I am only one...

Considering war

(I composed this essay as my contribution to a conversation initiated by a friend who is a combat vet talking about how he opposed the war, before during and after his service, but did his best while there to protect his comrades from harm.)

I believe that none of us have standing to pose in a safe place and criticize those who faced what we know only in theory. I think we cannot overdo thanks and honor to all those who served.

Also I believe we cannot overdo honor to those in a thousand places and thousands of years who did not go to war, but had war come to them. The mothers who used their bodies to try to shield their infants from the bombs; the children who scrabbled for food in the rubble; the doctors and nurses who worked to heal until they succumbed. Those who were brave and those who were overtaken by terror --- on any side of the lines (if there were lines) --- in VietNam, in Russia, in Germany, at Pearl Harbor, at Guernica, in Rwanda, in Cambodia, at Hiroshima, over and over again in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, France.

Those of us who have never seen our homes ripped apart by bombs, our neighbors slaughtered, our children and parents and lovers ripped apart by shrapnel --- we can easily forget the awfulness of war. We can fail to teach our children that war is unspeakably ugly. We can forget how lucky we have been so far.

War can look grand through the filter of distance and time. We can see the light in the eyes of the brave soldiers, and think that war is all about heroism, about passing a life test with high marks, proving oneself. War is especially seductive to our young men who yearn to do something brash and dangerous and glorious.

I have another good friend who served at the D-Day landing. He has kept contact with his fellow soldiers and has met with them regularly; they are his companions for life. His work after the war was in education, and he has spent much of his own time working for peace and helping develop programs to resolve conflicts. I once asked him if he thought any war was justified --- what about the war against Hitler? He said he thought there came a point in that conflict when war was inevitable, but it would have been possible to avoid getting to that point if enough people had determined that the costs of war are more horrible than the costs of a just peace.

Peace won't maintain itself. War provides tremendous profits in wealth and power to those who position themselves to profit; there will always be people willing to promote wars for that reason. Unless we speak out, are willing to be fools who throw ourselves against the machine, teach our children and grandchildren not to believe the speeches of the demagogues and the excitement of the trumpets and drums, war will happen again and again. We are fools if we think it will always happen somewhere else.

It will take the efforts of millions to stop wars, but it could be done. Wars are waged by humans; humans could stop them. How important is it to us? Picture yourself huddled in inadequate shelter under a bombing run, and then ask that question.

Look out!

In the spring of 1872 William Blackmore saw buffalo all along the Arkansas River. The following autumn the whole country was whitened, he wrote, by "bleached and bleaching bones." No buffalo were to be seen until deep within Indian Territory. The market hunter had arrived. This hunter was helped in his business by the coming of the railroads. They provided an easy means for getting buffalo hides and tongues to eager eastern markets. Most hunters were "hard cases" from the East and knew little about the plains or about caring for buffalo hides. Five buffalo died for every hide that reached market.

In 1873 merchants engaged in the business and organized the hide trade. A professional hunter, picked for his shooting ability and his knowledge of bison, now led the standard hide party. His accomplices were usually two skinners and a cook, and their goal was to find a herd and make a stand. A stand was achieved by getting within thirty or forty yards of a herd and shooting a buffalo in the heart. It fell in its tracks and died without disturbing the others. In this way the animals could be shot as they fed. One report tells of 112 buffalo killed within a two hundred-yard area in forty-five minutes by a single hunter. Another successful method was to pick off the bison at a river as they came in for water. Between 1872 and 1874 about 4.5 million buffalo were killed. Before the end of the 1870s the great herds vanished.

Their disappearance also marked the end for the gray wolf. The largest canine in North America, the wolf had depended on the herds for food. With the buffalo gone, the wolf turned to livestock, and massive predator-control programs hastened its disappearance from the plains. By the time of the 1889 Land Run into the Unassigned Lands of Oklahoma Territory, only fifty-seven years after Washington Irving pursued bear, turkey, buffalo, and wild horses near present Norman, all these animals were gone. They had given way to farms, ranches, railroads, industry, and the promise of tomorrow.

- Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History & Culture Oklahoma Historical Society

Imagine the buffalo, secure in their vast numbers, eating sweet prairie grass. There’s an unexpected noise, and a buffalo quietly sags to the ground. “Huh,” another says, “look at that. Tom died.” The other buffalo glance over, shrug their great buffalo shoulders, and go on eating. Another noise. Another quietly drops to the ground. “Wow,” says the observant one. “Now George died.” A few look; most just keep cropping the grass.*

And so it goes. As long as nobody gets excited, the herd can be wiped out. They could trample the hunter into the dirt if they rushed him. Their size and strength and speed are of no use to them, because they never fully realize they have a problem.

I’m suggesting that average Americans today are in something like the buffalo’s position. We have been losing to sharpshooters picking us off --- a bankruptcy here, a foreclosure there --- a little of this, a little of that. The taxes we pay which could provide good schools and hospitals, bridge or highway repairs, support medical research and development of clean alternative energy sources, and more --- instead go to bail out corporations which have gambled recklessly to increase their profits. Tax dollars go to war profiteers who have cut corners and exaggerated costs to enrich themselves while our young men and women face the terrible risks of battle.

The same corporations which are picking us off here are also making huge profits overseas. When they bribe foreign government officials to allow the corporations to walk off with that nation's resources instead of protecting them, the resentment toward Americans grows.

To protect the corporations’ investments against that resentment, our government has built huge military bases around the world (more profits for other corporations that built the bases). The people of those countries see their poverty increase, and their rulers, who have cooperated with the corporate piracy, propped up and armed against the people with American weapons. Little wonder that enmity to America has risen around the world. When enmity toward the US increasing, as individuals we are more and more at risk in the world, and we’re told we must give up freedoms for our own safety.

We are being picked off. We need to stop saying, “Huh, Fred died” --- “Huh, our neighbor’s house is being foreclosed” --- “Huh, another corporation has to be bailed out” --- “Huh, there just isn’t enough money for good health care” --- and start looking for the hunters.

First, the classic rule: Follow the money.

Second: Remember, war is hugely profitable for some.

That’s a good beginning. After that we have to pay attention, and stop assuming that we’re too busy and somebody else will take care of things.

One more thing: Honest vote-counts --- like the sweet prairie grass, something we thought we could always count on --- are not likely to happen without brave and determined activists getting on the matter NOW.

---

*the buffalo's speech "Huh, George died" is not original with me. I remember hearing it some 30 years ago, but can't remember whose it was and couldn't find it online.

Playing the Race Card

Race has been a huge and ugly issue in American life ever since the first European immigrants arrived. Although the immigrants accepted help from Indians, few if any regarded natives as equals and fellow human beings. The long process of taking land from the peoples who had lived on it for thousands of years was rationalized by assumptions that these were not civilized people because they did not have a European-style civilization. African slaves began arriving very soon, and "civilized" people justified their enslavement by clinging to beliefs about the inherent inferiority of dark-skinned people.

Almost everybody finds it comforting to have somebody to look down on, and darker skin has been an accepted stigma through much of the world for millenia. After using this standard for centuries, it's little wonder that a historically-very-new revolution in thinking remains fraught with uneasiness, especially when it's complicated by uncomfortable questions about whether, or how, those harmed by past and present bias should be "made whole."

Most of us with "white" skin wish that we could just pretend none of it ever happened. Seems like a simple solution --- we'll just evaluate everybody on the basis of their behavior and abilities today, and not get into awkwardness about what went before. Unfortunately that approach falls far short of fairness, because it doesn't consider the real situation. It ignores the fact that for a large proportion of African-Americans, slavery did not end with the Civil War; the sharecropper system perpetuated it beyond the 19th century. A huge proportion of Black farmers, however hard-working and competent, were little more able to control their own fortune as share-croppers than if they had still been considered property. Jim Crow laws extended severe restrictions past the mid-20th century, de facto segregation in bad housing and bad schools keep the negative effects operant right up to the current day. Only the most extraordinary individuals emerge from circumstances like that ready to compete with the more privileged; the average person will carry a heavy handicap for life.

This is the setting in which the phrase "playing the race card" has arisen. It's a phrase that offers some comfort to those who want to pretend discrimination never happened or is long gone. As commonly used, the phrase means it is inappropriate to notice race at all.

Perhaps we'll reach a time when that's valid. We simply aren't there yet.

