I

Two million years ago I was living in the open grasslands of Kenya, making stone tools and eating zebras. Then, the next thing I know I'm a Druid priest living in Wales in 57 AD. and the Romans say they are disgusted by me. Okay, the magic and soothsaying are bad enough, but they are horrified about us sacrificing criminals and war prisoners. Okay, I get it. Our women served in the military, which really freaked the Roman soldiers out as well. We stood there, in the Menai Straits, ready to defend our country, and we were promptly massacred. Yes, I know, bad ending.

At 210 million years ago I was a morganucodon, and most people would insist I was a shrew. Little did I know that one day my ancestors would be humans, and fighting over parking spaces at a mall. My life was good. I just sat around and ate beetles all day, and had no idea that one day they'd be bringing drugs and long hair to America.

Now, the year is 2020 and I've reincarnated again to a 59-year-old American male with a weird sense of humor. The virus has come to reteach us the meaning of life and the Christians scream, "God answers prayers," when people recover. But the people piled high in refrigerated trucks, outside New York hospitals, are the examples of unanswered prayers. For I did pray for them, uttering deep into the night, and all alone.

Who Are You?

I want to poke holes in the bubbles, where everyone lives. I want to tear down the walls that divide us, but I can't. Sooner or later, something has to give. We can't go on like this. There are minds out there that won't open. I'm suppose to talk about life, and all I see is death and strife.

I look into the eyes of people who cannot see and I listen to their cries. But they don't listen to what I have to say. I only ask how we can keep living in a constant state of crises and conflict. If something doesn't change we will crack.

The ignorance betrays the weakness and the pride covers up the sickness. I see a world of zombies who cry into the night. We won't be here forever, and I try to be the voice of reason and I scream, "How can we end this?" But it just goes on and on.

The pride needs to go, and so do the weapons and defenses. We must be humble, like the example set by Jesus. We must learn to listen to see the other side, for once. No one owns "the one right way." We must relearn how we think.

The Transformation

Maybe the "school of hard knocks" is the only way we can learn, but the Spanish Flu and Black Death taught us little, other than to avoid the sick and dying. So, we leave them to die alone, lest we join them.

It all may seen unfair, but life is all about struggle. The idea is to climb Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. But I am stuck at level one and stay in basic survival mode. My greatest concerns are food, shelter, and heat. There was a time when I was near the top of Maslow's pyramid, which is self-actualization. That's the level of enlightened maturity where we have reached our goals, accept ourselves, and are able to self-assess in a realistic and positive way. But life had different things in mind, and I went back to the bottom. But at the bottom I am grateful for every meal I have and I'm thankful every time the furnace turns on because if it breaks I can't afford to fix it.

So, you're telling me I'm suppose to learn something from this? I'm a shrew, an East African plains ape, and a Druid priest, all rolled into one. What am I suppose to learn? I have only learned that we are a part of this world and not above it. I learned that to live a good life is to respect nature, wildlife, and each other. If you save the life of an insect that means far more to me than the value of your car. Those who do harm to this world are my enemies. Trump has rolled back protections on the environment and wildlife so that rich corporations can get richer. He is my greatest enemy of all, and when people say Trump is "anointed by God" I question that. And I question the people who say it.

If there is a "transformation" in my life, I can only say that it's a renewed appreciation for the little things — the taste of food, the smells of nature, flowers, and trees. I won't spend any more time listening to a pastor give their "do more, give more" sermons. I am now free.

I have fallen in love enough times to know that love is vain. It's an illusion because what we love is what we want to love, and not who the other person is. And we mirror who we are and what we want on others, until we become lost in our own delusions.

Humanity should have booted religion when we invented science in the 1450s. But we were too much in love with the things we thought gave us comfort. We went through the Renaissance and then the Enlightenment while still clinging to the imaginary voices in our heads. The great thinkers of the Enlightenment taught us about deism, where God exists, but doesn't actually interact supernaturally with the universe. So what's the point?

When I was doing landscaping yesterday I came across a perfectly smooth and oval rock. Now, if God were to have made the entire world in a day He would have had to consciously plan for that one little rock to be in that one patch of ground, and in that shape. He would have had to think out every rock before doing his famous genie blink. The Real Christians believe that God put the rock there, and for denying that I am an apostate, heretic, and scoffer. But I know that the rock became smooth from hundreds of years of sitting in a creek bed, and years of water running over it, to make it smooth. And how it ended up hundreds of feet from the nearest creek, I do not know. I will guess that some boys found it in the 1930s while playing in the creek, and they dropped it there. And that is it.

