First, take a test:

Spend a 24-hour day without access to any and every electronic device the reader has. The ONLY exception is ‘phone calls’, an outdated term for when two people were able to have a conversation despite great distance between them; even given this rule, the reader may not initiate a phone call unless it is an emergency. So, lock away the smart phone, flip phones, computer, television, hoods, radio, DVD player, phonograph and any other device which allows the reader to hear any reproduced sound. Of course the reader may talk face-to-face with real human beings.

* * * * *

So – how did it go? No doubt there were many different experiences. If all one did was sit feeling frustrated, that’s one end of the spectrum while suddenly washing all the windows, moving the furniture around and go shopping may be the other end of the spectrum; maybe some folks started that novel that hasn’t been addressed in five years. No doubt the jocks played 27 holes of golf or bowled seven games in a row. (Were today’s jocks the hunters of yore?)

Mariner wanted the reader to experience first hand what was different without electronics. Were they more sociable? more task oriented? more physical? more intellectual? What type of creature did you become? Mariner suspects the reader was experiencing life as a member of the planet’s natural biosphere – industrial advances notwithstanding.

Mentally, perhaps the brain was empty, nothing to pay attention to, nothing to provoke the ego – causing naps, use of crossword puzzles, and other distracting activities, maybe even mentally remodeling the house. Did the reader have the insight that this is how Great Grandmother spent every day?

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Perhaps the three most disrupting issues that cause all the world’s consternation today are economics, weather and human transition to a physiological/electronic existence. Below is a list of major modifications to what a human is.

LIMBS. A couple of years ago, an African athlete ran track races at Olympic speeds while having two artificial legs. In a recent documentary, a man had tears in his eyes as he flexed his fist and individually moved all five fingers at the end of an artificial arm.

HEAD. Many of us have hearing aids, a tiny electronic device that replaces ear function. Another version is the device attached to the skull that requires the brain to train a new set of neurons to hear. Recently, a man with brain damage had lost control of his body; a new chunk of electronic brain was implanted successfully. Then there is new stuff like eyeglasses outfitted with electronics, or the hood that provides a personal visual world.  There is a new device that lets a person manipulate their computers and other listening/viewing electronics without moving their hands! Then there is Deepfake – how many versions of each of us exist in the electronic world?

VISCERAL. Recently, a man received a mechanical heart; he didn’t live very long, just long enough to prove the principle. Artificial ‘lungs’ have been in use for many decades. and there is the dialysis machine.

As an abstract question, is our species evolving into a quasi electronic creature? It may only be three of four centuries before a birthed human can marry a robot and have children . . . . It will take a lot of time just like it took time to evolve from a lemur to Homo sapiens.

The question indeed is abstract. A guess would be that for the world’s population, perhaps 6 out of ten humans have heard even a radio. Still, among the more organized nations, the population is increasingly, and privately, become electronically dependent. The discovery that guarantees evolution transition was the experiment that linked chromosome neurons with computer code and had the ability to reproduce itself.

So, amid the fury of politics, sustainability and culture shift, the question isn’t ‘Who’ are we but ‘What’ are we?

Ancient Mariner

As every news-wise reader knows, spirituality is suffering staggering setbacks not only in formal religions but in politics (spirit of democracy), finance (plutocracy) and culture (weaponized classes). Spirituality is one of the cosmetics a person uses to present themselves as a human creature. Spirituality sets the tone of all personal beliefs from the subconscious self to general personality and to one’s role in society. Yet, it is a will-o-the-wisp phenomenon. From where does spirituality arise? How does a person apply this ‘cosmetic’?

It is difficult to disseminate spirituality from cultural reality. For example, the Holy Bible has a huge impact on what spirituality is, as well as do all sacrosanct sources and ideological writings. How does one present an example of the dynamics of spirituality? After all, it is the foundation of ethics, morality, socialization and personal stability.

Mariner has decided to demonstrate spirituality through a valid but not often used premise: naturalism.

The Universe is God – unending, omnipotent, multidimensional and pervasive of all energy and context.

