Category Archives: Musings

Regarding lifespan

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From The Week magazine:

Don’t blame the politicians for our gerontocracy. Any of us would find it hard to quit a job that pays well, has endless benefits, automatic prestige and guaranteed self-importance. Blame yourselves. One has more confidence in the current officeholder only because the name is familiar and the party is traditional.

Having said that, mariner is forced to endorse Biden in 2024 if only to buy time for Democracy to find itself and for the Z generation to be old enough to run for office. He will not, however, endorse Chuck Grassley for another term as the Senator from Iowa; he turns 90 in September. He went to Congress with the Reagan Presidency – the beginning of a forty-year abuse of the labor class.

But this post is about all of us – politics, religion and oligarchs are irrelevant. This is a perspective on how all of us live through life. Joseph Campbell, a significant sociologist, often referred to “the arc of the champion”, referencing the travails of Jason as he pursued the golden fleece. Joe meant that we all chase a golden fleece, not necessarily money or fame, just each of us managing our own life from birth to death, each of us with our own unique existential reality to manage.

Dragging out one of mariner’s tropes, Homo sapiens is a tribal species. Further, Homo sapiens has an unusually high number of phases compared to other animals – the phases are called ‘generations’ because a human undergoes sequential brain changes about every 15-20 years.

CHILDHOOD

It is not an intention to compete with Wikipedia. Most readers will remember these transitions within themselves. Childhood starts when the child possesses a simple, one perspective consciousness: “Am I content?” The early years involve intensive learning of language, interpersonal relationships, muscle management and beginning to organize subconscious assumptions. The next change in childhood is discovering the outside world. Going to school is an organized source to learn about culture beyond the family. Experiences with the greater family, playing with others, vacations, shopping, etc., enable the child to form an independent identity. The sense of self changes significantly with puberty; Role play has a new dimension when the child is aware of sexual differences that run deep in the psyche. The final stage of childhood is wrapping up childhood and enabling the child to step independently into their life, ready to experience adulthood. Psychologists suggest this is a standard time frame for all children, sometime between 20 and 25 for men and 18 to 22 for women.

YOUNG ADULT

The physical condition of the young adult is something everyone in subsequent generations wishes they still had. Young adults have a brand-new brain and body that provides energy, rapid learning, and the inexperience that allows exploration, trial and error, and competition. Interestingly, marriage early in this phase is more likely because of the adventurousness of young adults. This generation quiets down as it moves to adulthood which begins some time in the middle thirties.

ADULTHOOD

There aren’t many stages in adulthood. It is a time when wisdom begins to emerge; it is a time when success and survival must yield to society; it is a time when lifelong emotions can become vulnerable to depression and flagellation; it is a time when jobs change, families move, relatives pass away. Yet, it is the most productive generation. It is the generation capable of making great changes in society; it is the generation considered to be experienced experts.

SENIOR CITIZEN

The Social Security age of 65 is an accurate flag that one has become a senior citizen. Seniors have experienced the active generations but subtle changes in a continuously changing society, health, family (especially between generations) and emotional flexibility hint that the body, for the first time since birth, is less than it was. In today’s medical world, life in the sixties and early seventies has improved. Even in the best of health, however, the brain continues to think more slowly and memory isn’t as solid as it used to be. As this generation closes in on the next generation, forgetfulness and physical weakness become realities that must be accommodated.

OLDIES

During the senior citizen generation, many will have the thought that old age ain’t so bad. As the seventies roll into the eighties that opinion may change. The eighties are hard on the bones and visceral functions. It is a time when injuries that occurred in younger generations return with a vengeance; chemical sensitivities become exaggerated; visceral deficiencies become something requiring continuous attention or surgery. But there is a good side: social behavior is easier and there is a feeling that one has done their bit so attitude, given good circumstances, is simpler. [Mariner understands that this is a two-sided coin; many oldies become eccentric and are difficult.]

ANCIENTS

Too many ancients still are elected officials. The link between Ancients and society is gone. Society isn’t relevant to most ancients. The biggest loss is represented by the phrase “use it or lose it”. The frequency of human interaction – particularly many different humans – diminishes social memories and awareness. Dementia shuts down the senses. Being responsible for one’s existential reality is no longer needed. This is all a matter of individual genes; many will have an easier time but most will not be well.