What's Next From Here

I wake up every morning in a daze. Am I depressed, scared, or just trying to suppress rage? My insurance company provides free video counseling, and the Indian woman on the screen tells me I'm okay. But the demons inside me disagree, and they constantly obliterate me, disintegrate me, and annihilate me. I want to break down, but there's no one around to care. Falling in love now means falling apart.

So, I get out of bed and join the rat race. Obviously I must change things because there's something I must be missing. I tell everyone I'm "great," because I know no one really cares. It's my last sardonic sarcasm as I pilot my sinking ship. I want to feel pain just so that I can feel again.

You tell me to pray to a God that even you don't believe in because if you did you would actually follow his teachings. You tell me to find truth in the lost and found. And as the bodies pile up I can only ask, where is your God now?

Inspired by the songs "Right Now," from Fire from the Gods, with lyric writers Erik Ron, Richard Markus Wicander, and Akil Jelani Channer; and from the song "Popular Monster," from Falling in Reverse, and lyric writer Ronald Radke.

Source:
The Death of the Druids, Phil Carradice, BBC


  Photo: Jakob Owens

Learning To Love Again

Three years ago I started fostering dogs and have had five wonderful pets live at my house. Some stayed for a night or two and others stayed for a couple of months. I even adopted my first foster, a sweet "brindle" dog named Lucky.  Last fall I got my latest foster dog named Baby. Baby was the runt of a litter of 12, and thus her name "Baby."

In the early part of her life she was sickly and barely survived. And once rescued from the side of a road she spent four months in a shelter, and had to fight other dogs for a piece of bread. She may have suffered abuse in the early part of her life because she was cautious of humans, although she's doing much better now. It took three weeks before I earned her trust, but once I did she has become very loyal and loving.

When I look into her eyes I see a special soul. Animals are far more intelligent than humans give them credit for, and dogs are especially tuned into humans. Their brains are only half the size of ours and they don't have a language module, but they understand sounds, voice tones, and facial expressions. Baby is particularly intelligent and reads my moods and emotions like a book. She's a brilliant animal.

Baby spent four months in a tent.

The thing is, animals have feelings too. Baby not only needs food, warmth, and shelter, but also love, stability, and a sense of security. She is all alone in this world and depends on me and the others who love her, for her survival. For some reason I can really relate to Baby — I'm all alone too. Together, we get through this crazy life, day-by-day.

Somewhere in the insanity of this world, and my divorce, and in all my heartaches and heartbreaks, I forgot how to love. I am thankful that Baby is teaching me to feel again. See, love is about compassion and empathy. It's about understanding another living being and caring for it. It's not about your needs any more, it's about their needs. 

I know I catch a lot of crap for being a freethinker, and just this week I've been called a "jerk" and a "loser." But that's okay, because I'm at the age where I'm ready to take hits for stating what I believe. And I will say this: The harm we've done to the animals in this world is unethical and immoral. We've burnt enough carbon to alter the Earth's atmosphere, causing droughts and wildfires that now kill animals by the billions. We have no right.

Throughout her early life, Baby was always
at the bottom of the pile. I feel the same way.

Baby is a hound mix. Ten thousand years ago people in North Africa bred the hounds from Grey Wolves and used them to help hunt bovines. But then one day someone got an idea and said, "Hey, why don't we just selectively breed the bovines into cows and keep them in herds. That way we don't have to hunt anymore." It was a disastrous idea because we humans got lazy and fat, and the bovines got lazy and fat, and we ate their fat and got fatter.

Of course, if you're a Young Earth Creationist you only believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and you think that what I'm saying is poppycock. So, in that case, we can just say that God made "dog" and "cow" on the Sixth Day, and enough of that. Let's move on.

In her early life, Baby required a lot of medical treatment.

Baby loves to chew everything she can, and she doesn't like neighbors very much, so keeping her has been a wild ride. But every day I love and appreciate her more. She fits in well with my other two dogs, but not so well with the cat.

When I call her to come in from the backyard, she curls up on the ground and I have to get her. But when I say "get in the car," she gets super excited and shoots to the back car seat like a rocket, almost knocking me over. That's because she LOVES going to the park, and seeing her mama, Merve.

