It is perfectly normal for everyone to adapt to what is real, what is happening now, how one survives generally. The mind pays close attention to how life plays out on a second by second basis. The skills needed to sustain status quo are memorized not unlike the muscle memory of pianist Jon Baptiste when his fingers know just where to go in the midst of a rapid jazz piece.

The brain is so quick to learn what counts that it can subconsciously drive your car for you while you do meditation because there is nothing to think about.

What do you do to occupy yourself while the dishwasher does the dishes, the clothes washer/drier does the clothes, the furnace creates heat, the air conditioner cools, the car walks for you, cabinet doors close themselves, cars will soon drive themselves, the grocery store provides food and elementary school teachers need not talk to students anymore because a computer screen does it for them.[1]

More than likely, you have chunk time to watch television (while the mind tends to other things.) No fault is intended to ourselves. We live the way our environment suggests we live. Our awareness becomes fixed on present circumstances. Mariner suggests that disconnecting that fixation, sort of like taking off your reading glasses, and focusing on another existential reality may be an interesting experience. For example, what if there were no electricity, public water systems or grocery stores? Not even bicycles?

Plough Magazine has published an article that focuses on that very idea. It is an essay written by Mark Boyle, an economist who decided to live without money.[2] Here is a paragraph:

“I came to the sobering conclusion that at the heart of our ecological, geopolitical, social, and cultural malaise was our extreme disconnection from the sources of what we consume. Money, I reasoned, allowed us to never have to come eye-to-eye with the consequences of our consumerist ways. The wider the degrees of separation, the more room for abuse.”

And:

“. . . surprisingly, over time I found my reasons slowly change. They now have less to do with saving the world, and much more to do with savoring the world. The world needs savoring.”

“it’s off to the spring to fetch the day’s washing and drinking water. Along the way I meet and chat with neighbors. After that it could be any number of things: making cider, hauling logs from the forest, sawing and chopping them by hand, foraging plants and berries, manuring vegetable beds, planting trees, skinning a roadkill pheasant or deer, planting seeds, weeding the herb garden, washing in the lake, whittling a spoon. Or any of a hundred other things modernity had once done for me.”

Mariner is sympathetic to preindustrial society, feeling that industrialization destroys the biosphere as much as it simplifies human life. For example, human activity has driven over 16,000 species to extinction and now the planet itself isn’t too happy. He had a pleasant read of the article and urges the reader to read it as well:

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/environment/not-so-simple

Ancient Mariner

[1] Mothers with toddlers, oddly enough, seem to have no modern replacement for childcare thereby requiring the mind to take care of itself.

[2] The Way Home: Tales from a Life without Technology (Oneworld, 2019) , on which this article is based. He lives in Ireland.

֎ Europe recently passed the Digital Services Act which is expected to come into force around the end of next year. Among other things, the Digital Services Act will ban targeted advertising aimed at children and will allow European governments to tell social media companies to take down illegal content, with fines that could range into the billions if companies don’t obey.

One wonders whether parents will be able to make good decisions in behalf of their children without the assistance of targeted advertising . . .

֎ Mariner knows the end is near. In a farm supply store today, mariner saw a family of Amish, fully replete with straw hats, kerchiefs, beards, coveralls, floor length dresses and boots. He left the store right behind them to see them get into two full-cab pickup trucks . . .

[Footnote] Regarding the mechanization of the Amish, the transition is active across the United States. Two colonies, one in Kalona, Iowa and another in Somerset Pennsylvania are as fully modernized as any home or farm can be. Sadly, the Amish will pay the price we all have – a community-based balance of capitalism (sustainability), socialism (empathy), and communism (unity).

֎ A couple of philosophical analogies:

Modern society, like an airplane, can command distance, productivity through speed and by flying faster, can command more distance and more productivity; speed is the absolute driver – more and more – because if speed slows down, the airplane will crash.

It is said that it takes money to make money. This is true but reality can’t afford to give everyone money. This leads to an inevitable imbalance. Every dollar acquired by a money maker means one less dollar to be shared among 100 of those without money.

