In one of my previous articles on “The War in Iran and the United Nations,” I concluded that the United Nations (UN) should be abolished ASAP. My rationale is that the UN will never advocate a military response to any aggression by any country, even when such a military response might be warranted, causing the other country to back down, thereby preserving the “peace.” And as if to underscore this statement, a news item from this past week mentions the difficulty that the UN Security Council faces in voting to defend the Strait of Hormuz by authorizing the use of force. Recall that the primary purpose for the existence of the UN is “maintaining international peace and security.” And that is something the UN has been unable to accomplish in its 80-year history. The UN has become, for all intents and purposes, an international country club for diplomats and nothing more; it must be dissolved!

But due to other recent news on the war in Iran, I want to now consider the idea that perhaps the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO-OTAN) should also be dissolved. You see, it appears the war in Iran is now revealing cracks in the NATO alliance suggesting that NATO has also outlived its usefulness.

Before tackling this topic head-on, however, I’d like to establish a certain frame of reference. Most of you are familiar with the novel The Three Musketeers, written by famed French author, Alexander Dumas, and first published in 1844. In that novel, the three musketeers and their companion, D’Artagnan, famously exclaim: “all for one, and one for all!” That phrase encapsulates the allegiance the four friends had for one another; an allegiance that they kept towards each other to the end.

That catchphrase implied that, when any one of the musketeers were in trouble or in need, the others would rush to their aid and lend a hand. Naturally, the novel being about comedic adventurism, the musketeers would often find themselves dueling with swords to help each other in time of need.

When NATO was created in 1949, the idea behind that organization was to address any potential threat emanating from the Soviet Union of states that had formed after World War II. Recall that the Soviet Union was on the “winning” side of that war along with the rest of Europe (except for Italy and Germany). As such, after the war, Germany was split into four Allied occupation zones intended to prevent any militarization by the Nazis. This eventually led to the creation of two nations: East Germany, allied with the communist Soviet Union, and West Germany allied with the European allies.

Thus began the Cold War, an ideological war in which spies were caught or killed in the intrigue and subterfuge waged by both sides, and in which a few major proxy wars flared up over the following decades as both sides attempted to spread their competing ideologies throughout the world. If you’re interested in seeing a first-rate movie about espionage during the Cold War, I heavily recommend the 1965 movie: The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. The movie is based on a 1963 novel of the same name by John le Carré. If you’re not a movie buff, then I highly recommend reading the novel.

1949 was also the year in which the Geneva Conventions were codified to establish international law regarding the humanitarian treatment of war combatants. This was a result of the various war crimes trials held in Nuremberg and Tokyo after WWII.

In that environment, NATO was formed as a sort of “all for one and one for all” alliance between western European nations, including the United States of America and Canada; a united front that would prevent another militarized Germany from rising up again. Later, Greece and Turkey joined NATO, causing major concerns for the Soviet Union.

As a response to the growth of NATO and its perceived threat, the Soviet Union cemented its ideological attack on the west in 1955 by establishing the Warsaw Pact, which, similar to NATO, was a treaty between a bloc of nations aligned with the Soviet Union. That same year, the iconic “hammer and sickle” flag of the Soviet Union was created.

Fast forward thirty years to 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev was made General Secretary of the Soviet Union and immediately embarked on a set of reforms that would spell the dissolution of the Soviet Union by 1991, the same year that Gorbachev resigned as president. Gorbachev tried to implement reforms such as perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness), which led to American president Ronald Regan’s famous “Tear Down This Wall!” speech on June 12, 1987. The Berlin wall was eventually torn down in 1989.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Warsaw Pact was also dissolved. Thus, for many around the world, the Cold War had essentially come to an end and the “west” was given the victory. However, in reality, that Cold War, the conflict between two ideologies, remained, resulting in the latest major war – the war in Ukraine.

For the world, the official end to the Cold War in 1991 should have been a sign that NATO had, by then, become irrelevant. By that time, it was recognized that Germany was never going to militarize to the same degree that it did during the Nazi regime, and there was no longer a perceived threat from a broken-down Soviet military machine that might attempt an attack on Europe through the Fulda Gap.

The reduced relevance of NATO became more evident with the formation of the European Union in 1993, which was formed as an economic response to the overpowering economic strength of the United States. One of the major economic engines of the newly-formed European Union was the unified Germany that had been the original catalyst for the formation of NATO to begin with.

As such, the great political and economic divide between America and the Europeans became official. The United States was no longer seen as an integral ally of Europe, but as an economic competitor. And while NATO continued to function, especially as a police force that would enforce peacekeeping actions on behalf of the United Nations, the newly-formed European Union, which has at its core the foundation that would “make war unthinkable and materially impossible,” began to separate itself from America in many ways.

The formation of the European Union, in turn, led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro, in 1999 (fully adopted by 2002). Thus, Europe, in essence, became its own dominant economic powerhouse that had no need for maintaining the “all for one and one for all” allegiance to those NATO nations outside of the European Union; namely, the United States and Canada.

Circling back to the current war in Iran, regardless of its outcome, as that war continues, there are signals from the NATO partners that each of them is not only NOT a “all for one and one for all” NATO partner anymore, but that some NATO members won’t help another NATO partner in time of need for ideological reasons.

For me, the first sign of this NATO “detachment” from its founding principles was the announcement by Spain in March that it would not allow its airspace to be used by American military flights used in the war with Iran. Spain also signaled it would not permit the existing joint military bases to be used to support the war with Iran. In other words, Spain essentially said to America, a fellow NATO member: “sorry, we don’t want to help you in this military activity,” with Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, calling the strikes on Iran illegal.

More recently, Italy and France voiced their opposition to the war in Iran, as both countries denied American military planes the use of their airspace and of their joint military bases (in the case of Italy). There is some irony in the fact that two of the original founding members of NATO (France and Italy) would reject helping America, the one NATO member often seen as the “liberator” of Europe (and especially of France) from the Nazis.

And so, from these developments going all the way back to the end of World War II, it’s easy to see where international relations are headed as they pertain to Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. In particular, these events lead to the uneasy conclusion that NATO has not only outlived its usefulness, but that it no longer functions as originally intended and that, perhaps, it is of no value to either the Europeans or the Americans.

With the new rules of war as enacted by the Geneva Conventions, and with the manner in which modern wars are fought, there is no place for NATO in today’s world order. NATO is simply another bureaucratic organization like the UN; a militarized version of the UN, if you will. Instead of career diplomats, NATO has military leaders meeting and carrying on military “exercises” to prove to themselves that they still have a reason for existing. But, despite those joint military exercises, NATO no longer exists as a “all for one and one for all” type of organization, if it ever did at all.

If I go back to considering the Three Musketeers; can you just imagine Aramis telling D’Artagnan that, because D’Artagnan started the fight, Aramis will not help him? Or, worse, that Aramis does not believe in fighting?

D’ARTAGNAN: Aramis, [CLINK!] so good to see you. [CLINK!] I could use a helping hand here. [CLINK!]

ARAMIS: So sorry, D but, you got yourself in this mess; you’ll need to get yourself out of it. I think you can handle five guys; I’ve seen you do it before.

D’ARTAGNAN: But, Aramis, [CLINK!] what happened to our pact? [CLINK!] “All for one and one for all” [CLINK!] remember?

ARAMIS: Ah, yes; well, you see, D, I’ve moved on to do my own mercenary work. My new motto is: “every man for himself and take no prisoners!” Good luck!

Just imagine for a second that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 called for the destruction of France, instead of America, referring to France as being the “Great Satan.” How would France feel if it decided to attack Iran before Iran had the opportunity to build up enough firepower to completely obliterate France, if the United States decided not to offer any help because France’s pre-emptive attack on Iran was deemed illegal? In this imaginary scenario, would France feel slighted by the United States? And, what would NATO do?

At the time of this writing, there are several news articles circulating around proposing, not so much that NATO “should” be dissolved, but that the integrity of NATO is being challenged by this “illegal” war with Iran. These recent articles include a statement from US President Donald Trump that perhaps the US should withdraw its membership from that organization. Based on the discussion in this article so far, that seems to me to be a legitimate action for the US to take.

However, looking ahead to possible repercussions, I see the dismantling of NATO as something that would be celebrated by Russia and that would give Putin more power and control, as he will no doubt take credit for dissolving NATO, his most feared adversary in the war with Ukraine. Putin might even claim that dissolving NATO was his whole objective with this “military operation” in Ukraine from the beginning – mission accomplished!

On the other hand, by dissolving NATO, there is a greater possibility of ending the war in Ukraine, as that particular sticking point in the negotiations for a ceasefire (the insistence by Russia that Ukraine NOT join NATO) would become moot. In any case, I believe NATO should be dissolved, beginning with the US withdrawing its membership, with Canada logically following suit.

We have become so accustomed to wars and have accepted the fact that wars are simply not preventable, that our civilization has adopted “universal” rules for conducting wars, such as: no killing of civilians, no bombing populated areas, no cruelty towards prisoners, etc. These rules of war are spelled out in the Geneva Convention protocols. Missing from these rules is the one rule that would prevent a war: make war itself illegal! But, how do you enforce such a law? Paradoxically, in some cases, the only way to prevent a war is through war!

The UN and NATO have become relics of a long-forgotten war that is irrelevant in today’s world. Both institutions need to disappear so that a new world order may emerge; a world order that is not mired in the ghosts of World War II and that best addresses our attempts to establish a global peace.

And, in my opinion, as I’ve stated in some of my previous articles, the only viable path to peace is global cooperation; the kind of cooperation that does not involve “diplomats” meeting endlessly to agree on the content of reports. Instead, my concept involves neighboring countries helping each other by giving and sharing as needed; “live and HELP live.” This is why, in my previous post on “A Logical Peace Plan for Ukraine,” I suggested that Ukraine agree to “share” the resource of the disputed lands with Russia, so that both can thrive TOGETHER. In that manner, Russia should be willing to allow Ukraine to return to its original borders of 1991, as those borders wouldn’t really hold any meaning, anymore. That willingness to share is what brings “neighbors” together and it’s what will bring nations together, establishing a lasting peace between them.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

Recently I was sitting at dinner with my family, including with some of my grandchildren. At one point, the conversation around the table focused on illegal drugs. The reason we zeroed in on that topic was that my fourteen-year-old grandson asked several questions regarding certain illegal drugs, and the other adults around the table were obliging in setting him straight; i.e., “educating” him on the subject. Interestingly, he seemed well-informed and this was not the first time he discussed this topic at the dinner table.

So, I asked him why he always seemed so interested in illegal drugs. His response was that “it’s always in the news.” As I pressed him for evidence, he declared that all the newsfeeds and ads on his smartphone were mostly about drugs.

That’s when his dad and I jumped in almost simultaneously to let him know that his newsfeed was placing him in a very tightly controlled reality bubble. We then explained to him that the reason his phone always gives him that information is because of his online searches and his conversations. We told him his phone is actively listening to what he says and types, trapping him inside those topics, thus making him believe he was involved in learning the most important topic in his world.

Most of you must be wondering why he even has a phone to begin with. Well, it’s a complicated issue. Most teenagers, when they get to a certain age, demand a delicate balance between being pressed so hard that the parents might “lose” them, and allowing some freedom with some restrictions and boundaries.

With my grandson we are currently at the “restrictions and boundaries” phase as his parents try to guide him to become self-reliant. Anyway, I think my grandson learned an important lesson that evening; what that lesson was I’m not sure. However, what I am sure of is that he has developed, as all teenagers do at his age, a view of reality that differs greatly from that of the adults around him. And that prompted me to write on this topic.

You see, each of us lives in our own reality bubble that today is reinforced mostly by social media and the many apps with which we choose to interact. It’s all part of the “user experience” that is being promoted by most online businesses these days. And, since our human DNA tends to drive us all to behave similarly at different stages of life, it becomes very easy for businesses and governments to control children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults and seniors.

And, as we transition from the teenage phase of our lives into adulthood, it’s natural for us to choose our “homies”; that’s just part of our nature. Some of us stay with the “gang” of our youth, others join other gangs or organizations as we seek meaning and purpose to our lives.

And in seeking that purpose and that meaning, we often fall into a trap in which we become isolated from the world outside of the reality bubble we establish with those homies or organizations. Usually, that reality bubble includes our profession, our responsibilities and our interests. A good example might be the so-called “nerds” who gravitate towards everything technology but seldom venture into the world of athleticism or adventurism (except for their electronic games, if those can be rightly referred to as “adventures”).

On the other hand, there are those who might be considered the opposite of nerds (anti-nerds?), who constantly seek physical adventure, going out paragliding, hiking, skiing, snowboarding, surfing, kayaking, canoeing, camping, or all-of-the-above; even on the same day!

And there are other reality bubbles that keep some from venturing into the reality of those who don’t even come close to sharing any of the same experiences, interests, ambitions, dreams or opinions. Is it any wonder our world is becoming so extremely polarized, with many being branded and/or forced to “choose sides”?

As a concrete example of how we develop our unique reality bubbles, for a great portion of my life I was involved with space exploration by: joining all the space exploration groups I could find, attending all the space exploration conferences I could attend, watching all the space exploration movies I could, reading space exploration books and news, keeping abreast of all the space exploration companies and their products, and communicating daily with others to share information that reinforced that reality.

During that period of my life, my reality consisted of a world in which, while I still worked diligently to maintain a family by purchasing a house, a car, and helping my wife provide for the family, my mind was consumed with helping to create the technologies, systems and processes that facilitated sending humans into space. That was my world – my reality.

And I’m quite sure in that world of space exploration there are some who know nothing about what team just won a championship in the sport of cricket, or rugby, or football. Or which actor won an Oscar, Emmy or Golden Globe. They might also be clueless about real estate prices in various parts of the country, or about crime statistics for major American cities or states. Some of my space exploration homies live in their space exploration reality bubbles, oblivious to many cause-and-effect events happening throughout the world and all around them.

By the same token, I’m sure there are people living in certain reality bubbles outside of space exploration who think space exploration enthusiasts are crazy, or wasting their time, or polluting the environment. Some may not even know that a space station with humans on board is orbiting in space above our heads right now, passing over us every ninety minutes.

For some, celebrities, concerts and awards shows might define their entire world. For others it might be medicine and science. And there are others such as professional athletes, military professionals, religious fanatics, gambling addicts, etc., who live in worlds that they perceive to be “reality,” but that differ greatly from the reality of others.

And so, I think we can all accept that reality, like beauty and art (Einstein was a genius!), is relative, and that we all live in our own separate and unique realities. And, in today’s world, whatever our reality might be, that reality has become even more unreliable, as the internet, and particularly AI, have created a world in which nothing can be trusted to be real.

For example, I came across this posting on Reddit from several years ago. It tells of a woman who was so addicted to her phone and social media that she wound up losing her husband and kids because of her addiction. But here’s what troubles me: knowing what I know about the internet, how real is that story? How many “real” stories on the internet are actually fake stories meant to garner “likes” or “followers”? How can we trust ANYTHING that we read online today?

In my opinion, every posting on every social media platform should be considered “fake” even if one knows the poster intimately. Profiles, pictures, videos, stories, all should be considered made-up, possibly even by AI agents. Even my weekly articles should be considered to be “fakes.” And, with AI becoming more and more advanced with each passing day, the videos we see in “news” or on “podcasts” can be considered fake. I already consider all TikTok and YouTube videos to be fake, automatically. Unfortunately for some teenagers, like my grandson, those apps and social media platforms represent their only reality - their world.

The end result of all this is that even our reality bubbles are becoming more like reality illusions. It’s not so much that those reality bubbles are popping, revealing the “real” reality as in the movie The Matrix, when Neo wakes up in the pod and sees the machines that had created his reality; it’s that our reality bubbles are becoming hardened like missile silos, keeping us in an isolated, small and narrow world from which we can never experience, or know, what is “real.”

In turn, from those hardened realities it becomes more difficult to expand and capture additional information about the “real” world, making it difficult for all of us to communicate effectively. And communicating effectively by sharing “real” information is especially challenging when it comes to parents and their teenage children.

To better appreciate the effect that our reality bubbles have on communication, when I was young, I played a game called “telephone” at birthday parties. For those of you who may not be familiar with this game, it involves sitting around in a circle. Then, the individual designated to start the game whispers a message in the ear of the person next to them. Then, that person whispers the same message to the person next to them in the circle and so on until the last person in the circle to receive the message says the message out loud for everyone to hear. The originator of the message then says the original message out loud to compare. It’s a fun game to have at parties and it’s very entertaining to see how different the last message is from the original, especially when using messages with strange words or sentences.

To those who have played this game, there is a realization that messages don’t always land as intended. In some cases, the intended message is completely disregarded or interpreted as something that may turn out to be the complete opposite of what was intended; for example, the classic movie scene in which a man kisses a woman or whispers something in her ear, only to get slapped in the face or bonked on the head with a frying pan in return.

In a previous article of mine on “Illusions, Coincidences, Accidents and Luck,” I wrote extensively on how, when we communicate with one another, it’s usually to share ideas, thoughts, concepts, or experiences, in order to establish a common understanding of the world around us: basically, we communicate primarily to expand our reality bubble by creating a common reality with others.

Because we communicate primarily to gain information and increase our reality, effective communication requires that the sender of information and the receiver of that information speak the same language and be familiar with the same concepts. In other words, they must share the same reality to a great extent. And in almost every instance of human interaction, there is an exchange of information that serves to establish a common reality, or at least to update the reality of each individual. Oftentimes, this exchange of information is silent, without the use of a formal language. In this way, reality becomes the environment that surrounds us and that is consistent and predictable from day to day.

But because the receiver of information must know the language, objects, concepts, facts, and ideas being shared by the sender of information, communication between teenagers and their parents becomes difficult since their views of reality are very different.

Returning to the case of my grandson, his reality bubble was getting smaller and smaller because of his reliance on his cell phone for all the information filling his brain. And, no doubt, he was relying more on his phone than on his teachers for his “education”; an education that at the present time seems to be singularly focused on illegal drugs. It’s going to be interesting to see how my grandson expands his reality bubble from here.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep a close eye on him. I learned from raising my own sons that the years between 14 and 16 are the most critical for teenagers of the male kind. I’ve also seen too many teenagers succumb to the lure of drugs (and vaping) and alcohol; most can’t wait to be “legal” so they can drink themselves senseless, or worse.

It’s very difficult for parents (and grandparents) to care for their teenagers these days, especially with those teenagers roaming through that bazaar called the internet 24/7. The reality bubbles being created via our electronic devices, especially with the help of AI, are becoming hardened, keeping us locked into certain views of the world that may or may not represent what is “real.”

My hope is that, someday, instead of trying to deceive one another by presenting false information in the form of fake profiles, photos, videos, stories, credentials, etc., we leave that bazaar of the internet (especially the social media gossip booth) completely and go out into the streets and parks to interact with real human beings and real nature. Then, we might truly understand the role each of us plays in the universe that is unfolding before us.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

When I was a young man in college, I decided to take a few art classes. You see, before entering college, I enjoyed drawing cartoons, especially re-creations of my favorite superheroes, such as Superman and Batman. And it helped that many people around me, friends and family, were duly impressed with my ability as they encouraged me with their positive comments. So, during my first two years of college I decided to take “easy A” classes to pad my GPA and, for me, that meant art and physical education.

I greatly enjoyed the various art classes I took, including history of art, drawing, painting, and photography. Along the way I learned many lessons outside of simply creating artistic works. Those lessons included patience and a commitment to one’s craft. But, as I learned more about my craft by, for example, how to more effectively use: a pencil (I distinctly recall my instructor telling me to give my lines more “character,” whatever that meant), a brush, a color or color scheme, contrast, film, framing, background, etc., I began formulating in my mind what “art” really is.

What Makes a Great Artist?

What I learned from my art education as well as from my art “experience” is that art is not defined by the medium, but by what inspires the artist. The canvas, the pencil, the camera, the stage, the clay – none of those define “art”; only the individual who masterfully wields those tools and those mechanisms does. Furthermore, that “art” is manifested, not in the final physical work itself (the painting, the drawing, the sculpture, the play, etc.), but in how a particular creation affects those who are exposed to that work.

Thus, those who wield the pencil, paintbrush, camera, oven, electronic device, football, musical instrument, tennis racket, golf club, etc., and manage to “wow” those who become exposed to their particular work, are the real artists. And that ability to “wow” an audience repeatedly, is what separates an artist from a very proficient technician. Thus, it’s quite possible for a painter who paints on canvas to be called a technician, while a painter who paints the walls of a house can be considered an artist. Allow me to develop this concept a bit further.

Consider the well-known painter, Thomas Kinkade. One can argue from a technical point of view that Kinkade mastered the presentation of color in his paintings. The first time I saw one of his paintings, I was impressed with the detail and the manner in which the artist brought out those vibrant colors. However, as I saw more and more of his paintings, I soon developed a feeling that I was looking at a variation on a theme. It was as though the “artist” had gotten stuck on one concept and simply produced a variation on that same concept in batches. So, to me, Thomas Kinkade was a very competent technician, not necessarily a great artist.

If I now consider the great American illustrator, Norman Rockwell, who might be rightfully considered to be the “opposite” of Kinkade in that Rockwell focused more on painting a “story” with people captured in action, as opposed to Kinkade’s pastoral landscapes, I’d like to contrast the artistry of Rockwell with the assembly line churning of paintings by the technician Kinkade.

As someone who has always tried to produce realistic drawings, I’ve always admired the works of Norman Rockwell. I once visited the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and thoroughly enjoyed seeing so many of his works in one place. If you’ve never visited that museum, and happen to have an interest in art, I recommend you make the effort to go there; it’s worth the trip.

In any case, I have always been impressed with Rockwell’s art due to the meticulous detail of his illustrations, especially the ones involving people in action or with interesting facial expressions. His “No Swimming” painting of boys and a dog running away from “something,” is but one of many such pictures that make the viewer stare for a long time to contemplate that story. No camera, in my mind, could ever capture that scene in the exact manner in which Rockwell did. Naturally, the stories that his illustrations tell can be different for each viewer. Telling a story with one picture is not easy regardless of medium. And although it’s easy to spot a Norman Rockwell illustration a mile away, even with only a few of his works eliciting “wow” moments for me, I still consider him to be a true “artist.”

Finally, a few words about M. C. Escher. I’ve always been captivated by the geometrical “impossible” scenes depicted in his works. Escher’s works always impress, even if they seem simple in design. His “drawing hands” is an example of something that captivates, even after seeing it hundreds of times. While not difficult to reproduce, many of Escher’s works contain that “wow” condition for me and, thus, I consider him a true artist.

And if I were to reach as far back as the Renaissance, and invoke the works of such great classical artists as Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Bernini, Donatello, etc., I note that they had that “wow” effect on the people of their time, and that is precisely why they are still recognized today as great artists. However, if those great artists had access to the technology we have today of cameras and movies, I’m positive they would instantly swap their paintbrushes and chisels for cameras; of course, only after we convinced them that such technology was not “black magic.”

The “Wow” Factor in Art

Before continuing to set the stage for how art, as defined by inspiration and creativity, is being modified or challenged today by artificial intelligence, I want to briefly touch on what I mean by this “wow” factor. Admittedly, the idea of something being “wow” art is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. There are many who may not be exposed to art enough to be able to discern “good” art from “bad”; children, for example. That’s been true of art since the beginning. But I have a reason for developing my view of art here as I try to show how inspired creativity, the basis of all art, and the true measure of what separates human intelligence from fake intelligence, is being greatly modified by AI.

So, returning to what makes something “art,” allow me to develop this concept further. I once walked into a building, I believe it was a large bank, and, as I walked through the lobby area, I was struck by the shiny floors, the spotless banisters, the fragrant smells, even the public bathrooms were spotlessly clean! I was so taken aback by how clean the place was, that I started thinking about the janitor that kept the place in such a spotless condition. I imagined the janitor of such a place as taking his or her work very seriously and pouring their heart into their work. At that moment, I experienced the “wow” effect of an artist through that individual’s work. Yes, as I’m defining “art” here, even a janitor can be an artist!

And to drive this point further, if you’ve seen the movie Ratatouille, recall how the main premise of the movie is not only that “anyone can cook,” but that a rat, no less, can create a “wow” moment for the most discerning food critic. And I’ve even seen cooking shows on TV that demonstrate “wow” moments for me, as well. Art is not the medium; it’s the inspired creativity of the individual.

