Category Archives: Politics

Change

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Change can be good when it is needed. Changing underwear for example or cleaning the attic or buying another car. Every once in a while governments need to change, too. The issues are who (who changes one’s underwear), how (who decides which antiquities in the attic are kept or not kept) and why (when one already has three cars).

Change seems to be an authentic phenomenon. Often, change comes later than it should. Then change becomes difficult, even disastrous. Suppose one didn’t change their underwear until they were on the bus riding to work. Mariner decided to visit Guru to talk about the validity of change. He took a trip to Guru’s remote mountain retreat.

Mariner began their conversation by citing the broad dissatisfaction that exists in the world today, the turmoil of war and authoritarianism, and the fading confidence toward economics.

“Change”, Guru replied, “is an absolute part of existence. There is not one ion in the universe that exists without being the product of change in the  state of its energy. Where there is energy, there is change. Otherwise there would be no universe.”

“But must change be so disruptive?”, mariner asked.

“At the level of living creatures here on Earth, change is always disruptive but in smaller scales of change, it sometimes can pass without being obvious. When a newborn has a different shade of hair, it is noticed but doesn’t seem disruptive. However, the level of DNA involved in that change that forced a modification in a sequence of otherwise ‘happy’ cells was significant.”

“But humans are so proud of their mastery of so many of Earth’s processes. Why can’t they manage change better?” mariner replied. He submitted a Wiley calendar subject to make his point:

“Your cartoon reflects the difficulty and disruption caused by change”, Guru replied. “Nothing, not an ion, a sea nettle, a crow or a human makes changes until they are forced upon them. Some changes are incremental and even greatly beneficial but these are not large changes. Change becomes disruptive when entire concepts and procedures must undergo total change in a short amount of time – that is, not as slow as evolution.”

Guru continued, “The cartoon also demonstrates that change must relate to genuine pressures that are hurting life’s processes. Making changes for ulterior or irrelevant reasons only adds to the cacophony.”

Mariner thanked Guru for his insights and headed home. Mariner’s assumption is that humans aren’t as smart as they should be about managing themselves. AI can’t do it, either – because AI is a human invention.

Ancient Mariner

 

More about happy

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Recent posts were about finding a happy place to live. There is no question that the US is, generally, an unhappy place to live. The economic pressures putt on the citizenry are unheard of and the President already is making financial stability a disappearing phenomenon for everyone. Still, Donald doesn’t (yet) own small happy places or one’s personal memories.

Seriously, everyone must survive each day with at least a little satisfaction that life is worth living. Often, we must force ourselves to insert satisfaction into our daily life. His daughter has a supper routine where everyone around the table must identify a rose, then identify a thorn. A rose expresses the high point of the day, a fun moment, an accomplishment, or an interpersonal action. The thorn represents the opposite: a low point in the day, a frustration or failure. Even their 4-year-old must participate. Besides the benefit of sharing with one another, the exercise makes one focus on what good events feel like as well as preventing bad memories from being the only memories.

It is possible to deliberately set up a discharge of bad feelings by performing a deliberate action for that purpose. For example, play with children – the more active, the better; get outside with them and romp meaninglessly while the good vibes rise to the surface. The same can be applied with loved pets; take a walk, go to the ice cream parlor for a shared treat or toss a stuffed toy or ball. Cats like to cuddle and play hunting games with a toy or treat. Or use Zen practices designed for the same purpose – go deep and let go. Go somewhere where you have good vibes.

The challenge is to get outside the negativity that has been forced on you. The old saw about two sides make up one coin is true. If negative feelings are dominating, turn the coin over – there’s a whole new fun world there. The ability to turn the coin over at will is made difficult today by industrial distractions. One will not achieve happiness scrolling a smart phone or a television set. If one is truthful, these devices are a sedative – a lot like oxycodone and not a cure.

Discovering positivity requires physical action, change of routine and a focus free of typical responsibilities. A smart phone is not the same as walking in the woods – well maybe it can be pretended as such but that’s the difficulty in taking happiness advice from a circuit board. Go personal! Use that body of yours for fun!

Ancient Mariner

 

Best measure of national content

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Generally speaking, the way a nation measures its economic health is by measuring its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is an economic phrase that means ‘how much profit ls generated’. Since the Second World War, the US economic strategy has been ‘big is better’ leading to large, monopolistic corporations, international trade control and sustaining controlled inflation/deflation. Donald reminds us of how profit is manipulated through tariffs. As things stand today, the United States is the wealthiest nation in the world.

But something doesn’t seem right. Would it then be true that small is worse? Does this delineation lead to hoarding the better and ignoring the worse? Afraid so, that’s how capitalism works. Charity is okay as long as it is voluntary. Mandated charity (Is that like a penalty for being wealthy?) is verboten.

GDP is just one item in a long table of contributing issues as to what makes a nation happy – not just wealthy. In population polls of all the nations, the US is ranked 16th to 23rd in most polls and one source reports the US at 63rd) as a ‘happy’ nation. It is interesting but clearly demonstrative that certain elements of society play a larger role than ‘bigger is better’. Eleven of the top twelve happiest nations are dominated by a similar social structure. They are:   Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Australia, Switzerland, New Zealand and Costa Rica.

