Is it the Tower of Babel all over again?

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Genesis 11:1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” 8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel -because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

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Mariner wishes sincerely that everyone would subscribe to the Atlantic magazine. It publishes articles that look at reality in a plain, nonpolitical way. Mariner cannot share adequately a real world metaphor in the May edition but the reader will get more from reading the article themselves at

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

The gods of social media have brought down the tower called ‘United States of America’ – a land for which “nothing would be impossible”. We must, in some way, perhaps through small, hands-on, face-to-face behavior begin again to build one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Ancient Mariner

Puzzled

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Mariner’s three alter egos, Guru, Amos and Chicken Little, are apprehensive. It seems the entire world is a pot of stew about to boil out of the pot making a huge mess. Perhaps it is similar to a hot air balloon slowly leaking air until the acceleration of gravity pulls faster and faster toward the ground. Perhaps it is more like a circus tent free of grounding stakes and the wind is growing stronger.

The rules that have governed mankind since the Luddites objected to new weaving technology in 1779 are unraveling as a new dimension of automation brings stress to the planet. It is a universal stress not limited to one circumstance like weaving or one nation like England, it is international, it is cultural, and it is personal. All the while the planet is tinkering with a new habitat for life.

Well into his eighties, mariner admits to being a Luddite. His reality began crumbling with the assassinations captured in the song ‘Abraham, Martin and John’. A poignant memory for mariner’s generation, the lyrics are below:

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend John?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?

Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?

And we’ll be free

Someday soon, it’s gonna be

One day

 

Has anybody seen my old friend Bobby?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

I thought I saw him walkin’

Up over the hill

With Abraham, Martin and John

 

Consequently, today the race war of 1860 has never ended. The Camelot vision collapsed in the 1960s because of the unpopular Vietnam War and a growing conservative swing in local government. Also today, economic theory is engaged in a war, the philosophy of individual freedom in a democratic society is crumbling and international politics is collapsing.

So this post is about none of that. It’s about puzzles. There are two: the first is an exercise in arithmetic; the second, taken from a Zen calendar, is a true puzzle.

  1. There was a shipwreck at sea and Buck, Lance and Jack were washed ashore on a small island. Upon reaching shore they promptly fell asleep from exhaustion. A short time later, Buck awoke and saw that a box of bananas had been washed ashore. Buck ate one third of the bananas and went back to sleep. Lance soon awoke and upon seeing the box of bananas ate one third of what was left and then fell asleep. Jack woke next and assumed that the other two hadn’t eaten any bananas, so he ate one third of what remained. When Jack had finished, there were eight bananas left. How many bananas were in the box originally? [answer in next post]
  2. A quote from Niels Bohr: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” Is this plausible? Is it logical? Is this how conspiracy theory works? [Send mariner an answer, he doesn’t have one]

 

Ancient Mariner

Did you know?

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Not only can one make ghost guns, one can make ghost kidneys.

Denver, Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, El Paso, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix and San Diego may not be sustainable by the end of the 21st century because of water shortages.

Independent local election campaigns no longer exist. The concept of local campaign-local-citizen-related funding no longer exists. Local citizen funding as an indicator of local citizen interest is a victim to giant PACs who can fund regional broadcasters, who can saturate local markets even if a local election committee wanted to spend money; PACs can dominate social media. The republican reelection campaign PAC alone is spending $141 million on district races. Three cheers for totalitarianism!

Elon Musk tweets are the new Trump tweets: Have you noticed cable news shows increased programming around Musk tweets?

Oklahoma’s four abortion clinics have been overrun with demand from out-of-state patients. When a team of academic researchers posed as pregnant people and called the Oklahoma clinics at the beginning of March, all four told the callers they couldn’t schedule them for an appointment.

Used car prices are a staggering 35% higher than last March. Many consumer products will never retreat back to pre-Covid days.

Syria is gearing up its military to join Russia against Ukraine.

Guru speculates that as many as three different regional wars may erupt similar to the Ukraine-Russian war because of regional, longstanding issues:

The Middle East War. See the map for possible players. Some players like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran are seeking more power through unification but common human struggle exists throughout the region. The West counterparts may involve Europe, Greece, Israel, India and the United States.

 

 

The Southeast Asia War. See the map for possible players. This is a China-centric war that includes a current sore spot, Tibet, where a current conflict is China’s genocidal policy against Uyghur Buddhists. Beyond Tibet are a number of nations that depend on independent trade that China would like to own – Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Malaysia. The West counterparts may include India, the United States, the Philippines, Taiwan and perhaps if China acts out in a certain manner, the third regional war for economic control of the Pacific Rim will join in. Other nations would join in like Australia, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Canada and perhaps Columbia and Mexico. In the expanded regional war for the Pacific, Russia and North Korea would step in as China’s allies.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why?

