People Who Know Everything

People who assume they know everything are annoying to those of us who do!

Thus spake a friend of mine (in jest I think) during a conversation about smarmy politicians who claim to have solutions to the ills that plague our society.  All we have to do is vote them into office and our worries will be over.  Or so they promise.

I confess I, too, become annoyed whenever someone presents as a know-it-all—not, as my friend joked, because I think I know everything, but because I think no one does.  Whenever I hear someone bloviating loudly on any subject, I remember a character from the Saturday morning cartoon shows of my childhood, Foghorn J. Leghorn.  I still picture him as a blustering, southern senator, speaking a mile a minute, pausing only intermittently to check with his listeners.

the-foghorn-leghorn-11

“Pay attention to me, boy!  I’m not jus’ talkin’ to hear my head roar!”

“I keep pitchin’ ‘em, son, an’ you keep missin’ ‘em!”

“Any o’ this gettin’ through to you, son?”

The theory, I suppose, is that no one can contradict you if you won’t allow them a chance to speak.

The problem is, the world is a complex place where almost any issue has more than one truth attached to it.  Draining a swamp, for example, might be considered a fine idea by a developer who wants to convert it to a new mobile home community, but not such a good thing for the alligators, herons, and muskrats who already make it their home.  One’s perspective always plays a part.

If the swamp denizens are afforded no chance to speak on their own behalf, if they’re out-shouted and overwhelmed by those who know everything, by those who have the financial and political wherewithal to dominate the conversation, they are doomed.  In such cases, although both sides of the argument may have merit, only one side gets heard.  And that side usually prevails.

My experience with know-it-alls is that they seldom want to be confronted with facts or evidence that might support a view contrary to their own.  The flat-earth society comes to mind.  When presented with the famous ‘blue marble’ photograph of our planet, shot from an Apollo spacecraft, the society’s response was, “It’s easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye.”

the_earth_seen_from_apollo_17-1

There are numerous other situations where those claiming to know everything reject scientifically-based information in favour of pre-determined positions: holocaust deniers, global-warming skeptics, and tobacco users are but a few.  The staunch refusal of these deniers to entertain an opposing point of view effectively cuts off any possibility of meaningful discussion, and imposes their peculiar world-view on everyone.  In the words of the Borg, from the Star Trek television series, “Resistance is futile.”

It is instructive to reference Susan Glaspell, a Pulitzer Prize journalist and novelist, who wrote:  One never denies so hotly as in denying to one’s self what one fears is true…

I don’t know the ‘honest truth’ (if there is one) about any of these controversial issues.  But I instinctively doubt those who claim to know it, especially in the face of possibly-contradictory evidence.  Surely both sides of any argument (or however many sides there may be) should be weighed and assessed before conclusions are reached.

And in cases where such rigorous debate has occurred, the resultant conclusions should still remain open to further examination and challenge as new information comes to light.  But certainty is the enemy of an open mind, and an open mind is the enemy of those who claim to know everything.

I’m reminded of a snatch of dialogue from a long-ago film that illustrates the point.  While arguing about something, one character states his opinion in no uncertain terms, clearly brooking no challenge.

“You really think so?” his companion asks.

“I don’t think,” the first one declares.  “I know!”

After a meaningful pause, the second character says, “Good, ‘cause I don’t think you know, either.”

confused

Indeed.

The Quality of a Nation

According to St. Augustine, a nation is an association of reasonable beings united in a peaceful sharing of the things they cherish; therefore, to determine the quality of a nation, you must consider what those things are.

He wrote this in a monumental work of Christian philosophy, entitled The City of God, in the fifth century AD.  Fifteen-hundred years later, in 1951, the Canada Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters & Sciences used it as a preface to their report to parliament.

royal-commission

The recent triumph of Donald Trump in the US presidential election was one of two things that got me to wondering what a list of those qualities might be—not so much for the USA as for my own country.  What are the values that Canada, as a nation, truly cherishes?

The political opponents of the American president-elect have cast his ascension to power in the darkest terms, quite a difference to the sunny ways seemingly endorsed in our own federal election a year or so ago.  Words like racist, misogynist, bully, and xenophobic, used in reference to Trump by his foes, offer a stark contrast to words such as enthusiastic, transparent, optimistic, and leader, which have been applied to our prime minister, Justin Trudeau, by his supporters.

On the flip-side, Trump’s supporters have described him as strong, forceful, down-to-earth, and no pushover.  Trudeau’s detractors have used words and phrases like boyish, emotional, and not man enough in their descriptions.

Of course, political opinions, like beauty, are mostly in the eye of the beholders, and care should be taken not to believe everything one reads or hears about either of these gentlemen.  Still, the fact that both were elected to their country’s highest office by their respective citizens might say something about what is cherished by each nation.  At least at present, and by a sufficient number of those who voted.

