When we put our understanding of universal and relativistic motion aside, we run our lives against a series of ostensibly still backgrounds. Just as we see cars move along a neighborhood street because the background doesn’t appear to move, so we see our personal lives in the context of backgrounds. We recognize who we are against a background of time, space, and regularities of all kinds. The neighborhood typically remains the same, though sometimes the eye catches some change: The growth of a tree or bush, the crack in a sidewalk, new furniture on the neighbor’s porch, maybe even a new neighbor.
 
Of course, there are times when the background changes rapidly. Tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, and earthquakes do that. One can find in a destroyed neighborhood an unrecognizable background, confusing in the least and horrifying in the worst instances. And the late winter and early spring of 2020 is one of those instances, potentially one as bad as 1917 and 1918, a time when WWI and the Spanish Flu destroyed the backgrounds against which tens to hundreds of millions of people had established their lives.
 
We find ourselves comfortable once we take a background for granted. The routine of daily life, whether a happy or sad one, is a steady background. It’s that steadiness, that lack of change, on which we can make the changes we choose to make or avoid. But all backgrounds as seemingly steady as the distant stars aren’t really steady. Those neighborhood bushes and trees do grow as do the neighbor’s children. Sometimes the plants die or the neighbor moves them; sometimes the neighbor moves or dies. Those disruptions to the background are inevitable in a finite world of entropy. No system, and therefore no background, is immutable, unless, of course, we count the background of constant change and underlying chaos on which we psychologically impose order and stillness.
 
We notice large changes in the background, that storm devastated neighborhood, for example. And we can’t stop thinking of them. Or, as the new background of 24/7 reports on the 2020 pandemic reveal, we can’t stop seeing our lives against this new background. Disruption. That’s the new, though no doubt temporary, background now. The world neighborhood has undergone a rapid change. Things once recognizable no longer are so.
 
Interestingly, there are still in middle March those who would pretend the background of their lives is unchanging. Mostly, the youth, particularly, college students on spring break. In non-war-torn areas, they have lived against an unchanging background of parties, concerts, and indulgence to various degrees based on their socioeconomic status. Sure, there are many among them who have struggled to keep the background constant, those who have worked to maintain that background and those who have worked to establish a new ideal background. But still there are those who, believing in their own immutability, would continue as they have continued against a recognizable background of youth, health, and support from the previous generation.
 
Maybe the background won’t change for millions. It didn’t for millions when WWI and the Spanish Flu changed so much in the early twentieth century. But the inevitability of a change of background eventually strikes most of us as we age (or survive). And when it does hit us psychologically as well as physically, we have a choice. We can keep focusing on the old background either nostalgically or sadly, or we can start focusing on the new one forced upon us and think of it as a transition to some new background, some new neighborhood in which we will live with increasing familiarity and security.
 
With one notable exception. Memory is a background, too. Yes, it can fade, wilt, and even die like some bush or tree, but it can also persist. We will find in memories clear and fuzzy a background against which we will understand, accept, or reject the ensuing background that replaces the older one. And that means that even backgrounds have backgrounds.

Did you know that when you have to put more cognitive effort into listening and understanding your pupils get a little larger? Maybe not enough to notice in others during casual conversation, but definitely a measurable amount. We might, however, actually notice without consciously noting, a process born from either evolution or experience. 
 
Increased diameters of pupils because of increased cognitive effort demonstrate that our bodies mirror what goes on in our minds. Thus, body language has its own field of experts who tell us that how we sit in a meeting sends signals about intention or attitude.  
That we can read physical signals for intention and attitude is probably a safeguard against attacks both physical and mental. But we are a subtle lot capable of practicing deceptive body language that might fool another. It isn’t as though we are dogs wagging tails in an obviously nonthreatening greeting; without tell-tale tails, people can hide their true intentions and attitudes, except… Except for the eyes; apparently, Mother Nature built in some fundamental responses to stimuli, such as that increased pupil diameter during times of some hard thinking.
 
Remember that eyes are “windows of the soul” and that vision is a brain function aided by eyes. We ignore what is insignificant in our field of view In favor of what we perceive to be relevant to our lives. Occasionally, we seem to throw relevance to wind. I suppose that staring is one of those eye responses that comes from the brain, as daydreaming, for example, takes over, and eyes ignore movements in a scene. “Hey, are you paying attention?” we hear during those moments. And we also know that the brain fills in a scene and ignores or extrapolates for the “blind spots” in our eyes. Staring and dilating eyes (in response to heavy thinking), indicate that the eye-brain relationship is a two-way street, just as my eye to your eye is a two-way street.  
 
I assume all but the blind become rather good at reading eyes through experience. And maybe some of those eye responses are imitations learned from adults when each of us is a child. We do, as we know, have mirror neurons that express themselves outwardly in imitative movements. Maybe brains hard-pressed to comprehend have long dilated their attendent pupils, but groups of brainstorming individuals see the eyes of one another doing whatever eyes do, possibly leading to learning by imitation.
 
