Category Archives: Musings

The Move from Past to Future

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The mariner apologizes to readers who are confused by his mixing metaphors incoherently. It was stated in the last post that as President, Hillary will become the leader of the Establishment and eventually the Republican Party. That is, the older elected officials, lingering old school racists, plutocrats, economic conservatives, and religious malcontents will adapt. Regardless of power haggling, one by one, less conservative leaders will emerge and adopt policy positions that, over the years of Hillary’s tenure as President, will become the new center right wing of the Federal Government.

During these years, slowly, the more strident conservative policy and behavior present in 2016 will morph into a newer conservative policy that can compete in elections. This means that the Republican Party we know today has collapsed under a nation rapidly moving to more liberal policies. Viewed from the sidelines, over time, conservatism appears to look more and more like Hillary’s Establishment.

As mentioned in the former post, Hillary is a super administrator but lacks the ability to envision new values in a non-establishment environment. Why we do what we do is not as much a motivation to Hillary; what tactics and processes must be executed is her focus. Bernie is very much a why person and challenged ideas like oligarchy, an unbalanced culture suffering from bad tax law, disappearing employee rights, and crooked Federal governance. Being an opposite type to Hillary, Bernie had less interest in rewriting policy than targeting legislation that changes governance.

Statistics from the campaign indicate that millennials (under 50 more or less) were fully united behind Bernie, seeing change in governance as more important than editing existing legislation. Mariner suspects this is because millennials have grown up in a drastically changed world and the government has not changed to manage that changed world.

As Hillary improves (we hope) Congressional concern toward a kinder and wiser government, the Establishment, still grounded in the old culture, will appear to become more conservative as the millennial folks change governance to something that slowly leaves the Establishment behind.

WHILE WAITING FIVE DAYS WITH APPREHENSION SECTION

When the reader was very young, perhaps before the fourth grade, what word could not be spelled on paper? For the mariner, in the third grade, he returned from summer vacation having forgotten how to spell ‘was.’ No matter how often he sounded the word, he could not associate a set of letters to match the word ‘wuz.’

A French tennis player by the name of Poille pronounces his name Pwee. One must feel sorry for French third graders.

The Brits, by way of the Germans and Romans, gave us Wednesday; how long before you spelled Wednesday correctly? It doesn’t matter, we say ‘Wenzdee’ anyway.

Is it any wonder we are drifting to memes, emoticons, and other graphics?

Ancient Mariner

Spirit-Driven Profit

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The last post about a nail driven by spirit likely was an odd one to the reader. Mariner hopes it loosened the brain a bit to conjure new and unexplored ways of thinking about mundane things. Remember we are in the musing category; practicality is not a requisite.

To clarify nailing with the spirit, mariner attempted to present an economy not pushed along by the motive of personal cash profit but by the motive of ‘passing it along.’ Using only the will or spirit looking to generate ‘profit’ on a benefit passed to you, you look for a way to contribute to the wellbeing of others. In a convoluted way, this generates productivity.

A readily available example is Habitat for Humanity International (HH). HH has built over 2 million homes! Talk about a spirit-driven economy! That’s 2 million homes without personal cash profit as a motive. Still, the resources brought to HH came from cash profits given to the volunteers. It’s as though HH built one link in the chain of economy. How do we, using only empathy to perceive need, spirit and desire, attach the next link of productivity not driven by profit?

This is not something mariner has mastered. However, from deep within Guru, it seems that a cash-driven economy – especially a profit-driven or capitalist-driven economy – will not suffice as human population grows rapidly and the world approaches the year 2100 and twelve billion people will be present and accounted for. And the global neighborhood grows trashier and trashier, eventually contaminating every habitat with one chemical or another. And completing the Sixth Global Extinction (already begun in the 1700’s), which will include Homo sapiens.

Economic examples like the Netherlands and Belgium and another dozen or so similar to Canada have accepted socialist solutions to replace some capitalist solutions. What is lacking in even the most socialist economies is displacement of accrued profit as the underlying vehicle for measurement. In the simplified prototype of ‘Pass it forward,’ the motivation is not personal profit or even the personal stability promoted by socialism. Rather, it operates more like the command “Everyone in the pool!” where each person is out to provide the loudest splash in the pool.