I know I've gotten jaded and cynical over the years, and I keep fighting that. American politics literally suck the life out of me, and I'm still recovering from losing a job I loved after 26 years. I just go through life as a lost soul. I appreciate Baby giving me some focus and I thank her for allowing me to do some good in this world. Hunger and thirst are horrible pains and it grieves me to think of every stray dog in the world that needs the basics of life, and not to mention protection from so many cruel and heartless human beings. I wish I could help every dog. The empathy and pain I have for them is strong.

We need to spay and neuter our pets, and if you can't adopt a rescue animal, then please donate to an organization that rescues and shelters these wonderful animals. They truly are man and woman's best friend. And for gosh sakes, don't go buying a bred dog when there are so many hundreds of shelter dogs that need homes.

The Meaning of Life

As I was walking through the forest yesterday it suddenly occurred to me why I love being in the wilderness. It's because nature doesn't lie. When we are in civilization we are bombarded with political, economic, and religious lies. So many facts are either twisted or blatantly false. But when I see a creek winding through a pathway of rocks I know it took millions of years for that formation to form. No one can tell me different. When I observe the lichen or smell the fresh soil I know it's truly real. I feel the moistness of the dirt in my hand and when I look closely I see that it's full of both dead and living organic material. As I hold the cold dirt and smell it, and feel it, I know that I'm alive.

Iron

But it wasn't always that way. In the early days following the Big Bang there were only gases, mainly hydrogen and helium. Stars formed and eventually exploded, and in the incredible heat of supernovas the heavy metals formed.

Our solar system is in the Milky Way galaxy, which is part of a cluster called the Local Group that holds 54 galaxies. In turn, our group is part of the Lanaika supercluster, made up of about 100,000 galaxies. There are an estimated 10 million superclusters in the universe. These clusters are like swarms of lightning bugs, twirling around and spinning, and held together by gravity. The supercluster is a big place, measuring about 500 million lightyears across. Just our own local cluster is 10 million lightyears wide.

The point being is that being in this swarm, and in this giant gravitational dance, causes galaxies to pull together and collide. The resulting collision may seem catastrophic, but it's beautiful in that it's one of two ways that new stars are created. During the collision, the interstellar gases mix and are set on fire with the result of new star formations.

As stars explode and reconstitute into new stars their furnaces create the heavier metals on the Periodic Table. Iron is significant because none of us could live without it. It's the hemoglobin in our blood that transports the oxygen in our bodies and allows us to live. And inside the hemoglobin molecule is an iron atom that is able to bind with and carry the oxygen.

Oxygen

And what about the oxygen? At 3 billion years go there was little oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. We still had the same amount of nitrogen, but most of our atmosphere was made up of carbon dioxide. Hardly anything could live in those days except single celled organisms that mostly existed inside stromatolites. But then came a miracle — an organism formed that could use the energy of the sun to convert CO2 into oxygen. These organisms, called cyanobacteria, figured out photosynthesis and as these lifeforms filled the oceans our atmosphere slowly filled up with oxygen. As the oxygen rose into the upper atmosphere it was hit with radiation from the sun and formed ozone.

The creation of the ozone layer opened the way for higher lifeforms to develop and the geological record shows an explosion of life 600 million years ago, right after the ozone layer formed. Known as the Cambrian Explosion it was during this time that our oceans filled up with a massive array of sea life. What happened to those little cyanobacteria creatures that gave us life? They now live in plants as chloroplasts and contribute to a plant's photosynthesis.

Now think of those little cyanobacterias that faithfully oxygenated our planet. The little fellows were born, put a little O2 in the atmosphere, and then died. They had no idea that they were paving the way for billions of other animals to develop and live after them. They put some true goodness into our world.

Consciousness

One of the greatest mysteries of life is consciousness. No one really understands it, or why we even have it. But we can all agree that it's a great gift, but with it comes great responsibility. We can discern right from wrong and good from bad. It's incumbent upon each of us to use our consciousness for good. We can do this by doing the things that matter, like helping animals, each other, and taking care of the Earth. I assure you, NOTHING ELSE matters.

The capitalists and Ayn Rand tell us that we should give entrepreneurs free rein so that they can create the great inventions and innovations that make our lives better. I saw a video of a young girl, inspired by Ayn Rand's book, who wanted to cure cancer. Yet, entrepreneurs before her invented chemicals that do good things, yet created new types of cancer. This is a personal issue for me because my dad died from a cancer caused by a now outlawed herbicide.

I'm sure the guy who invented asbestos insulation thought he was doing a great thing for humanity, until it was realized that he simply gave thousands of people cancer. And then there was the agricultural revolution where scientists thought they would end world hunger. While their advanced farming techniques, machinery, and chemicals vastly improved farm output all that did was explode the world's population, and we still have 815 million undernourished people in the world.