So, we shouldn’t be surprised to see some researchers devoted to studying the human gaze, especially if they think that developing an algorithm that ties gaze to response or intention can open the door for more humanlike artificial intelligence. * Gaze encodes a scene, sends that message to the interpretative brain, and ends in some response. If we could just capture the intricacies of human eye movements, we might be able to make that compassionate—or angry—robot, the Star Trek Data or 2001: A Space Odyssey Hal that, although not truly feeling, acts as though it is feeling. Imagine that perceptive AI that can read in your gaze your intention or attitude just as you read the dog’s wagging tail.
 
Look around. Look at looks. What do you see? What do others see in your looks? And what kind of AI will see as you see, process what is seen as you process, and act as you might act on the basis of visual evolution and experience? I guess we are destined to remain pupils of humanity for as long as there are people or their AI proxies and avatars.
 
*There are many research articles on this and related topics; here are four.
 
Brenna D Argall, Sonia Chernova, Manuela Veloso, and Brett Browning. A survey of robot learning from demonstration. Robotics and autonomous systems, 57(5):469– 483, 2009.
 
Congcong Liu, Yuying Chen, Lei Tai, Haoyang Ye, Ming Liu, and Bertram E Shi. A gaze model improves autonomous driving. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications, page 33. ACM, 2019.
 
Faraz Torabi, Garrett Warnell, and Peter Stone. Behavioral cloning from observation. In IJCAI, pages 4950– 4957. AAAI Press, 2018.
 
​Michael F Land. Vision, eye movements, and natural behavior. Visual neuroscience, 26(1):51–62, 2009.

The NBA and NCAA cancelled spring games because of Covid-19. MLB has postponed the start of its season, also. Except for times of war and attack, such interruptions are very rare. The NFL, for example, which is currently considering what to do about opening the 2020 season, is in its 101st year. The league started two years after the devastating Spanish flu that killed an estimated 50 million people. It has continued to play its games as usual over that century with the exceptions of WWII years and union strikes. It even continued to play during the 1957-1958 pandemic of H2N2 Asian flu that killed an estimated 116,000 in the United States and a million people worldwide.
 
But today, sports stadia normally filled have become empty caverns. And with good reason, as “social distancing” becomes the preventive medicine not only of choice, but also of desperation. Of course, the stadia will open after the virus wreaks its worldwide havoc, a destiny that seems inevitable, given both the many locations where crowded communities and poor infrastructure persist and the number of people who fail to heed the CDC’s warnings about crowding continue to think socializing at parties and bars is more important than preventing Covid-19’s spread. Look, for example, at the recent riots of University of Dayton students who objected to the school’s closing.  
 
Although we have no way of knowing—short of some startling archaeological find—the times when similar epidemics devastated Mesoamerica prior to the arrival of the Spanish and the smallpox epidemic they carried to the New World, we can assume that the people of the Mesoamerican past suffered the ravages of diseases from time to time. We know, for example, that plagues plagued Rome and Athens, for example. No doubt there was some time when the Coliseum’s and Greek amphitheater stands stood empty.
 
So, the discovery of a stadium that was used for almost two centuries starting about 3,400 years ago in the mountains of Oaxaca makes me wonder about any disruptions those Mesoamericans of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. might have experienced. The ball court discovered by Victor Salazar Chávez and Jeffrey Blomster at Etlatongo, coincided with the time when “trade between regions ramped up.” * In short, the rudiments of globalization go way back, showing that even as people spread farther apart to inhabit diverse environments, they tended to come together for their mutual benefit. Ironically, it’s in coming together for mutual benefit that the regional and now the global community pass along diseases.
 
Did the games at Etlatongo ever stop for disease? We don’t know, but surely over almost two centuries there had to have been some devastating disease, such as lupus vulgari and tuberculosis that we know affected Aztecs before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. Surely, their predecessor Mesoamericans weren't immune to epidemics.  

No doubt any epidemic is tragic for individuals while at the same time being only a nuisance for the majority of infected people. Unfortunately, those for whom Covid-19 is a nuisance can be vectors that carry the disease to others, a point, I’m sure, that everyone paying attention to the current news understands.
 
I’m guessing that sometime during the 175-year history of the Etlatongo ball court, the crowds dwindled because sickness kept people in their homes or put them in their graves, not because people practiced social distancing as a preventive step. During those ancient times, however, there were no means for mitigating the effects of an epidemic and no knowledge of microorganisms. Those ancient people might not have been flippant about a threat, rather, just ignorant about its cause. Ours is not a time, as medical people keep telling us, to be flippant about a threat because we actually understand its nature.
 
