Imagine

Imagine, if you can set aside a few moments, that you just woke up from a deep sleep, almost from a hibernated state. You try to make sense of your surroundings that is mainly a very large room with an oversized porthole that opened up to thousands of stars ablaze against a jet black sky. You didn’t need to count them. At that moment you just knew you were in some space ship but not sensing that you are in motion. You look at the large door opposite the window but, momentarily, you held back the compulsion to open it, at least not yet. You took stock of your living quarters. It looks and feels comfortable. There is food and water and you are breathing normal air in a room so ideally cooled. Everything looks good.  It’s time to go out that door.

Your quarters open to a very large round area the size of a hotel lobby. There’s a dozen other people milling around and judging from their body language you know their situation is similar to yours and you surmise the doors you see along the circular lobby lead to their quarters as well. Introductions are made. It is clear that although you are all speaking the same language, it is obvious each one is from a different origin in physical features and cultural background and likely with a different birth language. You find out from almost all of them that the living quarters were different from each one and that yours appears to have the better if not the best accommodations. You have not checked your pantry or inside what looked like an extra-large refrigerator but you are certain you have more than any of them.  You excuse yourself to get back to your room to look at everything more closely.

There is a flat screen on a desk but no keyboard but there is a center toggle in front of it.  You touch it and the screen comes alive. Immediately, it informs you of the entire inventory in your room that is exclusively yours alone. Hunger is setting in. You find stacks of meal boxes inside the refrigerator. There is no microwave oven but the instruction on the box tells you where to put it on top of the table marked a green square. The green square turns red as you set the box on it. In just a few seconds it turns green again and you can smell the food is cooked.

A week just passed. Everyone has things to do but driven by different motivations and needs. You had no choice but to work because there was stuff around to keep you busy. You have tools and material and a host of many resources that surprisingly you are finding all around your quarters, so there were things to do. Aside from that, there was much to learn from the information coming out of the screen that seemed inexhaustible in scope and variety. However, it will not answer any specific issues around the other passengers. This forces everyone to interact with each other to gain what information others are willing to share.

A month just passed. You calculated that your space ship is traveling at 18.5 miles per second. You learned that and a lot of other things from reading and experimenting and observing star positions that change ever so slightly. What eludes you that you found no answers for are: the direction or destination you are heading to and for how long this whole voyage will last? You notice a bright golden orb from a distance, changing locations relative to your window from time to time but it appears to accompany your ship.  You assume that is the mother ship. You do not have a good sense of the size of your own ship but you think it is huge. From somewhere your provisions and wastes come in and out.

This is the second month. You and twelve other co-passengers had been meeting regularly at the lobby. Early on you all learned that no person can go into another’s room. Some learned that the hard way. One violent sensation was enough to discourage all intrusions after a few incidents and word spread quickly. Today you learn that only three others seem to do well. The rest are complaining and bickering about all kinds of issues around how provisions, living accommodations and things to work with in each quarters were apportioned unfairly. No answers can be found from the screen and since there were no keyboards and methods of communication to either the ship or the golden orb they were frustrated from not being able to register their complaints or summon for answers. A few were showing physical distress and weight loss from not having enough to eat.  They were miserable and duly dissatisfied.

You learned that you can take food provision out of your room (it’s just that no one can come in to your room if you were to host dinner or something). You and three others decided to share some of your provisions with others.  Surprisingly, your provisions are replenished in your room through the pantry and refrigerator. You notice though that replenishment is influenced by the amount of work you’ve been doing. You’ve been doing experiments and you brought out some of your projects that other passengers appreciated. The other three passengers were doing different things too which the others welcomed. This lasted only for a while.

Today, you are faced with a crisis at the lobby. Most of the nine unhappy folks were destroying things around them; some even throwing away food they were given. Only one seems to realize that it was not the thing to do. He pleaded with you and the other three. He revealed that his situation was improving. His provisions had dramatically increased as he continued working and a few of his projects were working. The five of you huddled for a while. The fifth person to join you made an impassioned speech to the whole group, “We’re in this together.  In case you didn’t notice we’re all captive in this ship. None of us knows where exactly we are heading among all these stars and other objects out there. We can’t know for how long we will be traveling and we’re not getting any answers from anywhere else outside of this group. We had better start working together or we will destroy each other.”

One of the eight discontented ones yelled back, “We’re all going to suffer together and be equally miserable”. At which point they all aimed themselves at you and the four others. Quickly, you each retreated to your quarters. You want so much to end this nightmare. It must or it will put an end to all.  The ship will likely keep going but none of you may survive to see where it will ultimately take this voyage.

Multiply the total number of passengers – you and the twelve others by 538 million and …

13 X 538,000,000 equals approximately 7 billion.  Expand your space ship to something very large that you are familiar with. Think the planet you know – earth. The golden orb could be the sun.

Think about this further. Earth is indeed speeding along its orbit around the sun at 18.5 miles per second. It is moving along – a planetary captive together with seven other planets, asteroids and comets; the whole solar system journeying at 135 miles per second around a galaxy. You find out your home galaxy – the Milky Way – around which the sun is a medium sized star among a billion others, is approaching another galaxy, the Andromeda, at 250,000 miles per hour. Like everything else in space, speed of anything can only be gleaned relative to one another. Our galaxy is part of a cluster of galaxies, dubbed the local group that is also traveling at tremendous speed. It’s just that somehow the Milky Way and Andromeda are aiming to collide in less than 4 billion years.

For now, the prospect of finding a different planet, another earth, is out of the question. This is your home with the rest of 7 billion others.

As you can see, managing to get along with a dozen people is a challenge. Is this just a story I concocted? It is a story, one of many in our history. We do not take the story of Cain and Abel literally. As an allegorical representation was it too absurd to not have been replayed many times over for millennia? Did we not develop societies and entire civilizations so far advanced over previous ones repeatedly only to fall and be destroyed from within?

Earth is indeed a space ship traveling through infinite space and time. All 7 billion of us have nowhere to go but remain here for the foreseeable future.

Whatever we decide to do we must begin now and imagine.

Note: If you scroll to the prior musing before this, and you’re up to it, imagine again: “Diamonds are not Forever?” 

Diamonds Are Not Forever?

Dare I say that iron deserves the highest regard?  And, this is where you say, “Excuse me?” This begs an explanation but before I do that the diamond has some explaining first.

