Who Wants To Live Forever 2.024

Another year is soon to begin.  At any day during the next year each of us will celebrate or bemoan another birthday; often depending on where one is in the chronological ladder.    

Will our attitude about aging, dying or desire to live forever be different if, say, our average lifespan is 200 years, 500 years?  Or, put another way, what would our outlook be if we do not get past our twentieth birthday? 

"Well, your condition is serious but you can take comfort in the fact that nobody  lives forever".

 

"Who Wants To Live Forever" was a song recorded by a British rock group, "Queen" in 1986 which later became a theme song for the movie, "Highlander" which was about immortals battling each other over centuries of repeated encounters of varying identities or personas. 

A short book, more like a novelette, later made into a movie, “Logan’s Run”, tells a futuristic story of a society where people’s lives were “terminated” at the moment they were past their "Life-clock" that ended at their 21^st birthday (in the movie version the individual’s “Life-clock” was changed to end at 30, perhaps because producers could not find enough named young actors twenty one or younger. In fact, Michael York, the lead actor, was already 34 years old during filming).  The book was set in the year 2116 – that was exactly a hundred years from the year when I wrote the first version of this musing, seven years ago.  

Fantasy stories in that genre are an indication of society’s fixation on aging and ultimately the fear of dying. 

Today, data reveals that the average human lifespan has gone up considerably from 75 years ago. In the mid fifties to get to 60 years old was a significant marker. Today, mid-70s has become the average mean while more and more are getting past 80 and reasonably living a fair quality of life.  In most of Africa though, mid 50s is an average high.  Of the top 5 of the population with the longest lifespan, four are in Asia, only Switzerland is from the western world at no. 4.  The U.S. is at No.47.  Women outlive men by 4-5 years in any group.

Now, for perspective, in ancient times men were old and dying in their 30s and early 40s. Baby boomers realized not too long ago, growing up, that to be 60 years old was not only a retirement terminal  but that there was not much to be expected beyond that age.  Today, we’re told that sixty is the new forty or fifty, or whatever one desires it to be.

Then again, the tombstone below asks the question:

Here is the thing though.  We look across the whole spectrum of living things and we find life expectancy that can be very short as in the life of an individual microorganism to a very long one as in one bristlecone pine that is supposed to be 5065 years old (tree ring counts prove it). The mayfly, a breathing, metabolic insect lives only for a day!  As a mayfly, that is.  It is not only a fascinating life span but one that is so fleeting yet observable within a 24-hour period.  However, I must disclose that the mayfly has a previous life as a nymph living as an aquatic insect, its activities mostly underwater, which makes it a wonder of adaptation.  It could live as a nymph for years, a predator at that, before turning into a mayfly, to surface from its watery world, develop wings, mate, lay eggs and die within a day.

On the other hand a jellyfish is immortal.  It can keep on living unless eaten by predators or physically harmed in some other way.  It is in my opinion one of nature’s weird sense of humor because a jellyfish does not have a brain, let alone a structured backbone, with only a primitive sense of sight but with no ability to hear but it is endowed with immortality.   Tortoises can live up to 150 years, although a few were known to have lived beyond that. A bowhead whale will be just about middle age as the tortoise reaches its age limit.  

Why couldn’t humans have that gift? Here we are with our advanced brain power, an unlimited capacity to imagine, dream, and think up these wild questions about immortality and our lifespan is comparatively short-lived compared to these creatures that will never understand simple philosophical questions, let alone ask the basic meaning of their lives.  I know we ask and we propose answers or speculate or offer conjectures but undeniably we do not have answers to the meaning of life either.  But we try, anyhow.

Meanwhile, since the dawn of time we asked, we pondered, we philosophized, we developed over a hundred different expressions of faith in the form of religion. We’ve come up with natural and scientific explanations of the world around us, theorized about everything as we seek for answers and indeed we did get some but not all the answers. Into the future we can expect even more as we begin to remove the cloak of mystery on many unanswered questions but only to ask even more. 

Out of all the questions we can come up with, nothing is more compelling, more intriguing, or sometimes more frightening to ask than what happens after death. It is such that we’d rather use a phrase like “passing into the great beyond” or use the alternative substitute like the “afterlife” as a way of coping. 

We have no answers but I found someone who has an idea.  

Meet ELB, the Everlasting Being. 

He has knowledge of the natural world through science which includes math, biology and physics but he is indifferent to philosophy, morality, ethics, politics and religion.  Here is ELB and his thought provoking views of the world.  He will be talking to you. The italicized writings are all his.

“Hello, I am an Everlasting Being.  I am made of recycled material and because of that, more than anything else, I am immortal. The iron in my blood is recycled from billions of years ago when it was first created at the belly of a supernova. All of the iron we find on earth today came from an exploding star that was many times bigger than your present sun.  

I can't know for sure how old I am but if I have to guess I am at least 100,000 years old.

The simplicity of the universe is what makes me immortal and its complexity is proof that I am.

The universe may only seem complex but in reality it is very simple since everything in it – from viruses to mountains to clouds to the planets, stars and galaxies – came from one basic element: the hydrogen atom that has just one proton and one electron, the simplest element there is. The most abundant elements in the entire observable universe is made up of hydrogen and  helium - 99 % of all visible matter. 

Everything in me, everything around me is recycled. Even a single cell that “dies” is recycled; cancer cells included. Nothing anymore is created to add to the bulk or energy of the universe; but neither is anything ever deducted. What the universe has today is what it will have forever. However new something is, it has to come from somewhere or from components of something else. If today I am at the tip of an endless recycling process since everything begun then have I not always existed since?

The universe is matter, energy and information.  Where matter and energy are interchangeable, information exists to keep track of events caused by matter or energy or both.   If matter, energy and information in the whole universe are eternal I must conclude that I too must be eternal.

