Choosing to recognize groups of humans by letters of the alphabet might be emotionally satisfying for those who do so, but I believe the practice separates more than it unites and harbors hostilities more than it fosters peace. What would happen to contention if we labeled everyone H for “human”?


The chance of unifying people on any issue is remote when difference is more important than similarity.

Socialist: “Is this the land of milk and honey, or what?”


Capitalist: “Meaning?”


Socialist: “Unlimited wealth.”


Capitalist: “Unlimi—What could that mean? Everything has limits. And as far a wealth goes, I know that though a country can increase its wealth through the discovery of resources and an increase in production, no place on a finite planet has unlimited wealth. Where’s this coming from?”


Socialist: “College loan forgiveness. Joey—Uncle Joey—just announced it.”


Capitalist: “Well, that sounds like a sound idea. Lots of people are strapped by loans for degrees in gender studies (Princeton, Harvard, Yale), astrobiology (Penn State, U. of Washington), bagpiping (Carnegie Mellon), Egyptology (Brown), popular culture (Bowling Green State U.), and viticulture and enology (Cornell).”


Socialist: “Whoa. Just a minute. You probably are dismissive because you are unaware. Take that last major, viticulture and enology. Bet you didn’t know that employment in wineries rose by 153% during the first two decades of this century. Lots of people out there drink wine. Lots of vineyards to tend. Winemaking is a science; it’s chemistry in action. Wealth to be made there, I assure you. Don’t you drink wine?”


Capitalist: “I do. Okay, I’ll knock viticulture and enology off my proscribed list. Nevertheless, a degree at Cornell at more than $50,000 per year costs—if my math is correct; I wasn’t a math major—$200,000. What can a viticulture major make in wages?”


Socialist: “Twenty-nine bucks an hour, maybe $60,000 per year. That’s not too bad. And what about those who have inherited wineries or who have land to start a vineyard? That Cornell education is an investment in a business.”


Capitalist; “I thought you guys were against ownership, but okay, chalk that one up to my ignorance. But I’ve seen some strange majors in colleges, majors that don’t come close to a job in an industry with an average wage of $60,000. And beside that, I’ll have to say that the starting wage for someone who isn’t the boss’s daughter in the wine industry is probably less than $20,000. But take astrobiology. I know for a fact that working astrobiologists have research grants and professorships that pay over 100 grand per year, but they are at the top of their game, so to speak. An aspiring young astrobiologist might be shooting for the stars in salary, but at best isn’t going to make much until he lands that professorship or job with NASA. Most of those advertised jobs require someone with postdoc experience, so that means a bachelors, masters, doctorate, and postdoc work, none of which comes cheaply, and all of which can add up to big loans, and even those don’t guarantee a job unless someone has also published in peer-reviewed journals. Look here. Here’s a position I just found in an online search through NASA: The Hatzenpichler Environmental Microbiology Lab  at Montana State wants a postdoctoral researcher to join a collaborative project on the diversity, genomics, physiology, and ultrastructure of Asgard archaea and its (I suppose they didn’t know about antecedents—but hey, do astrobiologists take Composition 101 anymore?—as I was saying, its implications for eukaryogenesis. Got to be lots of jobs there, and this one pays $54,000 plus $4,000 in moving costs—Welcome to Bozeman.”


Socialist: “Just think of the benefit for someone who has a dream to be a gender studies specialist or a bagpipe instructor. This loan forgiveness brightens the future.”


Capitalist: “At someone else’s expense. I read this morning that the loan forgiveness announced by the Teleprompter might cost the nation between $300,000,000,000 and $500,000,000,000 in tax money. Half a trillion bucks. Just another drop in the bucket of national debt that might be thirty trillion right now. Yeah, as you said, ‘land of milk and honey,’ and unending at that. So, what’s the source of the money mean to you personally?”


Socialist: “Nothing, actually. It just comes out of the general fund.”


Capitalist: “Right, and as I say, ‘If it ain’t personal, it ain’t meaningful.’ You can’t see where your tax money goes because someone in government spends it as though it is a gift from the gods. And the waste and corruption that it breeds means nothing to you personally—think of the loss of billions of dollars from the funds allocated for the pandemic. I wonder how many Nigerians are rich because of those missing funds.”


Socialist: “You’re just against equity.”


Capitalist: “No, I’m against socialism and any Administration’s failure to spend responsibly. Giveaways are fine to some extent. Rushing help to victims of catastrophes, for example, helping a nation get through a pandemic—without waste—or spending funds to build commonly used infrastructure—again, without waste. Supporting citizens is a fine idea to some extent, but to have individuals make decisions that the government has to cover isn’t fine with me or with most people who paid off their college loans and now find themselves paying off other people’s loans. Just let me give you something to picture. A national debt of thirty trillion dollars: At six inches per dollar bill, a line of thirty trillion bucks would stretch from Earth to Neptune. The $500,000,000,000 in loan forgiveness would stretch past Saturn. It took Voyager I more than three years to reach Saturn.
    “I suppose I am also bothered by the Teleprompter President’s apparent use of this executive order as a vote-getting scheme and by his use of COVID emergency status as his justification after he eliminated the restrictions on migration based on COVID because he said the pandemic was over. I don’t have the exact words of his announcement, but I heard him talk about his dad, his baseball spikes, and about people not being able to afford to get a mortgage because of their college loans. So, his argument includes making getting another loan easier—who knows, maybe setting up a mortgage forgiveness order. He says that 43 million people will benefit and that more than 20 million of them will have their entire loan cancelled. Socialism in action. Milk and honey flowing endlessly.”


Socialist: “You’re just angry because poor people will benefit.”


Capitalist: “Will the poor people who decided not to go to college but rather to open a small business benefit? Should they pay for someone else’s education?”


Socialist: “Yes, because we’re all in this together.”


