Year 2113

It was the year of the Great Revival, following the Great Survival. It was to replenish the earth.  Replenish it of every life form possible - plants on the ground, fish in the waters, birds and insects in the air; and people, of course.  The last great war happened in 2067. 

The tragedy of wars was proven once again but the greatest tragedy of all are all the wasted lessons written on the pages of history. Is it because history is usually written by the victors?  Or, is it that victors soon forget but the vanquished, never? Or, is it the viciousness of the cycle of history to blame? Is it that defeat is not soon forgotten by the vanquished while the victors fog their memory so quickly with the sweet nectar of euphoria from victory. Victors always forget that winning is always temporary.  

Whatever is the story, one thing is for certain. Not a century had passed during the last six thousand years of recorded history when there was no human conflict of some kind on the face of the earth. Below is just what foreign policy experts are watching at the present moment. The proverbial Biblical listing of "wars and rumors of war".

Then,  we are met with:

The New Geography of Conflict

Michael T. Klare

Foreign Affairs

Vol. 80, No. 3 (May - Jun., 2001), pp. 49-61 (13 pages)

Published By: Council on Foreign Relations

Abstract

"As last year's global shortage of petroleum and natural gas showed, the world can no longer keep up with the demands of continued population growth and economic expansion. Indeed, the competition for natural resources is intensifying. And with four-fifths of the world's oil reserves lying in politically unstable areas, with diamond and timber wars already raging in Central Africa, and with many regions suffering persistent drought, resource competition could easily turn into open conflict. Governments now see the acquisition and protection of natural resources as a national security requirement--and one they are prepared to fight for."

Back to "whatever  is the story", where all existential threat that we  worry about, none can be more devastating to life and property than the outbreak of a war.  Whether it is a limited war or one that encompasses territorial boundaries, the tragedy is frightening to contemplate; to experience it is direfully horrifying.  Along with the physical pain for those who survive is profound mental anguish that is almost impossible to assuage.  A nuclear war is unthinkable even from the most hawkish of politicians and pundits.

Added to that are threats forced upon us since the 70s, when we were warned about destroying our environment, when in 2010 we were told we had just twelve years before the catastrophe of climate change will be upon us.  Rising sea level, melting ice caps, flooding, drought, diseases, crop failures, etc. - all manifestations of our profligate use of fossil fuels, we've been told. Failed prophecies were unclaimed except that new ones are hoisted upon us once the prophets were proved wrong with such "inconvenient truths".  Again and again.

From the italicized quoted paragraph above we see instead the need for fossil fuel to sustain each nation's economy and the commercial demands for it that will persist for decades to come.  The debate continues without resolution because each side, however many sides there are, will always be only partially right.  The war on fossil fuel is not only unfair, it is not winnable.  On the other hand, an all out assault on renewable and alternative sources of energy is also a fool's errand.  The failure to compromise, lest we forget, dooms all sides.  The political rhetoric on a campaign to win votes by promising to put the oil industry out of business is an outright lie to win an election. And on and on it goes. 

Let's zoom out from here and out into the far reaches of space, as far as we can imagine. Imagine an observer from somewhere out there looking into our spot in the universe. All they will see is a swirling smudge of light.  

Our entire solar system is represented, generously I might add, as the red dot half way up along  the center vertical line (image below).  Earth is on that red dot. If the observer is told that inhabitants on that little invisible dot do not get along for some reason  and every now and then they resort to killing one another, they will find the tragic pettiness of it all.  

 

 

You know, let's imagine that we are at the place of the observer looking back at us.  It would be the same sad image that we will see.  Indeed. Yet, back to where we are today, up close on television, we seem to have become numb from the daily "breaking news".  What of the people and children and the elderly up close to where it is happening?

It is sad indeed that this tiny flotsam of a habitat in the context of the entire universe, inhabitants do not get along.

So it was in 2067 when the Great War begun. Unlike the previous wars, it ended quickly.  In less than a year it was over.  And there was no visible victor but losers all.  

There were survivors. There were those from above the foothills of the Himalayas, the interior rainforests in Brazil, and scattered along island chains in the Pacific, and remote areas of the Arctic.  2113 plus a thousand years later and the Great Revival was well established. By the six thousandth year, the world had become like it is today.

An absurd scenario?  Yes and No. Yes, by the story we've always known about how the last several thousand years went.  No, if by then, as if by some miracle or by the much hoped for Divine intervention, future generations did at last learn.

It is up to us the living who see it today to make sure that those who follow will be on a path away from 2067 and find 2113 an unnecessary chore that future generations have to endure.

Confessions

It is time to finally put in writing the things I've always wanted to confess about.  Or, should it be "to confess to"?  At this particular moment in time it is with effortless eloquence that I am able to say, "Does it really matter?" That is, of course, a far more polite version of, "Who cares?"  What am I talking about here?

Well, I wanted to make the reader guess with a few tantalizing clues. For example, I'm still in my pajamas. What's so remarkable about that? Well, it's 10:00 a.m.  And it's Tuesday. I can't be.  What? 