Did those ancient athletes and fans feel disappointment when the games were cancelled? Probably. Are there people who would, even with today’s accumulated knowledge, go to a stadium or bar or concert regardless of the threat simply because they choose the games over safety? No doubt. Look at the recent St. Patrick’s Day celebrants who have gone to bars and restaurants even when the large parades were cancelled. Look at the numbers of young who, not realizing that life is precariously balanced on a narrow thread of time, choose to mingle in close proximity. I assume that some of them will escape the disease and that others will learn the single lesson on which I center this website:
 
This is not your practice life.
 
*Wade, Lizzie. 13 Mar 2020. 3400-year-old ballgame court unearthed in mountains of Mexico. AAAS online at https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/3400-year-old-ballgame-court-unearthed-mountains-mexico   Accessed March 16, 2020.

“I couldn’t have heard you right,” he said. “One million?”
 
“Yeah, that’s what I read. Musk wants to send a million people to Mars by 2050.”
 
“Does he know how many a million is?”
 
“Of course he does. He’s a gajillionaire. He knows what a billion is. I’m sure he believes it’s possible.”
 
“You goin’?”
 
“H…e…double toothpick, no. I’m kinda happy being quarantined on Earth. I can’t imagine being quarantined first on a spaceship and then on a planet with a carbon dioxide atmosphere, little water, and sandstorms that sweep over the entire surface for weeks or months.”
 
“But would you go if you knew that that quarantine kept you from Earth’s deadly diseases?”
 
“How’s that possible. You know how many bacteria, fungi, and viruses I carry around in and on my own body? What am I supposed to do, take hourly baths in ethyl alcohol, drink the stuff until I die of alcohol poisoning? And what about those supposedly ‘good’ bacteria in my gut? You know I would have to carry them to Mars and eventually put them into the ‘good red Mars’ as Eden Phillpotts might express it.”
 
“But there’s Elon Musk, saying, as you say, one million might go to Mars. I’m sure he has some plan for that society, but what do they do there except constantly try to survive?”
 
“Well, when you think of it, what do we do here but constantly try to survive?”

Because time flies, flies time. That’s particularly true of mayflies, whose lives are so short they measure them in hours. Now, we discover in 2020, that supply chains seem to be the new mayflies, well, sort of.
 
Adult mayflies seem to have a single purpose in their short lives: Make more mayflies. So, they don’t have to worry about eating. Their short lives put them in the order Ephemeroptera, notable here because of the linguistic cognate, ephemeral. They come together mate and make, and then die. The global supply chains are similar, but it took the Covid-19 for many to realize the ephemeral nature of material abundance and easy access to goods.
 
As Nick Vyas, Executive Director of the Center for Global Supply Chain Management (USC Marshall School of Business) explains, a very complex supply chain has evolved to provide services and products “right away. In this process, we removed access to excess inventory and slack capacity. This phenomenon took away elasticity…[leaving] no room for any disruption… We’ve become dependent on each other’s capacities….”* I suppose one could think of our current circumstance as an analog of modern “print-on-demand” publishing. Amazon, for example, doesn’t keep a supply of its authors’ CreateSpace books. You want one; you get one. No giant warehouse stands idly by filled with thousands of unsold volumes. Like mayfly reproduction, books come and go in a moment, produced on the spot in the short term and only as the driving need for reproducing them arises.
 
Without the diversification of supply chain “nodes,” people in the second decade of the twenty-first century have become accustomed to the ready resupply process. But when Covid-19 threatened one of the world’s giant suppliers, China, the various nodes of production and transport suffered the interruption. Suddenly, the world became aware of its end-to-end supply chain vulnerability.
 
Covid-19 has presented businesses with a pause to think about how they operate on a global scale. As they await the restocking of store shelves, individuals pause, also, to think about their own mayfly-like existence.
 
*University of Southern California. 13 Mar 2020. Five questions on how coronavirus will impact the global supply chain. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-03-coronavirus-impact-global-chain.html   Accessed March 14, 2020.

“Birds of a feather,” they say, “flock together.” The “they” in this bit of common wisdom, is anyone who has ever observed groups. Not only birds, but also people like to associate with “their own kind.” Thus, fraternities, sororities, country clubs, neighborhoods, and networks of movers and shakers. The reasons for the flocking probably include having a sense of security, making the social environment predictable, and seeing mirror images in the faces that surround. This type of gregariousness can be both beneficial and disadvantageous. Beneficial when networking provides greater opportunities, for example, and disadvantageous when bias prevents networking outside the flock. What would happen—indeed, what does happen—when outside “birds” move into the flock’s neighborhood?
 
