Even P.T. Barnum would be ashamed

The circus owner and operator P.T. Barnum once remarked that he didn't care what you wrote about him as long as you spelled his name right. He was a man of questionable character and less than scrupulous, but he billed his circus as "the greatest show on earth". Whether it was the "greatest", or whether it was just more colorful, louder and gaudier than all the others, I don't know. It doesn't matter, he was a shameless peddler of illusions, but I'd bet even he'd be gob-smacked by the even greater circus going on in his home country right now: that circus we Americans call our presidential primaries.

The jig is up. You've been found out. All that prattle about democracy and democratic process and the people's choice and even government by and for the people has been exposed for what it is: prattle: loud, hollow, foolish talk. America has just shown that by all reasonable standards, it has about as much to do with democracy as the old Soviet Union had to do with rule by the peasants and workers. Empty assertions, like lies, if repeated often enough, sooner or later are held to be true, but eventually, the truth will out, and when it finds its way to the light, the clowns of that particular circus reveal themselves to be Chuckys not Clarabells.

It's not just that they've turned a serious undertaking (the selection of public leaders) into a an adolescent popularity contest (I can't remember the last time I heard my fellow countrypeople actually discussing or debating an issue ... well, come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I heard them discussing or debating anything), and it's not just that they've scraped the bottom of the personality barrel (Trump and Clinton, just to name the most front-running mispicks) ... no, it's the shameless, disregard for the whole notion of democracy and democratic process that makes me ask myself whether it might not be something in the water in America that has blinded the whole country to what they are doing.

OK, I know that the United States was never intended to be a democracy, and that's fair enough, considering when it was established. I know that Benjamin Franklin is alleged to have told one of his local constituents that they had been given a republic, if they could keep it. But even a republic is a representative form of government, so it's supposed to represent someone, and I know as well that the likes of people like James Madison, one of our oh-so-revered founding fathers did his utmost to ensure that it would be the elite who's be represented. After all, the common folk are just to pesky, fickle, if not downright unfit, to govern themselves. Madison and his ilk have been patronizing that common folk ever since, but this time, it could just be that they went to far.

I mean, Citizens United should have been a tip-off, but apparently it wasn't. How can money be declared free speech? It boggles my mind, that is true, but I don't have access to the same water supply as my back-home compatriots. Money calls all the shots in American politics, and the few "independents" (by which I mean independent of major corporate campaign funding) are allowed to exist to "prove" to the world that Americans are still "free" to choose.

And now we watch how one of the most eminently unqualified candidates conceivable has secured the necessary delegates to gain the nomination, and his party is now scrambling and wringing their hands and distancing themselves from the man because he's unsavory even to them. It should be interesting to see how they are going to handle this in Cleveland next month. And just yesterday we have the other party prematurely declaring the front-runner the winner, even though all the votes haven't been counted. How is this considered even remotely democratic? Oh ... I almost forgot: in America you don't have to count all the votes, only the ones you want to count; just as the Supreme Court confirmed when Bush the Lesser was anointed president in 2000. It would appear the exception became the rule. But, I'm wondering how all those feeling the Bern are going to behave in Philadelphia next month as well?

I suppose I should be grateful, even thankful. The mask is finally off. All that pretense that you have to wade through when talking about anything political in America has vanished. It has become blatantly obvious, at the latest yesterday, when Clinton was crowned queen that both mainstream political parties in the United States have nothing but desultory disregard for anything democratic.

Emma Goldman got it right: if voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal (which the Republicans are still working on, quite openly, to be sure), but yesterday at the latest, all other illusions were shattered. America isn't a democracy and isn't democratic. Its true oligarchic face has been revealed. But, I know there are still quite a few fellow country people who will refuse to acknowledge that they have been exposed. Unfortunately, these people simply need more hope than the rest of us can give them. And the oligarchs apparently don't care. It seems that they have recognized that they don't even have to put on a show any more.

What would P.T. think? And what happens next when there's no show to go on?