In a culture that had moved beyond racial bias, there could be a real use for the phrase "playing the race card." It would apply to all the subtle invitations to bias --- the use of words and phrases that encourage resurrection of ugly old beliefs. When news stories about a candidate with African-American heritage use words like "pimp" in their headlines (as I saw yesterday about Obama) --- that is playing the race card, however the story below the headline tries to disguise it as hip phrasing. More subtle accusations that he is "presumptuous," "brash," "slick" also stimulate racist thinking.

In a bias-free culture, the phrase also could fit those occasions --- and they do sometimes arise --- when a person who lost a fair competition claims unjustifiably that he was the victim of racial bias, or when he implies that legitimate criticism or critique is motivated by bias.

Today, we see the phrase used far more often against those seriously trying to address and resolve racial issues, and seldom against those trying to exacerbate them. For that reason, I'm going to avoid using it --- and to examine my own attitudes with great care when I find myself tempted to use it.

For now, I think we should hold a rebuttable assumption that anyone using the phrase "playing the race card" is trying to evoke racial bias, or trying to discourage honest examination and resolution of America's terrible legacy.

Choosing themes

"History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past." - A.J.P.Taylor (Historian)

There are two story themes available now about major Democratic figures of the past two decades. Each has some supporting evidence.

The first story goes something like this (I tell it at some length because I believe it is valid):

Bill Clinton fit the Democratic ideals of opportunity for all: born into a poor and difficult family situation, he benefited from public education and rejected the bigotry common in the South.

As a young man, he opposed the VietNam War and supported the Civil Rights movement. He married Hillary Rodham, a bright and independent woman with middle class Chicago roots. They admired each other's intelligence and strength. Their interest in how government could serve the common good, and commitment to public service, were major elements in their mutual attraction.

For leadership roles in government, they had one serious lack. Even as campaigns became more and more expensive to run, they had no personal wealth and few connections to wealth. It gave them a perspective badly needed in the halls of power, but that didn't help in getting them there.

At the time women were still rarely seen in executive positions in government or business, so pragmatism dictated that Bill be the first of the pair to run for office, in his home state of Arkansas. Hillary worked in a law firm, helped campaign and tackled the funding process, looked for investment possibilities. She also worked on social causes close to her heart.

He won the governorship. One of the reasons Bill made friends in the Black community was that he didn't pretend racial issues didn't exist. He frankly acknowledged them (as the Black community always had to do) and worked for racial justice. He made enemies among the segregationists still very active in the state. He lost at the next election, then won again later.

Next he became a presidential contender. It was a hard campaign, and Bill was counted out more than once, but kept bouncing back and ultimately was elected. It was clear that Bill (and Hillary too) could be powerhouse candidates and campaigners for the Democrats for a long time to come. Justifiably alarmed, Republicans continued their fierce campaign against them right over into his term of office.

Right-wing funding was available to promote any kind of negative charge. Old enemies, and old charges from the Arkansas campaigns, were sold to the media. Journalists who promoted the stories were rewarded; those who didn't found career possibilities shrinking. Charges came thick and fast, and little attention was paid to the fact that charges had no substance, because new ones were raised as old ones were refuted.

Individuals working for the Clinton administration were also subject to attacks, both personal and legal, so the pain of unfounded charges was often compounded with the need to expend large sums for legal representation. Vincent Foster, unprepared for this level of assault, was driven to suicide --- and the scandalmongers responded with a new host of rumors blaming his death on the Clintons and himself. Whitewater was raised, refuted, and raised and refuted again and again, at great public cost; after years of exhaustive investigation and millions spent, the Clintons were exonerated.

Despite all this distraction, Bill had an effective presidency. A large part of his effectiveness was in his flexibility on language and tactics and his tenacity in shaking off defeats and pursuing causes, when progress on one issue was blocked, shifting to another, but repeatedly pressing on one or another priority. The national debt, which had been soaring like a rocket since Reagan took office in 1980, reduced its trajectory and soon began to decrease, reducing its effectiveness as a Republican argument against social spending. Despite all the Republican partisan opposition --- which extended even to shutting down government operations rather than compromise with Clinton, and mounting an impeachment on trivial personal grounds --- there were gains domestically and internationally and positive regard for the US increased in most places around the world.

After leaving the presidency, Bill continued efforts to improve world conditions, establishing a foundation to support education, poverty-reduction, and health around the world. Hillary successfully campaigned in New York and became a widely-respected senator. Both were generous in lending support to other Democratic candidates.

