Requiem for a Blog

This is the final entry for this Google Blog

I wrote this actively from 2013 to 2020 when newly retired. 

The world was as fresh and young as it had seemed when I was a child. 

Hopefully, the entries still reflect that enchantment.  You may wish to browse them some stormy afternoon.

My current blog Weekly Observations is more socially oriented. I like to think of it as a series of short, wise, meditations and observations of daily life.  You may find it the pet peeves of a worrisome old man.

There you will usually find something new, updated about three times weekly. 

It still has pictures, taken by cellphone rather than dedicated camera, snapped

here and there on my nearly daily walks, almost all extremely local.

I have also begun an “Internet Autobiography" called Cabinet of Vanities

Please visit for a glimpse of some books and paintings I have done over the years. 

A Toddler Germ Story

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Our grandson, like many toddlers who have spent most of their conscious lives in the pandemic, has recently developed an off and on desperate fear of germs.

I wanted to write a little booklet to explain my interpretation.

This ended up being an interesting project for me, even if he never pays any attention to it.

I learned how to use google docs, then google slides, then turn it all into a video and upload. I was amazed at the ease with which this could all be done.

So for what it's worth, you can use this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSkESGIA544

or type nicholasgerm into either google or youtube to see the results

Walden

 

This pandemic has allowed me to review my home library.  A few weeks ago, I rediscovered an old battered paperback copy of Walden.  This time, instead of speed reading out of sense of duty, I have been taking my time and listening to what he says.  Turns out to be somewhat different than the memories and mythology I had about a young man who rejected everything to live humbly in the woods.

Thoreau was, of course, well educated, and the events related took place in a sedate and settled community, not in raw wilderness.  Finally, I realize he did not so much reject the consensus of his civilization as stand a bit outside of it _ for a while_ to see how it related to what he wanted to do with his life.  All of us have been there, but many of us fail to act on our meditations.  He did so, but only for a while, and only moderately, and with an eye to writing about it. 

What I had missed in an earlier rushed read, was that he was not really advising anybody to do anything different.  Walden is not a polemic against civilization.  Thoreau appreciates a lot of modern comforts.  He is not against using iron nails, precut boards, shirts, or even occasional meals from friends. He simply wonders how much he really needs to be happy, and what he should be willing to pay for it in hours of his short time on the planet.  But he constantly reminds himself, and us, that he hardly believes that his conclusions have much if any relevance to anyone else’s life.

That is a standard problem.  Almost all of us work out our own approach to life in a more or less satisfactory manner.  We think we have done about what we could have and should have.  As we grow older, most of us become more proud of our life accomplishments, and more content in the paths we have taken.  But then, rather than stop there, we try to tell others that such is what they should also do, or should have done,  or compare their (poor) choices and actions to our (correct) legacy.  Even if we end up bitterly hating our lives, we try to tell everyone else how to avoid our mistakes, or at least how to fight those who we think made our life a disaster. 

Thoreau brazenly states that he has never met a sixty year old who had anything of value to tell him at thirty.  More uncommonly, as he discovers his inner peace, he makes no pretense that his conclusions will apply to you or me.  He just lays them out and challenges us to challenge ourselves in a similar manner.  Compared to fanatic diatribes of current philosophers, that is a refreshing approach. 

Contemplation of the right way to live automatically drifts to definitions of utopia.  How do I live the best life for me, how does society provide the best life for everyone?  Thoreau is the proper starting point, not with solutions glibly offered but with profound questions.  More interestingly, in these times when everyone is admonished to “be all that you can be,”  he questions just how much “all” in socially defined terms is really important.

Death of Smallness

 

A pathetic new plea by Karl Rove reiterates the false mythology of Republicans as the party of small government.  This has been a mantra (when they were out of power) since Reagan’s famous line about “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” followed by “starving” Leviathan with tax cuts as fantasized by Gingrich.  But everywhere, in everything, all the time, bigness has won.

The only national players _ superpowers and others _ are the big countries with bigger militaries.  Amazon has destroyed the corner stores and regional malls, big fast food chains have driven out smaller competitors, big citizens make billions of dollars, superstars dominate entertainment, big media reigns, big pharma produces drugs, and each small success startup is quickly gobbled by some giant corporation.  Saving a local park or recycling household bottles means nothing in the face of global climate change and mass animal extinction.