If you're reading this instead of a memo from your boss, you need to stop now; or, if you're mulling over a packed itinerary for a dreadful business trip on which your boss decided to tag along because he wanted to meet with your clients, some of whom you're not on a first name basis with, or worse, some don't even really know who you are, then close this page; or, reading this instead of the latest packet from HR that is required reading for the next sensitivity training where your attendance is absolutely and unconditionally required, then perhaps you had better focus on the reading material.  That is because  you're still at work, and if you must insist on reading this, then you had better be bullet proof.  Otherwise, for now, make sure you remain employable. Or, at a bare minimum, try to keep this job. Remember that if it's Tuesday and it's 10:00 a.m. and you're reading this, it is the moral equivalent of a bureaucrat reading a subversive material in Moscow in the 1950s that could result in a hasty train ride to Siberia. Or, it could be more severely punishable if you were reading this during your 15-minute break at a factory in Guangdong during the Cultural Revolution.

You know why? You're at work and you need to stay employed.  By the way, "bullet proof" only means that you are fully vested in your pension plan and that your Individual Retirement Account is to be envied by any financial adviser worth his or her salt. And you're literally months, or better still - weeks - from getting that retirement watch or some kind of memento they dole out these days commensurate with your rank and seniority in the proverbial corporate totem pole. If you are that bullet proof, then keep reading.

To the other readers: If you are like me, and unless you're planning to go somewhere, PJs and bathrobes can be normal apparel till lunch time, slippers are optional accessories. That's because, like me, you too are retired.  

To all currently employed, you had a taste of this, albeit temporarily, during the Covid lockdown.  Those pajama days are now over. Time to get back to work and insure that Social Security remains solvent; at least, for it to stay afloat for the foreseeable future of at least ten more years.  That takes care of all of us - the first and last of the baby boomers.

But what's with the confession? Sometimes, it is about guilt.  I retired on the month of April (been years now since) - and it was a particularly rainy month.  One morning, it was probably 5:00 a.m., I woke up to some distant thunder that seemed to roll ever closer like a herd of stampeding buffalos during a Serengeti migration. Then, it started raining.  Buckets. I forgot to turn off the alarm radio - again - that is tuned to the local station. It was the weather report, "We have a weather advisory. It is unseasonably cold this morning in the mid 50s and wind chill in the 40s and we expect all-day rain and thunderstorm .."  I was still half awake and dreading the prospect of having to drive on a day like that.  Then, suddenly like a lightning flash that had been getting through the blinds, I realized I didn't have to go to work that morning.  Or ever again! 

Now, you know what it is to be both feeling guilty and ecstatic at the same time.  I warned you dear reader.  If you're at work reading about this, you were warned.  I felt bad that you had to go to work today.  Drenched. Miserable too because half your co-workers didn't come to work.  The half that heard on the radio about school closings and potential widespread flooding.  Oh, well.

But it is not all that rosy for us retirees. I have nightmares.  Other retirees have confirmed this phenomenon. The dreams are vivid. I am about to make a presentation where high ranking execs will be in attendance. I was not only unprepared, I had no Power Point slides or notes.  Worse, I had no idea what I was going to talk about.  Sometimes the dream is a business trip. There would be me and other co-workers  at the airport waiting area. We were about to board.  Everyone had their tickets and boarding passes. I didn't have mine. And I had no idea why. Then how was I going to manage getting one? Sometimes, it would be about a business trip where I didn't know how to get back to the hotel.  Of course, all of these are mercifully interrupted by waking up. I was in bed at home. To any armchair dream interpreters or retired psychologists, I am open to hearing your diagnosis. Not really. Well, you can send comments.

But, surely I must miss something about not going to work.  Oh, yes, naturally. I will enumerate them without being facetious. I mean, using the true meaning of "miss". I don't want to flavor it with "I don't miss" them stuff.

1. I miss the daily commute. I miss seeing my tax dollars in action  to repair potholes or  on never ending road repairs as I drive through them.

2. I miss the bad coffee at the office and the occasional birthday cake, or leftover slices of them later in the afternoon with   icing almost crusty and brittle to the touch.  I and a few hapless folks were at an all-day meeting when the joyous occasion occurred.

3. I miss the reminders for deadlines and the stress that go along with them. I miss popping the almost daily doses of Excedrin.

4. I miss searching for the misplaced restaurant receipt, the car rental and toll receipts, etc.  Come to think of it I miss filling out an expense report.

5. I miss those meetings and the drone of presentations, one after another. I miss feeling that the presentation I made was all that mattered. 😎

6. I miss the annual evaluations. And I still have a recurring question that to this day remains unanswered. Your direct supervisor makes an evaluation of your past performance. In turn he gets evaluated too by his own direct supervisor.  Your supervisor's own evaluation by his/her boss was kept from you like a state secret.  You didn't know how he or she was evaluated for competency in handling his or her direct reports.  So, if he or she  was deemed incompetent by the higher boss, would the former's evaluation of your performance be still valid?  It would be like solving a math problem via a series of derived equations. It is like using a previously incorrect equation to arrive at the following one to get to an answer.  So, you worked the following twelve months  on how to improve your performance on a faultily derived equation, rather, evaluation.  Well, it's not really that bad. The corporation you worked for is still there. The monthly pension check still arrives. But we can't help feeling fortunate because in some cases the faulty series of equations, okay, evaluations, were so rampant, we saw Enron, Lehman Brothers, Block Buster Video, many others crumbled from the weight of a faulty tower.  Indeed, some of those bosses I talked about did get to the ivory pinnacle to wreak the greatest havoc. But, I'm just musing here, not recounting personal experiences.