When Hillary ran in the presidential primaries in 2008, the Democrats had many highly credible candidates, all of them raising issues which had been badly served by the Bush II administration. It came down to a very close one-on-one contest between two strikingly attractive candidates with very widespread support. In addition to all their other qualities, each would represent a first in US history --- Hillary the first woman, Obama the first with African ancestry, to be a major party's presidential nominee. After a long and close contest, Obama had a decisive lead, and Hillary pledged her vigorous support to his campaign.

Both Bill and Hillary are eloquent and charismatic, able to speak to the aspirations and stir the energies of audiences across the cultural and demographic range of the country.

~~~~~~~~~~

That's the first story; here's the second:

Bill and Hillary Clinton emerged from the dirty setting of Arkansas as ruthless power-seekers, and he captured the US presidency by doubtful means. His presidency was full of scandals. Both Bill and Hillary were shameless liars willing to exploit any friend or supporter, loyal to no cause but their own advancement. He was impeached but managed to wriggle out of it.

In the 2008 primary, Hillary --- a mere wife without qualifications, running really to give her husband an illegal third term --- joine with Bill to fight a dirty battle against Obama, refusing to concede when it became clear that Obama would probably win. It was a nasty campaign which dirtied his image and provided much ammunition for the Republicans to use against him in the general campaign.

Bill and Hillary are damaged, destructive figures certainly not able to help Obama in his campaign. A good opinion of them is a sign of collusion, ignorance, naivety, or just plain bad judgement.

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Now, it's obvious why the Republicans would choose to trumpet the second story. But can anyone explain what fratricidal yearning for failure drives so many Democrats to prefer some version of that bitterly false narrative?

Another try - Think again? with paragraphs

It's remarkable to me how hard it's been for me to write this. I think my writer's block for the past month or more has much to do with ambivalence about putting these ideas out to you. I think you'll understand, maybe understand easily, but the felt social pressure not to say this surprises me --- and is part of my point.

First I'll say that I have no problem at all with Barack Obama as president. Assuming he winds up being the Dem nominee, I will certainly support and vote for him. I read his books before he was a candidate, was very impressed, urged friends to read them. He has powerful worthwhile ideas to express; he's eloquent in expressing them; he's wonderfully intelligent and charismatic. As representative for the country he'd have tremendous power for good, both in what he'd say and do, and in who he is. I have no problem or quarrel with those who decided he's their top choice. Easy to understand that.

What I do have a problem with is the number of progressives who see HRC not just as their lesser choice, but as a villain. I think that's a picture that's been painted over a long span of time, by a lavishly funded media campaign, sometimes blatant and sometimes subtle.

One of the reasons that bothers me so much is that --- if/when Hillary & Bill are out of the running --- the same thing will almost certainly be aimed at Obama. It's a tool that has been pretty effective [though note: HRC has still been winning lots of elections] and given the mess the Republican right has made, their best chance is to distract attention from themselves by creating controversy about their opponent. I'm afraid a great many of those who've bought the garbage about the Clintons will, over time, buy it about Obama.

And one of the reasons I think HRC's staying in the race for as long as possible has been a good thing: the right wing has had to scatter its shot, and if Obama becomes the Dem presidential candidate in June, there will be only a few months for the negatives to be broadly and intensely focussed, insinuated, and drilled in before the general election.

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The essence of the right's campaign against the Clintons has been volume: multiple charges in rapid succession or simultaneously. The fact that the charges turned out to be flimsy concoctions, in essence nothing (Whitewater, troopergate, filegate, travelgate, and on and on) was obscured by the fact that there was always more in the air. In a community of even tolerably fair-minded people, if you keep hearing bad things about someone over and over, it's safe to assume there's really something wrong with that person. "Where there's smoke there's fire" is the folk wisdom expression of that.

The right wing has used that general wisdom together with their wealth and their control of multiple media outlets to make sure there was always plenty of smoke around the Clintons from the time they first appeared on the national political scene. It was just one part of a long-term well-orchestrated effort by the far right to gain permanent political control in this country, an effort that goes back at least to the 1970s. It didn't matter if there was not even a kernel of truth in the charges they portrayed because the point wasn't proving real offenses; the point was to have continuous smoke.