Mariner knows he is part of a small minority that believes many of the issues today are caused by breaking up tribal associations. Nuclear families do not have the social experiences nor the financial backup that should be part of their lives. Smaller communities, neighborhoods and places where “everybody knows my name” provide a better life experience. Commerce, too, would better serve the public in a storefront. Ordering online may be a great convenience to an individual person – at the expense of living a full life.

But the motivation for this post, after providing three pages of background, is the worst infliction of scattered tribes:

The number of older Americans living alone is on the rise. Nearly 16 million people aged 65 and older in the US lived alone in 2022, three times as many who lived alone in that age group in the 1960s. And as Baby Boomers age, that number is expected to grow even more, raising big questions about the country’s future.

Ancient Mariner

Regarding the Apocalypse

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Mariner’s alter ego Guru, responsible for wide ranging philosophical and futuristic insights, claimed in a recent post that the Apocalypse already has begun. There have been queries about definition.

From his safe house in Chicken Little’s hen house, mariner will lay out the timeline implied by Guru.

It all began innocently 2 million years ago when a new species evolved that had a growing brain. The species was Homo. 1 million years ago, Homo began splitting into variations. Many failed to sustain themselves and became extinct but a few with names like Neanderthal, Habilis, Australopithecus and Erectus survived into the age of humans. Together they would become Homo sapiens.

In those days, Homo had no choice but to live within the natural confines of their habitat. Living a plenteous life in an agreeable environment, a typical lifespan was about 40 years. Homo’s predators were meat eaters, infections and serious injury.

These characteristics are similar to the few indigenous tribes that still exist in remote areas of Africa and South America. These tribes to this day sustain themselves only with the restorative resources their environment provides.

About 10,000 years ago, Homo discovered how to grow more grain than he needed, hence the beginning of commerce by acquiring more grain than would be consumed by a local tribe. In a subtle way, this is the first abuse of the natural relationship between Homo and the environment.

Centuries roll by and Homo learns more ways to consume the environment beyond his natural relationship with nature. Homo extracted from nature other creatures like donkeys, horses, and wolves that would help expand the ability to acquire excessive amounts of Nature’s resources. Then Homo discovered iron, tin, lead and carbon-based energy. Now Homo could consume many times his need from Nature. Homo was consuming Nature faster than Nature could replenish itself.

This imbalance was the seed that has grown into the apocalypse we have today.

After I million years of living in accordance with the rules of Nature, in the last 1,000 years, Homo has trashed Nature; Homo has trashed the basic tribal society; Homo has trashed multiple generations that cohabit as a protective wall against difficult times. Homo quickly learned to ignore Nature and lived by the rule ‘If you can do it, do it’. He developed elaborate tools which, at every step, diminished the evolutionary potential of every Homo. For example, the use of coal and gasoline in the last 150 years has destroyed the security provided by extended family and tribe (town economy). Its method was to produce trains, automobiles, mechanized, oversized farms, superhighways and national and globally based industries.

In just 150 years the apocalypse gained speed. Isolated nuclear families became the norm – left defenseless without the human support of multiple generations and tribal support. Giant corporations became the norm, slowly eliminating local economies, local jobs and the existential satisfaction found in smaller towns and cities.

In the last 175 years, the apocalypse has shifted into a higher gear. 16,000 species are extinct because of Homo indifference. Around the world potable water is becoming scarce. Seafood from the oceans is 20 percent of what it was 100 years ago. And obviously the excess use of fossil fuel has launched serious changes in air quality and of the planet generally.

But in this century the chains are off. What easy transportation did to tribes, the Internet is doing to society. Communication technology makes war easier and more horrific; interpersonal skills and rewards are replaced by artificial behavior that dismisses 1 million years of evolutionary sophistication; privacy and security are fallacious assumptions.

Now a new age is upon us: artificial intelligence (AI). AI can emulate the entire reality of Homo. The final bridge to the apocalypse is that AI can reproduce itself. Who needs Homo?

Ancient Mariner

 

Possession is nine tenths

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Does the reader feel a slight comforting breeze? Just for a second, nothing that will turn around climate or political heat. Whoops, it’s gone. Nevertheless, being able to see a cloud in a blue sky through bomb smoke can give hope for survival.

The breeze he mentions is the slowly shifting opinions of the electorate regarding the economy (inflation fading and a stable job market) immigration (least in two years), and the lowest crime rate in two years. Surely this is enough to cause a small breeze in these cynical times.