Between Mr. Eliot's "Rock" and a hard place

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
-T.S. Eliot, from "The Rock"

Those are big questions. In fact, they're ones I ask myself a lot. Maybe I'm expecting too much.

Back when I was striving to maintain my sanity in Silicon Valley, we made a distinction between different levels of "head stuff", for lack of a better word.

Most everyone started with data: bits of pieces of this and that, sometimes numbers (1, 0.5, pi) or letters (a, b, c, x) or facts of a sort (25 people answered question 1 correctly) or something that could be used as an attribute (red, large, miniscule), or maybe a date even (2016-06-04). We recognize things like that, but we can't do much with them. They're just there. They have no real meaning in and of themselves and we find ourselves trying to put them into some sort of context for without one you really didn't know what to do with what you have. Maybe that's why Mr. Eliot didn't even bother to mention it.

Collecting data and placing it in a context, however, made that data more substantial, and that's what we then called information. Collect data together in some kind of sensible chunk and you can do something with it. In the business world, folks liked (and probably still do like) to think that you can use information to make decisions (e.g., stock levels are below the minimum threshold ... hence, we need to order more.) I find that too limiting. I see the difference between data and information more in the meaning realm. The date 2001-09-11, for example, is just a date like any other. But when we say, "On 11 September 2001, the largest terrorist attack in the United States took place," we have some context and hence meaning and we can start thinking about it in some way.

Mr. Eliot was writing and wrote our lead-in quote, he even then he was pointing out that information was overwhelming knowledge. What would the poor man be thinking today, in our 24/7-online-wired-interneted world? We're no longer just overwhelmed, we're awash in information, we're drowning in information. You can find the right, wrong, reasonable and outrageous answer to any two-bit question you can think of. Smartphone, wifi, swipe, type and in a fraction of a second you've got it. I'm not sure we do much with those answers once we have them, and I'm not sure how much can be done with them. But I can relate to Mr. Eliot's sentiment: where's the knowledge?

Now, I certainly don't want to break open an epistemological debate here, but it doesn't hurt to ask ourselves, "Just what is knowledge? What are we talking about when we use the term? We saw how data differs from information (at least in one way), so what is the difference now between information and knowledge? Don't know? I'm not sure that I do either, but following the conceptual trajectory already established, it would seem to me that knowledge is more encompassing (broader, deeper, richer) than information. If we took the step from non-sense to sense so far, what's the next step toward knowledge? Well, for the sake of argument, I'd like to suggest it is significance, whereby we've not just moved up a level, we've changed dimensions. Always take heed when you change dimensions.

One way of looking at this next step is that data and information are, in a sense, quantitative. You can, for example, glue together some data and come up with information, but you can't just glue information together and come up with some knowledge. You can also separate data and information into classes or domains: this is an economics statistic, that's a rule of logic, this is a history fact, that is the second law of thermodynamics. We can memorize all these kinds of things and we can call them up when we think we need them. But even doing that: memorizing and recalling really doesn't add much value to anything; data and information are things you can have, in your head, say, but possessing data or information can never make you smart. At best, you'll be informed, but that's all.

Knowledge, on the other hand, feels more qualitative. Some stock-market indicator is rising, unemployment is falling, tax revenues are declining, poverty is increasing ... this is information that we encounter everyday, but what does it tell us? Getting the answer to that question isn't necessarily something you can google. Is there a (or perhaps even several) relationship(s) among these pieces of data and information? What kinds of relationships are they? How strong are they? How do they change over time? Have there ever been situations where the relationships among these data and information have been similar, and if so, what was it telling us then? How comparable are these situations? And these are just the first questions that come to mind, and none of them are easy to answer nor can they simply be googled. We may never be able to get a final, definitive answer to all of these questions at the same time, but we're changed somehow by trying to find them: the search, the reflection, the further questioning, the further searching all make us aware of something that might be useful in trying to address the issues that questions like that raise. I'd say that here we're in the realm of knowledge.