But the critical thing about nationhood is that, despite these opposing viewpoints, each nation as a whole must accept and adhere to a basic set of values if it is to survive.

us-constitution

The second thing that prompted my curiosity about the qualities Canada might cherish was the proposal by a presumptive political-party leader, Kellie Leitch, to vigorously pre-screen potential immigrants for any trace of “anti-Canadian values”.  If they fail to measure up to the standard she will presumably establish, she will bar them from entry.

It makes sense, of course, to ban terrorists and criminals; it also makes sense to admit people with skills and training Canada needs, and people who are fleeing for their lives from oppressive regimes.  In fact, our current immigration practices and procedures do both of these things quite well.

But what are the values Leitch is looking for?  She has stated that the test will screen for anti-Canadian views that include intolerance toward other religions, cultures, and sexual orientations; violent and/or misogynist behaviour; and/or a lack of acceptance of our Canadian tradition of personal and economic freedoms.

I wonder, though, how she might define such concepts as intolerance (Sorry, but I will not eat poutine!) or personal freedoms (Okay, okay…I won’t pee on the golf course!).  Could it be so simple and light-hearted?

Likely not.  For example, if I were a prospective immigrant of a particular faith, say Catholic, would I be banned for not endorsing the notion of same-sex marriage?  If I were to vigorously protest the environmental policies of the federal government (perhaps a government she might be leading), thereby exercising  free speech, would I be expelled?  If I chose to wear a niqab during my citizenship swearing-in, would I be rudely escorted from the room?  And the country?

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted as part of the Constitution Act in 1982, pretty much lays out in its thirty-four sections the entitlements and responsibilities conferred upon, and expected of, every citizen.  By its very existence, it establishes many of the values our nation cherishes; for example:

  • the right to life, liberty and security of the person…
  • [equality] before and under the law and…the right to the equal protection and equal benefit  of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability…
  • [these rights] shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada…
  • [these rights] are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.

canadian-charter

In effect, this means all citizens enjoy the right to cherish, and act in accordance with, whatever they believe—with the proviso that they must not harm anyone else.  No one, it seems to me, including a politically-motivated Kellie Leitch, can judge any of us on a set of arbitrarily-established Canadian values.

Perhaps John Stuart Mill said it best, in his 1859 essay, On Liberty, where he attempted to identify standards for the relationship between a nation’s authority and its citizens’ liberty:

          The maxims are, first, that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself…

          Secondly, that for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishment, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.

If we were to accept the guidance offered in these two foundational sources, I don’t believe we would need a test to suss out anti-Canadian values.  To the contrary, our co-existence would exemplify those values, and allow us to live united in a peaceful sharing of the things we cherish.

And we would be proud of the quality of our nation, upholding it for all to see—from sea to sea to sea.

Everybody Knows

By now, I suspect, everybody knows that Leonard Cohen, an iconic Canadian poet and songwriter, died at the beginning of this week.  And of course, everybody knows that Donald Trump, an American entrepreneur and novice politician, won the US presidential race a day later.

I am struck by the awful asymmetry of these two events.

For many lovers of music, the passing of the artist, while distressing, allows us once again to celebrate and honour the memories his songs created for us.

For progressive, liberal-minded people, the election of an erratic demagogue foreshadows a period of pullback, retrenchment, and isolationism in America.  The nation’s motto, E pluribus unum—out of many, one—takes on an ominous tone.

I know of no one who is happy at the death of Cohen.

cohen

By contrast, millions upon millions of Americans are thrilled by the ascension of Trump.  And, despite my many misgivings, I could well be among them if all the actions he has pledged to take were similar to these, for example: impose term limits on all members of Congress; impose new restrictions on lobbying and lobbyists in Washington; allow vital energy infrastructure projects, like the Keystone Pipeline, to move forward; and fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure.  In my view, these are reasonable, wise moves.

Alas, he may also proceed with actions such as these: renegotiate NAFTA or withdraw from the deal altogether; lift the restrictions on the production of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal; cancel billions in payments to U.N. climate change programs; repeal, rather than fix, the Affordable Health Care Act; appoint conservative judges to vacancies in the Supreme Court (who will, quite possibly, reverse Roe v. Wade affecting women’s rights with respect to abortion); and cancel funding to such organizations as Planned Parenthood and Sanctuary Cities.  I deem these actions to be backward-looking and regressive.

trump

For me—one of those liberal progressives favouring public policies of inclusion and social conscientiousness—it is interesting to consider some of the sobriquets bestowed on Cohen over the years, and to see how many of them might fit Trump:

∙ prophet of despair,

∙ gloom merchant,

∙ grinning reaper,

∙ world heavyweight champion of existential despair, and

∙ dark messiah.