7.  There has to be a 7th, right? I miss the paycheck.  Well, if you did it right, thirty years of paychecks should have been enough to accrue dividends today to do or not do what your heart desires, right? And on a rainy Monday morning, specially in January, the pay is right - nil - to not have to go to  work. 

I leave it to the reader to add his or her own misses. I'm sure you'll remember a handful of them.

I started this musing yesterday morning - Tuesday - when I woke up to a rain of felines and canines - notice the fancy wordy substitutions; so you know these are all in jest - but I didn't finish it in time. Today is Wednesday. But seriously, there were Tornadoes in the eastern part of the state.

Today and for the next few days, it is going to be sunny.  Wherever you are and in whatever state of woe you are in, everything is temporary, and remember that behind those ominous dark clouds is a ball of thermonuclear energy 93 million miles away ever ready to cloak your worries away with warmth of sunshine. Blissful rays speeding towards you at the speed of .. light.

To my fellow retirees:

That is not a sunset.  It is just another sunrise. Another bonus morning.

 

MAD-deningly Unthinkable

Much has already been said, conjectured, debated and feared about what happens next from one day to the next as the fighting in Ukraine continues. There is enough sadness, cruelty and pity to last anyone a lifetime of asking, "why?" Not only will we find it almost impossible to find answers, but what is most in everyone's mind is the uncertainty of what happens next.  That is the biggest unknown.  Instead, we are forced to face the MADdeningly unthinkable.  I upper-cased MAD for a reason.

MAD is an acronym for "mutually assured destruction".  There are a   few ways to look at that phrase.   Humanity is supposed to take comfort in the fact that nations are deterred from unleashing the unspeakable nuclear weapons of war because each side will most assuredly be destroyed. But we are at a point now where there is enough in the stockpile of nuclear arsenal from the handful of nations combined who have them  to annihilate the entire human race several times over. It is maddening enough and thoroughly unthinkable at the same time.

But why?  Just when memories of the cold war are almost forgotten even by those who lived through it, and clearly non-existent in the thoughts of the last two or three generations, we are faced with the stark reality that indeed none of all the so called existential threats that politicians and pundits from every corner of academia and society have warned us about will compare to the one most unthinkable possibility.

But why, indeed? I will get a lot of pushback from this musing but first I only ask the reader to bear with me for a bit.  

Just when hardly anyone can remember what ICBM stands for or that nobody might even remember what MIRV is, we are now faced with the idea that such vessels of destruction are still out there - sitting in their land based silos or cruising underneath the oceans in the bellies of nuclear powered submarines or beneath the wings of aircraft in undisclosed hangars from all over the world. Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) are bad enough but what of the multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRV) that military euphemists tried so hard to give those harbingers of destruction a polite label. But there is no hiding the fact that a single payload can disgorge several independently programmed nuclear bombs upon re-entry into another land thousands of miles away with dead-on accuracy and devastation.

Again, why does humanity manage to get itself inextricably mired in the trajectory of self destruction?

First, let me get a partial quote from my last musing, innocuously titled Brigadoon.  I wrote about  the oldest tree in the world that had lived and still living for the last 5,000 years - The Great Basin Bristlecone pine:

The tree was a sapling right about when one of the pyramids in Egypt was completed, and perhaps over 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.

That tree, if it is tuned to what had gone on around the world since, had seen the growth of the world population, wars and pestilences, the shifting powers of conquerors and dictators, despots and notable leaders, beheld the plight of the enslaved and grimaced at the cruelty of the enslavers, and today is still a witness to what is going on in the Baltics, primarily what is happening in Ukraine and everywhere else.  Time may have stood still for that tree as generations upon generations of people had come and gone.

The tree, remaining standing still at one place, had witnessed the same theaters of war, protagonists of victorious conquerors and subjugated  peoples who fought over the same territories for centuries of repeated lessons unlearned, set aside and ignored.

Let me bring in here one of the famous generals who fought in the last world war - Gen. George S. Patton.  He had his admirers and detractors, his share of supporters and critics, and those who made note of, though others took it less seriously, his seemingly obsessive belief in reincarnation. Patton believed he would emerge victorious in his campaign in Europe because he had fought in the same battlefields over and over in his many incarnations as a warrior throughout history.

He intimated those beliefs to those close to him but he immortalized it in the poem he wrote, 

Through A Glass, Darkly by George S. Patton

Through the travail of the ages,

Midst the pomp and toil of war,

I have fought and strove and perished

Countless times upon this star.

In the form of many people

In all panoplies of time

Have I seen the luring vision

Of the Victory Maid, sublime.