For one, we can only get at it by actively doing something (e.g., looking for connections, searching for additional information, drawing inferences, reorganizing the data and information, asking new questions, etc.) What is more, pursuing the answers takes both time and effort, you just can't look in your crystal ball (or Google) and find what you need. Even more importantly, you start to realize along the way that there may not be "an answer" to any of the questions, let alone all of them together. You do, however, start to get a feel for what kinds and how strong certain relationships are, and you recognize that there are many factors involved and that you find that relating things you're finding out to other experiences you've had and read and heard about may provide support for lines of thought you are having. In other words, what you "know" is constantly changing, it is dynamic. The data and information you acquire is always the same, but what you know certainly isn't.

Back in my Silicon-Valley days, we didn't talk a lot about knowledge. It was a messy notion, slippery, always just slightly beyond one's reach. It was much easier to just deal with data and information and identifying rules for manipulating them. Over time, a good number of people starting referring to that manipulation as "knowing" and sometimes even "knowledge" until it became just accepted practice that when you were talking about (mostly abstract) information and rules and principles, you simply used the word "knowledge". Before you knew it, there weren't many people who had any idea of what knowledge really is any more. And we're certainly deep in that place today.

Like a lot of you, I like to think that I keep myself well informed: I read, watch and listen a variety of news sources. I read a lot of articles and books from various fields and in many genres. (OK, perhaps I'm a bit of an exception in that I can read Adam Smith, Stephen Hawking and Kurt Vonnegut all in the same afternoon, but that's beside the point.) What I'm finding, however, and what's disturbing me is the fact that the more contemporary the material I'm engaging, the less knowledge (or knowledge-like notions) I'm finding. Oh, information en masse, practically buried alive in facts, figures, data and information, but damn little knowledge. I find that not only bothersome, but, to be honest, downright unsettling.

Knowledgeable writers (or presenters) are sharers. They not only let you know what they know, they let you follow how they got there, how they went from unknowing or puzzled to knowledgeable. You can follow the line of argumentation, get a peek behind the curtain of assumptions and presuppositions that otherwise would simply be taken for granted, glossed over, or ignored all together. You're shown the data and information, you're given reasons why certain questions were asked and not others, you're brought into the process, and you're given a feeling of inclusion. You never get the feeling you're being lectured, looked down on, or put in your place. You get the feeling your mind is being opened, that you are being stimulated to think along, reflect, consider and encouraged to inquire further on your own, should you so desire. They make the complex much less intimidating.

Oh, how different are how many (too often, self-proclaimed) experts (if writing) or pundits (if presenting). In your face from word one, focused (often claustrophobically so: I'm talking about unemployment, leave the stock market out of this), direct, unwavering, certain, dogmatic, a maximum of statements and a minimum of questions (other than rhetorical ones, of course), the only unknowing involved is in the heads of the readers/listeners), no revelations of givens and just-taken-for-granteds, no wishy-washy maybe's and what-if's, just here-it-is, this-is-how-things-are, and this-is-what-needs-to-be-done-about-it. No sharing, just telling; if you don't agree, you're obviously mentally or intellectually unfit for the task; you never have the feeling your mind is being opened, just filled, and many seem to revel in making the complex so complicated that it's downright intimidating.

(With the summer upon us and you, with perhaps a bit more time on your hands, may like to actually experience what I'm talking about. Try reading Graeber's Debt or Proudhon's What is Property? and Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom (and the order doesn't matter, by the way). Or try Zinn's A People's History of the United States and Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard. Or perhaps Wilson's Consilience and Thompson's Coming into Being.)

Unfortunately, I know as well that this is a situation that isn't going to change any time soon. I've been to and in enough educational institutions (of all levels) to realize that information processing is being massively pushed and that knowledge has been all but forgotten. Oh, I know there are exceptions -- there are always exceptions to the rules -- but these are too few, too far in-between and not in the "system". Mainstream education, both public and private, has bought into the information-rich-knowledge-poor paradigm. Look at the No-Child-Left-Behind-test-'em-till-they-drop or Common Core disasters in the US; look at the OECD favoritism for objective testing and academics over crafts and trades here in Europe; look at the overscheduled, over-requiremented box-ticking that passes as bachelor (and I would suspect the majority of) master-degree programs (i.e. "higher education"), more and more of which is being dictated by "industry" so they can get the graduates they claim to need.