It seems this subtle improvement in democratic party performance has chopped the toenails off republican assaults on old man Biden.

Poor Joe. He’s almost as old as mariner. He has trick knees just like mariner. His accomplishments, just like mariner’s battle with rabbits, are an uphill battle.

But what would the electorate prefer – comfortable old, worn out slippers that have earned their trust or a pair of hard leather slippers with a sole of thumbtacks? (that means Joe versus the big D)?

Given a disease-infected republican party, given the lawsuits dragging on about Donald’s veracity, given the religious fervor of the anti-wokes, Joe’s old-style legislating may be a cloud in the blue sky until the rabid right fades.

The liberal side of the democratic party has chosen, wisely, not to go to war with the conservatives; they are waiting for a shift in political wind. That shift undoubtedly will come as Mother Nature continues to wreak havoc with human behavior.

Neither party knows what to do about AI or an economy without fossil fuel. Mariner suggests the electorate stay with Joe, a man who by himself overcame stuttering.

Mind you, this is the ONLY exception to mariner’s first rule of voting – given a choice, always vote for the candidate under 35 years of age.

From his apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house,

Ancient Mariner

Check the sky – is it falling?

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Mariner allowed Guru to offer a spontaneous thought about the state of things. Guru said, “Armageddon isn’t going to happen because there won’t be enough souls around for Jesus to bother coming back. However, the Apocalypse already has begun.”

Mariner has built a small apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house. He’ll be living there now. Amos has been put on leave.

Book to read: “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” by Stephen Hawking published 2018. Stephen Hawking is beyond reproach as one of history’s premiere theoretical physicists; he picked up where Einstein left off. He answers questions like:

Is there a God?

How did it all begin?

Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?

Will we survive on Earth?

And six other questions.

If the reader needs me, check the hen house.

Ancient Mariner

USMC and other acronyms

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On January 10, 2022. Mariner posted the following:

“Poignantly, mariner misses the word ‘gay’. It was a richly nuanced word that combined the sensation of friendly, entertaining and memorable into a three letter word.”

This still is true. There is no other single, simple word that conveys the experience where one would say they had a gay time – rejuvenation via pleasure. But this is a different time. ‘Gay’ virtually is extinct; it lingers only in a ridiculous acronym, LGBTQIA+ (LGBTQIA+ is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and more).

The ‘+’ bothers him. Maybe the next letter will be ‘F’ for people who like to have fun at parties having only one sex as participants. Will women’s clubs have to become secretive about where and when they meet? Will the mariner and his buddies swear secrecy regarding their poker club or their Friday night at the corner bar? Will the mariner have to give a swab before he enters the men’s room?

The whole genetic prejudice thing is absurd in today’s world. Mariner is excluded from conversations because he can’t remember the acronym – let alone say it.

Thank goodness mariner is not a black Asian who speaks Spanish, wears a kippah, lives in an Arabian neighborhood and lives with a Somalian. What would that acronym look like?

Ancient Mariner

Phonemes

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For most readers, this is a new word. Roughly speaking, it means the set of sounds in a language. We are accustomed to using written letters to organize our language into words, grammar and the expression of meaning. But there are other ways of organizing a language: by its sounds, not its letters. For example, the ‘c’ in the word ‘cool’ is the same sound as the letter ‘k’ in ‘leek’. Though different letters, they are the same sound – just one sound in a phoneme ‘alphabet’.

Yes, this topic is extremely esoteric, Mariner is attracted to any topic that has to do with hearing and speaking. The marvel of science that could make a scientist the richest man in the world would be to emulate the mechanics of hearing.

His experience with hearing aids is subpar. It seems that trying to convert sound waves into human speech is flawed. Every human listening system is slightly different because brains are different, bone structure is different, language expectations are different (budder in the US is the same word as buTTa in England or ‘sar’ in Massachusetts versus ‘saw’ in the rest of the US. Mariner’s pleasing favorite is anything Fats Domino says; mariner’s favorites are ‘haut’ for ‘heart’ and the permanent replacement of a short ĭ with a long ē – My haut stood steel on Blueberry Heel).

He has noticed that in general practice, there is a human who translates sounds between two incommunicable groups – either a translator of language or a converter changing sounds to hand gestures. Hearing aids don’t have translators; they only hear sound waves without intelligent interpretation.

