Musing about Musings

Musing about Musings

Whether writing musings is a legitimate or rewarding hobby or worth a rat’s ass hobby is debatable. In an age of tweeting and snippeting, long thought-through musings are a rarity.  But since I retired musings have become a valued hobby to me. Since 2007 when I first started to store them on the internet I have written 456 musings. Wow! Something wrong with me, but then most already know that. There are so many, that I can look at one from years ago and wonder what I had to say about the topic.  I actually have to read the musing again to answer the question. I tend not to read the old musings any more frequently than I watch a movie I have already seen—and that is seldom. It seems I am always eager to ponder new topics. Pondering, I guess is soothing to my psyche. So is going on long walks in nature. 

Google provides a lot of stats regarding my stored musings at no charge. That seems strange to me, but then I guess Google is not hurting for income. According to Google I currently have had 14, 257 hits to my URL, averaging presently @600 per month.  At first that sounds impressive but there may be people who google in several times a week to see if there are new musings. Also, there are people I am sure who google in the first time and never come back a second time. I would guess I have maybe 100 people who are regular readers of the musings, and then just the ones of interest to them. I make zero attempt to advertise the site even though google will assist with that if I utilize their help. But I never bother to do so. It always involves me getting active on social media. No way. While I enjoy writing musings (understatement) I do it for my own contentment. I do not allow comments for the musing on line because once I write a musing I have little interest in debating the nuances of a musing with a lot of people who I don’t even know. If you have ever read the comments which follow a lot of internet articles you will better appreciate what I am determined to avoid. After all, I am not trying to sell anything to anyone. None of my musings will change the world, only my own degree of contentment at this stage of my life. I certainly am not looking for pen pals. I am not on Facebook or any other social media.

As a self achieved semi hermit, this musing thing suits me to a tee. I manage to communicate with hundreds of people without personal interaction. The product I produce is food for thought and nothing more. No one is force fed, I receive no income from this product other than some added contentment to my life, there is no competing for anything, or goals to be met, or battles to be won, or maneuvering for position in any ladder for success, no heated debates about anything, and as a plus, I am totally in charge of this venture—no one can pull the plug but me. Wandering, cooking, writing, reading, watching netflix movies, and pleasant snippets of conversation with those I meet while in my condo building or on my wanderings make retirement a perfect little daily routine for my peculiar essence. While proud enough of my efforts before retirement and all the stresses, competition, maneuvering, and efforts on behalf of others, like everything else in life, enough is enough. It’s weird, but my father did the same thing with his life—when he retired he pulled the plug on his pre retirement life. So maybe this is all genetic. The difference is that he pulled the plug on everyone, not out of any anger, but just enjoyed a peaceful hermit-like life till his death. I manage to be in communication with others via musings and yet to live a secluded comfortable life. While I have lived a long time I doubt there is hardly anyone out there who could say I ruined their life in any aspect of it. Being an oft time pain in the ass, that’s another story. Almost always these past conflicts were caused by someone or others trying to create senseless problems for those who were not in a position to defend themselves. Because we can legally hurt others, mostly for selfish gain, does not mean we should. Because rules may be good for most, it doesn’t mean a rule should be used to senselessly hurt those for whom the rule is harmful. Exceptions trump using anything to harm the hapless. There were many times during my life when I was the more hapless one and others came to my rescue. Certain things in life we never forget, and to be fair T.O. style, we need to return tit for tat when we can. 

Google monitors the top ten countries which have the most hits on my musing URL. They are listed below:

United States

France

Russia  

Poland

Germany

Ukraine

Romania

Mauritius

China

United Kingdom

Mauritius?  Romania? Ukraine? I suppose Russia just routinely monitors everything on the internet. Maybe the United States is in first place only because National Security Dept is wired in permanently to this URL. Well, I haven’t been arrested yet, although many religious leaders would likely sense I have reached the end of my rope. Maybe Mauritius is an island mental hospital of some sort. Smile. 

I sense many people misinterpret the purpose of a musing. While musings may contain some facts, depending on the topic, a musing is nothing more than one person’s interpretation of how they see the world through their own peculiar prism. The purpose of a musing is to create thoughts to think about, to get any other readers to think about these thoughts and run them through their own peculiar prism. For the record, I consider chit chatting with others an essential part of our own education in life. But once again, there comes a time when enough is enough, even with this aspect of life. Do I really want to spend the better part of a day discussing trivial stuff like what I used to do for a living or what someone else is doing for a living, or listening to tales about some grandchildren  who I have never met, and on and on it goes. It is the same with a distant family tree. So, with great effort, I learn that my great great grandfather was born in such and such a year and died in such a year, was a chariot driver, and married someone named Lily of the Valley and had three kids. What does this really tell me about my great great grandfather? Nothing of any real meaning about his character or essence as a person. I have been known to tell others at a large social gatherings that I am a retired customized condom salesperson, was on the road a lot, and met a lot of interesting people. Or if they ask if I am married I make her the customized condom salesperson. In social circumstances I often agitate others simply to keep myself awake. If in a devilish mood I might offer to others that a friend at the gathering was a customized condom salesperson. Friends need be of a rugged personality to remain friendly with me. There is humor in most every aspect of life. 

Some might respond that I certainly talk enough about my past in my musings, and that is true, but it is sometimes the nature of my past which has led to the particular viewpoint in a musing. Otherwise, the reader would be left in the dark about from where the hell I got a  particular notion.

I reckon one could legitimately ask “for what purpose does all this reading and cogitating about so many aspects of life gain you at your age?”. I know, in what is becoming fewer and fewer years, I will be dead. But these people miss the point. The object is to achieve the maximum level of contentment in our lives. I had enough stress and commotion in my life, as well as being right in the midst of professional matters, to desire my retirement be devoid of stress, excitement, commotion, winning or losing on mundane matters, being involved in establishing policy matters, etc. One of my biggest retirement goals is not to be bothering other people a lot, or depending on them to amuse me. I have full days doing all the things I want to do, often simple things like cooking or wandering around solo all over in my walks in nature or city neighborhoods, etc. People that depend on others too much in their senior years tend not to be happy campers. My goal is to live as long as I can and still do the things I enjoy and not a day longer. My last act of independence will be to control my own dying process, and that, to my way of thinking, should be a basic right for everyone. Those who feel they have the right to decide when a particular person has the right to end it all are something else. Why would anyone really want to have a say on this matter for someone else?. When someone says “Only God determines when we die”, I interpret this to mean that God is really a sadistic SOB considering how many people often have horrible deaths. Yes, I would admit, someone is entitled to have a long drawn out miserable dying process if they wish. I don’t understand why they would wish such a thing. And it is not clear to me why I should be obligated to be drawn into their world of misery or others should pay for their chosen path of dying. 