We poor saps out here in society are the ones who will foot the bill and pay the price for this short-sightedness and by the time most of our highly schooled but hardly educated young people finally awaken to the realization that they're full of information but don't know a thing, it just may be too late to turn things around. Who's going to solve problems when there's no one left who can think?

And no, I never even got to wisdom ... I wouldn't know where to start. We live in a world, governed by a mind-set that is willing to destroy the environment to make more money, that is oblivious to have-nots and ever-fewer have's, that is incapable of distinguishing between price and value, that is thrilled by show, even when there's no where left to go. Where is the wisdom in that?

But, as Mr. Eliot so aptly pointed out, we're so busy just living (with the lack of wisdom, absence of knowledge, glut of information and data) that we've lost sight of Life.

The myth of Memorial Day

There is the erroneous belief, often portrayed as (incorrect) knowledge that a myth is simply a made-up story. Not every fictional story is a myth. Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick, or Lonesome No More is not a myth, it is a novel. Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is not a myth, it is also a novel. Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is not a myth, it's a novella. And Earnest Hemmingway's The Old Man and the Sea, is a long short-story, but it is not a myth. I have chosen to use American examples because for any number of reasons, Americans are more prone to myth-making and myth-believing that other folks. What is more, the size of the tale has nothing to do with whether a story is a myth, or even mythical, hence my inclusion of varying sized works.

For my purposes here, let me tell you what I mean when I use the word "myth". It is this: a myth is most often, but not necessarily always) a story whose design and intent is to point to something bigger than itself. The elements of the story may, or may not, be true; that is, they may, or may not, correspond and conform to the reality of actual events that once took place. They may simply be stories based on certain events that occurred or alleged to have occurred. But it doesn't matter. Most importantly, however, all myths start out well-intentioned to impress, inspire, or perhaps explain; most myths are harmless (because they have become ineffective ... they are no longer "believed"); but, in the end, all myths become destructive, especially when they are believed after having been exposed as untrue stories that point to no reality greater than themselves.

One of the worst, if not the worst, myths ever perpetrated is the Myth of Progress. This is the story that tells us that things, and by that the teller always means "the world in which we live" is getting better. It implies that there is a utopian, paradisiacal end to human (primarily, technological) development, but it's never had it's own story, rather it has always been presented as an obvious truth enclothed in a different set of "facts" each time it is told. A lot depends on who is telling the story and which point the teller is trying to make. It's such a shoddy myth, though, because it was never really true. Oh, don't get me wrong, we have things today that we never had before and some of them can be used for the betterment of all: things like soap and water-pumps and flush toilets, but most people in the world don't have these things and the people that have them aren't ready to share them with those who don't, so while they have made the world a better place for some, they haven't made the world a better place, so I have trouble seeing where the "progress" part comes in. But that's a whole other story.

No, my focus here are myths as we generally understand them: those stories that point to things greater than themselves and which we then believe to be true, even though they aren't. In fact, we tend to believe these stories all the more, the more we find out they're really "just myths"; that is, well-intentioned, made-up stories that simply shouldn't be believed anymore, because they have become, as all myths eventually do, destructive. They end up making things worse instead of better.

The reason this whole idea of myths and untruth and destructiveness are on my mind is because this is Memorial-Day weekend in the United States, and having originally hailed from there, I still have a connection to the place even though I left there so long ago. What is more, over this weekend, I will be, literally, bombarded by social-media memes all expressing the same mythical sappiness that every American who ever donned a uniform is a hero (or heroine) who did his (or her) part to ensure that all those meme-spreaders have the freedom to annoy the rest of the world with their own rather limited and, too often, self-serving worldview that they are somehow role models for the rest of us. Yes, what I hear so often from my fellow countrypeople, either directly or indirectly, implicitly or explicitly, is that if the rest of the world would just be like America and acknowledge that America is the greatest country in the world, well, the world would be a much better place. I know my fellow countrypeople are for the most part lovingly well-intentioned, but with loving well-intentionedness, cluelessness often goes hand in hand. Yeah, ya gotta love 'em, even if they are so annoying. Yet there's a dark side to this apparent harmlessness that needs to be acknowledged as well.