Capitalist: “By ‘in this’ you mean unending debt?”

I admit that I watched—or fast-forwarded most of—the panel of researchers from the University of Virginia discussing their work on life after death and before birth (i.e., leading to reincarnation as another person). The hour-long video was in itself a near-death-experience for me because I am highly skeptical that anything we do in the present can objectively determine the truth of paranormal experiences though coincidences and unexplained phenomena do occur.


This “sixth sense” stuff breeds undying debate. TNT’s Proof and other TV shows reveal our hunger for information. Those UVA researchers have spent their careers gathering stories and attempting to tie brain function to paranormal phenomena, such as people associating with past lives. The anecdotes are often interesting tales that invite both documentaries and full-length feature films with both scary and uplifting endings. And if all the Hollywood versions have anything in common, it is that at the end we are left with unanswered questions.


At the end of the panel’s discussion, I had unanswered questions. They take their work seriously, so I hesitate to denigrate it, but I have to say that I see little difference between such discussions and the Big Foot TV programs and UFO stories that never quite give us something solid. If a TV series about Big Foot was actually centered on a discovery, shouldn’t I think that some reporter somewhere would release a story entitled, “Hey, They Found Sasquatch”?


But the anecdotes about people recalling a past life are intriguing. How, for example, does a child born long after a military engagement remember flying a Corsair and dying in a World War II battle? How is that that child bears the same first name as the actual pilot whom the Japanese shot down? Coincidence? Ditto for the other anecdotes the researchers relate. Did someone feed the child false memories to garner attention? “Honey, I think I have an idea that will make us some big bucks. Let’s teach little Johnny about some Civil War soldier by reading him bedtime stories from the guy’s letters. Surely, someone will pick this up and run with it.”


Would it be unusual in a species that has over its lifespan of almost 300,000 years and that has had over 100 billion members to have unexplained coincidences? Surely, since we all share some very common behaviors, archetypes (Thank you, Jung), thought processes, and emotions, there has to be considerable overlap that makes itself manifest in “synchronicity” and paranormal phenomena. If the anecdotes are real, I cannot logically account for them. Certainly, I can’t explain the story of a toddler pointing to a picture of the site where his predecessor identity died during the Battle of Iwo Jima. I cannot understand the boy’s knowledge of the battle, the type of plane, and the name of the ship. I won’t bother you with all the details revealed in the video—something in me is saying “spoiler alert.”


I suppose my skepticism about people living previous lives and their reports of what people saw during near death experiences contradicts my own desire for an Afterlife. Yet, that skepticism is consistent with my view that regardless of our strong common bonds, each of us is truly an individual and not a soul harboring another soul. Why would individuals be recycled? I cannot accept that there is a limitation on the number of “souls” available for life, such that some reincarnation of Adam and Eve or Antony and Cleopatra now walk among us because the repository bank of souls is running out of funds. Did the Big Bang or God create a limited number of souls, making recycling inevitable? Or are people who report on their experiences with former selves simply retelling tales that coincidentally match some past lives? I’m not, for example, the first Donald.


That I cannot answer such questions objectively convinces me that a bunch of intellectuals received both grant money plus academic positions to explore the unexplorable. Of course, they would argue that their research can lead to insights about brains and minds and that I contradict myself by using my quite indefinable mind to refute their work on the intangible world of death. They might even point out that they have answered my questions before, Ala deja vu, that experience so common that when I mention it, you say, “Yeah. I’ve experienced that.”


What if the spirit world does, in fact, walk among us? Do the intangibles have any effect on the tangibles? Maybe the people who want to tie quantum effects to macro phenomena have some explanation that shows how the past, for example, can intrude the present or how an old life can intrude a new one.


Is there a connection between paranormal phenomena and the daily world of getting bread, milk, and eggs at the local grocery?  Is spirit capable of controlling matter in a way other than my mind controlling my typing fingers? Let’s say that from the rise of Stalin to the fall of the Soviet Union a bunch of Catholic nuns prayed for the fall of Communism. In 1989, their prayers were answered. Were the prayers responsible for the outcome? Did the intangible affect the tangible? Or, in a complex world, did the oppression of the Communist Party simply weigh so heavily on the generations born after the 1917 Revolution that people just wanted a change and more freedom? Did praying nuns affect the world? Did the fall of the Berlin Wall initiate a multi-country response the way the Arab spring rolled across northern African countries. Did those nuns do that?


There was some discussion after 9-11 that random number generators were somehow associated with the attacks. **  But no one can say definitively that a change in the randomness that appeared in synchronicity with the attack wasn’t just a matter of coincidence or selective argumentation. Could I, for example, determine the outcome of a slot machine? If you have ever been in a casino, you might have noticed little old ladies frantically rubbing the monitors as the wheels spin. Apparently, they believe that they have control over the machine, a belief that is randomly rewarded when the right symbols line up. And what if they do have that control? Can I in any way repeat it in an experiment? 


Rather than stringing you along as TV series on finding Big Foot, UFOs, or buried treasure do, I prefer to end by saying you aren’t going to have irrefutable proof. Go ahead, I encourage you to watch the UVA professors enlighten their audience. You will be entertained; you will be puzzled; and you will be convinced that there must be something to this paranormal reincarnation stuff. Why else would highly paid adults spend their lives doing what people have done for free around campfires for centuries?




*YouTube: Is There Life after Death? Fifty years of Research at UVA


**MOTLEY NEWS: The Princeton Random Generator that “predicted” 9/11

The bane of a democratic society is its dilemma between transparency and secrecy. An armed raid on a former President’s home might be justifiable, but how does anyone know? An armed raid on Gibson Guitar some years ago raised the same question. And the armed raid recently on an Amish farm also raised the question. How does anyone know whether or not the government isn’t acting for private interests, for a deep state, or for a group of fascists intent on complete control? Without transparency, there’s no guarantee that the State hasn’t been overtaken by a minority serving an oligarchy. Add to these armed raids the recent Russian-collusion hoax, the mandates, and the radical shift from independent to dependent energy production, and trust in government wanes for many and disappears for some.