If I had settled the question of my physical immortality then it follows that I must address the immortality of my consciousness?  Is my consciousness immortal?  I must say that it is. If I am the only one right now who can contemplate or at the very least observe everything around me, the universe is what it is because I am here to marvel at or ponder it.  Without me to think about these things that surround me who is to say that they exist or not?  How do I know that my consciousness too is not recycled?  I cannot know that but the physical vessel where my consciousness resides gives me the ability to receive and disburse information to and from the world around me. I have information, therefore I know.

Was it not Rene Descartes who said, ‘I think, therefore I am’? Descartes declared that the only thing he could truly believe to exist was his own mind.  Whether he does or does not have a point is not something I can judge, which brings me to the issue of philosophy, faith and religion. I am indifferent and I take a neutral stand for just one simple reason. Among the many differing religions and branches of philosophy that are out there, there is not one with a premise I can put to a test.

I cannot know what mechanism will be the true one but I believe in the immortality of consciousness because of what I know about this universe. Matter, energy and information are known to prevail. 

I am aware, and I know it very well, about humanity's desire to live long for many more years than what their current lifetime is. 

Keep this in mind.  If you were born in 1800 and still living today you will have been around to see or hear about over two hundred wars, revolutions, coups, regional conflicts, not including epidemics, famine, in the 19th century alone (1800-1900).  The ebb of old empires and emergence of new ones were the main source of indiscriminate anguish that often outlasted a single human lifetime.  

You were alive during the next century and you will not only have been around for the two world wars but the Korean and Vietnam wars as well.  Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Saddam Hussein and Pol Pot were just a few names  but enough for you to rethink the whole idea of such a long life, isn't it?  You had seen natural disasters devastate wide swaths of land, displaced people of all ages who escaped death and lingering illness. By the middle of that century you were in constant fear of a nuclear war.  Later, you find out that there were even more to worry about - everything a threat to your very existence, depending on who has the pulpit of speech or control of what you read.

After the last two centuries would you still want to go on living?

Count it  your good fortune if you were to live between 75 to 100 years old.  That is enough to have experienced life, lived it to be remembered by those you've encountered. 

I've encountered thousands upon thousands of people and if I ever had felt like you, as every human is able to feel - sympathy, compassion, even love for another -  I must have lost it a very long time ago.  I am indifferent to anything, to any situation, or capable of any emotional response or passion to discover and enjoy what is new.  Do you still want to live forever?

That is ELB and that is his opinion.  Is he an extraterrestrial alien?  Is he what some would identify as an angel? Or, a devil?   He is not a philosophical or spiritual reflection of my own personal beliefs.  Let me remind the reader the heading of every musing:

"When you find yourself having to take a break from those that keep you on edge and stressed out, you can take the time to ponder with me some of the un-ponderable and the whimsical and lightly thought provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber".

I will continue to believe in my Judeo Christian faith because that is how I was raised and I am satisfied with its moral teachings. ELB is in fact a composite of everyone who believes that one life in the scheme of the vastness and age of the universe may not be enough to be held accountable for a mere ten, twenty, ninety years of life, or for that matter the short lives of babies, young children, or of anyone not given the opportunity to learn from the teachings of one or another faith and belief system. I leave that to anyone who cares to ponder during their own idle moments.

Another year will commence soon but it is just another journey earth makes around the sun, one revolution, four seasons at a time. Anyone can hop on that journey at any time at one's birth and will hop off at a time of one's passing. That had gone on and will keep going on for what seems like forever but each of us gets one limited turn of some duration - some shorter or longer than others.

What is important is that first, we live life as best we can, within whatever "Life-clock" was meant for us, be good to other fellow human beings and, only secondly,  how others will judge how your life was lived.

When Nothing Is Everything and Everything is Nothing

“We come from nothing, we are going back to nothing. In the end what have we lost? Nothing!”

The above is a quote from a Monty Python comedic skit  which by the very nature of the show was meant to be funny, sarcastic, irreverent, yet, sometimes philosophically intriguing. 

With the Holiday Season upon us, the giving and the receiving have a way of making us reflect on so many things that make us ponder what it is like to have everything or, at least, for everything to go just right.  Do we have enough in our budget to get everything we've ever wanted to give to those close and dear to us in the spirit of giving.  On the other hand, some of us are really thinking, "Will I get everything that is on my wish list this year"?

Then there is a tiny, tiny fraction of the populace seeking what to give to someone who has everything.  That might seem like a no-brainer to anyone who is not tasked with that chore, but there are a handful, perhaps, who would spend time worrying what to give someone with everything.

What could Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, for example, ever want as a present on the 25th of this month?  Nothing, if what we are talking about is what money can buy.  However, Warren Buffet may want a newer home, newer than what he had owned and lived in over the last fifty years; maybe, a new car with a driver.  Perhaps, his own MacDonald's if he insists to dine on a burger often.  Each to his or her own.  But what is common to these folks is that the concept of having everything is far from what most people think.

Let's ponder the quote below:

“Two things define you: Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.”

― George Bernard Shaw 

Lest we forget, during the same season we are talking about, there is a bigger slice of the world's population - even in the neighborhood near us or from far away places in the third world where everything hinges on just a little something.  Anything just north of nothing is the closest these folks will ever get to something.  Everything may simply mean having three meals in a day .. sometimes.  

Let's read that quote again:

“We come from nothing, we are going back to nothing. In the end what have we lost? Nothing!”

 

Humor aside, some scientists take nothingness very seriously.  A few even make a career of studying nothingness – from the nature of the vacuum to the vast emptiness of space that actually makes up the majority of our universe.

Empty space or nothingness is what defines the entire landscape of the known universe. Is it true then that the desire to have everything and clearly to abhor what is nothing is far from what the universe is conveying to us?

Here comes the philosophical side of the Monty Python quote.  A slightly deeper dive but I promise to make it fun and worth the reader's while. I pledge to take us back to ground level - back to everything dear to us.

