Reason's Fermentation of Knowledge

     Montaigne recommended that we live in a conservative state forever adapted to cultural customs.  As a skeptic, he believed the certainty of Sebold's proofs about the validity of Christianity were no less credible than scientific theories at the time.  Because both rely on reason and reason is inherently circular, customs should be valued over scientific progress, revealing a bias for his religious beliefs.
    This reminds me of Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, which showed that a "consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible" (Wiki).  Or a mobius strip, where both sides of a circular ribbon appear to be the same, paradoxically challenging the entire basis for reason.
    Yet the progress of science, I believe, is that knowledge is certainly more tangible than it would seem in times when technology couldn't reveal it.  Depending on the century, people were more certain about natural laws than not.  This dependence presents knowledge as an evolving entity, becoming more substantial as it progresses.  You wouldn't convince a snail about the astounding implications of counting any more than an ancient nomad that the Earth revolves around the sun.  It seems the mobius strip and Godel's theorems can increasingly unravel upon greater intelligence, even if they are true.

Opiate Wand

    Once, in a land called Chelci, there lived a community of deaf people.  As they could not hear, they used a type of sign language that utilized the art of dance.  But their written language was what interested scholars the most, for they wrote in the language of music: a staff of five lines with all the notes in between, meant to complement the meaning of their dance.  The only people who could understand their literature were musicians, and even they had trouble translating without the help of a choreographer.  The musicians who tried to "play" their literature were utterly baffled by how a people that couldn't even hear produced the most beautiful music in the world.

    Until one day an able-eared outsider made love to one of their women, and the woman had a baby.  Though the man left without knowing he'd become a father, the woman liked to think he would have stayed had he known.  The child grew up hearing everything, learning their invisible language with a natural perception unbefitting to outsiders.  As such, he grew to interpret the "words" choreographed in perfect harmony like no one else; when everyone around him could only imagine their spiritual significance, he heard it in full force.  The child never spoke, since there was nobody to talk with, but he did learn to make the sounds of his language with a fife that a traveler had given him.

    One day a learned woman heard him playing it, on a hill outside the village.  The sound reached far and wide, encompassing the land, diluting it with an eternal presence that exists just beyond the veil.  He was dancing like the notes possessed him, hallucinogenic magic exuded from a junior wizard, while the land painted scenes that matched his melodies.  The awestruck woman revered the specimen, surely a demigod of some sort, nothing short of a miracle, until she learned of the villagers, their communication system, and put it all together.  She fell in love that day, convincing him to travel back to the city with her, where he could showcase his talents.

    When he got there he found many pushy people trying to take advantage of him.  They all wanted to hear his astounding music, so he was pursued relentlessly for the profits he might bring.  Yet he never signed a contract, never played in front of a large audience.  The woman tried to teach him her language, but he could not quite grasp the art of talking, just as the musicians had failed to grasp his.  He left her for the mountains beyond the city, wanting to return home but going in the wrong direction.  Which was all the same, since he found much pleasure being a recluse at the roof of the world, where he came to appreciate wind as the only music to be imitated, as it was the most delicate sound on earth, those stray wispy arias frisking the trees reminding him of catatonic youth, a sound he would probably meditate on again as he neared death when he became old.  That music is the language of ghosts, traveling far and wide over the earth, a most familiar sound often ignored as background fodder.

    And that's how he spent many days, lying on a mountain with that primordial sound, until a hiker came upon him and asked the best way to get back down.  The hiker looked strangely familiar, like he'd always known him, perhaps from a previous life or the one that was coming.  Receiving no response, the hiker asked who his father was, since he looked so familiar, but all that came out were the guttural sounds of a barbarian.  Halfway back down the mountain, it dawned on the hiker just who he might have been.  And that's when he heard the music, nostalgic sounds from a different life, a life when he'd traveled to the village of deafness, sheets of symphonic jottings tearing through his mind, a rosy smile from the woman he'd laid with.  It was the same music that had seduced him into laying with her.  My son, he whispered, my beautiful son.

    He went back up the mountain to be with his son, if not forever then at least for a day.  Settling into the soil, he buried him with his eyes, eyes that seemed to know who he was.  And his son started writing in a notebook he kept, an exquisite cursive delicacy he found utterly alien.  The son was composing a story, in his language, of how he'd come so far and how it might end.  But the father could not understand it, not explicitly, though he at least divined it with his eyes, a strong intuition that only fathers know.  That's when he decided to lead his son back to his people, to find his mother and spend the rest of his days with the family he never knew he had.

    When they arrived, they found the woman who'd taken him to the city studying his people and their language.  She'd become the first person to successfully translate their sheet music into words.  As she read the son's story, it moved her to tears, for the resilience he'd shown being alone and the mistake she'd made.  She translated the story to his father and together they formed a plan.  They would stay in the village with his son, only leaving to bring their stories to the rest of the world, along with the music and dance they transcribed, so that the art-form of the village became an entirely new one for the rest of the world to indulge.  Its mind-enhancing abilities were so revolutionary that people started finding less interest in capital gains and more interest in the seeds of culture: serenity, enchantment, and understanding.

Averroes and the Fractured Soul

     Averroes seems to be misunderstood by many philosophers.  His idea of a universal intellect that pervades human thought reminds me of the mental plane in Eastern and occult beliefs.  It is but one of many planes of existence that the spirit may access on its journey through the afterlife.  Averroes didn't believe in an afterlife without the body; he believed only in an impersonal immortality, wherein the collective thoughts of humanity are passed down to new bodies, suggestive of the collective unconscious or Jungian archetypes that wire us as we are born.