I have had people tell me that so and so has had numerous operations, chemical treatments, and is still hanging in there—and while it would be a trip for me to visit, the person would certainly enjoy seeing me again. I always ask, is he/she going to survive all this and live a normal life again?  And invariably they say the doctors said the goal now is to make the patient as comfortable as they can for their remaining months. I don’t go. And along with T.O.’s ‘fair is fair’ mentality I would never allow myself to be in such a state and then expect others to suffer a long drawn out death with me. I know people who spend a great deal of their life watching others die. That’s worse than chit-chatting all day with people we will never meet again. 

Here comes the little birdie again, to tell me to end this musing, I am wandering all over the place. Ok, I’ll stop, but wandering is in my nature. Maybe someone knows the answer to this question. When I die what happens to my musing URL?  Does it float out there forever? I am going to guess there is some sort of internet clutter removal device which zaps URL’s which are never used. In the case of my URL many of the topics are timeless so I will live on forever in internet space. Unfortunately, just when I might have a chance to brag, I’ll be dead. Somebody once said, “Life’s a bitch and then you die.”  When someone is dying shouldn’t they be clothed in their finest outfit with an embalming needle already in place and a nice coffin by the beside for the body to be rolled into? Instead of funerals we could have final ‘death rattle’ ceremonies bedside, with ample supplies of marijuana, alcoholic beverages, and even heroin for those who prefer a mood of “I don’t give a shit”. Others, more into the spirit of things, could sing endless choruses of ‘For he/she was a jolly good fellow’ …….just some random thoughts here before their time.  When T.O. is on his death bed there will be a sign at the head of the bed: “You don’t speak to me unless I speak to you first”.  Only if people know I am dying would I expect a mob scene bedside. “Give people what they want and they’ll come in droves.” Actually, when we are but a shell of ourselves, with an appearance of having been dragged through the streets by a pack of wild dogs, and the mental state of a witless addleheaded nobody-is-home(ness), why would anyone with an iota of self respect, choose not to die alone? It has been my observation that most everyone dies alone, crowd or no crowd—busy alone with dying.

Top 75 Musings—Dec 2016

1. Basis of Understanding   

2. Tidbits #5    

3.  Perplexities  

4.  The Price and Rewards of Morality  

5. Domestic Irremissibility   

5.  Deathday Countdown  

6.  Inflated Memberships   

7. Sports as Entertainment  

8.  Reunions, et al   

9. Condensed Guide To Healthy Living  

10.  Addendum to G.B. Public Ownership   

Next 27 (in no order)

 A heart-sickening Mass of Humanity  

Where U.S.Stands in Best of Various Categories  

Gift Giving: Useless, Meaningful, Inane…..   

Lincoln Boyhood Memorial Home  The early Years

Assorted Tidbits #1   

Diversity, Empathy, and Guardian Angels  

Interpersonal Relationships   

A Dog Named Buff  

Thoughts on nature  

So Little Left To Need  

Alternative Medicine  

Opportunities in Old Age The Terminational Years

You Can Never Go Home Again  

Addiction as Delusional Access to Contentment  

God and Heaven 

The Status of Life On Earth 

Missing a Football Game a Blessing   

The Locker Room, Incognito, and T.O.  

How Did I End Up Old  

Culture Shock  

Sentiments at 70   

The Most Disgraceful American Actions 

Pt. 2 The Proverbial Cliff for Empires  

The Perquistors  

The World According To a ……..

Emotional Feelings With Age

The Next 37 in No particular Order

What is causing This Current 6th Evolutionary Extinction Rate

Political Correctness

The Immigration Dilemma

Personal Appearance and Graduation

Violence in America  (6 Parts)

The Best Time of Day

Did Prince have a Calling From God?

Does the 2016 Presidential Election REally Mean Anything?

The Current Heroin Crisis

Big League ‘Welfare Queens”

Perfect Love

Gratitude as a Rewarding Human …….

Independent Low Budget Films

Weekly Tidbits #2

Connecting the Dots: Enough is Enough, Family Values….

Cataloging Republicans

Miracles Come in Bunches—Obama……

Assorted Tidbits #1

Age and Status

The Religious Crisis, Gay Marriage, and Human……

Willpower, SAT Scores, and Success the T.O. Way

How To Best Live Our Retirement Years

“Fire in the Belly”

Doctor’s WithOut Borders, Ebola, and the Angels

Ray Rice and Justice (Ray Rice Followup)

The Sexiest Woman Alive (Addendum added)

Rules For Enjoying Old Age

Irsay is no Isolated Fluke

A Perfect Day

Professional Sports Has Become a Predatory Nightmare

Enough Is Never Enough Classic example

Love

The Intrigue of Marathon Races

Judging Others and Life

So Where Do We Go From Trayvon? 

Note: For various reasons, there is no strong correlation between the most read musings and the quality of the musing. So the above may not mean all that much. 

Youth—A Bundle of Feelings

Youth—A Bundle of Feelings

While my aversion to social chit-chat with people I will never or seldom see again is well known by those who know me well, the reasons for this peculiarity are not. Part of it is simple enough—I don’t get a lot of personal contentment by it anymore. But this peculiarity also has a history dating back to my youth. In my early teens I would offer being a hermit as a life goal. It was never a case of no one speaks or interacts with me in social situations—they do and I can handle my side of any conversations. Strangely, seldom am I unhappy afterwards that I did attend an event, but even if I have agreed in advance to attend, when the time comes I invariably have other things I would rather do and these other things usually win out. 