Conservatives saw it (or at least sold it) as a defensive effort, in response to the progressive trend of the previous century and especially the previous few decades. The folksy charm of Ronald Reagan was very useful in moving public opinion; his presidency started with claims of social concern ("Hands Across America" to help the homeless) and went on to help the wealthy with trickle-down economics plugged near the top. Others re-wrote history of the real social concerns of the '60s and '70s with the universal label "The Me Generation."

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It was a program that worked. By the end of the '80s we were living in a far more conservative and more harshly capitalistic culture. Reagan's faux social concern was echoed by subsequent Republican administrations: Bush I started with "A Thousand Points of Light" and Bush II with "compassionate conservatism" but the wellbeing of the disadvantaged wasn't a priority beyond rhetoric. When the Clintons appeared in the early'90s, they posed a real threat to the conservative tide which by then had risen considerably, especially in its synergy with the religious right. The Clintons were able to connect with many of the people who'd switched from Democrat to Republican --- in the south and the Rust Belt especially. Hillary's background was middle class, Bill's genuinely working class, and they were able to empathise and speak to working and middle-class people in ways neither the phony populism of wealthy Republicans nor the intellectualism of many establishment Democrats could match.

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The Clintons embodied important progressive values --- education as a route to success; gender equality; embrace of diversity. They were both policy wonks, able to keep track of facts and program implications. It was probably apparent to Republican nightmares that if Bill were elected and had a successful presidency, there was a strong possibility that Hillary (just as well educated, just as politically adept) could step up for another 8 years of Democratic administration. When Bill spoke of "two for the price of one" it must have caused shudders.

So the Republicans launched the most intensive attack on a presidency that had been seen in many generations. Much of the effort was intellectually based in the neoconservative think tanks, but there were plenty of practical political fighters and mercenaries to carry it forward. Richard Mellon Scaife was one major source of the lavish funding, though not the only one. Bitter segregationists who had grudges about Bill Clinton's actions as governor of Arkansas were paid and provided platforms for attack. If they couldn't bring him down, at least they could keep him so preoccupied defending against one charge after another that his effectiveness would be undermined.

Read David Brock's "Blinded by the Right," for an account by someone who worked for the right and later thought better of it. Read Sidney Blumenthal's "The Clinton Wars" for the tangled interconnections of the various attacks.

The Democrats in Congress did not initially provide much support to "their" president. There were the perennial power issues between branches of government; there was resentment that the Clintons were outsiders, not Washington regulars; there were representatives bound to the views of their constituencies and doubtful that Clinton could protect their re-election. I hold an unproven theory that there were and are "moles" whose loyalties were not to the party they ostensibly belong to.

Bill Clinton tried for major moves; when blocked, he maneuvered to find ways to make incremental progress and made some, but was attacked by many in his own party who saw gradualism as a beytrayal of principle, and were appalled when he used conservative language to sell progressive ideas. (I tell it as I saw and remember it)

In the end, of course, he was nearly brought down by a stupid and tawdry recreational sexual liason. But even then, with every twisting of legal and political powers to bring him down, he survived. And despite all the character assassination that has been directed at Hillary since 1992, she too has survived and continues to present her policy ideas (very similar to Obama's) to voters and to win elections. The Republicans were right to fear them.

During this Democratic primary, every candidate has at times been bashed over irrelevancies (Edwards' $400 haircut, Obama's pastor), misinterpreted statements (Michelle Obama's comment that there have been times when she wasn't proud of America), statements taken out of context, and so forth. For Obama, this was balanced with positive coverage --- rarely much substance about policy positions, but at least some record of good moments and effective speeches. For HRC, though, there's been a very heavy weighting toward the negative. Headlines were even more likely to be negative than the stories beneath the headline; a close reading of the story sometimes eventually yielded the details which disproved the simplistic headline, but later reporting usually took the headline as the complete history.

If there was an exchange of criticism between Obama and HRC, headlines usually reported "Hillary attacks Obama" or "Obama defends against Clinton attack" regardless of whose statement came first. [I could say a lot more about this, because it struck me enough that I spent time following up on stories to get the full account when it wasn't easily apparent in press accounts. Just one example: it's taken as sad truth by now that Bill Clinton "played the race card" by mentioning Jesse Jackson in South Carolina, but reading the whole exchange just doesn't support that charge.]