We seem not to have learned from our own brains that there is a compromise form of flocking. When Margarita Khariton, Xian Kong, Jian Quin, and Bo Wang observed the brain development in Schmidtea mediterrnea, a flatworm, they discovered that each neuron had about 12 similar neighboring neurons with interspersed different neurons.* As science writer Tom Abate explains, “no single neuron sits flush against its twin, while still allowing different types of complementary neurons to be close enough to work together to complete tasks.”**
 
Jammed into our heads are 8.6 X 10^10 neurons *** with about 1.5 X 10^14 synapses (give or take one or two). Jamming. That’s the word that the researchers use to describe cells grown in proximity. If the same pattern of development occurs in us as in that flatworm examined by Khariton and company, then our neurons, too, have neighbors that are not just more of the same. There is room in the brain neighborhood for differences; yet, the neighborhood can still function as identifiable units. Maybe the brain has something to teach, that differences do not inhibit function. And although we do not know—and may never know—whether or not different neuron neighbors enhance function in an identifiable brain region, we can’t rule out that they might somehow do so. Possibly, those intermixed neurons provide some as yet unknown support.
 
Unfortunately, we live in a time when differences draw us into the most inhibiting neighborhoods of intellectual isolation.****  
 
 
*Khariton, M., Kong, X., Qin, J. et al. Chromatic neuronal jamming in a primitive brain Nat. Phys. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0809-9 and
 
**Abate, Tom. 12 Mar 2020. Scientists discover the mathematical rules underpinning brain growth. Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-03-scientists-mathematical-underpinning-brain-growth.html
 
*** According to neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel. https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-sz-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=sz&p=how+many+neurons+in+the+human+brain#id=1&vid=daf28861944db27648f41389946adcd5&action=click
 
****And so, to my astonishment and maybe to yours, also, I recently saw a few “celebrities” wishing death by coronavirus on those with whom they disagree politically, and that means possibly on those whose work is part of a supply network on which they, regardless of their arrogance, depend.

Know that once popular song about not worrying because of some limiting phenomenon? Hal David and Burt Bacharach’s lyrics for "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" include the lines “’Cause, I’m never gonna stop the rain by complaining” and “Because I’m free, nothing’s worrying me.” The song won an Oscar for Best Original Song for the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. B. J. Thomas’s version became the No. 1 single in 1970 with more than 2 million copies sold. It was a “happy song,” advocating a lifestyle free from worry. “But there’s one thing I know/The blues they [the raindrops] send to meet me/Won’t defeat me/It won’t be long ‘till happiness steps up to greet me.” Positive message, right? Really, why should the rain put a damper on what we want to do in life, such as traveling where we wish to go?
 
Just great. Another exoplanet I can never visit. This one not only far away at 640 light-years, but an orb with a sunny side that rises to 2,400 degrees Celsius. I hate these limitations, you know, limitations on my freedom to go where I want to go and do what I want to do—and just because it’s raining there. But, hey, it makes sense not to visit a planet where the rainfall includes drops of liquid iron.* Yes, I said, “iron.”
 
Those accustomed to living in free societies without government travel restrictions, such as those imposed by totalitarian governments, don’t relish the idea of limited travel. Freedom to wander has long been a “right” in free societies, especially so in the affluent present. If you haven’t been on a vacation, you know someone who has. Very few people in the West have never traveled. If one has the means to travel…
 
But it just wouldn’t be prudent to go to planet WASP-76b, the “iron-rain” planet. It’s a place where jeopardy isn’t just a matter of question. If iron evaporates and condenses in its atmosphere, it’s a place of real jeopardy. Common sense says, “Stay away. Consider self-limiting your travel in that direction.”
 
So, in the spring of 2020, I’m advising you not to go to WASP-76b. “It won’t be long till happiness steps up to greet [you]…[You're] never gonna stop the rain by complaining.”
 
 
*Science News. 11 Mar 2020. Exoplanet where it rains iron discovered. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200311121832.htm  and www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200311121832.htm>

Is there anything more amazing than our undeniable physical relationship?  
 
In contrast, African elephants aren’t members of a single species. There are bush elephants and forest elephants, the latter smaller than the former and showing easily recognizable (to those in the know) differences in color, size, ear shape, tusk orientation, and (for those who can count) number of toenails on the front feet. Or, take red pandas.* To me, they appear indistinguishable, the zoologist in me never having reached maturity. But they divide into two subspecies like those elephants in Africa. In contrast, there’s only one kind of human, regardless of ostensible and real differences in blood type, color, shape, and size! All the other human species are gone, maybe because of us. We represent all hominin races that ever existed, carrying as we do, some of their genes into our present, possibly also carrying in our species guilt that we might have played a role in the others’ extinctions. Apparently, over the past few millions of years we hominin species ran the experiment on diversity, and settled on unity. How that “unity” manifests itself is at no time more evident than in times of crisis.
 
Anyway, I find it amazing that only one species of human inhabits Earth. If I look at other organisms represented by a single species or just a few species, like members of the monotremes, I see isolation. Think platypus. Think echidna. But we are ubiquitous. And apparently our antecedent human species and those that lived contemporaneously with our species until about 35,000 or 40,000 years ago (Think Neanderthals), were nearly ubiquitous. We’ve pushed our geographic range farther than any of those species, but they, like us, also migrated across continents and oceans (just not to Antarctica, South America or the isolated islands of the Pacific—as far as we know until we discover differently).
 