Don't get me wrong, I would be the last person to maintain that what Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan started in the middle of the last century was a good thing. There was, as they say, a mass of evil afoot. Even as much against war that I am, it's hard for me to think that "issue" could have been resolved peacefully. Still, it was a prime opportunity for myth-building, and that we did.

We Americans like to think we won that war, and some nasty tongues maintain that we haven't won a war since. Truth be told, like it's predecessor, World War I (the war to make the world safe for democracy, which also didn't work apparently), the Americans were extremely reluctant to even join in. There was a lot of mental calisthenics being performed and a lot of whining about "Europe" and "their problems" and all, but in the end, there were severe economic downturns that just weren't turning around, so it seemed like a good idea at the time to find a reason to get involved. If it weren't for the Japanese attacking its Pacific fleet -- which was stationed somewhere the Americans claimed belonged to them (though they really couldn't prove that they did) – we may not have gotten involved at all. But we got in right as things started going bad for the bad guys, and by 1945 we were on the winning side, so even thought primarily the Soviets (which we called the Russians and their ilk in those days) kicked Hitler's butt, with some help from the Brits (who had been kicked off the continent) and the French (who though already defeated organized some significant resistance). Of course, the Soviets, whom we generally didn't like then, liked even less later, and continue to dislike in the guise of Russians today, really took a beating in beating the Germans, so we, who suffered the least, who contributed more supplies and money than actual troops, and who had far fewer dead than anybody else, proudly stepped forward to accept the awards and accolades for victory. Americans have never been shy about accepting awards, even if they don't really deserve them.

But, be that all as it may, it was good that evil was stopped. Of course, given the fact that other than Hawaii, which not everybody thinks counts, nobody was invading America or fighting in its streets, or razing its cities to the ground with artillery and bombs, or setting fire to it with incendiaries, or starving its citizens to death in obscene and insane sieges. It was really not suffering all that much at all compared to everybody else, so when it was finally all over, the only country which had much infrastructure and production facilities in tact was, well, the United States. They also had an intact military and one that really wasn't weary of fighting yet. After all, they only got involved at the tail end of the whole affair. They were still fresh and idealistic and, if needed be, raring to go. The last man standing, so to speak, the one who had just showed up, declared himself the world's first superpower and all anybody else had to say was a tired and mumbled "whatever". And that's when America really did what it has always done best: it stepped in and showed everyone else just how easy it is to make money out of misery. We were now going to show the world how things really get done.

No, this isn't the version we read about in our history books, and it's not the version our parents or grandparents told us. It's a jaundiced recounting, however, of the real story. All the other stories we were told were, well you guessed it myths. The stories we were told about this were designed and intended to (a) make Americans feel good about themselves, even if they had not made the biggest contribution, (b) let everyone else know that it was America's duty – if not right – to take charge on the world stage, and (c) keep the door open for other, future, most likely unexpected opportunities to stay in charge.

No, I'm not saying that any of this was evil, or nefarious, or even bad. Americans tend to be a naïve breed, and I really think that more than anything else the United States simply wanted a relatively peaceful world in which to hawk their wares and make oodles of money. They stepped right in and organized the world monetary system, set up institutions to ensure these would endure (like the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund – and notice two of three deal with money), and made a sound effort to make the rules of the game such that everybody would get something in the deal, all properly allocated, of course, in terms conducive to the rule-makers.

But, things didn't stay that way. The next thing you know, America found itself embroiled in one armed conflict after the other. First there was Korea, which was such a mess that to this day everyone wants to forget about it. Then there was Southeast Asia, which the Brits had mucked up, then the French had mucked up (but what can you expect, really, look at how they ended up in WW2 before we "saved their bacon", as we like to say), so now it was our turn ... and we mucked up. History, unkind or not, makes the use of the words "lost" and "war" in the same sentence unavoidable. And, I have to admit, my fellow countrypeople, on the whole, have been having a bit of crisis of confidence since.