In Cohen’s case, these phrases were intended as respectful descriptions of the songs he wrote and performed.  They are almost oxymorons, in that they combine positive and negative attributes in each phrase.

By contrast, for Trump they may bear no double-meaning; depending upon the actions he does choose to take during his first months in office, I fear they may have to be taken literally.

Consider these lines from Everybody Knows, one of Cohen’s most revered works; time will tell if they prove prophetic:

Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes…                                                                                                                

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied…

And if the worst does come to pass, keep in mind these lines, also from Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

light

Cohen knew that, and we know that, too.

Everybody knows.

 

The F-Word

Years ago, when our two daughters were still in elementary school, my wife and I encountered a moment of truth with them—one of those things that never seems to arise in the privacy and sanctity of one’s own home.  Children are too diabolical to let that happen.

We were out for dinner, treating them to a white-tablecloth dinner in a fine restaurant in our neighbourhood.  Part of our strategy to introduce them to the niceties of life, we hoped it also would serve as an opportunity to educate them in the proper manners and etiquette such occasions demanded.  No other children were present, and I smugly complimented myself on the loving family picture we must have presented.

family-eating

Our table sat amidst several others, nicely spaced, but close enough to require moderated tones while speaking.  We all had ordered, the girls speaking directly with the server, being sure to say please and thank you as required, and the evening was going splendidly.

Then my eldest daughter dropped the bomb.

“Daddy,” she said (more loudly than necessary, it seemed to me), “what does the f-word mean?”

Even as the blood rushed to my ears, it couldn’t drown out the sound of dropped cutlery clattering on plates from the tables around us.  I resisted the urge to check how many pairs of eyes must be staring at us.

“What?” I said, stupidly, since the last thing I wanted was for her to repeat her question.

“I said, what does…”

“I heard you, I heard you,” I interrupted.  “Please lower your voice.”

No one spoke for a moment or two.  Our fellow-diners appeared to resume their own conversations, though hoping, I was sure, to hear how I might respond.

My wife was the first to break the silence.  “What f-word?” she asked.  “There are a lot of words starting with ‘f’.”

I stared at her, aghast.  What could she be thinking?  Surely she didn’t want our daughter to say the word out loud in a crowded restaurant.

The two girls glanced sidelong at each other, almost furtively, nervous smiles on their faces.  The youngest shrugged her shoulders slightly.

“Umm, I guess I forget the word,” the eldest replied.

“That’s okay,” my wife said nonchalantly.  “But if you think of it another time, you can ask us again.”

I breathed a sigh of relief, grateful for my savvy wife’s realization that such a sweet child would be unwilling to actually utter the word.

Emboldened by her success, I added bravely, “Yeah, and when you tell us the word, we’ll tell you what it means.”  I immediately winced from my wife’s kick under the table.

The rest of the meal passed in peace as we engaged in casual conversation, laughed at the girls’ stories of their activities at school, and discussed our choices for dessert.  But just as our selections were served, my daughter spoke up again.  Too loudly again.

“Daddy, I remember the f-word!”

I dropped my spoon, splattering chocolate pudding on my tie.

“The…the what?” I uttered lamely, dabbing at the stains with my napkin, spreading them wider.

“The f-word,” she repeated.  “You said if I could remember it, you’d tell us what it means.”

My wife smiled sweetly, abandoning me to the course I had set myself.

Stalling for time, I surveyed the room around us, noting how people quickly averted their gazes.  One or two appeared to be laughing into their napkins.

“Yeah, okay,” I finally said.  “I guess I did.  But when you tell me, talk quietly.  We don’t want to bother other people, right?”

She nodded solemnly.

“So, what’s the word?” I heard myself ask, confident now that I could handle this.  I was beginning to feel like SuperDad.

superdad

With another glance at her sister, my daughter blurted out, “Fart!”

“Fart?” I echoed, hearing the now-audible laughter from other diners.  My relief about the choice of word was immense, given the alternative, but not for long.  “Where did you hear that word?”

“At school,” she replied.  “Lots of kids say it.”

I realized that now my wife, too, had her face buried in her napkin.

“Oh,” I said, trying to maintain some semblance of control of the situation.  “Well, fart is not a word that nice people like us use.”

“Yeah, but what does it mean?” my daughter persisted.

“Well…it refers to…to the gas…you know…the smell that sometimes comes from your bottom.  When you’re sitting on the toilet, for instance.”

With a shriek of laughter, my youngest daughter cried, “Oh, I get it!  When you do it, it makes a loud noise, and you call it a tinkie, Daddy.  Right?”

Blushing furiously now, I said, “Right, right.  But that’s just what we call it in our family.  Not everybody calls it a tinkie.  Probably every different family has their own word for it.”

There followed another few moments of silence at our table, save for my wife’s choked chuckles into her napkin.