It was not until 1477 that the very first diamond engagement ring was given as a symbol of pre-matrimonial promise.  It was Archduke Maximilian who started it when he gave a ring adorned with flat diamonds to the love of his heart - Mary of Burgundy.  But then, as only royalty and the super-rich can afford it, it did not really catch on as an obligatory gesture of professing one’s love.

It was, in fact, not for another four centuries later, when Cecil Rhodes came to South Africa to found the De Beers Mining Co. that eventually controlled 90% of the world’s supply; true even today.  It was in 1886 that Tiffany introduced their trademark setting, later followed in 1918 by Cartier’s “Trinity” ring.  However, it was not until the middle of the 20th century, after the Second World War, when America’s wealth was emerging and the escalating growth of personal income enabled the average earner to “splurge” on a diamond ring for the lovely maiden.  Of course, that was not the whole story.  It was the clever marketing of Be Beers that did it.  When Marilyn Monroe was picked to say, (or did she sing it?), “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” and the glossy print and billboard ads that declared, “Diamonds Are Forever” that sealed the deal for De Beers. Controlling the supply was the next clever thing even as the craving for it grew.

So how did this multi-faceted sparkling piece of adornment become one of the most coveted possessions?  It is actually made of pure carbon which, next only to hydrogen and helium, is a very common element in the universe.  So common in fact that life as we know it is essentially carbon based.  It is in our food as carbohydrates, source of most of our energy as hydrocarbons, and it is a waste product of every animal’s respiratory system although plants can’t live without it. 

Now, with carbon are other expensive elements that make possible the diamond ring.  A piece of crystalline rock is nothing without the settings of gold, silver and now platinum.  However, none of these elements could have become what they are if not for iron.  That’s right!  “Iron?” you say?

While diamond, the ones mined here, are earth-made through high pressure and temperature deep in the earth’s crust the other heavier elements, 60% of all the 92 naturally occurring elements in the periodic table can only be made by a much, much more intense temperature and pressure that are only possible in supernova explosions.  A star continues to shine for as long as it has hydrogen “to burn”.  The hydrogen atom fuses into helium as energy is released in the process that will take billions of years to finish for an average-size star like our sun.  Much bigger stars, thousands bigger and more massive than our sun will burn relatively quickly, turning hydrogen into helium rapidly (just a few million years), and then helium will fuse to form carbon.  The star will start to collapse under its own gravity – converting carbon into iron.  Iron will begin to settle into its core and as soon as that happens, almost in a blink of an eye, the heavy star will implode on itself and the shock wave from the sudden collapse will result in a massive explosion – a supernova will light up, outshining an entire galaxy momentarily.  It is during that explosion that heavier elements will be formed, and only then. 

The shock wave will compress surrounding hydrogen elements trillions of miles around to cause many, many stars to be born.  Our sun is supposed to be a second or third generation star out of the repeating processes.  All the elements formed during the supernova explosion will be spread out in a mix of material where some of them will be part of the molten swirling matter orbiting a star to become its planets.  One of those became our earth with a rich supply of the heavy elements from calcium to sodium, etc. and gold and silver, on and on.  Diamonds came last as the earth starts crushing carbon deep in its cooling crust.

There you have a story in the life of a star, one of a couple of billions of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.  But I digressed, though I hope you enjoyed the side trip.  Now you know iron signals the death of a star but it is also the reason a supernova explodes and new stars will be born.  You may want to know that the iron in your blood, your razor or the chassis of your car, or the cast iron skillet in your kitchen was at one time in the belly of a supernova eons ago, far, far away. Your prized possession of gold and silver, the calcium and potassium supplements you take were at one time created by unimaginable shockwaves that fused other elements to make them billions of years ago.

These elements we talked about have a forever history, so to speak, more than diamonds that are far from forever with its past or its future.  This is not a knock on diamonds but a profound inculpation on De Beers and those who traffic in so called blood diamonds or more diplomatically conflict diamonds from Angola to Sierra Leone to the Congo, etc.  And the thing is that iron and gold, and other heavy elements are indestructible by any regular process, except perhaps in a nuclear explosion, whereas, diamonds will shatter with a hammer blow or burn and disappear in a furnace. But, like you, I find diamond a dazzling piece to own or give away (if I can afford it).  Notwithstanding skyscrapers, bridges, iron tools, and steel safes to keep your diamonds safe, none of these can even compare to the allure and power of this coveted sparkler that is the hardest substance to scratch or acquire. 

I guess diamonds can be forever in one’s lifetime or the lifetime of a marriage.  Speaking of the latter, marital bliss will sparkle forever into generations that follow, ring or no ring.

Spider Talk

Two spiders were talking. They happen to like each other because both have two of the most difficult names in their species. One was Pholcus phalangioides, known as the long-bodied cellar spider or the skull spider and the other was Argiope trifasciata. Argiopeis Latin for “with bright face”; trifasciata is Latin for “three-banded.”

These two have this air of superiority over other spiders although one species has a more complex name than either; however, Parasteatoda tepidariorum, is also known as the common house spider, casting an inky shadow to the aura of the complicated name. But Pholcus phalangioides is one to talk when he is a cellar dweller. He’s got something special though as I shall explain.

They get together once a week. The following is the actual, unabridged transcript of their recent conversation.

Pholcus phalangioides: You heard what our human hosts were talking about the other day?

Argiope trifasciata: They’re your hosts, not mine, because you live in their cellar.  I am a free ranger. My meals are exotic as they come.  You prey on baby cockroaches.  Anyway, what have they got to say - your hosts?

Pholcus phalangioides: I heard them talking while working on a “project” at the basement. The so called “project” is a little bit of this, a little of that but mostly twisting off beer caps are what you’d hear in between the whirring of a power drill and some hammer work. In my experience watching professionals, a power drill and a hammer don’t go together well in assembling projects.

Argiope trifasciata: Please go on already. This is not one of your conspiracy stuff, is it?

Pholcus phalangioides: Listen. Steve was telling Al that he read something about some recent discovery by astrophysicists or cosmologists, those types, of a disturbance created from somewhere about 130 million light years away. And I said to myself, big deal!

Argiope trifasciata: What was it? Should it concern us?

Pholcus phalangioides: They talked about an event from trillions and trillions of miles away but it took 130 million years for the effect to get here. Our ancestors, yours and mine, were here 380 million years before these humans knew how to make crude tools. And this so called discovery is like a big deal when I could have confirmed its existence to them without resorting to their sophisticated detection tools”.