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Mariner is a ‘why’ person. An intensely why person. He instinctively searches for the broadest explanation of why something is. Today’s world is an enigma. Why is democracy cracking around the world? Why are autocratic politics rampaging in the United States? Why do Africa and South America lag behind the northern hemisphere in social and economic sophistication? Why have more than 16,000 animals gone extinct? Why has the Earth begun to behave erratically?

One can speculate a credible ‘why’ for each question but the difficulty is finding a ‘why’ that encompasses all the inequities happening at the same time. Add in a smaller ‘why’ each for artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, racial disruption and a myriad other societal disruptions. Why is all this happening at once?

One can seek large assumptions like the Earth is changing from one eon to the next, dragging everything along with it like tin cans dragging behind a marriage getaway car. One can blame humanity for destroying planetary ethics, therefore heading to some kind of Armageddon.

An assumption that is likely to be true is that the temperature and climate of the Earth have been unusually stable for the last 100,000 years – a time when the human species became intelligent and spread around the world. Scientists are finding evidence that global weather is changing not only because of human activity but in addition the planet itself is provoking change; it has something to do with the axial cycle of the planet as it circles the Sun. But why is all this other stuff happening at the same time?

Those with spiritual insight may lay a broad veil of immorality across contemporary history. Those with economic insight may suggest that global resources are dwindling, causing economic imbalance. Social critics may claim that humanity has trashed the planet. Perhaps, but why do the issues all come together at once?

It is easy to pass into fantastical theories about how all this relates. But is there a rational reason, perhaps subliminal to normal existential experiences that suggest a common theme for why everything is changing at once? In some unspoken manner all these issues are like the ingredients in a cake: they are linked in one reality. What confounds the issue is that it is not like dominoes falling in a line, it is all dominoes falling over at once. Why?

Mariner’s wife is the Blog’s Poetess Extraordinaire. She suggested a poem by Pattiann Rogers which suggests the ultimate ‘why’ is perpetual decay or as mariner’s son would say, entropy. This seemingly instantaneous collapse has been happening all along bit by bit and, like the game Jenga, it is time for all to fall down.

But why now?

Ancient Mariner

Happy Easter

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Even if the weather isn’t cooperating, Spring is leaping forward. Mariner’s seed trays are full of little plants eager to be put in the garden. Just today he received red onion plants; they must go directly into the garden bed. Also just today, the weather was mild enough for him to prepare the garden bed for those onions. Mariner is grossly out of shape.

Mariner truly can’t handle his entire garden anymore. Each year he makes a deal with Mother Nature to take care of an increasing part of the garden he can’t manage. He has mentioned in past posts about his partnership with moles to control Japanese Beetles. That worked out well.

He discovered a fine looking weed (perhaps a Speedwell variety) that covers the ground as completely as grass and has a tiny white flower. Mariner plans to use it in some beds and places where grass just doesn’t want to grow – and the ground cover doesn’t need to be mowed!

Given the advantage of living in retirement and thereby protected from chimpanzian aggression to survive, mariner’s need to compete with nature has subsided. Mother Nature has been running the evolution show for 3.2 billion years since the first microbial sludge pumped oxygen into a methane atmosphere. If one can pause for a moment while suppressing the anxieties of modern human life, one realizes that Mother Nature is the real, educated, experienced boss of the biosphere AND humans – who are a troublesome creation to be sure.

While the human version of a natural biosphere involves everything from lawn Nazis to massive open pit mining complete with poisonous waste, in fact Mother Nature knows what really works in the long run, human evolution notwithstanding.

So mariner lets Mother Nature manage what he cannot manage. It actually is entertaining to watch how she meters out the advantages and disadvantages to all living things as they take their place in the biosphere and in mariner’s yard. True, the yard is no French castle garden, but such presentation is not of value to Mother Nature.

One annoying element that is out of control (from mariner’s point of view) is rabbits. They are highly destructive to vegetables and flowers alike. Humans are to blame because they decided to live in large, crowded towns where rabbit predators choose not to go. Subject to the sins of his own kind, mariner must play the role of rabbit predator.

The world of life is fascinating when human judgments are set aside. Take a long moment to visit a naturalized park to see what reality really looks like.

