Category Archives: Musings

In the news

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֎ An interesting poll from GALLUP. What’s interesting is that in one year China jumped significantly over Russia as the greatest enemy of the United States:

Americans’ Perceptions of the U.S.’s Greatest Enemy

What one country anywhere in the world do you consider to be the United States’ greatest enemy today?

Feb 3-21    Feb 3-20      Change
%    % pct. pts.
China 45 22 23
Russia 26 23 3
North Korea/Korea 9 12 -3
Iran 4 19 -15
Iraq 2 7 -5
Afghanistan 1 1 0
United States itself 1 1 0
Mexico 1 — 1
Saudi Arabia — 1 -1
Middle East (non-specific) — 1 -1
Japan — 1 -1
Israel — 2 -2
Syria — 1 -1
Pakistan — 1 -1

The reader must take note that this poll coincides with the coronavirus pandemic. Still, despite the economic catastrophe affecting every nation, China’s size and fast rising GDP (7 percent) makes that nation look more healthy and successful than the US. Further, the cultural differences cause concern as China continues to squeeze individual rights and continues virtual genocide against the Uighur and Kazak Muslims in Xinjiang Province. Finally, modern technology has opened a new arena in spying and warfare that makes every nation paranoid.

֎ While the politicians, public, fossil fuel corporations, press and social media continue bickering whether global warming exists, Federal agencies are taking scientific information seriously. The agencies are trying to figure out models of projection that will predict damage.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Housing Finance Agency and NASA all have met with analytical firms to explore tools that will help protect taxpayers, banks and homes from rising seas, worsening rainstorms and severe droughts linked to climate change.

Mariner advises readers not to invest in coastal properties – especially in Florida where the peninsula will shrink by one fifth including everything below Lake Okeechobee – places like West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Naples and the Keys.

֎ Has the reader seen the news clips of folks on spring break? Sigh. Because mariner’s wife is brave and dutiful and has ventured into the outside world, he has been in virtual quarantine. He has spoken in person only to three other individuals in a year. The vaccination occurred so fast that he didn’t even speak to the technician. Mariner is old and fossilized but he is concerned what this year of isolation has done to elementary school children. Prepubescent children suffer subconsciously and will carry silent aberrations for the rest of their lives.

֎ A growing strategy by the GOP is to blame Joe for immigration numbers. Mariner suggests no President of any party, no authoritarian figurehead can alter the growing migration issue not only from Latin countries but from every country into every country around the globe. The reason: weak global economics and changing climate. Even squirrels know to migrate to mariner’s feeding station when there’s a foot of snow on the ground.

֎ Not in the news but referencing the post about pop psych, mariner is reminded that the pop psych terms ‘inductive’ and ‘deductive’ are similar to ‘what’ and ‘why’.

Ancient Mariner

 

What kind of a person are you?

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When mariner was young his father was attending seminary. His father was entertained by pop psychology, a term that implied, through simplistic descriptions, the behaviorisms of human beings. Mariner has carried this shorthand forward and often identifies someone in simplistic ‘pop psych’ terms. Below are two examples which the reader may recall from older posts but are worth rereading to distract you from the doldrums of being sheltered-in.

֎ Human behavior is of three types: What people, Why people and How people. The ‘what’ person must understand what actions the situation requires; often they have lists of what to do and through these lists understand the reality of things. ‘Why’ people can’t understand the reality of things unless they know why something exists and its relationship to a multifaceted reality. Understand that everyone makes lists; ‘what’ needs the list first to comprehend – ‘why’ makes the list last after comprehending. Mariner confesses to being an extreme ‘why’ person.

At one point in his life, mariner was a supervisor for a computer programming unit. A time came when another supervisor, a woman, was leaving the company. The manager decided to merge the two groups keeping mariner as the supervisor. Mariner had to learn the functions of the other group so he visited the woman to learn about its operation.

She sat at a computer screen and proceeded to read a list of sixteen tasks. When she finished, she said to mariner, “Got it?” Mariner said “No”. She turned back to the computer screen and repeated the list. “Are we good?” she said. Mariner said “No”. Showing frustration and disdain, she said “How in the hell did you ever become a supervisor?” It is true that ‘what’ and ‘why’ people don’t mix well. Fortunately for organizations, there are ‘how’ people. ‘How’ people make good managers because they understand the perspective of both ‘what’ and ‘why’ people. ‘How’ people are good problem solvers; their downside is their preoccupation with pragmatism and have little regard for the artful side of life. Interestingly, many trades have high numbers of ‘how’ people.