“But Daddy,” my eldest daughter said, “if we say tinkie to anybody else, they won’t know what we mean.  Does that mean we should say fart?”

“No,” I replied firmly, “you should not say fart.  You should probably not talk about it at all.  But if you have to say something, just say passing gas.  That’s all it really is, anyway.  Nice people don’t say fart.”

And that was the end of it.  Both girls seemed satisfied, and it didn’t come up again.

On the way out—with me clutching my jacket closed to hide the chocolate smear on my tie—we passed a table where a neighbour from our street was sitting with his wife.  I nodded politely, hoping to avoid any embarrassing conversation.  But I had to stop momentarily when he held up his hand, then beckoned me closer.

“Tinkie?” he said.

I fled.

The Big Bad Wolf

It seems I’ve always been fascinated by wolves.  One of the earliest stories told me as a child was the Three Little Pigs, defending themselves from the big bad wolf at their door.  I can still see my father’s cheeks, distended and whiskery, as he huffed and puffed his way through the tale.  I feared the villainous wolf stalking Little Red Riding Hood, too, and was grateful to the brave woodsman who dispatched it.

My mother would tell me stories of visits to her grandparents’ farm when she was a young girl, and of the fearsome wolves that roamed the area.  I could see them in my mind’s eye as clearly as if I had been there with her.  I laugh now when I remember her trying to recreate their howls, but I never laughed then.

When I could read on my own, a story I went back to time and again—my first ‘favourite book’—was The Wolf King, by Joseph Wharton Lippincott, of the famed publishing firm, J.B. Lippincott Company, founded by his paternal grandfather.  As an aside, his maternal grandfather was Joseph Wharton, founder of the Wharton School of Business.

wolf-king

I, of course, knew nothing of those matters, but avidly devoured the story of a giant black wolf who became a legend in the Alberta wilderness he called home.  The illustrations, by Paul Bransom, contributed greatly to my enjoyment.  It was this book that changed my perception of wolves forever, and I regret that it is out of print.

On many a camping trip over the years since, some with my own two daughters, I sat in on ‘wolf howls’, group attempts to attract roaming packs of wolves by howling into the night sky.  On the rare occasions when we were successful, the shivers in my spine were as real as the eerie, floating ululations borne to us on the night breeze.

A sadder experience was visiting a wildlife zoo in the near north of Ontario, where two wolves—looking scraggly and worn, not at all as majestic as the Wolf King—paced endlessly around their enclosed compound.  The clear amber irises of their eyes, staring accusingly as if I were to blame for their captivity, haunt me still.  It mattered not that I knew they’d been rescued as orphan pups, and would likely die if released into the wild.  They were animals born to be free.

On the internet recently, I came across a picture of a large wolf pack (a photo taken by Chadden Hunter of the BBC), following a looping trail through the snow in Wood Buffalo National Park.

wolf-pack

The accompanying description told me—

…the first three are the old or sick, they give the pace to the entire pack. If it was the other way round, they would be left behind, losing contact with the pack. In case of an ambush they would be sacrificed. Then come five strong ones, the front line. In the center are the rest of the pack members, then the five strongest following. Last is alone, the alpha. He controls everything from the rear. In that position he can see everything, decide the direction. He sees all of the pack. The pack moves according to the elders’ pace and help each other, watch each other.

The picture and brief story fit perfectly with my boyhood memories of the alpha wolf in Lippincott’s book.  Unfortunately, the explanation seems not to be true.  I found a more accurate account on the Snopes website—

…the pack, led by the alpha female, travel single-file through the deep snow to save energy. The size of the pack is a sign of how rich their prey base is during winter when the bison are more restricted by poor feeding and deep snow.

…some researchers would nonetheless dispute the use of the term “alpha.” In David Mech’s 1999 paper “Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs,” he posited that the concept of an “alpha” wolf who asserts his or her dominance over other pack members doesn’t actually exist in the wild:

“Labeling a high-ranking wolf alpha emphasizes its rank in a dominance hierarchy. However, in natural wolf packs, the alpha male or female are merely the breeding animals, the parents of the pack…

“Thus, calling a wolf an alpha is usually no more appropriate than referring to a human parent or a doe deer as an alpha. Any parent is dominant to its young offspring, so “alpha” adds no information…Such a designation emphasizes not the animal’s dominant status, which is trivial information, but its role as pack progenitor, which is critical information.

“…the pack is not being led by the three oldest members and trailed by an “alpha” wolf, [but by] one of the stronger animals…in order to create a path through the snow for them.”

As a storyteller, I confess that I prefer the first explanation over the more accurate one.  It corresponds more closely to my mythologized (and avowedly romantic) opinion of wolves, one I am loath to surrender.  Nevertheless, even factual descriptions of wolves’ pack-behaviour acknowledge the deep commitment they have to one another, and the social cohesion we might sometimes wish for in our own communities.