Ancient Mariner

֎ Politico – Cars are capable of amassing data on nearly every aspect of a drive, from road conditions to whether or not you’ve gained weight since the last time you sat in the driver’s seat. If you connect your phone to the car’s Bluetooth system, it’s also capable of knowing your contacts.

And while most of the data that cars collect is about the vehicle itself, like the engine temperature or the tire pressure, there’s a growing market for more personal driver data, such as the driver’s name and location, driven by industries like insurance, marketing and car repairs.

Where are mariner’s ponies when he needs them? As far as he is concerned, his 2002 Silverado just went up in value.

– – – –

We may think we’re smart, maybe . . . But we certainly aren’t educated.

Mariner’s wife found this British test given to 11-year-olds for acceptance to higher education schools. Having read the test, one wonders what school children do all day in today’s schools.

֎ As a service to Spectator [magazine] readers who still have any doubts about the decline in educational standards, we are printing these exam papers taken by 11-year-olds applying for places to King Edward’s School in Birmingham in 1898.

ENGLISH GRAMMAR

1. Write out in your best handwriting:-

‘O Mary, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands o’ Dee.’

The western wind was wild and dank with foam,

And all alone went she.

The western tide crept up along the sand,

And o’er and o’er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see.

The rolling mist came down and hid the land –

And never home came she.

2. Parse fully ‘And call the cattle home.’
3. Explain the meaning of o’ Dee, dank with foam, western tide, round and round the sand, the rolling mist.
4. Write out separately the simple sentences in the last two lines of the above passage and analyse them.
5. Write out what you consider to be the meaning of the above passage.

GEOGRAPHY

1. On the outline map provided, mark the position of Carlisle, Canterbury, Plymouth, Hull, Gloucester, Swansea, Southampton, Worcester, Leeds, Leicester and Norwich; Morecambe Bay, The Wash, Solent, Menai Straits and Lyme Bay; St Bees Head, The Naze, Lizard Point; the rivers Trent and Severn; Whernside, the North Downs, and Plinlimmon; and state on a separate paper what the towns named above are noted for.
2. Where are silver, platinum, tin, wool, wheat, palm oil, furs and cacao got from?
3. Name the conditions upon which the climate of a country depends, and explain the reason of any one of them.
4. Name the British possessions in America with the chief town in each. Which is the most important?
5. Where are Omdurman, Wai-Hei-Wai, Crete, Santiago, and West Key, and what are they noted for?

LATIN

1. Write in columns the nominative singular, genitive plural, gender, and meaning of:- operibus, principe, imperatori, genere, apro, nivem, vires, frondi, muri.
2. Give the comparative of noxius, acer, male, diu; the superlative of piger, humilis, fortiter, multum; the English and genitive sing. of solus, uter, quisque.
3. Write these phrases in a column and put opposite to each its Latin: he will go; he may wish; he had; he had been; he will be heard; and give in a column the English of fore, amatum, regendus, monetor.
4. Give in columns the perfect Indic. and active supine of ago, pono, dono, cedo, jungo, claudo.

Mention one example each of verbs followed by the nominative, the accusative, the genitive, the dative, the ablative.

5. Translate into Latin:-
6. The general’s little son was loved by the soldiers.
7. Let no bodies be buried within this city.
8. Ask Tullius who found the lions.
9. He said that the city had been taken, and, the war being finished, the forces would return.
10. Translate into English:-

Exceptus est imperatoris adventus incredibili honore atque amore: tum primum enim veniebat ab illo Aegypti bello. Nihil relinquebatur quod ad ornatum locorum omnium qua iturus erat excogitari posset.

ENGLISH HISTORY

1. What kings of England began to reign in the years 871, 1135, 1216, 1377, 1422, 1509, 1625, 1685, 1727, 1830?
2. Give some account of Egbert, William II, Richard III, Robert Blake, Lord Nelson.
3. State what you know of – Henry II’s quarrel with Becket, the taking of Calais by Edward III, the attempt to make Lady Jane Grey queen, the trial of the Seven bishops, the Gordon riots.
4. What important results followed – the raising of the siege of Orleans, the Gunpowder plot, the Scottish rebellion of 1639, the surrender at Yorktown, the battles of Bannockburn, Bosworth, Ethandune, La Hogue, Plassey, and Vittoria?
5. How are the following persons connected with English History,- Harold Hardrada, Saladin, James IV of Scotland, Philip II of Spain, Frederick the Elector Palatine?