֎ A second pop psych example is derived from the shapes below. Decide which one you like best before reading on.

If you chose the circle, you are a person sensitive to unity, stability and compatibility. If you chose the square, you are sensitive to conservative values, control and dislike change. If you chose the triangle, you are confrontational, insistent and unforgiving. The squiggly line means you are unconventional, artistic and free-spirited.

֎ Pop psych became mainstream in the 70’s and 80’s with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Mariner and many others think it was an example of jumping the shark. How many readers are old enough for someone to have said to them in a condescending way, “I’m an INTJ”.

What makes pop psych less than prophetic is the fact that no one is a pure type. Virtually everyone has a dominant characteristic along with one or more subordinate characteristics. Still, many folks clearly represent one type or another.

Have fun pigeonholing everyone you know.

Ancient Mariner

It’s a strange world

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There is a legitimate scientific theory that we live in multiple universes. Not each one separate from the other but conjoined in the same physical space. This theory exists because it is a way to solve certain conflicts in the deep channels of theoretical physics. Mariner, however, has absolute proof that we have two different times existing in the same space.

Mariner has prescriptions so he keeps a week-long pill box. The proof of multiple times from multiple universes is that he fills the box for seven days but in two days it is empty! Yes, the reader might dismiss this as folly but that is because by habit we measure time based only on the movement of the Earth as it moves through the Solar System. When we have a notion that something seems untimely, take a lesson from the Zen and conspiracy folks who understand that time has different speeds. Different speeds means different universes. Think about the many times the reader suddenly said, “Didn’t I just do this?”

Conversely, how many times does the reader feel they have been put on hold for a very long time when they call someone? Could it be the person on the other end just said “Doesn’t this phone ever stop ringing?” It is two different universes at the same moment.

We are conflicted because the two universes waffle back and forth like throwing two rocks into a pond at different locations: the resultant waves coexist in the same space.

If the reader still is dubious, consider this: A bus driver drives a bit slower because he is ahead of his route schedule but the reader is waiting stressfully because the bus hasn’t come. It is simply two different universes with different time speeds existing in the same space.

If the reader considers this theory plausible, they understand how Donald’s base believes he won the election.

Ancient Mariner

The Hero Children

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It was Joseph Campbell, an unusually gifted anthropologist and sociologist that described our lives akin to traveling the hero’s path. Our life experience is an experience similar to that of the hero Jason, king of the Argonauts and a prominent influence in Greek mythology. Jason’s life consisted of one challenge after another which required insight and confidence to conquer. Jason famously stayed the course to capture the Golden Fleece – as is our duty as we live through life’s perils.

Everyone is a hero today as the world suffers excruciating change. Similar to Jason’s confrontations as he faced strange societies, monsters and physical challenge, we face new and confusing times at every turn. Will we complete our hero’s journey through to more stable times?

To we who are in the throes of today’s confrontations, stumbling as waves of change crash down upon us, our journey is one of survival. We must hold onto the civilized principles of our heritage. We must survive the monsters of insurrection, greed, fear and injustice. Metaphorically, we are the rowers of Jason’s boat Argo. We must sustain momentum as we sail into the stormy seas of tomorrow. That is our hero’s path.

It is the hero’s path of our children, those born in this troubled century, who must fight the battles, confront strange circumstances and have the wisdom to stay the path, to acquire peace and success at the end, to capture the Golden Fleece.

It is our responsibility to prepare our children for their hero’s path. We must stay afloat as new theories and pressures change our children’s politics, formal education and career; we must care for them lovingly to instill stamina, self-confidence and skill; we must provide a lee from the storms to give them time to prepare; we must put down the threats of terrorism and greed to keep our society afloat.

While we fight mightily to keep some semblance of reality and stability, it is our children who will conquer the monsters and take the world to peaceful shores.