The prophet, AKA Jesus, Mohammad, et al, is Planet Earth. As Earthlings, the planet sets our ethics and morality through the manner by which humans respect and count on a solid, meaningful and compliant role within the planet’s biosphere. When we feel “all is right with the world” we are experiencing the impact of a spiritual bond with the planet.

As readers are aware, the very terms ethics and morality are easily misinterpreted, irregularly revalued and can be distorted for immoral reasons. To keep this treatise short, amalgamate all the pros and cons related to global warming – a confrontation with, possibly an abuse to the spirituality of the planet. Examples of violating spirituality in other religions is the crucifixion of Jesus, cutting off clitorises in Islam, and, just maybe, slavery.

An imbalance in spirituality caused by immoral interpretations of the biosphere will lead to disruptive behavior in the context of planet ethics. For example, the abuse of oil and the artificial interference provided by automation slowly have allowed chemical, cultural and population issues to be disruptive – creating turbulence in the biosphere. In other words, our cosmetics are smeared.

In this bare-bone example, it may be hard to imagine the phenomenon of bliss or spirituality. Like all moments of spiritual awareness, it is a fleeting moment of complete belonging, something as simple as feeling a fresh breeze or freeing a trapped animal or perhaps preventing an industrial project that would lead to the extinction of local biomass. The cosmetic has doses of compassion as well as biological territorialism but there always is a sense of belonging to the planet rather than to one’s self.

Belonging is the lock-in. Do we belong to democracy? Do we belong to Jesus? Do we belong to our community? Do we belong to a greater existence? Do we belong to our planet?

Ancient Mariner

As readers know, mariner is an old fogie. He has learned, however, to pretend he still is a young person. He has also learned that, rather quickly, he is kidding himself. He has adopted a gardener’s life as a replacement for a career. As his wife will attest, he has more projects than he can handle and deliberately sustains this overload. “Keeps me thinking”, he says.

One project was to build a rabbit-proof garden space for vegetables, plant management and a supply depot for the tools and paraphernalia associated with gardening. Well, mixed with all the other chores associated with gardening, the project was not moving. Add to that the mariner’s constant trope that he belongs to a special union that requires him to work eight hours a day but allows him two and a half days to complete it, and there is no hope that his physical limitations and his work plan together were achievable.

Enter a life-long friend living on the East Coast. Last November, he traveled to mariner’s home in Iowa for a week to set posts and make gates. The weather that week had temperatures in the thirties with constant snow, sleet and rain, and a soil of a very muddy nature. Still, with great persistence, he set the posts and made the gates.

He returned this past week with a wonderful new girl friend as well. He set the fencing while his girl friend weeded mariner’s gardens. Needless to say, this was not a come-and-go event. It took a lifetime of mutual support in life’s good times and bad times for their allegiance to become firm and unchallenged. Unlike the political clouds and economic storms that make up life today, these personal experiences among genuine friends (and family) are what REAL life is like.

Try to find a pattern of life that depends on genuinely loved friends and family. Use it or lose it.

As to the other reality, from a stratospheric view, Armageddon progresses.

Ancient Mariner

Mariner is in trouble again. He used the word ‘divers’ in his post. He apologizes for using an anachronistic term crowded out by words like type, option, choice, difference and, yes, diverse. Having apologized, he must say that divers is a legitimate word. It has a different, albeit subtle, definition.

He does not know why his brain chose to retain rather acutely the difference between the two words; divers is an active word in his lexicon as is diverse. Divers is spoken di’ vers whereas diverse is spoken di-verse’. Perhaps using a chart with columns and rows may help.

A table has columns. It needs columns because the definition of each column is different from the other columns. Each column, however, has many rows where each item is about the same header but not about other columns because each column is intrinsically different while members of a single column have a common definition.

For example, the human life form has many races like Hispanic, Asian, White, etc. One could say that there are diverse (more comfortable may be ‘a diversity of’) races in the column about the human life form. But there are many different, exclusive life forms, each having their own column and unique row values. One could say there is a divers number of life forms.

True, mariner knows most folks would not choose ‘divers’ but each of us as a divers creature has a diversity of idiosyncrasies – his is an awareness of header relationships versus column relationships. At least they come from the same Latin word; check their entomology.

Ancient Mariner