What we need to do is determine what is real good in the world and and we need to better understand the unintended consequences of our technological contributions. The inventor of the combustion engine made life more convenient, but now we are filling the atmosphere up with CO2, and all the work of those cyanobacteria is going down the drain. Our human population explosion and massive resource consumption has caused a massive species extinction. We are exploding our species at the cost of millions of other species. We've destabilized our weather, which has led to droughts and wildfires, which have murdered billions of other animals. So, again, I say when you do good, do the good that really matters. Don't make starving children in Africa pray before you feed them, damnit, just FEED THEM.

Consciousness is awareness and one of our big advantages as humans is we learn from and benefit from all the people who lived before us and can take what they learned to the next level. In one way that's called the technology explosion, which may not turn out so great. What I'm really talking about is our social and internal growth. We now have laws to protect animals, which is a major step forward. Years ago it was a big step just to have laws that protected women, but we have them now. It's progress.

You have one life to live and when you are doing the real good you may not know who you are influencing or how your actions contribute to the overall good in the world. But while unintended consequences can go terribly bad, they can also result in exceptional good. We all should live a life that adds new songs and new colors to the world. We should provide a stepping stone that allows those after us to move higher up. We will likely never see the results of our good deeds, but in some small way we are moving the flow of our cultural stream in a better direction. You can serve on five committees at your church, you can be rich and have a nice house, but I assure you that the only thing that matters in this life is the selfless good that you contribute to our world. That is the meaning of life.

A thanks to Tom Chi and his TED talk for his inspiration and allowing me to put more of the puzzle together. This blog post is inspired by and dedicated to him, and I borrowed several of his concepts.

Primary Sources:
Everything is Connected — Here's How, by Tom Chi, TedxTaipei
What Sparked the Cambrian Explosion, Douglas Fox, Nature

  Top Photo: Jon Flobrant Bottom Photo: Jake Thacker

Ronald Reagan, Sustainability, and Happiness

Dear Ronald Reagan,

Yeah, what a great job you did. You created a great model for the Republican Party: Cut taxes, cut social programs, beef up the military, and make people feel good about themselves. Once the economy is revved from the tax breaks and deregulation you brag about it and get yourself and other Republicans reelected.

Except that the federal deficit is soaring each month and you're driving your country deeper into debt. And removing regulations harms the environment and the working class. But the deficit is an abstract that most Americans don't understand or care about. What everyone cares about is that they are enjoying prosperity NOW. Thanks, Reagan, for harming our country and setting a bad precedent for future Republican presidents.

I'm not sure why so many highways and airports are named after you, but I guess it's because you made people feel good. And now, 30 years later, I'm still waiting for that trickle-down wealth you talked about to trickle down to me. What really happened is that the 1 percenters kept it to buy more second homes and yachts, while the working class struggles to pay their bills.

Introspection

My epiphany for the week is that facts don't matter (even though they really do). You can bury people in facts but they will still believe what they want to believe because it's comfortable for them.

I'm amazed by the people who believe the Earth is flat. They will go to great lengths to justify their belief and nothing can change their mind. Are they just trying to attract attention? Do they really believe the absurdity?

Religion is no different. There is a website that lists the 1,000 gods invented by men, yet Western Civilization decided to choose some god invented by Middle Eastern goat herders 3,200 years ago. A massive amount of money, time, and resources are wasted on this god at a time when we all could be working on environmental sustainability. Instead of elaborate Christmas Eve musicals, that time and energy could be better spent planting trees.

Roadmap

I'd love to find a web site that teaches us all how to live a better life. Just because you inject "the Lord told me" into every other sentence doesn't impress me at all. What impresses me are the people who recycle, plant urban gardens, and take reusable bags to the grocery store.

Trying to live a sustainable life is difficult for most of us because the economy has been engineered for most of us to exist at the subsistence level. We are just struggling to pay our bills and many of us don't have much time to do volunteer work.

But here's the path I try to follow:

• Recycle, use reusable shopping bags.
• Live a simple lifestyle.
• Minimize driving and meat intake.
• Repair things instead of buying more junk. 

For the people who feel the need to drive luxury cars and horde wealth, screw you all. I have no respect for you. Except if you need the luxury car for your job, like to impress your real estate clients, okay, I grant an exception.