Ancient Mariner

 

Life in a moment

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This post is provided by Mariner’s wife. All her life she has been a poet extraordinaire. She has the skill to express insight and create association but at the same time her poems dig deep into the reader, leaving some thoughts to conjure.

Many times mariner has encouraged her to publish; she would be successful. She has won a few poetry contests and can dash off another poem in the snap of a finger. One time we were driving down a road when we saw a roadkill raccoon lying by the edge of the road. Within five minutes she had penned a poem asking whether the raccoon deserved a requiem.

The poem below was written after we caught a mouse in the basement that had broken into a bag of sunflower seed. You will enjoy the complexity.

 

Leavings

I sweep up the leavings of sunflower seeds

left behind by a mouse

whose fate was snapped like its neck

in a trap that I had set.

I am glad that he had the thrill of satiety

when he found the bag of sunflower seeds

He was a millionaire among mice

in that moment of his big find.

I am glad that he did not know

his life would be cut short because of it.

Surely in that last moment there was no time for fear

And that snap too quick for pain.

He had perhaps the best that life can offer

in a little life–the warmth of a basement in winter

an endless pile of food, a quick and merciful death.

Or do I deceive myself?

His was not a little life, no smaller than my own.

Like me, he wanted more than comfort, warmth and food

He sought those things because they brought him more life

And more life was what I deprived him of.

MKM     1-19-19

Homo sapiens has become obsolete

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Regular readers are familiar with the skepticism of alter ego Amos. In this new century, one beginning with a multitude of new and unchartered worries for mankind, Amos feels increasing depression as his fellow humans (AKA electorate) fail to grasp the enormity and perhaps the fatalistic nature of the times. The recent attack on the United States Capital was a misguided and virtually irrelevant gesture when global civilization is on the brink of collapse as the environment falters, global resources rapidly disappear, birth rates around the world approach zero growth and mankind’s own manufactured reality is decaying.

Now, there is hard evidence that Homo sapiens is about to be irrelevant and will disappear in short order. The following photograph is taken from the back cover of the January issue of The Economist. The small type says:

“Malicious AI created her picture, yet she has never been seen by a camera. It made her an online profile, yet she has never logged in. Malicious AI built her to attack you.”

The public today is worried about face recognition software. Poo. Who needs your face anymore when AI has a detailed description of your profile, health, driver license, family connections, friends and financial particulars – and can make a face made to order? Even more, a detailed copy of your whole existence sits in data bases that can emulate your probable real life experiences.

Now, AI doesn’t need your face or your body. AI can create a fictitious reality without using real human beings and can interlace you with others on Facebook, Twitter and E-Harmony. If you’re still around in a few years, you may have remarried and not even know it.

Consider the new AI world of business: AI creates a statistical version of a restaurant then populates it with statistical versions of humans. The finances look good on a digitized screen and AI will have to move bitcoins around in the fake economy to balance the database.

The next phase of human evolution will be complete. Living only as digitized energy, our progeny easily will be able to spread throughout the universe.

Ancient Mariner

 

Wisdom in a Phrase

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Once in a while everyone stumbles across a short phrase that seems poignant, insightful or profound. Mariner has collected phrases over time that are significant. Just a few below:

֎ A very recent one from the Netflix documentary, “The Social Dilemma,” is the phrase ‘When a dead tree is more important than a living tree; when a dead whale is more important than a living whale, our priorities are not in order.’ This was spoken in the context that society ranked monetization and profit above respect for a natural world.

֎ Victor Hugo wrote an oxymoron that is one of mariner’s favorites, especially for older folks. He said, ‘Melancholy is the joy of depression.’ Hasn’t everyone sat around remembering the good old days, the young social world and when life was full of excitement? Those melancholy feelings are the joy that can be had only by way of depression or boredom.

֎ A term that has long been an expression of wisdom is the phrase, ‘My gut tells me . . .’ Today this term has become pejorative because scientists have discovered that the gut (AKA subconscious) doesn’t use facts to form opinions.

֎ Mariner’s wife contributes the next one, a phrase that keeps one’s perspective about where the self fits in the world:

“There are many ways of being in this circle we call life” is the first line from a John Denver song, The Wings That Fly Us Home. The words were written by Joe Henry, music by John Denver.