In traveling far and wide, the Neanderthals and the Denisovans must have met Romeo-and-Juliet-like and decided to get together romantically. Yes, Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred.** Not surprised? Neither am I. Especially since I, and possibly you, have some genetic tie to the Neanderthals and to some other hominin and primate species. Obviously, our very ancient forebears found cross-species love, or, should I say, cross-variation, cross subspecies love (I’ll define a species by its inability to reproduce fertile offspring with some similar, but genetically different group, that is, another species; the connections between hominins allowed for the transmission of genes through generations). This was a purposeful crossing of species.
 
So, now we have evidence that Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred, either consensually or forcefully. Such is the way of hominins. Homo sapiens also bred with Homo neanderthalensis. And now there also seems to be some other group that left its genetic imprint on West African humans, a group suspected to be Homo heidelbergensis.*** All this “crossing,” as I indicated, was purposeful.
 
We house the crossings in our DNA. And now, we live as a single species, admittedly with variations, but nevertheless, single, capable of breeding viable fertile offspring. Amazing unity. And this biochemical unity underlies “human” behaviors. Is there anything more amazing than our undeniably similar behaviors with regard to those basic needs we all learn about in Psych 101.
 
Across the planet, we see cultural differences that shape some behaviors, but always similar behaviors with regard to basic human needs and in response to similar stimuli. Look, for example, at the way people have responded to threats imposed by SARS, Covid-19, and Ebola. Look at the stock market fall in 1929 and the market fall in 2020. Someone sells, and on rumor, innuendo, or fear the Market falls. Fears of both the real and imagined drive a common hysteria. Those mythical aliens who are watching from a distance must be puzzled by an organism that proclaims individuality for its members, yet also acts in unison over broad swaths of the planet during times of perceived stress. The petri dish of society belies claims of diversity and reveals our unity of behaviors. As they watch from their hovering spacecraft, aliens see humans acting like magnetotactic bacteria.**** “Look,” they say, “how they swarm.”
 
And is there anything more amazing than our undeniable, self-spiting foolish counterproductive swarming motivated by cultural, religious, philosophical, and political traditions. Apparently, some in the so-called mainstream media of 2020 would prefer to hype an economic disaster and a pandemic even when their own economic and physical well-being might be jeopardized. And the groups they influence follow in unison, finding in a perceived enemy someone to blame for the spread of a virus. Scapegoating is a common response of the media and opposition party members in times of uncertainty (and elections). But who is to blame? Viruses that threaten our species with pandemics are invisible to the naked eye. It’s not as though one is sitting in the stands of a baseball game, where one often hears the warning “Heads up!” for a foul ball. One needs an electron microscope to see viruses. No one can shout, “Look out” or “Duck” until after viruses begin their invasion. And those who would blame people who serve as the initial hosts of cross-species viruses—possibly, in the case of Covid-19 the bat-to-human hypothesis—fail to realize that whereas the practice of eating bats might be the hidden pathway for this 2020 pathogen, the analogous practice of eating chickens might be the pathway for another bird flu in the near future. Being part of a single species makes us vulnerable to any cross-species pathogen.
 
And isn’t it amazing that viruses can jump from species to species? Doesn’t that speak to the relationships among Earth’s current animal populations? Here we are, separate, and yet tied to many life-forms. And among ourselves, claiming separation but acting as one when threats arise.  
 
But is there anything more amazing than a species that eliminated all rival species for control of a planet now relishing its own potential destruction for the sake of culture, religion, philosophy, politics, or just plain old envy and territorialism? All that interbreeding over all those millennia has produced a species that outwardly proclaims diversity as its members, divided by self-imposed differences, behave similarly. Would we be as opposed to one another if those other hominins had survived into the present, giving all humans of our kind some competitors, some other scapegoats? If only that single Denisovan had said, “You’re not my type. Get lost,” to that Neanderthal or that West African had said something similar to that Heidelbergensian, and the Neanderthal had in turn rejected the advances of that lusting ancestor of ours, we would be more like those pandas and elephants, seemingly similar but co-habiting the planet as separate subspecies with true differences.  
 
Instead, our singular species dominates the planet, claims diversity, and exhibits destructive and self-destructive behaviors in the face of threats and changes to our physical, religious, cultural, philosophical, or political status quo.
 
Like magnetotactic bacteria aggregating in an electromagnetic field, humans gather and behave similarly when threats to the status quo emerge. And one of those behaviors is scapegoating. Another is hoarding. Yet another is hiding.
 
Those unintentional cross-species pathogens find a way into our midst. Obsessed as we are with finding fault in one another, we fail to see the insidious crossers until they make themselves part of who we are just as we made Neanderthals, Denisovans, and possibly Heidelbergensians part of who we are. The difference between us and those pathogens that drive us to panic is that the latter have no intention in doing what they do whereas we intentionally crossed species.
 