    I am more in tune with the traditional projection through the afterlife; that it starts on the astral plane, where our emotional memories can always be accessed, making a part of our souls personally immortal.  Another part, the intellect, transcends the astral and imprints itself on the collective unconscious, as Averroes describes.  He may be correct that this part of the soul is not personally immortal, rather impersonally immortal.  My thoughts are not my mine, he would say, but they derived from a universal intellect, and are passed on to others through the medium of thought in the after-world. 

    For this to work, it's as if to say a new body is composed of a personal astral soul and a disconnected mental soul.  Such complexity may not seem elegant, though it could explain why some people feel their heart is always at odds with their mind.  I'm leaning on the fence with this.  Often I have felt like my heart and mind were two different "people" jostling for position; the heart being young and irrational, the mind being old and rational.  I have found it difficult to reconcile the two, not necessarily because I feel they are two souls inhabiting one body, but because their chakra development may be out of sync.

Russia's Geopolitical Strategy: Cold War in the Arctic

    There is at least one country that probably doesn't mind the acceleration of global warming: that is Russia.  In fact, they might be actively trying to speed it up.  As one of the world's top oil producers, drilling in the Arctic not only extracts more oil for CO2 emitting vehicles, but exacerbates methane emissions, where it is notoriously abundant.  Russian drilling in the Arctic seems to be the greatest single threat of any country to solving the warming crisis.

    You might think they they are only doing it for money, and you may be right.  Many countries have exploited regions only to improve their economy.  But as geopolitical strategy, warming the Arctic poses a highly convenient opportunity for Russia.  They have already claimed much of it via exploration and deep-sea submersion, but for what reason?

    The Russians correctly predicted the warming of the Arctic would open pathways of transportation that would benefit the country who "ruled" it.  It's already happening, as major cargo ships have been traveling through since 2014*.  The Arctic gives Russia a new front from which to expand and find economic advantages.  Full control of the Arctic also gives them more leverage when dealing with Europe and North America in war or policy issues.

 

     

 Source: American Geophysical Union

 

    From this perspective, the war in Ukraine makes more sense.  They needed better access to the Mediterranean due to the limitations of their geography.  There is not a major sea route from which they can deploy a navy, much less control shipping lanes like any powerful economy needs.  The invasion of Ukraine was a geopolitical maneuver that was meant to give them breathing room in the south, which would complement their expansion in the north by being able to "wrap around" Europe.  If Russia controlled half of Europe's perimeter- terrestrially and aquatically- NATO would be significantly weaker.

    Such a realist approach to international affairs is nauseating in our time.  By international law, nobody can claim underwater territory outside 300km from their shore, but the Russians want to do it anyway.  The justification is that as more ice melts, there will be more access to land, underwater or not.  It is yet another facet of this eternal "cold" war with NATO, this time in the most geographically appropriate place.

*Marshall Tim. 2016. Prisoners of Geography : Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World. First Scribner paperback ed. New York NY: Scribner.

Proof of the Soul

    Avicenna's proof of the soul is fairly strong.  Imagine you are suspended in a vacuum, flying in midair.  You can't sense or perceive anything, only your own consciousness.  (For a more harrowing example, think of Johnny Got His Gun).  Avicenna says that despite the absence of any sensation in such a situation, being remains, bearing proof of the soul.

    To me the stronger proof is found in altered states like comas and dreams.  We all perceive things in dreams that don't come from our physical senses, unless a loud noise is heard or someone moves us while we're sleeping.  When dreaming, we are simply being.  Thus dreams are the window to the soul and not the eyes.

    Let's not overlook the most important altered state of all: the mystical trance.  This is when many people in close contact with God feel the rhythm of everything around them- not necessarily physical sensations, but spiritual ones.  For there is an inner music that binds us all, an entanglement of strings that only the trance can open.

Symptoms of Bureaucracy

    One of the reasons bureaucracy keeps snowballing through modern history is the amount of new laws required to regulate technology.  Think of the automobile and all the new laws that were needed to make sure people were safe from this threatening innovation.  That is why law and capitalism seemingly have a love affair: that as technology and law increase proportionality, so do the profits for investors.  Expansion gets easier, trade gets faster, people find themselves more at risk, needing to trust the engineers that design our great machines.  Law is what holds it all together, the cement binding innovation to prosperity.

    Another symptom is that as bureaucracy expands, the newest generation is less likely to listen to or follow the old one.  Technology has a way of separating us from tradition, as do the laws it serves.  Gradually, the older generation gets more oblivious to these advancements, and less likely to pass down beloved traditions, so that what we have are 15-20 year marketing cycles, appealing to each new generation, flowing through a barrage of innovations that only the upper class in the older generation profits from.

Geographical Barriers in Africa

    A key question for the human geographer is: why has Africa always been underdeveloped compared with other civilizations, notably the West, Middle East, India, China, and even Egypt?  Africa was never able to consolidate into a civilization despite there being ample populations and sporadic cities.  It never even formed a collection of successful city-states, even after it was colonized by Europeans.  The answer is geography; Africa was destined to be poor because of all the disadvantages the continent possesses.  This is not a theory of race as much as it is a fact of our physical world.

    First, the Sahara Desert poses a huge obstacle when it comes to trade and the distribution of ideas.  All of Sub-Saharan Africa was isolated from the rest of the world due to this largely impassable barrier.  Any civilization would not have been able to interact with others beyond this vast sea of sand.  It is like an ocean of certain death, made worse by a lack of water and merciless sun.