Argiope trifasciata: I think I know what you’re talking about, but do go on”.

Pholcus phalangioides: First of all, they talk about this detector that costs $1.1 billion each and they built two of those at different locations just to make sure they got it right. It’s called LIGO, by the way.

Argiope trifasciata: What does LIGO stand for?

Pholcus phalangioides: I’ll tell you but you won’t remember it the second I say it. Steve and Al don’t either, so don’t feel bad.  It’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory.  It will detect gravity waves that disturb space time.

Argiope trifasciata: Wait, wait! You and I know we don’t call it that but we know what it is because we feel it every time it comes across but how do you know what this thing really is. Your human friends Steve and Al don’t sound that sophisticated to me. By the way, I don’t care what it’s called. I don’t mind that hairs on our legs – in all eight of them – feel it but what bothers me is when I feel the effect right at our foreheads and it’s not helping that our eight eyes are right there. It bothers me every time. My question is, ‘Why didn’t evolution take care of it already’? For millions of years it took to get us to our sophisticated level today …”

Pholcus phalangioides: Listen and listen well, they’re not our human friends the way they treat us.  We should be their friends, or at least they should recognize we’re useful to them. What we get in return is we’ve become Halloween caricatures and you’ve seen or hear how they squeal and scream when they come near us. I’ve seen enough cruelty and torment from their brooms and folded newspapers.  Sometimes they use fly swatters on so many of us. I just cringe every time I think about it. Don’t get me going, okay?  Anyway, I read, that’s how I know”.

Argiope trifasciata: Sorry.  So they have a name for it. They’ve detected it with some pretty expensive detectors, big deal! I’ll have to agree with you there.

Pholcus phalangioides: Decades ago someone named Albert Einstein predicted the existence of this thing.  Like I said earlier, I could have confirmed it.  My great, great, great grandfather or perhaps much earlier from my ancestry, could have told them that it is true. Anyway, we knew it existed but I’ll have to give it to these humans to explain why and how it is produced. Nevertheless, what good is detecting something that happened at a time when there were still dinosaurs around? Speaking of dinosaurs, what was so special about them? They died out and we’re still here and we’ll be here long after many more species will have gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Argiope trifasciata: Okay, okay, you’re going somewhere again, like you usually do. Let’s get back to what we’ve been talking about. We’re so sophisticated we can detect the slightest movement anywhere our web is touched. We can tell too if it is prey, something we can eat, or if it is just a leaf or twig or even a gust of wind or even from a slight breeze. Millions of years of evolution gave us eight simple eyes, eight legs with some exceptions, our mutant relatives they are. And …

Pholcus phalangioides: You’re talking to me, another spider. I know that, we know that. What humans don’t know is that we’ve been able to detect these so called gravity waves all our lives. They don’t know that and they can’t know it because they can’t measure it in us.  Anyway, do you want to know what these gravity waves are?

Argiope trifasciata: Even if I say no, you’re going to tell me anyway.  So tell me.

Pholcus phalangioides: At least you’ll know what this thing that from time to time bothers us. I know it’s irritating, something humans have no idea how. We’re more sensitive to it than their $1.1 billion detector. Apparently, these gravity waves that had been bothering us for all this time occurs from trillions and trillions of miles from here, like I said. This particular one came from a place that took light 130 million years to get here.  So, two heavy stars that much earlier had already collapsed into their dense shells collided and merged into one. There was an explosion as you can imagine and the event caused a ripple through space time around them, producing waves that travelled just like something produced when a pebble is dropped on a still pond.  It was so far away and by the time it got here the strength is a feeble facsimile of the original. We felt a lot of these in the past. Humans finally felt it and that was all the excitement about. Well, what do you think?

Argiope trifasciata: To be honest, I don’t really care. Good talk though. I need to relocate my web. There’s a new spot that seems to get a lot of traffic – flies, mosquitoes, moths, you name it.

Pholcus phalangioides: Before you go, let me tell you something.  Be thankful you can detect everything that touches your web. These gravity waves don’t come across that frequently. And by the way, baby cockroaches taste better than adult mosquitoes you’ve been getting lately. You know they carry more diseases than baby roaches. Baby insects until they’ve become adults are much cleaner, and easier to catch, of course. And don’t forget you are an arachnid. People fear you.  Same place next week? Happy Halloween!!!

Nerd Notes (Or, a note to the nerds among you):

Largely unnoticed last week or so ago was the much awaited news that astronomers, astrophysicists and cosmologists had been waiting for.  It was the rock-solid evidence of the existence of so called gravity waves, one among several of Einstein’s predictions proven to be true. Contrary to our two spiders’ pooh-poohing attitude, this was a big deal. It proved again that space that we know to be empty can be stretched and compressed and rippled like still water in a pond. It is so counter intuitive bordering on the strange and the bizarre, yet so very real.

Science News in Astronomy: “On February 11, 2016, after decades of trying to directly detect such waves, scientists announced that they appear to have found them. The waves came from another galaxy far, far away. How far? Try between 750 million and 1.86 billion light-years away! There, two black holes collided, shaking the fabric of space and time, or spacetime. Here on Earth, two giant detectors in different parts of the United States quivered as gravity waves washed over them”.

Not only did LIGO confirm it, radio and optical telescopes located the spot in the sky where the ripple started.

What about our two spiders detecting the waves? We cannot prove that they do or don’t.  And I am under no obligation to reveal how I came across the transcript of their conversation.

“Once there was a Fleeting wisp of Glory”

President John F. Kennedy’s administration in its early stages was at one time fondly attributed by the press to a Broadway musical. It was well known how much he and then First Lady Jackie Kennedy loved the Broadway musical, “Camelot”, when it first debuted in 1960, right at about the time of the presidential campaign which he won. How much the story in the musical had affected Pres. Kennedy’s view of his presidency, the country and the world, was subject to wishful speculation by many, including the media that was fascinated by the charisma of a young and vibrant president.  Sadly, the event in November 1963 tragically put an end to all of it.

What was it in the musical that could possibly have attracted the First Couple? Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, lyricist and composer teamed up for “Camelot” but their prior work, “My Fair Lady” was what first catapulted them to fame. They collaborated in “Brigadoon” and “Paint Your Wagon” (this last one, when made into a movie, had Clint Eastwood sing in his one and only musical role, but I digressed).