All in all, I think there are very similar strengths and very similar policies between Obama and HRC. Each is eloquent (I suspect those who say she isn't, just haven't watched any significant portion of one of her speeches). Both are highly ambitious and competitive (you just don't get that close to the presidency without those qualities) but clearly both have other motivations, not just power-hunger. All of those qualities --- ambition, competitiveness, power-seeking --- are generally seen much more negatively in a woman than in a man, and that's made the tightrope HRC has had to walk: too soft and she's just not presidential material; too firm and she's power-mad and cold; with no space between too soft and too firm.

Most of the explanations I've heard from those who say they wouldn't vote for HRC seem to boil down to a visceral discomfort or dislike. I believe that's due to the way she has been reported (or mis-reported) over and over for years. I have carefully considered the other possibility, that I'm misled; I've looked at her writings and watched her speeches and read what people who know her say about her strengths and weaknesses. I keep coming back to the conclusion that the aversion is mostly based on cultural discomfort with a woman who actively seeks a powerful job, amplified and encouraged by politically-inspired negative reporting.

About Hillary's refusal to "step down for the good of the party" --- besides the point above about diffusing the Republicans' attacks --- I'd make two other points.

First, this really has not been a vicious campaign, though the media have played up every negative statement or implication; for the most part the candidates have been trying to talk about policies and ideals --- so the charge that the extended primary battle is doing great harm to the eventual winner really doesn't hold water.

Second, although Obama has clearly held the lead for awhile now, this is no runaway contest. HRC has continued to win elections, some of them by wide margins. I can't remember another primary contest when a candidate withdrew while still holding a very significant share of victories.

So here's what I'd still like to see: Clinton for president, Obama for veep for 8 years; then Obama as president for another 8. (Why not the other way around? could be done, but in 8 years she'll be 68, and he'll only be 55. In American president terms, he's still a young man then; his age would not be an issue. Hers probably would be, especially because Americans still think women more depleted by age than men (despite women's longer life expectancy).

Do I expect Clinton/Obama to happen? seems quite unlikely now. But I wanted to say it for the sake of the possibility --- and the possibility of HRC as vice-president --- and of the next strong woman candidate for the presidency --- and to avoid feeling like a complete coward. And also in hope of raising some awareness about the destructive effects of blitzkrieg negative reporting, because I don't think it's going away until we get smart enough to make sure it stops working.

What is Mind?

Statement of the question:  How are we to make sense of "mind" --- that is to say, awareness, intelligence.  Is mind separate from body?  Is it evolved from some non-aware state, and if so, how did it ever get started?   

Or if it is separate from body, where does it come from?  and --- the big question grappled with by most religions and innumerable  folk tales and supernatural stories --- what happens to it when the body dies?

Logic, and the best working hypotheses I'd been able to develop about other aspects of life and being, told me that mind, awareness, is probably a physical quality rather than something else entirely.   And yet mind feels --- I feel --- quite different.  I can look at my hand typing away on this keyboard, admire the flexible way it moves and the many tasks it can handle, with no problem believing that it's a thing which evolved gradually from simpler forms, requiring no special explanation.   My eye likewise --- I see no problem in its gradual development from slightly sensitized cells to greater and greater sophistication. 

But awareness --- this "place," this Self, from which I look out, observe, and think about all else --- can that be explained in physiological terms?  can it be said to reside in the body --- in the brain?  Intuitively, it seems separate even from the brain.  Is intuition reliable on this?

I have a sense that I'm not the only analytically-minded person who's left this question off to the side, answered tentatively, but with a question mark remaining.  The biggest challenge to an evolutionary explanation was the question of how it would get started, what would be the evolutionary advantage?  It's easy to explain the survival benefit of complex reasoning (though in the end some of our less felicitous human ideas may do us right out of existence), but the complex stuff wouldn't have sprung into existence in full-force.  What is the mind-equivalent of the pre-visual patch of cells that were faintly phototropic?

Well, now I think I've got it.  My new hypothesis is that self-awareness comes before thinking, with the corollary that thinking is an elaboration of awareness.

The only drawback (and it doesn't bother me at all, though it will irritate those who want a huge gap between Homo sapiens and the "lower" animals) is that it goes waaaay back.