    Second, Africa has very few natural harbors.  The colonizers could not protect themselves because the continent offered few naturally defensive positions.  If there were harbors, like those in Europe or North America, it would have been easier for their people to defend against the encroaching Europeans.  Add this to a rigid system of rivers, none of which are safely navigable due to high elevations, and you have a recipe for scattered tribalism that could not overcome aquatic barriers in addition to the northern desert.

    Third, most of the worst diseases come from Africa.  The mosquito population is the highest in the world, making the threat of malaria unattractive to travelers and investors.  Other diseases include AIDS and Ebola.  Africa was likely spared from big game extinction because disease kept human populations low enough to limit agricultural development- also a symptom of rough rivers.  In other parts of the world, where agriculture flourished, big game extinction was prolific due to the sustainability needed for larger populations.

    Finally, ocean currents do not favor safe and easy maritime travel to Africa.  It is wedged between three oceans, all having currents that do not originate in a heavily populated area that is beyond the continent.  The Agulhas current, which arises from the Indian Ocean to South Africa's east coast, is too far removed from major civilizations to bring trade and investment to the area.  Only recently has China capitalized on these currents from advancements in maritime transportation.  Africa is now one of China's heaviest trade partners.

 

A physical map of Africa.  Notice the high elevations and lack of natural harbors in southern Africa.  Image courtesy of Burning Compass.

 

    What sets the rough environment of Africa apart from others is also what made us human.  We needed a tough environment to evolve our most distinct features, like bipedalism, large brains, and dexterous hands.  That is why it is strange to think of Africa as the least beneficial to modern human interactions.  Mother Africa may have been our biggest challenge, but once we "escaped", there seemed to be no stopping the advancement of civilization; only the dire wilderness of our origins could do that.

The Innocence of Children

     I reject St. Augustine's opinion that children are not born innocent, that they are born with "original sin" and are thus unable to control their desires.  What he has failed to consider is the evolutionary advantage of infants and children screaming and scratching for what they need and want.  Without such base communication tactics, the species would struggle to survive.  Extra attention is needed for them, so one would expect them to act out, particularly when they can't communicate on the same level we can.  Their brains also struggle to reason when they are young, through no fault of their own but the requirement of anatomy.  Therefore, by his own logic, they have not fully developed souls and cannot be expected to act with a purely moral intent.

    In fairness, he couldn't have known about evolution or anatomical development, as it was not generally taught in the 5th century, nor was the Christian faith particularly engaged with natural philosophy.  The cultural zeitgeist that brought in the Middle Ages rejected it for pure creationism, something that manipulated the innocence of youth into a mythological corruption, generated by the tasting of a forbidden fruit in a utopian garden: the Biblical story of creation in the Garden of Eden, when Eve tasted the apple, inadvertently cursing all the children of mankind.  Because it is based on pure belief, this line of reasoning hardly makes sense philosophically.

Umwelt: What Animal Senses Reveal About Hidden Realities in Nature

    Humans are the only species with the ability to physically map environments using their hands.  Cartography is one out of many privileges that came from our dexterous ability to manipulate objects.  But are other animals capable of mapping environments, if not by recording them, then at least with their senses?  If so, which are the ones better at it than us?  We can use the concept of umwelt, or the world as it is experienced by another organism, to answer such questions.

    Obviously, many animals have the same senses we have, but some have such refined ones that it is difficult to comprehend.  Take sight for instance; the mantis shrimp can see in 12 dimensions of color, which humans aren't capable of imagining.  Others have far better hearing, like the elephant, which can hear the calls of others up to 6km away.  Catfish have taste buds all over their bodies; they are literally mapping the environment around them with the sense of taste.  Scorpions can detect the footfalls of their prey using ground sensors, while harbor seals can track fish using their whiskers- a result of tiny variations in aquatic pressure.  In quieter eras, whale calls could carry across an entire ocean, presumably allowing them to navigate long distances.  Birds and turtles can also navigate long distances by sensing the Earth's magnetic field.  Spiders take off by sensing electric forces in the air that they can attach with.  Dolphins can map the physical anatomy of most ocean creatures by using echolocation; they can literally see inside our bodies while mapping their surroundings using sound.  Others can detect infrared or ultraviolet light in their surroundings.  The treasure chest of natural cartography is large and seemingly magical.  Imagine a being imbued with all these remote sensing abilities; you would have an organic super-being with finer detection than our most advanced satellites.

    Otherwise, the range of animal sense abilities are scientifically staggering.  The killer fly's ultra fast vision allows it to capture quick flying insects in the span of a human blink.  It can literally slow down time, at least relative to us, allowing for a slow-motion view of the world, which might explain why their life spans are so "short".  Because they see the world in slow-motion, their perception of time is dilated, allowing them to live longer in the same amount time that we would perceive.

    The naked mole rat is insensitive to normal pain, like those involving acids or capsaicin.  Sea otters have the most dexterous hands of any species, including humans- fascinating when you consider how this ability co-evolved with our superior brains.  Many birds can detect details in songs that humans cannot perceive; it seems they hear the natural world as a symphonic mess in slow-motion.  The greater wax moth hears higher frequencies than any other animal.  The platypus' bill can sense both pressure and electric fields, which it might combine into a single sense best described as electro-touch.  Turtles can sense multiple magnetic dimensions, not just one.  An octopus's arms are partly independent; they can sense and explore the world without direction from a central brain.