And so, to me, true artists reveal themselves by how their works “wow” others, especially their peers. True artists, in my view, don’t need to create works in traditional visual arts media, such as painting, drawing, photography or film (movies). Artists exist in just about every form of human endeavor, including: doctors, nurses, teachers, writers, athletes, cooks and, yes, even janitors. All humans have the potential to be great artists. The key, for me, lies in works created out of inspired creativity along with mastery of the medium.

Inspired Creativity

And so, I try to look for this inspired creativity whenever I consider if someone is a great artist. The photomontage I used in the graphic at the beginning of this article depicts several works of art that I created during the “visual artist” phase of my life. Whether or not they “wow” any reader of this article is immaterial. The fact is, given the right set of instructions and the right prompting, that photomontage could very well have been created by an artificial intelligence (or not). However, the point I want to make is that each of those separate items in the graphic is the result of my having been “inspired” at some point in my life such that I was motivated to draw that particular item (except for the trees in the middle – I was “forced” to draw those as part of a drawing class assignment).

To further illustrate the idea of inspired creativity, I now refer to the 1977 Steven Spielberg movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In that movie, several individuals who are affected by alien spacecraft become “inspired” to obsess over a form that resembles a mountain on which the aliens plan to land. The individuals have no idea why they have this vision in their minds, and one of them, the main character, even goes as far as destroying his garden in order to build a replica of the mountain inside his house, causing his wife to leave him, taking their children with her. Naturally, the movie itself represents a work by a great artist, Steven Spielberg, who “wows” with every movie he produces.

We all get hit with this sort of inspiration at various times in our lives. That inspiration seems to originate in our subconscious and quickly makes its way to our conscious where it becomes a mild obsession (or a very persistent one). For example, sometimes we might suddenly get an urge to take a trip, and we take it. Or, perhaps we hit on an idea, such as starting a business or building an addition to our home, or writing a book, and we go through with it. In some extreme cases, we might decide to build an automobile, a house or a helicopter from scratch (I’ve known some individuals who decided to build those exact things by themselves – they were obsessed!). No one knows where this inspiration comes from, but, when it comes, sometimes our creative juices get going and we doggedly commit to develop “wow” creations.

How AI is Changing Our Definition of “Artist”

In a previous two-part series of mine, Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature, Part 1 of 2, and Part 2 of 2, I wrote of the Wild West environment in which we find ourselves today with artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, I likened AI to the gun of the Wild West. Just as the gun (revolver and rifle) changed the social landscape of the American West, in a similar manner AI is changing the social landscape of the entire world today, especially when it comes to what we commonly refer to as “art.”

For example, I friend of mine who has devoted much of his time in retirement to “playing around” with AI, has most recently focused on creating six-second videos from still pictures. I’m very impressed with what the different AI apps he uses are capable of generating. However, as proficient as he has become in creating those six-second videos, the results very quickly lose any “wow” effect. The same goes for very realistic-looking photos generated using AI from simple prompts; those photos, which in most cases are easy to spot, soon become a novelty, losing whatever “wow” effect they might initially generate.

However, as I continue to encounter more and more AI-generated content, I’m beginning to realize that AI is not really an intelligence in the same way we humans possess intelligence. AI is simply a “responsive” database; it does not demonstrate any sort of autonomous “inspiration” to do anything on its own. And about the only “creativity” demonstrated by AI is when the AI “hallucinates,” which is quickly determined by the human intelligence to be of no value; i.e., not “wow.”

So, for the artists out there who might feel that AI is overtaking their ability to achieve great works of art, potentially making them lose their “jobs,” take heart; AI is basically a new tool in your toolbox. AI is a new type of pencil, or brush, or wood or clay to add to the existing tool set and media that are available to bring inspired creations to life.

It may very well be that, just as the movie camera has replaced painting on canvas as an art form, the pencil, the paintbrush and the moldable clay will quickly become relics of the past (3-D printing has already replaced traditional sculptures done in clay, marble or metal). And, with all great works of art being inspired creations regardless of the media and the tools being used, AI will usher a new era in art giving true artists new opportunities to create great works of art that will continue to “wow” long after those artists are gone.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

Recently, I had an opportunity to visit the city of Los Angeles, California. It had been a long time since I drove in that City of Angels. And as I drove around the city, noticing the cars and buses, one particular thing stood out for me: the number of vehicles that were empty of riders.

I think the reason my mind focused so much on that fact was that I noticed a number of Google Waymo driverless vehicles roaming the streets of the city (at least in those parts of L.A. in which I happened to drive), and none of them were carrying any passengers; the ones I managed to see were all driving around empty! Then I thought: in what way are these driverless vehicles, devoid of human occupants, contributing in a meaningful way to the city’s transportation system, especially when those vehicles are taking up additional traffic space?

Los Angeles is a traffic nightmare to begin with, so, adding empty vehicles to that mess makes no sense to me. I then started looking at other vehicles that I happened to pass on the streets, including nearly-empty buses. Again, I wondered: in what ways are all those nearly-empty mass-transports contributing positively to the transportation system? And there were many of them!

Those thoughts kept percolating in my mind as I considered a bus built to handle more than forty riders going through its route with just one passenger. That just did not register with me as being efficient, either for our climate, for our breathable air, or for the economy of the city. In addition, the introduction of the Waymo driverless vehicles without a great enough demand only adds to traffic congestion needlessly.

I then thought of the many times in my past when I rode the subway in New York City late at night, finding myself the only passenger on that subway car; the same subway car that would get filled with over a hundred passengers during rush hour. Granted, the MTA reduces the number of trains and cars that operate during off-peak hours. But what if, instead of operating a four-car train every fifteen minutes or longer during those off-peak hours, the MTA were to operate one car at a time every two-to-five minutes? That seems to me an easy way to address the issue of passengers waiting alone-and-vulnerable at some far-flung station, for what seems like an eternity, for a four-car train that is mostly empty.

And, in that “city that never sleeps,” traffic problems on surface streets have become so severe that one-way streets and various signs directing traffic, including the “do not block intersection” signs (and especially the endless “no left turn” signs onto one-way streets in midtown Manhattan), have had little effect on traffic. If anything, all those attempts to control traffic have only increased the congestion.

Today, the city of New York is so congested with traffic that city leaders have decided to impose a “congestion relief fee” for the privilege of driving in a certain part of downtown Manhattan. However, taking a bus or train (or hoofing it on foot) to that same part of the city does not cost extra. Yet, by imposing a fee, rather than actually limiting the number of vehicles, or building additional road infrastructure, the city is signaling that it doesn’t mind the increased traffic brought about by the large infusion of vehicles due to the gig-economy, such as Uber and Lyft (and soon, Waymo!). All those vehicles will simply pass the cost of that congestion fee to their passengers. Thus, the congestion remains.

You see, these problems are not exclusive to New York; they are and have been an ongoing issue for most large cities in America. It’s bad enough that the gig economy has introduced more and more vehicles onto our streets, the addition of Google’s Waymo (and other “robotaxis”) invading the large cities of America only make traffic worse in those cities. See, for example, this article in Futurism by Joe Wilkins.

I believe we (at least in America) suffer from an overabundance of vehicles: planes, trains, automobiles, boats, bicycles, and others, in all their different forms and sizes. For example, I’ve often driven by large commercial lots containing dozens of inactive parked trucks or buses. I realize that those vehicles are parked during off-peak hours and that, being parked, they don’t add to the traffic on the roads and highways, but just the idea of creating more vehicles because they represent a cool invention seems to me to be a very inefficient way to go about developing an efficient transportation “system.”

The history and evolution of transportation in America is interesting. The eastern part of the country was first settled at a time when the main form of transportation over land was the human foot. Naturally, at that time humans had already developed large sailing vessels to transport cargo and humans across the oceans. From that foot-powered form of transportation, America eventually developed large cities along the eastern seaboard that accommodated horse-and-carriage transportation, eventually leading to “horseless carriages” (automobiles) and trains and buses.

And as more and more European immigrants sought refuge in America, crowding mostly onto the eastern portion of this continent, the push westward, away from those crowded cities, was inevitable. That push happened primarily in the mid-nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution introduced the world to the steam locomotive (the “Iron Horse”) and train transportation, resulting in the first transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869.

Until then, transporting goods and humans to the western part of America was done using horse-and-wagon technology. Those “wagon trains” took months to traverse the great plains under treacherous conditions, usually on a one-way trip by pioneers who sought to survive off the land or to benefit from the “gold rush,” or both. The transcontinental railroad changed all that.

As the American west was being settled, transportation technology remained tied to trains or horse-and-wagon technology, until the invention of the “horseless carriage” in the late 19^th century. That technology soon took off (along with bicycles), primarily in the large cities that already had established “roads” for their horse-and-carriage technology.

As the automobile industry flourished, those vehicles eventually became the preferred method of transportation in western America. Meanwhile, the densely populated eastern cities developed more efficient mass transportation in the form of trains and buses. In addition, beginning in the 20^th century, airplane transportation became an established new transportation technology with great promise.

Today, America’s west is ruled primarily by automobile transportation, as the infrastructure to accommodate that form of transportation was established in greater form than the railroads that preceded it. In fact, by the 1960s, mass transportation efforts in Los Angeles that used rail and electric-powered trains largely failed due to the adoption of, and demand for, the privately owned automobile.

And, as a side note, the rugged Alaskan wilderness, the last frontier to be settled in America, mostly in the 20^th century, has evolved such that the primary form of transportation in that state consists of flying airplanes. There are very few roads connecting the many small communities in Alaska, making flying airplanes the most efficient mode of transportation across land. An interesting factoid is that the per capita number of certified pilots in Alaska is 1 in 78, which is approximately six times higher than the national average.

From this brief history of transportation technology in America, it’s easy to appreciate that the city of Los Angeles has become a city of automobiles. Which brings me right back to the Waymo problem and the problem of nearly-empty buses.

You see, like most cities, the transportation “system” in Los Angeles consists of whatever vehicles exist to transport goods and people from point A to point B. The city has made a good effort to accommodate the automobile by building a system of freeways that act as major “riverways” and arteries for cars and trucks. And because the city is a city of automobiles, there is no control over how many vehicles or what type of vehicles are permitted within the city limits. Thus, Google’s Waymo managed to convince city leaders to “beta-test” their driverless vehicles in that city.

In the Futurism article by Joe Wilkins cited above, the author mentions the drain on public resources as a result of having driverless vehicles on the roads of San Francisco. My focus here is on the inefficiencies presented by adding vehicles, which are not transporting anything or anyone, to already existing traffic. Those vehicles are simply using up traffic space (and other resources) needlessly.

And even when they do carry passengers, the inefficiencies are readily apparent. I can’t imagine, for example, asking my Waymo ride to “quick, I have a plane to catch at LAX, step on it! There’s an extra twenty in it for you if you can get me to the gate on time.” No amount of artificial intelligence in that driverless vehicle will make it go faster or take a shortcut based on the wishes of the passengers; it’s a dumb car!

Even worse, I can envision that vehicle simply shutting down in the middle of the highway due to some electro-connectivity issue, rendering its passengers hostage. Or, worser (is that even a word? Shakespeare said it is, let’s bring it back!), I can imagine a terrorist cyber-attack that shuts down ALL the Waymo cars in the city; wouldn’t that be a sight to behold!

Thinking about a world filled with autonomous robotaxis, I’m already feeling nostalgic for the days of taxis driven by real people with normal intelligence who can hold a decent conversation. For example, once when I visited Rome with my family, I recall white-knuckling it in the front passenger seat as our Italian taxi driver weaved wildly in-and-out of traffic on our way to Vatican City. I doubt any Waymo could compete with that driver, although Waymo might decide to install a conversational artificial intelligence (AI) that can engage with passengers in the language of their choice. Hopefully, such AI will not have strong political or religious opinions. I recommend that Google choose a child’s voice for that AI. And I hear that even Uber is considering using driverless vehicles for its taxi business. Riding in human-driven taxis is already starting to look like the good old days of yesteryear.

In one of my previous posts on “Pet Peeves: Speed Limits and Traffic Lights,” I wrote about how we’ve created roads that are shared by large trucks, automobiles, motorbikes, bicycles, trains and even pedestrians, all traveling at different speeds and different directions relative to one another.

In that same posting I proposed that the future of transportation hinged on the development of “flying cars” becoming the main form of transportation, especially autonomous flying vehicles (AFVs), possibly even all-electric autonomous flying vehicles (EAFVs). Those AFVs would hover and fly, and transport passengers (you and me) or cargo to their destination without any human input other than voicing the destination address.

Now, at this point you might very well ask: “weren’t you just writing about how bad autonomous vehicles are because of traffic?” Well, yes; however, here I’m talking about using the third dimension of altitude to ease the traffic. You see, the “mistake” that Google has made is in creating autonomous vehicles for use in the existing two-dimensional vehicle traffic paradigm, by adding more vehicles without contributing to “fixing” the traffic congestion problems within that paradigm. Waymo doesn’t “reduce” traffic congestion, it actually adds to it.

But hovering vehicles that can ascend and descend in the vertical direction will greatly contribute to “easing” the traffic problem. In fact, certain retail businesses such as Amazon and Walmart are already using flying drones to deliver packages, thereby bypassing the very limited, two-dimensional road structure on which motor vehicles drive.

And in cities such as New York (which already uses helicopters to move people to and from airports), the use of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft that bypasses the traffic below would greatly reduce the vehicle congestion in those cities. Imagine, if you will, VTOL EAFVs simply lifting people and cargo as an elevator would, above the buildings, and “delivering” those people to a different part of the city.

What’s missing in this scenario is a protracted effort on the part of city governments to develop a transportation “system” and an accompanying transportation “plan.” That system includes the use of all manner of vehicles from aircraft, and even rockets, to boats, trucks, cars, right down to bicycles and e-bikes. If incorporating EAFVs, this “system” would include the building of selected landing-and-take-off facilities throughout the city, just as trains use train stations where riders enter and exit those trains.

Without developing such a system, large cities will continue to “react” to new technologies that get thrown at them by ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs who use those cities as their sandbox in which they get to play with their toys, resulting in expensive adjustments to the existing infrastructure simply to address the collateral damage (increased traffic congestion, for example).

As for Alaskans, their greater reliance on airplanes for transportation means that, in the future, they will embrace VTOL “air taxis” more readily than they will Waymo ground vehicles.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

By now most of you are aware of the conflict that’s taking place in Iran, with the United States and Israel engaged in a coordinated attack on that nation’s religious leaders and their regime. And, as that war has progressed at the time of this writing, it appears other nations might be joining those two countries in this war.

I have followed the developments of the Iranian government and its people with mild interest ever since the Iranian revolution of 1979, which included the “hostage crisis” in which several dozen American diplomats from the American Embassy in Tehran were taken hostage for 444 days. I especially remember the botched attempted rescue of the hostages by then-president Jimmy Carter’s administration. The scenes of the American hostages being paraded blindfolded through the streets of Tehran, and the pictures of the destroyed helicopters along with the bodies of the soldiers were difficult for Americans to stomach. And in Iran, naturally, that botched rescue operation was hailed as a divine sign of God’s favor towards the resulting Islamic Republic and Muslim theocracy.

Ever since that revolution, Iran has fomented chaos throughout the Middle East, not just with their religious fervor calling for the destruction of Israel and America, but through their support of terrorist organizations in Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and elsewhere. In addition, as one of the original OPEC members, Iran has been involved in controlling global oil production and distribution for decades, especially in controlling the movement of oil through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

But I don’t want to frame the war currently taking place in Iran in political or economic terms. As I’ve written in previous posts (see, for example, “Heaven and Hell, Part 1 of 2”), fighting one another and engaging in war is imprinted into our DNA. And wars have a way of developing for the most illogical of reasons. Yet, many wars can be foretold, or perhaps even prevented, given enough information on the history of the warring parties.

For example, as I wrote in one of my posts on “A Logical Peace Plan for Ukraine,” the relationship between the old Soviet Union and Ukraine, prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, contributed greatly to the events that led to that war, including the takeover of the Crimea by Russia in 2014.

When Vladimir Putin first took over as Russia’s leader in 2000, having come from a career in the old Soviet Union intelligence community, it should have been clear to anyone who studied Russia’s history and knew Putin’s past well, that he would make an attempt to restore the old Soviet Union. This was most evidently demonstrated when Putin took over the Crimea in 2014.

So, after the annexation of the Crimea, the amassing of thousands of soldiers on the border with Ukraine beginning in April of 2021 under the guise of military exercises, eventually building up to more than 100,000 soldiers by January of 2022, should have been a red flag for everyone around the world that Putin’s objective had nothing to do with merely taking over Ukraine, but that his overall objective includes taking back all the former Soviet Union states, including Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. In essence, Putin’s fight is not with those individual countries but with NATO. Thus, on 24 February, 2022, Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine, launching a full-scale invasion of that country that continues without a clear “winner” four years later.

The same can be said of the current war in Iran. When the Ayatollahs rose to power and declared that the United States is the “Great Satan” that must be destroyed, and that Israel must also be destroyed, it was inevitable that, at some future time, those adversaries would engage Iran in war. Since the revolution of 1979 Iran has made their intentions very clear; they’ve been practically “asking for it” for more than forty years.

Given that humanity has been slowly stumbling towards World War III since the annexation of Crimea in 2014 (unless we were to recognize the Cold War as WW III and the current situation as the beginnings of World War IV), with the pace accelerating after the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, the question that comes to my mind is: where are the United Nations, both the member nations and the institution itself, in all of this?

You see, for me, every time a war breaks out anywhere in the world, my first thoughts center around the purpose of the United Nations as set forth in their charter document: “maintaining international peace and security.”

It’s been more than 80 years since the United Nations was first formed. In those years, the world has experienced the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Afghanistan Wars (one by Russia and one by the US), the never-ending war between Israel and Palestine, the recent Russia-Ukraine war, and various other wars that did not directly involve developed western nations, such as the Iran-Iraq War. Now, to add to that list, we have the Israel-US-Iran war of 2026.

To say that the United Nations has shirked its responsibilities as stated in their charter documents is an understatement. Just as its predecessor, the League of Nations, failed to fulfill its own obligations (which were, in essence, the same as those of the United Nations), the United Nations has failed miserably for more than 80 years to fulfill its major mandate of maintaining international peace.

As it stands today, the United Nations is nothing more than an international country club for diplomats. Their primary output for the past 80 years has been paper products in the form of “reports.” Their various meetings around the world consist of delegates (and a huge supporting cast of characters that caters to their needs, including in the area of language translation, soon to be replaced by AI) who sit around playing a game of political poker in which each player is out to obtain decisions most favorable to their nation. Within that body of nations, there is no such thing as the “common good” and no agreed-to way to create peace or maintain it.

So it is that, when it comes to controlling our DNA-driven propensity for war, those country-club gamblers sit quietly and watch the fireworks, occasionally voicing an opinion on the warring parties, but taking no action whatsoever to stop the war, never mind preventing it to begin with.

Just consider that the Russian “military exercises” on the border with Ukraine in 2021 continued for more than six months and the UN did nothing to reduce the chance of war breaking out between those two countries. By the time Russia had amassed a formidable force at the border, there was nothing the UN could do, other than to, perhaps, authorize NATO to respond with equal force.

But that is exactly the point here: the UN will never advocate a military response to any aggression by any country, even when such a military response might cause the other country to back down, thereby preserving the “peace.” I am confident that, had the NATO countries that border Russia also amassed their military forces along their border with Russia, hinting that they would respond with force should Russia attack Ukraine, Putin would have backed down and withdrawn his forces. Instead, everyone watched, expecting Russia to march into Kyiv and take over all of Ukraine within weeks.

But meeting force with force (or the threat of force) is not how the UN tries to maintain “peace.” Therefore, the United Nations will never be capable of fulfilling its charter of “maintaining international peace and security.”

A cursory reading of the Wikipedia entry on the history of the UN reveals that:

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Throughout the 1990s, the UN faced several simultaneous, serious crises within Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique, and the nations that previously made up Yugoslavia. The UN mission in Somalia was widely viewed as a failure after the United States’ withdrawal following casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu. The UN mission to Bosnia faced worldwide ridicule for its indecisive and confused mission in the face of ethnic cleansing. In 1994, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide amidst indecision in the Security Council.

From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, international interventions authorized by the UN took a wider variety of forms. The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 authorized the NATO-led Kosovo Force beginning in 1999. The UN mission in the Sierra Leone Civil War was supplemented by a British military intervention. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was overseen by NATO. In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq despite failing to pass a UN Security Council resolution for authorization, prompting a new round of questioning of the UN’s effectiveness.

Under the eighth secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, the UN intervened with peacekeepers in crises such as the War in Darfur in Sudan and the Kivu conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and sent observers and chemical weapons inspectors to the Syrian Civil War. In 2013, an internal review of UN actions in the final battles of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 concluded that the organization had suffered a “systemic failure”. In 2010, the organization suffered the worst loss of life in its history, when 101 personnel died in the Haiti earthquake. Acting under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 in 2011, NATO countries intervened in the First Libyan Civil War.

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Think about this: the UN suffered the “worst loss of life in its history” because of an earthquake! Not because they tried to break up a fight between two nations or sent troops to stop a war; because of an earthquake! And their losses amounted to 101 people. Meanwhile, millions of soldiers have died, since the inception of the UN, in wars that those diplomatic gamblers ignored because they didn’t care to prevent or stop them. And did you notice how much the UN seems to rely on NATO to do its “peacekeeping” by sending NATO forces into action?

The dissolution of the United Nations is inevitable. If anything, one can make a logical case for stating that the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, has, by his actions during his first year in office, done what the United Nations should have been doing. That is, Donald Trump has managed to get nations to discuss differences and to establish “peace” among themselves.

One can further argue that the current attack on Iran is due to the manner in which Iran has conducted their diplomatic negotiations by taking advantage of the United Nations and other international bodies to spend time negotiating while they continue to develop their military capability; the very focus of those diplomatic negotiations. For Iran, negotiations and dialogue are simply time holders that allow them to continue existing in order to destroy their enemies.

And this use of negotiations to stall for time is why the United Nations is ineffective. That slow and cumbersome UN bureaucracy can never “see” the manipulation of that bureaucracy by certain nations to obtain what they want from other nations, especially in the form of money allocated to the “poorer” nations.

As the largest contributor to the UN, the United States should take the lead in dismantling the UN by, first, kicking the UN HQ out of New York City. Then, the US should withdraw its membership from that institution. Without the support of the United States, the UN will dissolve very quickly while its ancillary organizations, such as the WHO, can try to survive on their own.

In my opinion, the only viable path to peace is global cooperation. This does not mean having “representatives” (i.e., diplomats) meeting endlessly to agree on the content of reports. What global cooperation looks like is every country helping all other countries. It’s the same as a community of neighbors who help each other out by giving and sharing; “live and HELP live.”

This is why, in my previous post on “A Logical Peace Plan Ukraine,” I suggested that, as part of the solution to that war, Ukraine agree to “share” the resource of the disputed lands with Russia, so that both can thrive TOGETHER. In that manner, Russia should be willing to allow Ukraine to return to its original borders of 1991. That willingness to share is what brings “neighbors” together and it’s what will bring nations together, establishing peace between each other.

All nations should strive to be neighbors, to help one another, rather than to take advantage of their neighbors and turn them into enemies. This is one reason that the UN has failed in its mission. The UN does not, and cannot, under its current structure as a country club for diplomats, promote cooperation among nations.

I daresay that Donald Trump, despite the attack on Iran, through his Abraham Accords and his Board of Peace,has done more to establish international peace than the United Nations. And it is because of this war in Iran, a war that has been forty-seven years in the making and that was not prevented and will not be stopped by the UN, that I call for the immediate dissolution of that irrelevant institution.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

The recent snowstorm that dumped record snow on the city of New York caused me to reminisce about the many years I spent growing up in the Big Apple. Good and bad, my mind brought out many experiences that impacted my early development as I transitioned into adulthood. A slight yearning to return nudged me emotionally. And as those memories filled my mind in no particular order, I began to ask myself: what caused me to leave that “city that never sleeps” in the first place?

Growing up in a densely populated city such as New York is a unique experience. I imagine the same is true for growing up in other large cities such as: Shanghai, Delhi, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, London, etc. No two people who grow up in any of those large cities turn out to be similar as adults. Anyone who calls themselves a “New Yorker,” for example, may share memories with those who lived in New York around the same time, like their high school buddies, but they can hardly compare themselves to someone who lived in New York twenty years prior or twenty years after, even if they lived in the same neighborhood. Those neighborhoods change their character very quickly due to the high turnover rate of residents.