Mariner believes the definition of profit must be altered for survival of Homo sapiens (and other species as well). So far in our history, profit has shown to be intensely destructive to people, environment, natural balance in sensitive biomes, disruptive to oceans, land masses and left alone shows an imbalance among humans that leaves the fortunate more wealthy than they should be while many more starve to death. Add to this worrisome profile nearly half again as many humans and a throttling distribution system that blocks fair distribution of profit, and the human manner of surviving as the world diminishes in its ability to produce in behalf of humans, and we are left with extinction.

In a few days, the mariner will open a forum where everyone can comment and respond to comments. Current economic authors are not much help; their vision remains well entrenched in personal profit motivation. Further, economists don’t often study philosophy as a solution for economic issues.

If readers are aware of futuristic economists already expressing concern about the collapse of human economy due to self-serving priorities, please share your sources.

COMMENTARY SECTION

Reader Ben, in a reply to “If a Nail were driven by Spirit,” suggested if he were a lumberjack, he would rather have a chainsaw than a two-man hand saw. This was in response to the mariner pondering whether it was better to enjoy living a simpler life within the constraints of one’s biological environment or, as we have done at every opportunity in history, used any invention to make life easier. The mariner believes that consumption of technology may be moral but on balance, humans must reduce the number of humans allowed to exist to prevent overconsumption of the Earth’s environment far beyond that expected of the hairless ape.

– – – –

As to Donald, this latest round of rants does not try to camouflage his similarity to Nazi fascism. The reader need only swap a few words and his ideals are too close to Mein Kampf[1].

Switch ‘Jews’ for ‘Latinos;” Switch “ICE deportation camps to load immigrants onto busses” for “trains to Auschwitz.” The method is identical as well: families are forcibly pulled from their homes with no regard for rights, status, or family situation. They are branded like cattle just as Donald wants those deported to be branded with physical identifiers like finger prints and eye patterns. There are more parallels but mariner chooses not to go on. Mariner understands there is not a lot to choose from in 2016 but vote to defeat Nazism. Don’t vote for Donald. The election exposes a lot of interesting change in the US. However, first things first.

Ancient Mariner

[1] Mein Kampf is an autobiography by the National Socialist leader Adolf Hitler, in which he outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926. The book was edited by Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess.

If a Nail were driven by Spirit

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This is a test. Have you ever had empathy for a small stone? When Mariner was in his pubescent years, he once replaced a stone atop a pile of dirt from which it became dislodged. He admits to a weird moment. How can the stone feel empathy? How will empathy interact or act in behalf of a stone? Will the stone pass it forward?

If the reader has a lifelong knack for easily evoking anthropomorphic sensitivity toward Earth’s inhabitants, animate or inanimate, the reader may have the ability to envelope themselves in a spiritual world of immense dimension and empathy, traveling to distant universes or conjuring different societies. Sometimes, for just an instant, a spiritual experience may reveal not only righteousness and salvation but empirical validation. Abraham had such a moment when he decided not to sacrifice his son Isaac.[1]

Spiritualism played a greater role in religious and cultural life six millennia ago. Homo sapiens existed within the realm of an environment they had not mastered through science and technology, socialized behavior, or specie dominance over the environment. It is true today that the seed for new plateaus of existence do not come from spiritual insights but from that which detracts from spiritual value – science and technology, socialized behavior (economics, government, prejudice) and human dominance over Earth’s rightful domain.

Recognition is given here to those who respond empathetically to others, to the environment and to the strange universe that operates around us – nothing more than a collection of giant stones.

Mariner has casually discussed what might be the very source of new anything – new inventions, new ideas, new feelings, perhaps new space and matter. What causes ‘new’? A pleasing ‘new’ has been the emergence of the phrase and gesture ‘pass it forward.’ The gesture of acting out a small benevolence to a stranger simply because one chooses to do so generates a longer lasting response for both than if they had to do without the benevolence. Is this lingering remembrance a created value?