There are a few more stanzas in between and he ended with:

So forever in the future,

Shall I battle as of yore,

Dying to be born a fighter,

But to die again, once more.

{The phrase "through a glass darkly" is a partial quote from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, 1, 12-13. Patton's poetry is unrelated to a movie of the same title}

Please read the verses one more time.

If the world manages somehow, or the powers that be will make it happen, we can all exhale a collective sigh of relief as if waking up from a nightmare. Are we then to fall asleep peacefully?

WWI ended on Nov. 11, 1918, after Germany surrendered four years after it started. It was so horrific that the Geneva Convention outlawed the use of chemical weapons.  It was supposed to be the war to end all wars.

But in just one generation, WWII broke out in 1939.  Lest we forget, Great Britain and France guaranteed the integrity of the borders of the Polish state on March 31, 1939. The following August, Germany (re-established as a military power once more) and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty. The following month Germany invaded Poland. Also, not to be forgotten, Japan earlier invaded Manchuria in 1931, then China in 1937.  In 1941, it declared war against the United States and went on a war campaign throughout the Pacific.

Both countries pledged after WWII, since affirmed in their respective constitutions, that they will not raise an army again, except for civil defense only.

Today, another chapter is being written. Western Europe just woke up to another specter of conflict that can conflagrate uncontrollably.  Russia, though far from a manufacturing economic power, wants to re-constitute its earlier empire in eastern Europe, using the hammer of petroleum at its disposal.  Japan is waking up to the looming economic power that is China that is flexing its military capabilities.

The question is: What are Germany and Japan to do? Germany is an economic heavyweight in Europe but a military weakling. Japan had lost its economic luster and clearly militarily defanged. Both are hearing from subtle voices that could be interpreted as a call to re-examine their constitutions to protect their interests.

If the world makes it through and temporary peace is achieved in the Balkans, we have much to be thankful for. However, we also have much to think about. Conditions will remain unchanged. In Europe, Russia will still have control of much of the oil to feed the contiguous economy of its neighbors to the west.  In Asia, China will continue to be the manufacturer of cheap merchandise for much of the world; cheap labor for the ever increasing demand for smartphones and electronics, tennis shoes and garments, etc. And it will have a mighty military power with nuclear weapons.  It is also home to a billion consumers of entertainment from western providers that are only too willing to acquiesce.

Much can be said of both Germany and Japan that despite being reduced to rubble after WWII, both made spectacular recoveries to get both their economies to unprecedented heights.  Japan may have weakened its economic dominance but it remains an economic force to reckon with, though now trailing behind S. Korea and China.

Germany and Japan, to be expected of any nation, will want to keep their economies strong in their respective regions but they will continue to lack the natural resources for material and energy. Add to that the potential of being cut off from both and they will be faced with the same trepidations pre - 1914 and 1939. Recent events are stark reminders of the same scenario.

I leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions. 

We know so much about human nature and its inability to learn from its past. Through the pages of history, we know that it takes only one future charismatic leader, one mad man, who can lead a dedicated group of people waywardly to plunge right back into the maddeningly unthinkable idea of re-armament in the midst of regional instability.  It had happened twice before in recent history. 

It would seem alarmist to think this way but fast-forward to two decades from today and will the reader think the same way?

What about the Great U.S. of A? Will it once again become the peace agent and arbiter of world conflict as it had done twice before?  Would it have the will to reprise its role in WWI and WWII.  

Will it be its old self in 2050? I refer to what I wrote on Oct. 5, 2021, "2050: The Ebb of the Tragic Trajectory of a Once Powerful Nation".

I remain hopeful that none of what I fear will happen.  But a portrait of a dark scenario is what we need to awaken to the reality of the maddeningly unthinkable in order for us - collectively as a whole - to realize the folly of our nature and to pray and work hard towards goodwill among all.

Are we to be complacent or hopeful based on this quote from Matthew 24:6, From the New Testament, KJV

"And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet".

Brigadoon

If you missed it, just a few days ago, February 22nd, was Enchanting Day in celebration of the Scottish legend of Brigadoon.

"The legend of Brigadoon is the story of a mythical village in the Scottish Highlands.  The village became enchanted centuries ago remaining unchanged and invisible to the outside world except for one special day every hundred years when it could be seen and even visited by outsiders.  This enchanted day is spent in joy and celebration".

A story like that had no choice but to be made into a musical, "Brigadoon", written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who later made another legend - that of King Arthur - into one of the most successful musicals, "Camelot".

{Tommy Albright (Gene Kelly) and Jeff Douglas (Van Johnson) are on a hunting trip in Scotland and become lost in the woodlands. They happen upon Brigadoon, a miraculously blessed village that rises out of the mists every hundred years for only a day. (This was done so that the village would never be changed or destroyed by the outside world.)} 

The other more intriguing version of the legend is about a village who'd wake up one day, go about  celebrating the new day  until nightfall, then they'd go to bed. However, the next time they wake up  the following morning, a hundred years  of "our time" had elapsed. Of course, the villagers don't know that the next "outsiders" who might come around are generations away from the last ones who saw them last.   