*http://www.sci-news.com/biology/two-species-red-pandas-08203.html
 
 
** https://phys.org/news/2020-02-earliest-interbreeding-event-ancient-human.html
 
***https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5573301/Modern-day-people-West-Africa-carry-genes-unknown-species-human-ancestor.html
 
****https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-pty-pty_maps&hsimp=yhs-pty_maps&hspart=pty&p=video+of+magnetotacgtic+bacteria#id=3&vid=25933849b4d8aa99af725b1f116d6962&action=view

​It’s virtually impossible for anyone to sail on the sea of life without potentially passing by or into some maelstrom like disease, socioeconomic collapse, natural disaster, troubled relationship, family loss, or war. So, as I sit in the crow’s nest of today, March 4, 2020, I scan the horizon, looking for swirling water I might avoid by a simply adjusting the jib or even by jibbing. Changing the angle of the jib would allow me to proceed by piloting a course that avoids the whirlpool. Jibbing would keep me under the doldrums of inaction.
 
Because all of us, to use the Homeric phrase, must sail the “wine dark sea,” all have to choose between jibbing and swinging the jib. Personally, I prefer the latter, even though by doing so, I reroute. What’s your preference, sailor? Are you going to jib or realign the jib?

​Although it is not in every work, the search for identity is a theme that writers have woven into all genres of literature. Some authors have their characters search through time consciousness. Proust, for example, and Updike, too; both belong on the list of authors who have used time as the basis of “identification.” The search, however, isn’t limited to awareness of or relationship to past or present. Other authors have used love, death, war, morality, coming-of-age, survival and heroism, and even society as the background against which characters seek and find—or lose—their identities. The theme of identity permeates literature with good reason: We’re always in the business of either finding out who we are or refining who we are.
 
Identity is a complex issue, of course. We speak of “wearing masks” that both define us (our Egos) to those we meet and hide us (our Ids) from those with whom we interact. That we behave in certain ways, profess certain beliefs, and adjust our appearances for both the daily grind and for “special” occasions, indicates a rather common obsession with identity. On a very basic level, the search for and maintenance of identity makes us into lexicographers of the word human. We are nothing if at not first “human.” Everything else, especially identity, is piled onto that elusive concept, a concept to which we have ascribed different attributes. Just as the dictionary writers add new meanings, new definitions, so we often redefine human, that is, what it means to “be human,” and what it means to be “a human (being).”
 
Circular definitions (“a banana is a banana”) usually enter the discussion when one tries to explain either identity or human being. With arguable degrees of success, we’ve been in the business of trying to define what it means to be human for all our intellectual history. If you go to a site like Dictionary.com, you’ll see that human means “of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or having the nature of people.” Yeah. So what does that meaning mean? A banana is a banana. It’s banana-like. Not very helpful, right? Try out your own definition right now; give it the circularity test. Go ahead, really. I’ll give you a moment since you are giving me a moment. I’m serious; I can wait…
 
Let me guess. You’re thinking, “Does he want me to define the modifier human? Or does he want me to say what ‘a human’ is? Adjective or noun? What are we looking at here? Can I define human being? And why does he want me to define either? Is it because there appears to be an obvious relationship between having an identity and being (a) human? Isn’t identity a psychological concept, but the concepts of “human” or “being a human” are biological (sedentary bipedal mammal with keyboard)? As always, when I read this guy, I have to ask, ‘Where’s this headed?’”
 
When I was a teenager, I had a discussion with friends that was far beyond my ability to form anything but the simplest of arguments on identity and the “nature” of human. But maybe that’s where some discussions always end: In simplicity, or, maybe in reduction. Surely, though I can’t remember the details of that debate, in my youthful limitations, I argued as much from ignorance and emotion as I did from logic. And, of course, when emotion walks onto the stage of debate, reduction usually ensues, sometimes often with raised voice, as though volume makes an argument. Take questions on ethics and morality, for example. Take, identity and the definition of “human.” Or, address the very difficult matter of abortion as an example tied to defining human and identity. Complex and controversial as the issue of abortion is, it centers on what it means to “be human” and how we define human and identify. In that reduction, we see two fundamental positions: Pro-choice and pro-life.
 
Among the arguments of pro-choicers one hears that 1) “It’s” the woman’s body to do whatever she wants to do with “it”—an argument that uses it to represent both the woman and the fetus, i.e., the identity of either depending upon the point of view—and 2) The fetus is a parasite, an inconvenient (from different perspectives) one to be kept and tolerated or discarded at will. Among the arguments of pro-lifers one hears that 1) All life has value and is even “sacred” and 2) The unborn also have rights because they have individual identities. I’ll admit both groups would argue against my reduction of their positions, but bear with me for a moment.
 