Be all this as it may, given a choice, I would rather, at my age now, muse about some area of life and write it up, than spend the same amount of time chit-chatting with other people in any gathering with more than a few people. The quality of chit-chat is inversely proportional to the number of people in attendance. I always smile when I see, at a restaurant, a huge table of people celebrating some sort of occasion. The reality is pretty much that the only people they are chatting with are those immediately on either side of them. Even in medium size groups, the nature of the chit-chat differs to smaller groups of less than say 2 0r 3. Endless one liners rule the day in these larger groups. And this is fine, for maybe an hour at most. Then it becomes, to me, a tiresome re-run of nonsense. More boring than annoying. Perhaps my point here is better made this way: An evening in large groups with endless ha-ha one liners does not bring much meaningful insight into anyone or their life. If there are just a couple of people present for some length of time we end up with far more insights about the person with whom we just chatted. Then I enjoy the conversation because everyone really does have an interesting story to tell.  I am intrigued by interesting personal human diversity, but not banal chit chat filled with boring personal stats. If I want that I can read obituaries. 

Before retiring, the most interesting aspect of teaching was not the classroom lectures but the individual meetings with students one on one in my office. Most Professors are not all that receptive to conversation with students outside the course material. For whatever reason, and maybe another musing, people tend, when conversing one on one with me, to unburden themselves with whatever is bothering them in their lives. Maybe it is me who directs the conversation in that direction. Perhaps the reputation of not being very social made them feel safe to do so. Like who am I going to tell, I appeared to be off in my own little world.  All my life, even when younger, a lot of people felt free to tell me things they would not tell others. The net result is that I found human diversity more intriguing than irritating. To some degree, the more different someone is from me personally, the more likely they have an interesting story to tell.  Another result is that the more we become aware of what others face in life, the less critical we become of those different from ourselves. In depth conversations with all kinds of people from all walks of life impact on our own feelings about life and others. Put it this way, if I am overly grateful about the good things in my life, it is precisely because I am well aware of how much more trauma and unfairness many others have faced in their lives. It seems unfair to look down upon someone else just because I have been more fortunate in life than them. Instead, almost by instinct, I let them sense, one way or another, that I empathize with them and will help, if I can. 

Ok, am wandering a bit here, a specialty of mine. What is there about youth that stands out?Youth, it seems, more so than in later years, is a bundle of feelings less based on reality. When young, our grasp of reality is limited, and feelings drive much of what we do or say. Social interactions in youth are really difficult and more nerve wracking. How we felt about a lot of things in youth were based on limited understanding or experience, and thus were likely to be errant in nature. Back in youth it was easier to see things in pure black and white. There were clear cut good guys and bad guys. Americans were the good guys and the Indians were the bad guys. The U.S, was the good guy and Russia was the bad guy. If blacks didn’t like it here they could leave. The residents of my neighborhood were the good guys, those in less affluent neighborhoods were the bad guys.  The only true religion was the religion we inherited, and so it went, on and on. 

This sounds a tad ridiculous, but for me as a child, a pet dog was a perfect fit for my innermost feelings. Buff the dog had feelings too, written always on his sleeve and his feelings and my feelings were what we dealt with together. If he was sad I tried to make him happy. If I was sad he tried to make me happy. A pet never rejects us or turns on us no matter the situation. When company came in the front door I went out my bedroom window and took off with Buff. In school I never signed up for any group activities. My parents were not the kind who made their kids join anything. And I didn’t. My friendships, outside my immediate neighborhood friends, were always one on one. My dad, over my mother’s vocal objection, would drive me to spend the day with a friend who lived in the roughest and poorest section of the area. I have no idea why we were friends as we had little in common. He was a poor student, non social, and hung out with an antisocial and crude crowd BUT never when I was there for the day, all I got were the tales of adventures on the wrong side of the track. He got killed in a car crash when young via reckless driving. It seemed to me early on that the young, who see no future in life, behave recklessly and often mistreat others as a way of life. Not so much that they are all evil, but bitter about the cards dealt to them or their position in life. When ghettoites and the affluent clash it is more, on the part of the ghettoite, “you don’t like me and I don’t give a shit about you either.”

Being shy and insecure is not always a bad thing, especially in youth. It makes a young person more an observer of life than a participant. Unlike today, where circumstances are quite different, my days, except for school, were not planned out for me. If I wasn’t in school, my parents usually had no idea where I might be, or doing what, except I was expected to be around for meals or I had to make my own meals. It wasn’t for lack of effort, but my mother’s endless questions about where I had been and with who, gained her little info. “I don’t ask you questions like this about who you have been with all day and doing what”. My dad would do his best to stay neutral. “He seems to pick his friends with care—we have no evidence that they are doing anything more than harmless nonsense and just exploring life together.”  But he would sometimes take me aside and in effect say: “You know right from wrong and I depend on you to behave accordingly. I want you to discipline yourself when it comes to behavior. You seem to love nonsense and that is ok I guess, but it better always be harmless nonsense. Freedom comes with responsibility.” And that would be about it for any interference from my dad in my daily life. My dad, with preciously few exceptions, none of which I can remember now, ever had anything bad to say about anyone. My mother didn’t think much of nonsense, to her it was bad behavior, while my dad would stay neutral, never reprimanding me nor give any evidence he was amused by it either. I don’t think I ever observed my dad engaging in pure nonsense about anything. And interestingly, I can’t remember him ever being the object of anyone else’s nonsense. If anyone could rise above it all, it was him. He was never the object of funny ha-ha’s, nor was anyone ever the object of any funny ha ha’s from him.

It seems youth is more feelings than reason. And we got the feelings from those around us. How we thought about a lot of things were simply taught to us by the adults around us. America was always right. Our inherited religion was the true religion. Most all our attitudes about others was based on feelings. Empathy or appreciation of minorities of any sort was nonexistent. Hate was not so much behind prejudicial feelings as it was pure ignorance of what minorities were up against. If certain groups didn’t like it here they could leave. There was no real thought behind making fun of the ugly kids or the dumber kids, or those with weird personalities. Looking back I don’t know how many kids in these categories ever got through the day. These ‘different’ kids were endlessly the butt of jokes. If we dared interact with these ‘off limit’ kids we would be teased endlessly about it. In short, much of youth is lived through the attitudes prevailing at the time.