 

    I discovered all these amazing abilities reading the unforgettable book An Immense World by Ed Wong.  It helped me imagine what it's like to view the world from a wider perspective.  Every animal in the book is a fascinating case study in alternate perceptions that would enhance our scientific abilities if we had them.  What I suspect is that some animals are better at detecting "hidden" realities behind the physical one we perceive, lending credence to possible religious or supernatural ideas that some humans might have more access to than others.  The more we realize how limited our perceptions are, the more we must remember to keep our minds open.  I can't recommend this book enough.

Lulu's Light

A poem dedicated to my second son, Lucas:

Porcelain dream baby the soft morning awakens,

Colors awash by sunglow off the minted pane,

Dazzling crystals of gentleness whitening his eyes,

Woven sheets of clean figurines unleashing joy.

Arise, merry youth, cooing to the ambient chorus,

Rift of the horizon's overture, a steady hymn,

Rays that penetrate his glossy eyes, barely used,

Augmented orbits of innocence in their reflection.

Grace he found in the reckoning of sunrise,

Lullaby fragments that patterned his solace,

A love returned, amplified by warmth of slumber-

Life begins where heaven meets the earth.

Time Analysis, The Great Chain of Being, Eternal Recurrence

     In the first millennium AD, the Neoplatonist view of The Great Chain of Being was an attractive way of merging natural science with religion.  Like evolutionary laws, there is a hierarchy of being in metaphysical realms, based on how developed souls are.  It remains to be seen if there are souls more advanced than the creatures of earth, but if we are to believe all the mystics through history, they certainly exist but only on "planes" that differ from physical reality.  I'm open to the idea of larger structures in the physical universe possessing "souls" that are more complicated than ours.  For example, if the earth and sun had souls, they would probably be higher on the hierarchy.  

    St. Augustine made an interesting point about the conception of time being an integral measure on the Great Chain of Being.  He believed these conceptions were directly related to the power of mind.  A rock, having no power of mind, has no conception of time or memory.  Plants and fungi may have faint conceptions of it, but that would be hard to measure.  Small animals have fleeting memories; therefore the past and future seem to mingle with the present for them.  Larger, more sophisticated animals perceive time in higher dimensions; the past becomes larger as memory improves; the future becomes more predictable as intuition evolves.  Humans, having the highest ability to reason, stretch the limits of time beyond what we are capable of perceiving directly.  Higher beings, which may involve angels and other specters, can presumably bend time to their consciousness, experiencing it at will and possibly simultaneously with other minds in other periods of time.  The grand unifier of the integral would be God itself, experiencing all time as a single perception.

    I have never thought of time in such a manner.  It's always been about the pagan-Buddhist form of eternal recurrence for me.  I am not ready to abandon my preference, but there is an elegance to the Great Chain's order that moves me to wonder.  For if reason is a function of time analysis, there is nothing more qualified to discover God.  It seems to me eternal recurrence and the Great Chain are not mutually exclusive, as beings could move up or down the hierarchy in cycles of rebirth.

The Great Chain of Being.  From the top: God > angels > royalty > commoners > animals > plants > nonliving things.  Didacus Valades, Rhetorica Christiana, 1579.  Image source: Wikipedia.

Spanish Flu and Covid-19: How the Invention of Wings Created a Pandemic World

            Global pandemics are a relatively new phenomenon in human history.  An origin for the common cold cannot easily be traced, however there is good reason to believe that global trade accelerated its prevalence and subsequent mutations.  Likewise, there is no recorded origin of influenza.  The first time it appears in historical literature is from Herodotus and Thucydides in ancient Greece, who each wrote what may have been the first descriptions of its symptoms.  From that point on, influenza outbreaks were regional epidemics up until the 20th century, when mobilization allowed it to spread and mutate continuously like the common cold. 

Few people know that prior to the 20th century, these were not seasonal cycles.  Global transportation was not as fluid since cars and airplanes had not been invented yet.  Viruses and plagues were confined to regions; even the Black Death did not escape Europe.  As the world globalized, so did the potential for lethal viruses and bacteria to spread. 

Covid-19 is the first pandemic with a known origin that does not seem to be going away.  It started severe, much like the Spanish flu from 1918, which saw similar mortality rates.  In the following years, as people built their immunity to Spanish flu in the 1920s, the virus took advantage of our newly globalized world, largely caused by the revolution in transportation.  It mutated with such a frequent subtlety that many thought it had ceased to exist, and most people today still believe it disappeared. 

But alarmingly, immunologists have discovered that it is probably still with us, in the form of mutations that have been occurring for decades.  “Analysis of newly discovered samples from the 1918 influenza pandemic found that every section of the virus' genome could have given rise to seasonal flu.” (Ashworth, 2022).  Thus, it has likely settled into our seasonal social pattern, catalyzed by modern human geographic systems, allowing it to mutate and avoid being permanently destroyed by vaccines.  The seasonal flu as we know it today could be the offspring of the worst influenza pandemic in history, which killed between 17-50 million people.   

We may be seeing a parallel event in modern times with the covid-19 pandemic.  It started strong and seems to be settling into a similar pattern that the Spanish flu adopted.  The good news is that if the pattern holds, our immunity to it will keep building, making it no more severe than the common flu.  The bad news is that it would mean it is here to stay, for as long as our world remains globalized.  And it will stay, even if we take further precautions to quarantine like China has done (which is alarming in itself).  The flu just survived two years of quarantine and social distancing; there is no reason for me to believe covid-19 wouldn’t do the same.

 

A graph illustrating similar global wave patterns between Spanish flu and covid-19.  Image courtesy of the CDC.