So, it becomes difficult for me to accept the label of being a “typical” New Yorker because there really is no such thing. I mean, just look at Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani; both grew up in Queens, the same area of the city, and the two could not be more radically different than they are!

I recall arriving in that city of skyscrapers on a Greyhound bus that my family took from Miami, Florida, in a move prompted by my stepfather obtaining a new job. I was asleep in my seat when my mother shook me awake to let me know that we had arrived in the city. The bus was making some turns as it made its way towards the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42^nd street. I looked up at the tall buildings and exclaimed: “they don’t look like they’re touching the sky!” Thus began my relationship with a city that would mold me in ways I never expected and never fully understood.

From my elementary and junior high school days in Manhattan, to my high school days in Queens, to my college days in Spanish Harlem, my experiences molded me into a man desperate to get out of what seemed like a prison by the time I finished my college years. In summary, here is how I would categorize my best and worst experiences during my formative years in that city:

The Best of Growing Up in New York City

• New York pizza (the best! – sorry, Chicago, no offense)

• The American Museum of Natural History (I lived within walking distance and would play hide-and-seek inside the hallways with my friends after school – the museum was almost always empty and admission was free!)

• Central Park (the getaway playground for me and my friends regardless of season or weather, after we tired of playing hide-and-seek at the museum)

• Flushing Meadows Park (my new getaway playground after my family moved to Queens)

• Subways (when going to Yankees games or to the Staten Island ferry)

• Attending Yankees games at Yankee Stadium (sorry, Mets, no offense)

• Playing street ball (football in winter, baseball or stickball in summer, basketball in between)

• Riding the Staten Island ferry for fun

• Times Square

• Broadway plays

• Nathan’s hot dogs (from the hot dog stand)

• Bagel with butter and cream cheese (don’t ask) paired with a cup of coffee

• The Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall

The Worst of Growing Up in New York City

• Sewer smells, subway station smells, alleyway smells – pretty much all city smells except inside department stores and pizza joints

• Rats and roaches

• Hookers, male and female, soliciting clients on the streets (or anywhere, for that matter)

• Weirdos talking to themselves (before cellphones or earbuds) or just being weird

• Garbage piling up on the sidewalks (more smells!)

• People rummaging through garbage

• Getting mugged in Central Park (or anywhere in the city)

• Subways (during rush hour or late at night)

• Noise (police, fire and ambulance sirens echoing off the buildings, and car traffic)

• Frigid-cold winters

• Neighbors, upstairs, downstairs and to the sides making noises (or worse)

• Canyons of concrete and steel, and people boxing you in everywhere in Midtown Manhattan

I didn’t mention visiting the Empire State Building, which, at the time that I first moved to New York was the tallest building in the world. I also did not mention the Statue of Liberty which I visited only once. Interestingly enough, I saw the Twin Towers get built during my time in the city which, I suppose, makes my living experience there rather unique. But those tourist attractions were meant for outsiders, and most city dwellers I knew rarely visited them, if at all. The Freedom Tower, on the other hand, is a different story, especially for those who lived through the events of 9/11.

Before addressing the cause of my leaving Gotham for good, I want to take a step back and look at what created huge cities, such as New York, in the first place. Looking at the past and how civilization evolved, I think we can all appreciate how small villages that were located in large harbors attracted shipping traffic from all over the world, thus having the greatest potential for becoming large cities. And, for the longest time, such villages remained relatively small in population, below the one million level. However, when the Industrial Revolution hit, suddenly those villages ballooned beyond the million-inhabitants mark.

I looked up some statistics about population demographics and found that, by some educated estimates, the world’s population in the 18^th century (prior to the Industrial Revolution) consisted of approximately 90 percent rural/agrarian and approximately 10 percent or less living in cities. Up until the 18^th century, the largest cities in the world held less than a million people. So, before the Industrial Revolution, most people around the world lived on rural farms or small villages, and the largest cities of those times might be categorized today as a large village or a medium-sized city.

As a result of the Industrial Revolution, however, cities such as London, New York and Tokyo, which have large harbors that facilitate seaborne trading, became industrial hubs and magnets for international commerce. London, in particular, quickly rose in population, driven by rapid industrialization and migration, going from about 1 million inhabitants in 1800 to more than 6 million by the end of the century. London held the title of the world’s most populous city until being surpassed by New York around 1925. Moreover, because of the very large and relatively rapid migration of people into the city, London quickly became a city of poverty, where millions lived in overcrowded and unsanitary slums.

When I first arrived in New York, the city was pretty much as I’ve just described London. By population, New York was the largest city in America at the time. As with London, there were many pockets of poverty along with areas in which only the very wealthy lived. Such is the condition of most very large cities today; it’s almost a requirement by definition. And, I’m quite convinced that that pattern will continue for as long as cities remain densely populated centers. It’s human nature for those with the power of the ruling class to obtain the best living conditions for themselves, leaving the lower classes to struggle.

In that dog-eat-dog, everyone-for-themselves environment, one quickly develops a desire to climb the ladder of success, or else leave that rat race and find a different calling in some other place. During my high school years, for example, I dreamed of many possible futures. Being athletically inclined I thought of pursuing a career as a professional athlete. However, the adults around me (teachers, parents and relatives) convinced me I would do better pursuing a career in engineering or architecture.

By the time I graduated high school and started college, I became disillusioned with the city. My commute to college classes each day allowed me to see the city from a different perspective. There’s a song about New York City by Elton John, titled “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters,” from 1972, which contains the following verses as part of the lyrics:

Subway’s no way for a good man to go down

Rich man can ride and the hobo, he can drown

Those lines encapsulate, for me, what living in New York City was all about during my life there. The rich man can make it in that city because he can afford that penthouse overlooking Central Park and ride in limousines or taxis above ground, but the commoner (meaning middle class or lower) will always struggle, being relegated to partake of the mass transit system and barely able to afford decent housing.

Thus, for the working class, their life choices are to pursue wealth and hope to become one of the “haves,” or else to leave the city and find their own calling in life, whatever that may be and wherever that may lead. Otherwise, one remains a worker bee, riding the subway to/from work every day, living in a closet-sized “room” in an apartment one shares with five other roommates while paying rent that would get one a one-bedroom apartment solo in most other places around the country. During my college years, I sought to leave and find my own calling; a calling that I hoped would result in a slower pace of life in wide open spaces, with many opportunities to “smell the roses.”

To get a better appreciation for the intense density of the city, the projected operating budget for New York City for fiscal 2027 is over 100 billion dollars; a figure that exceeds the state budgets of at least 47 states. Only the states of California, Texas and Florida have larger budgets than the “CITY” of New York. That’s mind-boggling! A city that covers only about 300 square miles of land area requiring that much capital to operate deserves its own unique classification as a city-state. The King Ranch in Texas is almost three times bigger than New York City in land area – and it’s a ranch!

And with its very large population, the city has more than 500 high schools! That’s almost two high schools for every square mile of city. And if you consider elementary schools, and middle schools, they number more than three times the number of high schools; all contained within that 300 square-mile area. The high school I attended when I lived there, for example, had over five thousand students. For reference, there are thousands of incorporated cities in America with fewer residents.

Recall that, in a previous posting of mine on “A New Form of Government,” I recommended that, for the sake of those states that are overwhelmed by their large cities, such as Arizona (Phoenix), California (Los Angeles), Illinois (Chicago), New York (NYC), Texas (Dallas-Ft. Worth and Huston) and Florida (Miami), those large cities should be designated as separate states, providing them with the same representation in the federal government as other states.

And in a separate post on “Cities and Civilization,” I wrote that living in a big city meant dealing with the criminal element and that, rather than serving as examples of progress, very large cities only serve to dehumanize the population and set back civilization by bringing out the worst of humanity, with everyone a stranger and survival of the fittest being the primary way of life. And today, more than ever, obviously, those large cities simply keep growing in size and complexity. In essence, New York City has become a densely concentrated country that can only become denser the further it grows vertically. And that’s a problem.

It is estimated that, today, more than 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. Furthermore, it is estimated that, by the year 2050, as much as ninety percent of the entire human population will be concentrated in urban centers. It bothers me to think that the majority of future humans will live in a manner not too different from the way I lived growing up in New York (or worse). If ninety percent of the world’s population lives in urban centers, that would imply, because of the nature of large cities, that poverty will increase to unprecedented levels.

But here’s an idea with the potential to become reality within the next thirty years that might alleviate that situation: as large cities continue to grow in the vertical direction, with some buildings already exceeding two thousand feet in height, there is a possibility that every new building will become its own self-contained city. That is, new buildings that exceed a certain capacity will contain schools, hospitals, restaurants, shops, green spaces, exercise and recreation spaces, in addition to living spaces, all within one gigantic structure.

If this were to materialize before humanity reaches the ninety percent urban threshold, there’s a good chance we can keep poverty down and make large cities desirable again. Potentially, some people might spend their entire lives inside “the building.” Naturally, each such building would have its own government: a mayor, a council, and building laws and law enforcement, etc.

While my memories of living and growing up in New York City include some that I retain with some level of fondness, I don’t miss living in that city in the least; the bad memories simply outweigh the good by a lot. Nevertheless, those who live there now are living their own unique New Yorker life; a life that perhaps is very good, indeed. As for me, inspired by Elton John’s line “subway’s no way for a good man to go down,” I’m glad I left when I did.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

Another Valentine’s Day has passed and my wife and I still love each other. Yes, I count the blessings in my life.

You see, a very funny thing happened recently that made my wife and I realize how much we still love each other. This Valentine’s Day, I kept my gifts simple and traditional; I decided to give my wife a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates, along with a small heart-shaped jewelry box. Naturally, I also bought a greeting card, selecting the one I thought best captured our relationship.

When I surprised her at home, she was ready for me with her own greeting card, a hug and a kiss, wishing me a happy Valentine’s Day. I immediately opened the greeting card and, to my surprise, found a duplicate of the greeting card I had bought for her. I immediately let out an uncontrolled hearty laughter that I could not contain for a few seconds. She had no idea what had tickled my funny bone so suddenly and I could not stop laughing enough to tell her. Through my uncontrollable “ha-ha-has” that had me in tears, I gestured for her to open the greeting card I had just given her. She opened it and immediately realized why I was laughing so hard.

Inasmuch as our having decided to buy the same greeting card (trust me, there were hundreds of different cards from which to choose) indicated a melding of minds due to our marriage, as I regained my composure and stopped laughing, my mind took me to thinking about what it means to be married. As some of you know from reading some of my postings, I’ve been married twice; so, I know a thing AND two about marriage.

When I look back at my first marriage, my mind takes me to another world. We were both young twenty-somethings thoroughly in love after having known each other for almost a decade, corresponding frequently via snail mail and at times endlessly talking on the telephone (before cell phones and the internet). We had discussed the possibility of marriage several times and finally took the plunge after I graduated from college and began my professional career.

As the wedding day approached, I was terrified by the many thoughts of what I was getting into. I knew my life would be instantly transformed as soon as I said “I do” but I didn’t know how. I kept thinking of all the single women I knew and friends who would be locked out of my life once I obtained the “married” merit badge.

I also gave great thought to the woman I was marrying: was she the right choice for me or was there someone “better” out there? And what would our children be like? How many children will we have? What kind of mother would she be? What kind of father would I be? What kind of husband? Was I prepared to take on the responsibility of caring for a family? Would we grow old together to the end of our lives or would we break up at some point?

Those thoughts consumed my mind the days leading up to the wedding and caused me to lose a lot of sleep (and weight). However, as that fateful day grew closer, I convinced myself, through many different justifications, that I was ready to make this important commitment and that my bride-to-be was the right woman for me. We were going to be the perfect couple and we were going to have the perfect family!

Fast-forward twenty years. After raising two wonderful sons, and through many trials and tribulations, we found ourselves in the midst of a divorce. Through no fault of our own, or, perhaps because of our collective complacency about our marriage relationship, we lost our trust in one another and could not communicate effectively anymore. Every conversation quickly devolved into a shouting match and we both knew our marriage relationship was irreparably broken. I’m sure this scenario has played itself out many times over many centuries, but that bit of knowledge did not make the process any easier on us or our children. The divorce was rather amicable, based on divorces I’ve witnessed in the past, and, to this day, my ex-wife and I remain on friendly terms.

It’s way easier to get married than to get divorced, not just because of the process involved in a divorce, but because of the emotional trauma inflicted on all involved; from the parents, to the children (especially the children!), to family members and even employers who might see the divorce as a failure-to-maintain what we today refer to as a “balanced life,” which might affect promotions. In a nutshell, after dedicating so much time (I think we can all agree that twenty years is a long time) to keeping that family together, I felt that I had failed completely as a husband to my wife and as a father to our children. That experience left many psychological scars on everyone.

By the time marriage number two came around, I was much older, a bit wiser, and more practical in my approach to relationships. The psychological scars from my first marriage had healed enough, although I still had many reservations about marrying again as the pain from the divorce weighed on my mind. My second wife, who had experienced a divorce herself, was also hesitant, questioning the “need” for us to marry at our age. Nevertheless, we’ve been married now for more than ten years and hope to be together to the end, knock on wood.

In my second go around, I’ve become more pragmatic about what it means to get married and I have no illusions about maintaining a perfect marriage. You see, what I’ve come to realize is that marriage is not a certification of love or happiness; it is a privilege accorded by our government (or a religious institution) to two people who are prepared to make a commitment to reproduce human beings and nurture them to grow into a family. Otherwise, why bother going through such a stress-inducing process if one simply wants to be together with a soulmate?

As a perfect example of this idea that marriage is not a certification of love or happiness, consider that a very famous Hollywood couple has been together for more than forty years WITHOUT EVER GETTING MARRIED! And, guess what? They raised a family during that time. Of course, I’m talking about Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn; they never asked the government for permission to live together without a marriage license (or, did they?).

Marriage is a government institution that has nothing to do with love. Marriage forces a couple to negotiate and figure out: sleeping arrangements, financial responsibilities, who takes out the trash, who does laundry, who’s turn it is to feed the baby or change the baby’s diaper, etc. Marriage is like being thrown into a jail cell and battling it out for who gets the top bunk and who has the “alpha” personality. Furthermore, the idea of needing some kind of certification for starting a family is a slap in the face to those who have families by “accident” or who choose to raise a family without a “license,” as with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. Marriage is, and always has been, a contract, much like a business contract, in which both parties agree to remain together “till death do them part.”

Thinking so much about marriage somehow led me to consider the landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) in 2015 regarding same-sex marriage. As I look back on the life and death of my first marriage, and as I consider the ruling by the SCOTUS on same-sex marriage (OBERGEFELL v. HODGES), I can’t help but wonder: what got into those people who decided to take their case all the way to the Supreme Court? Didn’t they understand what marriage is all about? Knowing what I know, if I’m being offered a choice between the freedom to be whomever I want, or getting married, I’d choose to be free (no offense, darling).

You see, humans have learned over the course of their existence that copulation, what we sometimes euphemistically refer to as “love,” leads to a new life being formed; a life that requires the constant attention of the original parents in order to become a viable member of the species. Because of this, somewhere along the way, maybe to address the issue of infant mortality or women left to fend for themselves with their babies, humanity introduced the concept of marriage, in which the male and female humans that meet and wish to copulate make a pact to remain together “forever” in order to begin and grow a family.

And it used to be, not too long ago, that marriages were forced on people. In some cases, marriages were arranged between very old men and young pre-pubescent girls. Today we would refer to those old guys as criminal pedophiles. But even in our present time, arranged marriages exist in some cultures, ignoring the couple’s feelings or opinions on the matter.

To me, who has experienced marriage twice and a divorce once, the “right to marriage” is a trap, embraced by society, intended to coax non-monogamous humans to remain together, sexually faithful to each other for the rest of their lives. In addition, as difficult a choice as marriage is, divorcing (i.e., ending the marriage so you can marry someone else you suddenly discovered you “love”), which has also been in existence in one form or another for thousands of years, is a much more difficult choice to make.

Let me be clear, I am not passing judgment on same-sex marriage; I am simply making a statement, from having experienced marriage and divorce, that marriage is not necessarily the desirable institution that it’s made out to be. I’m quite comfortable with anyone marrying anyone, including old geezers marrying underage girls, if at some future time the SCOTUS decides that to be the new law of the land. My objection here is to ask: why? Why would anyone want to ball-and-chain themselves to a relationship (sorry, dear) in pursuit of “freedom” if they don’t have to?

Look, if your objective is to seek government benefits, then, yes, by all means ask the SCOTUS to make same-sex marriage, or any other kind of marriage, the law of the land. And if you want to adopt children, great – go for it! Just don’t expect your life to be all rosy; ask any set of parents who are raising two or more children.

The one thing that strikes me about the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges is that the majority opinion failed to define marriage. Instead, the five justices focused on the idea that marriage is a constitutional right, in the same way that “the pursuit of happiness” is a right, and then declared that the law of the land from now on shall be to allow “same-sex couples” to marry. As such, they left wide open the who-what-where and when of marriage. And, in leaving open the definition of marriage, the majority opinion justices have created a legal mess which only they can resolve in future challenges, with the potential for having this ruling completely overturned in the future. In my mind, they failed to consider the most important law of the land - the “law of unintended consequences.”

For example, looking back at my own experience with marriage and divorce, I can easily see a time in the future when divorce will no longer exist. Why? Because if the SCOTUS has already ruled that marriage is a constitutional right, then on what grounds can states continue to allow married people to get divorced? After that ruling, getting a divorce means the person who petitions for a divorce is denying the other partner their “right” to remain married. If marriage is a right afforded by the constitution, then how can a married couple get divorced? I suppose if both parties claim that they now hate each other, it might make sense. Nevertheless, I see a silver lining to this: without the process of divorce, couples will no longer have to worry about paying a lawyer to split up property or change their IRS filing status, or change their name on their credit cards.

Now, the idea that divorce is no longer valid raises another interesting possible consequence of the ruling: without divorce, how many times can someone marry to exercise their “right to marriage”? That is, if someone marries for love because that has now become their right according to the US Supreme Court, what is to prevent a person who is married and can no longer get divorced, from falling in love with someone else and desire to marry that person as well? How can states reasonably place a limit on how many times someone can marry without denying them their “right to marry”? Should states require that both partners in a marriage must love the third person equally before a third person may marry into the existing marriage? Since this would again be constraining a constitutional liberty, on what basis would the legislature create such limits? Certainly not on moral or religious grounds! And how does the government apportion benefits to multiply-married people? Again, there may be a positive consequence to this, as people can marry as many times as they want while reaping the additional government benefits that such multiple marriages bring.

Carrying this thought process even further, what in this ruling prevents a pedophile from exercising his right to marry an underage person if both profess their love for one another? The justices who ruled in the majority did not specify an age at which someone who is “in love” acquires this right to marriage. How old is too old and how young is too young to have this “constitutional” right? Depending on the answer to this question, I can easily see the pedophile lobby (if there currently is such a thing) pressing our judicial system to rule in favor of older adults marrying under age children. With their ruling, the SCOTUS have opened the door to the possibility that a school teacher and student who fall in love with each other might be able to marry exclusively without the parents’ permission.

The law of unintended consequences has a habit of striking back with a hard dose of reality. Without a clear definition of “marriage,” and all that the word entails, the US Supreme Court has set itself up to crash mightily against the reality of their ruling. The convulsions we will experience in our culture and our society over the next several years will serve as a reminder that our government is not perfect and our judges are just simple human beings like the rest of us.

As for my current marriage, I’ve developed a certain comfort in my relationship with my wife. As our minds meld even more, I feel that we understand our roles in this relationship well enough that we can make this marriage last as intended: “till death do us part.”

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

(Artwork developed from photo by Gary Hershorn, REUTERS)

Another Super bowl has passed along with another halftime show controversy. Although I’m sure Bad Bunny gained way more fans from his Super Bowl LX appearance than he would have gained by simply continuing on his award-winning career trajectory, I did not watch the halftime show or the alternative shows that competed for eyeballs (and ears) during that portion of the game. Usually, I watch football games to see the game of football being played.

And while I enjoyed watching the game to some extent, I found myself more focused on the celebration that took place at the home of my friend who hosted the Super Bowl party to which I was invited. In particular, the thing that caught my attention more than anything else, outside of the game being played on the screen, was the behavior of the people in the house.

You see, as with all these types of celebratory gatherings, there was quite a bit of alcohol consumed, along with the usual bragging while discussing the game and the halftime show. At one point, our host lit fireworks outside the house when his team scored a touchdown. He did this a couple of times, despite several of us advising against it, causing not just very loud noises in the neighborhood, but setting off car alarms in the vicinity of his house. Apparently, my friend lives in a neighborhood that tolerates that kind of activity, as the police never knocked on the door while I was there.

Nevertheless, I was somewhat unnerved by the amount of alcohol being consumed. As some of you frequent readers of my postings already know, I’m sensitive to the effects of alcoholism. I wrote extensively on this controversial issue in my article on “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of…Alcoholism.” In that posting I also wrote about my personal experiences with relatives and close friends who suffered greatly from the effects of alcohol consumption.

As I thought about the Super Bowl party host’s actions, I started thinking about how we are all driven to act in certain ways that seem to be out of our control. It’s almost as though we are all trapped into performing a role in which all our actions are controlled by an external entity. Like puppets on a string, our actions are, if not predictable, very characteristic of our personalities. And as our personalities lead us to actions based on what our minds construct, sometimes it seems everything our minds construct has already been predetermined by the environment into which we are born. So, I didn’t even bother trying to talk anyone at that party out of consuming alcohol. It is what it is.

I’ll connect back to the Super Bowl party later.

In one of my previous articles, “The illusion of freedom,” I wrote about how freedom, in its most basic sense, is difficult to achieve primarily because of our self-imposed constraints brought about by the manner in which our DNA interacts with the specific environment to which we are exposed.

In America, for example, we all believe in freedom. But, as I pointed out in my posting on “The Illusion of Freedom,” ever since the events of 9/11 we have allowed our governments to monitor everyone as much as possible in order to prevent home-grown terrorists from plotting and executing another event like the one of 9/11, or when Timothy McVeigh bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. And with the development of new technologies come more effective methods for governments to control our movements, our thoughts, and our beliefs. Since 9/11, then, most of us have surrendered our freedom in exchange for the idea that, collectively, our government will keep us safe.

Today, America as a nation is still struggling to protect and provide freedom to its citizens. The same reasoning that drove Tim McVeigh to bomb a federal building and kill 169 people in 1995, is percolating in those who are currently protesting against American federal agencies. In today’s politically-charged environment, it’s quite possible for history to repeat itself, as some future version of Tim McVeigh executes a similar act for similar reasons.

The connection I’d like to make between the host of the Super Bowl party and someone such as Tim McVeigh is not in their actions, but in how they both simply acted out the roles given to them by the environment in which they were born and in how their DNA made them respond to that environment: stimulus → response.

If you read the Wikipedia entry on McVeigh, from the chronological narrative of his development, one gets the sense that even his thoughts were predetermined by the world around him, which was, in some respects, a far less controlling world than the one in which we live today.

You see, this whole concept of freedom is grounded in the illusion that we are all “born free.” That is, that each of us is born with a God-given internal freedom to think as we wish. Furthermore, we believe that each of us acts according to the constraints imposed by our id, ego and superego (if we buy into the theories of Sigmund Freud). Thus, even if we accept the premise that we are born with any kind of freedom (freedom of thought, for example), we run into the problem of being constrained by our reasoning abilities into acting as we do. That is to say, our id, ego, and superego act to keep what we think from becoming what we do.

When we speak of freedom, we usually think of the ability of an individual to act according to his or her independent will. That is, when an individual thinks about an action, or plans an action, and is not prevented from executing that action, either by other individuals or by the individual’s environment, we say that the individual is in a state or condition of being free, even if the individual takes no action. In this latter case, having freedom implies, not that an action must be taken in order to know that freedom exists, but, rather, in a more general sense, that the opportunity to take ANY action always exists. And if we consider an individual who is incarcerated, such an individual is commonly thought of as not having complete freedom. In fact, when released from prison, we usually speak of the prisoner’s condition as that of having their freedom “restored.”