The social uprisings in the 60’s by various minority groups was not really appreciated by myself and many others until it was almost over. It really is hard to see things through the eyes of others who are protesting legitimate grievances. Whether or not we ever reach the point of understanding social grievances by minority groups depends a lot on our professional career and the amount of real contact with these ‘others’. Every society is responsible for the kind of communities that exist within it’s boundaries. That such brutal and unforgiving ghettoes exist throughout our country—urban, suburban, and rural—is an aspect of governance that has dismally failed. And these ghettoes continue to grow in size, in violence, and in the depth of poverty. America could get away with this when the frontier still existed, but today there is no where to run. Living in one of our ghettoes is not just temporary bad luck but has dire medical consequences. Long term high levels of stress hormones in anyone runs the real risks of various medical consequences on almost every system of the body during the most vulnerable aspect of our lives——the formative years.  The Nobel Peace Prize of some sort should go to those parents who manage to raise kids in a ghetto without high levels of stress hormones in these kids’ bodies. To me, these parents are heroes—saints of some sort. The odds are against the best of parents in such situations. 

One reason kids need to become independent of their parents after the formative years is so they can become ‘free’ to adopt thought-through reasons for their ‘feelings’ as adults. Some family units never break up and remain isolated ‘family values’ cabals, seemingly forever, noted especially for their rigidity and intolerance to others. Economic status doesn’t exempt any family from this misfortune. Even their relationship to each other is not healthy. Most people, at the end of their formative years, need to ‘get a life of their own’ independent of parental dominance. In most cases we don’t really become a ‘valued’ member of society until we fully mature as an independent self-developed social being. Maybe there are exceptions but they are few. When people say ‘Poor Lincoln’, ‘Poor Obama’, ‘Poor  Bill Clinton’ and so on, this is an ignorant comment. These are examples of people who grew up in poor but secure environments and had to develop their own personalities and view of life and other people. A secure environment is not always the ‘perfect family’. It would be hard to define a ‘perfect family’. What is perfect for one child often is not perfect for another child. Just understanding this takes away some of the harshest feelings we might have towards certain others. What most people really need are opportunities to become better individuals while at the same time receiving no avoidance of punishment for their personal crimes against others. When it comes to crimes against others there can be no tolerance. No society can tolerate any product of the worst ghetto for crimes against others that they commit as adults. A society that tolerates the existence of ghettoes throughout it’s territorial domain will soon enough implode for it’s neglect of these hell holes. We, even in America, have managed to wall these people off from the rest of society, but we are beginning to pay a terrible price for this neglect. This neglect, along with human overpopulation and inability, in a global economy, to have global living wage minimum wage laws—is putting everyone, everywhere, in a corner from which there is increasingly no path to escape. Mother nature will correct what we have created here and the correction will leave no one protected. In the absence of global responsible reproduction, the consequences will be dire and randomly cruel. No class or area will escape. We already see it in places like Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, and the list grows with every year that passes. We cannot see it in our own ghettoes, but we have blinders on. Inside these economic ghettoes is a cauldron of disaster brewing with only short snippets seen when they riot. These little riots are but a sign of what awaits us when these riots become coordinated via modern gadgetry. The police and national guard cannot be everywhere at the same time. Our blindness is everywhere. We still, for the most part, do not want to give children in these ghettoes good schools, good teachers, good health care, personal security, and economic opportunities. In some ghettoes the unemployment rate for young people is 60-70% and for many residents it has been a lifetime occupation to be unemployed. 

Youth is a difficult experience, difficult even in the best of environments. Very few blossom into something successful on their own and achieve success solely because of their own efforts.  The number of T.O.’s in life are few and far between. It takes a genetic lottery prize to have the amount of willpower and focus to achieve a particular success on your own, and even here success will be limited to the object of total focus and willpower. The total amount of willpower we have is limited and needs to be spread around carefully, and if spread around, then success in any particular area will be limited. Most of us cannot be successful at a whole bunch of things. And most of us, to succeed at hardly anything, we need help from others. Where our lives are not much affected by the Golden Rule, success becomes quite limited. And help from others, is not by any means guaranteed in life. 

Youth is a stressful and perplexing time for most young people. Others play a major role in how we feel about so many things. By adulthood we still have such feelings and yet, to become our own unique individual, we need to venture out on our own, escape the formative years nest, question everything we have ever learned about anything, and use reason to cement what we really think and feel about things from then on until death. It is hard to develop a real sense of contentment and achievement if we never make the effort to see and feel things as a consequence of our own thoughts through perceptions of life as it comes through our own prism. It always surprised me how many people just get stuck in the learned ways of youth with few changes, little creativity of their own, and essentially remain puppets of their past. It is also true, or so it seems to me, that even if we develop our own unique essence, in our terminational years many of us settle into our own daily routine and cease trying to change ourselves or much of anything else in the world around us. Maybe at that point in life that is ok. Those who cannot let go of  matters that should be handled by the next generation tend to reap nothing but frustration as they feel the world is passing them by. The elderly who cannot learn to enjoy being in the grand stands, and be content to see things through their aged eyes as good theatre, will end up being grumpy curmudgeonous whiners, bitter beings, and a botherating pain in the ass. Those of us time-worn, gerontic, somewhat fossilized, ancient with more and more doddering, tottering, and having seen our better days, achieve the highest contentment when we can adequately amuse ourselves. I reckon we will still die anyway, but if we have the right or means to control our own dying process, then most of the trauma and desperational days can be avoided.  Not a bad plan if we can pull it off. The terminational years of life can often be the best ones of our lives. Like every other phase of life it takes a little luck, the rest we have to work through ourselves. 

Deep Thoughts That Go Nowheres

Deep Thoughts That Go Nowheres

I was watching Sheebiejiebee meticulously groom herself awhile ago and it made me think, for some reason, of the phrase “we are all God’s children’, or if some prefer, “We are all God’s creation”.   How we view this creation process is all over the place. For me, as I have said many times, “wherever there is a gift, there is a gift giver”. That’s as far as my own reasoning ability can push it. A process for ‘creation’ does exist and I simply assume God created the laws which govern the evolutionary process. There is no process in the world which amazes me more. 