Having received a hand, is the stranger primed to replicate benevolence to stranger #2? If so, could that benevolence to #2 be more than the benefit the stranger received in the first place? For those with superior empathetic skills: If money was benevolence, and benevolence can so easily be enlarged, that is, pay interest, what would the purpose of money be in society? In other words, mariner drives your son to college as a favor. Subsequently and perhaps causatively, you build a new basement storm door for an elderly person. How does the mariner’s drive to a college measure against you building a new storm door? Can that be dollar-added interest? Could that be economic creativity? The Universe suddenly has a new basement storm door in the Milky Way’s Solar System on Earth.

This post isn’t in the religion section; it’s in the musings section. The mariner simply muses about the power of spirit in general – how things may be different if the world, indeed the universe, may function with a different ‘transmission’. It isn’t difficult to see that mammalian dominance of our age has shaped its dynamics. We mammals are born to protect, defend and secure our surroundings. Non-mammalians like fish just spread their young like grass seed; turtles plant them like lily bulbs; birds raise their young as an instinctive gesture inherited from the dinosaurs but just as well may drop them on your head while in flight.

Mammals have within them the desire to own and secure their own space, their own property. A good model is the Silverback Gorilla. The male’s job is to defend his family and eating grounds even to deathly combat. So it is that Homo sapiens does the same thing but with far more intelligence and a more sophisticated desire to have the ‘largest family’. Even Elk want the largest herd. Seems like conflict is part of being a mammal.

What evolves is a pragmatic society. What works best, ten men having a good time being productive or a back hoe and a bulldozer? Best to stop here, mariner thinks.

Ancient Mariner

[1] Holy Bible, Genesis 22

It’s Time Again

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Okay, readers. It’s time for another haiku poetry challenge. We of the iowa-mariner.com blog periodically craft a haiku poem. For the youngsters who have forgotten the rules and for those new to the blog, here are the rules for writing haiku poetry:

  • Haiku is a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.
  • (an English imitation of this.)
  • Haiku poems don’t need to rhyme, but for more of a challenge some poets try to rhyme lines 1 and 3.

Abandoned buildings
Along the street row on row
They watch and they wait

Across the dark street
I ponder a lonely house
I hear it sobbing

© 2016 Darlene De Beaulieu

 

Nature’s wake from sleep
Life flirts with beauty
a time for flowers to flaunt

 ©2016 Funom Makama

 

Our day-to-day life
Wrestles with that moment when
One day will suffice

2016 Ancient Mariner

Haiku discipline forces the mind to think thematically and procedurally at the same time. It is a nice replacement when crossword puzzles no longer satisfy. One is not caged as in soduko. A winning haiku invokes empathetic feelings.

Ancient Mariner

Two Roman Gladiators

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This is a post that indicates mariner is bored and looking for something to do. Most readers will find little benefit in reading further. Nevertheless, the mariner grows bored with the Presidential Campaign. Some readers may be bored as well. We have learned who the candidates are by watching endless interviews, and reading redundant commentaries. By now we intuitively know our four candidates’ personalities, platforms, location on the spectrum of liberal-conservative, rational-irrational, useful-irrelevant, and plutocrat-egalitarian among many more. Whatever else is to be known is minimal and fodder only for the gristmill of the news media.

What will keep our attention for the next seventy days?

The post title implies what the mariner will not watch. He will focus on the larger perspective of two combatants sparring in a coliseum – more like boxers than gladiators. We have grown tired of the meaningless debate points (punches); we may be more interested in watching a higher level of competition: It’s not what they say; it’s whether they successfully counter the other one thereby gaining or losing the match to the Whitehouse.

This means we must keep track of polls, betting odds, electoral probabilities, one or two political websites, related national and international news, and which pundits are brought to the glass tables of cable news. The specific detail of the candidates’ comments will not mean as much to our spectrum analysis – it’s whether the campaign changes a candidate’s momentum.

