September 29, 2022
Hurricane Ian has made landfall causing serious flooding and destruction of property and catastrophes for people. Sometimes stalling in movement in Florida it has dumped up to two feet of rainwater in some places. Infrastructure and homes and businesses are in ruin while electric power is gone with obliteration of large swathes of the power grid system. There's a war in Ukraine with Russian forces trying to regroup being pushed back aggressively and effectively by the Ukrainian forces. Smoke, bombing, devastation, war atrocities, and economic turmoil is gripping the world with food shortage disruptions, fertilizer shortages, population displacements and refugee trauma describe some of the issues with this war. Recently Putin has called up troop reserve replacement for all the Russian troops killed and injured. This has resulted in many Russian citizens fleeing to neighboring countries if they can to avoid enlistment. Putin keeps threatening using tactical nuclear weapons to win so he can maintain his grip on Russia. Various governments are succumbing to oligarch and dictator type governments with limitation of civil rights and freedom of expression. El Salvador has been incarcerating many on suspicion of drug and gang involvement (like the Philippines recently) while their president wants to become president probably for life. Iran oppression has their morality police abusing and probably killing women for not wearing their clothing properly while they seem to foment chaos in parts of the Middle East and threaten to nuclear obliterate Israel. China recently has a show of its naval power around Taiwan and Biden on 60 Minutes TV show said that he would authorize US troop involvement to defend Taiwan. Scientists have been studying the changes in artic and antartic weather with the melting of so much ice sea levels may rise so coastal area could be lost within a few decades.
This brief survey is cursory and incomplete. To go on in detail would further highlight the problem of humanities negative impacts on our lives and the environment. I've been finishing The WEIRDEST PEOPLE OF THE WORLD by Joseph Henrich. He has an interesting graph showing from the years 1000 to 1800 AD the distribution of battles and sieges in Europe. Most parts of Europe were in conflict with war throughout this time yet Europe made such progress in benefits of civilization with urbanization, commerce, and education of the masses. Henrich suggests with some examples of evidence leads that war had a direct correlation with this progress! His thesis tells the story of our history as a lessening of our kin based clannish nature to be loyal to our family, clan and group sticking together and keeping outsiders at a distance except for commerce. Autocracy and rule through cronyism, bribery, corruption, and myth keep those with more wealth, power, and prestige close together so that marriages are arranged with relatives. Henrich gives the Catholic Church credit in banning this intermarriage practice. By so doing outsiders are needed to marry. Movement away from the clan vicinity results. Then Henrich brings in Martin Luther (though he gives interesting historical references to earlier groups). Indulgences and bribery of priests and the church highlighted by Luther and others are seen as counter to the faith of the bible which should be followed and interpreted individually by each worshipper. The follower of Christ does not need a priest to intercede with Jesus and God but the follower must read the bibles and make their own journey and find their own way to moral wholesomeness and the gift of heaven ever after. The only way to do this is to learn to read these texts of literacy is very important. Before Luther literacy was very low but after it has improved very significantly. So literacy leads to more openness to new ideas, less agreement with clannish dictates and beliefs, more sharing of viewpoints amongst fellows of similar interests, collaboration leading to innovation including others suggestions with newer inventions and progress. The WEIRD means Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic. WEIRD people are different from the clannish more polygamous autocratic in that their thinking is more analytic versus global and holistic. Heinrich even gives a nod to neuropsychology claiming that our progress in civilization towards WEIRD has changed our brain structure since literacy requires the use of certain parts of the brain we used to use to recognize other people so we lose some of this ability.
His book gives interesting and to me humorous research tidbits. The marshmallow test gets some yardage. Place a child in a room, give him on a plate one marshmallow and tell him that he can eat it now but if he waits fifteen minutes he'll get another. Then study decades later the demographics of the groups who waited versus those that did not. Can you guess the result? Those children who had patience and waited did better in a number of areas associated with a successful life! My humorous pick for today is his description of studies associating the instruction to the participant to think of having sex with his sister (even if he/she does not have a sister imagine one) then giving the participant a work task and measuring his work efforts. The Protestant group differed from the Catholic Jewish group how? Guilt is assuaged with hard work with the Protestant but the opposite is true for the Catholic and Jewish subjects. He also describes the Dictator Game in which priming with the word God influenced the participant to have informal fairness (share money since God is watching). Another favorite of mine is the witness to an accident scene in which as a passenger if asked by a defense attorney telling the truth gets the driver of the car in trouble. Do you lie (or equivocate)?