This conclusion is based on Gallup polling data collected over the past three years from 143 countries, with researchers evaluating six critical factors: gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, and perceptions of corruption both internally and externally.

֎ GDP per capita. ‘Per capita’ means per person rather than the typical use to measure a nation’s situation. This measurement is the average income of all citizens individually. It includes not only well-to-do citizens but citizens from all income levels – including those with no income.

֎ Social Support. This category includes government programs that support the citizenry, e.g., Medicare, Social Services, child care, social security, food stamps, minimum wage, etc.

֎ Healthy Life Expectancy. This category focuses on price controls for various costs related not only to health and prescriptions but also to assisted living and living conditions generally.

֎ Freedom to make life choices. Distracting issues like racism, class discrimination, sexual constraints like birth control, abortion and homosexuality, education policy, restrictions caused by disruption from zoning, home owner associations, tax and insurance policies, and corporate intrusion all impose on an individual’s desire to make independent decisions about life choices.

֎ Generosity. There are two types: government and citizenry. It is a matter of behavioral attitude for both. Governments can be oppressive and finite about social policy or they can adopt some awareness of social need and exception. A US example is the battle over minimum wage, which is far behind the effects of inflation. Food stamps and rental policies which avoid competitive pricing are other examples.

On the citizenry side, Housing Associations are notorious for constraining individual desires. Another is the atmosphere of unanimity in communities. [In a recent post, mariner alluded to the influence of a common industry and multi-generational families contributing to a unified society.] Large corporations can choose to support employee needs outside the workplace by ‘joining the community’ or simply impose their presence in a way that can, in the extreme, wipe out a whole neighborhood.

֎ Perceptions of corruption both internally and externally. This category is likely to be the real reason the US is ranked as the 23rd happiest nation. Corruption is de rigueur in the US. Since the Reagan administration in the 1980s, unions have been busted, the tax code is dangerously imbalanced, elected officials see their own security and lifestyle as more important, rental prices are not competitive, Corporate America is completely self-managed and owes no support for American society. Lest we go on . . . .

Many times mariner has heard the comment, “If Trump buys Canada, where else can I move?” Try Finland, perpetually the happiest nation in the world.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

Dormancy

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One doesn’t usually think of dormancy as an active response to a situation. It is common to recognize dormancy in bears and frogs and of course in the plant world where endless species shut down to a dormant, death-like state for the winter. Even Homo can use dormancy, a dormancy with gradations.

For the last two weeks of zero temperatures, sleet, bitter winds and snow, mariner chooses to be a bear – almost. He does sleep a lot more, a privilege of being a retired bear, but he is restrained to his lair. He peers out the window of his lair to see a barren, white world. The only sound is the wind whistling against the window.

It would be nice if, like the bear, Homo could gather fat in warmer times then use it to pay for heat in the winter.

Homo has learned to use dormancy as a tool. For example, attics and basements are put in a state of dormancy on purpose. Another example is spring cleaning. Does this mean we would be a dirty bear all winter? Of course not – we borrowed this style of dormancy from the frog who hibernates in soft muck just below the frost line.

In the final analysis, though, Homos aren’t hibernators. If Homos aren’t careful about their style of dormancy, that word converts to loneliness, depression and even ill health. Homos are forced to continue to live an active life that energizes, that socializes, that sees the end of dormancy. Otherwise, we live the life of the sparrows, many of which don’t make it to greener times.

Ancient Mariner

About Era shifting

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Greetings, Readers

It has been pleasant, if not rewarding, avoiding television news. Watching headlines is a lot like taking slaps to the face over and over. Mariner does keep track generally through his own news email services and a number of trustworthy magazines. Television still has its saving grace through shows like NOVA (PBS) and documentaries on Netflix.

Just the other night PBS ran a show about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two early presidents who had different perceptions about the structure and role of the emerging United States. They fought tooth and nail and were brutal politically. Honestly, there were as many dirty tricks as one witnesses with politics today. An important difference was that back then, each political battle added to the Constitution with the intent of strengthening the nation whereas today it is petty payback and disassembling the Constitution without a plan to improve it.

The general observation mariner took from the show was that moving from one era to another, whether presidents, migrating fowl or coral reefs, it is grotesquely disruptive to normal expectations. There is abuse at the individual level. New rules are yet to be known.

So it was with those early days when Europe, Russia and The United States (and indigenous natives) had several wars to determine how the new world would be split among nations.

Similarly, today a new economic future that has little to do with contemporary practices has led to a global scramble to acquire a dominant position in the ‘new world’. What frightens mariner is that the planet has its own Trumpian plan to force human life to pay for the ‘borrowing’ of too much of nature’s resources – including global warming, overpopulation and gross extinction of the planet’s biomass.

Under the circumstances, the best one can do is to love family, share with the community and be careful about insecure assets and income.