We also often speak of the will – that quality inside all of us that drives us to action, in conjunction with freedom. The idea that we have free will, or the ability to make choices free from any constraints, is widely held to be true. Because our thoughts are wholly contained within ourselves, we say that all human beings are free to think anything they want to think. But, is this really true? Can it be proven that even our thoughts are manipulated by entities external to our minds?

Let’s consider how our thoughts materialize in our minds.

For example, even as my thoughts seem to materialize out of thin air at times, I would argue that those thoughts are constrained by such things as language, prior knowledge, prior experiences, and my internal nature as determined by my DNA. For example, I’ve never experienced having thoughts in Japanese, a language I’ve never learned, and I’m quite incapable of having thoughts concerning technologies that will be developed five hundred years from now.

And our dreams, in their many forms (REM sleep dreams, daydreams, visions, aspirations, etc.), which tend to spur us to action, can be considered to be brain activity that is limited by our Personal Mental Database (PMD). For example, children are incapable of dreaming of being grandparents, and individuals who have never heard of or seen snow cannot conceptualize what that is. The thoughts we generate can only be generated from the PMD we possess at the time that we generate those thoughts. As such, I think we can safely say that even our “free will” thoughts are constrained by the interaction of our limited PMD with our DNA-driven “instincts.”

I’m confident that, if Sigmund Freud had known about DNA when he first formulated his theory of psychoanalysis, he would not have developed the idea of an id, ego and superego; but, rather, he would have established a science of the psyche based on the interaction between human DNA and our environment. Today, psychologists hint at this connection as they assess personalities based on how individuals are affected by their environment: some wind up being productive citizens contributing greatly to society, others become law-abiding workers doing their part, while a few become criminals who disrupt the existing structure of society. But all of them can be said to arrive at “who they are” by way of how their DNA made them respond to their environment as they evolved into self-directed adults.

So it seems to me that the idea of “freedom,” including the concept of “free will,” is just an illusion. None of us is truly free as we are constrained since the beginning of time by the coding in our DNA and in how that coding interacts with the very unique environment into which we are born, to create who we are. That includes the thoughts we generate; thoughts that become more and more complex as we grow and increase our PMD. Thus, the host of our Super Bowl party acted exactly as he was supposed to act, just as the rest of us in that party setting acted exactly as we were supposed to act, and just as Bad Bunny acted as he was supposed to act at halftime. Even Timothy McVeigh acted as he was supposed to act.

But aside from the illusion of freedom and free will, there is one other very impactful idea related to this topic that has affected humanity since the American Revolution. You see, our well-intentioned Founding Fathers decided to pen the following statements to the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

• That all men are created equal

• That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights

• That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

• That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

• That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

[emphasis mine]

And it is this phrase, “that all men are created equal,” that has had the greatest effect on society since the American Revolution. I call this phrase: the Big Lie. As I stated in one of my previous articles, I think we can easily accept, from the discussion thus far, that the proposition that all men (and women) are created equal, as stated in the American Declaration of Independence, is false. For those of us who have lived a fairly full life, the falsity of that proposition is self-evident. One only needs to look around to see that every individual in the world possesses unique characteristics from birth, including a very unique birth environment, and no two individuals are identical. Even identical twins and clones represent different and unique individuals.

Because people are born with different color skin, eyes, and hair; and because people are born to different parents, families, and homes; and because people are born to different wealth, religions and political environments, they are not created equal. And because people are born to be short or tall, weak or strong, smart or not-so-smart, as determined by their DNA, they are not created equal. In short, the statement that all humans are created equal is a Big Lie.

And perhaps it’s because of this Big Lie that many of our institutions pretend to create equality where there is none. We see this primarily in our military systems in which everyone is forced to look the same and wear the same uniform. But we also see this with our school systems in which all students must conform to the same standards of knowledge and behavior, and with our corporate business institutions in which workers are pigeon-holed into working according to expected knowledge and established standards of behavior. In today’s society, it seems the only “safe” place in which an individual can express their imagination and individuality is in the “privacy” of their own home; a privacy that is increasingly being threatened by today’s technologies. Today, we’ve discovered Big Brother’s secret identity: Google.

And so, because I’ve reached the conclusion that freedom, and by extension, free will, are illusions, and that we are not created equal, I’ve more or less given up on trying to convince my friend who hosted the Super Bowl party to give up booze. He will live his life according to the lifepath that has been predetermined for him since the beginning. I’m not sure what effect my lifepath, as it crosses his, will have on his life or mine; I can only react to my environment based on my PMD and my DNA. And, in reacting, I fall into the trap of playing the role assigned to me.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

The following is a true story.

After being laid off from the aerospace company for which I had worked more than twenty years, I tried looking for new work. This happened during the Great Recession and, not having established a good network of colleagues on whom I could rely for potential job leads, I was left to search for work on my own. Although I was in my mid-fifties at the time, I soon found a job opportunity at SpaceX and made a good enough impression on paper (online) with my cover letter and resume, that I was granted an interview.

For those of you who may not know about the reputation that Elon Musk established early on with his hiring practices at various companies, but especially at SpaceX, read on.

You see, although I had heard that SpaceX was prone to hire only young people, I nevertheless made an attempt to present myself as being valuable enough that the company should hire me. I wasn’t going to hide my age, as so many of my unemployed colleagues were told to do, as I felt that my experience counted for more than my age and, obviously, based on the information in my resume, the SpaceX hiring managers and HR people thought enough of my qualifications and experience to grant the interview.

Reflexively, I dressed for this particular in-person interview as I had for many other interviews, in a suit and tie. When it came to face-to-face interviews, back then, that was the uniform-of-the-day. However, as I drove along Southern California highways on my way to the interview, recalling that Elon Musk hired mostly young people, with most wearing jeans and t-shirts to work, and some even eating and sleeping at their work stations, I decided to ditch the tie and jacket and roll up my sleeves for the interview.

When I arrived at the SpaceX facility, I was greeted by a young lady who was wearing, you guessed it: blue jeans and a short-sleeved blouse. At her prompting, I followed her to a large open courtyard with a cafeteria-like area of tables and chairs, and some desks around the periphery that appeared to be work stations. We sat down at one of the tables for the interview.

As I did my best to answer the questions being thrown at me, I looked around and noticed that just about everyone sitting at the tables or desks were wearing jeans, sneakers and t-shirts or polo shirts, including a couple of individuals who appeared to be about my age. I felt very out of place even in my reduced business-casual attire.

Needless to say, I did not get the job. In my battle damage (or post mortem) assessment of the interview, I concluded that the age factor was just too great an obstacle to overcome as a potential new employee at SpaceX. And, although I had toured the original SpaceX facilities several years earlier when Elon Musk first started the company (I even got a free SpaceX baseball cap!), I had no meaningful connections inside that company that would let me in the door, so to speak.

Returning to the discussion at hand (I’ll come back to the SpaceX connection later), I read recently that the launch of the Artemis II rocket that is set to send astronauts around the Moon (after more than fifty years!), was postponed due to a fuel leak and concern over the “extreme” cold weather in Florida. Here is one of the better descriptions by Josh Dinner of Space.com, of that postponement. And here is an editorial by Eric Berger of Ars Technica, in which he writes about the “elephant in the room” that is causing these space delays. In his article, Berger argues that the long delays and periods of time between launches of the Space Launch System (SLS) are due to very high costs and to the fact that the system is unnecessarily slow (meaning, I suppose, that it takes twelve hours to move the spacecraft from the VAB to the launchpad, a mere 3.5 miles away).

And in reading some of the comments by NASA officials regarding this delay, one would think this is the first time NASA has ever attempted to use this rocket system or ever attempted to send people to the Moon. Making every flight an “experimental” flight does not guarantee mission success. Yet, for all the hoopla surrounding this new Moon initiative, Artemis II does not even come close to representing a “giant leap for mankind.”

This is especially so because the SLS system belongs to a bygone era. Using technology that was developed more than forty years ago and that is more closely associated with the very expensive Space Shuttle system, which is why that system was scrapped to begin with, can only result in very expensive delays. If humanity is making any kind of leap with the SLS system, it’s a leap in a backwards direction.

And coming on the heels of commemorating the anniversary of the Challenger explosion on January 28, this latest news on Artemis II triggered memories of that explosion and the news surrounding it. In turn, those memories immediately triggered memories of the Columbia tragedy, in which one astronaut with whom I worked in a professional capacity at one time, Mike Anderson, was killed.

The Challenger explosion revealed to us the O-ring issue while the Columbia tragedy revealed the broken thermal tile issue. In both cases, one can say with some level of justification that the root cause of both disasters, regardless of the official results from NASA investigations, was the increased complexity of the systems being used, and of our human inability to keep up with that complexity.

Allow me to expand on this idea a bit further.

You see, the real elephant in the room for space exploration has always been the complexity of those efforts. Today’s rocket ships are infinitely more complex than the great sailing ships of old, which were probably the most complex systems of their time. Systems that require thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of workers to build and to make them work correctly, whether automobiles, trains, airplanes or spaceships, are simply too complex for any one individual to comprehend and fully understand. For some reason, we humans seem to be imbued with a propensity for making anything we build as complicated as possible; we seem to delight in creating Rube Goldberg machines.

And this propensity is present in our most sophisticated systems and products, especially in our space exploration systems. For example, I recall, while working on a space project for NASA, that we had to design many parts to extremely tight tolerances (for proper fit, function and low weight) which often resulted in parts that had to be redesigned or scrapped because their manufacturing didn’t meet the required design specifications, or the component didn’t interface correctly with another component or assembly. Thus, our designers were forced to work within very precise physical and weight constraints that at times risked meeting the overall mission requirements, rendering that “system” ineffective.

In addition, due to the very hazardous nature of launching rockets into space, NASA required triple and sometimes quadruple redundancies in some of the spacecraft components, especially when it came to the computer systems. Basically, NASA admitted they did not trust the designs they approved, so they addressed the complexity factor of the systems by creating redundancies, allowing NASA to accept as many as two or three failures and still (hopefully) fulfill their mission.

Unfortunately, as we learned all too well from the Challenger and Columbia disasters, the complexity of some systems means that even redundancies sometimes can’t prevent an unanticipated failure of a weak link in the system, especially when those involved fail to understand what makes that weak link “weak” to begin with.

Furthermore, our knowledge of a system is soon lost when the system is passed on to a new generation because the new generation never bothered to extract that essential knowledge and experience properly, forcing that new generation to relearn the system, resulting in missed pearls of wisdom or, in some cases, scrapping the entire system altogether and creating a new, sometimes less effective system from scratch. Most NASA engineers who worked on the SLS system weren’t yet born when many of those technologies first came into being. So it is that even the most intelligent among us cannot handle the complexity of the systems we are currently developing; hence, leaky rockets.

Circling back to the story of SpaceX, as was pointed out in the ARS Technica article, NASA is trying to stick to a schedule using old, practically obsolete technology that produces leaks and, ultimately, is too complex to understand and control. But, doing so in the interest of completing (or “winning”?) a new “space race” is a recipe for disaster (again!). Meanwhile, SpaceX and Blue Origin wait in the wings with cheaper and more reliable spacecraft.

Obviously, it’s too late to scrap the SLS system (or, is it?). But what I believe needs to be done, not just in the spacecraft industry, but with all our transportation systems and even in such fields as education, government (especially with governments!) and with our economy, is to keep it simple; the old K.I.S.S. principle. If you notice at the bottom of that Wikipedia entry on the KISS principle, there is an interesting quote attributed to Northcote Parkinson: “Expansion [growth] means complexity and complexity, decay; or to put it even more plainly—the more complex, the sooner dead.”

Naturally, keeping it simple is a difficult thing to do when systems evolve and grow, a process that automatically increases complexity. But, just as Rube Goldberg machines contain many unnecessary steps (which, in the world of rockets and spaceships means a LOT of wasted money), sometimes systems as they develop and evolve retain old and obsolete components in the name of expediency (i.e., sticking to a schedule and keeping costs down), as happened with the SLS. The result is that those obsolete components become a detriment to the growth of the system, turning that system into a Rube Goldberg machine.

Over the years I developed a rule-of-thumb “complexity factor” that I form in my mind from time to time to gauge the complexity of any system. This complexity factor measures the number of people it takes to completely understand and maintain a system. When the correct number of people involved are in control and fully understand the system and its inputs and outputs, I assign a complexity factor of 1 (CF=1). A system is oversimplified if more people are assigned to it than are needed, and I assign a complexity factor less than one, depending on how many individuals exceed the number required. Of course, there’s always the “too-many-cooks-spoil-the-broth” problem to be considered; bloated management, for example.

And, obviously, when the complexity of a system exceeds what the people attempting to control and maintain that system are capable of, the complexity factor is greater than one. Based on this rule-of-thumb, I consider all the space exploration systems currently in use, including at SpaceX and at Blue Origin, to be overly complex systems with a complexity factor greatly exceeding 1.

But here’s a curious thing I’ve noticed: as we realize and admit that the systems we’re developing are too complex for us to fully understand and control, along comes this technology known as artificial intelligence (AI). Just as complexity seems about to destroy our quest for knowledge and understanding as we embark on exploring the cosmos, this new technology serendipitously falls on our laps, as it were, allowing us to fully control the most complex systems we can imagine (or not). And although AI is still in a Wild West environment in which everyone is shooting in different directions, I see the potential here for us to develop very complicated systems without turning them into Rube Goldberg machines.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Artemis II and the new efforts to put humans on the Moon succeed. But the very idea that I, and especially any leader and decision-maker at NASA, must keep our fingers crossed and “hope” that the space exploration systems we are using with which to explore the cosmos work, indicates that those systems are overly complex and beyond our comprehension. We’re basically “praying” that everything goes right. With the exception of religions, no system that humans create should have “hope” as an output.

NASA is hamstrung by small budgets and too many mouths (scientists and engineers) to feed. SpaceX, on the other hand, represents a new way forward in exploring space that is more effective than NASA’s SLS. And, despite the fact that SpaceX did not offer me a job, I greatly admire Elon Musk as a visionary leader. I only wish he would sell off his other holdings and really focus intently on establishing a system for shuttling humans to and from Mars. Let others build electric vehicles; that’s no longer a novel technology, anyway. The same goes for satellites, for solar power, etc.; all those distractions only serve to delay development of effective (CF=1) systems for going to and from Mars. SpaceX and going to Mars is where Elon Musk should put all his chips; then the payoff will be great!

Enjoy Super Bowl Sunday and thank you for reading and sharing this article.

I recently found an item on my newsfeed regarding an issue with an Olympic bobsledder who seems to have missed qualifying for the Winter Olympics. The issue in that story centers on the delegation from Canada withdrawing from the North American Cup qualifying competition held in Lake Placid, New York, in order to purposely prevent the bobsledder from qualifying for the upcoming Winter Olympic games in Italy.

As I read that story, my mind brought back memories of past Olympics and, for some reason, of the hype built around the Olympic torch relay and how the flame from that lit torch is passed from runner to runner as it makes its way to the venue, becoming the “match” that lights the Olympic flame, making that flame burn brightly during the games.

And as I thought about it further, I considered the many ways in which each generation of human beings essentially “passes the baton,” or that proverbial torch, to the succeeding generation. Thus, each generation creates a legacy, physical, cultural and societal, that gets passed to the next generation; a legacy that defines the destiny of humanity, for better or for worse.

With those thoughts engulfing my mind, I then thought about what legacy my generation, the boomer generation, as it fades into history, has handed off to subsequent generations so that they might successfully continue the human “race.” I thus began to consider what my generation accomplished that would help subsequent generations move forward towards a greater civilization.

As I gave those ideas some thought, I came up with a few generational heirlooms that I feel we boomers passed on to subsequent generations. Here then, from my perspective and in no particular order, are several significant paradigms that I feel have been adopted in different ways by subsequent generations (Millennials, X, Y, and Z), and that will greatly impact the direction of society and civilization going forward.

Technology Development

The greatest contribution to humanity was probably made, not by my generation but by the preceding generation. The previous generation that came back from the wars, World War II and the Korean War, immediately began work on putting satellites in space and, eventually, sending humans to the moon. Somehow, wars always seem to bring out the best in human inventiveness and creativity.

The parents of the boomer generation also came up with the digital computer, television, the microwave oven, jet airplanes, intercontinental missiles, satellites, amateur radio (ham and CB radio), and the atomic bomb. That generation also discovered DNA and originated SPAM as a type of food. As well, my parents’ generation taught us many lessons in recycling, reusing and reducing waste, which they learned all too well while fighting those wars. Even so, that generation managed to pollute the environment such that they discovered global warming and created Earth Day as a reminder that we need to take care of our ecosystem, if we are to survive in it.

Meanwhile, my generation, the baby boomers, decided to halt any further exploration of space with humans, except for keeping humans circling the Earth in space stations that served as joy rides for astronauts, while justifying those expensive rides as being done in the name of “science.” My generation did manage to send out probes to the planet Mars, landing quite a few rovers and even a tiny helicopter on the surface of the Red Planet. We also improved on the other technologies developed by our parents, including creating the personal digital computer, digital cameras, 3-D printers, the internet and social media, and “smart” cell phones as well as satellite communications, including satellite radio, phone and internet.

And as I look at where those technologies lie today, it seems that the generations that followed the boomers have become so filled with fear and anxiety that they have further developed some of those technologies but only to put their minds at ease. Perhaps it’s the threat of a nuclear holocaust or of apocalyptic climate change. Or, maybe it’s the insecurity caused by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the COVID pandemic. In any case, it seems the newest generations want technologies that make them feel secure and safe, rather than to bravely explore the universe and, in the process, create a far future world filled with enduring abundance.

So, for example, in their panic to address climate change, the newer generations chose to use space exploration technology mostly to monitor the earth environment. They also very quickly developed electric vehicles by swapping the internal combustion engine for an electric engine. No thought was given to how much the other components of the vehicle contribute to climate change or even how the entire vehicle-road infrastructure or transportation system contributes to climate change. In addition, it seems no thought was given to how much the electric grid would be stressed with all the additional power requirements placed on that grid. We simply decided to electrify everything!

Even human-powered bicycles, which are probably the cleanest form of transportation, and a great form of health-promoting exercise, have now been electrified. E-bikes have become so pervasive throughout America that in some areas those e-bikes have become a hazard and are being confiscated for violating various city and state regulations. In my two-part series on Climate Change and Me, I discuss at length the anxiety caused by climate change and how we’ve responded over the years as we try to allay that fear and anxiety.

Women’s Liberation, Racial Desegregation, and Make Love, Not War

My parents’ generation left us a certain social legacy that we, the boomer generation, squandered royally. In fact, I feel that we certainly dropped the baton on this one. When I was a child, I learned about life in America primarily through the lens of watching television. TV shows such as Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, and Father Knows Best represented, to me, the ideal social world in America and I’m sure everyone who tuned in to watch those shows tried to emulate the family lifestyle they presented. Even adventure shows such as The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman, which were very popular in the 1950s and 1960s, demonstrated a type of hero that is missing from the stories given to us by today’s storytellers.

My parents’ generation also developed a society that treasured shared values. In particular, most Americans from that generation shared the same Christian values that first forged our nation, including frowning on: drinking alcohol, working on Sundays, and openly discussing sex. Controversial issues such as homosexuality, drug abuse, mental health, unwanted pregnancies and abortion were left to the families that had to deal with those issues, rather than bringing them out in the open so as to have an impact, good and bad, on everyone. And most businesses were closed on Sundays to allow the people to rest while they worshipped in the religion of their choice. Additionally, my parents’ generation had to deal with the effects of racial prejudice and discrimination, including segregation and the many Jim Crow laws that created separate and unequal worlds for Blacks and Whites.

Then, my generation came along and we completely turned that world upside down. Or, rather, metaphorically speaking, we blew it up with several megatons of TNT. Between the race riots of the 1960s, the “make love, not war” Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which eventually persuaded the US Supreme Court to rule on abortion in the Roe v Wade case of 1973, the social structure of the generation that preceded the baby boomers was practically annihilated.

In my two-part series on the Failure of Title IX, I discussed at length the impact of some of those social changes and the effect they had on American culture to the present. If you recall from reading that series, the counterculture movement of the 1960s became the pivotal cultural event of that century that, for better or for worse, determined the future trajectory of America and, indeed, of civilization.

But even as we dismantled the culture and social structure of my parents’ generation, and attempted to create a “better” and “freer” world, events such as 9/11 and COVID brought back the same fear and anxiety that permeated the world immediately after World War II; the fear of nuclear annihilation after my parents’ generation dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Back then, that fear filled the world to such an extent that our storytellers took advantage and brought us such forgettable movies as Godzilla, Them!, The Beast From 20000 Fathoms, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and Attack of the 50 ft Woman, among others.

And so, it seems the events of 9/11 and the continued threat of global warming (now called climate change) caused a global anxiety in society that led to prioritizing the monitoring and controlling of the people, and the panicky quick-response attempt to control our atmosphere and its effects on human life. Thus, the priorities that my generation, the baby boomers, had placed on society, namely, seeking world peace, establishing a world brotherhood in which everyone respected everyone else, and developing a oneness with nature such that our ecosystem provided everything humans needed to survive indefinitely, have been put on hold, if not discarded altogether.

Communism vs Capitalism - Money is Our New God

The World War II generation, my parents’ generation, lived in a cash-only society. Credit existed in the form of signed pieces of paper called “promissory notes.” Gold was the standard by which wealth was measured. In that environment, monetary transactions were slow, and the pace of the economy reflected that. The Dow Jones Industrial Average index on the New York Stock Exchange didn’t reach the magical value of one thousand until 1972, right around the time that the United States officially got off the gold standard (1971).

In addition, the end of WWII signaled a new war front in the form of communism trying to spread its ideology throughout the world. The beginning of this Cold War led to the Korean conflict and the Vietnam war. In America, my parents’ generation experienced a bit of fear and panic as McCarthyism took over the public conscience in the 1950s, resulting in the destruction of many people’s reputations, including some famous movie stars in Hollywood who were blacklisted, never to work in movies again.

When we, baby boomers, came along, credit cards made it possible to obtain money more easily and to execute transactions much faster. Hand-written checks and cash at the cash register were soon replaced by credit cards. We established automated teller machines (ATMs) that made banking transactions easier and faster. And, as we developed the personal computer and the internet, our banking transactions migrated to our homes, from which anyone could make deposits or withdrawals, and even play the stock market.

McCarthyism was long over by the time we boomers came along, but the Cold War continued. The Vietnam War pulled in many of us, rendering some (maybe many?) incapable of successfully functioning in our society when they returned home. And as we continued to live our lives hoping to create that utopian world we envisioned when we rebelled against our parents, many gave in to drugs, alcohol, and other vices that greatly changed our society. We also began repealing so-called “blue laws” that allowed for a day of rest, usually Sundays, in which businesses were shut down for the day. This change was driven primarily by corporate entities that wanted to increase their profits even more. And, with 24/7 monetary transactions, we soon pushed religion aside, making the almighty dollar our new god.

Today’s generations live in a world that functions in 24/7/365 mode, without rest, with people all around the world participating in gambling on the stock market (and other gambling platforms such as lotteries). So much so that we’ve even created imaginary money in the form of so-called crypto currencies that function no differently than gambling on stocks.

Today, very few people maintain cash on hand and most transactions don’t even use credit cards anymore, as we transition away from creating plastic (because of fossil fuels), and as most monetary transactions are performed on-line by electronic means in which the “money” is composed of digital electronic information. Today, we live in an on-demand world in which individuals remain in the safety of their homes from which they can order all of life’s necessities without ever stepping out to interact with other human beings. Instead, we communicate with digital profiles and chatbots that become our closest “friends” and confidants. Nevertheless, as the Beatles once reminded us, money can’t buy you love.

Concluding Remarks

Perhaps it’s the parent in me that makes me feel that my generation has failed subsequent generations. Most boomers today have lived through at least three generations, counting their parents, and can see the results of what our generation accomplished. That post-WWII generation left us a great legacy that perhaps baby boomers squandered and failed to pass along to subsequent generations: their willingness to sacrifice for the greater good and their determination to preserve the American way of life. The baby boomer generational rebellion (every generation has one) clamored for freedom to love, world peace, no police (they were called “pigs” by some of my generation), a oneness with nature, and equality for women and for all people regardless of skin color, religion, or culture.