In today's vernacular,   "What's up with all that?", Brigadoon!

Let me detour for a bit.

A man one day found the fabled magic lamp.  As stories like this go, he had no choice but to rub on it. Truth be told he just wanted to make sure the lamp was something of value as to be made of precious metal, like gold or silver.  Rough in demeanor, impertinent and insolently rude, he was none too pleased to see a genie, clad only in loin cloth, appear. The Genie, with little variation from his fabled behavior, as the story goes, he predictably offered the man one wish.  The man, in his usual disparaging manner of speaking, said, "So, you tell me I freed you from a thousand years of bondage. I'm sure a thousand, even a million years is just like a second to you because here you are apparently un-aged and unchanged. And a million dollars is just  like a dollar to you, right?"  The genie nodded in agreement.  "Aha!", said the jubilant man, "So why don't you give me a hundred million dollars".  The genie promptly replied, "Sure, give me a second."

Well, let me introduce a new term - scalar perspective. I just made that up but here's the definition.  Our perspective on everything is all based on the scale of one thing relative to another. A small fish in a small pond would seem better off than a larger fish in the ocean. A one eyed man is king in a village of the blind.  Someone with a dollar is far richer relative to a penniless beggar. Isn't it better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of an elephant?

So, I again bring in my favorite microorganism (from the prior blog to this) - the amoeba. 

Johnny goes to bed one evening. On a wet dish on the night table with leftover snack he was too lazy to clear away was a colony of amoeba  observing him. By the time he woke up in the morning, multiple generations of amoeba later, a fresh colony was there to greet him.  Also, a foul morning breath is brought on by a colony of bacteria far removed from a handful of them stuck between Johnny's teeth or gums the night before.  Several amoebic and bacterial lifetimes to one night of slumber; scalar perspective - it's all relative, isn't it?

Does the concept of Brigadoon still look too fanciful or outrageous?

First, just a little bit of physics; just a short, little uncomplicated bit.  Elementary subatomic particles live for just a mere trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

On the other hand, trees can live for a hundred years but the oldest one - The Great Basin Bristlecone pine - is dated to be 5,000 years old. The tree was a sapling right about when one of the pyramids in Egypt was completed, and perhaps over 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.

That tree, if it is tuned to what had gone on around the world since, had seen the growth of the world population, wars and pestilences, the shifting powers of conquerors and dictators, despots and notable leaders, beheld the plight of the enslaved and grimaced at the cruelty of the enslavers, and today is still a witness to what is going on in the Baltics, primarily what is happening in Ukraine and everywhere else.  Time may have stood still for that tree as generations upon generations of people had come and gone.

The tree, remaining standing still at one place, had witnessed the same theaters of war, protagonists of victorious conquerors and subjugated  peoples who fought over the same territories for centuries of repeated lessons unlearned, set aside and ignored. Of course, a hundred centuries is but a millionth fraction of a fraction of the age of the universe. 

The Genie had been out of the bottle, or appeared after a cloud from a lamp in so many ways but had man wished more nobly other than wealth and pleasure?  Had man wished of the Genie for peace and unity?  Or, not enough time had yet materialized for lessons of history to be learned, at last?

The concept of an Eternal God, a Being whose eternal clock has been ticking with no beginning nor end, is no longer the product of our ancestor's superstitions but one that transcends the concept of time. This will require an explanation.  There is one.

The idea that the passage or flow of time is all relative is no longer in dispute.  Photons of light do not experience the passage of time. A photon of light does not age.  Not even by one second. Time and time again, no pun intended, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity has been proven at every turn - time slows down for any object as its speed increases. And, time will stand still for particles of light. Lest we forget, it is always one relative to another.

Light, ancient readers would have quickly noted, was introduced immediately in the third verse of the book of Genesis, before all the other creations were fulfilled.  Is there another meaning - a deeper one - of, "Thus spake Jesus again unto them, saying I am the Light of the world .." John 8:12, KJV. 

Is there hope of a Brigadoon, miraculously blessed that may no longer  change or be destroyed?

I threw in a lot of things here but that is in keeping with the goal -  "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".

Anatomy of a Scam - A First Person Account

Nothing can be more ego deflating, stomach churning, or profoundly embarrassing than to be a victim of a scam, a con, or a  fraud. While my initial reaction is to be quiet and keep the embarrassing experience to myself, I gave in to an overwhelming compulsion to share it for the benefit of many. Thus, the choice is to open up the anatomy of a scam.

There was good news and there is quite a bit to be learned because, as we all know, the scammers are always a step ahead of everybody.  Even though the shelf life of a scam is short and quick for the most part, the scammers are always thinking of three or more different ways up ahead to further their malfeasance in some other different ways. And fraud is, of course, one of the oldest tricks man had perpetrated over another since Biblical times. 