There was the Cold War just a little over a decade after WWII. The fear of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union gripped the nation and the rest of the world. The United Nations was a young world organization where the Security Council’s circular table evoked the idea behind and connected to the idealism of King Arthur’s Round Table.  Camelot was the dreamy, idyllic place from which King Arthur ruled, surrounded by knights in shining armor from all around the kingdom and even from across the ocean. All of these symbolisms were not lost on many citizens of the world, fearful of another war but hoping for peace. Kennedy perhaps reflected upon those fears and what better way to launch his administration by countering fear with the ideals represented by chivalrous knights? I am merely speculating.

Let’s examine the story of “Camelot”. King Arthur was going to marry Guinevere. When they first met he explained to her what Camelot was all about with the song, partly:

A law was made a distant moon ago here:

July and August cannot be too hot.

And there's a legal limit to the snow here

In Camelot.

The winter is forbidden till December

And exits March the second on the dot.

By order, summer lingers through September

In Camelot.

Last stanza went:

Those are the legal laws.

The snow may never slush upon the hillside.

By nine p.m. the moonlight must appear.

In short, there's simply not

A more congenial spot

For happily-ever-aftering than here

In Camelot.

Jackie Kennedy was known to have played the vinyl record (no CD or streaming then) over and over in the White House. John Kennedy had a genuine fondness for it, for sure, but he also loved Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. I often wondered what it would have been like if Kennedy went on to finish his first term and re-elected for a second one.

As tragic as his story was, “Camelot” was not, in its full story, the pure and idyllic place as portrayed earlier in the musical either. {Note: the musical and the Legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are two entirely different stories; the latter, far from what the musical represented, was truly about chivalry, righteousness and faith against aggression by foreign invaders}.

The musical was a contradiction in its content.  There was the fairy tale land of perfection, only to be soiled by an adulterous affair between Sir Lancelot and Guinevere, then an intrigue fomented by King Arthur’s illegitimate son, Mordred, followed by the inevitable destruction of the Round Table. King Arthur, if Kennedy idealized him, was an ineffective, oblivious king who through to the end stuck to his ideals even as his kingdom was falling apart. The fall of Sir Lancelot from being the perfect model of knighthood, proved the depth of human frailty.  King Arthur considered him his best knight even though he was from the other side of the English Channel. Lancelot described himself the perfect knight without a shred of humility when at the beginning of the musical on his way to Camelot he declared:

I've never strayed

From all I believe;

I'm blessed with an iron will.

Had I been made

The partner of Eve,

We'd be in Eden still.

C'est moi! C'est moi!

Lancelot not only did he make it to knighthood in the first ballot, so to speak, he became King Arthur’s favorite. But it did not take long for character to succumb to human weakness. Guinevere and Sir Lancelot fell for each other and King Arthur’s world was ripped asunder. Well, Kennedy turned out to be more like Lancelot. He was a war hero, good looking, magnetic and everything a knight was portrayed.  But he was a flawed man. That we knew later. He was the fallen Lancelot and he had several Guinevere(s) as it turned out, long before he stepped into the White House that was his Camelot and even during his brief sojourn there.

“Camelot” is still one of my favorite musicals, so it might seem I am contradicting that sentiment after the above dissertation.  There was hope at the end of that musical, as he was preparing for battle after the kingdom’s fall. King Arthur saw a young boy emerged from behind the lines to join the king’s army. King Arthur saw hope and a shining example that chivalry was still alive in the boy’s face.  He knighted him Sir Tom but he was going to send him away from the battlefield to “go home and grow old”. But before the boy left he told him to listen first:

Each evening, from December to December,

Before you drift to sleep upon your cot,

Think back on all the tales that you remember

Of Camelot.

Ask ev'ry person if he's heard the story,

And tell it strong and clear if he has not,

That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory

Called Camelot.

That is about all we can hope for today as governments here and from many corners around the world face all kinds of challenges. It seems that crises after crises are all we hear. Our fears increase by the day while the world appears helpless. People from all corners can only harken to a place, more imagined than real, more wishful, supported only by a universal hope. But perhaps by miracle the world will get to it. Yes that we will indeed get to where “once there was a fleeting wisp of glory” which once found, we can hold onto and we get to keep it for at least ten thousand years.

Always Greener Somewhere Else

Every year in Tanzania the Great Serengeti migration occurs with seasonal regularity on a scale unmatched anywhere else. Over a million wildebeest accompanied by several other species of grazing animals participate in this almost circular pattern of migration with clockwork regularity. They go north in May and come back down south in September, then repeat the 1800 (2900 km) mile yearly trek according to the rainy seasons. It is the rain first then an explosion of vegetation - primarily green succulent grass – that regulates the migratory calendar. It is a story of survival that had gone on for hundreds, if not thousands of years, where the main characters are the wildebeest.  Zebras, gazelles, etc. are the supporting casts. If we must inject villains into the drama, we have crocodiles, lions and hyenas to fill the roles. This is purely for dramatic effect and certainly not an indictment on the predators, whose roles are just as important towards a healthy and sustainable ecosystem. The wildebeests manage their journey at a cost of sacrificing about 10,000 of their kind to the altar of survival every crossing. In the process, crocodiles survive on food intake that occurs only twice a year as the rivers are crossed by the migrants coming and going. Imagine having a meal bi-annually to survive. Lions and hyenas and other minor players do not enjoy an easy life either. Weather patterns would sometimes sketch erratic patterns of drought, ill-timed arrival of rain that disturbs even slightly the migratory calendar that threatens their own survival. The yearly drama is harsh and only the strong and the well-equipped survive. The wildebeest is the prime mover because it is in their DNA, the strength of their instincts, to go because it is always greener somewhere else.

That was exhausting trying to put together a whole paragraph as segue to the conversation on our human yearning, metaphorically speaking, for a place that seems to always evoke a greener landscape.  At least, greener than where we find ourselves today, despite the fact that we truly do not know what greener or greenest really is.

Years ago I was driving the car with several co-workers to go to lunch. Typical in city driving we went through several traffic lights. In one of those stops I didn’t realize the light had changed already. In the few intervening seconds, the co-worker sitting in the front passenger seat, in her mild Midwestern voice said, “You know that light is not going to get any greener”, a teasing jab for me to go step on it already.  That was a funny episode I had to tell because at that time I had been in the country only a couple of years and American humor was something I needed to understand and get used to. It was something I was expected to use in the new culture.