Yet, what we passed on to our children and the generations that followed was: fear and anxiety, the weapons with which to protect themselves, and the drugs with which to reduce that fear and anxiety. The generations that followed us didn’t even listen to our calls for brotherhood and peaceful coexistence while pursuing knowledge and wisdom to understand the universe all around us through scientific exploration. They only heard that climate change was going to destroy humanity, that they needed to guard against terrorists, that recreational drugs should be legalized so that everyone could numb themselves and ease their anxiety, that the government will take care of everyone, and that we should all focus our individual attention and efforts on creating the greatest amount of wealth that we can for ourselves.

As I consider the developments from the World War II generation, to the boomer generation, to the current generations, I wonder what paradigms will get passed to future generations and how those will affect the trajectory of humanity. For example, today we are facing another inflection point in the destiny of humanity with the development and implementation of artificial intelligence (AI). In one of my previous posts on A Logical Trajectory for Humanity, I wrote about possible future scenarios involving AI. If we fail to do AI right, we might very well place humanity and civilization on an unalterable course toward extinction. And in my two-part series on Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature, I made several recommendations for controlling the effects of AI in the Wild West environment in which we currently find ourselves.

Meanwhile, I want to apologize to all the generations that came after the baby boom generation, on behalf of all boomers, dead and alive, for having so badly handled the “handoff” of the cultural baton that our parents gave us. Yes, there were many problems with the social structure of my parents’ generation that needed “fixing.” But the way we boomers went about completely undoing that social structure and replacing it with uncontrolled individuality has, in my opinion, made the current social structure less effective in moving civilization forward.

I sincerely hope that you, the new generations, will look back through history, not as an academic exercise, but as a treasure hunt to search for the best of humanity. And I hope that when you find the best knowledge and wisdom there was (and is), that you adopt them again and preserve them for all future generations.

Thank you for reading, and especially for sharing, this article.

We humans are possessed of a natural instinct to subjugate and oppress others. This instinct may very well be a form of survival; “survival of the strongest” (or smartest?). For example, when we become angry and yell in a threatening manner, that is a manifestation of our instinct to control others; it’s in our DNA. Often, it also signals that we’ve lost control of a situation.

We can also observe this same instinct in other organisms in nature, in which alpha males or queens dictate the behavior of others of their own species. And, usually, those who don’t behave as requested often find themselves being punished in one form or another.

When it comes to humans, outside of the penalty of death, different forms of punishment range from being constrained in some manner and then beaten, to being ostracized and cast out to survive alone outside the protection of the tribe, or, in some cases, to being mentally and emotionally tortured. And those who are oppressed tend to go along with the program, or else they rebel or revolt and try to overthrow the ruling class.

Given this intro, and assuming this represents a true depiction of animal behavior, including human behavior, I wonder why and how humans invented the first prisons. Basically, I ask myself: what function do prisons serve in human civilization?

Intuitively, it’s easy to imagine early humans or pre-humans who had already mastered the ability to pen flocks of animals, to realize that they could limit the movement of other humans using similar technology, whether that entailed using wooden structures from which the human could not escape or perhaps a structure made of stones, or even just digging a large hole that kept the human trapped (unless it rained heavily and the captured human knew, or quickly learned, how to swim).

In any case, it seems fairly obvious that the idea of constraining another person probably first arose very early in the evolution of human civilization. And because we have no written records of what humans did prior to about ten thousand years ago, we don’t really know when the first imprisonment occurred.

For instance, the first mention of a “prison” in the Bible happens when Joseph, the son of Jacob (Israel), is placed in the “king’s prison” (Genesis 39). Obviously, by the time of Joseph’s imprisonment, estimated at between 2000 and 1000 BC, it seems prison technology had already evolved to an advanced stage of development.

And although nothing is said about how Joseph’s prison functioned, it’s understood by historians that the prisons under the control of the Egyptian pharaoh were meant to control criminals under hard labor conditions for extended periods of time or until they died. Thus, unless some event caused the pharaoh to commute the sentence of the prisoner, that prisoner was dealt a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Naturally, the narrative in the Bible involves a miraculous event that gets Joseph released from that prison, eventually rising to become pharaoh’s right-hand man.

And there are other, more logical uses for prisons. For example, with our natural instinct for war, we had to develop methods for controlling the captured enemy that was bent on destroying us, including putting them to work at hard labor. As the old saying goes: “to the victor belongs the spoils.” This also gave rise to slavery, which, apparently, existed at the time of Joseph and the pharaohs of Egypt, and which has probably existed since the days of the first prisons.

And that is pretty much how prisons functioned through the centuries, until we get to the eighteenth century, when prisons became places of “rehabilitation” in western society. In other words, according to Wikipedia, prisons became institutions in which convicted criminals were kept for a certain amount of time in order to fulfill a sentence, or punishment, given as a matter of justice.

So, for example, rather than giving criminals a hundred lashes or crucifying them, they were held in prison for a time, after which they would be released back to society to continue with their lives. The assumption being that those prisoners had “paid their debt” to society through incarceration, having received the appropriate punishment, and would learn their lesson to not commit a crime again.

And, depending on the society and the culture that implemented those prisons, the prisoners were either treated well, including put to work for the good of the community, or were tortured and treated so poorly that those prisons became death traps for the imprisoned.

Today, prisons are recognized and accepted within civilization as institutions that support the punishment decided by the ruling class. So, in modern civilizations, when someone breaks the law, a punishment is given that usually entails incarceration for a certain amount of time depending on the severity of the crime.

But we’ve come to accept incarceration in jail and prison so much that every city and town has a jail in which it keeps lawbreakers. By way of an example that pokes fun at this concept is the TV show The Andy Griffith Show, from the 1960s. In that show there’s a character named Otis Campbell who frequently turned himself into the Mayberry jail to sleep off his drunken binges. Otis even kept a key to the jail cell.

Apparently, the fictional town of Mayberry is inhabited only by law-abiding citizens such that the jail is almost always empty, except for Otis, who uses it for his own self-imposed brand of justice. Certainly, in that TV show, from the point of view of the writers, jails were accepted as a necessary part of society, even if the town jail served no better purpose than as a free hotel.

In any case, laws and other restrictions are intended to curb or control human behavior within society and, when not followed, result in some sort of “punishment.” Thus, society sees lawbreakers (criminals) and outlaws as “bad” people who must be punished in order to change their behaviors.

We use the same concept of punishing to rehabilitate in other aspects of our culture. In schools, for example, we give unruly and disruptive students “detention” by keeping them in a special room or in the principal’s office. In more severe cases, the students are “expelled” from school. The 1985 movie The Breakfast Club depicts, in a satirical way, how this system of punishment worked in the 1980s.

And along the way, we developed special prisons for people who were very disruptive to the order of society, such as people with emotional and mental issues that caused them to disrupt the daily lives of others. In particular, some cultures developed prisons dedicated to the “mentally insane”; individuals who caused pain and suffering (or death) to their fellow human beings and who showed no remorse or willingness to control their behavior.

But, do these and other types of prisons really “rehabilitate” the individual and change their behavior to become more law-abiding? To answer that question, I’d like to briefly consider how our personalities drive our actions and whether or not those personalities can be changed by incarceration.

Throughout history, there has been long-held beliefs that our personalities are set in stone, as it were, from the moment we are born. Astrologers of old (and even to this day) held that our personalities were set at birth by the alignment of the stars in the sky (western astrology) or by the particular year of our birth (eastern astrology). Even psychologists argue that each of us is possessed of a very specific personality with very predictable behaviors, based on some agreed-to measure of personality, such as Meyer-Briggs personality types.

At this point, I’d like to digress briefly and refer to the very popular TV show Criminal Minds, in which the topic of personality is considered in every episode. The premise of the show is that criminal behavior can be predicted by considering the personality of criminals, as demonstrated by their consistent criminal actions and other behaviors. In the show, a group of behavior analysts working for the FBI are routinely called upon during each episode to help solve a series of crimes that share similarities in their execution. The behavior analysts, or “profilers,” attempt throughout each particular episode to piece together a behavioral profile of the criminal based on as much existing information as they can gather, including past experiences of the criminal with parents or adults during their formative years, usually before the next crime is committed.

Naturally, this TV show being a work of Hollywood, at the end of each episode the good guys capture the criminal and save the day, as it were. But the point of the show that resonates with my thinking, and perhaps with a majority of its audience, is that, despite each of us having free will, with enough information about “who we are,” our actions become very predictable. It is this predictability of action that allows psychologists and psychiatrists to categorize and treat personalities.

But the “treatment” of personality disorders by psychiatrists does not involve incarceration. Most often, behavior modification for troubled humans is done with drugs and chemicals that alter the mood and emotions, causing the individual to change their behavior to, it is hoped, meet society’s acceptable norms.

Today, most instances of personalities that deviate from cultural norms and expectations are considered to be personality “disorders.” And, according to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), there are at least ten different personality disorders. As posted on their website, these include:

• Antisocial personality disorder

• Avoidant personality disorder

• Borderline personality disorder

• Dependent personality disorder

• Histrionic personality disorder

• Narcissistic personality disorder

• Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder

• Paranoid personality disorder

• Schizoid personality disorder

• Schizotypal personality disorder

In reading the descriptions of each of these personality disorders as given on the APA website, one might conclude that just about everyone exhibits, at least once in their lifetime, behaviors associated with the description of one or more of these disorders. The descriptions appear to be very subjective. The website goes on to state that these personality disorders can only be assessed on adults older than eighteen years of age because “people under 18 are typically not diagnosed with personality disorders because their personalities are still developing.”

The insinuation from the medical community, in the form of the APA, seems to be that personality, that part of our being that drives us to action, “develops” throughout our formative years but apparently stops developing after we all turn eighteen. And the fact that they identify ten different disorders implies that “treatments” exist that may be applied in order to “correct” these disorders. But, if so, how do the environmental stimuli that develop our personality during our formative years cease to influence or have any effect on our personality going forward after we reach adulthood?

It’s difficult to accept, from a logical point of view, that personality is influenced and formed throughout a great portion of our life but then suddenly stops being modified by our environment at the seemingly arbitrary age of eighteen. This would greatly impact the concept of rehabilitation, including the idea that incarceration produces a “reformed” individual. If our personality is unchanging as adults, our efforts, including those by psychiatrists, at rehabilitating broken or antisocial humans would seem to be futile efforts.

Are our personalities as children drastically different from our personalities as adults? That’s the crux of the issue regarding prisons as institutions of rehabilitation. For, if a child begins to exhibit criminal behavior for whatever reason (a death in the family, a divorce, bullying, etc.), can psychologists make the case that the child will grow to be a criminal as an adult?

Might a person who committed a crime as a young adult be considered a criminal twenty years later even if they committed no more crimes since? For, if our personalities are set in stone and are predictive of our behaviors throughout our adult lives, how do we as a society deal with those whose early personalities exhibit potential criminal behavior? Is it possible to look ahead to the future of individuals, whether through astrology, personality assessments, or through psychoanalysis, and see a life of crime developing? How should society deal with such individuals?

Based on the fact that some people become career criminals (terrorists, for example), it seems that some adult individuals make a conscious decision and commitment at some point in their lives to dedicate their lives to committing illegal or evil acts in the eyes of society. Gangsters and terrorists come to mind.

What drives some individuals to dedicate their lives to a life of crime and can those individuals be rehabilitated through incarceration? Can they be rehabilitated to act and behave according to society’s acceptable norms, or are clinical attempts at “curing” personality disorders simply subjective efforts to modify the behavior of individuals according to the whim of the psychiatrist?

From serial killers, to terrorists, to rapists, to robbers, and to those who simply take advantage of the weak and innocent, there are many who simply either believe that doing evil is “good,” or they submit to being evil and resign themselves to going to “hell” after they die, and therefore live a life of doing bad things to others. It seems there will always be psychopaths among us.

As such, it seems that society will always require prisons, not to rehabilitate, but to separate those who pose a danger to society from those law-abiding individuals who work diligently every day to make the world a better place.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

The other day, after the new school semester began, I asked my grandchildren: “how’s school?” This is a typical question that most parents, and sometimes grandparents, ask their children, or grandchildren, whenever they start a school semester. These days, when I interact with my grandchildren, who are adolescents (high school age), I often ask how school is going just to get a general view of their interest in what they are learning or if they’re learning anything worthwhile. I also pry to see if there are any problems brewing, such as bullying, insufferable teachers, or other potential problems that I, or their parents, should know about.

Not surprisingly, the response I received was disinterested shrugs. Not even a brief comment like “I hate it” or “It was great,” just a shrug, as though the question itself was unworthy of a response. School, the environment in which they spend a good portion of their day, five days a week for most of their developing years, apparently has such little impact on them at this point in their lives that they simply shrug at the prompting for a comment.

But I’m used to this type of response. You see, I experienced the same reaction from my children when they were teenagers attending school. Not only that, I recall when I was a teenager in high school not sharing with my parents what I was learning (if anything), simply because teenagers, by nature, are at that stage of life in which distrust of their parents, and adults in general, is their new mode of operation. And most teenagers are going through so many emotionally-charged changes that many probably don’t really absorb what the teachers are trying to instill in them, anyway. Teaching teenagers is challenging.

And it seems teenagers only trust other teenagers. As they try so hard to convince their parents and other adults that they are “independent,” “different,” and “responsible,” nevertheless they all somehow wind up dressing and looking the same, speaking the same peer-developed language that they invent apart from their parents’ language, socializing only with their own kind (other teenagers), and hardly contributing in any meaningful way to their household, never mind to society.

It seems, then, that teenagers, including my grandchildren (and my children when they were at the same age), don’t seem to be as enthusiastic about school as they were when they first entered school. I still recall the excitement in my children after returning from their first day of kindergarten; they wouldn’t stop talking about their teacher and the different activities they performed, complete with descriptions of colorful chairs, tables and work stations. Yet, somehow, between kindergarten and the first year of junior high school, it appears that the “system” makes students lose interest in going to school, or in learning altogether.

What is it about the educational system in America that creates this attitude in our adolescent students? For, even if we were to consider the possibility that the fault lies with the students themselves because they are going through puberty with its many physical and emotional challenges, the “system” should be wise enough to take that into consideration and still manage to make school exciting and interesting, even for hormonally unstable teenage werewolves. I mean, if rock-and-roll bands can attract teenagers like flies to light, surely the intelligent people running our schools can compete with those performers. Alas, such, it seems, is not the case.

While researching material for this article I came across some information on the drop-out rate in America and in various states, as well as the main reasons, as described by drop-outs themselves, for dropping out of school. Here’s a brief look at the main reasons that high school students drop out.

And here’s an article from 2017 that explains why students drop out, from the perspective of the drop-outs themselves. I think many of these reasons still apply today, almost a decade later.

From all this, I get the feeling that the educational system in America needs an overhaul if we want to improve, not just the number of students that graduate at least from our high schools, but the quality of those students, including getting most to enjoy the school experience and maintain a desire for learning on their own during their adult years.

In one of my previous articles, “The Miseducation of America,” I offered five recommendations for how I believe our educational system could be made more effective. One of my recommendations was to instill a love for learning by making learning fun and exciting. Another recommendation was to treat each student individually according to their ability to grasp new knowledge.

Thus, instead of squeezing all those students into a box (“classroom”) and feeding them the same intellectual food, producing individuals who hate the idea of learning and don’t have a clue as to how they want to contribute to society, our educational system should identify, from elementary school forward, the kind of “tree” each student is best motivated to grow into so they can produce unique and meaningful “fruit.”

Just imagine every high school student going home to their parents after school and eagerly sharing with the parents their school experience for the day, including wanting to get to their homework right away. I know; most of you can’t imagine that ever happening.

But, what would it take to make that happen? Unfortunately, I could find no research on what makes students love learning from the perspective of school-loving teenagers, but I did run into this on-line article from 2017.

And from many discussions I have had over the years with some friends and acquaintances who were teachers in the American public school system, I’ve come to the conclusion that the biggest factor that contributes to student dissatisfaction with school is class size. Please allow me to elaborate on this concept.

You see, the average class size in American high schools has remained pretty consistent throughout the decades at between twenty and thirty students. I recall attending high school more than fifty years ago and I distinctly recall all my classes containing at least twenty students. My teacher friends have also corroborated those numbers. And, when I asked my grandchildren how large their classes were, the same numbers came back. I suppose class size has always been in that range when it comes to high school settings. For reference, here’s a chart showing average class size by state for the school year 2017-2018. It looks as though the anecdotal numbers from my friends and my grandchildren match up well with these data.

But how does class size influence a student’s enjoyment of the school experience such that the same student eagerly wants to go back to school to learn some more? From basic principles, I think we might all agree that the “perfect” class size would be a one-to-one ratio of teacher to student. An even better learning experience might be to have a many-to-one teacher-to-student ratio that would provide a much richer form of education, potentially creating a leading thinker in society, if the parents could afford all those expert tutors and coaches.

As an aside, there has been some research done on the number of items that a human adult can handle in terms of remembering those items. According to a Wikipedia entry, the “magical” number seven constitutes the limit of items that humans can recall and process simultaneously.

Going back to considering class size, and considering the nature of that “magical” number seven, it seems to me, then, that in order to effectively manage a class and provide the individual attention that each student needs to become engaged in the class, the ideal (“magical”) maximum number of students per class might be seven. However, that number is rather small compared with the current average classroom size that is above twenty. Why has the average class size in most high schools in America remained so high? Generally, it comes down to economics.

But, let’s get real and consider what it is that our educational “system” is trying to achieve, besides making money. As I see it, in an ideal world our schools would have, as their primary objective, to develop functional adults who will contribute to the betterment of society. In our western culture, institutions such as Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale have established brands that produce some of the most impactful adults in our world, even if most of their students have been filtered from elementary school to succeed in those elite universities, and, indeed, in life.

Based on the discussion so far, I now propose several recommendations for engaging students such that those students become eager learners who enjoy the school environment.

1. School administrators should make every effort to decrease class size as much as possible, as their main objective. I realize there are economic factors to consider as this would require hiring additional teachers and possibly creating additional instructional spaces. However, when prioritizing how new funds should be used, consider first and foremost reducing class size so that teachers can provide more individualized attention to all students, and more easily engage them in the school environment.

2. Implement and encourage cross-pollination of ideas. In order to engage students in the school environment, teaching should be a team effort. Create relevancy of class material between different subject areas so that students can relate, for example, something learned in social studies with something learned in math. These subjects should not be mutually exclusive but should very much be intertwined so the students can see the forest for the trees and gain an appreciation for the value of each subject area.

3. In addition to cross-pollinating class objectives, make the classes fun based on the students’ grade level. For example, a math class can start with a student playing a musical instrument and the teacher tying music theory to math theory. Or perhaps a student can start the class by showing what they know about trees growing and then the teacher can tie that in with the math concepts being taught that day. School administrators should establish teaching teams from different subject areas to develop interesting curricula that keep the students (and teachers!) engaged and wanting to come to school for more. Getting students to synthesize knowledge from different subject areas, rather than teaching those subjects as separate silos, make for a more interesting and engaging experience that might keep bringing them back for more.

There is an old joke that goes something like this:

Q: Hey, buddy, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?

A: Practice, practice, practice.

4. We all know the value of practice in sports and music. Athletes practice the same drill constantly to create that “muscle memory” so that the athlete can perform on the field with optimum efficiency. The same goes for the musicians and for most performers, including stage actors. Yet, when it comes to learning in schools, most instruction is of the one-and-done variety. In other words, the knowledge obtained in a classroom is given as-is and, if a student were to miss some of the information, which might be critical to fully understanding the topic, that student is simply given a grade and pushed onto the next level class. Practice makes perfect, so, establish continued practice of knowledge so that the knowledge is understood and retained permanently. Here’s an article that discusses the value of practice to retaining knowledge.

There was a TV show from the early 1970s called Kung Fu. That show involved a Chinese Shaolin monk in the American Wild West who is on a mission to find a half-brother, but who is also running away from Chinese elements (bounty hunters) who seek him for the killing of a Chinese priest. One of the most popular plot devices of the show was the use of flashbacks to show some very relevant lesson that the protagonist learned from his Shaolin master.

In each of those flashbacks, one could appreciate the one-on-one attention that the protagonist was getting from his master. Also, the flashback showed the power of the guided discovery method used by his master to allow the lesson to “sink in” to the mind of the student. Most teachers are familiar with the guided discovery method of teaching, in which teachers guide students to actively explore, question, and discover solutions for themselves, leading to better understanding and retention of knowledge.

So, rather than making the school act as a factory that pushes out widgets, without giving thought to the quality of those widgets, our schools should be seen as incubators of future citizens and focus on the quality of those future citizens. Instead, what we see from our schools is an output of students in batches (graduation classes) with ten percent exceptional, eighty percent acceptable, and ten percent (or more) unusable. Is society willing to tolerate ten percent of the population as useless individuals, especially if it doesn’t have to?

I suppose the ultimate question to be answered by this discussion is: can we develop an educational system tailored to each individual student, rather than tailoring the student to our current school system?

With today’s artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, I see an opportunity for school administrators and teachers to develop personalized instruction and guidance for every student, such that the AI guides each student in achieving a life-long career goal. It’s like having a personal teacher, or mentor, for life; from elementary school through college and beyond.

If we could do this, just think of what a high school student might say, after coming home from school, about the latest project that THEY (rather than the teacher) decided to create in order to further their learning and mastery of subjects related to their dream career. Such a student does not need to be asked what they did in school; that student will come home in an excited state telling the parents (and grandparents): “guess what I did in school today?” Wouldn’t that demonstrate the ultimate success of a school system?

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

By now most people around the English-speaking world have returned to work after spending some vacation time celebrating the Christmas holidays, which usually culminate with reflecting on the end of the year and celebrating the start of the New Year. I suppose a few who celebrated during the last two weeks of 2025 did so by getting plastered as they attended party after party, depending on how socially-connected they were. That’s how I traditionally celebrated the holidays when I was single and unattached.

Back then, the Christmas holidays consisted of attending parties with friends (and exchanging gifts, of course), sometimes staying out until dawn. Naturally, the ultimate party was ringing in the New Year, especially at New York City’s Times Square, standing there squeezed-in, shoulder-to-shoulder with complete strangers, waiting for the “ball to drop” as the countdown began. That lifestyle made for some intense hangovers on New Year’s Day, making the new year seem more like a curse than a welcome event.

One memorable New Year’s Eve celebration found me puking my guts out on some poor slobs who just happened to be standing next to me. I don’t recall if any fighting broke out. I think we were all too out of it and in such celebratory spirits that no one cared.

My how times, and people, have changed! This past year, I celebrated the two weeks at the end of the year by visiting family members and celebrating with my immediate family. My New Year’s Eve celebration consisted of going to bed not too long after dinner, ignoring any possible significance to the dramatic change that might occur when the clock struck midnight. The following morning, I noticed that the first day of 2026 was not much different from the last day of 2025. It’s been this way for many years, now, as my days of fancy-free partying passed away a long time ago, may they rest in peace.

I suppose with age and experience comes some level of understanding and responsibility. Some might call that “wisdom.” I call it adapting to my environment. I mean, once you experience standing for hours in freezing temperatures waiting for that stupid ball to drop in just a few seconds, all the while feeling like a human icicle, eventually any intelligent person would prefer to watch that event on TV, in a warm room surrounded by familiar faces while sipping on a cup of hot chocolate with cream, sugar, and a few tiny marshmallows floating on top. Let the newbies gather shoulder-to-shoulder and learn for themselves!

Anyway, this past year was unusual for me because I spent my last two weeks of the year watching more new movies than I have in the past five years. I normally don’t watch too many new movies as I have my own collection of DVDs from which I tend to, once in a while when I want to vegetate, pull out a movie that brings back memories or gets my adrenaline going. At most, I tend to watch a handful of movies during the course of one year, most of which are DVD replays and maybe one or two are theatrical releases.

This past year, however, my wife invested in Netflix, Prime and Disney+ (on her dime) and we sort of binge-watched a few movies, in addition to watching a couple of movies in the theater. And when I say binge-watched, I mean we saw one movie every two days or so. In total, we saw six movies over the last two weeks of the year, including those we saw at the theater.

Here, for reference, is a listing of the movies I saw, in no particular order:

1. Avatar: Fire and Ash (theater)

2. One Battle After Another (Streaming)

3. Zootopia 2 (theater)

4. When Harry Met Sally (Streaming)

5. Relay (Streaming)

6. House of Dynamite (Streaming)

I might also mention that, earlier in 2025, my wife and I saw Black Bag in the theater when that movie first came out.