Matter – the stuff we can touch, see or smell – only makes up about 5% of the entire observable universe.  Yes, the couch you sit in, the car you drive, your dog, your cat, your town, county, the moon, the planets, stars and entire galaxies all make up only 5% of the universe.  Between here and the moon is a quarter of a million miles of empty space.  The astronauts who went to and from the moon encountered nothing, except perhaps a few grains of interstellar dust.  Between earth and the sun is 93 million miles and the distance between our sun to the nearest star had to be measured in light years to make the number manageable, i.e. 4.2 light years to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, if you were a light beam.  Light will have covered in a year 59,000,000,000,000 miles through nothingness or else we will not see the rest of what's out there.  

 

Our island galaxy, the Milky Way, is so large it will take light a hundred thousand years to cross it, yet it is an average size.  Our next door neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is much bigger and so far away that we see it today as it was a few million years ago –that’s how long it was for light to travel through nothing to get here.  But we’re about to meet up with it in a few billion years.  The two galaxies will merge as one after a high speed dance, like two ice skaters twirling and circling each other that will take millions of years to complete.  The several hundred billion stars between the two galaxies are so distant from one another that even during and after the two galaxies become one none of the stars will collide with one another. 

Nothingness seems to rule the cosmic real estate.  However, scientists, astrophysicists and anyone who cares to think about these things are not happy with the 5% idea.  It does not explain the structure of the universe.  There is not enough in 5% to hold together galaxies and clusters of galaxies (don’t you know there are superclusters of galaxies?) that everything should have all flown away a long time ago like fine dust on a windy day.  They don’t because something mysterious is holding everything together - an invisible glue.

Now scientists have the answer and they seem pretty adamant about it that they have come up with the numbers that total 100%.  First, there is 5%.  Then there is 27% that is made up of dark matter, and 68% dark energy.  You can’t get any more exotic than this, I’m not trying to make this sound like differentiating between dark and regular chocolate but it is, as of today, a mathematically viable theory.  

Dark matter  supposedly holds together the shape of and the clustering of galaxies while dark energy is what is causing the universe to continue to expand and doing it at a higher rate than previously theorized.  Mathematical viability notwithstanding, there is no solid proof of the existence of dark matter or dark energy.  Proponents of the theory just “knows” they exist but they can’t even describe what either looks like or what exactly they are.  We’re back to 5% that’s real and the rest theoretical at best, imaginary even if one suspends a little bit of his or her disbelief.

Let’s turn to  human scale and anything smaller.  Between us folks we demand and create a lot of space from each other.  Take the average home.  We fill it with a lot of stuff – just look around you – and even when we include ourselves, the dog and the cat and the aquarium at the corner, there is more space than stuff.  We like the high vaulted ceiling, the second floor bedrooms that nobody goes up to, and if you add the attic, there’s more space still.  

There is a reason for bringing this up because when we look at the very small, the amount of empty space is even more staggeringly lopsided against actual physical matter.

Take the stable building block of everything - the atom.  It has a nucleus and electron(s) circling it.  Scale up the atom to the size of an average covered football stadium.  Make the nucleus the size of a  basketball at  centerfield and you’ll have an electron the size of a grape circling above at roof level.  In between that basketball and the grape is empty space.  We’re made of atoms and if within each atom is mostly empty space we could then very well be made more of nothing than something. 

Now we see that whether in cosmological or human scale, space, the void, or nothingness pre-dominates.  It might be facetious to take this position but it is a metaphor for much of everything around us. 

If you believe in the Creator you accept that we were created from nothing and that we will ultimately go back to nothing, “from dust to dust…”  If you are not a believer then you have some explaining to do as to where everything came from.  Even if you embrace the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe you’d still have to look beyond what was there before it.  Was there nothing before it?  Then there is the question of what is really beyond the so-called horizon of the universe – what lies beyond the very edge.  If we say that there is nothing beyond the horizon then we will have to admit that the nothingness that is out there has to be infinitely far larger than all of everything in the universe combined. 

No matter which side of the debate you are in, nothing is everything and everything is nothing.

The expression, "You can't take it with you", is exactly about ending with nothing, dust to dust.  In other words, everything we seem to obsess with, worry about, keep us up at night, many nights, before the 24th this month, are all  in the interim,  which is what defines each of our individual lives. An interim of time spent amassing, collecting and obsessing about stuff, which in the universal scale that interim we call life is about less than one nanosecond. 

Therefore, the next time you order a burger, or a pizza at the mall while shopping, say  that you want everything in it.  And think nothing of dessert later.  

However, keep in mind that the weight you may gain this Holiday season is a dream of roughly more than three quarters of the world's population.  Gaining weight is really just a first world thing, where   weight loss programs, exercise machines, appetite suppressants, surgeries even, etc. are a multi-billion dollar business.  

On the other hand, weight gain is a mother's constant wish for her child or children in the interior of the Amazon rainforest, the plains of the Kalahari, the poorest sections of Bangladesh, and we can go on and on.  

For this season, therefore, let us think nothing of getting everything.

I must end with this quote to cure all our fears during the Holidays:

“The bad news is nothing lasts forever,

The good news is nothing lasts forever.”

― J. Cole

Think for just a bit because that quote may answer everything you've always feared about having nothing. 

 

Moments 2.023

We all have them. And when we allude it in this manner, "He has his moments", or "She has hers", we can mean it to go either way through the corridors of  praise or annoyance.

But there is no getting around it, our memories are made up of moments. Everyone's entire life is made up of slices of space and time, each slice a moment.

We can be thankful for our moments. Though sometimes we prefer not to have them. Our animal friends only have a handful: fight or flight, not too hungry, fully sated or craving, cold to a shiver or hot to seek shade and shelter, desire to mate or to flee with and to protect the young.  None too complicated. None too complex.

We, on the other hand, have a plethora of countless moments.  Few so simple, all others so complicated. Most don't come to us singly, some a concoction of many.  All at the same time. What do we make of this and what ought we to do?

Over time at particular points in our lives we've learned a thing or two about what moments to remember, what to discard, what many others we'd soon forget with dispatch at the time they happened. So many different moments we can set aside, except perhaps for the two I choose. Moments of sadness and those of joy, or happiness. All others, I think, are between those two, in many flavors or degrees of glee or distress. 