ARITHMETIC

1. Multiply 642035 by 24506.
2. Add together £132 4s. 1d., £243 7s. 2d., £303 16s 2d., and £1.030 5s. 3d.; and divide the sum by 17. (Two answers to be given.)
3. Write out Length Measure, and reduce 217204 inches to miles, &c.
4. Find the G.C.M. of 13621 and 159848.
5. Find, by Practice, the cost of 537 things at £5 3s. 71/2d. each.
6. Subtract 37/16 from 51/4; multiply 63/4 by 5/36; divide 43/8 by 11/6; and find the value of 21/4 of 12/3 of 13/5.
7. Five horses and 28 sheep cost £126 14s., and 16 sheep cost £22 8s.; find the total cost of 2 horses and 10 sheep.
8. Subtract 3.25741 from 3.3; multiply 28.436 by 8.245; and divide .86655 by 26.5.
9. Simplify 183/4 – 22/3 ÷ 11/5 – 31/2 x 4/7.
10. Find the square root of 5.185,440,100.
11. Find the cost of papering the walls of a room 16ft long, 13ft 6in. wide, and 9ft high, with paper 11/2ft wide at 2s. 3d. a piece of 12yds in length.
12. A and B rent a number of fields between them for a year, the rent and other expenses amounting to £108 17s. 6d. A puts in 2 horses, 5 oxen and 10 sheep; and B puts in 4 horses, 1 ox, and 27 sheep. If a horse eats as much as 3 sheep and an ox as much as 2 sheep, how much should A and B each pay?

These papers were kindly sent in by Humphrey Stanbury, whose father took the exam, and passed.

https://rense.com/general75/pass.htm

[The next post will present a standard 1954 civics test on the U.S. Constitution. Most schools no longer teach civics – perhaps one of the reasons democracy is threatened today.]

All the fuss today is about the metaverse, how it is a three-dimensional version of reality. Around the world trillions of dollars are flooding into this commercially-focused technology. When one considers why the public is interested in the metaverse, it appears the metaverse is just a three-dimension version of social media and entertainment. Very few of us may remember when silent movies gained sound, later color and today computerized graphics; shortly the metaverse will introduce interactive watching. All in all, the metaverse still will be entertainment with a huge snack bar. A customer needn’t go to a mall with movie theaters, one soon will be able to go to a theater that has a shopping mall – and stay home as well!

In other words, humans will continue to experience a whirlwind of new services, entertainment and gossip but life at the street level still will be the same.

But a true shift in human culture is coming – not through metaverse, avatars and emoji, rather through a new computing age called quantum computing. Quantum computing, already a growing industry, will make today’s computational speed seem like an old Smith-Corona manual typewriter. The speed, along with miniaturized storage, will allow computers not only to run stock market trading as they do now but computers will run governments in a similar fashion. Computers will manage supply chains and huge corporations – automatically with minimal human attention.

In short, computers will become our policy makers. Congress can’t keep up with today’s computational speeds; will Congress even be needed when computers figure out policy at the speed of light?

What quantum computing gives to computers is a primitive version of consciousness. They can do their own research, learning and decision-making. It will take a generation or two to iron out stable, human oriented parameters (a sort of automated Supreme Court) but after that, politics may not be a front row influence.

The danger, of course, is the power that Lord Acton talked about will be in the hands of even fewer humans. This is evidenced today in the stock market where a few corporations control parameters for the computers that do the buying and selling instantly before any human notices a change. Conversely, common investors like us don’t have a chance. Will this be the world of quantum computing?

The missing element, which we live with today, is emotional judgment. Scruples and fairness require more than speed-of-light analogs and algorithms. Run by capitalists, oligarchs, dictators, socialists or communists, will the quantum age simply automate today’s inadequacies?