If we are all God’s children, then at the present time God has 8.7 million varied species and if we count each individual for all the species, then God’s children must currently exist in numbers beyond my extent of math. And since 99% of all species that ever existed are now extinct—God’s family of life forms that ever existed is beyond counting. Then, I wondered, “Does God have feelings similar to the feelings we have?  Does God ever laugh? Organized religions don’t seem to have a lot of humor in their rituals and commandments, etc. Most top religious leaders, like the Ayatollah for example, would fracture their face if they ever smiled. Okay, it’s serious business so smiling and laughter might be out of place. 

It seems all major organized religions believe that members can have some sort of individual relationship with God. Some even can identify exactly when they were ‘born again’ Billy Graham style. If this is true then God must be able to communicate with millions of individuals at the same time. I know, God can do anything. I guess. Sometimes, but not much anymore, I have pressed those who claim they communicate directly with God, as to some of the specifics. Is language involved like in normal human communication?  Who initiates these conversations?  Usually the person would say they are not normal communications but feelings that pass between God and them. Ok, so let’s take abortion or gays or differing sex acts, or oh just anything religious people have strong feelings about. I try to find out who  initiates these strong feelings, he/she or God? I mean, let’s say your sexual partner wants to engage in certain sex acts which do not appeal to you. Do you then talk to God and God says it would be sinful and disgusting to engage in such acts. Or, suppose you want to engage in certain sex acts, do you refrain because God came to you and said “Stop that”. I get the impression that almost all the time we use God to support what we feel and ignore God if we feel one way and Church doctrine says something different. It is easiest to use the Catholic Church here since one church official (the Pope) interprets scripture for his flock. Yet, despite clear denunciation of what is right sexually, polls seem to show the same percentage of Catholics do or do not engage in varied sexual practices as any other religious group. Is God someone we listen to just when convenient?

We know sexual drives differ both in intensity and the kind of sexual acts enjoyed. That must be some kind of genetic/environmental mix that gives us such variation here. If God doesn’t want us to sin to the extent we will go to Hell if we do, then why does God allow such genetic and environmental differences to exist?  That certainly doesn’t make a level playing field in regards to getting to heaven or hell. Fortunately, all major religions have a forgiveness clause. God will forgive our sins and things will be ok and we can proceed to heaven. In theory then, we could kill ten people, then at some point be ‘born again’ and we will be forgiven and go to Heaven. That’s a good deal. But suppose some of those we killed had done bad things before we killed them. They can never be ‘born again’ so they go to hell and we go to Heaven. Something strange here. Wouldn’t this mean that the best thing we could do for our children is kill them before they have any chance to commit major sins and thereby guarantee they go to Heaven? Deep thinking past our capabilities seems futile. 

It seems logical, if God is personally chatting with millions of people on a continued or daily basis, that  there would be tons of conversations in which people are telling others about these conversations. How many conversations have we really had where people are telling us what God told them last night.? Ok, maybe Pat Robertson and his ilk love to hold press conversations to give some real authority to their beliefs. When every President ends a speech with “God Bless America” is that an order, a suggestion, a plea, or a meaningless prayer? When a President gives a speech and declares, for example, that we are going to invade Iraq, and ends the speech by saying “God Bless America” isn’t that rather a presumptuous way to speak to God?  No doubt there will be millions of Iraqis on their knees praying, “Please God don’t let American bombs rain down on us.”  If God, for example, is blessing us in all these invasions (63) the past 50 years, why have almost all of them been failures.? I mean, which invaded country became a better more prosperous country after we invaded? We have to go back as far at least to the Korean War. 

Let’s press on here on another front.  We grow fond, very fond, of many pets in our lives. If we had the power they would never die. But they do, even though they are God’s children too. Don’t forget 99% of species that have existed in the evolutionary process became extinct. Of course the religious purists will say that the faithful followers of the right religion will go to Heaven, and not die at all. Why, I wonder would God allow certain humans in but not any of the other extinct species? This all seems clearly self serving on our part. And why does God value our pets less than we? I certainly would let my pets into Heaven. And after all, they too are God’s creation or children.  

All this pondering over questions for which we have too little brain power to answer is fruitless. This may be a wrong impression, but I get the sense that those who wail the loudest at funerals are the religious purists. That seems strange, they are the ones who are certain Heaven awaits the faithful. Were all this true which is pushed by the religious purists, then we would be smart, after doing some good things with our lives, to shoot ourselves lest be do some bad things in the future. It would be like on a TV contest, when the contestant has won all the money possible, and asked if they wish to continue, knowing that if they answer wrong the amount of money will go down, why would they ever continue? If God did communicate with me and told me “you know Reid, you are barely eligible right now for Heaven”, I would shoot myself on the spot. 

One person’s observation is hardly conclusive, but it just seems to me that the most contented and happiest people are rarely religious purists. And beneath the rigidity seems some real hostility, mostly directed to all the ‘heathens’ out there. We all know how vicious religious wars are. Killing in these wars is seldom enough, there seems a need for gruesome killing, the more gruesome the better. Then also, most religions seem to have an angry God. Throughout all of human history humans have sought ways to alleviate the anger of God toward humans.  Absurdly enough these offerings were often live animals or humans. Why would we think killing any of God’s children/creations would make God happy?  Why do we even bother to acquire illusions about the nature of God? Our pets don’t seem to spend much time comprehending our ‘real’ nature. If we are nice to them, they are nice to us, no matter how much of an ass we are in the rest of our lives. 

It always seems to come back to this: the best we can do is try to bring some contentment into our lives. We do not exist to please God. Why would we even think God’s contentment is something that we have to give him? If I had created the laws which govern the amazing and perpetual evolutionary process, that would provide contentment enough—like good theatre for eternity. We always seek to make everything revolve around us. It took me decades to give up on that. No compulsive behaviors of any sort can bring us contentment. Addictions are dead ended. Ask Donald Trump. How contented is he?  It is hard to find anyone more angry about so many things so much of the time. I mean really angry. Perhaps we all need be a little nervous here. Not many good things happen when the atmosphere is permeated with anger. 