In addition to having good personal habits, I try to help in two other ways:

• Volunteer for good causes that help other people, animals, or the Earth. For instance, I do volunteer work for the Sierra Club, foster dogs, and financially support my three favorite organizations — Sierra Club, Population Connection, and Planned Parenthood. I feel these three organizations do the most good with my limited dollars.
• Engage in advocacy. This is best done by emailing and calling politicians and government agencies on the local, state, and national levels. I subscribe to email lists that let me know when important legislation is coming up and who to contact.

The other thing I try to do is be a good person and a peacemaker. If I am perceived as "meek" or "weak" for doing this, then so be it. I'm not going to change who I am.

Visionaries

My two favorite books are "Ishmael" and "The Story of B," both written by the late Daniel Quinn. One of my favorite quotes from "The Story of B" is: 

"If the world is to be saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision."

When I see middle aged white men attacking Greta Thunberg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez I know these two visionaries are on the right path. I guarantee you that anything a bunch of old, overweight white men resist has to be good. And if I see anyone attacking these women on social media, I unfollow them immediately. Why? Because big white dudes shouldn't be attacking young women, especially when they are trying to save our earth. So, dudes, go back to your Fox News shows and potato chips, and leave the good people alone. I know you think everything is "just right" in our world, but it is not.

Happiness

Before there were Hebrews there was the city-state of Canaan, and, honestly, I'm telling you, they are the ones who invented your god. So when you sing hymns to Yahweh from your tattered green hymnal book, remember that he doesn't really care because he doesn't exist. You are singing to the legacy of goat herders who spent a lot of time gazing at stars and needed something to worship.

To those of you who worship money, I tell you that it won't buy happiness. Rich people are just as jacked up on antidepressants and drugs as the rest of us. The wealthy folks can just afford the better drugs without having to steal, although they typically steal in different ways.

But, getting to the point, happiness for me comes from doing the right thing and being with the right people. I am told that happiness must come from within, which is partly true. But when I look my grateful foster dog in the eye or when I'm with a woman who completes me and energizes me, then I am truly happy. Happiness really is a warm puppy. And happiness is being at peace with yourself, and being fulfilled and content. Happiness is a form of completion.

Conclusion

Okay, Ronald Reagan, I actually did like you and enjoyed your thoughtful speeches. Even on your worst day you were a trillion times better than the current buffoon we have in office. You had an impressive record of activism and public service before you became U.S. president. You were extremely qualified for the position and even though you financially torpedoed the country you claimed to have loved, and even though you took credit for ending the Cold War (and thus stealing the credit from Mikhail Gorbachev) I still think you were a great leader. You just simply led us in the wrong direction.

  Photo: Nghia Le

Something From Nothing

I find that debating people is hopeless because everyone has their mind made up on their positions and rather than being openminded, people just defend their viewpoint. To save society at this critical time we all need to listen to the other side and use critical thinking skills.

When in a debate I usually don't think of a good response until after the fact, which at least makes me sharper for the next debate. But it's no use because if I get a few "zingers" in that only makes the other person more defensive and angry. PEOPLE DON'T WANT THEIR MINDS CHANGED. They like holding on to their stories, whatever they may be.

So, I don't really know what to do other than to listen and make a few points in the hopes that I am at least putting cracks in their walls. People don't like it when I disagree with them. They are frustrated when I don't swallow the dogma and regurgitate the script of southern white America. Please forgive me when I question, it's just that we are facing so much social and environmental peril right now that I feel like I must stick my neck out a little.

Before the Big Bang

Last week I talked about our evolution leading up to the Big Bang, which cosmologists are now able to date to 13.8 billions years ago. Just a few million years after this event the chemical building blocks of life started to form, which eventually led to us.

Now, to review from my past posts, we are mostly made up of hydrogen, which is the basic element of the Universe. In the super-heated furnaces of dying stars more complex elements are formed and when those stars explode they blast their dust everywhere. So, anything in our body more complex than hydrogen was made by a star. We are, indeed, stardust and no magician made us from a handful of dirt.

Until recently the belief was that before the singularity, where the Big Bang happened, there was simply no time or space. However, newer theories suggest otherwise. A more recent theory states that there is no such thing as nothingness, but rather, between the protons, and even between the quarks, there is open space where particles come and go out of existence. So, there never was nothing and at the time of the Big Bang that "something" apparently just changed form.