Ancient Mariner

Marching Forward

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֎ As if there weren’t enough disruption to what reality is, the age of cryptocurrency is coming to our governments. Cities and states, as well as other nations, already are at the stage of experimenting with blockchain data storage. Let’s hope it at least eliminates standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. In the recent past mariner has been refused his purchase with cash, requiring a credit card – now what, anyone have change for a bitcoin?

The purported asset in blockchain is that no one ‘owns’ the data or can secretly manipulate values – which is a common practice in dictatorships. Let’s hope blockchain storage can alleviate the fears of the republican states that want to outlaw open elections.

֎ The untold story today is the desperate condition of the low income financial class. More than 11.4 million renters are behind on rent, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; Over 300,000 black female single parent families have been evicted; white female single parent families aren’t far behind.

Add to this a new press for charity food centers and low income housing opportunities (which don’t exist). Our own law abiding citizens are no better off than the homeless children in immigration facilities (another sin on US society). Sadly, mariner sees no sympathy from our disabled governments. The reader and mariner must make every effort to ease the undeserved pain in these unfortunate families.

֎ [Inflation Footnote] In an effort to turn a depressing, terrible national situation into something with personal value, mariner has made a game, if that’s the appropriate word, of trying to alter his financial overhead by the going rate of inflation. For example:

Mariner drinks a lot of coffee. He isn’t a connoisseur, he’s after the caffeine. Typically mariner will finish a pot plus some each day. Each morning he pours out a cup or two of yesterday’s coffee and makes a fresh pot. Recently, his online supplier advised him that each pound of coffee will cost $2.50 more because of a notably bad growing year for coffee in South America and because of inflation.

To modify his behavior to account for the increased cost, mariner preserves yesterday’s leftover coffee and drinks it before he makes a fresh pot. He feels successful in his adjustment which, when calculated, amounts to an increase of 8 percent in coffee cup availability, thus offsetting the increased cost – at least when compared to inflation.

This is a con on himself to allow him to feel successful in combating inflation but to tell the truth, it does not block the depression that comes from the terrible state of millions of desperate citizens. The governments aren’t up to the job – this is a citizen’s responsibility. Don’t storm the Capital; storm the charitable sources to help even in one’s own neighborhood. Find a residence for a family that doesn’t have one; send a check to any number of charitable organizations.

Ancient Mariner

Inflation 2022

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It is no surprise that lower income families, retirees on fixed income and debt-laden families are suffering under inflation much more harshly than those with higher income. An individual bringing home minimum wage will have to pay proportionately more for necessary commodities and food than a higher income individual.

For example, a person may bring home, after deductions, about $250/week. Because of a shortage in low income housing, as much as 50 percent of the individual’s income will be for rent. The remaining $125/week must purchase all other consumables, children’s expenses and fossil fuel needs.

If inflation rises by 7 percent as it has in just 4 months, the individual doesn’t have $125/week; they have $116/week. Mariner’s grocery shopping jumped by 15 percent. If the individual had shopped at mariner’s supermarket, their net value would be reduced by more than 7 percent.

Of course inflation affects everyone. Inflation inflicts tragedy on the poor but even ‘middle class’ families need to adjust spending patterns to minimize the higher cost of family living. What follows are suggested modifications for offsetting the loss of spending power:

  • Have two dinners each week that are meatless. Fruit salads, meatless vegetable pasta, bean soup are much less expensive without meat and, in fact, better for you.
  • Move away from pre-packaged, ready-to-eat foods. Does the reader remember how to use flour, rice and eggs?
  • How many channels on the smart TV are paid for? Cut back by half. Spend more time with your family – that’s free.
  • Many families have a weekend night out. How about switching to a night out every other week or not at all?
  • Adjust the furnace thermostat down by three degrees and wear a sweater – raise it for air conditioning.
  • Analyze auto trips per week. Find a way to stretch those trips to 10 days. A good game for this category would be to shop less frequently but limit the amount to what the old schedule would have purchased in a shorter time.
  • Alcohol consumption along with snacks is relatively expensive. Cut back by half or more; perhaps this is a good time to start a serious diet.

These ideas are offered to help the reader develop a mindset that lessens the impact of inflation. Mariner is positive that there are many more ideas the reader can conger.

Ancient Mariner

It is time for change . . .

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. . . Let’s hope the change will be productive. Mariner, especially with the input of Amos, knows he complains a lot. In this post, however, mariner simply is sharing evidence about why the nation is in dangerous disarray. Mariner will share with the reader his personal experiences which show the extent of fragmentation this nation suffers.