Picture the primordial pond and the multicellular creatures eating one another, and being eaten.  In the harsh environment promoting mutations, and the rapid turnover of generations speeding promulgation of the advantageous oddities, the beginnings of sight and scent arrive not long after self-propulsion.

If every now and then one of those small conglomerations of cells has a mutation that lets it differentiate what is itself from what is not itself, think of the advantage!  It can hide itself from a predator; or it can hide and pounce on its unsuspecting prey.  Not hard to believe that it, and its progeny and its variations, would tend to thrive.

Take that and 600 million years of development, and it's not astounding to have a self-aware thinking animal that can consider everything from space travel to genetic engineering to theology.  It wasn't inevitable; if it hadn't happened to happen we wouldn't be here to think about how amazing it is.  But here we are.

Yep.  I relinquish the idea that my mind is some different thing, outside natural explanation.  It's a little disappointing, but not too much so.   (Paul said "All this, just because we could hide!")

Speaking of mortality

Aging, sickness, and the possibility of death are issues I've thought about more and more  --- not surprising, since I and many of my friends are now in our 60s or beyond, and death has become an immediate fact or a near possibility for lots of folks I know and love.  When we were all younger, thinking about death seemed morbid.  But at my stage of life, it no longer seems morbid in the sense of life-denying or obsessive.  In fact, once we come to terms with the fact that life isn't going to last forever, we're motivated to spend our hours doing what feels meaningful. 

Beyond that sort of "Seize the day" philosophy, I've looked for a way of understanding life and death.  What follows is based on thought and theory, but the ideas led me to imagery which makes the end of life a much less disturbing prospect.   (For me, this understanding built gradually.  For Paul, who's far more intuitive than I am, it came as a profound image in a dream, and the logic came afterward.  I'm grateful to him for the galaxy-forming image.)

The whole of our universe --- including each of us --- is made up of the same physical elements:  oxygen and hydrogen in great quantities, with a lot of other elements.   We are  not really altogether distinguishable from the rest of the universe chemically.   The living beings and objects and even the air around us is made up largely of the same elements we're made of.   When I think of it that way, it becomes a little hard to picture what separates me out from all the rest.  In a quite literal sense, I really am one with the universe.

Watch a stream flowing over pebbles.  Here and there the water is caught into a whorl that spins for awhile in a motion that seems separate from the rest of the stream.  One of these whorls may be momentary, or it may move along with the stream and last for quite some time.   But eventually it melts back into the stream as a whole.

Look at smoke rising from a fire and you'll see something very similar.  A "bit" of the smoke is caught into a swirl which may move and rise and spin for some time, and then it's absorbed back into the motion of the whole.   

Watch a waterfall that's big enough for the water droplets to disperse as they fall, and you'll see that same thing again.

All those things have become my images of life and death.   A life is the whorl in the waterstream or the rising smoke, the momentary pattern in the falling mist of the waterfall.  Dynamic, even beautiful, but certainly not something that will last forever.   Also:  not something that is ever really separate from the whole, and when it ceases it is not gone, it is simply reabsorbed to become part of the whole.

I'd read many years ago that the cells or elements of our bodies aren't the same ones all through our lives; the molecules come and go, exchanged with the atmosphere around us, and over a period of months, there's no individual cell left of the body we started with.

What this says to me is that in an even more specific sense, we are never separate from the universe we are a part of.   I am a part of the ocean, the trees, the wind --- and some part of me has been, and will be again, a part of everything I see around me. 

Death is a name for the time when the elements that are (temporarily) me are reabsorbed back into the universe and stop being replaced.   The particular elements that were part of me at any given moment, including the moment of death, have all been elsewhere, and elsewhere is where "I" will be --- dispersed, a part of the smoke, the tree, the waterfall, the atmosphere.

I find that image satisfying, comforting, exciting.

That doesn't mean I'm tired of my life.   In fact, acknowledging my temporary status makes me more ready to know a range of experiences, and to treasure perceptions of many kinds --- certainly more ready to see the wonder and rarity of momentary beauty, this warm sunshine on my knee right now, the whoosh of a gust of wind through the trees, the glitter of light on a strand of spiderweb moving in a lighter breeze.  In the wide span of the universe, what an absorbing coincidence each moment is!

There are a couple of important pieces to this issue which I haven't fully worked out.  One is philosophical, and has to do with consciousness, the mind:  what is it, and how does it relate to the body?   I've read some treatises but so far none I've come to own.