Until this episode, I believed I had immunity to it because I thought I knew all about it.  I even blogged about, "If It is Too Good to be True .. on September 2, 2019.  My fascination with the story of, "The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower (Twice)" and stories of extraordinary con artists and the Academy Award winning movie, "Paper Moon", assured me that I will never fall for any con.  But, never say never, and rest assured it can happen to the best of us, including learned and sophisticated folks who fell for the Bernie Madoff and Elizabeth Holmes of the world.  Count Lustig fooled the most sophisticated business people in Paris when he "successfully" sold the Eiffel Tower, once at least, and would have done it again almost the second time (the first victims were too embarrassed to report it the first time).

I am not embarrassed to write about this little misadventure although I have already stopped asking, "How could I have fallen for it?"  Now, my dear reader, don't be too confident either but at least try to heed this one other teachable moment you may rely on and serve as one more shield toward partial immunity.

Rather than go through another method of narrating the scam, let me just include below, the summarized write up I submitted to my credit card company, after a couple of conversations with them, which resulted in my getting a full but provisional credit, for now, anyway (hoping it will be permanent). It is the good news part I mentioned early on above.  For obvious reasons, I X'ed out the sensitive information.

February 14, 2022       

Cardmember Service

P.O. Box XXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Case No. XXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXX:

I would like to provide a full explanation of the above case that is outside of the standard form that I was sent to fill out, sent Feb. 4 which I received today, Feb. 14. To explain best about how the fraud was done, I will detail it via an actual timeline in sequence.

Feb. 2, 2022, 8:25 a.m.:  I received an email, addressing me as an Amazon customer. purportedly advising me that I was debited a purchase of an item, quote:

“ORDER NUMBER:                    DHA2022AM

PRODUCT NAME:                    IPHONE 12 PRO MAX

ORDER DATE:                           2nd February 2022

------------------------------------------------------------------

AMOUNT:                                  752.60 USD

PAYMENT METHOD:              Direct Debit

If you wish to claim a REFUND then kindly Contact our Billing Department as soon as possible

You Can Reach Us On:  +1(855–607–3088)”

I called the number. The lady on the other line informed me that my credit card, via Amazon, was hacked and being misused by people – one in Ohio, one in New Jersey, and China. She knows that there is a CVS nearby and instructed me to go there.  When I got there, I was told that she had just deposited $500 to my Amazon account but that I need to purchase a Target gift card for that amount.

Feb. 2, 2022, 9:23 a.m. I purchased the gift card

A few minutes later, the same lady asked for the gift card no.  I gave it to her because that was one way to “ping” and clear the hack, she said.

I realized then, but only after I already gave her the gift card no. and Pass code, that I was a victim of a scam.  I immediately hung up and turned my phone off completely.

Feb. 2, 2022, 10:14 a.m.  I drove to the nearest Target store to report a possible hack and presented the target gift card I purchased from CVS.

The Target representative swiped the card to check the balance.  The $500 was still there (intact) but she instructed me to call 1-800-XXX-XXXX.  I called the number while still at the store. By the time the Target representative came on the line the gift card balance was zero.  I explained that I was likely a victim of a scam.  He provided me a reference no. XXXXXXXXX

I explained to him that given the short amount of time that had elapsed, I requested that Target can still put a stop to it by intercepting all online orders made on that gift card – Gift Card No. XXXXXXXXX.  My point was that the purchase had to have been via online.  If the purchase was done in person, the card had to be presented.  Furthermore, if the purchase was done miles away from where I was, it was not me making the purchase.

The representative instructed me to get a police report.

Feb. 22, 11:30-12:00 a.m. I called the Sugar Land Police Dept.

Feb. 22   mid-afternoon.  Officer XXXXXXXXXX of the Sugar Land Police Dept. called me back.  I related the whole case to him.  He provided me with a case no. XXXXXXXX

That is what happened.  I did my level best to stop it.  I know too that the Target representative understood the point I made about stopping the orders made on the gift card.

Sincerely,

(Attachment: copies of the Target gift card (back side with the number), CVS receipt, Target Card Balance Inquiry receipt):    All time-stamped

The most crucial part is, of course, after one realizes the fraud is to act quickly and keep as much information, time stamped, if possible.

The thing about is that it was all explained in the most recent issue of Consumer Report Magazine, which we have as a subscriber.  The magazine had been sitting there on the coffee table but I didn't read it until after.

The lesson: (1) Don't get duped in the first place;  (2) Once victimized, act immediately because time is of the essence.  Most scams like this are online, so given a quick action, the scam can be stopped.  Consumer Report recommends it (including a police report).

How did someone like me fall for it?  The are  three different ways we can be induced - all functions of human nature: (1) The "too good to be true" appeals to the softest part of human nature in the mistaken belief that certain things can be had cheaply or with little effort ; (2) Fear that stokes alertness or concern if we don't do something right away to correct a perceived or induced danger (IRS, police and other coercive fraud); (3) Sympathy, kindness, pity that reaches to our human tendency to help total strangers (we give to panhandlers or anyone reaching out online begging for help, contributions, donations, etc).

In my case, it was no. (2).  They had enough information, or at least they knew enough to make me believe in the story they were telling me. A hacked credit card account was something - also serious - we hear so much about.  Fear or sense of alertness can get us into a state of almost near hypnosis that gets to our sense to follow rapid-fired instructions, almost mechanically. Fortunately, I realized just in time, almost as if I woke up from a trance. The police officer who wrote up the report told me that other individuals lost in multiples of what I went through and never got their money back.