This is, perhaps, my favourite description of wolves and the effect they have always had on me.  It was penned by a former poet laureate of Alaska, John Haines, in his book The Stars, The Snow, The Fire—

Far across the tanana, a mile or two to the south of us, a group of wolves were singing. I call it singing, not howling, for that is what it was like. We could distinguish three, perhaps four voices – wavering, ascending in pitch, each one following the other, until they all broke off in a confused chorus. Their voices sank into distant echoes on the frozen river, and began again. A light and uncertain wind was blowing out there, and the sound grew and faded as the air brought it toward us or carried it away southward. It might have come across a thousand years of ice and wind-packed snow, traveling as the light of the stars from a source no longer there.

For me, the noble wolves will always be there.

wolves

Threescore and Ten

When we were very young, the biblical threescore-and-ten seemed a lifetime away—as, indeed, it has been.  But in a few short days, my partner, my lover, my wife, will complete her seventieth year, thus beginning her eighth decade.  C’est incroyable!

We met when she was sixteen, courted for five years, then married, a loving relationship that carries on to this day—fifty-four years from high school to septuagenarian sweethearts.

 donna-1970-2

 

 

 

 

A few years ago, when we lived in a forest home on a lake, I wrote this poem for her, and I include it here to mark my best friend’s seventieth birthday—

Sunlight,

Slowly streaming, peering, through tree branches

Seeming reaching up and out to touch it

And be touched.

Dark shade-spots, never-lasting, shift on forest-run

And up the stretching trunks,

To dance ‘cross leaves turned up to see the sun.

Water,

Reflecting morning back to bluing sky

Above, from fiery diamond-dance of light

Atop the waves.

The lake awakes as light turns trees of green to gold

And traps their images

In mirrored mere, quicksilver, green and cold.

Mist,

Wet, wraithlike trails of dew that do not seek

The morn, but rather gather, clutched, and drift,

And look to hide

Until, discovered by the sun’s relentless rays,

Surrender to the light

That thrusts elusive phantoms from its gaze.

Breezes,

Approaching shyly, coming on to shore,

From jigging o’er the watertops and waves

That lap the land.

With sighs they softly rise to stir the trees awake,

Then us, through mesh that screens

The out from in, and stubborn sleep from wake.

I stir,

And lying on the bed in my repose,

With eyes still closed, I draw a morning breath

Into my soul.

And then, eyes opening to the world dawning anew,

I also turn to see the morning sun…

And it is you.

donna-dec-03

It is you, indeed!

The Better I Was

At threescore-and-ten years of age, plus a few, I am no longer cavorting on ice-rinks and athletic fields-of-play with the same wild abandon that characterized my youth.  Not even close.

My ice-hockey skates have lain, undisturbed for lo, these many years, in a box in my storage locker.  My inline skates were recently given to my grandson, whose feet, amazingly, have grown to my size.  And my baseball gloves (the ‘relic’—floppy, scuffed, and worn; and the ‘newbie’—still-shiny, with a lovely, leathery smell) lie beside each other on a shelf I never look at.

My competitive pursuits these days consist of golf (from the forward tees), tennis (‘doubles’ only), and snooker (on tables with oversized pockets).  My comrades and I—no longer so quick, strong, and skilled as once upon a time—are unhurried, more frail, and prone to error now.  And that’s on our good days!

snooker

I’m sure the same refrain runs through their minds, as through mine: O, how the mighty have fallen!

Not that I was ever that mighty, mind you.  The visions of grace and glory ever running through my youthful head were more likely delusions of grandeur.  And the triumphs I always looked forward to were more often trials and errors.

It might have been said about me at various times over the years (snidely, of course, by persons with varying degrees of sensitivity) —

  • He’s a legend…..in his own mind.
  • He’s not as good as he once was; but he might be as good once as he ever was.
  • He’s not a has-been; he’s a never-was!

However, the one I deem most accurate, given my propensity for self-aggrandizement, is probably—

  • The older he gets, the better he was!

That one comes closest to the truth.  When I absolutely ‘crush’ a drive off the tee now (which is rare, and which means about 150 yards), I bemoan the fact that I used to regularly hit it almost twice as far.  Not true.

golf

When I double-fault into the net at a crucial point in the match (which is not-so-rare), I protest that I used to reliably smash aces past my opponents.  Also not true.

And when the cue ball ricochets off the ball I intended to sink, and itself literally leaps into the pocket (which is often), I smack my forehead and exclaim, “What a fluke!  I used to make those shots all the time!”  But I didn’t.

It strikes me that the phrase ‘I used to…’ is a prominent part of my conversation these days.