It appears the Spanish flu was so powerful that it found ways to survive by killing less people and decreasing its severity, lending it an important evolutionary advantage.  If the virus had kept being as severe as it was, it would not have been able to transmit as effectively.  A similar pattern is happening with covid-19, as the mortality rate has dropped substantially, and the new omicron variant isn't as lethal. These diseases only seem severe at first because it takes time to adapt to a host with maximum efficiency. Regardless, 50 thousand people still die from the flu every year, and we can probably expect a similar number with covid, mostly among the elderly.    

In the coming centuries, there may be more pandemics that survive initial turbulence the way Spanish flu and covid-19 did.  Diseases may compound until we are sick year-round, forcing us to mask up 24/7.  This does not indicate some revolutionary virus is going to wipe out mankind, as it (almost) did in the movie 12 Monkeys and in Stephen King’s The Stand.  It would be impractical for a virus to completely kill off its host the way it did in these stories.  The evolutionary advantage of a low mortality rate means that viruses are more likely to transmit their genes in order to survive. The most severe viruses, like E-coli and Marburg, seem to be hampered by their lethality, thankfully making them harder to globalize. 

It was the very evolution of wings that brought viruses like these with it.  Now that humans are flying, we should expect more of the same. The reason we get so many global viruses from birds and bats is that they are the only truly global class of species.  Each can transmit germs around the world in a short period of time, just like us. Wings, it seems, are the most prominent variable of global pandemics, regardless of the species.

Estimated statistics: 

	Spanish flu	Covid-19
Demographic	impacted all ages	impacted all ages
Mortality rate	2.5%	3.4%
Total deaths	17-50 million dead in one season	6.5 million in 3 years- likely "lower" from more  speedy information and quicker vaccines
Variants	pattern of decreasing severity	pattern of decreasing severity: alpha-delta-omicron-?

  

Source: 

Ashworth, James.  Natural History Museum. May 10, 2022.  Retrieved from https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2022/may/seasonal-flu-could-descend-from-deadly-1918-influenza-pandemic.html

  

The Nature of Truth

     St. Augustine made the grave assumption that humans are the highest beings in a hierarchy of species.  Given what I am reading about the extraordinary abilities of other animals in An Immense World, this is hard to accept.  Each is equally miraculous, having their own manifestation of truth.  As each has its own truth, based on a unique class of perceptions, the truth turns out to be relative.  There are mathematical and logical truths that transcend it, but these seldom exist in the real world; they are only abstractions in our minds.

    The modern findings presented in An Immense World would taint Augustine's proof of God: that since truth stands alone above us on the hierarchy, it must be synonymous with God, and if it is not, then God is above it.  My position is that truth is not static, that God is every variety of truth, even ones that contradict each other, for duality is what sets all things in motion, serving as scales on the fulcrum of all spectra.  There is truth in good and truth in evil, whatever those mean to the observer.  As man is not alone at the top of the living hierarchy, he cannot be the sole interpreter of it.

Beyond Capacity: Cities, the Dunbar Limit, and Social Media

     The city feels alienating to us because it exceeds the threshold of our Dunbar limit- 150 in everyone's social group.  Beyond that, humans feel more detached from communities, and probably more aggressive, less empathic as a result  That is why crime is more common in cities.  We pack millions of people into areas that should only have 10-20 villages at best, each having a population of around 150, as our evolution required.  All the stresses that accompany living in the city got compounded.  The noise we filter.  The strangers we walk by every day, desensitizing us.  The pollution we feel is required to adjust to the unmovable bastions of commerce.  As I write this, the worst wildfire smoke season on record just ended here in Seattle, where nobody will protest because it is the new normal.  And few would reject natural causes, as most of those fires were started by people (we get very few lightning strikes).  Summer droughts are getting longer here, lending evidence to human-caused climate change that some deniers are finally coming to terms with.  We are going to see climate suffering on a scale like never seen before, even factoring for population rates.
    What the city did to us, social media did to the internet.  We can't handle more than 150 followers and friends, yet millions are connected beyond their capacity.  It has resulted in chaotic social movements where facts are brushed aside for comfort.  We latch onto anything that makes us feel secure in our worldview because there is no community anymore, only a jumble of reactionary cattle triggered by algorithms that dismiss togetherness, assign blame, or present another social group as the enemy.  Metaphysically the internet is one community, yet we have pushed its boundaries by being able to engage with anyone in the world; in return, we push the boundaries of what made us feel most secure through our long history through evolution: the community, where everyone felt involved, a cog in the wheel, more in touch with the environment, senses open to what is actually happening around us.

Epicureans, Buddhists, and Maslow: The Fine Line Between Desire and Need

     To my knowledge, the Epicureans never interacted with the Buddhists.  If they had, the conversations might have been interesting.  The Epicureans believed that a good life is a pleasurable one and a bad one is full of pain.  This is not quite as material a philosophy as hedonism, for the Epicureans believed some desires are bad as well.  In fact, they posited a deductive hierarchy of desires that systematizes ones that are healthy and ones that are destructive.  Vain desires that include luxury pursuits, greed, or looking a certain way fell into the latter category, as do merely natural ones like lust, which must be taken in moderation.  Similarly, the necessary desires like food, drink, and even friendship must be taken in moderation or the path to gluttony will be realized as self-destructive.  Thus while the Buddhists believed all desire causes suffering, the Epicureans argued that only too much of it becomes destructive.  Certain desires are useful for a happy life, particularly the ones people need.  Psychologist Abraham Maslow theorized that people could not live a content life unless their basic needs were being met.  In this manner, there's a thin line between desire and need that the Buddhists were more keen on drawing.