What to do?

1. Never respond to unsolicited emails or phone calls about correcting bad orders or IRS or other threats from government or private institutions. Exception: your credit card company may call to verify or alert you to a suspicious transaction.

2. Once you realized you were a victim, act immediately. Write things down and have as much information as possible.  Contact your credit card company or other financial institutions right away. It is not uncommon for the credit institutions and sellers to be already familiar with the issues. They can and will help. I was lucky I had time-stamped documents.

Well, if this wasn't a teachable moment, I don't know what is. I was just fortunate and so I wanted to share this one embarrassingly stressful episode.

(P.S. I did get full credit refund from the credit card company two weeks after this musing.  I can only infer that by acting quickly, Target must have put a stop to shipping the orders made with the gift card. I am one of the few lucky ones.)

The Significance of Our Insignificance

 

 

Let’s face it. In the context of the vastness of the universe, we, the whole human population, are about as insignificant as a colony of amoeba in a puddle of water at somebody’s backyard after a rainy day.  The significance of our existence would then seem like a thin invisible thread in an unimaginably infinite fabric of space. Should we then give in to the futility of our role in the world we live in? Does our life as individuals have any meaning? Or, are we destined for something far greater than the mere biological evolution of our species?  

Let’s look at that amoeba.  Imagine one in a patch at the water’s edge of Lake Michigan.  With it were countless others that are each an exact copy of itself after countless cell divisions in a blink of an eye - by human chronological reference, that is. But the amoeba was proud of what it had achieved.  So one moonless night it looked at a faint glimmer of light that was on the other side of the lake.  It knew it was far away but it was curious.  It decided that it must go to where that light is. It is a challenge it couldn’t resist.

We scale that story up many, many millions of times to our level and within the context of just the last few hundred years of human history.  Have we not contemplated reaching for a similar distant glimmer of light? Our ancestors would look up at the glowing moon each nightfall, and with their naked eyes pondered even more at the thousands of faint lights farther out. Just like the amoeba we had let our unfettered leap of imagination soar to the high heavens – reaching for the stars.  Our evolutionary path has taken us not only to great physical wonders of anatomy but to levels of intelligence that gave us calculus, the languages, powdered milk, powered flight and a few other things.  That is the good news. However, the amoeba has a better than fair chance of reaching the other side of the lake than our reaching the nearest star.  It is a practical impossibility for any human to reach Proxima Centauri, least of all in one’s lifetime.  A journey undertaken by multiple successive generations of space travelers is a fantasy.  Let’s put this one to rest.  It takes four years for light from that star to reach us (at a staggering speed of 186,000 miles per second).  The laws of physics will not allow any object to attain that speed.  Let’s assume we can multiply our current launch capability for spaceships from earth at hundreds of times, it will still be a fraction of the speed of light, so it will still take future astronauts hundreds and hundreds to thousands of years to get to the nearest star.  Then there is the issue of cost.  There is not enough wealth and resources, let alone the international will, to finance such a voyage.  As population grows the future world economy will be no better and people will not pay for something they will not see completed in their lifetime.  No one plants a tree that will bear fruit beyond the grower’s lifetime.  We cannot also ignore the possibility that before such an adventure we will have destroyed our world through war, natural depletion of resources (food in particular), various geological catastrophes and diseases, etc. And let us not forget the inevitable asteroid strike – an event that has occurred with recurring regularity in earth’s history.  One strike actually changed the entire makeup of how life evolved on this planet over sixty millions years ago.

Current estimate puts the number of galaxies in the observable universe to be at 2-3 trillion, each galaxy with 100 to 300 billion stars.

So what is the meaning of our existence?  Here we are in a middle orbit of a solar system lorded over by a small star that is one of billions of others that make up a pinwheel-shaped averaged size galaxy. From the perspective of our own Milky Way galaxy alone, planet earth is a grain of sand on a beach along an infinite shore line.  Then we find out our galaxy is an average size island of stars scattered around with billions of other galaxies that we perceive as the known universe. We are therefore as significant as a billionth of a grain of sand trying to determine the shape of a sand dune. True. So, should we then lead our individual life with purposeless futility?

Let me bring in the amoeba again.  As organisms go, the amoeba is about as simple as it gets.  It feeds on other simple organisms that could be harmful to us.  In turn the amoeba is also food for other slightly larger organisms and the process cascades upwards to more complex life forms.  The bad news is that this type of protozoa also causes amoebic dysentery that kills thousands of people and sickens millions more, particularly in under developed nations, around the world every year.  It is not as insignificant as we might think.  Meanwhile, at our level, the pages of history are filled with individuals who have left indelible marks, good and bad. Pages of our history have been soiled with the likes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot and many more.  On the brighter side of history we were given Aristotle, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein and Mother Theresa. And let’s not forget ordinary folks around us - everyday people - who volunteer at the hospices, do rescue work, serve at churches, etc. 