“There are many ways of being” has been a mantra for me for many years. It is a way of acknowledging and accepting the world in all of its variety, and the differences among people, too. Everyone has a right to his own interpretation of life, his own choices, his own quirks of personality. Often I say it with a rueful puzzlement–“what were they thinking? Oh, well–there are many ways of being…” It reminds me that my way is not the only way, or necessarily the right way. But it applies to the larger world, too, from grass and trees, to birds and fish, rabbits and moles; so many ways of being in this world. So many different ways of perceiving the world.

For your viewing pleasure:

https://search.aol.com/aol/video;_ylt=AwrJ61kaTslfxuoAxyFpCWVH;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzIEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?q=the+wings+that+fly+us+home&v_t=webmail-searchbox#id=3&vid=f2dc2c9ab8bc3e45815e24d6258eda67&action=view

֎ Albert Schweitzer is a top hero in mariner’s Pantheon. Albert had many famous quotes but the one that should hang under any portrait is ‘Help me to fling my life like a flaming firebrand into the gathering darkness of the world.’ Albert put his life where it was needed and, to associate it with another phrase from Life is Like a Mountain Railroad, ‘never falter, never fail’.

Pause a moment to find a poignant phrase in your life.

Ancient Mariner

Faith is a necessary life tool for everyone

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Read these words from this old hymnbook favorite – sing along if you know the melody:

Life is like a mountain railway

With an engineer that’s brave

We must make this run successful

From the cradle to the grave

Watch the curves, the fills, and tunnels

Never falter, never fail

Keep your hand upon the throttle

And your eyes upon the rail

The verse asks for a commitment to an ideal, a belief that the run must be successful. A belief in what? It could be any religion’s doctrine; it could be any political vision; it could be a personal life or a person’s sustained commitment against fatal disease.

The point is that all thoughts and behavior of any merit require belief in a valued objective. The only instruction in the verse is completing the run and keeping one’s hand upon the throttle. Could this verse be applicable to Blackbeard the pirate’s belief in his role on the high seas? (Yes, mixed metaphor)

What is missing today is context. At the beginning of the verse, what does ‘Life’ imply? As an ethical compass, what is the world supposed to believe in – not just the United States but the entire world? The confrontation is universal: what is a gibbon to trust in a disappearing habitat; what is a fish living on a dying coral reef to accept as normal; what is the dictator of Kazakhstan to believe about his uncertain future; what about the broken and abused family in Nicaragua; what about the preacher in Kansas or the steel worker in Detroit; what about the billionaire CEO. With our hand on the throttle, where is the rail taking us?

More than at any time since nations have existed, we live in a time of social disruption and turmoil. The job of Homo sapiens is to decide where the rail will take us. Holding on to broken, outdated, even useless railways doesn’t help. The job of everyone around the world today is to build a new destination for our railway.

The hymn cited at the beginning was written in 1890 by gospel songwriter Charles Davis Tillman. He styled it for the repertoire of white southerners, whose music was derived from Gospel. Further verses reference the Bible as a source of context. Life in 1890 was from another time, another reality. Where is Life headed today?

[For several renditions of the hymn see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDrFJ7k9jOA ]

Ancient Mariner

The Frontal Lobe versus Planet Earth

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The frontal lobe is responsible for abstract thinking. It is the youngest and largest region of the human brain located just behind the forehead. While the rest of the brain abides by the normal mammalian genome adapted to Earth’s biosphere, the frontal lobe of a human brain is not bound by such mundane relationships.

In an exercise to pass time while sheltered, mariner developed an analog which eliminated conflict between humans and the biosphere by stepping backward in history until the conflict had yet to occur. An example everyone is aware of is the fossil fuel conflict. By tracking backwards to the point where the cause (a frontal lobe invention) did not exist, one can deduce the lifestyle, politics and what at that point would be compatible with the biosphere.

Herewith is a summation of the results:

SOCIETY

  • THERE IS NO FREE WILL. HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND INTELLECT ARE TIGHTLY BOUND TO A GENOME THAT EVOLUTION TOOK 70 MILLION YEARS TO CREATE. IN THIS RESPECT, HUMANS ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN OPOSSUMS AND KING COBRAS.
  • THERE IS ONLY 2% DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE GENOME OF A CHIMPANZEE AND THAT OF A HUMAN. THE DIFFERENCE IS THE FRONTAL LOBE.
  • ONE IN TEN HUMANS CAN THINK IN THE ABSTRACT. THE REST ARE SMART SIMIANS, ALSO KNOWN AS THE ELECTORATE.