Pleading Ignorance of the Law

     Ignorance of the law does not make one wicked.  Imagine traveling to another country or culture, where some of the regular customs in your own are outlawed.  Is it fair then to be punished for them?  Aristotle might argue that you should educate yourself on the law before traveling.  But sometimes that privilege is not acceptable.  Or it seems like such common sense to trust your morality that it isn't necessary.  Or people overestimate their moral intelligence, which is a bad excuse.  However we must remember that because law is relative to location, morality must be as well.  Thus wickedness cannot be determined by another country's judges or priests.
    I am aware this would go against the law in our own country (USA), where not knowing it is no excuse for criminal activity.  I disagreed when I first learned about this, and still do.  Though there are some things so universally wicked, like murder and theft, that at traveler would be foolish to think wasn't the law, there are misdemeanors they wouldn't intuitively know were illegal. For instance, imagine traveling to Singapore and getting arrested for selling gum.  Unless someone had informed you, you wouldn't have known it was illegal there.  You could have tried reading about Singaporean law before traveling, and you would have been wise to do so, but there is always a chance you wouldn't find a particular law, especially when it isn't so easily grouped like that one.

Aristotle's Ethics

    The most potent contribution of Aristotle's to philosophy, I believe, are his insights on ethics. The moderate response is necessary in any given situation, which is relative to the person and the place. Reason is the tool by which the right choices are made, which is often replaced by gut instinct or listening to one's heart. This is a mistake because the heart tends to only steer us in the direction of desire, upsetting the balance that moderation possesses. The two extremes at either end of the moral mean are the two vices that any situation has the potential to reveal. For instance, wrath and subservience are at the ends separating good temper, a state when anger is only expressed when it is justified and in the right moment. The vices are fueled by passionate desires to saturate anger and settle for peace, respectively. All vices are fueled by desires like these that become a virtue on the fulcrum. The wise person understands that the appropriate reaction is a balance between the vices, not necessarily the most noble or holy one. The situations and scales he uses are elaborated in "The Nicomachean Ethics".

Urban Apocrypha

We disemboweled the village,
Castrated the community,
Flocked to the cities
Once the rivers ran dry,
Tasting emptiness on a concrete meridian.
The village was our mother,
Protecting our children,
Justifying belongingness,
Enhancing our ethics,
An inheritance the city transformed
With desensitized codes of law,
Morphing empathy into morality,
Community into individuality.
The city is a mass of me's,
Competing for the eternal
In boxes of bits, cubes of cults,

Social groups that tie commercial knots,

Bleeding purpose, breeding inequality.

Primitive as we were,

We'd reached a fine balance

Between nature and our unnatural needs,

Lost to madness after insectivization,

The city compounding our broken dreams.

Men became the specialists

Who erected its systems,

Trade networks and minarets,

Phallic symbols of power

The village hunters inherited,

The killing of other men in place of beasts.

Womb of the earth severed,

We disconnected from the soil.

Built monuments to new sky gods,

Future towers reaching for their psalms,

Blessing of tyrants who imitated terror.

Urban revolution the garden surrendered,
All her plants theirs for the taking,

To exploit, capitalize, feed their children,

Safer now from the threats abroad,

Primed for learning, educated by bureaucrats,

Documentation segregating the ritual.

From the center imploded kingship,

A gravitational mandate

Forged from the elements of productivity

That shaped expediencies engineered,

Leadership inevitably necessary

From the colony's first pulse.

God and king became one,

The peasantry inverted skyward,

Raising temples to mimic serenity,

Only possible through the allowance of surplus,

Magnificent architecture fed by awe.

In turn, the god-thing-figment

Carried the burden of nature,

Sacrifice an original sin

To appease the affronted magicians,

Wielding divine tricks on the powerful,

Normalizing violence in regions sparse,

Whence came the rolling thunder of war.

New vices were cast,

Mistaken for the original, of the noble savage,

Whom we assumed more barbaric

To disconnect from an irony

Separating municipal freedom from restrictive castes,

Collective interest from communal bloodlust,

Mantras of invasion when monopolies crumble.

We burned our brothers,

The bridges that connected us,

Disdain of writers beseeched

In iconographies of cataclysm,

Flood, fire, destruction, drought,

The anxious masses turned to stone,

Rural redeemers taking their place.

The Hierarchy of Souls

    I accept Aristotle's hierarchy of souls, but not in the manner he intended. I have been reading in Ed Young's book An Immense World about all the astounding abilities of sensation animals have that humans don't. Such as the catfish being able to taste things over its whole body, or the mantis shrimp being able to detect 12 dimensions of color, or the fly perceiving things in slow motion. How can we even imagine the souls creatures like these possess? They are not mere beasts limited by sensations, but advanced perceivers of nature no less miraculous than our ability to reason. Therefore, I elevate the souls of species with advanced perception to our own level, each having their own dimension of active perception that exists separately from the body. Aristotle could not have known about these astounding abilities of animals, so it's no fault of his. Though I do wonder if he'd modify his beliefs if he could read a book like the one I am reading.