And it’s difficult to speak to the details when the details are hard to come by. Recall the Elián González Brotons affair. Attorney General Janet Reno might have been right in returning him to his father in Cuba, but the method of the return cast a shadow because it was, like the raid on the Gibson Guitar and the Amish farmer, heavy-handed, brutally so as the picture of an armed agent facing the child in the arms of his uncle seemed to show. The recent raid on the Amish farmer and the President also suggest a heavy-handedness.


I do understand that agents of law enforcement need to be cautious when they serve warrants or seek information on private property. There have been too many lives lost in domestic situations, but we should know, given our need for transparency, why heavily armed agents were needed to seek documents from the President’s home or to serve a cease-and-desist order on the selling of organically raised beef. Did the agents expect armed resistance? A stampede by free range cows happy to die happy?


The restrictions placed on Americans during the pandemic at first seemed reasonable. No one really knew what to do about the disease, and those in government, if I assume they acted with good intentions, were faced with a quandary: Do nothing and let people die, or do something and help people live. It seemed like an unavoidable Either/Or. But once the government set such controls as mandatory vaccinations, masking, and quarantining, it opened the door to excess, a door already slightly ajar.


Yet, as in all previous examples of government overreach, the populace has little recourse save the slow wheels of a justice system that seems to favor those in power. That government agents act with impunity seems to be the case. How many of the Russian-hoaxers have been punished?


I should not, however, assume that the populace actually cares about transparency. Some are just happy that the people they don’t like or agree with suffer some kind of retribution, deserved or undeserved. But overreach is a real threat and comes to all eventually, as those in the Soviet Union, Italy under Mussolini, Germany under Hitler, and China under Mao discovered.


Let me share some observations. I’ve consulted both for and against the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. In the role of a government researcher, I inventoried all the effects of underground coal mining on natural and artificial structures and phenomena, from buildings to streams and groundwater. In the role of consultant for a coal company, I studied the overreach exhibited when the DEP shut down a long wall mine because of a “high quality stream” on the surface above a “panel.” Some 500 miners lost their jobs as a result of the shutdown. The stream in question I found to be intermittent, not steadily flowing. A layman looking at it in the middle of a dry August might call it a ditch at best because it contained water only after a rain and was dry at other times. But the DEP enforced the “law” without exception based on its strict interpretation of a dubious “high quality” stream.


Yes, government can play a role necessary for the safety of the public. In my role as government researcher, I noted abuses by coal companies, some unavoidable because of the nature of mining and others completely avoidable and caused by blatant disregard for transparent rules. In correcting those abuses and punishing the coal companies, the government seemed to operate in open good faith. It has in its view an obligation under the law to protect the people and the land. But there is always that gray incident, a circumstance when strict adherence to a rule meets the variability of the world outside paperwork.


Whereas it is true that un-inspected meats can cause disease, sickness, or even death, it is also true that for as long as there have been carnivorous humans, un-inspected meats have been part of the diet. The addition of antibiotics, chemicals, and hormones to meats favored by the Department of Agriculture doesn’t guarantee protection against those very substances causing human ailments. The organically raised beef on an Amish farm eliminates those compounds from the diet, but it also bypasses strict controls by agents of the government, the same agents who might go to a Whole Foods to shop for groceries. One wonders whether or not an armed raid on a Whole Foods store is next because of the raw-milk parmesan, agents in bulletproof vests with guns drawn lest some checkout girl, cheese-cutter, or baker become unruly.


You laugh, but then you aren’t an Amish farmer, a guitar luthier, or a former President.

Smart is as smart argues.


Those who wish to convince others through their intellectual prowess sometimes rely on logical fallacies, such as ad hominem and appeal to authority. The former fallacy often comes with a smug smirk; the latter, with a dismissive shrug. Such is what I observed in a YouTube video of a debate among six “experts” on climate change/global warming. Examples of people coexisting on equal grounds are rare, and tempered language even rarer. Nowhere in the annals of intellectual—a questionable modifier here—conflict is the futility of argument in the sense of a logical progression of ideas and refutations more evident than in the debate on climate change. One of the reasons for the intractable positions on either side lies in pride. Who wants to admit failure? Who is willing to say, “I made a mistake; you were right all along”? Another reason lies in bias: One side associating some inherent character flaw with the other side. Anyway, arguing is futile. Discussion is fruitless, and declarations of facts dubious because of their sources.


I took my wife to a Johnny Mathis concert some years ago—I can’t remember exactly—first because he was her favorite singer and second because I wanted to provide her with a pleasant break from her incessant work ethic. One of Mathis’ songs is “Chances Are,” a tune basically about the lover telling his loved one chances are good that what she sees in his eyes are an expression of love.


    Guess you feel you'll always be the one and only one for me…

    Well, chances are your chances are awfully good.


So, I wondered whether or not I might look into the eyes of Democrats and Republicans or Leftists and Rightists, or liberals and conservatives, or Alarmists and Deniers to discern the chances of either side changing views. In this milieu of divisiveness, chances are not good for anything other than satisfying confirmation bias among the like-minded. 


I write this after having observed a “discussion” or “debate” on the subject among supposed representatives of both sides.