Moments of darkness lead us to seek and appreciate light. As soon as we perceive the coming of dawn, the graying of a once pitch black horizon, hope is awakened, buoyed in anticipation of a pale orange sky, followed by bright yellow - the inevitability of another morning.

Many of us, all 99.999 %, do not have our lives turn to spectacularly high levels that nerd multi-billionaires had become because of countless sad moments in their lives that they turned around to overcome what they lacked, to focus on the best they were capable to do; but we had our own share of sad moments that were inspirational, if not the impetus, for what we've become. Or, what inspired us to rise up rather than be down on ourselves.  

Think back on all the moments that you remember.  The happy ones were good and wonderful, yes! Good moments are what makes us to want more, better than what we've had so far. Sad moments make us more thoughtful of a loved one lost, perhaps, or a friend or co-worker down on his or her luck.  

Sad moments at a setback or failure hit us hard but because one believes that it is not the fall but how one gets back up that is a lot more significant than a quick high-five over one success. More successes were had by those who viewed their failures with sadness at first. Then they turned it around to propel themselves to overcome. Soon they realized how much more capable they were of achieving far and above the ones they failed at in the beginning.

Sad moments.  Those I remember well. It was our first December in this country. We had just moved to Houston the previous month of November, having left New York and the family of my wife's sister and their parents, to start my job here.  We had no car - I took the bus to and from work - because I didn't have enough credit history to get a car loan and no credit card company would approve my application to have one. We were new immigrants.  

All the happy moments of getting our Green Card to come here just months earlier, the flight, the awe of New York, were all forgotten then.  We did not know anyone in the huge city and we had no friends, no relatives nearby.  On Christmas Eve.  I rented a car for the two days on the eve of and on Christmas Day.  We went to the mall but all we did was sit and watch all the happy people around us.  We didn't shop. We couldn't. There was not enough money.  It was the saddest Christmas except that our entire family of four were together.

My wife had second thoughts about emigrating, almost regretting the whole idea, because it was she who wanted to venture out of the secured and predictable life. It was her original application to the U.S. Embassy.  I resisted at first because we were happy and comfortable in our homeland. Why move when we had everything going so well, already seven years into a career I liked; with two young children ages five and six? I asked.  

In the midst of those sad moments when even my wife was distressed by our situation, I reassured her that not only were we going to stay, we were going to make it and we will do well.  I did not base it on any concrete guarantee or reassurance but  knew we had  to do the best we could and I had to work the hardest like I've never had before so no other Christmas like that ever happened again. Those sad moments made me discard every negative thought and held onto everything that was right about our decision to come here.  I held on to every word the Vice Consul said at the U.S. Embassy in Manila when we were interviewed early that year. He said we were a family America would welcome and he knew we would do well. If he had faith in us then I saw no reason why we couldn't believe that ourselves.  Those sad moments on that December night did matter a lot more than any happy ones before and even later. Every sad moment then and later had purpose.

Fast forward to today from that December forty three years ago, I am happy to say that  not only did we do all right we've achieved many-times-fold whatever were our expectations  of the decision we made to come and settle here. So, even now that we are so blessed and happily living the dream, it was the saddest moments I often remember, to remind me of the fortunes we've had that countless others somewhere out there at this very moment are dreaming and seeking to have.

Remember that looking back at the last year of 2023 about to close and looking into the New Year of 2024, think not so much of just the happy days. The sad moments that come to visit with us will leave lasting memories, whether we like them or not, so we might as well make use of them because like carbon atoms that nobody wants to have are what are added to iron to make steel. 

There are no sadder moments than a diagnosis we never anticipated could happen to us or a loved one; a relationship about to unravel; unforeseen major expenses; even fears we daily feel beyond our control, and so many others we'd rather they do not become moments added to our life's story.

When my wife was diagnosed with Parkinson's last year, it was naturally devastating for both of us. But I sought to peek behind the curtain of sadness and despair and saw many brighter moments. I did not know until then the untold capacities of love; I just realized what it is like to really care for someone.  I did not know, for example, that doing the groceries, cooking, and even loading the dishwasher the way she prefers, and loading and emptying the clothes dryer (she still prefers to load the clothes washer herself), are chores I will do routinely and willingly with nary a moment to ask why. 

I tell my wife that we do not question why  Parkinson's came upon her. Instead we need to answer the question: Are we both capable of dealing with it, recognizing we've had the strength all along to sail  half way from the other side of the world to begin a new life and do well. We had the benefit of having lived one life in one world, only to begin again in another - a new world with far more opportunities and advances in medical care and nutrition.  These thoughts alone are enough to keep the torch of hope lit up with a steady flame to ward off the darkness.  

We do not know to what depths our love and care will go toward another until we go down to as low as we can to measure it.  It is by measuring to see what we are capable of which will soon make us realize we can do it.

“THERE ARE MOMENTS WHEN I WISH I COULD ROLL BACK THE CLOCK AND TAKE ALL THE SADNESS AWAY, BUT I HAVE THE 

FEELING THAT IF I DID, THE JOY WOULD BE GONE AS WELL.” 

--NICHOLAS SPARKS

Exactly, because we will only know and recognize what joy is, once we've familiarized ourselves with what sadness looks like. 

With the coming Holidays about to unfurl, let us believe  only in days of good tidings, and let us not focus on worrying about what unwanted moments will intrude, for we've had enough of those already, at this point in our lives, to have inoculated us with an impenetrable shield.

Enjoy the Holidays! Be safe and care for those close to you.

The Moral Currency Exchange

Many years ago, at the multi level parking lot, adjacent to the offices where I worked next to other commercial businesses nearby, my heart  momentarily stopped as I approached my truck.  The left rear fender had a huge dent. Crumpled, paint-scraped metal where it used to be a curvy unblemished and smooth fender.