But, they push on in spite of themselves: the bloody suppression of so-called "revolutions" in South and Central America, the overthrow of democratically elected governments that were somehow deemed "unworthy", as it Iran, Chile, and even Greece, the over-the-top interventions in the Middle East – Gulf I, II, and Iraq – and now the so-called global war on terror (GWOT) which, as we all know, creates far more terrorists than it ever has or ever will ever eliminate. And each and every time we perpetuated an outdated myth or recast an old one in new garb or turned up the marketing of those elaborate and pompous stories we created about our good will, our humanitarian goals, our fervent desire to bring liberty and freedom to oppressed peoples, our moral obligation to a higher purpose. And each and every time we sent – no, we sacrificed, on the altar of power and profit – our best and brightest and bravest and – truth be told, poorest – so that the few could have even more than they already do and the rest of us could be left holding the bag (of death and misery and destruction and war crimes).

We all know, in the meantime, that some few people were getting filthy rich of all these schemes, that more often than not natural resources were the real motivators for our involvement (since we were willing to put into place and maintain in power some of the most oppressive and ruthless dictators known to the 20th century in order to ensure our "interests" were well represented), that yellow and then brown people were simply not fit for all that liberty, freedom and self-governance that we held in such high esteem and so more guns and more bullets and more bombs and more death and more destruction and more overt, physical intervention would be necessary to make the world safe for ... and here is where most of the non-American world simply draws a blank: just what is it that they were (and apparently are) so bent on doing. I wish I knew. When I look at it all, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. What am I missing?

But, the myth machine is still running full blast, cranking out stories to make all those sacrifices look like heroic deeds done for heroic purposes to achieve heroic ends. No one wants to think that all those young American men (and more recently, women) died in vain. I don't want to think it, I can assure you, but they can only not die in vain if the myth is true. We know in the meantime that the myth is not true, and the frenetic rushing about and patting of vets on the back and thanking them for their service is, I know, well-intended, but it's nothing more than the doomed-to-failure attempt to appease one's own deceived conscience.

This weekend, we should take time and make every effort to embrace all of those, living and dead, who were misused and abused by the myths. We should tell them all just how sorry we are that we allowed them to suffer for false honor and false glory. We should locate every single living vet who has been made homeless and see that s/he gets a home. We should find every vet who is suffering from whatever service-induced or even remotely-related physical or mental ailments and see that s/he gets proper treatment. We should stand up and let them, and every current service member know that we're no longer putting up with this crap: of allowing young people to be utterly destroyed for no other reason than silly stories that aren't even true. That means, of course, that we all have to take a stand for truth and actually do something. My bet is the silly stories will be retold as the barbeques get fired up and the beer chills on ice.

Happy Memorial Day.

Hunks of meat suspended in time

Recently, I had a bit of a discussion on social media (and yes, I know I'm too old for that, but I've got an extremely young grandchild and need to keep up-to-date, or some reasonable facsimile) ... well, it wasn't as much a discussion as it was an exchange. Let's face it: social media doesn't lend itself to discussions, nor was it ever intended to.

Discussions need to be done tête-à-tête, I agree, but I've been involved in the electronic medium long enough to know that it is possible to have long, deep, meaningful, debates and discussions online, but you need people who can, and are willing to, think and who are willing to persevere till Hitler (or some other Nazi reference) butts in. Exchanges are nice enough, but they are pretty meaningless in both the petty and grand scheme of things. Social media is there for people to spit out opinions, to try to impress others with one's own wit and brilliance, or to just vent. That's not really what I consider to be engaging an idea, notion, or possibility in any superficial or meaningful way, but we shouldn't expect more than a media channel can deliver.