LADIEEEEES AND GENTLEMENNNN, IN THIS CORNER WEIGHING IN WITH BILLIONS OF TONS OF ANTHROPOGENICALLY PRODUCED CARBON DIOXIDE ARE THE TAG TEAM OF NOBEL LAUREATE MARIO MALINO, DANIEL SCHRAG, AND LAWRENCE KRAUSS. AND IN THIS CORNER THEIR OPPONENTS, WILLIAM HAPPER, LORD NIGEL LOWSON, AND RICHARD LINDZEN.  *


You can watch the whole debate on YouTube if you like. But I want to point out why supposedly intelligent humans cannot carry on a logical dialogue with give-and-take that results in a change of mind, or should I say, mindset. And, though you might accuse me here of violating my own principle of “evenhandedness,” I want to use the words of just one of these eminent men, Mario Malino, Mexican scientist and alarmist who has worked on the effect of CFCs on the atmosphere and on other atmospheric phenomena.


At one point in the debate, Malino, to counter the argument of the other side, says that 97% of the scientific community agree that global warming is not only occurring, but is also occurring because of anthropogenically emitted carbon dioxide. This is a Nobel laureate in science, mind you, not someone to dismiss lightly—if we were to appeal to authority. I might understand a flippant dismissal of Yassar Arafat, terrorist given the status of Nobel Peace laureate, or Barack Obama, recipient of the same award after having worked as a community organizer and running for US President with no other discernible accomplishments save a couple of teleprompter speeches, one of which he gave in France to a crowd attending a concert. But Malino? This is a guy with credentials in atmospheric studies and the chemistry and physics of gases. Maybe we should listen to him.


Yet, his use of that “97%” mantra, so common after Al Gore used his film to announce it, makes me think that Malino is more a representative of the religion of climate change than of the science of climate fluctuations that occur for various reasons. Ninety-seven percent? Is this true? And what is the significance of the number if it is true? If, as Malino says, 97% of scientists say the world is warming anthropogenically, do they also say that warming is a problem of “existential” dimension? Has it been worth turning food into fuel (corn to ethanol), shutting down fossil fuels, and covering fertile soils with solar panels?


Trying to discern the problem of “consensus” has become a problem in itself. Really. You can see about a half dozen videos on YouTube on the subject, some saying the number is definite; others, that it is a myth. Some trace it to a work by Cook and others to a work by Oreskes. ** And the comments beneath each of these videos reveal the truth in what I am arguing: Argument—logical argument—is dead. Refutations come as ad hominem attacks and appeals to authorities on authority.


I suppose the best any of us can do to convince the “other side” that we aren’t just crazies who have been brainwashed by either Left or Right, Big Coal or Big Battery, or Lomborg, or Thunberg, is to put down a numbered list of pros and cons in the debate. But even if we do that, we’ll find that nowadays, regardless of our sources, our message won’t “hit home.” That reality, the reality of nonacceptance, is what will continue to keep us apart whenever we disagree. We have a tendency, as revealed in Malino’s reference to 97%, to emote and quote.


Chances are that you see in another’s eyes what you want to see, either love or hate, conformity or rebellion, intelligence or stupidity. The YouTube debate among those six “experts” ends with the moderator asking the large audience whether or not their minds were changed. Surprise, surprise. Only a couple of people said they had altered their thinking.


So, where are we after witnessing experts debate? Those convinced that changing climates pose an existential threat will continue their control over a Press populated by reporters and journalists who took a general science course and slept through philosophy in college. The logical fallacies will continue to be the bases for arguments, foregone conclusions will persist, and weather phenomena—which still surprise by noncompliance with TV forecasting—will stand as “proof” of climate change. And those convinced that weather phenomena are just weather phenomena fluctuating as weather phenomena always have fluctuated, and who believe that excess carbon in the atmosphere will result in a greening of the planet and a possible logarithmic warming that might expand tropical and temperate growing zones, will say, “Warming. Sure, but so what? Is it worth depressing economies when no predictions of existential threats have as yet occurred?”


Before you choose sides, I recommend your reading word-for-word through all the IPCC reports, the Paris Accord (including the footnotes that contain caveats by the signees), the Hurricane Center’s account of storm number and intensity, and a book or two on the physics of the atmosphere and on eustacy during the past 2.5 million years. Note, too, the contrary studies, such as those which demonstrate the health or expansion of ecologies like the Great Barrier Reef and the data displayed in "hockey-stick" graphs that might not include contradictory data.  

Chances are…


*The debate can be seen on YouTube under "Debate: Global Warming-Krauss, Schrag, Molina vs. Lindzen, Lowson, Happer-CDI"
**In addition to YouTube videos on the 97%, you can read a review of the issue at https://www.wsj.com/articles/joseph-bast-and-roy-spencer-the-myth-of-the-climate-change-97-1401145980  Seems that we have turned from debating the data to debating the debate.
By the way, I would be interested in seeing a survey of those in the 97% that asks what specific changes they have made to their personal carbon footprints, such as going fossil-fuel-free, turning up thermostats in summer and down in winter, and...well, you get it don't you? How has the 97% responded personally as a demonstration of their science? Are they going about their personal business "as usual," not using for example, that gas fireplace in the Florida condo just for effect? Not leaving any lights on or any computer or player on "standby"? Using the sun to dry clothes on the old fashioned clothes line? Not ordering products that have to travel on ships that burn bunker fuel for propulsion across an ocean? And, as "scientists," can they quantify their effect on climate? Do they think the Forest Service's plan to plant one billion trees over this decade will "save" climate on a planet with an estimated three trillion trees and a species with a current habit of cutting down 15 billion trees each year? Will those one billion trees offset the loss 150 billion trees over the decade? Do any of the 97% use wood? 

You will die, but read this first. And since life’s highway is known for its fatal accidents, please pull over to read. If Death’s the cop, you don’t want the citation.    


It was sometime in the late 1950s. I was a teenager on a summer construction job, working among men who smoked, drank, and cursed, all guys determined to display their machismo in some manner. Frequently, I heard one ask another, “Can you lend me a smoke?” It was a common question, and it still runs through the language because I heard it from a stranger I encountered as I walked out of the pharmacy just this past week. “Sorry, I don’t smoke” is my only response nowadays, but in my youth I said, “You know, those things are gonna kill you.” I might have been young and inexperienced, but I knew Death carried many scythes and that one of them was made from tobacco.