A Comparison of Poems and Paintings

     Leonardo da Vinci argued that painting was the most supreme of the arts, going after poetry in particular: "if you, o poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness, and less tedious to follow."  Points taken, brush-slinger.  There are advantages to painting that would seemingly make it superior.  But as we all know, taste is in the eye of the beholder.  There are things a poem can do that a painting cannot.  A poem can lead the reader's thoughts to places a painting cannot, which are sometimes places that cannot be physically represented.  Poetry is more flexible in that it can incorporate events, ideas, and relationships more fluidly, so that the reader can relate with it on a more personal level.  Rather than looking at a rigid scene, which can't be changed mentally or physically, the imagination creates a narrative in poetry, allowing it to freely create its own image(s) in the mind.  That is why a poem can evoke more complex emotions and stories than a painting can.  With a painting, you similarly have to put pieces together (if there is a narrative) in the image, so I don't really see it as simpler and less tedious to interpret.  Abstract expressionists and cubists were just as obtuse as the most difficult poets are.  Of course, these more modern painting styles did not exist in Da Vinci's time, but poetry had been around for centuries and had an incongruous evolution with painting.  He might see it differently in today's world.

    Another thing a painting can do is tell a more personal version of a story.  A painting's rigidity means it can only be seen from the artist's viewpoint.  With a poem, so many viewpoints are possible that it adds an extra dimension to interpretation; a completely mental one that only exists in the minds of each specific reader.  So when we see a painting and read a poem that both express the same story, the poem will allow the mind to conjure a more appropriate image that is relatable, while the painting is restricted to the context the artist has shown.  The advantage of the painting on this point is that it can open our minds to imagery we aren't familiar with.

The Meteors of Waste

In suspension, we are bombarded by time,

Elements that assembled over the eons,

Constructions that fragmented into objects

Through each cycle of the orbit,

Accumulating events that rained on our atmosphere,

Fused into a uniform body that disassembled history,

Churned the layers with a logician's wand.

They were reckless gods who divided the meteors,

Sent them crashing to earth in future artifacts,

Fossils of the past retracing their steps,

Centrifugal magic the moon serenaded in persuasion,

Caught in a web of particles that merged the present,

Human ruins that obfuscate the archive.

Plato's Immortality and the Missing Piece of the Soul

    Plato thought a body moving by its own will was evidence of its immortality. Because the soul moves the body, it is immortal and not the body itself. Only two things can move it; an outside force or an internal one. The internal soul is in perpetual motion, as its energy is neither created nor destroyed. It's a compelling argument that I never considered. Nothing moves the soul, not that we are aware of anyway. That is the only thing that could break the argument by its own logic. He also believed the soul had three parts: desire that motivates, spirit that competes, and intellect that reasons. He may have been the first personality theorist, for he believed everyone's souls are in balance among the three, creating individual personalities from different combinations. I find the idea lacking a critical symmetry. Based on the four elements, there would ideally be four essences of personality in classical terms. Desire is earth, spirit is fire, air is intellect, but what is water? Love; that is his missing piece of the soul. Which is ironic because he wrote about it so much. Love is what creates, in any context of the word. The soul creates relationships, works of art, modes of discovery, etc.; all based on its capacity to love.

Broome

Pearls unfurled on the western wash,
Wet tide flats draping the sunny sands,
Stromatolites multidimensional,
Shadowing the prints of dinosaurs
At the crown of Australia-
Great archivist of tectonic forces.
Camels stride the layered beach,
Waves unseen beyond the tropical shield,
Blazing sunsets that seer the margin,
Casting ambivalent light on the ocean’s reflection,
Drawing forth a stairway to the moon-
Familiar sense of oddness in a land full of it.
Out there in the deep,
Where a spirit fell trying to reach it,
The moon watches as it sinks through the bathysphere,
One aboriginal among millions before,
Sinking, sinking to the depths,
Relinquishing the cause, destined to return,
When suddenly, out of the startling darkness,
Appear millions of bioluminescent forms,
Imitating the stars that would have been seen
Had the ascension been complete.
Oceanic universe, hidden under a sea of pearls,
Forgive this trespass, for you are subconscious reality,
A theory of metaphor patient for release,
Integrating sea and air for the land to exist.

Proof Against Material Possessions

    Many believe that material possessions will make them whole, so they aspire to obtain more of them throughout their lives. The same people never feel complete because they always want more. Similarly, a glutton will hoard and constantly feed on things, aiming to fill a void in their souls, a void that can never be filled. What they don't realize is these are vain attempts to attain the limitless in a finite world. Every possession or binge is but a taste of the infinite, based on the illusion that it can be possessed. It cannot be bought or eaten for ones fulfillment; it can only be received. The greedy and the gluttonous are forever grasping for air when they don't even realize it isn't toxic. They don't realize that they want the infinite, just as anyone does, but that those who reject possessions find it in more constructive ways, like art or music or meditation. 
    The greatest problem with humans is that desires are tuned to illusion and not creation. Material attempts at reaching the infinite only prove how similar an activity it is to ascetics who have renounced worldly possessions. Those who seek the infinite inward instead of outward feel no need to gather wealth; all they need is already within their possession - the natural resources that bind the world together, not the manufactured fragments that tear it apart. Thus, it is proven by logic that material possessions are not the source of wisdom, only imaginary toys that infants play with on their journey to a higher self.

Reinventing the Holiday Calendar: A Season-Based Approach

    As the fall equinox approaches, I am reminded of the significance of the changing seasons and how they are celebrated. My wife loves decorating the house for them, so it seems a waste to be doing that when there isn't even a holiday. It begs the question, why aren't the major holidays celebrated on key seasonal days, such as the solstices, equinoxes, and the points between, as ancient Pagan cultures did in the past? 

    One reason is that religion has hijacked some (Christmas, Easter), while politics steals their thunder (4th of July), or card companies take advantage (Valentine's Day). Others are so misplaced on the calendar that you have to wonder how administrators got it so wrong (Thanksgiving). Halloween is really the only holiday that correctly synchronizes with the earth-sun relationship- Samhain is the ancient holiday it imitates, taking place every October 31. But even that holiday is glossed up inmodern extravaganzas. Let me be clear, I'm not against indulgences like Halloween, I just wish we were more consistent with them throughout the year. 