It turned out, in a similar way, I was supposed to recognize that society expects us not only to see what is green, where it is, and when it is no longer going to get any greener at one place we are to move on to the next intersection.  We will find, of course, that there are more intersections to cross. But must we always look for where it could be greener?

Like the wildebeest, it must be in our DNA as well, to recognize the place or places where it might be greener. Often, we are merely told and made to believe that it is always greener somewhere else.

How would one answer if he or she were asked, “Given the chance, would you like to live or be at a better place than where you are now?” Often, the first reaction is, “It depends.” Isn’t it?

Well, perhaps for some, such as those who had hit rock bottom, another place might just be perceived a better alternative with very little thinking involved. Then there are those who had always lived at rock bottom. If, as a child, someone grew up in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, Calcutta, or the poorest town in Eastern Romania, any place away from there will be a step up without even realizing how many steps down that someone had been living in. These folks are faced with very little options. Their story is not likely the story of many; at least, we hope so because otherwise the world is in worst shape than we are imagining.

On the other hand, what if that someone already lives in a place many rungs above the global living standard? It may not matter at all because, based on the dictates of human nature, most will likely opt for anything better than where they already are, regardless of the level of their location in the social ladder. The more pointed question perhaps is, “Is there ever a point when someone will say he or she asks for no more because they have reached the absolute zenith of everything?”

Let’s use ice skating terminology here because often the dangers in life are when folks find themselves skating on thin ice in their desperate quest to reach the greenest of green pastures. For the most part the stories told by many are not out of desperation but of meeting challenges with moderate degrees of difficulty. Speaking of degrees of difficulty, many might just go for the double toe loop, the Salchow or the Lutz, then maybe a single or double axel. Only the elite attempt the triple axel and no one, male or female, has done a quadruple one, not yet anyhow. [Axel Paulson was a Norwegian skater in the 19^th century who started all that forward jumping from off the outside edge of his skates].

The story I tell is in the category of a double toe loop, a somewhat above average jump. It was a jump nevertheless, and across a river halfway to the other side of the world. My wife while still single, energetic and fueled by a sense of adventure, applied for immigration to come to the U.S. She was among the multitude of wildebeest from many lands around the world who dreamed to see and live in a greener pasture called America. It was approved in a year but the migration was scuttled temporarily because she met me. We got married a couple of years later and had two children. Her dream for that pasture was shelved somewhere temporarily. About ten years later after her initial application, the U.S. Embassy wrote, giving her one last opportunity to immigrate, or lose it forever. We have now become a family of four wildebeests.

Many things had changed but my wife’s instincts for that pasture somewhere were still very much intact and she saw that it was not going to get much greener where we were.  I, on the other hand, was more concerned about the perils of crossing that river, the crocodiles that were waiting and the fear of the journey to the unknown was compelling. It was a daunting decision and I was holding out but the Embassy official who interviewed us provided the proverbial nudge that would change our lives. And not to be diminished was a U.S. Airline that offered us tickets for four on credit, on a promotional program (then) designed for immigrants only, with a catchy slogan, “Fly Now, Pay Later”. That was analogous to the kind of push all wildebeests get just before jumping into that river. But once we took the first step, there was no looking back.  We needed to and found work, paid for the tickets as soon as we could, and the rest is history.

Did we find the greener pasture? What we found was a land of many diverse pastures. The wildebeest family came and elected to stay.

How do I answer the question I posed earlier? America is a zenith of sort, not a perfect one, but close enough for us to go no further in search of the absolute green pasture, even if it seems that it is always greener somewhere else.

The Anatomy of the Truth

Here is an incident about a murder at the theater.  A stage hand, up above by the rafters and on a platform where all the ropes and pulleys and lights, had a gun in his hand. He had it with one of the actors below playing a scene and he was going to shoot him just as the drama was about to become loud and confusing.  A second stage hand was suspicious so he went up there as well to see what the first stage hand was up to. When he saw the gun he went to grab it from the first stage hand and they struggled for it. The gun went off.  The first stage hand let go of it and immediately the second stage hand picked it up to prevent any more shooting. The first stage hand picked up something blunt and aimed it at the second stage hand hitting him at the base of the back of his neck rendering him unconscious. 

An audience sitting at the front row was hit and killed instantly from the one and only gunshot.  In the ensuing confusion the first stage hand climbed down and exited through the back of the theater. He rushed to cross the street when at that moment a car hit him.  He was dead by the time he hit the ground.

Once it was identified where the shot came from in a matter of minutes, theater security and an off-duty cop went up to the platform above the stage to find the second stage hand recovering from the blunt trauma.  He naturally tested positive for gunpowder burns in his hand and his fingerprints were on the gun. The prosecutor convinced the jury that the injury on the suspect (second stage hand) was self-inflected when he slipped after firing the gun.  The second stage hand was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Well, the truth died with the first stage hand after he was hit by the car. The second stage hand’s version of the story could not save him in court and there was nothing he could do about it. It looked like the truth will be buried forever.

What is wrong with the whole story? Why can’t the narrator of the story testify for the defense? I told the story.  I wasn’t there. I merely told a plausible story based on what the second stage hand said all along but it had no weight whatsoever because there was no one to corroborate it. And there lies the problem with the truth. (I made up that story to drive the conversation, so please don't look it up)

Via, Veritas, Vita - The Way, The Truth and The Life, are the beacons that are to guide adherents to the Christian faith. Of the three, truth is the most elusive. All three are in every human experience. We always find a way regardless of what life we choose to live, managing to find different ways to live it and still finding we fall short of the ideal.   Lives lived will therefore vary, one not necessarily better than the other and there should be no indictment on which is far superior to another. For the most part, that is, because there are social and moral standards where lives lived and the ways they were lived are measured against.  For civilized society to survive in the manner that it had so far, religion and philosophy spoke of and to the same attributes – Via, Veritas, Vita.

The truth, however, is and should be the uncompromising one. What event occurs and the manner in which it occurs, how and what words are spoken, what and how actions are made hold indelible properties. They are permanently recorded in space and time and cannot be eradicated. But unless recorded on audio/video, such occurrences are often subject to recollection and interpretation by man. And there lies the reason why truth is often hard to come by, let alone be determined without equivocation.