Armageddon progresses.

Ancient Mariner

Good AI perspective

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Virtually every commentary about AI approaches the topic at a too low perspective: the impact on jobs, privacy, energy vulnerability, etc. In fact, AI is a global issue that will change global politics, global trade and a new era of feeding the world. Below is an expert’s insights as to how AI will change the world – worth reading. From AXIOS:

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-167e2440-d545-11ef-86f8-718f1121da12.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

Ancient Mariner

How does Holy Father Trump sound?

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The only daily news mariner reads are the email titles from news websites. He avoids television news. However, given a decent education and actively pursuing information during two presidential elections, he has a perspective about the way things are going. More than once he read headlines about two billionaire preachers trying to turn the US government into a theocracy – an awkward interpretation of the spirit of Jesus similar to what Rome did 2,400 years ago.

Anyone who takes the New Testament even half seriously asks about billionaire preachers. Isn’t that a blatant oxymoron? How can a representative of Jesus’ instruction that one is with God only when giving, sharing or helping become a billionaire? Remember the main parable about the Good Samaritan? Samaritan Jews and traditional Jews did not get along well (sort of like Protestants and Catholics} but a Samaritan is traveling in traditional Jewish neighborhoods when he comes upon an injured Jew by the side of the road. The Samaritan gets the Jew to an inn, pays his housing costs and assures the innkeeper that he will cover medical costs. Mariner is pretty sure the Samaritan is not a billionaire in Rome-dominated Israel.

At a minimum what the preachers are doing is even worse than what Donald is doing. Metaphorically, if the nation were a shrub, Donald is using shears to cut it to the ground but is possible that the shrub will grow back; the preachers want to pull the shrub out by the root.

Of course one of the benefits is that the US congregation will have its own pope – probably a billionaire.

Ancient Mariner

AI and Humans do not use the same logic

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Mariner was reading through an old scientific journal published in 2022 when he came across an article about how computer logic and brain logic do not reason in the same way. The comparison watched the brain reason through its neuron activity while the same task was assigned to a computer analog.

Too make several pages into one, both sides were asked to identify an algebraic shape and place it in the correct location. The shape was a doughnut hole. The computer was stumped because the data provided described an empty circle and was asked to properly insert it in the dough. To the computer, there was no information that provided the placement rules for mathematics; it knew, by formula, that it was dealing with a circle but had no mathematical process to determine where the circle was suppose to fit.

The brain, on the other hand, did not conjure the values of multidimensional tables to get the answer. The brain reasoned, “What things have holes in them?” An image of a coffee cup came into focus. The brain said, “Oh – a coffee cup has a hole in the middle, and so does a flower pot, and a well. They all have a hole in the middle”. So brain decided the put the hole in the middle of the doughnut.

The computer uses mathematical algorithms which, through frequency on tables, identifies a mathematical solution. The brain, on the other hand, uses reason. Both have to do a table search to obtain information but the brain uses experience and human function.

Will chatGPT ever master the human brain?

Ancient Mariner

Are we tongue tied?

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As many folks may experience, a sound sleep may be disturbed by a brain chasing some weird thoughts during the night. Mariner experienced this phenomenon last night when he was disturbed through the night by his brain struggling with language.
This time it was the troubles humans have because they must use the same sounds over and over again for different words because the human limits on making different sounds cannot handle the billions of words humans have invented. So humans have to use the same sound for many different words and meanings. Just a few simple one-syllable examples:
Cow, now, sow, plow, mean, bean, lean, tree, flee, see, flea, sea, etc.
If one sounds out the vowel letters in the alphabet (a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y, which is redundant to i), that’s about the limit of different noises a human can make. Humans try to stretch these sounds so they can invent more words. That is called slurring, or respectfully, dialect.
So humans use five sounds over and over and over again by attaching distortions of the throat, mouth, tongue, teeth, lips and jaw. These noises are called consonants.
Twenty-six letters constitute all the letters one is supposed to need to make words. But it isn’t that easy thanks to the Great Vowel Shift that occurred between 1400 and 1600. The shift made it easier to invent more words with the same vowel noises. Check these examples:
plough as well as plow, slough as well as slough – tricky, one uses the ‘ow’ sound, the other uses the ‘u’ sound; the other direction to make more words with no more vowels is to combine words, allowing vowels to be used more than once in one word. For example, tie dye as a simple one and Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a complex one that means ‘fear of big words’, something about which Icelandic and Welsh languages have no concern.
What would it be like to be a crow and have to develop an entire vocabulary based on ‘caw’ noises. They have, you know.
So mariner can understand the problems ChatGPT (which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) has trying to capture nuance and relevancy in human languages.
The dialect piece can be entertaining. Jimmie Carter and Fats Domino never end a word with the ‘ur’ sound; mariner’s friend from Boston puts ‘ur’ noises wherever he likes.
Thinking further, one wonders how the vowel noises are represented in sign language, There are only so many gyrations of the face, arms and hands.

Ancient Mariner