HOMO SAPIENS

  • AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PHENOMENON, THE HUMAN BRAIN IS AN UNSTABLE ABERRATION. LIKE THE DINOSAURS, WHICH EVENTUALLY BECAME EXTINCT BECAUSE THEY WERE IN CONFLICT WITH THE BIOSPHERE, HUMANS HAVE AN END DATE FOR EXISTENCE.[1]

ECONOMY

  • CAPITALISM AND SOCIALISM ARE SOPHISTICATED ARGUMENTS FOR GREED.
  • COMMUNISM, SANS ALL THE AUTHORITARIAN INFLUENCES, IS THE NATURAL ECONOMY FOR THE HUMAN SPECIES. TODAY’S EXAMPLE IS OFF-THE-GRID HOMESTEADING – A NATURALLY COMPLIANT BEHAVIOR WITH THE BIOSPHERE. NOTE THAT THIS LIFESTYLE MATCHES THE REST OF THE SIMIAN GENOME WITHOUT THE IRRITATING INVENTIONS COMING FROM THE FRONTAL LOBE.

SCIENCE

  • CREATES INTELLECTUALISM AT THE COST OF DISRUPTING THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT, E,G., LIFE SPAN OF A HUMAN BEING. RELEVANT HUMAN HISTORY IS SUPPOSED ONLY TO BE ABOUT 60 YEARS OR THREE GENERATIONS.

TECHNOLOGY

  • THE CENTER OF GROWTH FOR GREED-BASED ECONOMIES.

Well, there it is. Humans get in trouble when they let the frontal lobe do its thing without respecting the rest of the simian brain and its agreeable relationship with Planet Earth.

So much for shelter-in-place.

Ancient Mariner

 

[1] The asteroid just hastened the end of a declining existence for the dinosaurs; Covid-19 tried hard to bring an end to humans but came up a little short. Humans will have to end it on their own.

Alas, Poor Uncle Sam

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. . . I knew him, Horacio — a fellow of infinite jest… Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs?

– – – –

Mariner has become frayed and disillusioned wandering the foxholes and ditches of daily politics, economics and social conflict. It reminds him of those old news videos of doughboys running in the trenches of World War I. Mariner searches desperately for reason, cohesiveness and purpose.

Alas, the trenches of Somme are the nation’s reality. Cash replaces tear gas; international trade replaces cannon fodder; political dialogue replaces machine guns; technology replaces bombs and strafing. And now an accelerant, Covid-19, has introduced the urgency of a raging forest fire.

Not only is shelter-in-place an urgent pragmatism, it is a metaphor for our times; it is our trench.

Meanwhile, out on the battlefield, Covid-19 has expedited cultural change. It has made space for artificial intelligence to rush in and set new standards. It has disrupted political change from an incompetent form of democracy to one that relates to the battlefield. It has destroyed the nation’s economy.

More than a million soldiers were killed or wounded on the fields of Somme representing seven nations. It was brutally personal. Currently in the United States 23,000 citizens have died and the plague is still progressing. It is brutally personal.

Subtly, a new force has joined the war: global warming. As today’s global war of change fights its way into the future, as small steps of stability are put in place, global warming will attack across all fronts – politics, economics and society. Global warming will introduce a new dimension of destruction just as the atomic bomb did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the United States today, political smoke fills the air, explosions erupt in the halls of government and reason dies under attack from greed, prejudice and moral decline. Yet, no different than the Battle of Somme, this time of great, historical change must continue to be fought. It is not nation against nation so much as it is faction against faction. It is the wealthy against the poor, the average, the good of all; it is the plutocracy of government fatally infected with cash and privilege; it is corporate America flushed with opportunity to monopolize society; it is data technology that will erase the idiosyncrasy of each citizen while all around this war the biosphere dies more rapidly every day.

Will reason, cohesiveness and purpose ever again exist? Will humanity survive? Is all this commotion part of the Sixth Extinction?

Ancient Mariner