Reducing the arguments for and against abortion to just two representative positions each would most likely be deemed unacceptable by either side because neither side wants to accept the simplistic definition imposed by the other side. After all, the tenets of both sides are also coupled with personal and group histories, including both joy and sadness, confusion and surety, hope and despair, adherence to or rejection of philosophical, religious, and cultural traditions, and physical and psychological well-being. And then the circumstances of conceiving add complexity, such as in rape and incest, lust and love, inheritance and image, drive to continue the species, though in any or in all of these the fetus is, in fact, not an active participant, so it lacks any intention, good or evil, positive or negative, beneficial or inimical in its own conception. If we who are defined as “human” have so much difficulty with our own identity and definition in spite of our extensive experiential backgrounds, the fetus has infinite difficulty because “it” has no intellectual or experiential tradition, personal or cultural, to use as a point of departure.
 
The argument against the two pro-lifers’ positions I mention above entails, I believe, a rejection of the principal assumptions in those arguments. First, to say that life has value and is sacred is to speak axiomatically. It is somewhat self-serving position because in saying “Life has value,” one can ensure (and insure) his or her own life’s value. Pro-choicers would argue that neither value nor sacredness is self-evident, that both, in fact, are cultural baggage handed down through inculcated philosophies and theologies. Both might be psychological mechanisms that foster the continuation of the species (Kids, can’t live with them; can’t stop reproducing them). If (human) life has value, then the living live to reproduce, saving what has value. Second, to say the fetus has rights is to impose a legal tradition that has not permeated all cultures. The Romans, for example, sometimes abandoned malformed infants. And around the planet both today and historically, fully-formed humans have been denied “rights” and have been enslaved. Thomas Jefferson’s “unalienable rights” aside, not everyone accepts as a truth self-evident some universal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Probably billions of fully mature and rational humans have been treated as “sub-humans.” In this reduced argument for pro-choicers and against pro-lifers, I ascribe to them an ethical or moral system that is definitively situational. But isn’t that their position? Otherwise, there are moral absolutes, and the axiomatic thinking of the pro-lifers gains weight.  
 
The two pro-choice arguments I enumerate are subject to both a bit of science and legal precedent by the pro-lifers. No, I’m not talking about Roe v. Wade (though the woman who was at the center of that ruling, Norma McCorvey, became in 1995 an advocate for pro-life). Rather I’m looking at the use, among other purposes, of DNA to convict criminals.
 
Let me start with the science and make it personal and then with justice. You are related to your biological mother. You carry some of her genetic heritage, but not all of it. Some of your DNA is yours exclusively. Since the OJ Simpson trial, the public has become more aware of the ramifications of this separate DNA, and TV crime show detectives and lawyers use DNA evidence to catch murderers (or identify either the pathological or the pathogenic). In “real life” detectives and prosecutors also use DNA to pin crime upon criminal and in some instances to free the falsely accused and imprisoned. Our legal system accepts that one’s DNA belongs to that person and to no one else, so it is admissible as evidence. Now if the pro-choice argument of “it’s my body” holds, then logically, the body that commits the crime is also the body of the mother—or an extension of it—because any singularity of body is demonstrable by its DNA. Short of convicting the offspring, the justice system could put the blame on the mother whose biologically identifiable body, or clone, committed the crime. Foolish argument? Maybe, but it is a logical extension of the “it’s my body” position.
 
We all know that we use DNA to convict or exonerate the offspring. So, legally we are in a contradictory bind. Do we accept the individuality of the offspring as defined by its DNA, or do we accept the joint ownership of the body (or should I say, joint ownership by the DNA?)? If one takes the “it’s my body” argument to its logical conclusion, then the current justice system imprisons only half of the real criminal. Of course, pro-choicers would say, “This is absurd.” (Not an argument) The mother neither participated in the crime nor had criminal intentions. (An argument) But is it absurd? How does it do anything other than reveal a basic contradiction in an Either/Or? Either the fetus is one with the mother fully or not one with the mother. How is it that pro-choicers are willing to accept DNA as indicative of individual human identity in one instance but not in the other? Is this where Emotion steps onto the stage of debate and loudly shouts an axiom with the face of Janus? Should pro-lifers shout in return, “Free the imprisoned! And put their mothers in jail”? Should the pro-choicers exclaim, “It’s not an Either/Or! Rather, it’s a Both/And”? DNA identifies both sentient individual and sentient clone. “It’s my body; it’s my body; IT’S MY BODY! That ‘whatever you want to call it’ has its own behavior’ as anyone who has ever put a hand on a pregnant woman’s stomach knows.”
 