Operating as I did naively on some Messiah complex—Was I the Greta Thunberg of smoking?—I had tried and failed to get my parents and others to stop smoking. Aside from my aversion to the smell of cigarettes, I had been convinced that it was harmful after I saw in junior high a film about the danger of smoking graphically revealed by a contrast between the lungs of a deceased smoker and the lungs of a nonsmoker, the former blackened like some over-grilled burger. The image of those diseased lungs that the assembly-hall film burned into my brain remains as a rather vivid memory these many decades later. I associate smoking not only with raspy voices, coughing spells, and wrinkled skin, but also with blackened lungs and Death. But just as I am not alone today in knowing that smoking is hazardous, so apparently, I was not alone then. Even my older co-worker who asked “to borrow” cigarettes knew that smoking was not just a possible cause of cancer, but a probable one as well. To my statement “those are gonna kill you,” he replied, “Well, we’re all going to die. Mis’well enjoy myself while I can. It’s just another ‘nail’ in my coffin.”


As all know, smoking isn’t the sole bringer of Death. if not by smoking, then people certainly die by some other means. But most of us adopt the attitude of centenarian comedian George Burns: “I don’t believe in dying. It’s been done. I’m working on a new exit. Besides I can’t die now; I’m booked.” Or, in response to a question about death, George said he planned to be somewhere else when it happened. My smoker co-worker probably assumed the lethality of chain smoking was something that happened to others. If incurable lung cancer was in his future, he reasoned, it was in his very distant future and certainly not during his vital present. By the way, George Burns, bless his soul, is dead.


The ultimate circumstance demands our reluctant attention. Each of us moves ineluctably toward Death. Some drive to meet it unintentionally through a detrimental lifestyle, say, by smoking or drinking or overeating or overdosing. Have I listed all life’s offramps here? No, others get caught up in the traffic of terminal illness on life’s highway between Being and Nonbeing. We can slow down, but both those who pause and those who hurry get to the same and ultimate destination.


To understand our relationship with Death, we could adopt Freud’s ideas of a drive toward death, Todtriebe (Todestrieb), and its complement, the drive toward pleasure, Eros. Freud seems to have reduced the human psyche to two fundamental motivations. If we do so adopt his ideas, then we might ask ourselves which of these two drives dominates our lives. Is your very driving down life’s highway a distraction from thinking about your ultimate destination? Then Eros is your vehicle, and you live in the fast lane of distractions. The problem with Eros is that pleasures fail to please after a while, so we become the disillusioned and worn out characters in the Eagles’ “Life in the Fast Lane.” As the lyrics go, “They  didn't care, they were just dyin' to get off.” But I suppose it doesn’t matter if your vehicle is Eros or Todtriebe, because you are still headed toward Death. And speaking of driving toward Death…


Canada is one of just a few countries that permits “medical assistance in dying” (MAID). Under ostensibly strict guidelines, doctors and nurse practitioners may administer lethal drug combinations to a mentally competent person willing to sign all the necessary forms. About 10,000 Canadians sign those forms each year, most because they believe their deaths to be imminent or their suffering to be unbearable. But now Canada is considering euthanasia for some with mental disorders, such as depression. Where are we going here, and how fast are we traveling?


Canadians 18 or older may apply for MAID. Now, one might argue that an eighteen-year-old though possessed of reason might lack maturity necessary for such a decision just as one might reasonably argue that a pre-teen or even a teen might lack the maturity for a sex change. With regard to both sex change and MAID, one should know that though the former is permanent, the latter is definitely MORE PERMANENT.


Someone I know directed my attention to the story about MAID written by Yuan Yi Zhu for The Spectator (online at https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-is-canada-euthanising-the-poor-  Accessed August 19, 2022). * It’s the tale of Todtriebe in Canada as it has evolved over the last decade. Zhu makes a number of points and offers some anecdotes about euthanized Canadians which, unfortunately, lack the specificity any of us might desire, such as names, locations, and dates. Nevertheless, if what Zhu writes has just an iota of truth, then all Canadians should look out the windows of their life vehicles to see how the ethical landscape has changed along the highway of life:


    “Despite the Canadian government’s insistence that assisted suicide is all about individual autonomy, it has also kept an eye on its fiscal advantages. Even before Bill C-7 entered into force, the country’s Parliamentary Budget Officer published a report about the cost savings it would create: whereas the old MAID regime saved $86.9 million per year – a ‘net cost reduction’, in the sterile words of the report – Bill C-7 would create additional net savings of $62 million per year. Healthcare, particularly for those suffering from chronic conditions, is expensive; but assisted suicide only costs the taxpayer $2,327 per ‘case’. And, of course, those who have to rely wholly on government-provided Medicare pose a far greater burden on the exchequer than those who have savings or private insurance.”


And I cannot leave the piece without quoting this:


    “Next year, the floodgates will open even further when those suffering from mental illness …become eligible [for MAID]…There is…talk of mature minors’ access to euthanasia too – just think of the lifetime savings.”


There it is, the progressive utilitarian’s perfect solution. Makes me think of Jonathan Swift’s Juvenalian satire “A Modest Proposal.” You know, you Canadians might consider some real life version of Soylent Green, what with all those people convinced to sign the appropriate papers. You Canadians can solve two problems simultaneously: 1) Unburden the health care system that cannot offer palliative care and 2) Increase the food supply during a time of world shortages. Is the ultimate bottom line based on a bottom line? Is there an argument for euthanasia not centered on economics?