I suppose it’s a form of self-defence to claim a level of excellence that never truly existed, an attempt to ward off the all-too-obvious failings of the flesh brought on by rapidly-advancing years.  Even more fragile than my aging body, after all, is my vaunted male ego.  Yet sadly, the first gives out before the second.

I recall a computer-translation into Russian of the old saying, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  When a Russian-speaking person was asked to re-translate it to English, it came out as, “The wine is good, but the meat is rotten.”

Exactly how I feel!

wine2

Still, I continue to declaim the glories of my yesteryears to all who will listen (the number of whom is fewer and fewer all the time, I am noticing).  I am out there whenever I can be—on the golf course, at the tennis court, around the snooker table—rarely winning at the games, but always seeking the former stardom I pretend to remember.

“The important thing is not who wins,” I try to tell myself.  “It’s who shows up to play.”

And strangely, the showing up is somehow made easier by a still-burning desire to do better next time, to improve, to regain the degree of mastery (illusory, I know) once taken for granted.

After all, the older I get, the better I…..well, you know.

Intelligence and Change

If the history of our planet and the existence of life upon it were to be displayed as a clock-face, with its beginning at twelve o’clock, the appearance of the first humanoid beings—our distant, distant precursors—would not occur until the hands had swept around to the merest sliver of time before twelve again.

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Life itself, however, in its earliest, most basic form, would have begun much earlier, when the hands were approaching two o’clock.  The difference in real time is about four billion years, based on the fossil record so far uncovered.  Bacteria, for example, are a subset of prokaryotes, the earliest type of life on earth.

Life existed, in other words, for four billion years before the first hominim stood up on hind-legs, discovered oppositional thumbs, and (possibly) wondered who or what (s)he was.

All this time later, modern humans claim supremacy over the planet and everything living in its embrace.  Such foolhardiness, as we shall see.

We do so, I suppose, out of a belief that we are the most highly-intelligent life-form yet evolved.  Our basic intelligence—distinct from other species because of our imagination and curiosity, which allow us to ask such questions as Why?, How?, and What if…?—varies widely among individual humans, but is demonstrably more advanced than that of other species.

If the specie-specific intelligences of all life-forms, as we measure them, were arrayed on a graph, the human sort would be a tiny triangle at the very top of a much larger triangle, the lower intelligences of inferior life-forms spreading out below ours.

But that ranking may be misleading because of the definition of intelligence we apply in order to do the grading.  If the essential purpose of every known life-form is to perpetuate the species, to survive, and if each group’s success at doing so is the ultimate measure of intelligence, then our ranking would certainly be much different on the graph.

Very recently, a study undertaken at Indiana University posited that the earth might presently host almost one trillion distinct species, of which less than one-thousandth of one percent have been identified.  We might imagine that we are one of the very few species among them to possess an awareness of the others’ existence, but that awareness may not matter much.

A parasite life-form, firmly attached to a host, may not be cognitively aware of its host, but it thrives and reproduces because of their symbiotic relationship—even as the host dies.  The trillions of bacteria that live on our bodies, most of them in the intestinal tract, may have no cognitive awareness of us, but they are essential to our survival, and they reproduce exponentially.

In fact, it has been argued that our human bodies are nothing more than carrying-cases for our microbiome, a coalition of genes from several different species, only one of which is human.

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Most bacteria are beneficial to us, but certain types, pathogenic or disease-carrying, can be harmful.  They exist in three main forms—cocci, bacilli, and spirilla—and reproduce so quickly that they can overrun an otherwise-healthy organism, causing illness and even death.

Another species posing a threat to us, perhaps the smallest and simplest life-form of any on earth, is the virus.  By themselves, viruses are inanimate, requiring a host in which to multiply and grow—which they do by invading a host-cell, causing it to produce infected cells that attack other cells, and eventually killing the host.

The drive to survive among bacteria and viruses is relentless.  Human intelligence has inspired the development of methods to combat them—antibiotics, such as penicillin, amoxicillin, and tetracycline for bacteria; vaccinations and antiviral drugs, among them acyclovir and interferon, for viruses.  For a long time, these have been effective.

There is some evidence, however, that pathogenic bacteria and viruses are evolving into organisms with an immunity to the drugs we administer.  This comes as no surprise, really, because all living things evolve over time through a process of random mutation and selection.  The alarming thing is that these ‘superbugs’ may be outstripping our ability to develop new drugs to combat them.

Imagine, for instance, if all our defenses against bacterial infections and viral illnesses were to be rendered useless.  Which species would survive, the highly-intelligent one of which we are a part, or the simple, ruthless ones that have existed for the better part of four billion years?

And if not us, then which of the species is truly the most intelligent?  The human one that spawned Newton and Marie Curie, Mozart and Dylan, Indira Gandhi and Mother Teresa?  Or the simple ones that have ensured their survival over billions of years on the planet?