Despite the world’s almost universal (though not totally) proclamation of faith in one form or another, we are still an anthropocentric species. Everything we see around us is reckoned from and on the basis of our interests. We interpret everything from that point of view. The universe is what it is because we are there to observe it; hence, we are the center of the universe. That being the case, it is not surprising that events, spoken words, gestures and actions are treated the same way – individually by every person. That explains why the same events are recounted by witnesses differently, sometimes wholly or partially, with nuances and details minutely registered one way or in many other ways.

In Agatha Christie’s novel, “And Then there were None”, not the movie version, we were told of a fictional version of how the truth can be buried so effectively in a plot where all the characters were killed including the killer but the truth died with all of them.

While the story above is a work of fiction, aren’t there many instances in history or recent events where the truth eludes final judgment? There were many sensational cases that despite all-out investigation, full of evidence and eyewitness accounts, the matters remained unresolved (or at least not to the satisfaction of everyone). Often the truth is extrapolated for lack of solid evidence.

King Solomon did such an extrapolation when he ruled for the woman who would rather give up the disputed child rather than for it to be cut in half, each half given to each of the two women who claimed to be the mother of the child. That decision is often cited to exemplify King Solomon’s wisdom. There was no DNA evidence then at that time, so can we say that the truth was clearly arrived at? Well, the Biblical story, if I were to interpret it, emphasizes that King Solomon’s wisdom, in this case, was guided by God, evidence of providential justice derived from a higher power.

The best we can come up with in the western justice system is to ask witnesses to “solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.  Undoubtedly, there were many cases where that has not been followed to the letter by every witness. It is being used as if it has inoculative powers or the effects of a truth serum when in fact it is nothing more than a suggestion. And the best that can be done is a threat of punishment from committing perjury –a procedure that is itself calling for another trial where witnesses must come forward and again admonished to tell the truth …

The anatomy of the truth, if not supported by hard and clear evidence or by witnesses beyond reproach (idealistic rather than a real condition), is beyond autopsy by us - humans. The space and time that is the recorder of all events pass through at the speed of light.

Imagine being blindfolded, made to enter a dark room sealed from the outside. The door closes and, immediately, you hear footsteps, not sure if from one or more persons. You hear a thud then footsteps and the door opened and closed. You removed the blindfold finding the room pitch dark. After a minute a light came on and now you can clearly see something happened when you looked down on the floor. You looked around and there was no one else.  Clearly, you had to extrapolate what happened. The truth of what happened is beyond extraction.  If you were to guess it will have to be wholly based on a few things that had to do with your background (are you a lawyer, a scientist, a man of the cloth, what are your experiences, your gender, your level of education, etc.).  Investigators who later came after you called will have to sift through any evidence. Your testimony will be limited to what you heard as far as the actual event is concerned but you will be asked mainly for why, when and how you were blindfolded and every other circumstance that led you to that room.  We can say that much of that will be uncovered but the truth on what happened in that room will have to be extrapolated.

That by the way is the reason anthropocentrism is flawed because we cannot perceive the universe to be what it is based on everything that we observe. Or put another way, since we cannot observe everything then we cannot determine what the universe truly and wholly is. If we cannot know the truth, do some of us not ask, “God please tell me”, as a last resort?

Does the courtroom then also beg, as a last resort, when the witness is asked, to “solemnly swear to tell …truth?”  In some courts the witness is no longer required to put one hand on the actual Bible while answering the question.

I cannot find an actual text in Aramaic so I picked up the Latin version, “Ego sum via veritas et vita”. That is what we are left with in the Judeo Christian belief system if we must go beyond our capability to find what is, or get to the anatomy of the truth.

Anatomy of Happy Endings …?

“Shane” the movie made in 1953 was the iconic model for everything heroic and noble in western movies and boys my age who watched it were swept by chivalry and we believed that happy endings pre-dominated the real life ahead of us, or the life we yet had to experience.  I felt that way but there was something that I couldn’t let go then and still think about it today. It was a happy ending, a great ending actually. It defined the standards for us who watched it and the so many other similar movies later in life. But I always wanted to go beyond the endings.  When the boy ran after Shane at the finale, shouting, “Shane, Shane, come back!” I wondered what was going to happen to Shane.  Was he wounded? What was he going to do with the rest of his life?  He was going to grow old for sure but will he die alone?  Or, maybe at some later encounter with more bad guys, will he still be as good as he was or will he meet someone better and that would be how his life will end?  Friends would tell me that it was best to leave it well enough alone and just let the story end as it did.

Well, I believed that Shane’s story had to go on just like it did in real life where no one just rides out into the sunset and that’s it.  We all love happy endings. But aren’t happy endings merely moments in time, always followed by a comma rather than a period?

Movies relate to and reflect the mood of its audience.  Movies, like novels, short stories, poetry, featured in books, are creations by myriad story tellers and if what they tell gets wide acceptance, become best sellers and be critically acclaimed, they have a way to represent the sentiments of the people in general, at a particular moment in time. Movies tell, examine and present narratives well within two hours or so. In that same window of time the audience is temporarily transported from their own realities where, happy or not, there are endings to punctuate every story. We know endings tell a lot but sometimes if we look closer they open more questions or hold gateways for the story to continue.

One more movie then I will go to the point of this musing. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is my own personal pick for best of all time. Of course, my view is not exactly a very bold one because the film won 7 Oscars out of 8 nominations.  The movie had everything in it. There was clearly a lot of heroism, bravery, nobility of command and obedience, sacrifices, survival, human conflict, and a number of ironic twists. I also picked it for its mixed ending.  There was happy but there was sad and it left us thinking further or far longer beyond the closing credits.  Yes, the bridge was destroyed, characters from each side were killed but the whole story can be distilled in a couple of short lines. One spoken by Lt. Col. Nicholson whose last words were, “What have I done?” It was followed by the surviving POW doctor’s words at the end when all he could say was, “Madness, madness!”  The war story, which by the way, was loosely based on events that occurred on a real river at the Thai/Burma border, combined everything that can be told – the horrific nature of war, the heroism, conflicting human emotions and an ending that left many with mixed feelings.  Yes, there was an ending but we all knew the war did not end there, at least not for a few more years. The famous tune (whistled by POWs) played earlier and refrained at the ending evoked optimism but we knew the prisoners were simply moved into another POW camp which left me thinking about a few more endings before the war was going to be over.