A business card was tucked beneath the left windshield wiper.  It had the name and phone number of the manager of the Chick-Fil-A Restaurant, at the adjacent mall. It had a note.  The writer asked me to call his number, admitting responsibility and apologizing for what happened.  He had already called his insurance company.  

His insurance even paid for a loaner car while my truck was in the shop.  Twice, during the week, he called me to make sure everything was being taken care of, and that he had been following up with the insurance company on my behalf.  

Now, that was one moral currency that never devalues, nor is it affected by the passage of time.

Fast forward to over twenty years later, just two weeks ago. Pulling into a parking space outside the fitness center,  I misjudged how close my truck's nose was to the small car's left side that was parked at the adjacent space.  I dented the left fender, with little damage to mine.

Without hesitation, not even for a second,  I scribbled my name and phone number on a piece of paper and tucked it under the car's wiper and took some photos.  I went to do  my swim and when I got back the other car was still there.  After waiting for a bit, I called my insurance company to report the accident, provided them the details of how it happened and photos of the car's license plate and the damage.

I asked the claims person about what if the driver does not call me, what should I do.  She said not to worry.  They will run the license plate and they will contact the car's insurance company on record.  I have not yet heard from the other driver but I feel better that I did the right and proper thing. 

The title of this musing alludes to something that people had already recognized as one of humanity's ideal principles dating back from as early as humans had written about the story of life, for centuries.

"There is a concept in Judaism called in Hebrew midah k'neged midah, which is often translated as "measure for measure".

As we all know, this philosophy not only has had many iterations in the Biblical texts but  other writings and practices from different faiths preach the same theme.  

The principle of treating others as one one would want to be treated by them - ethics of reciprocity - is, of course, more popularly known as The Golden Rule.

What we should keep in mind, however, is that this  really refers to how one would treat another who would do the same even before any actual actions ever took place.  There is that one difference that separates it from the phrase "tit-for-tat", or even that of "measure for measure", because the latter two call for  reciprocity of actual deeds or exchange of goods.  

The so called "ethicization" of human behavior had long been explained philosophically as well as spiritually or religiously, for that matter, although it is oftentimes misunderstood or misapplied.  We are more familiar with the word karma.  It is mainly known to have origins in the Hindu faith (the word itself) but it is premised in Buddhism and other ancient religions as well.

Karma from its original meaning was never just about bad things happening to those who did bad things.  It was rather about consequences, good or bad, based on the individual's actions.  In fact, there were specific words to describe just that. Dharma is good karma that leads to meritorious rewards; adharma leads to both spiritual and real demerit and sin.

To just say that for every action there is consequence for the doer is, of course, much too simple as to not have the proper ethical premise. It is more profound than just accounting for pure cause and effect.  Now we get into intent and purpose (reference to my previous musing, "For All Intents ..") that have to be weighed in over actions and consequences.

Now we must grapple with unintended outcome where the doer did not mean for what happened to another when there was no intent of the kind to cause harm or damage.  Often someone may mean well when the result of his or her action proved harmful.  That is what was meant about the "ethicization" of this particular philosophical theory.

In other words, one's intent, attitude, and desire must be evaluated.  

That is well and good from the views and perspectives of the human experience.  In other words, where people are actually made aware of the causes and consequences, even provided with ample evidence of intent, and witnessing or even promoting the application of consequences, hence the premise is evaluated.  In human terms, of course.

The question we ask ourselves is this:  How is the accounting done when no one else is looking? {Reminds us of a quirky funny question often asked in jest: If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one around, does it still make a sound?}. For lack of a better way to concisely define it, I came up with the, "Moral Currency Exchange", or MCE, as some kind of cosmic balance sheet.  This is an effort to include the non-believers who do not rely on any kind of spiritual belief system for the proper accounting of deeds and/or misdeeds.

You, the reader, and I can look at our real personal experiences to evaluate the validity of MCE, if at all.  Go ahead and think of just a few instances where you are convinced that fortuitous events happened to you and the many ways by which you can ascribe a few little things you did to or for others out of unselfish motives on your part.

Now, I can't know your own personal experiences and since I do know mine, but without trying to scale the morality ladder, just to be seen or hailed for it, I simply must say that  how or why MCE works is a personal matter. I believe too that it increases in value almost exponentially from what little act it was based on initially.  But we will find that there is ample evidence of it in our own personal experiences.

Let me digress for just a bit.  It will be about lost wallets. Not including wallets lost to pick pockets or simple thievery, many studies were done about lost wallets.  Some of the studies involved controlled conditions but mostly about collecting statistical data.  Wallets containing no money were less likely returned.  The most surprising part was that wallets with the most cash were returned at higher rates than those with less.  

There was no common thread among those who returned them.  Young, old, even children, people of authority, ordinary lower income people, etc. It would seem that more people return lost wallets with the most cash in them because they felt that people who lost the most would be hurt more.  Not a very scientific conclusion except perhaps for the universal wishful thoughts that indeed most people have a way of interpreting the Golden Rule in their own independent ways without really thinking about it.

Is there a ledger somewhere in this universe of ours that records even the littlest things we do?  Good or bad?  Does someone who took the trouble to go back to a large grocery store to pay for a $2.00 item that was missed by the cashier at checkout get some ethereal merit of some sort?  Little things we do that cost so little, do they mean much in this ledger? Giving the delivery person a bottle of water on a hot summer day, tipping the workers generously for work they do in the backyard or in the attic; going out of one's way to help a stranger; helping a neighbor in need of compassion, just little things offered to help or alleviate grieving hearts, etc.

Is it really true that over time the things we do - how little or how huge - accumulate for some later accounting? 

I will end with the opening verses in a  poem written by Alice Cary ( Born April 26, 1820 - died Feb. 12, 1871), "Nobility" :

True worth is in being, not seeming, -

In doing, each day that goes by,

Some little good - not on dreaming

Of great things to do by and by,

For whatever men say in their blindness,

And spite of the fancies of youth

There's nothing so kingly as kindness,

And nothing so royal as truth.