First, accept the fact that mariner is an old geezer with many of the typical maladies that come with old age. One malady among others is a lung issue. When mariner was young he suffered lung damage while working in an industrial factory. The resulting years since have been normal with no effects but in recent years the lungs are suffering a gradual decline.

Each year when mariner gets his general physical, three different pulmonologists have offered him a prescription that ‘may’ slow the decline. It is important to know that this prescription costs $10,000 each month. The firm that sells this prescription has arranged for some off-shoot firm to pay $8,000 in his behalf.

To each pulmonologist mariner said, “I will die before I accept that prescription.” This is the point of truth about the condition of our society: The CEO of the pharmaceutical firm that sells this drug each year makes $2.4 million in base salary. If mariner pays him 10 thousand/month, he will let mariner live longer.

This is the result of forty years of unbridled capitalism in the United States. This is the underlying cause of Trumpism and direct attacks on the principles of the Constitution. Working classes statistically make less today than they did forty years ago (Minimum wage in 1980 was $5/hour; that equates today to $19.50/hour). Mariner can throw many charts and comparisons at the reader that show a rapidly growing poverty class – coupled with a rapidly growing billionaire class. In past posts, he has demonstrated the social stratification between post-college life and labor class life – including the deliberate, premeditated elimination of unions.

On the society front, mariner has complained continuously about abuse by big data technology; he will not belabor the issue except to say that the right to live an individual life centered on the existential experience of that life is under great threat by a capitalistically driven technology.

Human life has lost its priority to a handful of dollars.

The pandemic is a dreadful way to force to the surface deep, embedded values that are fracturing this nation.

Ancient Mariner

Farming

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From a number of sources, mariner has picked up a theme that the combination of pressure to increase farm production, increased regulations about farming methods, the need to continue the use of fossil fuel versus the pressure to revamp farm equipment, has put farmers in a target zone being fired upon from every direction.

Also making smoke is an antiquated supply chain which puts the cost of farming on the shoulders of farmers while a monopolized processing chain takes an easy profit from controlled pricing to the public. The most blatant example is the chicken industry where a corporation like Perdue avoids farming costs with a minimum payment for each chicken but gathers great profit from a tightly manipulated sales strategy. Through mergers and buyouts, beef processing, more or less, has been consolidated into four large beef processing firms – which caused a stink during the pandemic because it didn’t take much to shut down four processing firms caused by Covid absences.

Add to this pressured environment dysfunctional state and federal legislatures and rising inflation and being a farmer isn’t a quiet, countryside experience. Perhaps like mariner, they may yearn for the old horse and plow days; at least back then meat supply was dealt with directly at the farm.

The reason there is growing urgency in the farming sector has to do with a number of circumstances that are worldwide. One is the fact that in a couple of decades food production around the world may feed only half the world’s population. Another is the impact of climate change on huge regions; The U.S southwest, for example, is a major supplier of hay for beef farmers but already the temperature is growing too hot and droughts are setting new records. Along the Gulf Coast flooding and very heavy storms are wreaking havoc. This is the story around the world.

Keep an eye out for news from the farm sector; it may be the most serious situation for the next generation.

Ancient Mariner

It is about the times

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Mariner’s wife has a desktop Zen calendar. Most of the time mariner struggles to grasp the point of the quote but today it couldn’t be clearer or more apropos to these times:

“The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its meaninglessness.”

We must find our dignity within ourselves – in the world today the reader won’t find it anywhere else. There is no news outlet broadcasting good times. Even marginal advances in humanism and technology are fraught with negatives and controversy. There is the Putin war, the totalitarian legislatures, the republican autocracy, the uncontrolled metaverse, the age of misinformation, global warming, pandemics, housing shortages, inflation, skyrocketing medical expense, China, North Korea, societal disintegration, the age of mass murders, the destructive influence of venture capital, uncontrolled private equity, growing plutocracy, Christian-based Trumpism, abusive tax structures that protect the wealthy, ignorance about the disappearing biosphere, disrespecting the very immigrants who will bolster the national population and its GDP.

Okay, mariner will stop. Oddly, it seemed almost like good news when the news outlets broadcast the passing of Madeline Albright; it wasn’t, of course, but it seemed better because it carried no angst. Bless her; she helped run a more civil nation in a different time.

Within ourselves we must find stability, sameness, a reason we exist. We must use behaviors that show responsibility for others, by doing what we can to help victims of our age.

We must separate our emotions from our thinking. Pure, educated thinking is in short supply today. We must act with vision and wisdom.

As the Zen quote implies, we must search for a world with meaning.

Ancient Mariner