Nevertheless, even such pithy exchanges, you can get a feeling for where the other commenters are coming from. Every time we open our mouths (or let our fingers do the talking) we tell the world where the shoe is pinching (as the Germans like to say) or what our particular problem is this week. People ain't refrigerators: they can't keep nothing. You want to know what's important to someone, what's floating their boat, tickling their fancy, or pissing them off to no end: just listen. They'll tell you. If you don't know what's bothering your partner, well, then you're not listening.

Oh, it's easy not to listen. In fact, it takes a good amount of effort. Most of us are so wrapped up in ourselves that we can't get past the monkey-chatter in our own heads to pick up on whatever it is that "they" are going on about. The old Zen saying may be that those who say, don't know and those who know won't say, but I can assure you that the vast majority of denizens of this planet don't know what they know nor are they willing to try to figure out what you might know. It's so loud in most of their heads that they would rather just turn it off than have to try and filter the worth-hearing from the noise. And let's face it, most of it's noise. There's a lot of noise, both inside and outside our heads.

But that's not the point. What struck me in my recent exchange was how few options we had. Center point of the back-and-forth was "human beings". You can love 'em, you can hate 'em, but you can't avoid 'em ... they're everywhere. For obvious reasons there are 7 billion of us on the planet these days and truth be told, most of us don't have a clue ... about anything. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining nor am I accusing: most of those 7 billion can't have a clue: they're struggling to survive today, let alone tomorrow; they're so poor they don't have dirt to rub together; they're hungry, sick, forlorn, forsaken and forgotten. But ... and it's a bit but(t): we in the West do, and we, in the West, should know better. But, we don't. And that's what hit me first. The vast majority of human beings in existence, that is, alive today, didn't even get factored into the discussion/exchange equation. What does that say about us?

The second thing, though, that hit me ... OK, it was more like a bitch-slap ... was the assertion/contention/assumption that if humans were involved, whatever the topic was, it was doomed to failure, because, well, human beings are beyond hope anyway. There was/is the implicit, though if necessary, explicit assertion that humans are incapable of anything other than stupidity, bullshit and nonsense. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not accusing my interlocutors of anything other than short-sightedness: they appealed to history, and history -- regardless of who has written it -- documents the failure of human beings. We haven't gotten a damn thing right in the half-a-million or million years that we've been here (and I'm only referring to homo sapiens right now, for simplicity's sake, not because it's the only way to see things): violence, rape, pillage, plunder, war, death, destruction, thievery ... regardless of whomever we love to pick out and praise as being laudable, enviable, praiseworthy. They only managed to stop the destruction long enough for someone to write down how great they were. I get that. Really, I understand that, but the conclusions they draw from this is simply ... well, wrong. Let me explain.

Two forces are at work here: First, there's the factual evidence that over time, and according to whatever records we have been able to salvage, the creatures on this planet know as "human beings" tend to act more stupid than smart and are much more violent than peaceful. But ... and, again, it's a big but(t) this says nothing about how human beings actually are. Also, and closely related to this, is the deduction/assumption that human beings are simply not capable of any more/better than that. In other words, if human beings are involved, whatever you have planned is going to go south; that is, there is such a thing as "human nature" and it more or less precludes that any other outcome is possible. These are insufficient, inadequate, inappropriate conclusions to be drawn from the evidence for they are based on an incorrect assumption about human beings in general, namely that they have a "nature" and this nature is somehow defective.

This is a common, widely spread, and simply wrong conclusion. It assumes too much, and it has to. Why? Because those who believe that "this is how things really are" start with two incorrect assumptions: (1) past actions of human beings are accurate predictors of future behavior and, the one I like to call the materialist fallacy, (2) we're just big hunks of meat who are the unfortunate product of chance. If matter is all there is, well, you can't -- no, shouldn't -- expect too much of others. After all, they are, at best, products of chance who have no clue why they're here or what they're up to. But, this is going to far too fast.