Meanwhile in the US there are only two big political parties, each fighting the other as if in a war, with only a winner or loser for whatever “base” supports it.  The good of all is tangential to simply having power.  And that power _ bureaucracy _ must be big to keep the other big parts of society _ police, military, corporations, billionaires, states, media _ under control so that civilization does not rip itself apart.  The deep state is a necessary infrastructure for remaining socially cohesive.

I admire small things.  The local entrepreneur, contractor, restauranteur, professional are to be encouraged.  But each of them is supported by large networks, especially the huge protection of our immense court system.  They purchase what they need, generally, from appropriate goliaths _ contractors, for example, frequent big national home-goods centers.  But they exist largely on sufferance and are likely to be snuffed out by a change in taste, or a pandemic, or new legal consensus.

I admire representative democracy when it is organized as a republic whose purpose is formally to respect the rights of its inhabitants.  But I am not sure what these rights _ in a modern technological crowded and globally connected world _ should be.  I have lived through vestiges of “blue laws” and worry about the fanatic beliefs of evangelicals because the freedom of one may be the chains of another. 

So what should a conservative _ or for that matter libertarian _ mindset consider?  Simply how is all this bigness somehow subordinated to an individual’s rights.  I do not want to be told what to do by billionaires, deep state, or corporations _ yet I also know that if these and the huge military keeping us protected from other countries and each other would cease to exist, my life would be awful indeed.

We’ve gone about as far as we can with enlightenment philosophies _ generated before electricity and the global community.  We need some new ideas.  And if current conservatives or anyone else cannot provide them, they should step aside.  But I guarantee that whatever the solutions or outcomes, smallness will not play much of a part.  Current civilization and its needs have killed that forever.

Everything is big now.  A small government would be crushed by other governments and other forces, and would in fact be a pitiful and useless annoyance.

Surrender Complex

 

An atom is a weird assemblage of leptons and strangeness.  There are 100 trillion atoms in each of our cells.  Current Cosmology outlines the astonishing path required to create each of the 118 elements in the universe, and the distribution, accretion, explosion, and implosion to get them all here now.  Geology and Biology add more layers of ineffable wonder with tales of molecules, force, erosion, decay, and evolution.  Properly understood, a shell on a beach is an impossible object.

There are about the same number of cells in our body.  Some are symbiotes or parasites, most are parts of complex systems.  Each of these cells is undergoing incalculable chemical and electrical internal interactions at each moment.  A breath or heartbeat is incomprehensively complicated.  Digestion, disease control, all our basic functionality, let alone consciousness and memory, are infinitely convoluted and intertwined.  We happily assume that such “natural” conditions continue as we enjoy holistic health.

Understanding environment and social structure can be frustrating.  How is oxygen level maintained, where does water come from, why can humans build and maintain cities _all the “simple” questions of children _ are really only partially answered, no matter how much we think we know.  Yet at this level, at least, we have always claimed a certain amount of understanding and control.  Hunting, farming, tribalism are part of our nature.  We try to figure things out and then use tools as necessary to make them better or at least keep them from getting worse.

A primary mental tool is belief in cause and effect.  It did not require Newton to grasp that when an object hits another object, there are consequences.  Since we can manipulate the “cause” in many cases, it is natural to assume that something else controls what we cannot _ such as making lightning and thunder and rain.  This idea of agency requires a guiding principle or intelligence for everything we do not understand.   Usefully, it allows us to ignore deep and often irrelevant underlying issues so we can deal with how to move that rock from here to there.

People conflict when seeking to control that agent.  Praying to a spirit which brings rain is inconsequential to society unless a tribe decides such prayers require human sacrifice.  Which brings us to current civilization.  Science has discovered too much cold complexity; we dream of comforting simplicity.  Cults fill that need with slogans and beliefs _ for example, “my job and life are bad because of immigrants.”  Even if we can do nothing about it, it is a solid backstop in our confusing existence.

Little of that is new or necessarily bad, everybody needs illusions.  Unfortunately, we are also at a point where slogans have taken on the varnish of unquestionable writ, at which point those who oppose it are seen as blasphemers who must be silenced.  As frequently noted, this is the opposite attitude to that of science, which questions everything.  But surrender in the face of complexity is not only intoxicating, but also paradoxically allows us to sleep peacefully at night, happy in knowing the simple truth.