Only the golden rule can bring us various measures of contentment. It is really so simple. Those who give and those who receive both benefit in terms of more contentment. Not in some far off Heaven but immediately. Just give help wherever we can, if we can, to the extent we can or should, and the return will be additional contentment to our lives. To do this successfully we need always remember the importance of knowing when enough is enough of any pleasurable aspect of our lives. We need avoid compulsive behaviors and addictions to short term pleasures. For example, studies have shown that people do need money, in this country, up to about $70,000/yr, to maximize contentment here. Past that contentment levels do not rise but decline. We all need to eat, and eating is pleasurable, but if we eat too much too often our contentment level goes down. Sex is pleasurable, but once the need for sex becomes compulsive, the contentment level in our lives goes down. Having a car to get around brings contentment, but once we become addicted to the value of our car, contentment level doesn’t go up, but down. Addictions to most any aspect of life, including money, titles, power, sex, food, property, things of most any sort, do not generate maximum contentment. Only the Golden Rule does that. 

If the Golden Rule was the dominant ethical principle practiced by all humans everywhere, then “we could all have our freedom, we could all have our happiness, we could all feel the sun and smell the grass and smell the flowers and look upon each other with appreciation.” (Unknown) 

Clearly the Golden Rule is not the dominant ethical principle anywhere on the planet, and we are now paying dearly for this. Fortunately, individuals can maximize their own contentment via the Golden Rule so all is not lost. That, however, is not to say tragedies cannot happen to individuals, entire families, entire communities, entire nations, or the whole planet. Chance, opportunities, luck, and help from others come inherently with the gift of life. In the last analysis (no such thing for my quixotic mind) only Mother Nature sorts it all out and evolution proceeds. It is what it is. 

What is Causing This Current 6th Evol Age of Rapid Species Extinction Rate?

What is Causing This Current 6th Evolutionary Period of Massive Species Extinction Rate?

In recent years I have mulled over what Evolution is really about. It exists, is scientifically documented, but describing an event does not give the intent or purpose of the event. Most people, including myself, believe in a God of some sort, often in the sense that wherever there is a gift, there must be a gift giver. Ok, the universe and us exist and so God is the culprit behind it all. EXCEPT: Where did God come from? That’s it, we just don’t have the intelligence to understand how something came from nothing. 

Humans do have considerable powers of rational thought so we mostly create a God in our own image, a God with Whom we can have a personal relationship, and a God who will answer our prayers IF we follow our inherited or marriage adopted religious scripture. Then we tack on heaven and hell and make a contest out of it. The neat thing about this contest is that God is always ready to forgive, which is nice since we can do a U turn, at any point, and God will welcome us to Heaven because he is a very forgiving God. Certainly a lot more forgiving than us since, when we ‘see the light’ on matters like abortion, gay marriage, who can be a priest and so on, on and on, we are ready to cut some throats if heathens do not have their religious beliefs in order. At the very least we will make their beliefs illegal and fine or jail them.

For a long time it seemed to me that ‘well, maybe some religion is the true religion with the real God and it is up to us to have the degree of faith needed to get that religion in line with our lives’. Heaven does sound like a good deal and hell is kind of scary. HOWEVER, we are not really so much in the dark on all this. Every major religion has prayer as part of it’s communication with God. Now if God answers his followers of the one true religion, then members of that religion will have smaller percentages of deaths from diseases, from being on the battlefield, have less poverty amongst them, have less fatal accidents, have fewer of their members being raped, or shot, and so on. There are no such statistics. God apparently is not listening to the prayers of these true believers. That’s kind of disconcerting. 

On a common sense level, I gave up praying for personal stuff years ago. Now really, why would God help me in my personal life, and simply ignore the prayers of homeless refugees?  Why would God let a little girl get raped and help me with a personal hurdle or problem?  What kind of God are we worshipping? Believing as most people do, why do we never hear of screaming for help from God when an assault on us is happening and instead always hear about being safe by caring lethal weapons?

Be all this as it may, it is still God which created the laws which govern the evolutionary process. So what is this evolutionary process about? It has been around now for billions of years, and so it must have a purpose. After all it generated you and I. Just how many different species exist on our planet today? Scientists estimate there are about 8.7 million. Wow!!!!! How many of them are most of us familiar with? What are they around for anyway? God certainly isn’t listening to their prayers. The dumb bastards don’t even know how to pray. Here is a bigger wow!!!!!!!——99% of species that existed in evolutionary history are now extinct. Could this happen to our species? Are we going to be the first species to exist and be a permanent feature of the process from now on?  That question, in my case, is certainly beyond my comprehensive ability. 

What does seem evident, from the above, is that God’s interest is in the evolutionary process itself, not to perpetuate any particular favored species. Change is based on which of the millions of species can best adapt to environmental changes. We don’t even know what constitutes our total environment. Who knows what else exists in the Universe, and what long term effects will change the nature of our planet, let alone the whole Universe. What a revolting situation for us personally. We are one of 8.7 million species existing on our planet right now and 99% of species which existed over millions of years have become extinct. This makes it hard for us to feel overly important to the whole scheme of things. What then is the point of living? We know the answer since we are all naturally selfish beings. We want to achieve a contented life. No one can be completely contented, so we simply strive to be as contented as we can for as long as we can. That is about it. 

With the above introduction we now take a look at what is causing the current species extinction rate to be 10,000 times faster than it was before humans existed. I mean wow, we are a destructive species!!!!!! If enough of you would have the common decency to non exist, the species extinction rate would maybe get back to normal. Human lifestyles result in endless activities which are harmful to other species. In the past 5 major evolutionary periods of mass extinction, climate change due to factors not related to any particular species were the cause of massive extinctions.  You know, ice ages and that sort of thing. Our specie activities are the first such lifestyles which are bringing about climate change and mass destruction of habitats in which other species live. The locusts were nothing compared to us. 

I tend to harp on this so much that just a small paragraph will suffice. Biology 101 makes it Nixonian perfectly clear that no species can escape the consequences of overpopulation.  We can bicker over what level constitutes human overpopulation, but certainly everyone can agree that for the human population to double again, as it has in my lifetime, would be catastrophic. Look, there are too many people on earth right now for there to be enough food, energy sources, and natural resources to enable everyone to live the kind of lifestyle many of us now live. That answers the question as to whether our planet is over populated with humans right now. 

Assuming that most everyone knows, in some, if only limited way, that overpopulation is disastrous for any species, it becomes rather depressing to realize that while we know, in theory, the consequences of overpopulation, we cannot emotionally commit to responsible reproduction as an absolute necessity for all nations on our planet. In some sort of broad sense, we are no longer a planet of individual independent nation states. Most everything is global now and this requires global cooperation to control population growth, protect our natural resources including other species, and provide livable wages across the planet to workers. 