That εὐθανασία, euthanatos, or “a good or easy death” isn’t a new concept is demonstrable in the dialogue of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. In short, the suffering one says, “Better to die than to suffer so.” Why suffer interminably when dying offers an easy out? Other ancient Greek playwrights and philosophers also broached the subject, and I have no doubt that the dilemma of continuing an unpleasant existence or dying voluntarily has always been a problem for conscious social beings, that is, for humans and their closest hominid relatives like the Neandert(h)als. We might believe the dilemma engendered by the prospect of burdensome health care is a plague peculiar to our times, but it seems to have predated historical cultures. I would not, however, assume that those who struggled with decisions about life and death prior to the rise of “modern humans” invoked the “Canadian Solution.”


What about those Neanderthals or Neandertals? you ask. Surely, they couldn’t care for the sick, the feeble-minded, and the elderly in a subsistence culture. Surely, they didn’t have extended care caves. Whatever did they do for the enfeebled In times of drought or over-hunting when scarce resources would easily exacerbate an already tough existence. And yet…


Unlike Canadians bent on unburdening their health care system through euthanasia, Neandert(h)als left evidence of extended care. Rendu, et al. (2013) reported an instance of care for an elderly decrepit man at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. ** It seems that sophisticated and knowledgeable Canadians take the utilitarian shortcut whereas the unsophisticated “ignorant cavemen” exhibited prolonged compassion.


Would you consider Canadians to be an ethical and moral people? Certainly, many of them belong to a religion and many obey laws and act with socially approved manners—disregard the hockey fights, of course. They have laws and social values. AND—here’s the “Big And”—they have socialized health care that shows the world how compassionate they are as a “people.” How is that we associate ethics and morality with history and not with prehistory? Maybe all those ancient myths about ethical and moral problems derived from Indo-European, African, Asian, American, and Australian origins hark back to an even older age, a time when stone tools marked the height of consciousness and people survived by hunting and gathering. Maybe ethical action is written in human DNA. In what other context could we interpret the care for the decrepit old man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints? Are we to think that French Canadians are less compassionate than French Neandert(h)als? Are today’s French Canadians less willing to sacrifice the time and resources of the young for the good of the elderly and sickly? Did those ancient cavemen not have the Canadian Solution in the club they carried? Boink!


This euthanasia stuff has my head spinning. It makes me wonder about the nature of government and the individuals who submit themselves to its authority. Born in the idea of peace and order, governments can “do good” for individuals and groups, but the inevitable burgeoning of any officialdom is hazardous to those same individuals and groups because its utility takes precedence over compassion even when it acts in the name of compassion.


Let’s define compassion. It’s more than saying some Clintonian “I feel your pain.” We’ve seen too much of such compassion in the elaborate lifestyles of a Pope Alexander VI, AKA the Borgia pope, to the current Pope and the American President who live behind walls at the Vatican and on a Delaware beach while complaining about walling out migrants. We’ve seen too much of such compassion from Canadian and  American politicians who in “serving the people” somehow become inordinately rich AKA President Obama, who is worth tens of millions and having not one, but two expensive homes on beaches. Feeling your pain? Concerned that the health care system is burdened by all those people who not only want to use it but need to use it? Big compassion turns out to be woefully little compassion. Big empathy becomes a question of convenience. Just don’t show them the details. The utilitarian system will provide the best outcome for the most people—which doesn’t include those suffering from excessive poverty, terminal illness, and now even depression.


Ultimately, no utilitarian construct can substitute for one-on-one compassion and sacrifice. Yet, there are those who believe that in setting a national health care system standard that provides for an ever-easier access to euthanasia, they have demonstrated their love for their fellow citizens while, of course, saving big bucks.


Canada isn’t the only nation driving toward death, of course, but it serves as both a model and a warning about utility and life. Those French Neandert(h)als could not possibly have had an easy time caring for that decrepit old man but they somehow demonstrated that they could comfort someone approaching the ultimate destination. What, then, did they do for those with problems less traumatic than terminal incapacity? Were there depressed Neandert(h)als over the age of 18 who wished to end their lives and who the tribe accommodated with rocks and clubs?


And while we’re mentioning rocks and clubs as tools of euthanasia, shouldn’t we speak of our modern tools, those powerhouse poisonous mixtures that enable the euthanized to die in some easy and “dignified way.” Or should we say with Dylan Thomas,


    Do not go gentle into that good night,
    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I have to end this with the story of my paternal grandmother. She had breast cancer in the 1960s. Before she died she told me that I couldn’t imagine the pain she had. I asked, “Grandma, why don’t you take morphine or some pain medicine?” Her response? "I don’t want anything that dulls my senses and robs me of complete consciousness.” Obviously, Grandma was strong enough to “rage against the dying of the light.”

​Of course, not everyone is that strong-willed. But for those who are not, for those who see their suffering as unbearable, is utility sanctioned by the government the most ethical course of action? Decide this issue now because whether you are a Canadian or not, that decision most likely lies at every offramp you pass on the highway of your life. Permit me to distort the words of John Donne’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in saying that when the “bell tolls for thee,” you’ll be passing through a government toll booth. If you don’t have the coins, the government will issue you a tax-funded EasyPass.


*Zhu, Yuan Yi. 30 April 2022. Why is Canada euthanizing the poor? The Spectator.
**Rendu, William, Cedric Beauval, Isabelle Crevecoeur, and Bruno Maureille. 16 Dec. 2013. Evidence supporting an intentional Neanderthal burial at La Chapelle-aux-Saints. PNAS. 111 (1) 81-86 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1316780110  Accessed August, 20, 2022. There is also a report by Alejandro Bonmati of such care for the elderly as long ago as 500,000 years.

Herbert (Herb) and Ralph converse about ideals and the origins of ideals:


Herb: Got a question for you, Ralph.


Ralph: What’s that?


Herb: Do you think all ideals are imposed?


Ralph:  That’s a tough one. Let me think…No, I don’t think all ideals are imposed because I can set my own ideals. But a thought just occurred to me that some ideals, maybe most ideals, are imposed. It’s just difficult to say who does the imposing.