Now it's your turn. Think about it: who are we creatures we call 'human beings'? Is there a reason for our presence on this planet or are we mere products of chance? Does life -- no matter what we think it is -- have some meaning or is this all just a big coincidence? Do we have some fundamental, basic "nature", some way of being that when you get right down to it just can't be changed? Do notions such as "good" and "evil" really exist or are they just illusions? Do the ideas of "right" and "wrong" actually exist or are they merely conventions we've accepted so that we can get through whatever the hell this is we are experiencing until tomorrow? Do we have any say (in any sense of the word) in our lives or is everything simply determined, if not predetermined, by the accidental interaction of forces, events, whatever beyond our knowledge?

OK, I know these are what is often referred to as "heavy" questions. When you get down to it, though, each and every one of us has to have some idea, some story, some explanation that we like to tell ourselves that helps us get through the darkness of unknowing as to why we're here. But, hey, maybe there's no reason at all. I'm not claiming there is, I'm only asking you to think about what you think the answer to "the question" is.

So, where does this leave me with my "discussants"? To me, it's relatively clear: they are what we know in this day and age as "materialists" and they don't know, to be kind, any better. And here, too, you shouldn't misunderstand me: I'm not criticizing or condemning these folks in any way, shape or form. They simply believe that all there is to life, the world, the universe, to all that is is, well, matter. I know: it all sounds so simple. At some time, a long time ago, an explosion -- to be precise and scientific, a Big Bang -- occurred and the ball started rolling who knows how and who knows where and here we are. One of the products of this "bang" was matter ... stuff ... the shit we knock our knees against when we're not paying attention. Somewhere along the line, we -- that is, you, me and every other human being on the planet or who ever existed -- showed up, as a, well, coincidental by-product of this "bang". Though we don't know for sure, we still "know" that matter is all there is. And here we are.

Well, this is where my discussants are at any rate. We've got a lot of people now, just as there have been a lot of people before us, but all of them are more or less fortunate or unfortunate accidents of a huge fart that took place billions of years ago. (To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't trust these accidents with much of anything either, but I started from a different assumption, and that makes all the difference in the world.) We're (and by that I mean we human beings, allegedly with consciousness and free will) are freaks of nature, and I use the word "freaks" in the most well-meaning sense of the word: it was just an accident that we are as we are; there's not a damn thing we can do about it, and if we consider the laws of statistics and probability, we shouldn't be here anyway. Unfortunately, we are. Funny how that works.

Well, what disturbed my discussants, I believe, is the fact that the fate of our planet should be placed in the hands of these freaks. Oh, I understand their shock and dismay. After all the failures we have to show for ourselves, I am the last person who would jump up and yell, "Hey, let the failures take charge!", but the truth of the matter is that there is only us. We have it in our hands -- and here I've got a lot of good science on my side -- to destroy the planet or to at least eliminate ourselves (and probably a whole lot else, including thousands, if not millions, of other species) in the process, and these folks -- my discussants -- are the ones that potentially are going to save us from ultimate demise. I agree, the chances are slim, but -- truthfully -- if not us, who? Yeah, we're pretty screwed up as a species, but we're also the only ones who have even the slightest chance of pulling ourselves, and everything else, back from the brink of extinction.

Yes, I exaggerate. My hero of heroes, George Carlin, accurately, and I believe appropriately, declared that human beings are to the planet nothing more than a bad case of fleas: the planet can shake us off and go on as if we never existed. And for as right as he was/is, that's a whole other issue and not relevant here.

So, here's the point: what happens to the earth and all of its inhabitants is nothing we can worry or not worry about. It doesn't matter. What happens to us, human beings, as a species, is, nevertheless, in our hands. We can participate in the further development of planet earth or we can decide to opt out. And this is where things start getting both serious and interesting: it's up to us. We can change our behavior and play along in the Big Game of Chance, but we can also opt to just spite ourselves ensure that not a one of us survives. This is what my fellow discussants didn't get, or didn't want to acknowledge: we have a choice in the matter, and the mere fact that we have a choice makes us different than any other species of living thing on this planet ... for better or for worse. We may -- and probably will -- choose the path of death and destruction. We seem to like that. But ... whether we like it or not ... we, and only we human beings, have the option to choose Life over Death.