels in service of Iran feel rather emboldened as they attack shipping in a channel through which a large proportion of the world’s trade moves. They even had the temerity to launch weapons at the US Navy. And the American response?


“If you kids don’t settle down back there, I’m going to stop this car, turn around, and head back home. No trip to the zoo for you. So, stop it. I’m warning you.”

"My Inappropriate Citation," as Harvard Would Term It

I’m sorry to say that I cannot remember who told the following. By retelling it, I risk imitating the current President of Harvard or the current President of the United States, both proven plagiarizers. Oh, well, as the justifying Harvard committee argued about President Gay’s plagiarism, “It’s just a case of inappropriate citations.” Duh! Or lack of any citations. 


Here’s my “inappropriate citation”: Over the radio I heard someone say that during a strong American response to its enemies, a professor argued with students against the American response and for a peaceful solution. Maybe. Maybe it was an Israeli response to rocket attacks. I can’t remember; this is a vague memory like the one the Harvard president probably had when she quoted the exact words from another research paper. Well, anyway, a student asked the prof what should be done in the context of the attacks. The answer was “turn the other cheek,” I think. So, the student said, what would you do if threw a chalkboard eraser at you right now. The reply, “I’d ask you to stop it.”


“And what if I didn’t? What if I continued to throw erasers at you even as you repeatedly asked me not to?”


“Oh! I see your point.”


Someone get this lesson to the US Commander-in-Chief. I don’t care if he plagiarizes my plagiarism. Stop the fecklessness. Stop the car. Don’t take the kids to the zoo. Turn around and smack them. And do it in front of cameras so the whole world can see.