Needless to say, I felt overwhelmed from watching so many movies in such a short period of time (for me). In addition, I noticed that my wife is starting to get hooked on a few Netflix shows, as well (she really likes Netflix). One in particular, The Big C, caught my attention while I eavesdropped on my wife during a break from my writing. More on that show later.

So why am I going on and on about movies during my end-of-year holiday celebrations? In a previous post of mine on Responsible Storytelling, I wrote about how today’s storytelling, as told through literature and Hollywood movies, is taking society in a backwards direction by creating depressing worlds and broken heroes that only serve to create hopelessness in the audience.

I also wrote about how Hollywood actors, producers and directors dismiss any influence on the audience as just coincidence; those movies are just an artistic expression, a form of free speech, they might say. So, after viewing those movies, I’ve come to the conclusion that today’s movie-makers and storytellers are actively contributing to the creation of a dead-end society.

For example, let me first consider the movie Avatar. This movie is the third of a franchise that has become so popular that the three movies to-date have generated over seven billion dollars in revenue. Yet, for all the magnificent visuals and special effects, the story throughout the three movies has been a simple retelling of the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans during the 16^th through 19^th centuries. Painting the characters blue, rather than red or brown doesn’t mask that analogy.

However, even as James Cameron, the director, tries to paint the Na’vi as worthy protagonists/heroes, nevertheless he manages to portray them as savages, just as the Europeans portrayed the native Americans as savages. I cringed whenever one of the Na’vi characters used a menacing growl or yelled the “Yip, yip, yip!” yell so commonly associated with native Americans in past western movies and literature. One major reason for the death of the American western movie is precisely due to the portrayal of the natives in those movies.

I’m very surprised that the native American community has not objected to this portrayal of the Na’vi. But, as with all Hollywood productions, the usual response from the creators will be “it’s all art, there is no harm intended in any way.” But the harm, the stereotypes, in a subliminal way, still remains.

If I now consider One Battle After Another, which has gotten rave reviews and already won four Golden Globe awards as of the writing of this article, I see a movie that promotes, nay, glorifies, failed human beings as heroes. The main character, played by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, is a disillusioned former revolutionary who is spending his days smoking weed and drinking himself to death while “raising” his sixteen-year-old daughter. How’s that for a parenting role model?

The most redeeming aspect of the movie is that DiCaprio’s character spends the entire movie chasing after the people who kidnapped his “possible” daughter. The movie makes liberal use of sex, violence, and profanity, although perhaps the fact that DiCaprio’s character only seems to know one word, “fuck,” which he repeats ad nauseam, only reflects on the screenwriter’s limited writing ability. I bet AI would have come up with some better dialogue. Nevertheless, the movie had a certain quality, perhaps in the cinematography or the fast-paced action, that compelled me to keep watching.

As I watched that movie unfold, my mind took me to a famous classic movie from the past with a somewhat similar plot. I’m talking about Casablanca. If you’ve never seen Casablanca, you owe it to yourself to see it at least once. In that movie there is also a revolution and a woman caught between two men. There is also a man who lives a life of drinking, thinking his past was behind him until it catches up with him again.

While the two movies may seem to be radically different, they share a view of the same theme but from very different perspectives. Unfortunately, the treatment of the subject in One Battle After Another is so perverted that it’s difficult for me to root for any character in that movie. Except for the daughter and her friends, practically every character is a failed character. On the other hand, in Casablanca there are plenty of characters to root for, including the very corrupt inspector.

Lastly, I consider the movies Black Bag, Relay and House of Dynamite. The reason I want to pull these three movies into this discussion is that they tend to share something similar in their plots: a secret that is either being revealed, hidden, or that needs to be protected. Of the three, to me, the movie Relay was the most compelling and interesting, not only for the manner in which the story is told, but for the totally unexpected twist at the end. I highly recommend that, if you have not yet seen this movie, watch it at your earliest convenience for its entertainment value, and because it contains practically no sex, violence or profanity.

As for House of Dynamite, I found it to be very difficult to watch. Mostly because the approach from the director of showing the same event over and over from different perspectives without arriving at a satisfying conclusion made it feel boring and a waste of my time. For me, the movie resembled an old movie from the 1960s called Fail Safe, which was a more realistic and dramatic treatment of an accidental nuclear war. I also recall another movie from that same period called Dr. Strangelove, which was a satirical, and much more entertaining, view of the same subject.

I now turn to discuss The Big C, the Netflix TV show centered on the drama that unfolds for those who have to deal with cancer. As I mostly listened to the show while my wife watched, I found it to be the very worst of soft porn disguised as a dramatic show about a serious topic afflicting many people on Earth. The show includes plenty of sex and sexual innuendo, plenty of profanity and sarcasm, plenty of farting (for those who appreciate that in a soap opera), and plenty of weed smoking which I guess is emphasized because that is how some people with cancer treat the disease.

Cancer is a very serious topic as my wife and I have lost several family members and friends to that disease. So, as I listened in, I came to the conclusion that even a serious subject such as cancer is treated by our storytellers as entertainment that required the usual plot lines involving sex, violence and profanity. The Big C is no Grey’s Anatomy.

And so, I fear that, because of how movies and TV shows have evolved over the years, our storytellers today, wittingly or unwittingly, are pushing humanity towards a dead-end civilization. This bothers me because it tells me that there is a certain probability that we will exterminate our own species before we ever get off this tiny blue marble, cosmologically speaking.

What kind of society are we creating if the role models for our children are failed characters? Do we really want all our children to grow up to become the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another?

We know that Hollywood has always impacted our society to a great extent with their movies and TV shows. When we go to the theater to watch a movie, we tend to become mesmerized by the beautiful actors, their costumes, their body and speech mannerisms, their ethical and moral behavior, and their heroics. And because we admire all these different qualities, we go out and purchase all the merchandise associated with our favorite movies and actors, right down to the type of cigarette they smoke, the clothes they wear or the type of car they drive.

I think it is safe to say that today’s society is shaped by Hollywood more than by any other entity, and the Hollywood decision makers know it. I surely wish that more movies of today reflected more compelling main characters who exhibit the personality and ethical and moral values of successful and disciplined human beings so that we, the audience, have role models that, when copied and emulated, lead to a greater civilization. We need for today’s storytellers to create characters and worlds that offer hope and a future filled with greater potential for humanity, instead of offering the many ways that the future of humanity can go wrong.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, I was exposed to an ideological movement that sought to unite the world into one global “brotherhood” of peace and love. In those days, so-called “Jesus freaks” popped up all over the world, with men sporting beards and long hair that imitated the “Jesus look,” promoting a view of the world existing as one; a utopian view in which everyone lived in peace and love, without crime, supporting the “common good.” Or, as Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame would say: “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

In addition, the now-famous peace symbol was adopted and widely used during those years, especially by those who protested the war in Vietnam. And the words “brother” and “sister” gained new meaning, leading over the years to today’s shortened “bro” being more popular than “dude” when addressing a male friend or acquaintance, or even when addressing male strangers (apparently also very popular with Avatar movie script writers, especially in Fire and Ash).

But this movement was not just restricted to Jesus freaks or their closely associated ideologues, the hippies; it was also widely adopted by many popular musicians of that time, including Cat Stevens (currently known as Jusuf Islam) with his song “Peace Train,” Three Dog Night and their song “Black and White,” former Beatle Paul McCartney’s “Ebony and Ivory,” and former Beatle John Lennon’s famous “Imagine.” These are but four of many songs from that time that serve to encapsulate the main thrust of that era’s counterculture movement. For reference, here are some of the lyrics to John Lennon’s song:

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Livin’ life in peace
Youuuu

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

[emphasis mine]

Back in those days, as an impressionable youngster I got caught up in that ideology to some extent. And, although I was too young to grow a beard and too “normal” to join the hippies of the time, I nevertheless embraced the idea of working to create a utopian world in which everyone lived in peace, helping to support one another, rather than to take advantage of others by oppressing, subjugating and/or enslaving them. The idea of one world of brotherhood and peace appealed to me.

During my youth I was also exposed to the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, which was widely circulated in various forms. This idea of creating a world of peaceful coexistence persisted through the 1970s and 1980s, culminating in marketing stunts such as Hands Across America (in 1976 to celebrate America’s bicentennial and in 1986, the more memorable one).

And so, as I got caught up in this ideology, and as I thought about what such a world might look like, I decided one day to draw a one-world flag that represented the identify of that utopian one-world society. That flag concept is shown at the beginning of this article. Notice I chose the colors of the oceans, the soil, the green biology and the atmosphere, with an Earth motif in the middle – our world.

But this article is not about the nostalgia of ideologies from the past or about my artistic skills. Instead, what I’d like to discuss for the remainder of this article is the proposition that, if our civilization is destined to become a one-world civilization, how and when will that be accomplished, if at all? Obviously, as I look at the world today, we are very far from ever uniting and becoming the one-world peaceful civilization envisioned by the counterculture of the 1970s. If anything, we’ve strayed further and further away from that hippie ideology, remaining a society and civilization composed of primitive tribal entities and individuals independently seeking and fighting for land, power, fame and fortune for themselves.

You see, for most of my life, perhaps due to the influence of the many science fiction movies and TV shows of my youth, I developed this idea that humanity is destined to conquer the cosmos, or, at the very least, our solar system. This seems logical and intuitive to me, when I consider our natural instinct for exploration and how we have already evolved technology capable of sending humans to other worlds and bringing them back safely. In turn, this led me to the logical conclusion that we will someday develop an interplanetary form of transportation, allowing us to settle and mine other worlds within our solar system. It’s only a matter of time, then, as we develop the appropriate technology and the resolve. I think most readers will agree that this seems a logical progression, especially with Elon Musk already poised to send humans to Mars.

But here’s the problem I see: we can’t get there unless we cooperate as one world, and that would require that we develop a one-world government. You see, before we can go out and effectively explore other worlds we need to understand how to keep our ecosystem – our world - functioning safe and sound. Once we have that figured out, we can embark on exploring space with humans by developing the infrastructure and responsibly obtaining the resources required to make interplanetary travel a reality for most humans. And with space being so vast, we need to use our resources efficiently, with a single-mindedness of purpose to effectively explore that vastness. In order to do this, we need to involve the entire world.

But some might say that having a competitive environment in which different nations and different corporate entities all race to develop their own interplanetary exploration and transportation systems is a better way to go as it would quickly lead to the development of the best and most effective methods and technologies.

But based on the history of space exploration, the fact is that such an approach leads to a lot of wasted resources and a depleted ecosystem, as the “losers” of those races in that Wild West environment close shop, with much consolidation taking place, potentially leaving the space transportation system in the hands of one entity which, after the dust has settled, literally and figuratively, might create a very exclusive system accessible only to the rich and famous.

We’re already seeing this in how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are providing “joy rides” to space only to the rich and famous. Meanwhile, the governments of the Americans, the Chinese and the Russians are effectively “racing” to see who will be the first to land humans on Mars, even as another “race” is brewing between the Americans and the Chinese for who will be first to return humans to the Moon.

So, if “the dream” is for average humans to be routinely traveling to and from other heavenly bodies within our solar system, spreading our species and our ecosystem beyond Earth, I see that dream developing and evolving only within a one-world government that creates the standards and builds and regulates the infrastructure required to make it happen, utilizing resources from across the globe. For example, I think that if the Chinese, the Russians and the Americans, the only nations thus far capable of placing humans in orbit, had agreed to cooperate in sending humans to the moon and to Mars, we might have gotten there years ago.

Despite all these difficulties, let’s assume the entire world buys into the idea that we need to establish a one-world government; how would we do it? In answering this question, I’d like to begin by considering different examples of unified bodies and how they function as one body; there are a few from which we can draw some inspiration.

I first consider our human bodies. Our bodies are composed of many different organs (skin, heart, liver, lungs, etc.), each with its own function supporting the life and actions of that one body. No organ “decides” to perform a function different than the one it was designed for (except perhaps for cancer) and no organ attempts to become the body. In this manner, each of us uses our body to perform specific tasks as we adapt to our environment, all without giving much thought to how our heart, liver, lungs, etc., are performing, unless we run into severe problems involving those organs.

If I next step it up a notch and consider the union of two people, a marriage or a partnership, I notice that the idea that “two heads are better than one” works mostly when both bodies agree to work together in order to achieve a common goal. This type of cooperation involves compromise. Otherwise, the partnership may be quickly dissolved due to disagreements and a refusal on the part of one or both partners to compromise (or simply to “listen”).

Scaling it up from there to institutions such as corporations or military organizations, I notice a similar pattern: many “organs” performing specific functions to support the actions of the larger organization. Thus, in a military organization, there are soldiers who specialize in providing logistics (including weapons, fuel, food, and clothing), others who specialize in providing intelligence on the enemy, others trained to fight, others providing new technology, etc. The same goes for a corporate entity, which tends to behave as one, just as a military organization behaves as one.

On an even larger scale we observe the same paradigm with certain countries and nations. For example, the United States of America is considered to be a union of many “independent” states, with each state contributing its many resources to be shared with other states. In America, commerce between the states is the beating heart of the American economy, while the world views the United States of America as one single entity. Nevertheless, America has had its many challenges in holding this union together, not the least of which was the very bloody War Between the States in 1861 when several states decided to secede from this union.

The America motto, E Pluribus Unum (“from many, one”), which I’ve adopted as the title of this article, is but one statement of how unity leads to greater performance than actions by independent agents, even when working for the same or a similar cause. Other such statements include “united we stand, divided we fall” and the famous line from Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Three Musketeers: “all for one and one for all!”

Lastly, I consider past failed attempts to create a one-world organization. In particular, I refer here to the United Nations, which was preceded by a similar organization called the League of Nations. Both the League of Nations and the United Nations were created as a result of world wars and both had as their primary purpose to maintain peace around the world. The League of Nations, created after World War I, was dissolved prior to World War II as it proved totally ineffective in preventing that war. However, the United Nations, in its eighty-year history, has proven to be equally as ineffective at preventing or stopping wars, or establishing world peace.

From these considerations, it seems as though the larger and more complex the union, the more difficult it becomes for that union to accomplish anything as a single intelligence might. This is shown to be true especially with large united entities such as the European Union and the United Nations.

And so, as I consider these different types of unions and how effective or ineffective they are, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing that would unite humanity into one cohesive body with a singular purpose would be an existential threat posed by some extraterrestrial agent, whether an alien race of beings similar to us bent on destroying us, a very common theme in most sci-fi storytelling, or perhaps a rogue entity attacking earth from outer space, as with some sci-fi plots that involve an evil scientist with goals of world domination. Humanity would also respond as one when a biochemical threat to our species is detected. In all such cases, when all humans sense the same threat, it’s a sure thing the world would come together to respond as one.

But aside from these types of threats, because we humans will always wage war against one another to protect our “territories” and other possessions or desires, the idea of a one-world government in which the people live in peace and love, caring for one another, seems quite improbable from where we are now.

Can we ever develop a one-world government? Do we even need a one-world government in order to explore space?

I’m still convinced that humanity is destined to explore and populate the cosmos in some manner. And I believe that, eventually, our world will establish a one-world government. How those two intersect remains to be seen. But Elon Musk (one individual) has been trying to go to Mars for the past twenty years, making very slow and incremental progress. And America (one nation - NASA) has been stuck in low Earth orbit (LEO) for more than fifty years, without so much as returning humans to the Moon once during that time.

Not only is space immense (we’ve yet to detect any boundaries), but the process of developing the technology that makes routine space travel possible is difficult and long, spanning generations. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of space exploration.

Whether or not the effective exploration of space requires a one-world government, the fact remains that, due to the current geopolitical condition of the world and to how space is currently being explored, humanity has no choice but to explore space through trial and error, with many entities exploring space independently in a Wild West environment over hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of years before we actually behave as one intelligent species that has finally mastered peace among ourselves and routinely travels throughout our solar system.

Thus, it seems, the dream remains a dream.

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In my previous post on laziness and the evolution of technology, I wrote about the potential in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) for the creation of a new class of human slaves within our society and our civilization. A recent visit with my son, who lives in the desert, caused me to give further thought to that idea.

During my visit, I discovered that the desert is a great environment in which to contemplate ideas. The different deserts of the American southwest are marvelous examples of the unique microenvironments that exist on our planet. Not only do those deserts contain plant and animal species that are found nowhere else on Earth, but the spectacles that include some unique rock formations and desolate landscapes adorned with different kinds of “trees” (which are actually a form of cacti) against silent, cloudless, star-filled night skies make for a very impressive immersive experience.

It was while visiting my son that I noticed his constant use of apps on his smart phone to obtain immediate answers to his many needs and to my many questions. I realized then how he and I live in entirely different realities. He has become one with the technology du jour while I’ve remained entrenched comfortably in my old ways, even as society quietly nudges me to adapt to the new technologies being forced on me.

For example, although I’ve pushed back on doing everything online, I’ve relented in many cases, especially when it comes to downloading apps. But I loathe downloads of any kind, especially apps that quickly take over my device in order to make my “experience” more pleasant. My life is pleasant enough; I don’t “need” more pleasantness, thank you very much.

And it bothers me to no end when Google tells me where I’ve been over the past month. I KNOW where I’ve been; I’m not yet at a stage of senility at which I need to be reminded. The same thing happens with certain social media platforms that insist they know “people I may know.” I know who I know; I don’t need an electronic digital subroutine to tell me the people with whom I’ve established some type of relationship. I also can’t stand being asked to rate a business I just left. The invasion of privacy is bad enough; I don’t need constant reminders of how much I’m being tracked and controlled.

Sometimes I’m tempted to shut my phone down completely during long-distance trips just to spite Google and tell Google: “Hah, you failed to track me during my trip!” But I’ve decided to surrender to the technology du jour because I’m given no choice; buy a smart phone, surrender all your privacy.

It seems as though the only true way to stop being sucked into the latest technology is to go back to more primitive times, off-grid, using a landline and snail mail to communicate, and visiting brick-and-mortar stores using real hard cash (or maybe actual gold instead of easily tracked crypto “currencies”) to conduct purchase transactions. Or, perhaps a better solution might be to become a complete hermit and simply renounce being a part of civilization and of humankind. In my old age I’m tempted to do just that.

But, at this point, with my survival instinct still intact, more or less, I feel that I must adapt, and in doing so I must surrender my privacy, much as my son and his generation have done; all for the sake of convenience and an “easier” life. Even so, I think the newest generation has no clue about living as previous generations lived, and might not even realize how they’ve become “enslaved” by technology.

As I thought about how the latest generation has completely embraced the technology that allows anyone to communicate with anyone else anywhere in the world almost instantly, and as I considered how ubiquitous AI is becoming throughout all human activities and endeavors, my mind came back to the idea that AI, if not used correctly, could potentially produce a “slave class” of people who become totally dependent on AI for all their knowledge and perhaps even for all their actions.

Coincidentally, I came across an article in Newsweek on the effect of AI on education. In particular, that Newsweek article pointed out the difficulty that college instructors are having in distinguishing writing assignments written using AI from those written organically without the use of AI. The article goes on to point out how a certain college professor decided to just “give in” to AI and give all his students a grade of “A.” Thus, rather than figure out a way to make the students use their critical thinking, instead of relying on AI for their information, the professor simply gave up. In his class, AI “won.”

As I read through the article, I thought of different news stories I’ve read over the years concerning the impact that AI is having on students, teachers and working adults at all levels of society. In parallel with the impact of AI on what students learn and on the many jobs adults might lose, there are news headlines of employers complaining that high schools and colleges are failing in preparing students for the working world and that the use of AI to promote one’s expertise or influence on others is creating a world built, not on the creativity and mental-emotional capacity of humankind, but on whatever knowledge AI is ”willing” to dispense.

In a previous post of mine on AI and the cycle of stupidity, I proposed that, if we continue to rely on AI for our increase in knowledge and understanding, at some future time we might reach a steady-state condition in which no new knowledge is gained. Because AI relies on new information provided by humans, and as humans become more and more reliant on AI for that new information, a circular reasoning condition is reached in which no new knowledge is created. In that scenario, humans essentially become zombies that depend on, and believe, the information provided by AI. Thus, a new class of human slaves is created.

But here’s the thing: the very people who complain about AI seldom do anything to remedy the situation; they only complain (that includes me, although I suppose writing about it might count as doing something about it). In some cases, as in the Newsweek article, the complainant (the professor) just gives up in controlling the use of AI. And I know some individuals who actually believe that some AI are sentient beings fully capable of thought, emotions and creativity on a level exceeding that of humans.

But the use of AI goes way beyond the classroom and is greatly affecting the working world. For example, I recently happened upon another article in one of my newsfeeds that underscores the problems some employers are having in hiring job-seekers who present impeccable resumes and who are very good at interviewing, but who, upon being hired, turn out to exhibit skills far below what was expected of the individual, as painted by the resume and validated by the interview.

In the case presented in that article, a major Japanese digital electronic game company changed their hiring policies to require that job-seekers actually draw artistic renderings during their interview to demonstrate their artistic skills. This new policy was implemented because apparently too many job applicants were submitting artwork (portfolios) created with the use of AI. In this case, the employer “won.”

When I read about the problems employers are facing in hiring competent individuals because of AI, I am reminded of the time I worked on a proposal for a government contract many years ago. Part of the contract included budgeting for “training.” We did this because the contract called for developing a new product for the government and we knew that the personnel we hired (many of which would be recent college graduates) would more than likely not have the knowledge required to work the contract effectively. There were new technologies, new tools, new processes and new systems to learn in order to create the product that the government requested.

So, instead of “hoping” that the new employees hired for the new contract were already prepared because of their education and experience, our contract called for all employees to be trained in the necessary tools, methods, and systems that were envisioned to create the requested product. And the government agreed.

At this point, it’s worth pointing out that, in times past, some aerospace companies actually had their own “universities” (Northrop, for example) which graduated employees with skills applicable to their jobs or to new opportunities within the company. Those aerospace companies were desperate enough for competent employees that they effectively created their own educational system to produce the employees they needed.

Today, however, many educators and employers simply complain about the lack of preparation of students and potential workers. In addition, with the proliferation of AI, it seems job candidates are not only NOT qualified, but they use AI to act as their agents in obtaining work by looking the part and getting the part.

Circling back to the professor in the Newsweek article who basically gave into AI, it seems to me there were several options available to that instructor for evaluating the students’ ability to think creatively and critically in their writing. In particular, I would think that a writing class in which original thinking is being emphasized should make use of old school ideas.

For example, just as the Japanese game development company decided to test potential employees during the interview process by having them demonstrate their drawing skills on the spot, the professor could have given more weight to in-class writing that includes writing in free-hand (no use of computers, cell phones or digital devices), while making those in-class tests carry greater weight in the grade awarded at the end of the semester.

In this manner, the students are forced to think (actually think) on their feet as they write, instead of relying on AI for their homework assignments. In addition, the instructor can use the free-hand written material to compare with the typed up digital format to sniff out the use of AI. Then, with the typed material carrying a fraction of the grade, the students will be forced to think about what they write, including their penmanship. Thus, the instructor can minimize the use of AI, and its effect on the students’ critical thinking, while making use of AI as a tool in administrative tasks such as grading.

In one of my previous posts on the miseducation of America, I pointed out how our educational system in America tends to teach to the middle of the class or even to the worst performing students. In other words, most teachers try to bring all the students to the expected average, reducing the brightest students to learn only what is expected. Then, the brightest students receive the “ceiling grade” of “A” with no incentive to learn more, achieve more, or see how far the ceiling goes beyond “A.” In some cases, truly gifted students become disillusioned with the school system and drop out.

In that posting I recommended five ways in which our educational system might be improved to create students that, rather than “cheat” the system by, for example, utilizing AI to provide the required information, develop a desire to learn and fully understand the material being taught. I also recommended that the teachers use AI in support of their teaching duties but only as a tool to aid in teaching, not as a substitute for either learning or teaching.

The future trajectory of humanity is determined by the manner in which we educate our children today. There is an old proverb that says: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Today, our educators appear to be feeding their students lots of fish but never teaching them exactly HOW to fish by making their students think, critically, and to develop a love for learning. Learning and truly understanding a concept requires time, practice, failure and success. As Lao Tzu is quoted as saying: “nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

And as we become more and more reliant on AI to do the learning for us, we become subservient to AI, essentially turning AI into our slave masters. But, rather than fear AI, we need to fear ourselves. There is an iconic statement attributed to the syndicated cartoon character Pogo, created by Walt Kelly, that says: “we have met the enemy, and he is us.” That statement was made on the first Earth Day in 1970, in reference to how badly we had polluted our environment. Today, we might make the same statement in reference to how, when it comes to using AI, we have become our worst enemy.