If the reader chooses to pursue this more sophisticated comparison, his reasoning powers will be enhanced by practicing ‘vector analysis.’ Assume the reader has the task of keeping a washer centered over a small circle on a large table. This is made difficult because the washer has seven strings attached to it hanging over the table edge each with a different weight tied at the other end. The task is to rebalance the weights on all the strings so that the weights are complimentary to the task of centering and stabilizing the washer over the circle. In the example of the campaign, it’s how much out of balance the strings are – the distance away from the center; the farther, the more momentum for one of the candidates….. Perhaps this is too much trouble.

But for those who may enjoy casually thinking about the campaign from the point of view of all the elements of a campaign instead of just the words of the candidates, entertainment may be had for seventy days. The personal benefit from this effort is that the reader will know why the candidate won, not just because the Electoral College and FOX/CNN says so.

Ancient Mariner

The Yard

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Mariner is one of those obsessive gardeners who keeps adding to his projects and workload in the gardens until the whole process threatens to break down – neighbors insinuate that it already has. Primarily, this is because the mariner is very old but his visions are as expansive as ever. He tells his neighbors that at his age it takes eight hours to do four hours of work. It also takes two years to do a three month project – and a neighbor’s help in lifting a 100-lb bag of anything.

One traditional process that has not changed over many years is how the mariner makes compost. Needless to say, his lawn-fascist town considers the area behind the garage not to be an attractive site. Simply, over the year, mariner throws anything (garbage to grass clippings, finished annuals, etc that will decompose into a big pile). Anything – any dirt, sand, last season’s old pot dirt, garage sweepings, etc. Occasionally he will salt the mound with triple ten fertilizer. The newer stuff is piled on top of older stuff. If the mound becomes dry, mariner waters it as if it were another garden.

In the spring, when fresh soil is needed, he digs into the pile until he strikes decomposed soil. He granulates the retrieved soil (removes larger clumps that aren’t decomposed), adjusts the ph and adds horse manure.

To the mariner, all this mound building is nothing more than chores. What mariner enjoys is exploring the mound each year to see what vegetation grows on the mound. He has retrieved feral tomatoes, watermelon, acorn squash, bell peppers and this year a full crop of cantaloupe – all surviving a year or two as seeds in the compost biome. Further, he discovered miniature cattails which will be kept for the proposed water feature. A couple of years ago two attractive but different trees emerged; he has kept them for the patio project.

By the end of summer, the mound is a wilderness of huge weeds and endless groundcovers; redistributed zinnias flourish in unexpected places. Trees are sprouting all the time – especially Oak and Maple; they must be pulled or they become a difficult nuisance. Frogs, toads, crickets, sow bugs, ants, stink bugs, centipedes, spiders, rabbits and dogs stop by this wilderness McDonalds all year.

All in all, this has been an empty tale but it can be a tiny slice-of-life story.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Simple Religion

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Lifted from a small daily calendar providing a profound statement for each day:

“This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need for complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart is the temple; the philosophy is simple kindness.”

– The Dalai Lama

Indeed a profound statement. One feels release and wisdom. If only humans could live by such a simple philosophy. It seems, though, that humans need discipline; they need doctrine; they need a harness to keep them on the path. Otherwise, humans degrade to undisciplined grazing for personal gain of some sort – a human’s own mind and heart no longer just a temple. They become the deity as well. Ownership of one’s own deity is not wise nor of its satanic gargoyles – wealth, greed, prejudice, violence, revenge and persecution.

Today’s turbulent transition in every aspect of human life throws down old bastions not only of faith but also of science, technology, culture, physiology and political strife. The core of human worth is laid bare for reconsideration.

Will humans survive into the next age?

Will satanic gargoyles and their human owners be struck down?

Where is a real God?

How does an individual clothe oneself in the harness that will keep them on the path? The answer is to dedicate one’s self to the lives of others; live by personal values that do not live inside the mind but live in the minds of others. The harness that keeps a human on the path has been a theme in recent posts: It’s what one does for others, not themselves. It is Campbell’s “Path of the Hero,” Jesus’ two great commandments, Albert Schweitzer’s lifelong commitment to lost tribes in Lambaréné, Africa. Adorned with the harness, don’t worry about God; God will have the traces in hand.