He goes onto historical events and figures and interesting ways to analyze societal practices. For example, he suggests that WEIRD people walk faster per mile than their clannish counterparts. Our clannish counterparts work at farming, hunting, or their craft with no internal clock having a goal of productivity. There more leisurely walking pace is a by product. Perception of time differs between the two groups. I can go on but I'm stuck with the different ways that historians, economic researchers, and psychologist study our differences. If anything a take away to his book is that most of the studies about human psychology coming from university research laboratories across the world have been done on WEIRD subjects! In the book Heinrich tries to round this out by describing research using the more clannish, polygamous, autocratic social groups. For example, he mentions a New Guinea group that managed to have a much larger villages of people while the rest of the groups broken apart after reaching a certain size. The group that grew larger had the sacred rituals and myths protected by a seperate group not under the direction of one clan or another. This group gave the directions to the rituals and sacred practices to different groupings in the town requiring them to cooperate more.
As a species so far I see that we have been and continue today to sometimes very vehemently and violently disagree and hold beliefs and attitudes that drive us apart. Our democratic governments are build on conflict, arguments, and disagreement. Yet in our personal life we can be very loving, caring, cooperative, and kind to each other. Even family members who hold some very toxic outlandish beliefs can be nurtured as long as we don't argue and debate the differences. For example, the other day I was at the gym and was next to a neighbor who was using the adjacent machine. We smiles and exchanged pleasantries. She asked if I had hiked recently and I mentioned that I skipped a hiking date since I had some malaise after a flu and Omincron Booster shot. She said that President Biden had declared the pandemic to be over and she had never had any vaccinations. Well, my nature I found an article which I sent to her describing how the pandemic continues, COVID presents a clear danger to our health, and vaccination is beneficial for our health and the eventual decrease in infection rate. I sent her the information knowing she probably would not read it and I would not be able to sway her opinion. So I'm an optimist thinking and hoping that my last statement is incorrect.
This week I had a visit with my cardiac electrophysiologist. He had the technician check my pacemaker functioning to make sure the leads to my ventricles was working and analyze the data. For example, the previous week showed that after starting to hike up a trail in Tantalus mountain my heart rate was over 190! Well, that probably was my atrial rate since I'm over 60% of the time in atrial fibrillation. My Apple iWatch shows beats as high as 150 which when I notice causes me to stop and wait for the pulse to lessen which it does within a minute. I showed him the mild swelling of my right foot with edema wondering if this is venous stasis or congestive heart failure. He said that he could get a blood test to pinpoint the difference. However, if positive for heart failure he would not recommend any change in treatment so Rebecca and I decided to forgo the test. Then today I visited my retinologist who is treating the potential retina hole developing near my fovea on my left eye. Fortunately, the medical treatment of steroid eye drops seems to be working. In his office I shared some photographs I took of yesterday's hike to twin waterfalls in the mountains. He's a photographer so we briefly talked about his upcoming trips to Iceland and Greenland and I shared my trips next week to Silver Falls State Park, Columbia Gorge, the Palouse, Spokane, Reno, Lee Vining, Bristle Pines reserve and Temecula. The body may be wearing down but I'm hiking, traveling and very much alive today.
Two night ago the EMT ambulance was across the street at our neighbors home. He has Alzheimer's disease and had a stroke that evening. A few days before while driving to the gym I saw the byclers doing the 100 mile organized ride. This neighbor and I did this about 20 years ago.
So Barrelhouse Blues, stomps, and American music created by our oppressed black citizens was in my head and sometimes heard while I played the music on the piano. Then I went back to Beethoven sonatas and played with more feeling and ease now being more familiar with the scores. I came across some music and a series of poems by T.S. Eliot called the Ordinary Cat.
Here's one.
The Naming of Cats
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names,
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.
Leonard
https://www.flickr.com/photos/leonardsjacobs/albums/72157603520494610
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