    In my approach, there are eight main holidays, each occurring on or around the key events in the earth-sun cycle. The following dates would logically be chosen for them: December 21, February 1, March 21, May 1, June 21, August 1, September 21, November 1. Notice the even distribution of holidays over the year, and how they're evenly spaced, allowing proper decorating regimens, similar to how businesses have optimal periods of keeping their seasonal shelves stocked. The names of each holiday are borrowed from ancient Pagan ones, mostly out of Ireland.

    December 21 would be Yule, the ancient tradition of the winter solstice, from which Christmas is based on. Instead of celebrating the birth of Jesus, we would celebrate the longest day of the year as the earth begins a new journey around the sun. We would have Yule trees and lights instead of Christmas ones. The mythologies of Santa, Rudolph, Frosty etc. would stand. It would be a quintessential celebration of winter, and the dawn of a new year all in one day, which might seem overwhelming. However, we must be honest with ourselves by asking why exactly the new year has to start 11 days after the solstice instead of directly on it. 

    February 1 would be Imbolc, the midway point between winter and spring, from which Groundhog Day is based on. Key rituals would be initiation and weather divination. Sporting events would be common, as this is the crux of the super bowl, NBA All-Star game, and the beginning of spring training in baseball. Award ceremonies would all be held on this holiday, such as the Oscars and Grammys, which typically occur around this time anyway. Since a lot of television would be involved, the event would probably last a week, or a few days, culminating in weather divination and Mardi Gras/Carnival parades on the last day. 

    March 21 would be equivalent to Easter, which is based on Ostara, the ancient tradition of the spring equinox. This is a time to celebrate the return of spring and the regeneration of the earth, not the resurrection of Jesus. The mythology of the Easter bunny would stand, as with all the festivities associated with it. Cultivating gardens and trees would be key rituals. There would be a sunrise mass at holy sites to symbolize the dawn of harvest season and the coming of pleasant weather, more light, and the blooming of flowers and plant regeneration, which is the true resurrection the Christians displaced.     May 1 would be Belatane, the midway point between the spring equinox and summer solstice. Taking place at the height of spring, it would be the equivalent of Valentine's Day. But to make this day particularly sacred, I would include the love of family and friends as well, adding Mother's Day and Father's Day to encompass the appreciation for everyone we love. As mid-spring is the peak of the growth season, it is only natural that a holiday of love should occur, and I have trouble reconciling February 14th with such an atmosphere. People also tend to be in optimal physical shape during this time, enhancing the celebration of attraction. I wouldn't have May Queens, as they did in ancient times, as that would inspire jealousy, but I would imagine it as the favored day for weddings out of the whole year. Attending a wedding might be the holiest ritual on this day. 

    Then we have Midsummer on June 21, a celebration of the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer. As the sun is at peak intensity, bonfires and fireworks would be common festivities. Traditional 4th of July festivities would also go here, like barbecues and parades. Camping would be a major recreational activity. A mass would involve a walk in the woods holding candles just after sunset. Light and heat are in such abundance that designing lanterns would be a personal activity to be displayed outside at sunset, similar to Easter eggs and pumpkin carving.

     August one would be Lugnasadh, the midpoint between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. Originally meant to celebrate the beginning of harvest, I would see this as more of a recreational holiday, where the outdoors are enjoyed to their fullest extent. Ballooning, boat festivals, and concerts would be an abundance. The sky would literally be full of balloons, and full of music- an incredible sight. The torch would be a key symbol, as the day would coincide with an annual Olympics, featuring the top competitors compete in each sport. While not the most holy of days, it certainly sounds the most glorious. Recent trophies for achievements would be on full display, those eternal emblems of merit. Above all, the spirit of music would prevail, as this seems to be the time of year when acoustics are optimal, mirrored by the sounds of summer crickets, owls, frogs, and most other animals. 

    September 21 is Mabon, a celebration of the fall equinox. This day is special because it marks the end of harvest. It never made sense to me why we celebrate Thanksgiving in late November; it is surely more appropriate for the first day of fall. Mabon would be the biggest feast day of the year, rich with fresh food and distant family gatherings. An activity for this holiday would be arts and crafts, as the equinox brings balance to all forms of expression, not only natural ones. The changing leaves amplify our yearning to create, putting on a canvas beautiful mixtures of color that are similar to a coniferous forest changing its leaves. 

    Finally, we come to Samhain, taking place on November 1, the holiday that completes our cycle of the earth-sun wheel. This would virtually be the same as Halloween, though I would add honoring the dead as a key element. Perhaps a visit to a graveyard to (re)decorate gravestones would be the holiest ritual, similar to how it's done on Mexico's Day of the Dead, or All Saints Day. It's an appropriate final holiday, as nature begins its long slumber over the winter, and those who have passed on are remembered. One could also reflect on the year itself, though this is typically done when the next one starts. 

    My holiday calendar is much more festive and balanced than our current one. It would bring far more revenue to people that rely on seasonal work throughout the year. Someone in the holiday industry could switch their focus every couple months, offering fresh and fun opportunities to reflect the state of the environment at any given time. My calendar is also makes more logical sense, relying on scientific events that complement spiritual ones in the cycle of life and death. In my world, we'd always be preparing for or celebrating the state of the environment, which ideally would turn more heads to its preservation.