Each of our individual stories is a lifetime while the story of our ancestry is several generations in a world whose history is scribed millennially. Every story we know or generations of stories we can ever know are mere segments of a seemingly endless roll of film. Imagine an infinitely long reel and it had been running for all this time. What we are able to witness today is a segment of film.  The history that we know, the story of our family tree, even the history of the world as we know it can all be described as mere segments of a far longer epic.  In each of those segments we find happy vignettes, sad detours and temporary amounts of elation. There are numerous happy endings – birth of a child after a long precarious pregnancy, graduations, acceptance to a college of choice, the first job, the wedding, the anniversaries, etc. Along the way there will be disappointments, setbacks, interruptions, and so on and on. Why?

Let’s look at the following mathematical series from Charles Seife’s book: 1-1+1-1+1-1+1 … It is a legitimate series.  Let’s group the numbers as (1-1)+(1-1)+(1-1) … which does not break the integrity of the series.  No matter how long we extend that (to infinity even), the final sum is Zero. But if we group the numbers differently, again without breaking the integrity of the series, as in 1+(1-1)+(1-1) + (1-1) … the sum  is 1 ! In fact, if we just jump in in the middle of that long series, cut a segment of it, we will find a sum of 1 if we want to.

The point there is that along an infinitely long story, we can always pick a segment that can be punctuated by a happy ending. So, if I heeded what my friends were telling me I should have just let Shane go on his journey after the encounter at the saloon and leave it there.

From that we can all say that in our lives, short for some, long for others, there will be in a long series of events many pockets of happy endings and disappointments. That is just the way it is. It then says that we have a choice. We can pick the segments in a way we treat the number series above so as to collect the happy vignettes, learn from the disappointments and failures, and collect only the +1’s.

We do not want to ignore the disappointments or failures because they are just as important as the happy ones.  In some exceptional cases exceptional individuals bounced back much higher from when and where they hit rock bottom. Is it not that one can launch himself or herself from solid rock (even from the bottom) higher and with more energy than from soft sand (at the surface)?

Looking back at the number series we see that in real life, no matter how perfectly anyone tries to make it, events occur as plusses and minuses. Just as in the series, the numbers will end in a sum of either a zero or a one. Zero, here, is not an indictment but a state of mind. 1 is not the euphoric opposite but it too is a state of mind. This takes us quickly to how happiness had been defined for us by philosophers, dreamers, social workers and politicians. Yes, happiness has had the most variations in definitions – from the romantic to the sublime, from the profound to the superficial. Happiness is in fact a series of plusses and minuses.  It can be the average of all of them if anyone summarizes his or her own life stories, or stories told by others. But what exactly are they? Can we bottle them? Can we express them in a formula? Do we have a specific value that is applicable to everyone? The quick answer is no. The slower answer is still no.

If happiness is a state of mind then we know it is a first person experience.  It is how you or I feel.  Last we check nobody can make that determination other than you on how you really feel because however anyone may try, psychiatrists included, only you knows what your state of mind is exactly. Let’s forget the laughter, ebullient signs of merriment, ear-to-ear grin of contentment. What is inside that head and what the heart says – lively thoughts and rapid heartbeat – are what will truly describe happiness. Often others will dictate what we should be happy about or what will make us happy. Forgetting that happiness is a state of mind, folks will resort to material things like wealth, status and reputation because those are visible and in so doing define happiness with things physically measurable. It is not so.

How often do we read or hear about unhappy people at the peak of their career or at the height of their popularity, or mansions inhabited by very sad people. Meanwhile, don’t we see or hear about happy people from places we least expect to harbor conditions conducive to happiness?  If happiness is a state of mind is it fair to say that a happy rich man who owns property in Manhattan is a lot happier than a man in Mongolia whose only property is a horse, a herd of yak and temporary tent for his family?  Are children enrolled in an exclusive prep school happier than barely clothed children going after small crabs on the seashores of Bohol Island in Central Philippines?

The anatomy of happiness will defy autopsy. How can we when the very nature of happiness is merely a +1 in a series of plus ones and minus ones? If it is a state of mind punctuated by a comma, we cannot and should not hold on to it but enjoy it for the moment.  Then we move on to find more of it, learn from the minuses, and hopefully we will all find in the number series of life more +1’s than -1’s. At the very end, a finite end in a never ending series, we may get our life summed up to a +1.

Places Where Logic is Officially Dead

First, there is good news. There are still plenty of spots, from every nook and cranny, some “nookier” and “crannier” than others, where Logic still thrives in pockets of hopes, or temporarily taken out of life support. I apologize for the newly minted made-up-words but feel free to use them.  Editors of Urban Dictionary are always looking for new ones. Whoever thought of “Selfie” and “antifa”!

So, let’s hold off on Last Rites for the total demise of Logic but keep them on stand by while we examine places where folks had already pulled the plug. In some spots Logic gasped for its last few molecules of common sense just moments before everything went dark.

There was actually a time in history when something similar had occurred when darkness enveloped the whole world, when knowledge or the pursuers of knowledge went into hiding. It was aptly called The Dark Ages – specifically the period 500-1500 A.D.

It is very difficult to imagine Dark Ages Redux in the age of information technology and social media.  But it could come if we’re not careful, in places least suspected by unsuspecting folks.

The Marketplace

In the Dark Ages and before it, the marketplace was exactly just that – a place where people sold and where people bought. By word origin, “mercari” was Latin for to buy (hence, the words merchandise and merchants). In Roman times, it was either a covered or open place where buyers and sellers convened. The Greeks, the erstwhile world power whose reign preceded the Romans, first came up with the idea of a marketplace out in the open where people could freely come and go to buy and sell. The Greeks called it agora; unfortunately, today psychiatrists use the word to describe a mental distress, thus folks who have fear of open spaces suffer from agoraphobia.