Herb: My thoughts exactly. But what ideals are truly yours?


Ralph: Well, I guess I’d say personal ideals.


Herb: Namely?


Ralph: Losing weight to become Adonis-like. Yes, I want to look svelte and muscular. That’s my ideal.


Herb: Ha. But why? Aren’t you simply following a cultural ideal imposed by the worlds of fashion, art, theater, magazines, Hollywood, gym owners, and sports? Why is an Adonis-like body better than, say, a moderate plumpness with a bit of flab that stores fat for hard times? What of the ideal body shapes during times of disease and famine as depicted in “robust” Rubenesque naked women revealing that they are better fed than the rest? Plumpness once meant “healthy.” So, the ideal figure of one era becomes the shunned ideal in another era. Haven’t you noticed that there are those in the media and fashion who are attempting to reimpose a bit of plumpness in the ideal shape? Note the difference in model shapes between the 2022 Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition and previous editions. I suppose that begs another question about ideals: Can a group of influencers alter the society’s ideal of the svelte body? I guess we’ll have to wait to see.


Ralph: Good point. I hadn’t thought of how I might have been influenced to acquire an ideal.


Herb: I think of how societal ideals, say an ideal like heroism, might have originated in stories passed through many generations. Let me give you an example. During the American Civil War, soldiers on both sides were inspired to fight courageously in support of a cause. The idea of a brave soldier committed to fighting in the face of extreme danger was a significant motivator. Stonewall Jackson leading from the front, so to speak; George Custer leading the charge at Gettysburg. This is what Lieutenant General James Longstreet wrote about Pickett’s charge:


    “Pickett’s lines being nearer, m the impact was heaviest upon them. Most of the field officers were killed or wounded… General Armistead, of the second line, spread his steps to supply the paces of fallen comrades. his colors [flag] cut down, with a volley against the bristling line of bayonets, he put his cap open this sword to guide the storm. The enemy’s massing, enveloping numbers held the struggle until the noble Armistead fell beside the wheels of the enemy’s battery.”


Now that’s the standard ideal of military heroism, isn’t it? Achilles and Hector fearlessly facing each other.
       
As such, dying in battle was a noble act, though the heroic ideal usually meant a selfless sacrifice of life. This is what Sergeant W. P. L. Muir of the Fifteenth Iowa Regiment wrote about participating in the Battle of Shiloh:


    “We were all spoiling for a fight, and there was no little amount of grumbling done by members of the regiment on account of the fear that we would not be there in time to take part in the battle.”


No doubt Muir, having already experienced battle, knew the dangers of the fighting unlike those Union soldiers who fled in panic at the Battle of First Manassas. Those rookie soldiers went into the fight thinking it was some kind of show but came out of the fight in an unheroic retreat. As Union diarist George Templeton Strong wrote of First Manassas, “Today will be known as Black Monday. We are utterly and disgracefully routed, beaten, and whipped by secessionists.”


It’s difficult to say where the ideal of death in battle came from. Was it something Homer wrote in The Iliad? Certainly, that epic is filled with acts of heroism that might have led to the belief “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country. I would guess that every war since The Iliad and probably before had its heroic ideals that today we see in every action hero of the big screen, those images from books and movies motivating young men to achieve the heroic ideal.


Ralph: Yes, I guess the stories told over centuries perpetuated the ideal. Of course, those “ideal sacrifices” on the battlefield did run against modern realism: The fruitless sacrifices of the young dying for the causes of old men; maybe among others Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and the poetry of World War I’s Wilfred Owen set in motion an anti-heroic ideal that modern war movies often depict by showing the randomness of death during battle.


Herb: So, I come back to my original question about the imposition of ideals. Since people act on ideals—dieting and exercising as you point out—shouldn’t each person ask about the origin of those ideals? And I’m not just talking about war or body image. All ideals that motivate should be subject to examination. Social ideals, political ideals, religious ideals, and even psychological ideals—all those ideals. Equitable society? An ideal, isn’t it? What’s its origin? Is it imposed? Can it be imposed by subtle and constant exposure, creeping its way into the common psyche? What’s the consequence of its imposition? And the same goes for those other ideals that motivate us.


Ralph: Geez, Herb, can’t you just talk about sports? Now I have to go through the day wondering whether my motivations aren’t someone else’s.

Einstein understood that every observer was the ultimate ground of observation. I’m sitting at my desk in my library, apparently motionless—except for my fingers moving on the keyboard that, by the way, I observe to be stationary. But I live on a turning planet moving in an orbit around a sun that is moving around the galaxy that is moving through space. From my perspective, the squirrels, deer, and birds outside the window move through the woods while I remain still. If I type on an airplane going at constant speed, I perceive the ground below to be moving, demonstrable, I think, because I can get up, walk to the restroom and back, and find my seat in the same place—seemingly—where I left it. In the interim, the plane might have moved relative to the ground below by some ten or more miles in a minute. Physical relativity is a fact of physical existence. But what of mental and emotional relativity?


Apparently, absolutes of any kind are difficult to acquire or identify. I think, for example, of what I heard as I walked—and yes, changed positions in my moving house ostensibly firmly planted on my tree-covered property—through the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. On the news a retired military “expert” was talking about the United States sending equipment to Ukraine, a policy with which he agreed. But he pointed out that those in the Pentagon feel no apparent need to rush replacement equipment into the hands of the soldiers, causing, he opined, a weapons deficit while adversaries like China are posturing a threat. The “expert” was concerned that the United States military was concerned about optics centered on Wokeism. That is, those in the Pentagon want to demonstrate their “inclusiveness” and “sensitivity.” The point here is that what anyone or any group believes to be important—sees as absolutely important—is, in fact, relative. The Chinese I’m pretty sure, don’t care about equity and inclusivity or Wokeism as much as they care about stuff that breaks things and kills people, specifically, weapons. Thus, importance is a relative term.