As Einstein once wrote, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

But history tells us that, although humans are not naturally resistant to every bacterial and viral infection that might assail us, we are naturally resistant to change.

That is a problem.

 

The Unwelcome Guest

For many years, my wife and I lived in a beautiful home on a lake.  We enjoyed having friends visit us, and always bent every effort to make them feel welcome and appreciated.  It seemed only right, given our previous experiences.

welcome

You see, during the years before we owned our place, we had become perpetual guests, enjoying the vacation cottages owned by many of those very same friends.  We reveled in extended visits during the summer—always by invitation, of course.  But strangely, we were never invited to holiday at the same place twice.

And that was ever a mystery to me.  All our friends absolutely adore my wife, and appreciated that she brought food, drinks, bed-linen and towels, and an appropriate hospitality gift to thank our hosts for their graciousness.  As a person of some sensitivity and breeding, equally eager to be welcomed, I always tried to conduct myself as a valued guest, too.

That wasn’t as easy as it sounds, though, because it’s difficult to define what makes one welcome.  I tended to rely upon the timeworn standards; namely, go only when invited, make suitable noises of appreciation while there, and leave before being asked to.

On one visit, my host confided in me that, “Remember, guests are like fish.  After three days, they stink!”  On another occasion, a friend (out of earshot of his wife and mine) handed me a roll of toilet tissue, saying, “This is yours.  When it’s gone, so are you!”  I laughed heartily, sure he was being funny.  He wasn’t.

So over time, I came to realize that the things one host might require of me were not the same as that expected by another.  Consequently, my relief was immense when I came across a list of ‘do’s and don’ts’ for people planning to visit friends at their cottage.  Some twenty-odd items long, the list was chock-full of wonderful suggestions.  I spent a good deal of time studying these, and made plans for putting them into practice.  My wife merely shook her head; she is prescient, that woman.

Tragically, I came to learn I had wasted my endeavours.  On most of our visits, nothing worked as it was supposed to.  And because I put forth my utmost efforts, I can only conclude that the list of suggestions was faulty.

Take, for instance, the one that said, “Don’t ask if you can bring some friends.”  That made sense to me, so I didn’t ask.  I just invited a few people on my own, figuring they’d all get along once they got to know each other.  Not so much, as it turned out.

Another suggestion advised, “If there is one bathroom, limit your time in it.”  I did.  I made a point of rising each morning before anyone else, so I’d be in and out of the bathroom in under half an hour.

One recommendation puzzled me at first, until I realized the limitations of septic tanks.  It said, “Do not flush the toilet after every use.”  Since everyone seemed comfortable with that, despite the obvious (and odious) disadvantages, I went along with it.  I found it necessary, ‘though, to flush each time before I used it.

I was very good, too, about offering to “help with a few of the never-ending chores around the cottage.”  I was quick to clean up the wood-stain I spilled; I helped to re-install the screen door I accidentally walked through (the new netting had to be back-ordered); I accompanied my host in his boat to fetch a canoe that drifted away after I forgot to tie it to the dock.  The rocky shore it had washed up on scratched its painted finish, but it still floated (thankfully, since I was tasked with paddling it back).

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My most heroic effort was when I dove down a number of times, unsuccessfully, trying to retrieve the small outboard motor I inadvertently dropped into the lake.  (Damn thing was heavy!)  I only stopped because I didn’t like swimming in the gasoline slick that appeared on the surface of the water—although I thought the colours were amazing!  The last I heard, the motor was finally located, recovered, and junked.

Ever determined to pointedly follow the advice from my list of ‘do’s and don’ts’, I was hurt when my hosts would decline my offer to “help with barbecuing and barbecuing duties.”  I was stunned when they would tell me not to bother to “fill the gas tanks after boating.”  And I was positively shocked when they would literally scream at me to “exercise caution when using power tools.”   They actually relieved me of the chainsaw I had fired up to cut kindling for the campfire I was planning.

The most hurtful moment came after lunch, on what turned out to be the final day of one such visit.  My hosts showed me a piece of cottage etiquette not covered by my list.  It said, “If we get to drinking on Sunday afternoon, and start insisting that you stay over until Tuesday, please remember that we don’t mean it!”

unwelcome2

Being a person of some sensitivity, as I have said, I eventually came to realize that my efforts to please my hosts were neither understood nor appreciated.  Which explains why my wife is still invited to these cottage-getaways—but for what are called girls’ weekends now—while I languish at home.

I really believe someone should revise that misbegotten list!

 

Presidential? Or Preposterous?

As a resident of a country bordering the economic, military, and political colossus that is the United States of America, and as a highly interested, but mostly-unaffected, observer of its 2016 presidential election process, I have some thoughts about the current contenders as they portrayed themselves in the first televised debate recently.

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But let me begin with some context.