Today, we exhibit no fear of open or covered markets, including those in the cloud. We may be taken advantage of, taken to the cleaners, fleeced, or baited and switched, but we feel no pain because Logic is no longer around to give us signals or warning signs in the market place. In ancient times people went to the market to fill their needs. Today’s marketplace goes above and beyond that. After filling your basic needs, it creates and defines for us additional needs we haven’t thought of yet. Look at your smart phone today. How much of it, or in it, do you really need? But every two years or so we keep falling for the latest and greatest features, 90% of it we already have with the last model.  I read that some if not most of what we consider today our basic needs did not exist two or three generations ago.  Granted that today’s conditions call for items we absolutely must have, the marketplace ever so slightly keeps tweaking them so that what used to be a basic need had turned into a much needed item that happens to be pricey (or luxurious). Don’t scratch your head or roll your eyes. Since when did a pair of working pants become designer jeans? Since when did one terribly soiled, oil and dirt stained pair of denims cost $400 at a high end department store? Nothing is more basic than food but marketing turned them into Gourmet, or labeled it Select or Reserve and we fall for it.  Why? Merchandisers and marketers and clever researchers realized that the marketplace is Logic’s open graveyard. We can’t cover everything here but you get the picture.

The Opinion Makers

We need opinions and ideas to be expressed and discussed.  Those are indicators of a healthy democracy. We have opinions as a vehicle for conversation and they are part of the social scene. Business decisions get done when the CEO or decision makers had heard all the opinions that needed to be heard before committing to any course of action. We expressed them at the polls, at our preference for this product or that product, this book for another, this movie for another, etc.

We as consumers want to be entertained and we are willing to pay for it. Those whose business it is to provide the entertainment must aim to extract maximum return for their efforts because their livelihood depends on as many customers as possible. Consumers are not a monolithic group when it comes to their political affiliations, their religious beliefs, their social affinity, and their moral beacons. However, there are many common grounds where these consumers get together.  They leave all their differences at the theater doors, or right before they enter concert halls and sports arenas. 

Entertainers must know that. In fact, it is required of them to know and understand their customers. These customers represent the country, and if the country is split right about the middle when it comes to politics, then the logical thing for entertainers to do is make sure their opinions do not offend half of their customers. There are countless instances and examples in human interactions where it is prudent, even mostly advisable, to keep those opinions to oneself, certainly not out in the public forum, if you are an entertainer and your goal is to get as much of the public as you can. They can capably play many roles but political commentating is said to be one role too many. By the way, keeping their opinions to themselves does not diminish the value of their vote come election time. One movie idol’s vote is valued as one, just as one ticket stub admits one paying customer.  They should leave opinion making in the open public to those whose job it is to disburse those nuggets – the politicians and political pundits.

But in the la-la-land of Hollywood, the rarefied air of highly paid moguls and superstars, Logic had perished a long time ago.  It had been extinct there for some time now and it seems an impossible task to resurrect it because the barnacles of oblivion are well dug in. So, Logic will forever remain dead in Hollywood.  Unfortunately, Logic’s death is not only contagious, its specter, its vapor-like phantasm is well on its way to the sports and stage arena. Same people whose business it is to entertain as wide an audience as they can get just can’t help themselves from emulating their Hollywood brothers and sisters.

The Destroyers of Statues

When people, alive and well and healthy (because they’re mostly young) start calling for the destruction of inanimate objects that represent dead people, we’ll have to wonder what motivates them. We know we have a problem when objects that are the daily landing zones for pigeons’ unsanitary habits pose a threat to the welfare and well-being of such vibrant and active protesters.

Safe Spaces

That has to be one profound irony - the death of Logic in safe spaces, brought upon by micro aggression by a multitude of people upon naïve but otherwise bright students. The aggressors had to be imaginary. How does one project aggression in very minute dosage as to be labeled micro aggression? What real world is it where young college students have to be coddled because of hurt feelings?  What is going on? Trigger warnings have nothing to do with guns but they could be so much more dangerous; in fact, they are supposed to cause more mental ailments on students at college campuses.  Whose fault is it when we send snowflakes to fight through, to survive and succeed in the cauldron of learning we call a university? We have a problem when four-corner-strategy is taught instead of business tactics and economics.  I did not invent those words and phrases; they are lexicon already well embedded in social media.

What, what Matters

We are at a point in history where equality is a daily mantra, so why does one particular this or that matter more than others?  Let’s do the numbers.  Numbers are the last refuge where Logic may have a chance for survival. I know numbers can be manipulated but deception has less cover to hide in them where news and punditry can be thick in artificial facsimile of the truth.  For example, we know what the protest du jour is lately.  Let’s examine how common is police killing of unarmed black men, with regards to the rest of the population. If some extraterrestrial reads only the media account, killing of unarmed black men in the U.S. had reached epidemic proportions. Not only that but they are all innocent unarmed black men.

Last year Washington Post reported 16 unarmed black men out of a population of 20 million were killed by police.  The year before that, the number was 36 (from the same 20 million). Between 2006 and 2016, a 10-year period, 352 people were struck and killed by lightning. The nation is 20% black, or 7 % of the population, so extrapolating from that, about 24 black people would be represented in the total number of lightning fatalities in the last 10 years. From that, using lightning fatalities statistics, we know police shootings in general are rare and the perception of an epidemic is blatantly incorrect and particularly so of black unarmed men.  Yet, based on news coverage, it looks awfully bad.

Logic must be brought back to the media news desk.  But alas, at Logic’s death was born the slogan of the year in 2016.  Even if we use three news media statistics and two from the government (FBI and BJS –Bureau of Justice Statistics) the number of unarmed black fatalities tracks with the population. The news organizations are focusing on one segment of it that matters more than others.

Gun Control (there is room for one more)

Logic dies another death after each mass shooting. Guns, like all inanimate objects such as cars, knives, blunt instruments, poisons, etc. are another of those that need to be destroyed, so claim the same voices each and every time. It is always about the removal from society of these objects that will solve all problems. Yet, these are objects that do not think for themselves, cannot act on their own, let alone hurt anyone, until they’re picked up by somebody, who can think, willfully decide, who is responsible for his or her action.  The gun is no more a tool than a screw driver or a car but each is capable to hurt or kill when used improperly.

If the beef of the argument against guns is the number of people killed then shouldn’t we go after, with same fervor, other agents of death, some even deadlier than guns? During the entire 10-year Vietnam War 50,000 Americans were killed. During the same 10-year period close to half a million people (men, women and children) were killed in traffic fatalities in the U.S., about 25 % of those caused by drunk drivers or were under the influence. There was no outrage or campaign to ban cars or alcohol then and now, yet these caused a thousand-fold the number of deaths caused by shootings in the country.

Logic is dead in these places and it dies every day we choose not to use it, ignore it, unencumbered by the ability to think or think properly.