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Some of you might have read about the power outage that occurred recently in the San Francisco (California) area. During that power outage, Waymo driverless (autonomous) vehicles shut down completely in the middle of their runs because they were not prepared to navigate the roads, due to traffic lights being out of commission, causing massive traffic jams. Recall that in one of my previous posts I wrote about one of my pet peeves: traffic lights and speed limits. Enough said on that topic.

In any case, the more I thought about that technological “glitch” in San Francisco, the more my mind took me to contemplate the evolution of technology in general and how we have arrived at a world filled with robots, artificial intelligence, and driverless vehicles that are unable to comprehend the road ahead because the “lights went out.” In essence, they exhibited the driverless vehicle version of “deer in headlights,” except in this case it’s “driverless vehicles in darkness.”

And as I thought about how we arrived at our current technological environment, I came to the conclusion that the evolution of technology seems to mirror the evolution of life in general, in some respects. In particular, I realized that, while Darwinian evolution centers on “survival of the fittest by ‘natural’ selection,” technological evolution centers more on “survival of the fittest technology by ‘human’ selection.” And, that selection and that evolution are driven by our natural laziness. That’s right, we invent things and develop new technology because we are lazy.

But what is it that allows us to invent in the first place?

Before I attempt to answer that question, allow me to digress briefly. In the 1969 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, there is a scene at the very beginning of the movie in which a group of pre-human hominids encounters a giant black monolith that emits a loud humming noise. The more aggressive and adventurous members of the group approach the monolith and, after one of them touches the monolith without any repercussion, the rest of the group also approach the monolith. In a later scene, one of the hominids is seen playing with a bone of a large animal, using that bone to smash the skeletal skull of the animal.

The insinuation in the early scenes of that movie is that human intelligence came from above (via the monolith), giving early pre-human hominids enough intelligence to be “selected” to continue forward in evolution, eventually becoming humans capable of controlling the environment enough that today we’ve become the only species capable of traveling safely into space.

You see, we humans are possessed of two things that put us at the top of the animal kingdom, and quite possibly the entire life ecosystem: our brain and our bipedal morphology that leaves our complex hands free to craft and manipulate useful devices. The leisure time that humans enjoy above most other animals came about because of our ability to easily meet the most basics needs of food, clothing and shelter.

There’s an old saying: necessity is the mother of invention. So, when humans recognize that there is a need for something, they resort to using their God-given intelligence to fill that need – usually an invention that involves developing a new technology based on our scientific knowledge at the time of the invention. And that is why most inventors live by the dictum: find a need, fill a need.

Unfortunately, oftentimes some humans (let’s call them “marketing experts”) create unnecessary “needs” and, with their marketing savvy, attempt to fill those made-up needs. Case in point: pet rocks in the 1970s.

Today, there are countless “inventions” that are practically useless and, yet, people run in droves to buy them. The jury is still out on whether or not the crypto craze falls into the category of marketing creating a “need,” but I know it’s taking a lot of marketing effort to get people to jump into the bitcoin craze. Every news headline that promises bitcoin at a million dollars is just another sales pitch meant to attract new buyers. And, naturally, those with a vested interest will lobby governments and established businesses to get in on the action to give crypto the legitimacy of gold.

But, creating products and services that are needless and useless has always been the way with humans; cheating others out of their money and their wealth is ingrained in our nature. As the great P.T. Barnum is quoted as having said: “there’s a sucker born every minute.” So, as long as marketing experts, who know suckers very well, continue to come up with creative marketing ideas for filling useless “needs” with equally useless apps and social media platforms, we will continue to spend our hard-earned money on things we don’t need or will never use.

Nevertheless, the majority of products we use today all fill needs that began a long time ago in a more primitive state but that, over time, engendered more and more related needs. And, because of our human nature that’s encoded in our DNA, those needs are easy to identify and bucket into major categories. For example, I think we all agree that the most basic human needs for survival are food, clothing and shelter. After these basic survival needs are satisfied, we generally have other needs that make life easier, such as a need to communicate, a need to transport ourselves and our goods, a need to defend ourselves, a “need” to procreate, and a “need” to entertain ourselves. And there are other “lesser” needs that crop up depending on our role in life, such as the “need” for attention, the “need” to be rich or powerful or famous, etc. Apparently, it seems some of us are actually quite needy.

And so, keeping in mind these various needs, as I follow the evolution of technology, I notice that many of those needs are satisfied by technology that ever increases, not so much in complexity, but in how that technology satisfies our laziness. That is, the new and improved technologies that we develop in order to satisfy a need mostly serve to make it easier for us to not have to work so hard. This may seem intuitively obvious, but it points to how deterministic and predictable the evolution of technology has been and continues to be.

For example, early man had a need for warmth and, after “discovering” fire (or having fire handed out to them by the “gods”) and how to control it, eventually created the heating and ventilating systems in use throughout most modern houses today, which automatically create the correct temperature inside our homes without us ever having to reach out and turn any knobs or switches. And the need for food, coupled with the control of fire, gave rise to heated cooking. In fact, in most homes throughout the world, cooking is accomplished by an actual fire created by natural gas and which is controlled by turning a knob (don’t worry, contactless cooking will soon become a reality; our laziness demands it!).

The same can be said for many other products in everyday use today: telephones, televisions, refrigerators, microwave ovens, coffeemakers, dishwashers, etc.; all the inventions that constitute today’s technology arose out of actual or perceived needs, and of our laziness.

But because we can easily satisfy our basic needs of food, clothing and shelter, and have time on our hands to ponder and create new inventions and technologies, we tend to use those creations to facilitate or enhance our most primitive urges and desires, such as entertainment, oppression of others, and even killing. Some people even become consumed with improving their appearance and allowing their instincts and desires to rule their thoughts and their actions, much as most animals do, by, for example, searching out wealth, power, fame, traveling, shopping, indulging in recreation, partying or attending amusement parks, etc.

So, if we accept the idea that inventions and the evolution of technology are following a predetermined path, rather than evolving from unknown random variations in technology along the lines of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, can we also foretell what inventions and what technology will dominate the future of humanity?

If we begin with the assumption that the first “tool” and “weapon” used by humans, or pre-humans, was a rock (or a bone as in 2001: A Space Odyssey), we can easily imagine humans with the ability to grasp objects and throw them, using rocks of different shapes and sizes to kill, to pile them together to create walls or homes, and to fashion objects or useful tools and devices, etc. Using something that already exists in abundance in our environment, and that is plentiful throughout the world, probably made humans more adaptable to their early environment.

Humans also developed technologies associated with transporting people and goods, as well as technologies that made us communicate more easily with one another. In this manner, the idea of “find a need, fill a need,” coupled with the intense drive and motivation of some individuals to doggedly pursue their ideas and inventions, have contributed to the evolution of technology in different areas of human needs, mostly due to our natural laziness. Furthermore, the overlap and complex interactions between all these separate needs have led to the development of multipurpose technologies (the proverbial Swiss Army Knife), creating a multitude of inventions too numerous to address in this article.

Returning to our lazy nature, most technologies and inventions come about primarily because we seek to create an easier or more comfortable living environment. That is, we want to create an environment in which we enjoy food, clothing, and shelter – the most basic of human necessities – to the greatest extent possible with the least effort possible. And so, while it can be said that necessity is the mother of invention, we might add that humans are lazy by nature and that, therefore, “laziness is a sibling to invention.”

Human laziness is a real phenomenon and one that we humans should not feel ashamed of, as it is that trait that has led directly to the development and evolution of many technologies over the millennia, and to the environment, good and bad, we have created for ourselves. Human laziness can probably be attributed to our God archetype personality in which we have an intrinsic desire to control everything around us, including other humans, such that the world behaves as we wish it to behave. In this manner, most of us have an internal desire to see the world conform to our world-view and respond to all our desires, as “instantly” as possible.

Another aspect of how our natural laziness leads to technology development and evolution is automation. Automation is the “drug” that enables or facilitates our laziness, as we attempt to automate every invention, taking away the human element as much as possible. It is for this reason that inventors automate many machines and appliances, outfitting them with “remote controls” and artificial intelligence; because we don’t want to spend “extra time” or energy reaching for knobs, levers, switches and buttons to get the desired results. Sometimes, it seems we all want that magic Harry Potter wand that creates the world we want simply by speaking the correct spell, incantation or curse while pointing that wand at the object of our attention.

And so, it’s natural that our laziness includes the idea that our environment should provide us with all our necessities without us having to make any effort. And as humans continue to find ways to automate processes in order to satisfy their needs instantly, we’ve developed technologies that are slowly (rapidly?) replacing the need for human labor. Today, for example, with the entire world connected electronically via satellites or “cells,” we can control many machines and appliances that perform work previously performed by humans, from anywhere in the world, by simply pressing “keys” on some virtual digital screen. It may be that at some point in the future we will dispense with the use of keys and simply control machines and appliances remotely with some electronic device implanted in our brain.

Nevertheless, this process continues as artificial intelligence is the latest technology to become embedded in all other technologies to further remove the human factor with the potential to make human “work” obsolete. It’s not too difficult, then, to imagine a future in which artificial intelligence is used to evolve current technologies and create all future technologies, leaving humans to do more pondering and more inventing – or not.

I wonder: will our God archetype personality and our human nature lead to more inventing and a better future for humanity, or will it lead to the creation of a permanent human slave class that becomes subservient to the artificial intelligence creators and their machines? Given the present state-of-the-art in autonomous vehicle technology, as evidenced by the Waymo experience in San Francisco, I’d say the artificial intelligence creators and their machines have a long way to go.

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In my previous post on Climate Change and Me (Part 1 of 2), I wrote about my experiences with climate change throughout the course of my life, and I shared my thoughts on the data used to promote the urgency for action and the proposed solutions. In that post I also wrote about The Paris climate agreement, signed by over 190 nations, which serves as the driving force in combating climate change.

In that same post I shared my concern with the way climate change has been presented to the general public. In particular, the singular focus on CO₂ concentration in our atmosphere as being the primary cause of the rising temperatures, and human activity being the singular cause of the increased concentration of CO₂. Naturally, by holding this view, we humans are the only ones who can “correct” the situation by first decreasing the amount of CO₂ concentration, which, it is believed, will automatically decrease average global temperatures.

That’s the plan. Now for the solutions.

But first, a brief history of environmental regulations that were intended to clean the air of the pollutants that created intolerable smog in America’s largest cities. In 1970, American president Richard M. Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and in that same year the government enacted the Clean Air Act, calling for automobile manufacturers to greatly reduce pollutants from auto exhausts.

As you can see from looking at this history, efforts have been underway since the 1970s to clean up our atmosphere from naturally-occurring greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, and from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used mostly in refrigeration.

Going back to my statement in my previous posting that the effects of trying to control climate change should be felt within a lifetime, it seems to me that, if we have implemented GHG reduction policies since the 1970s, we should have measurable results by now one way or another. If not, either we can say that whatever we have done to-date isn’t working, or perhaps there is something we are missing in our assessment (or modeling) of the problem or in the recommended solutions, or in both.

I cannot imagine that fifty years of effort have yielded absolutely nothing that we can measure in terms of moving the thermal needle, and the only thing we can say after fifty years is that we need to continue to reduce our carbon footprint-fast! We’ve had United Nations sponsored COP conferences for thirty years, with many countries claiming progress in reducing CO₂ emissions and we still have made no measurable progress. In fact, that exponential hockey stick chart continues to grow, well, exponentially, if we are to believe climate scientists.

But, how is that possible? How will we ever know if our policies are working if we attempt to effect a solution and we can’t measure any result from that attempt? If we’re shooting for an average temperature reduction of 1.5^oC, we should be able to measure a change of 0.1^oC from our efforts after fifty years of trying, and tie that change directly to those efforts. Otherwise, we are simply throwing solutions blindly at the problem hoping they result in the hoped-for reduction in CO₂ concentration as well as in the average global temperature.

Recall also how the UN-sponsored COP30 conference held last month in Belem, Brazil, ended with an agreement to triple the amount of money given to the poorest countries in order to help them implement carbon-reducing policies. If after fifty years of policies and ten years of the Paris climate agreement, the best statement that the UN can come up with is that we need to throw more money at the problem, we must be doing something wrong. Or perhaps we don’t fully understand the problem.

So, allow me to examine the idea of increasing global temperature from scratch. Many high school students learn that every chemical and physical change generates heat as one of its byproducts. How much heat depends on the particular reaction or change. Now, consider that the entire ecosystem consists of trillions of organisms, perhaps quadrillions, in addition to humans, each generating a certain amount of heat during its daily activities. We humans, by virtue of our higher level of intelligence, which has allowed us to create all manner of technology, all of which tends to generate heat, probably contribute more direct heat into our atmosphere than might be generated by the amount of CO₂ we pump from carbon-releasing processes.

Let me expand on this idea. Almost everything we use in our daily activities generates direct heat. Cars, boats, airplanes, rockets, ovens, refrigerators, microwave ovens, cell phones, motors of any kind, computers (especially those used to mine cryptocurrency and to generate artificial intelligence), and even our bodies while we sleep, all generate heat. And there are many other technologies, structures and devices created by humans, the operation of which generates direct heat.

Thus, people who at one time used horses as the primary state-of-the-art means of transportation generated much less heat per person than people today who use the equivalent of many horses (the automobile) to run errands locally and the equivalent of many fires to provide the comforts of life. This greater per-person energy demand (in the form of “needing” modern gadgets such as refrigerators, lights, cars, telephones, televisions, and many other electric appliances) has resulted in the production of more direct heat per person than in more primitive times.

It seems this kind of direct heat from humans as well as from all organisms on Earth (and from the Earth itself) should form at least one component of the temperature increase calculation, aside from CO₂ emissions and in addition to the solar flux. I know from experience, when cycling on city streets for example, that I could feel the extra heat emanating from cars and buses as they passed me. I also recall feeling the heat rising up from sewers, from black asphalt, and from vents at such places as restaurants, stores and hotels.

So, I believe we humans contribute heat directly into our atmosphere in a significant way that should form a part of any climate modeling involving temperature. Do climate scientists have a good understanding for how much heat humans (and the ecosystem) contribute to the atmosphere directly outside of CO₂ emissions? I don’t know.

But now, as I consider the different solutions implemented by many countries to reduce the carbon footprint from human sources, as well as from our manufacturing plants and other large carbon “polluters,” I wonder how we are ever going to make real progress if we have trouble measuring temperature changes that can be directly attributed to our efforts in bringing down CO₂ emissions.

Take the idea of eliminating all Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles and replacing them with all-electric vehicles. To begin with, this idea only replaces the power source for the engine while leaving all other components as they were, including using the same rubber tires and other vehicle components which are produced by processes that add significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Even the lithium batteries that replaced the gas-powered engines generate their own form of pollution and contribute in their own way to GHGs.

So, if we were to calculate how much we eliminate in terms of CO₂ emissions from this conversion, by looking at all the processes involved in building a new all-electric vehicle, it may turn out to be a minimal amount. Nevertheless, we introduced electric vehicles more than twenty years ago and, in that time, if they have any effect, we should be able to measure a change in the atmosphere that we can attribute to those changes.

The same rationale can be applied to all the other types of heat-producing, CO₂-producing technologies and manufacturing processes out there: while replacing them with alternatives may not decrease their heat-producing processes much because they still require greater and greater energy that is demanded by the increasing population, nevertheless we should be able to measure some effect from implementing those changes. From my point of view, then, the only real solution seems to be to decrease the per-person energy demand in conjunction with increasing the number of carbon-sucking processes (plant life) that we can produce.

In a previous post of mine on Cities and Civilization, I offered some wild ideas for preserving our ecosystem in the most effective way. If you recall, one of my ideas was to have all the people of the world live underground, allowing the Earth’s surface to remain pristine in supporting the ecosystem with minimal human intervention. Obviously, if humanity were to adopt such an idea, we would almost instantly decrease the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere and, hopefully, the average global temperature.

And this idea is more or less endorsed by the Paris climate agreement, which includes language to preserve or increase the amount of oxygen-producing plant life around the world. And many efforts have been made over the past several decades to do just that. Again, if we really understood this problem, then we should be able to measure some effect from those efforts after several decades.

And as I mentioned in my previous post, COP30, held last month in Belem, Brazil, was another “meeting-of-the-minds” to get some results. But, as with all other UN meetings that seldom result in any concrete action taken, the result of that conference was to agree to triple the amount of money that third world countries would get in order to help them get to net-zero-carbon by the year 2030. In this manner, climate change has become a money grab for the wealthy who continue to flout their own rules for reducing carbon footprint, rather than a problem requiring real results-oriented solutions.

In addition, the hypocrisy of all the climate change advocates and activists is on public display for everyone to see every time some newsworthy activity takes place. For example, the destruction of a portion of the Amazon jungle in order to prepare for the COP30 conference made headlines around the world. Here’s a screen grab of a Google Gemini description of this event:

So, naturally, there remains plenty of skepticism as to how dire the situation is, when even those who are in charge of enforcing the necessary changes don’t seem to believe in their own cries for action. Here’s a more critical review of the COP30 conference.

But what about all the destructive climate phenomena that results from increased global temperatures, such as more powerful and destructive hurricanes and more intense and destructive wildfires? According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, when it comes to hurricanes, there’s been little change since the 1950s. In fact, in some areas of the world there seems to be a reduction in the number of hurricanes. Here’s a short excerpt from that website:

“Are scientists at a point where they can argue confidently that hurricane activity is increasing globally? Or that global warming is causing an increase in hurricane activity? Right now the answer to both of these questions is no. Global and regional hurricane records indicate that the apparent increase in hurricanes in the North Atlantic does not appear in many of the other hurricane-producing regions. In fact, hurricane activity in some regions has even declined over the same period.”

And if we look throughout history at the most powerful or more destructive hurricanes, we notice that the deadliest was the Great Hurricane of 1780 (Hurricanes didn’t start getting proper names until 1953). That’s right, 1780, right after the America Revolution and a few years before the Industrial Revolution. In America, the next deadliest hurricane was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, just a few decades after the Industrial Revolution began. In terms of strength, Typhoon Tip in 1979 was deemed the strongest by pressure, while Hurricane Patricia in 2015 was the strongest by wind speed. Notice that the most destructive in terms of cost (not deaths) have all occurred in the 21^st century, as would be expected due to inflation and the increased value of property.

And if I were to consider the deadliest fires in recorded history, I found that some of the deadliest occurred only a few years after the industrial revolution began. The Peshtigo Fire and the Great Chicago Fire occurred on the same day on October 8, 1871, due to extremely dry conditions that had persisted over the area for a long time. Again, these fires could hardly be blamed on the global warming that had yet to be discovered, unless climate scientists claim that global warming has been around since the 1800s.

In my mind, it all comes down to energy demand. As we discover more and more technology that makes life easier, we introduce more and more heat into our ecosystem. There is no doubt that humans contribute to the heat being generated in our ecosystem, as do all living organisms. Perhaps the ecosystem itself “knows” when things are getting too hot and will blow out a few volcanoes in order to cloud the atmosphere with particles that block out the heat from the sun, thus cooling the ecosystem for a while. We just don’t know.

However, here’s something concrete I do know: regardless of where our climate is headed long-term, our primary function as a species is to adapt to our environment so that we might survive. Instead of creating panic in the population and seeking to control mother nature by trying to reduce average global temperatures, we should be asking ourselves: in what ways can the human species best survive an Earth that is 2^oC warmer than pre-industrial levels?

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

I don’t know about you, but in my neck of the woods we are in full-blown winter mode. I’m talking about freezing temperatures, jackets and overcoats, gloves and boots, and sipping on a steaming cup of hot chocolate by an open fire. I know some of you who live in the land down under are probably feeling the opposite weather effects, but, for us north of the equator, it’s just another early winter, climate change be damned.

What prompted me to write on the topic of climate change is that I happened upon a recent New York Times (NYT) article about a retraction of a scientific paper on this topic, published in the journal Nature, indicating that the researchers who published the paper had made incorrect use of some data. Since I know the NYT has a paywall and many of you may not be able to read that article, you can read a better summary here.

Reading about that retraction brought many thoughts to my mind. You see, I’ve been living with climate change for my entire life, as have you. And I don’t mean the seasonal changes that I experience each year as the Earth revolves around the sun, or as I change my residence from one climate zone to another; I’m talking about noticing the average temperatures in my environment over the years. That is, I’ve lived in some places for many years, taking into account how the weather changed over those many years. In this manner, I’ve had an opportunity to gauge global warming, to some extent, as it has affected me. And I have to report that, in more than six decades, I have yet to notice any difference in Mother Nature’s emotions, despite what climate change scientists have to say on the subject.

You see, throughout my life, I’ve lived in extremely cold environments and in extremely hot environments. I’ve lived in desert heat of over 40^oC and in snowy cold of -20^oC. That’s a temperature difference of 60^oC. Somehow, I managed to survive in those extreme environments. So, it becomes difficult for me to imagine a world that is just 2^oC hotter, as somehow being a world in which it is impossible for me to survive.

Now, you might point out that there is not enough time during one lifetime to accurately assess the true effects of climate change as scientists have described, and that those changes are not necessarily about the temperature outside but about the catastrophic events taking place all around the world. But, allow me to explain why I feel that those effects (and especially the solutions we choose) “should” be felt during the course of one’s lifetime.

To begin with, I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with climate change, or, as it was previously called, global warming. Since I can recall, scientists who called it global warming (which, in my mind, is a more appropriate term for what they describe) predicted all sorts of catastrophes, including the end of all life on Earth (the runaway greenhouse effect). At least, that is how some of us ordinary pedestrians took it. But those alarms also created a lot of good in terms of cleaning up the air and our fresh water sources of many pollutants.

Nevertheless, that warming warning created unprecedented panic among the masses. And the scientists who poured over the data added to it by insisting that the warming trend could only be attributed to human activity. But they went even further. Not only are humans the cause of this phenomenon, but we are the only ones who can correct this mistake. Not only that, they insist that we must correct this trend, as if turning the dial on a thermostat, to “pre-industrial age” (1800s) average temperature levels.

Say what??

This has been a lot for me to take in; there are just too many things for my feeble mind to handle at once. I even recall a time when some scientists were warning of a global cooling trend that might lead to another ice age. Talk about confusion! In any case, a bit of panic sets in when scientists predict catastrophes on a global scale, mostly because there is nowhere to run and hide when we’re all stuck on the same globe!

According to a Wikipedia entry on the history of climate change, there was a time in the 1960s when there was no scientific consensus on whether the trend in increasing carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration in the atmosphere and average global temperatures would lead to global cooling or global warming. Here is a short excerpt from that Wikipedia entry:

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Scientists increasingly predict warming, 1970s

In the early 1970s, evidence that aerosols were increasing worldwide and that the global temperature series showed cooling encouraged Reid Bryson and some others to warn of the possibility of severe cooling. The questions and concerns put forth by Bryson and others launched a new wave of research into the factors of such global cooling. Meanwhile, the new evidence that the timing of ice ages was set by predictable orbital cycles suggested that the climate would gradually cool, over thousands of years. Several scientific panels from this time period concluded that more research was needed to determine whether warming or cooling was likely, indicating that the trend in the scientific literature had not yet become a consensus.

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At this point, before continuing, I want to briefly discuss the 1973 science fiction cult classic movie Soylent Green. The movie was directed by Richard Fleischer and was, according to its Wikipedia entry, loosely based on the 1966 science fiction novel, Make Room, Make Room, written by Harry Harrison. The movie takes place in the year 2022 (fifty years after the movie was made) and paints a dystopian world that has become overpopulated and in which greenhouse gases have turned most of the world into a humid hothouse filled with pollution. Because of overpopulation, food becomes scarce and, in particular, food from primary sources such as fruit from trees and meat from cows, become highly prized and only affordable by the very wealthy, while the rest of the world subsists on protein-rich crackers referred to as “Soylent Red,” “Soylent Yellow” and “Soylent Green.” In this setting, the movie eventually reveals its big plot twist that (spoiler alert), because of the scarcity of food, those crackers were actually composed of the remains of dead humans recycled to feed the population.