Rip Van Winkle

 When the coronavirus pandemic ends _ or at least becomes controlled _ most people seem to believe the world will return to “normal.”  But I think we will discover that very little will be the same.  Ancient customs we took for granted will be gone forever.  New outlooks and practices which would formerly have taken years to come to fruition will be in place.  We will be just like Rip Van Winkle, waking up after a two or three decade sleep into a society we hardly recognize.

A short essay can hardly enumerate even the broadest changes.  A quick survey would note that the nine-to-five job at an office is probably gone with the horse and buggy.  Travel will be vastly more complex.  Restaurants will never return as they once were.  Technologies which were only gleams in inventor’s eyes will be rampant.  And society itself _ its makeup of families and property and rules and ideals and goals _ will frighten any who cannot adopt.  Short term confusion clears with new paradigms invisibly but firmly in place.

Will it be better or a kinder and gentler world?  Probably not.  Changes are just changes, society may take routes none of us ever desired (like an acceptance of security over freedom.)  We may pine for the nostalgic golden age before the plague, but nothing will bring back that imagined sunny world.  Climate change will become increasingly vicious, forcing adaptations that would frighten our ancestors.  The struggle to determine what is truth or fact may play out in internal wars as vicious as those of the European Reformation.

There are good and bad options in all this.  Technology affords all kinds of possible wonders.  But, unlike the politicians, I am not going to say that those of us now living in American and Europe can much influence the path of history.  Environmental destruction is far advanced, industrial societies with different core ideologies challenge global supremacy,  the comforting predictions of the enlightenment that an educated free populace will be progressive and “better” are obviously wrong.  No matter whether we adhere to the idea of historic trend and imperative or to the hope that great leaders change the future, neither of us is one of those great leaders.

Rip Van Winkle eventually just decided to have a drink and watch the world go by.  No use starting over and becoming frustrated.  The new world will be for the young and the very young, and to them that environment will be the “normal” _ and they will laugh and cry at what we were and had and did with our lives and the lost fortunes of the Earth before.

Unwilling to Heal

 Lately, we are being told that America is divided and should try to heal.  “Reasonable” folks, especially conservatives and Republicans encourage me to do so.  I find it increasingly impossible.  More than that, I think it is an irresponsible course of action.

I believe in science, enlightenment values, tolerance, and American idealistic patriotism of the fifties.  I worked most of my life, am grateful for our country and culture, admire capitalism, and like to consider myself decently open-minded, well-educated, and aware of my own faults.  Furthermore, I think this is a wonderful peak of world civilization, even though it faces existential threats from climate change, automation, nuclear-armament, and civil strife.  I like to believe there are ways to continue the long climb to paradise.  

The “other side” frightens me.  It appears to be composed of self-victimized losers who apparently cannot find good jobs and blame everyone but themselves.  It is funded by nostalgic fat old people who think their thirtyish drugged children are just having fun down in the family basement where they live and constantly play violent video games while caressing firearms and dreaming of a cleansing apocalypse.  Why should I try to “heal” with such vicious racist louts who have enclosed themselves in a cult mentality that despises me and has no desire to change?

I curse the enablers who have tried to forge that mob into a power base, much as the French aristocracy and bourgeoisie did with the poorest peasantry (to their ultimate chagrin) before 1789.  Some “conservative” cable personalities are demagogic spokespersons who ignore truth and decency to improve ratings.  Some companies mindlessly fund wretched bigoted politicians simply out of habit against possible increased regulation.  Well-meaning intellectuals put up with it all because they consider it free speech. 

Unlike many of my peers, I am worried about the glorification of our military.  That has turned into a pretty good, pretty elitist job, with lots of benefits.  Not least of which is increasingly becoming part of the militarized police departments when soldiers leave the service.  I know we need the armed forces.  I continue to regard them as a necessary evil.  I have never disliked soldiers themselves, but like the founding fathers and Eisenhower, I mistrust the institution.

What can I do?  Life is complicated, but lately lazy people want it simple.  Slogans like “stop the steal,” “black lives matter,” or “lebensraum” are far more effective than well-thought-out four-hundred-page philosophic tomes.  I am afraid the answer is I cannot do much.  But of all my limited available actions, refusing to “heal” with the other side probably remains the most viable.