Ancient Mariner

Earth the Artist

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Regularly, Amos holds forth lamenting the failures of the human species. It is his wont. But there are places on Planet Earth where the planet can still display its own beauty, timelessness and independent reality untarnished by humans. For those traveling the North American Southwest, many earthen displays are available.

The mariner traveled through the Southwest on his way to Los Angeles to attend his daughter’s wedding. Having experienced horrendous traffic, indescribable waste of Earth buried beneath 12-lane highways and interchanges large enough to be cattle ranches, and slowly dying roadside trees and other vegetation from fossil fuel waste, the mariner was sensitized to those moments when Earth’s timeless beauty was on display – beauty undisturbed for eons because there are scant resources for human consumption or destruction.

The first moment with Earth’s museum of art is the Glenwood Canyon in western Colorado on I-70. When highway contractors planned to bulldoze their way through this magnificent canyon, the public rose up in protest led by many environmental organizations and championed by John Denver. The highway planners were forced to redesign I-70 in such a way that the splendor of Glenwood Canyon was preserved as much as possible and wildlife was not disrupted in its natural behaviors. Granted, the canyon would be even more inspirational without the accoutrement of automobiles but still one can view the majesty that only Earth can produce.

It comes to mind that the canyon is one of the planet’s cathedrals. Glenwood Canyon is narrow with vertical cliffs rising far above the Colorado River. The mind senses an upward thrust to the heavens and beyond; the cliffs frame a portal to the Universe. As with all Earth’s displays, the human experience is one that makes us aware that we are not in charge as much as we think we are. 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tons is in charge.

Traveling on toward Las Vegas, there is a relatively short canyon that will be missed unless one is looking for earthen inspiration. The Virgin Canyon displays the massive power of Earth. While Glenwood Canyon displays unity with the Universe, Virgin Canyon displays the no-nonsense nature of Planet Earth. The rock formations are huge, suggesting immovable strength. The formations suggest that we are not as strong as the planet by a long shot; the mariner was impressed in the same manner a muscle builder may impress – overwhelming flexes of strength and potential energy.

Driving through the Mohave Desert/Red Rock Canyon, Earth offers continuous entertainment as only large deserts can. If you like colors, Red Rock and the Painted Desert east on the way to Albuquerque are phenomenal; it is obvious the planet was in its bright color phase when these colorful, vast canvases were painted.

Returning from Los Angeles, the mariner and his wife did not stop at the Grand Canyon. The canyon is impossible to absorb all at once. There are the displays of color; observers remark they must be painted by humans but not so. Earth is the origin of all colors and will use whatever color fits its purpose. Further, the vast cut into the canyon by Earth’s own history – a history before time and with no assistance by H sapiens, makes one become aware that the Earth has been around a lot longer than humans; one is reminded that a shallow sea once covered the canyon long before it became a canyon.

There are other artworks in Earth’s museum that are not rock formations. The mariner is in awe of the planet’s oceans. Sitting still on silent rolling swells makes one aware that oceans will do what they will regardless of human intent. The oceans surrounding the planet speak of Earth’s independence and they cavort only with the Sun and Moon to create tides.

When we look at the Milky Way and the Solar system, Earth shares with us its own family of inanimate siblings, cousins and stars. If nothing else, viewing Earth’s family shrinks our species to its proper importance. In times gone by, we borrowed the Zodiac from space as an attempt to explain Earth’s place in human understanding. We continue to this day pondering the existence of gravity and the cause of dark matter. Earth already knows.

Ancient Mariner

 

Humans are not Creators, they are Stuff

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It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.

Alas, Heraclitus was not a theist for he also said:

This Universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by Heraclitus smallregular measures.

Heraclitus, who lived from 535-475 BC in Ephesus Iona (Turkey), predates Socrates and Plato by a century and was not part of the mainline Greek philosophical revolution although he was commonly quoted by many later Greek thinkers and shows up as a quote in books about other philosophers.

Heraclitus appeals to the mariner because he established the principle that the law of the Universe is the only law and all things that exist in the Universe must obey the same law. Too often the creative genius of H. sapiens is attributed to itself when in the broader view it is, as Heraclitus suggested, a child playing with blocks.