The point being is that there is no need for a creator or fairy tales to explain our creation. Physicists and cosmologists are slowly unraveling the mysteries of the Universe. To prove that a God triggered the Big Bang there is no way to create an experiment or apply math. If you really want to prove a mystery, capture some dark matter because no one really has. Getting some in a box would take us to the next level in understanding the Universe.

To learn more on this topic I recommend you study the works of theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss. His book, A Universe From Nothing, goes into more detail about the Big Bang or you can catch some of his lectures on YouTube.

Who Am I

As I try to figure out the mysteries of life and the Universe, I've also been trying to figure myself out more. In the human brain there are places that are similar to the deepest parts of the ocean — they are areas that hold great mysteries and remain unexplored. Even at age 59 I'm still trying to understand myself. For instance, sometimes I think I subconsciously sabotage my romantic relationships and I'm not sure why. The biggest problem I see is that people are unwilling to acknowledge their flaws. Their behaviors are always "right" and it's always the other person who does things "wrong." It would be helpful if we all did some serious introspection and learned to acknowledge the parts of us we don't like. Self-improvement and understanding needs to be an ongoing part of our life journey.

Rouge Leaders

On another topic I can't express enough my loathing and disdain for the current president. The man is a walking train wreck. But then I see the rise of these near-autocrat, right-wing politicians around the world. What's going on?

As I mentioned a few blog posts ago, race has been a main driver in American politics for 150 years. Now, we have immigration, and the fear it creates, to shape politics.

The irony is that there is a perpetual loop in place where citizens in wealthier nations panic when they see all the "different" people flooding their country. That's when they elect extremist leaders who promise to take action against immigrants. These wealthy countries produce more than their fair share of carbon, which affects the weather and causes droughts, famines, and natural disasters. These events, in turn, trigger human emigration as desperate people, who may have lost their farm or home, struggle to survive. It's a really screwed up situation and will only get worse as sea levels rise and more neighborhoods simply go underwater. Evangelicals will scream that God is punishing us for gay marriage and abortion, but the only thing that matters is physics. More carbon in the atmosphere means a greater greenhouse effect. So you can bitch about Al Gore flying around in a private jet but the real problem begins with the millions of American cars that are spewing out CO2 every day. Pray about that all you want.

But, anyway, to quote Mr. Krauss:

Unfortunately, the politics of fear that is promoting the rise of autocratic politicians is producing policies that are likely making [environmental] problems far worse. It is hard to see how this vicious cycle will easily end.  

Over the years I've come to view both religion and metaphysics as not only escapism but a serious danger to the world. In addition to serving as a distraction from the serious problems we face, religion also promotes fantasy thinking in other parts of life as well. The end result is that we have a society disconnected from reality. Where I live in the Atlanta, Georgia suburbs there are churches EVERYWHERE. Now, if people actually followed the teachings of Jesus we'd easily have a sustainable world. Jesus lived a simple lifestyle, spoke against the evils of wealth, and promoted nonviolence. The American Christian is NOTHING like the Jesus presented in the four Gospels. It's all a charade, a sham, and a joke. It's weird that religion and greedy corporations are speeding up the end of humanity, but, if you study cosmology you will find that the Universe is full of weirdness. So, I guess it's no big deal. But it is a big deal because of all the other lifeforms we are killing along with us. If I sound a little angry at religion, well, yeah, I am.


Additional Reading: Nuclear Synthesis (written in easy-to-understand English)

Photo: A. L.

Seven Billion Billion Billion Atoms and the XR Movement

I am in awe of the opportunity to briefly be alive and experience the Universe. I can't believe how anyone can NOT be in amazement, yet most people simply go through their lives in pre-recorded patterns and only focus on their immediate gratification. But a few us are sentient, and whether we like it or not, we are given an awareness of the overall world.

Nearly 14 billion years ago the mysterious Big Bang occurred, sending zillions of hydrogen atoms everywhere. Through fusion and heat, eventually atoms fused into more complex elements. At one miraculous point the complex atoms formed into living cells and those cells grew into spectacularly complex lifeforms. So, wow, here I am, alive, for a brief period of time. The cool thing is that of the trillions of atoms in our body, two-thirds of them are still basic hydrogen, and a quarter of our atoms are a slightly more complex atom — oxygen. So, the point being is that we are not very different from the Universe itself.

I know a lot of people brush off the miracle of life with a religious story, and in my opinion that's an insult to our Universe. There was no magician who made us out of dirt — that was just a story that ancient people created to "fill the gap" until we could figure things out more.

