There is beauty, grace, and perfection in every moment.
It all depends on how you frame the shot.
Totally Overthinking It
There is beauty, grace, and perfection in every moment.
It all depends on how you frame the shot.
Scientists keep trying to tweek the Drake Equation to explain the absence of evidence of advanced civilization in the Universe. What is the X Factor obliterating civilizations before they can build Dyson Spheres, capturing the totality of a star's energy, or find a way to communicate over the void with brutes like us?Here's how I reached that conclusion:
Comfort and wealth, baby. That's the perilous X Factor. Comfort and wealth.
The world has perpetually seemed to be going straight to hell just as it's gotten fabulously better and better. Why? Because we're spoiled princesses increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas. We're Mrs. Howells endlessly piqued by poor picnic weather and inattentive servants. This explains why the merely wealthy are beginning to foment class warfare for unfettered access to the trappings of super-richdom. This cadre fights not for bread and shelter for the disadvantaged, like their righteous forebears, but for their right to smart watches and Beemers.Few have noticed this societal turn, as blatantly extreme as it is. It's especially evident around New Years, when fabulously blessed people surge with bitter complaints about their wretchedly insufferable existences. We recently took stock of our latest excruciation: in 2020, we were forced to wear masks for a few months, couldn't celebrate holidays with our extended families, and had an asshole president who upset us by saying unpleasant things. This is what passes for extreme suffering in 2020 (and some weird amnesia blocks us from recognizing how we've kicked each wretched year out on its ass for time immemorial). Our ancestors chortle bitterly.
When our grandparents urged us to "count our blessings", it wasn't so much an endorsement for Positive Thinking as a means to regain perspective.
Humanity has persevered over illness and lions and warlords; famines, droughts, and extreme poverty, and its pain has only grown in the process. Comfort and wealth will prove an indefatigable challenge.
By the time we're down to our very last Nazi (some geezer raving and saluting from his electric scooter), we'll all be so unhinged by his presence that we'll jump in the ocean and drown en masse like lemmings.
The people bitterly complaining about 2020 - who are the same people who whined about 2019, 2018, 2017, etc. (an unbroken chain of unsatisfactory suboptimality) - are not the ones in ICUs with tubes down their throats, nor are they the health care workers bravely attending to them. Those folks are all busy. They have no time for whining on Facebook. People confronting actual problems don't reflect over their disappointment. Whining's the exclusive domain of the comfortable.So let's return to the prospect of these vaccines potentially curing cancer and other scourges. If so, it's not good news. In 2017, I posted "Cure Cancer, Kill Social Order", which I'll reprint below
We appear to have turned a corner, where cures for many forms of cancer may finally be within sight. This is very bad news. I'm not sure humanity will survive it.Comfort and wealth have shown themselves to be the perilous X Factor. Cure cancer on top of that, and we're finished.
First, it helps to understand that "cancer" is another way of saying "dying of old age". If you don't develop actual disease (a heart attack, a stroke, flu, malaria, etc.), or get eaten by a lion, then, congratulations, you've won, and will live long enough to be taken down by the normal processes of old age, which usually involves tumors and other familiar signs of DNA break-down, like a calculator running on depleted batteries.
I'm talking about prevalent cancers, e.g. liver, prostate, etc. Rarer and earlier-onset forms of cancer are exceptional, and I'm certainly rooting - and contributing - for their cures ASAP.
Why is there so much cancer now? The Whole Foods crowd will attribute it to those nasty chemicals everywhere. But the actual reason is that many of us are finally living long enough to get cancer. And that's a win. Cancer's not a scourge. Mortality is the scourge, and cancer is a symptom.
Removing cancer from human society would change everything. We're well aware of the mounting problems of financial inequality, though it's seldom pointed out that it skews toward the elderly. Society counts on parents dying and passing stuff on. But that process has been seriously disrupted by people living into their 90s the way they once approached their 70s. That's like wedging in a whole extra generation, and meanwhile our inflation-adjusted income and standard of living have, for the first time ever, gone stagnant. There's less upward mobility in the workplace, college grads are listless and blocked, and it can't possibly be coincidence that so many 70 and 80 year olds are holding the reigns of control (Reagan was a shocking and precarious 70 when he took office, yet no one had serious trepidations about Trump and Clinton both being that same age).