The other is pragmatic and cultural, and has to do with body image:   why do we (especially "Western" cultures) so despise a body which is aging, being drawn by gravity, getting ready to rejoin the universe --- and can we change our minds (whatever they are!) and stop seeing those body changes as bad.   That's another post.

Listen to Great-great-great-great-great Grandmother..

A story on SFGate this morning tells of a Paris typesetter, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, who invented a way to make a visible record of sounds in 1860 (17 years before Edison's first recording).  Scott apparently had no expectation that the sounds could ever be recreated from his picture; his writings indicate just an expectation that they could be read as a visible representation of sound. 

But now Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory physicists have converted that image back into the voice of the young woman who sang a few words of a song all that time ago.   It's believed to be the oldest recording of a human voice, and we can listen to it right now --- a slightly scratchy recording (well duh) but quite recognizable and individual.

http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/1860-Scott-Au-Clair-de-la-Lune.mp3

Listening to this is for me an exceptional experience of time travel, a sense of immediacy of contact with a person I might be passing as she absent-mindedly sang to herself while sorting clothes.   A fold in time.

Imagine a civilized conversation

As I've watched the Democratic candidates this season, the campaign and the debates, I've often felt frustrated. We have been lucky enough to have many good choices of candidates, people who know much, have thought much, and who have ideas and inspiration for solving problems.  Yet these intelligent and knowledgeable leaders are asked by the system to skip from one subject to another with little logic, to score points on each other as if they're in a high school debate contest --- to play "Gotcha" over trivialities.

It's not the best way for us to learn from them about the complexities and difficult choices of the world situation we face.   It's not the best way for us to get a sense of who the candidates are and how they might face the task of being president and negotiating with other leaders.   And it's alienating to see them dredge up points against each other, often weak points spun into weak weapons.

Picture this:  what if we got together and forcefully told our party and our candidates that we don't want them to fight each other in the primaries --- we don't want debates with gotcha points scored --- instead we would like to watch an active and civilized discussion among all our candidates, with enough time on each topic to give some real weight to the complicated issues.

It would be a chance to really watch what they know, and to learn from them.  It would be a chance to see how they thought about the issues; how they listened to information presented; how they dealt with disagreement.   I  think a half-hour to an hour in that kind of format would be of far more use in learning --- not only which candidate we want to support --- but what questions we want to ask them, and what positions we want to encourage them to to take.

Maybe they'd be tempted to play it safe, stick to their talking points, not engage in real conversation.  But if one candidate made it real and the others posed, there could be a payoff for the one who spoke from the mind and heart.

A radical thought, perhaps.   I like it.

Many issues to choose from

In tackling the problems facing our world right now, there's plenty of work to go around, and the efforts are not harmed by some specialization.  If I am talking about gender issues and you are focussed on racial bias --- or if I am talking about education and you are talking about environment --- we are not enemies.  There are enough of us to work on many fronts at once; there are enough fronts to keep all of us busy.  We can cooperate; we can each work on the issue that most stirs our energy at the moment; we can still understand that we are allies in making things better.

If we begin to fight each other over which is the single most important problem, we are wasting energy that could be used to address various problems.  We are also helping those who don't want to acknowledge the problems and don't want to see them solved.

Two very common arguments that serve the purpose of not solving problems are these:

(1)  If the person trying to address the issue is a member of the community (or nation) where the problem exists, the line is "How can you be so disloyal as to attack and criticize your own people."  If the person trying to help is not from the same community/nation, the line is "You are an outsider, you don't belong here, what business is it of yours, why don't you go work on what's wrong in your own home."

(2)  Regardless of whether the problem-solvers are local or not, the line is "How can you even talk about [this problem] when you haven't said anything about [some other problem]." 

Variations of these two arguments show up repeatedly.  They are virtually always distractions from the attempt to solve the problem, though often those who use them aren't consciously aware of that intention.   A good answer may be to describe the solution we're trying to achieve and ask, "Can you agree that it would be better if we achieved this change?  if it would be better, why fight over who helps to make it better?  why say that some other unrelated problem has to be solved before we can work on this one?"