But let’s say the pro-choicer decides that the DNA argument is specious at best. Now what does the pro-lifer argue? There’s always that other argument (#2), that the fetus is a parasite. It is true, obviously, that the fetus gets its life-sustaining chemicals from its host and simultaneously gets a safe house provided courteously by that same hostess. But here we go again with that stubborn DNA argument. Parasites have distinct DNA, and they don’t have the same physiology, form, or complex makeup of their hosts; but more importantly, they don’t turn into organisms that carry a considerable amount of their host’s DNA as a fetus does. And parasites don’t find sustenance and growth outside the host; parasites like malaria run their reproductive cycles within the host. “Human” (for want of a better word here) fetuses do not reproduce within the hostess, and they can become adult humans. With some care, the most premature of fetuses have been known to survive early ejection from the hostess and to grow into self-sustaining and reproducing humans. “Parasite”? I think not, at least not in the lexicon of biologists.
 
Obviously, there’s a divide between the two sides of the debate. Pro-lifers accept an axiomatic right to life and the undeniable separate DNA of the fetus. Pro-choicers reject axiomatically derived values and favor the desire or perceived needs of the hostess who decides to abort a “clone” or “parasite.” (But they, also, rely on axioms) The argument has in the past few years gone Roman, with some defending the post-birth life of an abortion survivor and others defending the post-birth demise of the aborted left in the wilderness to die or be raised by wolves. Senate Bill 311, designed to amend title 18, US Code, “to prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion,” has been defeated in 2020. Essentially, being born alive isn’t in the eyes of the government at this time a guarantee of any of those rights enumerated by Jefferson, at least not a guarantee of those rights for infants, or should I say, post-birth organisms capable of becoming, through some transitional developmental  biochemistry, mature human adults.  
 
And all this brings us to more questions, such as 1) At what age do Jeffersonian rights apply? 2) Who determines the rights and the extent of rights of others? 3) If there is no axiomatic right to life, then what justifies keeping you alive if society, or another member of society, deems you a burden subject to euthanasia or murder? Pro-choicers might argue that the Jeffersonian rights apply at the age of reason, that those rights are not absolutes, but rather situational and subject to change as culture changes, and that a mature sentient being can decide to terminate the life of another on the basis of economy, resources, or convenience (of whatever nature). Pro-lifers would reject those opinions, arguing, for example, that those who suffer some temporary psychological ailment that disrupts their ability to reason would make them subject to termination as the Nazis argued during WWII. Similarly, if humans enter the “age of reason” gradually, say between four and seven years old (I don’t know when), then what happens when they exit the “age of reason” in dementia. Is there a sliding frame during which the demented are partially rational and partially irrational, partly endowed with certain unalienable rights that gradually slip away with increased brain erosion or loss of self-identification? But then if “reason” is the guide, then one has to ask whether or not any “unreasonable” act at any time of life warrants others to consider terminating the “unreasonable actor.” (If so, goodbye many impulsive high school and college students)
 
There is, of course, the argument both sides could make from the “lesser of two evils.” That isn’t a new dilemma. In the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna, the bowman, questions whether it is justifiable to kill his kinsmen among the rival Kauravas. Krishna, Vishnu’s avatar and Arjuna’s cousin, tells him that in a justifiable war he would be justified in his killing because one doesn’t kill the soul, just the body. Krishna favors the Arjuna and the Pandavas in the battle at Kurukshetra because in his eyes, the Kauravas would usher in a culture of hedonism and self-centeredness, whereas the Pandavas would usher in a culture of Dharma. In the abortion debate we appear to have a strange and topsy-turvy version of Kurukshetra. Those who would favor emphasis on personal needs, a modern version of Kauravas, believe nothing of significance is killed, just a soulless body. The modern Pandavas believe there is a “sin” in killing kinsmen, as Arjuna believed before Krishna convinced him he fought a just war.
 
We know from DNA studies that the fetus is, in fact, closely related to the mother, a kinsmen. Every abortion is the battle at Kurukshetra reenacted, the two sides of the debate falling in the camp of either the Pandavas or the Kauravas. The Pandavas argue that their opponents in the debate, the pro-choicers, are defenders of Anrita and the dissolution of universal moral law (Rita), a dissolution that necessarily follows from their acceptance of the identifiable Self as the sole authority on (human) rights. The Kauravas argue that the Pandavas fool themselves by thinking that there is Rita (Rta), that the Self, however it identifies according to situational necessities, is the decider and that “sin” or wrongdoing in almost any religious sense, is simply a cultural construct. Further, they argue that the only right is the right of the one who gets to decide what is right, what is “human,” and what identity is significant.
 
No doubt the pro-choicers will continue to say, “It’s my body” and “It’s a parasite.” And pro-lifers will continue to argue for the identification of the fetus as “human” with rights independent of its hostess because its inevitable future is a “human” presence. That arguing is not going to change until both can agree on what human means, what constitutes identity, and what a human is. Kurukshetra is an ongoing battle centered on defining the terms human, human identity, and a human. The abortion debate is a re-enactment of Kurukshetra.
 
After about 60 million artificial abortions in the United States since Roe v. Wade, where do you stand? And because volume isn’t an argument, don’t shout your answer.