It is difficult for humans to associate with the Universe. The Universe has no recognizable goals. The Universe does not show responsiveness, preference, appreciation, personality, possessiveness, vengeance, favoritism, or kindness. There is only astronomical stuff, chemical stuff, unending space and two unending energy resources: time and gravity – immeasurable time, pervasive gravity and all the space the Universe needs. These eternally present things are called Universe stuff. It isn’t easy to talk with the Universe over a breakfast muffin and coffee; trying to get the Universe’s attention by discovering how to fly to the stars with the Universe’s own stuff doesn’t score, either – less than a spit in the Milky Way.

Before we begin dissecting how humans fit into Earth’s stuff, it will be easier to have a consolidating word for all Earth’s detailed activity, cause and effect, and interactions between elements of Earth’s environment: let’s call it all “stuff.” Specialized stuff. For example, anything created, altered or thought about by humans is “human stuff;” things like orbit changes, volcanoes, earthquakes, geologic ages, atmospheres and magnetic fields are “Earth stuff.” There’s also environmental stuff that includes weather, living things, gold, diamonds, sulfur, critical stuff like water, oxygen and other stuff as may be required.

From a few miles in space, human stuff right now looks very much like a colony of disturbed ants long resident under a large rock. Like the ants, humans are racing about blindly, trying to conjure what is going on; what shall we do? Experiencing reality like an ant but on a human scale, consider the following:

Environment stuff is increasingly unstable – some unstable because of human stuff but most because of Earth stuff. Observant, thinking humans acknowledge that Earth’s surface stuff is growing warmer. Even indifferent humans acknowledge that humans have accelerated warming with excessive release of Carbon into Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. As Heraclitus suggested above, if you do not expect the unexpected, you will not recognize it when it arrives. Such is the case with carbon pollution, which arrived unnoticed and unexpected shortly after the Civil War.

The use of the word “stuff” is an important tool; viewing the Universe on the scale of normal human cognition quickly exaggerates the importance of human stuff. It isn’t really important at all – except to humans. Similar to ants, reality is greatly distorted by personal experience. Brazilian farmers continue to deforest the Amazon rain forest despite the suggestion that removing the forest will change environment stuff. The farmers’ reality is distorted by personal gain; they are incapable of expecting severe changes in their weather so the true scale of their reality is much like an ant’s. On the scale of Universe stuff, ants and humans are closely related.

Humans keep track of mathematical versions of stuff. An arctic fox may have a sense that it is unusually cold but it seems not to care that not only is it unusually cold, it is minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit cold – now that’s cold! Humans mathematically track a lot of phenomena about other stuff; that’s how humans know the environment is growing warmer on Earth’s surface.

A reputable scientist wrote an article in Atlantic Magazine about a year ago. He was ridiculing humans’ plan to reverse climate change: “They think they will fix the problem in a lifetime or two. What they can’t see is the scale of global warming. It may take the Earth 30 thousand years to reset its global environment!” Many scientists agree and also believe that the Earth will enter a long ice age at that time. Each set of stuff has its own scale of size and time. We forget how small human stuff is when compared to environment stuff and Earth stuff. A simple example is we count our lifespan in years; environment stuff easily can count lifespan in centuries, i.e., how many years does it take for the Fertile Crescent to come and go through a desert cycle? Earth counts lifespan in eras; an era has two or three cycles called periods – the length of time during which rock formations appear, e.g., the Rocky Mountains.

If human stuff is messing around with Earth stuff, the results may take so much time they never will be known. On the other hand, looking down the scale of different stuff, say solar system stuff messes with environment stuff, things can change rapidly. Remember the meteor that helped wipe out the dinosaurs? That meteor may have been floating around the solar system’s inventory of asteroids for billions of years then POP! If we had been alive at the time, we could have watched the entire global environment change within a week.