Sentient Beings

All my life my brain has been in constant overdrive and I think way too much. As a child I grew up in a super religious household and I remember trying to figure out how "Jesus came into your heart." At age 8 I pictured a bunch of little scientists in my brain pushing buttons, and when I became a Christian they were all thrown out, and Jesus sat in the middle of my brain with a glowing light behind him.

I'm a firm believer in the 80-20 rule which is roughly the same composition of air — 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, and the other 1% is argon, carbon dioxide, and other trace gases. I believe that human awareness is the same composition. Eighty percent of humanity eats, poops, and screws without ever questioning their existence -- they just continue on with the recordings that their parents put in their heads. The other 20% of humanity is aware of their existence and are usually sympathetic to the environmental issues that affect us. But it's that wonderful 1% of humanity who are the activists and organizers, and who make things happen in the world. These are the people who are humanitarians, environmental leaders, and politicians. They are the ones who chart the course for the future and even protect and guide us. I love these special people and they are the ones who give me hope.

Extinction Rebellion & Climate Change

I am just now learning about a new movement called the Extinction Rebellion, which conducts demonstrations around the world to raise awareness to climate change. These activists have my deepest respect. While millions of people are in church this morning, singing a few octaves off key, there are other people on hunger strikes and risking arrest to try and save our planet.

For 100 years we've been sucking oil out of the ground and burning it for transportation, warmth, electricity, and to run our factories. We've learned how to make thousands of products out of the black goop, which are all aimed at making our lives better and more comfortable. For this convenience we are paying a horrible price — we are sacrificing the future of our planet and children for the sake of convenience and comfort now. Well, golly, isn't that what we humans always do?

As a crotchety old environmentalist, I must admit I dig all the rhetoric of the Extinction Movement. But even if we plant millions of trees a day the best we can hope for is a carbon neutral society, and reversing the damage from the last few decades will be an uphill struggle.

I am perplexed as to why conservatives are so dead-set against recognizing the climate fiasco. The favorite line they tell me is, "Well, scientists don't really know. In the 70s they predicted the Earth would become a giant ice ball." Hey, okay, as a kid I remember seeing those pictures. Okay, I give you credit for that. But now the science is concrete and the symptoms of climate change are real and all around us. We are the frog in the slowly boiling water

Allow me to share some of the text from the Extinction Rebellion website (also known as the XR Movement):

The symbol above represents extinction. The circle signifies the planet, while the hourglass inside serves as a warning that time is rapidly running out for many species. The world is currently undergoing a mass extinction event, and this symbol is intended to help raise awareness of the urgent need for change in order to address this crisis. Estimates are that somewhere between 30,000 and 140,000 species are becoming extinct every year in what scientists have named the Holocene, or Sixth Mass Extinction. This ongoing process of destruction is being caused by the impact of human activity. Such a catastrophic loss of biodiversity is highly likely to cause widespread ecosystem collapse and consequently render the planet uninhabitable for humans.

It's a given that industry will resist climate action because they fear it will hit their pocketbook. Politicians will resist because they are owned by industry. Religionists will resist because climate action doesn't fit into their story line. But the 1 percenters, the real activists of our time, will take take action, and the 20 percenters will at least support them, even if it's just to vote or writing a check. I have no ill will toward the 80 percent of the population who doesn't care and will do nothing. I'm quite sure humanity has always been this way and I accept that. So, go to your church, go to the mall, go to your NASCAR race, and indulge yourself in comforts created by oil. Live your fantasy life! Watch your reruns of the Batchelor on TV, smoke your weed, pop your antidepressants, shoot your gun at militia rallies, buy your MAGA hats, do whatever you want. Those individuals who are driven to make a positive change will carry on, in spite of you.

Summary

One of my epiphanies lately is that the people who are seen as the greatest Christians are simply passionate humanitarians. These individuals would be helping their fellow humans whether a "Christian" label is slapped on them or not. It's built into them. And most of who we are is already determined by a very young age. As I spend time with my granddaughter and see her outgoing personality I can assure you that she will be an extrovert throughout her life.

So, maybe the secret to saving humanity is to, well, I don't know. I don't know how much of our personality is influenced by early childhood or what is simply built into us. But if there's a way to influence children to be more environmentally conscious then that might be the key to saving our planet. One thing I do know and that is bombarding them with religious ideology is NOT the answer.


Photo: Hal Gatewood

Love Lies Bleeding

I spent most of my life as a journalist because I felt I needed to write, and write I shall. I am inspired how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is speaking out against injustice, and I feel that all of us likeminded individuals need to speak loudly with her.