Ancient Mariner

It is true that the hearing impaired can be a nuisance, causing the speaker to repeat words and phrases and often requiring moving around so sound waves are not distorted by walls or distance and may require lip reading and over enunciated spelling of each word. Television is a show stopper; hearing aids cannot focus between sources talking simultaneously.

The hearing impaired are as bothered by this as much as the nonhearing impaired. But the difficulties don’t entirely lie at the ear of the hearing impaired.

Unlike the Germans and Russians who love to pound out soft consonants, the Americans pretend to say their soft consonants. Oh, there may be a lip gesture or a soft noise deep in the throat but the rhythm of syllables is lost as the word becomes a slurred reference to any properly articulated word or phrase. To hear English properly spoken, tune into CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley; odds are the reader speaks three times faster than Jane – on-the-scene reporters perhaps four times as fast.

What follows is a sample or two that emulates what the hearing impaired may hear. It replaces supposedly spoken consonants, words and phrases with an underscore (_). For those who like puzzles, mariner will not provide an interpretation.

The _o_ was caught in _  _o_  _cause of _  _o_. I used _  _o_ to bring a _ow truck.

The _rolu_ is you _int lock _ door this _or_. You _oly were _stract_.

Along with mariner’s lifelong friend, a philologist, together we used to collect some really lackadaisical speech patterns. Here’s a few with impaired hearing added:

_kowe_      skoeet, let’s go eat

_roly          probably

Jeetjet       did you eat yet?

In addition to word enunciation, many speakers significantly drop their volume on a predicate phrase – whole phrases are not heard.

Mariner hopes this illustrates the difficulties of impaired hearing versus hurried, inarticulate speaking. As the impaired listen, their brains, for tiny milliseconds, must stop listening and do a dictionary search for probable meanings. In that millisecond, a conscious link with the conversation is lost, likely will be halted and require the speaker to start over again.

Achint Manner

Economically, and therefore culturally, the planet is a mess. Way too many nations are on the brink of revolution, starvation, oppressive war by authoritarian governments or destructive, violent, militarized guerilla groups. Human rights are declining – including in the United States. More rapidly the assets of the world are being sucked into the secret coffers of the planet’s oligarchs. In the US, children are routinely shot; across the Middle East women are brutalized.

Further, in the book “The Network State” by Balaji Srinivasan, he lays out how ‘nation states’ will be replaced by internet-enabled ‘network states’ run from the Cloud.

This universe sucks.

Our saving Grace is in the universe of hobbies. The hobby universe has different physical laws. For example, time flows at arbitrary rates controlled by the hobbyist; global dynamics simply don’t exist; hobby ambition and success are forces in the atmosphere and with a good location, the troubled universe completely disappears.

But one must be serious about this path. One needs a noncritical subject in which to invest serious attention and dedication. The whole object of the hobby universe is to escape the troubled universe, to forget everything except the target of one‘s hobby. Before all other thoughts and emotional interests, except for family and very close friends, the hobby is foremost in one’s mind.

Give a moment to consider what noncritical activity has drawn unusual interest in the past; what interesting thing floats in your mind during casual moments? Perhaps you are fortunate to have a hobby but haven’t made it the most important activity in your daily routine.

Once the hobby is chosen, it requires religious intensity, a desire to engage in the hobby at every chance. There are many subjects that are common for hobbyists: one thinks immediately of handiwork such as woodworking, pottery, glass blowing, metalwork, restoration of an object, art, weaving or building furniture.

There are activity hobbies like gardening, fishing, competitive biking, stock car racing, canoeing, hiking, camping, golfing and neighborhood sport leagues. There are social hobbies like working for charity building homes, cooking meals and providing transportation. Intellectual hobbies include activities like reading, becoming a world class expert on the dung beetle or mastering a new musical instrument; perhaps private tutoring or a part time librarian. If one has room, animal husbandry.

The key, however, is to walk through the warp door into the other universe. Desire. Determination. Curiosity. Achievement. As the old Eddy Arnold standard says, ‘Make the World go away’.

Ancient Mariner