Significant or not there is quite a lot to think about as to our place in the universe.  We may not reach the stars but we now know so much about them. All the heavy elements we have here on earth were made from exploding stars.  That led one cosmologist to declare that we are literally made of stardust.  

Iron, potassium and sodium, etc. that are in our blood could ONLY have come from a supernova explosion billions of years ago.  Our sun, in fact, could be one of the third generations of stars created by such an explosion.  Are we then a product of chance, a random roll of a cosmic dice? 

It would take a series of lucky rolls of the dice to make a habitable planet. 

It is therefore not a difficult thing to say that, indeed, we - all of us - are here for a reason because to think otherwise would mean we relegate ourselves to the seemingly insignificant existence of an amoeba.  But as you read above, that amoeba is not so insignificant after all, is it? For that reason we therefore ought not believe in our insignificance. Instead, we must marvel that we have a mind, or rather that we were endowed with a mind that is more powerful than the most massive computer system ever built. Just the last few seconds that you pondered that, no computing power can match the breadth and scope of what you just thought about. Everything else would then seem insignificant. Once we set our mind to think that, we are significant.

"For Kindness Begins Where Necessity Ends"

That quote stood out, for me anyway, from the thousands of words and word combinations in a 571-page novel, "The Lincoln Highway".

Sally, one of the characters in the book, a most adorable, virtuous and no-nonsense young lady uttered those words, as she lamented about one facet of human nature or certain habits or behavior of those she encountered in her young life.

One is most prevailed upon, as I was when I read that quote, to ask what it meant. First, I wondered why the author wrote that sentence,  which made up the entire last paragraph by itself, at the end of a chapter on page 104.  

The best selling author, Amor Towles, also wrote another best seller, "A Gentleman in Moscow". In "The Lincoln Highway", he employed a storytelling technique that involves multiple points of view; that is, the entire book is woven seamlessly from the perspective of all the different characters, sometimes in the first person and at other times it is done in the third person. From chapter to chapter, a character is the story teller or the story is told from the perspective of the character when he or she is the focus of the chapter. The characters emerge in and out, as the chapters unfold with the developing story.

When it was Sally's turn it was in the first person, so we, the readers, get to know what Sally felt and thought.  And, it was she who said those words. Having lost her mom at a young age, and a married sister who moved out of state, she takes care of all the household chores  in the home she shares with her dad, who works the farm and ranch.  Though not the main character in the story, Sally has the maturity and clear thinking of an intelligent, yet practical young woman.

Her piety begins with what is clearly a good working Biblical knowledge mixed with a pragmatic view of the world.  In her mind, it is not kindness when one does what is necessary.  Here is a quote:

"And I do it because it's unnecessary.

For what is kindness but the performance that is beneficial to another and unrequired?  There is no kindness in paying a bill. There is no kindness in getting up at dawn to slop the pigs, or milk the cows, or gather the eggs from the henhouse.  For that matter, there is no kindness in making dinner, or in cleaning the kitchen after your father heads upstairs without so much as a word of thanks.

Nope, I said to myself while climbing into bed and switching the light, there is no kindness in any of that.

For kindness begins where necessity ends".   (The chapter ends with that).

In Sally's mind, she considers kindness as doing something good to someone or others even when it is not required. More so when it is neither necessary nor expected. 

If we go by that, it is kindness when one adds to his or her tab after a meal at the restaurant a 20% up to 30% tip to the server if the conventional rule says 10-15% is all that is necessary.  When upon seeing a delivery truck about to stop by the front of one's home, one hurries to the refrigerator to get a bottled water and hands it over to the delivery person or postal worker in exchange for the package, because it was such a sweltering summer day, one dose of kindness was just dispensed.  Even if the dose of kindness was never completed because the delivery person was in such haste, perhaps because he or she was running behind, preoccupied with the prospect of not making his or her delivery quota for the day, so that by the time one opened the door, the truck had already lurched away to the next stop, the intent to offer the bottled water was kindness just the same. 

Now, we all know that kindness is never always about money; in fact, hardly is it ever about money.  And, though it is returned, it never is owed. Think about that for a minute. 

Hardly will kindness be explained by science. It will, however, defy it.  Take Isaac Newton's third law of motion, also known as the law of action and reaction, which states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Where kindness "defies that law" is that a single dose of kindness is most certainly but in very unexpected ways returned with multiple doses of kindness or circumstances that almost always come from somewhere else, often not from the recipient of the first dose.

Unfortunately, there is another human condition that is also well known to be true.  It is the direct opposite of the effects of kindness and if a dose of it is dispensed, unexpected doses will be returned with the same certainty. The ancient, though now extinct, language of Sanskrit gave us the one word that describes that ancient principle that we  know as karma. (Of course, from the original Hindu philosophy, karma comes as either good or bad, while today, we commonly associate it only with bad connotations).

That sentence from a fictional character named Sally stayed with me and I know that the reader of this musing will come to know and understand as well. I hope that those six words will resonate with you as it had with me.  More importantly, I hope that more than resonance will come out of it because if life were a piece of music, kindness ought to be reprised over and over by all of us.