And speak I shall ...

For starters, I think the discourse in our country is becoming too uncivil. The partisan divide is only getting wider and more strained. A first step to recovery is dropping our labels. I will no longer allow people to stand behind their political party, religion, culture, race, or anything else as an excuse for their behavior. For instance, I now see that "conservatism" is simply an excuse for doing nothing. And people do nothing because they are inherently lazy.

You look at me as if something is wrong. But I will tell you that those of us in the progressive community are horrified at how people calling themselves Christians can align themselves with someone as amoral as Donald Trump. Is the abortion issue really that important to you? Or do you get revved up when he goes after the brown skins and all the other bogey men that he uses to scare you?

Can you wake up just for a minute? The wildfires, flooding, and super storms were all projected by climate change models developed in the 1990s. It's all coming true, so, yeah, I believe in climate change. My mind is boggled because instead of doing anything about it we slowly sink our country financially by sending disaster aid to one crises after another. Yet, you do nothing, America.

And as for you, the desperate woman who has made the difficult decision to end your pregnancy, guess what? For the first time and last time thousands of good Christians hidden in churches around the country will suddenly love you. They will love you just long enough to force you to have your unwanted child, and then they will love you no more. Once you have the child they will cut off your welfare and the school-assisted lunches, they will take away your Obama phone, and they will go back to their sheltered churches and their dozens of "activities" that make them too busy to help you or that homeless dude at the intersection.

If I want to see what love is, well, maybe it's in the form of idealism. We are an entire country bonded not by blood or ethnicity, but by the ideals of James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. We are a country of idealists in an age where idealism is falling apart. We are a nation of oligarchs, who befriend the foolish theocrats only for votes, in return for supporting their crusade to end abortion and deprive gays of cupcakes. And there I see love again, because money-grubbing, power hungry preachers and their allies in the corporate world, who wish to stomp out the middle class in the name of profit, fall deeper and deeper into love.

I watch and study ants. They are the true example of collectivism, which is really the only way we humans can properly live. The whole idea of individualism is a failure, especially since we've chosen to multiply our species until we are packed like sardines. But we still hold on to our Wild West mythology and the idea that you can do whatever you want with your land, your garbage, your self, and whatever, Meanwhile, the Earth as a whole dies by a thousand tiny cuts.

Religion as we know it was made up by goat herders in the Late Bronze Age, and now people are treating these stories as fact and using their mythology to justify their amoral behavior. I do believe in Jesus and believe he was two thousand years ahead of his time, and he gave us the right way to live, which was promptly ignored by the Jews, Romans, and Westerners alike. Yet, when it's convenient, a few verses are cherry picked from a book that's never read and used to bash others over the head.

In college I studied the poem The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot and in class we spent days picking it apart. I kind of got the idea that the poem was a snapshot of life in the early 1900s. I kept digging and analyzing, and to my surprise I realized that the meaning was in the title: "The Waste Land." It's a poem written in 1922 that describes America today. But, what a weird way to start a poem:

“April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”

What did that mean? It means that April is the cruelest month because the life and color of spring flowers throws our depression into a sharp relief and causes painful memories to surface.

So, there I was, my senior year in college, and it was April 1982. I had fallen in love with the girl I wanted to marry. I had given all my heart to her, and now I could feel the whole thing unravel. She was elusive and noncommittal.  I could see her drifting away and I couldn't think of anything more I could do, other than to love her more. It took me nine months to fall in love with her and during that first kiss in September 1981 the dogs stopped barking and the crickets stopped chirping, and everything in the Universe disappeared for a moment. I had created a chasm in the Universe, where I wanted to stay and live forever. But things were awash from the start because although she tried, her feelings were not the same as mine. I prayed, being the selfish dick that I was, that she would love me the same.

If there is any lesson to be learned it's that the one time in my life when I was completely, wildly in love was to become the microcosm of my life and for human existence as a whole. We want to stay in our shells, but sometimes our heart tells us to venture out and risk everything to experience love because it brings us happiness, and happiness is like a drug and we want more and more of it in ever stronger doses. So, I dared to give that once-in-a-lifetime complete love, I took the risk, and ended up like a crushed aluminum can on the side of the road.

To America, to the Christians with their nice cars, to the remnants of the middle class, and to those few of us who actually love this world, even more than this life, I say to you that it's okay to love, and to love one last time, even when you think you can't love any more.

Photo: Taylor Ann Wright