While we know that humans are the major threat to other species and our human activities the cause of the massive species extinction now going on, the second place culprit is less well known. “Ten thousand years after their ancestors invaded our Fertile Crescent settlements,  cats—trailing our armies and sailing on our ships—have spread like dandelion fluff. They have populated every imaginable habitat, from Scottish heaths to African tropical forests to Australian deserts. There are now some 600 million of these felines worldwide, and some scientists put the total closer to a billion.The United States alone has nearly 100 million pet cats, a number that has apparently tripled in the last 40 years—and perhaps nearly as many strays.”

With all due respect to my good friend Sheebiejiebee, my house cat and once feral cat, her species is right up there with human species activities to drive many species closer to extinction. Cats are great hunters when given the opportunity and this includes domesticated cats, not just feral cats. All cats can hunt down over 1000 different species. For a start, cats like to hunt birds. In 2013, Smithsonian and other government scientists suggested that cats kill 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion birds per year. This is apart from the 6.9 billion to 20.7 billion mammals and millions of reptiles and amphibians cats kill per year. 

In Australia, a government report implicated house cats in the fate of 92 extinct, threatened, and near threatened mammals in Australia. The Australian continent has the highest rate of mammal extinctions in the world. The popularity and affection for domestic cat pets is at an all time high. I reckon the feelings for cat pets follows along the line for children. People love their children and become apoplectic at any insinuation that there be any limit passed on how many children they can have (responsible reproduction to alleviate human overpopulations). People love their domestic cat pets and become apoplectic at any insinuation that these must be kept as indoor pets or be sterilized. 

Many species, once domesticated by captivity, lose the ability to survive in the wild. Not cats. Like humans, cats have populated every imaginable habitat. Not only can they survive in almost any environmental habitat, but cats rank up there as one of the most unsurpassed breeders.  A breeding pair of cats could produce 354,294 descendants in five years, if all survived. Once cats are entrenched in an ecosystem, they are almost impossible to dislodge. Bait poison rarely works as cats prefer to eat live animals. The cat defendants are not without their points. Why make cats the scapegoat for species extinction when in the absence of responsible human reproduction, this current massive species extinction period will continue? Some also argue that cats are a big plus in urban cities as they keep the rodent population down. Some rural farmers feel the same way about cats controlling rodents in their barns etc.  An indoor cat’s avg life span is 12 years while an outdoor cat’s avg lifespan in less than 5 years. 

Someone guessed that cows were in second place to humans as the greatest contributor of our current species extinction period. I think they were referring to the methane put into the atmosphere which contributes to climate change. While this is true, cows are not directly causing other species to become extinct like humans and cats. 

In the broadest possible manner, if I were to put all the serious problems facing our planet, which I have mentioned in numerous musings, in one bag—well, the complexity of the entire situation would be far beyond the average voter, or probably any single human, to grasp enough to enable effective solutions to be achieved. This is what is scary. We humans are now over our head. We cannot mentally, or emotionally, handle all this coming down on our planet at this point in evolution. The evolutionary process (Mother Nature) will, I suppose, handle this like she has handled other dire situations in evolutionary history and over time, with stalls and reverses, come back stronger than ever with a new and improved universe. All the changes will happen independent of our own personal human planning.  The most our input can affect is timing, not the kind of changes themselves. Whatever proves best to survive in a changing environment will survive. The rest perish. I always like to point out that if Lincoln had not organized the extinction of slavery in our country someone else would have in due time. If Eli Whitney hadn’t invented the cotton gin, someone else would have. Like it or not, we are pawns in the process, not major players as individuals. All my musifications mean nothing, albeit many already have figured that out—except me. Well, that’s not true since I do know that and it’s just a hobby. I feel more contented each day having, in my own mind, figured out something about this thing we experience called life. After all, the more mundane amusements have become just more of the same ole, same ole, same ole.  The goal of everyone is to be more contented in life, albeit we all don’t go down the same paths to achieve personal contentment. What is for sure is that compulsive behaviors of most any sort do not lead to contentment. If we cannot learn to sense when enough is enough of just about anything, then contentment will elude us, be it money, power, control, sex, food, gambling, and so on. 

Sheebiejiebee, my once feral cat, is lying on the desk looking at me with such peacefulness in her eyes. I am thinking how odd that her species and my species have become such threats to the welfare of our planet. The locusts have become extinct. Uh oh!  Is this threatening to me? Hardly, every one of us will personally become extinct in due time. The order in which we personally become extinct is irrelevant. But being a gentleman (if you can pardon the exaggeration) I will let you go first.  Death levels all. If I cannot be of major importance to the evolutionary process, then I suppose T.O. is right—‘fair is fair’. We all become the brotherhood of unimportance. Oddly enough, as I have found out with retirement, being unimportant can be a peaceful, mellow, contented mode of existence. Being busy as a bee, with all the stress, manipulations, competition, short term achievements, winning and losing, and so on—all this has it’s place but is rarely the end all objective of our lives. There is a lot to be said for getting up each day in reasonable health, and doing exactly what one feels like doing, independent of others—albeit never interfering with others, and wallowing in a mellow contented manner of living. Then we die. It is what it is.

Women and Their Equal Rights

Women and Their Equal Rights

Women are certainly a distinctive human group. Blacks are obviously a distinctive human group. So are American Indians, Chinese, the handicapped, gays, and so on. A human right is something which seems inherent to all humans. We live in an age where unrestricted activities of the human species is now threatening the survival of more species in this 6th evolutionary period of massive species extinction, which, left unattended, will kill a huge portion of our own species— but human rights have steadily been elevated to include more and more human sub groups. One huge human problem is ignored, but the other one marches forward.

From the beginning of human history on this planet, males have retained for themselves more human rights than females. There is no scientific evidence that males are smarter than females—in fact females have always had a longer life span than males since these figures have been recorded. Perhaps the fact that most males are physically stronger than females, in terms of muscle strength than females on the average, generated from the start the reality that males have more human rights than females. Of course we are not talking about physiological strength since women have always had longer average lifespans. So while men, on the average, can beat up physically on women—women, on the average, live longer than men. Some sort of tit for tat I guess. Did you know that Trump will give a tat for a tit? Well, that’s just rumor. 