A related musing, "For Kindness Begins Where Necessity Ends" is worth a quick read at:

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2022/02/for-kindness-begins-where-necessity-ends.html

 

Existential ..

Webster defines existential as, "grounded in existence or the experience of existence"; "relating to or affirming existence".

Another overused adjective, often paired with the noun, "threat", that is also almost always misused and abused.  As a result we no longer pay attention, especially after hearing so many things we're told that this or that is an existential threat.

The threat to existence is no trivial matter based on that definition.

"I have no idea where we parked the car, or why we exist."

Let's first look at the bigger picture of our place in this huge universe of ours to get a starting reference at what it would take to be existentially threatened before we cast ourselves with the extraordinary ability to do it on our own.  

Let's begin with our sun - the source of heat and light and the gravitational hold that keeps our little world in its place.  If we were to scale it down to the size of a golf ball, our puny earth is smaller than a grain of sand about eight meters away.  Yet, season after season, that sun, so far away, 93 million miles in real scale, rules what climate prevailed on earth for millions of years.  Our ancestors and those of other organisms had to adapt to the tantrums of a fusion thermonuclear device (yes, believe it) by which the sun produces its energy.

Now, there are other suns all throughout the universe.  So farther apart from each other that the nearest neighbor, the Alpha Centauri double star system, is indiscernible to our bare eyes.  Using the same golf ball analogy, with our sun as a golf ball on top of the Washington Monument, the nearest star would be just another golf ball farther north beyond Quebec, Canada, and you'd have to go another two hundred miles past that city to find it.  

These vast distances have a way of emphasizing  that our earth is puny, all its inhabitants even punier, yet it has a way of making it possible for life to develop and flourish in the only place we know it exists.  In fact, scientists fondly put our place at the Goldilocks Zone.  Not too hot, not too cold. Farther away we get a cold, lifeless planet that is Mars; too close and we'd have a hot summer day at 880 deg F (471 C), surface temperature, in our sister planet, Venus.

For life to exist in the only place we know and, more significantly, where we happen to be, along with a gazillion other organisms, the threat to our existence is not to be taken lightly.  Yet, it appears that the phrase, "existential threat" gets thrown about with careless abandon.

In fact, it is the same phrase directed at real and imagined threats over centuries of human conflict.  We will not flip back to so many pages of our past but, perhaps, look back to just the last half century after the Great War.

We - every nation with the capacity to do it - built up an awesome cache of arsenal against one another over decades of unrelenting arms race. The reason: the opposing side poses an "existential threat" to the other's way of life.

"This stuff is virtually useless against nukes."

For example, the hot wars of the Korean and Vietnam Wars were caused by threats, fueled by nothing more than the ideological differences between the perceived notions that capitalism was an existential threat to communism and vice-versa.  It turned out that such wars were not only avoidable, they were both unnecessary, if fervent ideological zeal and unreasonable fears were kept at bay.  

From all the capitalist nations' perspectives, we now know communism doesn't work.  The only place where it is still practiced in its pure form is Cuba - a fine example of the way not to run an economy.  Just ninety miles away, while also being surrounded by other more relatively successful Caribbean nations, is a capitalist nation that is the haven for countless Cuban immigrants who have called it home for decades, also a beacon of hope for individualism, as opposed to blind reliance and dependence on the power of the commune.

On the other hand, the Vietnam War could also have been avoided if not for the perversely imagined threat of the ideological "domino effect" that communism was going to engulf the entire Asian continent.  It turned out that had the west let the vines of communism spread on its own, it would have wilted or withered without establishing deep roots.  We now know that even China of over a billion people is a successful economic power by running its economy as capitalists would, albeit running its executive government as a sort of hybrid communism.  A united Vietnam today, where the North won, abandoned pure communist idealism and is embracing capitalism to dictate its economy.

I will say this quickly as in removing a band aid.  Climate change is not an existential threat.  We are throwing money at it like drunken sailors - no offense to sailors who when they wake up the next morning will sober up and re-take their senses far better than the unelected government bureaucrats who will spend taxpayers' money like there is no tomorrow.

Today, we know that people - the governed - will discern quickly what works and what doesn't.  The mistake was that governments were guided too much by ideology and had always maintained that throwing money and resources are what would assuage the fear, however unreasonably overblown and imagined, against perceived threats, existential or otherwise.

Climate change has been a phenomenon  since the creation of our solar system.  It was our ability, as it was true for every surviving organism today, to adapt to the changes in climate.  Supported by geological evidence, there had been five ice ages before the last one.  Keep in mind that every ice age was always followed by a warming of the climate.

Earth today is undergoing  a  warming up cycle from the last one.  A few things to consider here:  (a) climate changes occurred in the past and will continue to occur into the far future without our actions; (b) climate changes made us who we are today.  If not for the warming of climate, we would still be covered in fur; diversity of skin and eye color are all a result of climate changes; if not for climate change, there will be no Sports Illustrated, Swimsuit edition; (c) Climate change created the Great Lakes and all kinds of bodies of water worldwide; island nations and nation-archipelagos were created as ice melted at the poles to raise sea level as the earth warmed up.

Plate tectonics, driven by the molten nature of the earth's mantle, have more power to reshape the global landscape than all the nuclear bombs combine. Look no further than its handiwork in the Grand Canyon, the African Rift valley, the shapes of continents and the separation of the Americas from Africa, etc. What used to be one great landmass, called Pangea, are now the various continents.

All of the above, including the constant volcanic activities and earthquakes that caused all kinds of changes in the landscape - were catastrophic events at the time that they occurred.  We and all current living organisms survived because of adaptation - a distinct ability every survivor is equipped with. 

"All I'm saying is now is the time to develop the technology to deflect an asteroid."

And don't forget, extraterrestrial threats like a wayward comet,  asteroids, massive radiation from the sun's hiccup or tantrum, a supernova explosion nearby (in galactic proximity, of course).  One asteroid that hit earth 67 million years ago killed off the dinosaurs but it ushered the age of mammals (including us) and for the diversity of birds soaring through our skies or running through desert sands, that were the successful species to adapt from dinosaurian lineage.