We've messed with our churn, and curing cancer will mess it up way, way more. If, twenty years from now, 95 year olds hold on to their jobs and their assets, consider the fate of 70 year olds (much less 25 year olds), finding themselves caught in a half-century holding pattern, perhaps many of them still living in mom and dad's basement. The pitiful experience of England's Prince Charles may turn out to have foreshadowed a looming new normal.
Who knows; we might manage to shift our social norms to adjust to this radically different framework. But history shows that far less massive shifts can be enormously destabilizing. This is not good.
I touched upon a similar point in this posting from last year. Here's an excerpt:You may have noticed some tension in our body politic these days, on both right and left. Income inequality is a huge, toxic problem, poisoning society in all sorts of ways. Same for power inequality. As the Olds enjoy greater and greater lock on both, and maintain that lock for longer and longer, there will come a tipping point when the imbalance becomes parsed in these terms. Youngs aren't going to like it. The energy and momentum of Occupy Wall Street, and the anger of Bernie and Trump's followers may be recalled as minor foreshadowings once a generation is clearly seen as refusing to step out of the way.
Every time you cook something, criticize it like it's a restaurant. And next time, make tiny adjustments to ensure it comes closer to your pref. Think Grand Canyon: macro progress via cumulative myriad micro-iterations.This wasn't tedious iteration, it was blossoming iteration. The trunk sprouted branches, the branches sprouted twigs and leaves and blossoms, and panini became a full and fertile channel for my creativity. I didn't feel the least bit constrained. Any incipient whiff of boredom just spurred my creativity to devise novel thrills. Creativity flourishes under impediment!
Jacob Chansley, AKA Jake Angeli, Arizona man makes first court appearance in for charges related to storming the U.S. Capitol. His mom says he hasn’t eaten since Friday because the detention facility won’t feed him all organic food. @abc15 pic.twitter.com/doTLFal4At
— Melissa Blasius (@MelissaBlasius) January 11, 2021
Jazz was passé in the 80s and 90s. Blogs were passé in the 00s. Smartphone apps were passé in the 10s. Web sites, however, were sexy and appealing in 1997. And that's why Chowhound was my only undertaking that sparked any wide interest.
This is what professionals must do. Seasoned ice fishermen don't kibbitz about how frickin' cold it is. Urban bus drivers don't scowl at poor drivers. And professional house movers don't grunt and moan as they lift.But the upshot I've heard from such looky-loos has been surprising. Oddly, they often get something from their glimpse into my process. I suppose it's like "The Tortoise and the Hare" or the Special Olympics. An "inspiring display of perseverance" or whatever. It's so courageous to see the poor dear painstakingly struggle to rise above his constraints.
Whiney ice fishermen, scowling bus drivers, and moaning house movers don't last long. They're locked up somewhere, sipping broth.
Writing = Editing, and ideas come from invisible magical fairies.
— Jim Leff (@jimleff) November 26, 2020
One can easily empathize with the perspective (framing!): "We have 30 carrots and 60 hungry people. So we'll slice each carrot in half, and await fresh carrots! Voila! Solomonic wisdom!"One of my friends is among the smarter people walking this Earth, and some time ago he arrived at a solution for the Middle East mess: nuke it. Nuke it all. Remove the people, remove the problem, as well as the ongoing spillover from the problem which has been the engine for such mayhem in this world.
My empathy does not signify agreement (though cultural blocks against empathizing-while-disagreeing are so fundamental that the inhibition is even baked into our language. Never empathize with stupid! Never empathize with crazy! Doing so marks you as a facilitator/appeaser of stupid/craziness!). So while I can understand and empathize, my objection is easily stated: Vaccines aren't like carrots, you grotesque morons.