First, the American dream, as popularly understood, is that everyone who works hard will achieve prosperity and upward social mobility, unfettered by such barriers as racism, religious persecution, gender bias, and other obstacles of that ilk.  Private enterprise and capitalism will provide the means, and every citizen will provide the ambition.

This worked reasonably well for the educated, dominant white landowners and merchant class in the largely-agrarian country that emerged in the two centuries following the founding of the republic.  It worked less well for the working class (including both slaves and freemen, and immigrants), and scant thought was given to assisting those who didn’t prosper, and who fell into radical poverty.  They, it was assumed (if, indeed, anyone even considered their plight), constituted collateral damage, and could move west to pursue their dream.  Or die unnoticed.

Today, in a population approaching 325 million, inhabiting a largely urbanized country, there are too many of these unsuccessful achievers of the American dream to ignore.  The private sector tries its best to do that, however, in its endless pursuit of profit.  Getting rich has become the yardstick for whether or not one has achieved the American dream, and capitalists pursue that goal without regard for the widening income disparity between the wealthiest and poorest.  Consider the insurance conglomerates, the big banks, and the pharmaceutical industry as examples of this.

So who will look to the needs of the poor, the disenfranchised, the homeless, if not corporate America?  It would appear the government cannot.  Socialism is a bad word in America, ‘big government’ is anathema, and any candidate espousing an increase in taxes may be committing political suicide.  How, then, can government institute a general sharing of the wealth, drawing from those with means, and giving to those with needs?  Such a radical notion runs contrary to the American ethos on which the whole experiment in nationhood was based.  We’re not commies, son!

But somebody needs to figure out an answer, and soon, before an American Robespierre arises—angry, ambitious, and armed.

Second, the mainstream media portray (or, at best, do not question) the ‘imperial presidency’ as an office where the person occupying the role is omnipotent.  The average American voter—unaware or forgetful of the three branches of federal government, or of the separation of powers that governs their functions—tends to see the president as one who can singlehandedly fix everything that’s wrong with the country, one who can make America great again.  And the media, including the unconstrained social media, perpetuate this misconception because of their endless fascination with ratings and readership numbers—the profit motive.

As informed citizens must know, the presidency is the executive function, intended to manage the government’s functions, enforce the laws, and serve as commander-in-chief.  Congress—the bicameral, legislative branch, comprising the Senate and House of Representatives—is charged with making the law.  And the Supreme Court, the judicial branch, is supposed to ensure that the laws and their execution are constitutional.

If all voters knew this, they would be, perhaps, less likely to fall for the pitches of pretenders to the presidency.

us-capitol

The two candidates for the office in 2016 present a striking contrast, and it was evident in the first debate we watched.  Voters will have to decide which of the two will be best able to manage the economy, address the issues of poverty and racism, combat terrorism to ensure the security of the nation, and deal rationally and firmly with other world leaders.

The economy is nowhere near as healthy as reported by the media—rigged numbers supposedly representing the growth rate, the inflation rate, the unemployment rate.  The only rate with any plausibility is the interest rate, and it’s so low that people (except for the very wealthy) have no incentive or wherewithal to invest or save.  They sure do borrow, though.

The poverty gap is not going to lessen dramatically, regardless of who is elected.  In an increasingly-technological society, low-skill jobs are gone forever.  State-of-the-art education and innovative entrepreneurship are of utmost importance if the situation is ever to improve.  Racism is pervasive and, it sometimes seems, part of the national DNA; there is no quick fix for that, only generational change brought about by relentless pressure and, unfortunately, oft-violent protests.

Terrorism is part of our world, like it or not, and (whether foreign or home-grown) unlikely to be eradicated; there are too many disenfranchised people in the world, with too many grievances, too much hatred, and too many weapons.

The leaders of other nations, allies and foes alike, are not so much interested in American greatness as in their own national aspirations.  And it is they, not just the next president, who will exert a large influence on the state of international relations.

So it’s obvious that neither Mr. Trump nor Ms. Clinton can ‘fix’ America’s problems, make her great again, just by virtue of being elected president.  Were I an American voter, unimpeded by party affiliation, I would try to suss out which of them is best-positioned to make the best stab at it, imperfect though both may be.

Is either of them presidential, or are they both preposterous?

I would want to know which of them (even if neither is truly altruistic) is more interested in my plight; in helping me to achieve my own American dream; in advancing the prospects of every citizen, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or socio-economic status.  Which of them best appreciates the differences between federal and state government functions, and has the skills to foster productive relationships between and among them?  Which of them has the most comprehensive understanding of the sacrosanct Constitution?  Which of them has the ability to talk with, and listen to, other world leaders?

In short, which of them has the experience, the patience, the gravitas to faithfully execute the onerous obligations of the office most effectively?

Given the limited choices in 2016, I know which of them I’d be voting for.

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