So, why is climate change being forced on us as an existential threat more than a nuclear war, famine and diseases?  

Permit me one analogy.  A dropped pebble on a still pond will create a ripple.  Try as we may, we cannot stop the ripple, wave after wave projecting from the center of the impact. There is just no way.  The dropped stone is the changing climate, composed of many elements but the least of which is the use of fossil fuel.  The foolish one who is trying to stop it is the promoter of the ideology to control the narrative, overturn the people's way of life over a flimsy argument, and the messaging of a political agenda.  

What are we to do but ride over each wave, float over the ripple.  Yes, indeed we can cut emissions through efficiency in combustion, lighter vehicle bodyweight, use electric cars where warranted, more efficient housing materials, create more carbon sinks with a massive tree-planting program, etc. As had been in the past, climate change occurred over millennia of very complex processes that allowed time for adaptation to help species survive.  Warmer climate allowed for longer growing seasons and better yielding food crops. 

We know there is something wrong when political personas predict rising waters, end of civilization with dates like 2012, at one time, then re-adjusted to 2030, and on and on. Predicting dates like that, just   to make it relevant for people living today and create a dire scenario of a pressing nature, is pure folly. Don't forget too that these narratives almost always follow the same political magnetic lines against another.  It is no longer about, "what can we do together to make this a cohesive and reasonably well thought out plan agreed upon by both sides", instead of instinctively demagoguing the messages to conform with a single political persuasion.   

Ending the fossil fuels, extinguish the coal industry, doing away with internal combustion engines, outlawing gas stoves, refrain from eating meat, plus many more inanities, are only ideas that are dictated by a single voice, but clearly not through wide public acclamation. 

Here's a not-so-farfetched thought experiment.  Can we conceive of an all electric powered fire trucks, emergency rescue vehicles, earth moving equipment, cargo ships, 18 wheeled transport trucks, air transport, even cruise ships?  Now, if we make an exception to refine hydrocarbons just for these example vehicles, does anyone realize how expensive fuel production would be just for these vehicles and equipment?  Can we defend this or any other country with electric tanks, warships and stealth aircraft?  Can we launch into space even just one lightweight weather satellite? 

As in the TV game show, "Jeopardy", all of the above in the last two paragraphs, and many other examples, will fall under the category of, "Stupid Answers".

One final thought. One popular mantra of saving the environment is recycling.  Well, well, nature has been recycling everything over eons. Carbon and hydrogen based vegetation, decayed and piling up layer over each layer for millions of years, compacted under immense pressure and heat, became what is known as hydrocarbon.  This was the gift from the earth that propelled civilization into the industrial age, modern travel and productive agriculture from better hydrocarbon-based fertilizer.

Just imagine this.  Hydrocarbon splits up into carbon and hydrogen after releasing the stored energy within their bonds during and after combustion.  Vegetation will recapture the carbon, hydrogen will combine with oxygen to make water or water vapor.  Should we not be dedicating resources to make that recycling process one of the permanent solutions instead of demagoguing carbon as a pernicious villain?  After all, we are all carbon-based organisms by definition. We consume carbohydrates for energy, and amino acids that are the main components of protein are bonds of hydrogen, a little bit of nitrogen and, yes, carbon! 

Let's think about this very carefully before we condemn hydrocarbons, also known as fossil fuel, into the Most Unwanted List. 

We will soon  begin another cycle around the sun, let us not forget that what we see around us are, almost without exception, recycled material, not the least of which are hydrogen and carbon in the form of hydrocarbons, which by the way includes the base component for asphalt - which literally paved and continues to pave the world's highways around the world, connecting places and people who would have been so remotely far removed from better healthcare facilities, otherwise. 

The last oxygen atoms you inhaled within the last seconds just now had been around since a few billion years ago; the carbon dioxide you just exhaled was the same molecule that came from simple life forms and dinosaurs, Neanderthals, Nile crocodiles, etc. over eons of breathing in and breathing out many million, trillion times over and over.  This makes the nice sounding catchphrase, "Net Zero Carbon Emissions Initiative" sound like a pipe dream with too many holes to hold anything.  

Let's re-think every existential threat we hear or read about.  Better still, let's expunge that phrase with a permanent restraining order.

 

 

 

For All Intents and ..

First, I like to rehash what I wrote about years ago, a short one I read from somewhere.  A funny story – it was funny then, to me, anyway – that I keep recalling it every now and then, went like this:

There was a campground for boy scouts by the beach close to the sea where dolphins also come by each morning.  The camp director actually fed the dolphins at about the same time the boy scouts had their breakfast.  Each morning the camp director would announce breakfast to the boys and call out to the dolphins with, “For All in Tents and porpoises…“, to come and get it.  

Corny now, perhaps, but it was a clever pun I can’t shake off, that it was the title of my musing then.   

"The phrase for 'all intents and purposes' originated in 1546, in an Act of British Parliament that gave King Henry VIII the power to interpret laws in any way he wished".

When I read the above, a factoid of little significance now, pales against everything else we  know about Henry VIII.  It was also about "Absolute power corrupts absolutely".  So many stories about that too but this musing will not be about that.  It will not be about politics.  Neither about dolphins or porpoises.

However, the phrase "intents and purposes" held so much staying power and latent energy that it has not lost its relevance even in today's language and vocabulary - legalese or otherwise.  Today, we may use "virtually" or "in effect" to mean the same thing; but often we still hear or read "for all intents and purposes".

I chose this to be about life in general, personal ponderings for everyone.  It is one characteristic of language that two words taken together render both innocuous; separately, each has a far deeper meaning.

Intent, as a stand alone word is powerful. Purpose can easily be just as powerful, if not more so.  Yet, neither one is of any value unless propelled into action.  In physics, both will be defined purely as potential energy.  No different from a wagon load of coal, a barrel of oil or a giant boulder at the mountain top. Unless converted into heat and/or kinetic energy to perform work or exert power to move some other object, intent and purpose are both simply as useful as an ax or saw inside a locked tool shed.