Most human subgroups tend to rally strongly as a group for more equal human rights. Early in history slaves were a a large human sub group. Slavery was a hard nut to crack since slave owners benefitted strongly from slave labor as well as receiving the psychological benefits of self importance achieved by slave owning. It was less than 200 hundred years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that slaves were property and not entitled to any protection of their ‘human’ rights. What seems startling, at least to my insight, is that black men were given the right to vote about 75 years before women were given the right to vote. Women still do not have the ‘right’ to be priests in the Catholic Church, or the right to choose whom they marry in some countries, or the right to determine whether they will proceed with an abortion—if they feel incapable of being a good parent for varied reasons, or to be paid the same salary for the same job as men, or yet to be elected President in the U.S. It seems certain societies, including our own, have yet to feel women really have the right to be President. There is not any existing rule against a women being President, but no matter, it so far never happens. Why is this? 

Most human sub groups stick together strongly when it comes to that particular human sub group gaining the same rights that other humans already have. But not the human sub group of females. This is a huge subgroup and if they collectively demanded all the rights that men have, they would certainly have all these rights. But they are never solidly in support of their own rights. A certain percentage of women always seem content to leave things as they are, admitting I guess, that they are not really the equal of men in certain respects. Not all women were behind the extended long term drive to achieve the right to vote. Most all other human subgroups are solidly behind their right to have the same human rights as others already have. 

For example, more women vote than men in Presidential elections. Certainly this would enable a female to become President once in a while. Well, we have been through a lot of elections and there has yet to be a female President. Individually, through their own efforts, women have achieved a lot. There are now more females in college than males, more female doctors graduating from Medical School, and we even now have some female Corporate Presidents. But these are all things which individual females can achieve on their own. No female can achieve, through their own efforts, the right to become a priest. This, even though one of the arguments for not letting women have the right to vote was that women were better left to handle the things they were better equipped to handle, like raising kids, upholding moral values in a family, domestic housework, and so on. Wouldn’t that make them better candidates to be priests?  Wouldn’t that make them ideal candidates to decide whether a pregnancy goes to termination? The poor human embryo—it has, in the eyes of many, a right to be born but after that, if it is born into a ghetto with only one parent, a crack head unemployed mother, well—tough, that is just the roll of the dice. This child is not by law, required to have good schools, good health care benefits, a safe environment in their formative years, good nutrition, employment opportunities in their community, and so on. I have often wondered, what would have been my destiny had I been born in a similar environment? I had, as a child, almost all the childhood diseases but I had good medical care. I was psychologically rather delicate and withdrawn, but there were always others to nurture me along to overcome such natural limitations. Yep, I inherited a lot of rights which other children just never had. When I taught there was a sign over my office desk that read “People build people”. Perhaps too many people spend too much time praying (often selfishly) instead of building others, especially the less fortunate. 

Think about this: In the first Republican debate among 16 candidates seeking to become nominated for President there was only one female candidate on the stage and one candidate boldly admonished her by stating “No one is going to be elected President with a face like yours”. He is now the President, even though more women vote than men. Hard to figure. Imagine if the majority of voters were black, or hispanic, or gay, or handicapped, etc, whether we would still be waiting or have waited so long for one of them to become President? Of course not. Any subgroup who is a majority of the population is going to have all the rights anyone in that society has EXCEPT WOMEN. It seems like all women want equal rights but are really particular about which female is first to get such rights. 

A lot of women seem to be satisfied with a more submissive role in life. They like the role of motherhood as a profession, letting men fight political battles, while they in more crude terms, enjoy being essentially restricted between the kitchen and the bedroom and minding the kids. That certainly is not against the law and shouldn’t be, so this is not unreasonable for them to personally prefer this. With rights become responsibilities. Our own society insists that prostitution should remain illegal, unless of course it is protected by a marriage license so that ‘gold diggers can practice their profession and become quite wealthy, even first lady. It gets a bit tricky, if someone can become extremely wealthy by being an actor/actress or professional athlete, why can’t someone who is especially attractive become wealthy via marriage and the sexual favors that come with it, even if it is just for a limited time, in which case they get awarded millions in a divorce. It certainly beats serving four years in Iraq or Afghanistan in the military. For that matter why can’t a female, or any one else, make a living via their sexual attractiveness? If I laugh here, it is because they already do this. The laws against prostitution are mostly enforced upon the less attractive in society who attempt to earn money or sex the hard way via the sexual needs of those who need to pay to satisfy such needs.  Which is more difficult, spending several years in some God forsaken environment avoiding land mines, snipers, sudden unexpected assaults with modern day weapons of destruction, or routinely, for a few minutes, spreading your legs and “thinking of England”. One is a lot less likely to get post traumatic stress syndrome providing voluntary sexual or social favors than being a mercenary in modern day military adventures. In some respects, men have all the rights, but women are free to play the game on their own terms to become wealthy and contented on their own terms. Maybe it is just the less attractive women who need equal rights, like equal pay for equal work. 

Some people feel women are more ‘mysterious’ than males, better adapted to making men play the role of fools so the female can achieve their end game. It is hard to generalize with women. We now know that when a female campaigns to be President, on the basis of it is time for us to have a female President, a good percentage of females will be the first to declare, “Yeah? Well it ain’t gonna be you?” Maybe females tend to personalize things more.

No one is less qualified than I to form conclusions about the nature of females. My specialty is to observe, see little tidbits here and there, ask unanswerable questions, see inequities, and ruffle mental feathers. It won’t be the first time someone says to me ‘What did you just say’? The nice thing about musings is that it is so unlike teaching a science class in which “These are the facts, learn them”, than a musing which can only hope to generate some ideas to ponder on the part of the reader and author. Of course not everyone cares to ponder/cogitate certain issues which are already comfortably assimilated into their often inherited cultural values.  Someone once said to me, “You know what? You are a mental troublemaker.”  Not always, especially these days. Sometimes I sits and thinks. Other times I just sits. Either way, on this last phase of life, I hope I can go gently down the stream, grateful for the good things that came my way along the path of life, and very forgetful of the bad things. So far, so good.