This depressing view of the future came naturally from the negative news being promulgated at the time when the movie first came out, about an impending population explosion, rapid decrease in food supplies (the so-called Malthusian theory), and the negative effects of the greenhouse gases being released through human activities. It’s an interesting movie to watch more than fifty years after its initial release, if only to appreciate how badly we (especially writers of science fiction) are at predicting the future, especially when we allow our fears to cloud those predictions.

With a world population estimated at around eight billion people, today there are population trends that actually indicate decreasing birth rates in some countries with the possibility that the human population may stabilize or even decrease in the future. And, although climate trends point to a generally warmer global climate, the runaway polluted hothouse depicted in the movie has yet to materialize.

Today, there seems to be consensus among climate scientists that there is a warming trend globally in average air temperature. I’ve accepted that much from the scientific community for many years. However, even according to the Wikipedia entry on the history of climate change, there is still some debate as to how much of that warming is due to human activity. Naturally, the climate “alarmists” tell us it’s ALL due to human activity. Others say the sun, moon, volcanoes, earthquakes, and other natural phenomena, such as meteor strikes, have a greater impact on our climate than we humans could ever have.

Whom should I believe? Obviously, for you and me, in our everyday lives we have to deal with the changes in climate that occur from day to night and from summer to winter; changes that involve much more than two degrees Celsius and that have been pretty consistent over the years. At least, within my lifetime, so far.

Going back to the Wikipedia entry on the history of climate change, I note that throughout the history of climate change measurements, theories and experiments, the focus has been on CO₂ concentrations in our atmosphere. Over the years, climate scientists zeroed in on the effect of CO₂ concentrations on temperature and, after modeling their theory and matching it to actual measurements, declared that the rapidly increasing average global temperatures can only be attributed to human activity.

Interestingly, the one chart that climate alarmists seem to focus on is the famous “hockey stick” chart showing CO₂ concentrations going back thousands of years, indicating an unprecedented rise in CO₂ concentration since the 1950s, a time when new and more precise tools for measuring CO₂ concentrations and average global temperatures came into being. For example, global temperatures measured today involve the use of satellites, which weren’t around before the 1950s.

Here’s a primer on climate change from the BBC. Notice that, as the BBC answers the question “what is climate change?” it also hypes up the alarming nature of climate change by connecting it with many environmental disasters around the world, some of which may not necessarily have anything to do with the increase in temperature or the increase in CO₂ concentration. And the BBC also posts the famous “hockey stick” graph to show how intense and critical this change is. Unfortunately, it’s that very same hockey stick graph that raises all kinds of questions in my mind.

The first thing that captures my attention is the fact that the data on global CO₂ concentrations goes back to 800,000 years ago (what?). How were these climate scientists able to measure global atmospheric CO₂ concentrations back then? Oh, yeah, they dug up ice cores and developed an estimate of the CO₂ concentration from those samples. That’s fine and dandy for me, as far as science goes. But here’s what bothers me a lot: lumping those same data with data collected using actual thermometers, balloons and satellites, shown in the graph as the 1950 level and 2024 level. Those are two separate and distinct methods and any person with any sense would say that you just can’t put those kinds of data on the same graph and compare the two as representing the same phenomenon. Putting them together as though they represent the same measuring methodology is misleading, at best.

Why is this such a big deal to me? Let’s say that the ice-core measurements, if taken from the same region of the world, represent the CO₂ concentration not only restricted to that particular region, but possibly only within a particular level of the atmosphere, rather than a global atmospheric condition. Then it’s quite possible that what we see from the 1950-to-2024 level represents data that is no different from that shown by the ice-core measurements; we just used more precise measuring devices, and in greater quantity, than the ice-core samples.

It’s kind of like putting a magnifying glass on the 800,000 yr-old estimate and claiming that the enlarged view indicates a dramatic change in the data. Perhaps what we see in the upward trajectory of the hockey stick “handle” is exactly the same as what we would have seen 800,000 years ago if modern humans were alive then and had the same measurement devices we have today. It’s quite possible that the Earth ecosystem is self-correcting enough that in a few years, or perhaps a hundred years from now, we might experience a downward trend in global temperature even if we did nothing about it. To my mind, that hockey-stick graph is very misleading.

And the same logic applies to the temperature chart. Here’s a summary of the recently-held COP30 (“Conference of the Parties”) conference held in Belem, Brazil, again from the BBC.

In that summary you’ll notice another hockey-stick graph showing the increase in average global temperature from pre-industrial years through the present.

My concerns with this graph are the same as I have for the CO₂ concentration graph. Is it possible that current methods for assessing average global temperatures differ greatly from before the 1950s, when satellites and weather balloons did not exist or were not widely used as measuring devices? Again, I feel that the graph is misleading because it may very well indicate that average global temperatures may be no different today from a hundred years ago, especially if measured using different and fewer devices, in fewer locations, and possibly calibrated differently.

Interestingly, the paper that was retracted in that issue of Nature had to do with the cost of climate change by the year 2049. And in the COP30 meeting, the main discussion centered around how much each nation suffering from climate change should be funded in order to meet with the goals of the Paris climate agreement of 2015. The Nature paper was retracted because it had overestimated the cost by three times, and the resolution agreed to at COP30 was to triple the amount of money that is used to fight climate change. Coincidence? Perhaps. But my mind is troubled greatly when solutions to climate change are defined by money grabs, rather than measurable results. Those monies will simply land in the pockets of despots and bureaucrats who do nothing to change the behavior of their people.

I will have more to say on this in my next installment of this two-part series when I discuss the solutions proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and agreed to by over 200 nations that signed onto the Paris climate agreement.

Until then, thank you for reading and sharing this article.

I recall a time when my children, two boys, were still very young and would invariably get entangled in a physical altercation. I had to break them apart and tell them to shake hands and say “I’m sorry” to each other. Naturally, each one of them would resist, coming back with “well, he started it!” At that point I’d have to act as the tough referee and inform them about how fighting never solved any problems and that if they didn’t like something the other one did, to come to me or mom and tell us, instead of fighting it out.

As evidenced by my experience with my children, it appears that from a very early age some of us seem to have an aggressive nature that make us fight with our own kind, including pitting brother against brother. Even the Bible, at the very beginning, tells the story of Cain luring his one and only brother, Abel, onto a field and killing him without remorse. Basically, we kill one another because we know we can; it’s in our nature.

And as we increase the scale of fighting and killing to include the case of many fighting many, we see immediately how war is also a part of that killing nature. Even the Bible recognizes that war between humans is inevitable, as the Old Testament is filled with stories involving wars between God’s chosen people and the “other” people who did not recognize the one and only God. And God even encourages war and is often the arbiter of wars and destruction. For example, God instructs the Israelites to completely destroy the town of Jericho, taking no slaves or property and leaving no humans or animals alive.

And if we were to examine the concept of war in its most basic form, between just two individuals, we find that the impetus for fighting against one another often arises from emotional and instinctual, rather than rational, thinking. Some of the most hostile and horrific one-on-one “wars” occur during divorce, road rage, and over “cheating,” however you may define that (a spouse “cheating” on the other spouse, or a gambler cheating at cards). In all those cases, the emotions can override rational thinking to the point that someone gets killed.

Using the 1989 movie, The War of the Roses, for reference, in that movie we witness a story of a married couple that is in the process of obtaining a divorce, experiencing what one might consider a war between two people. Although that movie is a satirical look at the process of divorce, individuals who have gone through that process might attest to how realistic some of the scenes are. In the case of that movie, the couple shared the surname, Rose, hence the title. But the title of the movie is also an obvious reference to the famous Wars of the Roses that took place in medieval England in the fifteenth century.

And any war on a large scale is hell on Earth. If you recall from my two-part series on Heaven and Hell, I wrote about why “War is Hell” and on the nature of good and evil. In any case, there is probably no better example of this idea than World War I, which was fought from 1914 to 1918. With more than nine million dead, WWI counts as probably the deadliest and the most miserable of all wars in terms of wounded. In addition, perhaps because of that war, the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 that killed more than ten million people around the world (some estimates put the dead at higher than fifty million) added to the idea that war is hell on Earth.

But we also know that there have been periods of peace during the history of humanity. However, for the most part, peace is just another name for rearming and preparing for another war. Humans, it seems, evolved to forever practice the art of war. So much so that, in his novel 1984, George Orwell writes that, through thought manipulation, the people in his fictional novel are led to believe that “war is peace.”

But as I look throughout history at the types of “peace” that ensued after some major wars, I notice that there are many different ways to obtain peace, even if for a fleeting moment. In the medieval Wars of the Roses, for example, which were considered to be civil wars because of the relationship between the fighting forces (the House of York vs the House of Lancaster), peace was obtained when the “winning” king married the daughter of the losing side, thus bringing together the two houses into the newly-created Tudor House, which would become a long-lasting ruling dynasty in England.

More recently in history, the Korean War was the first proxy war fought after World War II. That war resulted in the death of several million people, and ended in an armistice in which peace came by way of both sides agreeing to end hostilities, but officially remaining at war. Thus, the Korean War never really ended and remains a war to this day. Nevertheless, one can say that, for the past seventy years and because of the armistice, there has been relative “peace” on the Korean peninsula.

A more interesting peace agreement resulted from a period of civil war in the country of Colombia in the early 1950s. That civil war originated from the intense political divisions in the population, pitting conservatives against liberals with much blood shed on both sides. The end result was that both sides eventually agreed to a power-sharing agreement in which the nation would elect alternate presidents each election cycle; a candidate from the conservative party one year followed by a candidate from the opposition party the next election cycle.

Colombia has enjoyed the longest continuous democratic form of government in South America ever since that “peace” agreement was enacted more than seventy years ago. Nevertheless, that country has been beset by guerrilla fighting since the end of that civil war, as communist guerrilla factions, funded by the very profitable drug trade, persist to this day in attempting to overthrow the government.

Today, we are closing in on the fourth year of the war between Russia and Ukraine with more than a million war casualties and practically no end in sight. Recently, there have been some rumblings of a 28-point peace plan offered by the Americans that seems to be gaining traction, if we are to believe the news media. But, establishing peace, especially a long-lasting one and especially after a war such as the one being fought in Ukraine, is no easy task. But any effective peace plan (unfortunately, I have no insight into the 28-point plan proposed by the Americans) that has any meat to it requires that we first understand the motivation behind the war.

If we examine briefly the motivation behind this war, we need to go all the way back to, at least, World War II. Immediately after that war, the Soviet Union, which included countries that are currently independent nations, such as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine, attempted to spread communism throughout the world while the other “winners” of WWII, which included most of Western Europe and America, were attempting to spread capitalism and democracy.

The two sides continued this “Cold War” and, in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed as a response to the aggressiveness by the Soviets. From this and other post-war developments, it seems that any “peace” that transpires as a result of the end of any war is short-lived, if it ever really exists to begin with. Perhaps we humans have always been in a perpetual state of many wars, with in-between periods of respite we refer to as “peace.”

Then, throughout the decades of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, the world saw many proxy wars in which the Soviets, working with their communist allies, engaged in this ideological Cold War that engendered the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the war in Afghanistan (for the Soviets) and various skirmishes in Central and South America. Communism took over China in 1949 when Mao Zedong came into power. Then, in 1961, communism took over Cuba when Fidel Castro took control of that island nation.

However, with time, communism saw enough unrest in the Soviet Union (and other communist nations) that, by 1991, several member republics declared independence from the Soviet Union, essentially dissolving that union, while disavowing communism.

It began with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev who established openness (glasnost), restructuring (perestroika) and democratization (demokratizatsiya) in order to improve the economic situation in the Soviet Union. As a result of those efforts, the Berlin Wall fell and several nations, including Ukraine, decided to leave the Soviet Union. Thus, in 1991, Ukraine became an independent country. In that same year, Gorbachev resigned and, several years later, Vladimir Putin took over.

Since the year 2000, Putin has been in charge of Russia. During his life, Putin experienced the drastic changes that engulfed the old Soviet system and produced a Russia that has been isolated by NATO and, in particular, by America. Since Putin took over Russia, he has attempted to reinvent the old Soviet Union in some ways. Having lived through the transformation of the Soviet Union from being a political powerhouse on the world stage to being ignominiously dismantled, Putin very much wants to see Russia and the former Soviet republics together again, reestablishing that super power status.

As for the war in Ukraine, whatever statements might be publicly made by Putin, it’s almost natural for him to use any pretense to declare war on Ukraine. With actions speaking louder than words, it becomes obvious that Putin’s objectives have to do with obtaining greater control of a country that was once considered to be a sibling to Russia. This war is not just a war against Ukraine but a war against NATO and the powers that helped dissolve the old Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the war in Ukraine may turn out to be Putin’s last stand.

With this history we arrive at a war that, today, is going into its fourth year with no end in sight. Given the motivation behind the start of this war, what kind of peace “plan” can we come up with that is effective and hopefully long-lasting?

I have a few thoughts, but, first, let’s consider what’s been done so far to end this war. The war began with the massing of hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers along the border with Ukraine in early 2022. This was viewed in the west with alarm but without any clear idea of how to respond. Most analysts assessed that Russia, with its much more powerful weaponry and prior experience fighting in Afghanistan, would overtake Ukraine in a matter of weeks. Having previously taken the Crimea in 2014 without any resistance, this time Russia was poised to quickly take over the entire country of Ukraine.

That didn’t happen. By taking a long time to attack, Putin not only gave away his hand, but he provided the European NATO countries enough time to help Ukraine and support its response with enough weapons to repel the attacking Russian forces. Putin’s short “military operation” turned into a long, drawn-out military quagmire, a nightmare from which Putin would probably entertain any face-saving proposal.

Here, then, is my face-saving proposal that, from a logical point of view, would, if accepted by both parties, result in a long-lasting peace.

1. First and foremost, as all peace plans begin, a ceasefire must take place immediately after acceptance of the plan by both sides and all hostilities must be stopped by both nations.

2. Russia must agree to “give back” Ukraine’s 1991 borders and recognize those borders as demarcation points between the countries of Russia and Ukraine.

3. Ukraine must cede partial control of the lands currently occupied by Russia in a “sharing” of the resources afforded by those lands, with the terms of this “sharing” to be determined by an international committee to be created for this purpose.

4. Ownership of the lands currently occupied by Russia within Ukraine’s original borders must revert back to their original Ukrainian owners.

5. Political leadership and control of the shared lands will be determined by the people of those lands, but the lands must be considered to be part of Ukraine and fall under Ukrainian law.

6. Reconstruction of Ukraine must be funded by Russia with a level to be determined by an international committee created for that purpose, with additional support from other nations who might provide the funds and the expertise to allow Ukraine and Russia to coexist “peacefully” for several years to come.

7. Putin and Zelenskyy both agree to step down from their leadership positions and give the Russian and Ukrainian people an opportunity to begin a new chapter in their lives by electing new leaders who will maintain the peace between these two sister nations for as long as possible.

8. Ukraine agrees not to seek membership in NATO or in the European Union.

This, then, is my own eight-point plan. It asks a lot of both sides but, given the current situation, appears to me to be the only solution that will save face for Putin while keeping the nation of Ukraine with its original borders, including the Crimea, and lead to a lasting peace, whatever that may mean in a human world that is constantly at war.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.

The other day I happened to be looking in the mirror when I suddenly felt something I have felt only a handful of times during the course of my life: I failed to recognize the individual who was staring back at me. No, this was not a case of onset Alzheimer’s, and I imagine you’ve probably had a similar experience at one time or another. It’s that instance when you are somewhat shocked to see yourself as an older person that does not match the young and vibrant individual still residing in your mind.

In that one instant, I suddenly took notice of the many wrinkles that had become permanent fixtures around my eyes, on my forehead, and around my cheeks and neck, as though I were noticing them for the first time. I also took notice of the gray hair and the receding hairline. In that instant, that individual staring back at me seemed like a foreigner; an alien from some other universe, not the man filled with dreams, hope and ambition that I knew myself to be.

Mirrors are interesting structures. They reflect and create what appears to be some other dimension separated by the plane of the mirror itself, and in which left is right and right is left, and in which you only see the face that stares back at you. Because our eyes can’t see the face on which they are set when they look out at the world, we seek out a mirror to know and understand what others see when they look at us. Unfortunately, because of the right-left structure, and perhaps a few minor imperfections with the mirror, we often see a skewed version of how others see us.

But mirrors also show a reality that we sometimes fail to recognize or wish didn’t exist. Thus, those rare instances in which we don’t want to accept what the mirror reflects back to us. Or, worse, we feel deceived by the mirror when that small imperfection on our skin, the one no one else in the world would care to notice, seems to be the most disfiguring scar ever, as our blood pressure suddenly rises and panic sets in while we frantically search for some sort of camouflage, perhaps a band-aid of invisibility, that will obscure that ugly mountain that sits on our cheek, right next to our mouth. We might even consider calling in sick at work until that actually-tiny pimple goes away.

Many of us tend to live out our lives believing ourselves to be some special character, perhaps a dashing young hero or a brilliant scientist, when all the while we are just another insignificant worker-bee barely able to tolerate the pressure that comes from living life. In such cases, our minds become the mirror, but one that fools us with a reflection that does not quite match what others see in us. Sometimes, when we think introspectively on who we are, we might catch a glimpse of reality; but, more often than not, the hopeful and ambitious among us see ourselves as being smarter and more capable than we “really” are, while others see themselves as being inferior and less capable.

But believing we are better and more capable than we really are is part of our human nature. I believe this is yet another instance of how our DNA makes us succeed in adapting to and surviving in our environment. Whether that internal mirror reflects back a superior or inferior individual, I believe the effect is primarily due to how we are manipulated by our dreams.

Allow me to elaborate on this concept.

To begin with, dreams can be categorized in many different ways. Naturally, there are those dreams we all experience during our sleep cycle; they are usually the first thing that comes to mind when we encounter the word “dream.” However, there are other variations, such as visions, daydreams, conceptualizations, and even hallucinations that may be brought on by psychologically induced stimuli or by the physical absorption of certain chemicals into the bloodstream. These different categories of the concept “dream” generally materialize at once in our minds, lighting up our minds with visual images to which we attach some meaning.

Today, the scientific study of these types of dreams centers mostly on studying the neurological processes that occur in the brain when we sleep. Scientists have been able to associate dreams with sleep patterns and have even identified REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep as the most significant type of sleep that produces our dreams. However, because of how vivid and emotional dreams can be, they greatly affect our personality and the behaviors we exhibit as we live out our lives.

Thus, the dreams that originate in our subconscious play a very important part in our behavior. So much so that, throughout history, dreams, visions and their interpretation have held a very important status in many different cultures and have greatly affected the development of civilizations.

Even in the Bible we see much of the narrative dedicated to dreams and visions, and their interpretation. The first instance of a dream depicted in the Bible occurs in the Book of Genesis, when Abimelech, the King of Gerar, after trying to have sex with Abraham’s wife, Sara, thinking Sara to be Abraham’s sister, is told by God in a dream to steer clear of her or face certain death. Greatly perturbed by the dream, Abimelech apologizes to Abraham and his wife, and gives them many gifts, including a portion of Abimelech’s land.

Later in the Book of Genesis, we find Jacob fleeing from his brother Esau and stopping to rest. As he lies down in a field and falls asleep, Jacob dreams the famous “stairway to heaven” dream. Upon awakening, Jacob builds an altar to God on the spot where he slept and dreamt.

From these two narratives, we can surmise that, absent their dreams, Abimelech and Jacob might never have entertained the notion of taking the actions that they took upon awakening. Abimelech felt compelled to apologize and give many gifts to Abraham, and Jacob felt compelled to build an altar to God. They did not, for example, dismiss their dreams and continue with their lives unaffected.

So, dreams (including visions, daydreams, hallucinations, and especially nightmares) have a great impact on our personalities and on what we decide to do during the course of our lives. Some dreams might create fear in us, others might create pleasant feelings, and still others might lead to the development of psychiatric disorders. In any case, we respond to dreams by creating new thoughts and ideas, or by taking action in the case of dreams that stir our imaginations.

But it’s also possible that dreams might simply be the result of memories randomly accessed by our brains and put together in various ways as our minds recover from deep sleep back into consciousness. That is, just as a computer “boots up” when first turned on by testing and verifying the functionality of its components in order to be ready to work, perhaps from a physiological point of view dreams are simply a way for our brain to boot up prior to awakening, by mixing and sorting random images and other synchronized sensual memories from the memory reservoir in the mind, as it tries to carve out and cement new neural pathways and get back to the reality it left when it first went to sleep. Then, as it sorts through many memories to create certain possible realities, it discards those that don’t make sense until the brain is synchronized back with the reality of the “moment-before-falling-asleep” and is ready to wake up.

If we accept this, then the dreams that we recall with great accuracy might remain in our consciousness only because of their relevance to a desire or fear that we might have; for example, seeing in the dream the death of a currently-living loved one. In any case, I think we can agree that dreams can have such an impact on the psyche that it makes sense that people would seek meaning and act on those dreams that caused the dreamer to wake up in a cold sweat, filled with worry or fear.

But there is yet another category of dreams with which we all must contend during our lives. I’m referring here to those dreams that we conceptualize as long-term goals in life; for example, “the American Dream.” Some of these types of dreams we express early in life, and are usually described when we are asked the question: what would you like to be when you grow up?

Typically, these early dreams are shed as we mature and acquire new dreams that displace the old ones. For example, we might start out wanting to be a policeman, firefighter, teacher, astronaut, doctor, movie star, professional athlete or some other role model we admire in our youth. Then, as we learn and experience success and failure along the way, we adjust our “dreams” to include such things as: becoming a billionaire before the age of thirty, owning a home in some gated community or some country setting, retiring before the age of fifty, obtaining a certain high political office, creating a successful small business or perhaps discovering a great scientific truth.

But, being human, when we conceptualize one of those long-term dreams, we often idealize those dreams in ways that prove nearly impossible to achieve. In addition, unintended consequences resulting from our actions often derail the best laid plans for achieving those dreams. Because of this, giving up on a dream can sometimes be the most difficult, most emotionally painful experience of our lives.

In a previous post of mine called Dare to Fail, I challenged readers to allow themselves to fail as a way to deal with the fear of failure. In that post I wrote about the poem Don’t Quit. When it comes to dreams on which we “give up,” most of those dreams are, by definition, difficult to attain. And, because we tend to treasure those dreams, they remain in our consciousness for a long time as we chase after them. But, at some point, we give up on them, referring to them as “broken,” as though perhaps someday we might be able to repair them and continue chasing after them. Other times, chasing after a dream becomes a nightmare, and then our new dream is to get out of that nightmare-of-our-own-making.

But some dreams just aren’t repairable. For example, as a young man I dreamed of athletic achievements with my sights set on reaching the Olympics or playing at a professional level. By the time I reached my thirties, that dream began to fade, although I kept my hope alive well into my forties. Eventually, I put that dream to rest in peace and never looked back. Sometimes, our dreams don’t just break; they die.

But other dreams of mine remained alive, even if on life support. And some dreams materialized but not quite as I had pictured them. In some cases, the reality was a twisted, warped version of my dream, as though God or destiny were laughing at my expense (be careful what you wish for). But I laughed along; life’s too short to be taken seriously.

And although I’ve never had a “beyond my wildest dreams!” experience, I’ve always felt blessed to be who I am, and I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. The way I see it, there are way too many lives to be lived and I can’t possibly live all of them at once. Yet, my life, as it is, has been extremely good, even if full of failures and broken dreams.

Some of you might be familiar with the rock band Green Day and their very popular 2004 song “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” which I’ve chosen as the title of this article. I did some research on that song and discovered that the songwriter actually spent time in New York City before coming up with the lyrics. I then realized why that song resonated so well with me; it perfectly encapsulated how I felt living in that city. For some, living in New York City creates a sense of loneliness, even as one walks and lives among millions of people. That loneliness is difficult to explain unless you live that experience. Music can be inspirational at times.

Next time you look in the mirror and see a stranger, accept and embrace the individual who is staring back at you, and who is probably walking alone down that boulevard of broken dreams. We all have a purpose for being here but none of us knows what that purpose is; we only know what we can do and what we dream of doing. But those dreams and visions are what keep us going with life and with fulfilling that purpose for which we were created. So, keep dreaming!

And, if you feel you might need some inspiration, I recommend some music. In particular, there is an up-and-coming alternative/indie band called LA River Crossing that I discovered. Check out their music on YouTube or your favorite music app.

Thank you for reading and sharing this article.