And so it is with individuals, as demonstrated by my thinking that sitting and writing these blogs is important though I have on average only about 100 daily site visitors (Thanks, by the way, for stopping by). So it goes with every human: Border Texans think border security is important, whereas until the Texas governor began sending migrants to their cities, mayors of major cities like New York and Washington that lie outside border states gave illegal migration little public attention.


Whatever lies on one’s list of importance might not lie on another’s list. And so, for generations humans have acted at cross purposes, each believing that what the other does is relatively “unimportant.” Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong in such a belief just as there’s nothing inherently wrong in acting on what one believes to be important—unless such actions run up against diametrically opposed values. Take the Pentagon’s seemingly lax position on rearming. As the Poles found out during the onset of World War II, men on horseback cannot compete militarily with men in tanks. Germany under a tyrant thought a strong military was important. Japan under a strong military leader thought a strong navy was important. At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, America had a relatively small navy for the territory it wished to protect. Had the Navy not won the Battle of Midway in the course of ten minutes, the war in the Pacific might have had a far different outcome. After Pearl Harbor, the importance of a strong navy became a focus.


Human relativity is notably a driver of individualism. I find that to be a good thing. But the downside of human relativity has a parallel in stepping off a moving train. I might believe I am stationary while on the train because all the seats remain in their relative places, but I am, in fact, moving relative to the ground. The US military might believe that their focus should be on sensitivity training, but their potential enemies are not similarly concerned; stepping off the train means encountering the ground that, although moving itself, is not moving at the same speed or in the same direction. Yes, everything is relative, but there is a difference in relative motion that has consequences just as two vehicles moving in opposite directions cannot collide without consequences.


Not to kick a dead horse, but the same applies to the current energy policy of the United
States that wants to achieve a “zero carbon” status for the country. At the same time the country’s leaders are quashing coal use in the US because of the “importance” of climate change, the American coal industry is acquiring more markets abroad, indicating a difference in how “important” climate change is around the world. Does it not occur to those who see the issue of “warming” as so important that they label it an “existential threat” that others don’t place the same importance on climate as revealed in their coal use increase? China, for example, just issued a statement about increasing coal production by 300,000,000 metric tons per year.


It behooves us to ask ourselves what we think is important and to evaluate it against what others believe to be important. Everything is in motion. Our successes in life depend on our understanding those complex motions and even more complex emotions.

One of the problems we face daily lies how to read appearances. Often we misinterpret. On an interpersonal level, such misreading can lead to embarrassment, hurt, or even anger when, for example, a teenager might mistake a look for a flirt, a worker might mistake a directive as an assault, or a nation might take a visit from a foreign dignitary as an affront to sovereignty and a cause of military action. Appearances are “real” because they lead to consequences both wanted and unwanted.


One might have to be far removed from the events of the summer to be unaware of the move by the FBI to seize documents from the former President’s Florida home. The incident fills the mainline and social media, motivates people to express their political views, and demonstrates how the appearance of an event can shape new realities. Regardless of one’s political affiliation, however, each American should ask about the consequences of appearances.


To state the obvious, I’ll say that appearance is important to every human who owns a mirror or pauses for a split second to look at a reflection in a window. Now think of the appearance of an FBI agent wearing a bulletproof vest and standing guard with an “assault rifle” in front of the President’s estate during a nighttime serving of a search warrant. What does the appearance suggest?


Does the presence of armed agents indicate that the FBI thought there was a “real” threat of an armed conflict at the residence while the family was in New York? Would that resistance come from Secret Service Agents or a butler and maid? Did the Attorney General believe that this was, as the written procedures of his agency require, the least intrusive mechanism for obtaining what it sought? Think now not from the point of view of one who supports the former President or from a point of one who hates him, but think rather from the point of view of an objective observer of appearance. What does the appearance of an armed search party suggest other than that there was a real possibility of violent resistance?


But let’s make such an appearance personal in case you are an opponent obsessed with an extreme “gotcha” syndrome that makes you happy to see such an incident in America. Let’s say the local police department decides to pull up in front of your residence at night in cars with flashing lights and officers armed with guns drawn in a mistaken address incident. Sleepy-eyed, you innocently answer the door to bright lights and an intimidating agent of the law. The mistake corrected, you go back to bed peacefully thinking “no problem.” Across the street, the neighbor sees the appearance that becomes the reality, and those throughout the neighborhood assume there is “some reality” to the appearance. Why else would the police show up in force? In this hypothetical, ask yourself how easy it will be to go on with life as it was with your past casual relationships in the neighborhood remaining unchanged.


Funny reality about appearance: One man’s interpretation can differ from another man’s interpretation. The reality of most appearances lies in the variability of what they elicit in the minds of many. On a peaceful summer day of lying on the grass and looking heavenward, I don’t necessarily see the elephant in the cumulus cloud that appears so identifiable in your mind.


Appearances are largely the realities of any society and are especially so at a time of ubiquitous and anonymous videoing. No matter how careful one is in personal care and behavior, cameras can capture appearances that once broadcast become the meme, the characterization, that is every bit as memorable as the sad-faced and happy-faced masks were as characters in Greek plays. It appears that few of us can avoid the instant as a representation of a lifetime.


One might argue that appearance, though not “everything,” is definitely “most things.” But lest you think I’m hypocritically faulting you, I’ll add that in fast-moving, complex social and political relationships, there’s little time to sort out the real from the apparent. So, just about everyone sticks with impressions garnered from appearance and modified by personal preferences.


The bias of preferences shades the interpretation of appearances, and for some that bias imprisons the mind, keeping individuals from other perspectives. The old adage “We see what we want to see” and the our seemingly innate penchant for confirmation of our beliefs combine to make almost any appearance into a “reality.”