However, when John says to Jane, "I intend to marry you", is that more powerful than when he tells a friend, "I love Jane.  Very much"?  The first sentence could be more powerful to Jane, more so to her mom - the eager future mother-in-law. Actually, John telling a friend he loves Jane is a lot more powerful than just saying to Jane, "I intend to marry you".  Think about that for a minute.

To all retirees like me, when we wake up each morning we intend to get up. When indeed we do, it's another day to be grateful for. We intend to do something. If we didn't act on that intention to do it, we find that the time to the next sunset will seem like taking forever to elapse. That might seem like a good way to lengthen the remainder of our time on earth but in reality it could be the shortest and awful way.  Let me pause and speak for those in nursing homes or living by themselves who are much too unable to act on their intentions.  We must never forget nor should we not care or wish them well in our prayers.  This musing will not speak to them.  It is for those, the reader like you, who is blessed with the ability to still act on mere intention everyday, greeting every sunrise with a purpose.  I am reminded of the last few verses from Rudyard Kipling's  poem, "IF":

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it.

Sadly, the subject-phrase is also used in the following quote:

"He was forty, out of baseball, and, for all intents and purposes, out of life".

Intentions reside in our head, denizens of our thoughts. Some, if not many, are fleeting visitors, others linger, a few are plucked and we act on them.  Others over stay, can be annoying, others become kibitzers - not in any good way - congealing into  harmful obsessions.  Still merely intentions.  But they have the power to sometimes become agents of over analysis. Analysis after analysis that leads to mental paralysis. 

Intent, the criminal kind, is not prosecutable in the court of law; fortunate for anyone not acting on impulse or intent to commit a crime.  Anyone who purchased a gun for the purpose of committing a crime is held blameless until the act of robbing an establishment.  

Two faces of intent and purpose we'd rather not intrude into our lives, either as a doer or the object of someone's deed.  Intent and purpose, both powerful in each own individual potentiality but let's focus on their good sides.

Intent is where everything humanly doable begins.  It was intended by our parents that we do well when we grow up.  Their good parenting was primed by the same intent.  It was our intent to do well in school because the purpose of a good education is to serve us well later in life.   

Intent and purpose should not wane post everything we have accomplished so far.  Intent and purpose do not and should not end at the water's edge of retirement.

Acting on one's intention to be of service to others through volunteer work is as rewarding or even of greater value over another's exotic hobby of collecting rare objects of art.  But no matter how noble or exciting an intention can be if left unfulfilled is of negative value against one simple undertaking that is acted on and finished.

The origin of the following proverb is not known but it first appeared in print in 1828:

 "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" 

This is the darker side  of intention though no less powerful when used to motivate others to do evil deeds.  We will not get into it any more than what we see in newspaper headlines, almost on a daily basis.  We will not look back in the history books for so many roads humanity had paved with good intentions, only for many of them to lead to places of unimaginable horror - man's inhumanity to another man.

We will leave it at that.  Let's go to another analogy. A more pleasant and practical one;  some readers may even find this useful.

A few weeks ago my wife and I decided we needed a round breakfast table in the kitchen area, replacing the rectangular one that is there currently. There is a purpose for why, which I will get into later. I suggested we'll just buy the table top only and I intended to build the base. Awesome, if not a bit ambitious intention (at my age). I found a company in Austin TX.  They will custom-make the top to my specification: 48 inch dia. round table, 1-1/2 inch thick, from solid red oak ( I intended to use 1 inch thick red oak stair tread at the home center to make 2-inch thick workpieces after gluing them up for the base) .  The manufacturer will make it a point to send me a diagram of the intended table, with all the specifications, once I place the order. It was going to take 2-4 weeks to finish. All of these were all intentions at that point until I gave them my 16 digit card number plus my signing on to the design they sent me.  I thought a lot about all those intentions, not the least of which was the cost (not cheap for just the top) and the hours and hours of building the base. 

I had time before the table arrived.  I have wood working experience though not necessarily about making the table base, let alone a plan or drawing of my intended idea of it.

First photo below is what the company sent me to see first and approve. It will be sanded and ready for staining and finishing of my choice.

  

Alas, the tabletop arrived (below) before I was done with the intended base!

It took two of the delivery guys to carry it into the house where I had them lay on the work table I had set up earlier. It was exactly as they promised, except I wasn't quite prepared for how heavy it was.  But for all intents and purposes, I am now well past committed. I intend to get this done.

Meanwhile, I was dry-fitting the cut parts (below).  At this point of construction it was already about forty pounds.  I intended for this to be a knock-down assembly construction. I was going to stain and finish the parts individually for later assembly inside.  It was going to be quite unwieldy to carry from the workshop, through the garage to the inside of the house.

Dis-assembled parts (below) stained and finished in the garage for better air circulation against the fumes.

Now, (below) I have it attached to the table's underside.  The challenge is how to flip it over, right side up, and ease it down to the floor without breaking my back or crushing my toes.  The work table surface is 30 inches off the floor and this table is now about 120-130 pounds.  

So many intentions cascading through my thoughts. I intend to do it this way or that, and what else will intrude before I get to do it.  And I will still need to move it to the intended nook, after moving the old table. I guess y'all will have to wait when I have this fully accounted for in my woodworking blog. And I can't have my wife watch me do it to spare her the anguish of my attempt.  We'll see.  It will not be but for a while. I will be waiting for a part.  A part of me who will want to do it.

Now, for the purpose of a round table.  As most of you know, my wife has Parkinson's.  Mentally, she is definitely very capable so  she still handles the detailed home accounting and all our financial records and she still likes the occasional card game.  The round table is a lot more suitable when  our two couple-friends come to play. The grandkids visiting us this Christmas also love the same card game we play.

However, I do intend to finish this by Thanksgiving.