Mariner can hear the reader complain, “What’s all this stuff about? What’s the point?” This always happens when Guru is allowed in the room. What it’s all about is that the twenty-first century confronts humans in a new and unpredictable way. Like the ants, Earth stuff is changing our reality: our comfortable rock has been lifted to expose new, larger issues that force H. sapiens to realize it is not as much in charge as it thought. Further, time is short enough to be relevant to our psyche. Stephen Hawking is confident H. sapiens will be extinct within ten thousand years. Our line of ascendency began nearly 90 million years ago as a simple primate. We’ve only 10,000 years left to come to terms with the relative value of our messy human stuff as a part of Universe stuff. One example: Are we a benevolent species or a predatory one?

“This Universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.”

POST SCRIPT

Mariner’s in-laws, nine cousin families strong, are celebrating their eighth quinquennial this week. Posts may be scant during that time.

Ancient Mariner

Signs of the Future

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Remember those spooky science fiction shows when you watched the actor (and yourself) walk into a dense, mysterious cloud where something unimaginable will occur? Well, dear reader, we are at that moment in real life. You, the mariner, and every other speaking soul, approach a dense cloud where everything will be different.

What does this cloud look like? Not just a water vapor cloud or a disrupting chemical cloud – this cloud is a montage of things, behaviors, environment, and different lifestyles. Okay, it doesn’t look like a “cloud.” It looks more like a roaming, tumbling garbage dump with zombies roaming around; nevertheless, the mysterious unknown will envelope you. What will you become?

From a distance, we see in the cloud a disappearance of written and spoken language capable of specific expression and defined meaning. With the use of text abbreviations, compressed spellings, and rolling enunciation, much of our speech will be comprehensible to seals, whales, beagles and subordinate primates – but it will not be useful for finite, articulated ideas or correlations of fact. What seems probable is an erasure of the history of speech – leaving us expressing little more than our ancient predecessors to express emotions, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and pain.

Back in 1980, as the mariner’s son was being born in York Pennsylvania, mariner was working as a project consultant in Roswell New Mexico for a small group of men who wanted to build a new jail. Typically, a consultant would have to prepare about five wordy documents to describe in detail the goal, scope, cost, staffing, project plan and delivery dates. In Roswell’s case, even a blueprint would be appropriate.

These men wanted none of that. The general attitude was “I wouldn’t read it if you wrote it” and “How is doing that building a jail?” These men were brick and mortar types with trowel in hand! After a lengthy meeting discussing how in a productive manner we should move ahead, we arrived at the use of one document to handle the ideological and regulatory aspects of building a jail: the blueprint itself. Instead of articulating the purpose and description of a space, we had a discussion which reached consensus and agreed to move a room’s wall two feet farther to the west. Room by room, door by door, plumbing fixture by plumbing fixture, regulation by regulation, we finished the design to the point it could be turned over to the builders. Notes about the blueprint process were on the margins of hundreds of previous versions of blueprints; every meeting started with a newly updated blueprint. Call the process “document writing via storyboard” or “social dissolution of a conundrum;” however unusual, the jail was built on time, under budget and ready to function;” a project consultant and five men in Roswell couldn’t be more proud. It is in use today.

What mariner did not realize was that he had participated in creating and using a hieroglyphic with three-dimensional scripting. The Egyptians, Syrians and Hittites had nothing on the Roswell project! The Roswell team had abandoned letters and words for glyphs! We had gone back in time 4,000 years – and Hawking said it couldn’t be done.

It was then mariner realized he had an experience near ‘the cloud.’ People would speak and write something like ‘LOL,’ even speaking it. Not a true Egyptian hieroglyphic – it required some knowledge of word usage and spelling. Soon afterward, words, letters, even paragraphs were unnecessary when emojis were created. Mankind was moving deeper into the cloud.

Will we become an illiterate creature – depending on monks to document our lives and articulations? Will we have to draw a picture to ask for Pseudoephedrine? (What will the emoji be?) It is true that the mariner had a mother-in-law many years ago who drew a stick figure of a man, a plus sign and 2 eggs on a piece of paper so her husband would not forget to buy mayonnaise. This was necessary because, despite the wise woman she was, she was illiterate. Hmm – aren’t we all….

Ancient Mariner