Perhaps hearing aids should have a phoneme lexicon built in. Computer storage can store a sound value on an atom these days. Why not build a phonemic dictionary into hearing aids; adaptability to parochial sounds could be as rapid as human listening.

Here is the difficulty: Phonemes are categories rather than actual sounds, they are not tangible things; instead, they are abstract, theoretical types or groups that are only psychologically real. (In other words, we cannot hear phonemes, but we assume they exist because of how the sounds in languages create a pattern.) For example, the word ‘kicked’ has two ‘k’ sounds but they are not identical. The first k is clearly thrust from the throat and the second k is a collaboration between the tongue and the roof of the mouth.

Nevertheless, mariner feels there must be some form of phonemic intelligence incorporated into hearing aids.

Ancient Mariner

On living forever

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Mariner’s wife took him on a Father’s Day trip to the next county, known for its small villages and the fact that there are no stop lights in the entire county. But – they have the largest milkshakes he has ever encountered – easily a full quart.

On the way home, mariner’s wife pondered, “Which would be better, to have children and die after a natural lifespan or to not have children and live forever?”

Wow! Did Guru sit up for this question! His wife was considering the emotional tradeoff and how that would affect the happiness of an individual. Would a person choose living forever and never growing old in exchange for the joy of family, fellow-aging community and culture?

This question offers many different paths of examination. Mariner’s first thoughts were about the evolutionary mandates in humans that require a generation-based society. How would society work without generations? Second, would a Mitch McConnell exist as old or would he be a young Majority Leader forever? Wouldn’t political diversity disappear over time because no one is older than anyone else?

Third, and this is scary, isn’t this the plan offered by AI? The only difference is an individual gives up their own life instead of a child’s.

In short, his wife’s question is thoughtful. What are the root values in human life? Is an individual a complete person without Mom, Dad, and the kids? Does life forever offer sufficient feelings of security about staying alive forever? Economics requires a changing market. Wouldn’t everyone be wearing the same thing ala the movie 1984?

Lest we forget, no one said cancer and influenza wouldn’t have a role. Living forever simply means controlling chromosome division so that it can divide perpetually. No one said anything about external causes; no one expects that a person would live after being run over by a train.

Those among you harboring 1-5 year-olds are not allowed to consider the question.

Ancient Mariner

You know what I mean

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Mariner is an old codger. The wiring between his brain and his mouth is damaged. Consequently, he cannot recall words, especially nouns and names of things if the mouth is asking for them – the brain knows but won’t tell until five minutes later when he doesn’t need the word anymore. On the other hand, when he is typing, he has almost his entire lexicon at hand; words fall in as needed and he can manipulate meanings with unending suffixes and metaphors.

It doesn’t help that mariner can’t hear other people’s words, either. He wears hearing aids.

Mariner was poking around on the Internet looking for information about his issue. He was familiar with the general explorations of language as a deep survival skill and as a social skill as well. Just as with whales and many birds, humans have a brain that, when as young toddlers, the brain is quite adept at associating meaning with a given sound.

The following two paragraphs are from science journals. The topic is about the anatomical science of hearing and its chemical processes.

The investigation of organometallic compounds containing unsupported homoatomic metal-metal (M-M) bonds has been an area of major interest for decades. These compounds feature distinct, otherwise inaccessible bonding, such as M-M quadruple and quintuple bonds, and fascinating reactivity, including mimicking the reactions of C-C multiple bonds. Ultimately, the main driver for research in this area is to push the boundaries of bonding for a given element and, in doing so, rewrite the textbooks. On page 1147 of this issue, Boronski et al. (1) report the isolation of diberyllocene as the latest entrant in the field. Diberyllocene is a stable Be-Be bonded compound and is a relatively accessible source of nucleophilic beryllium, which has the potential to unlock the reactivity of organoberyllium with a vast array of new substrates.

Astrocytes are intimately associated with neurons and participate in a host of essential roles that facilitate synaptic transmission and circuit function. In neurons, heightened activity induces the expression of “immediate early genes,” which are predominately transcription factors that modify gene expression programs and activity-dependent epigenomic states, ultimately regulating circuit activity, plasticity, and associated behavioral outputs. However, whether heightened neuronal activity induces an analogous immediate early gene–like response in mature astrocytes and how this sculpts astrocytic transcriptional and epigenomic responses to regulate circuit function remain unclear.

Isn’t knowledge wonderful?

Ancient Mariner

Amos and Worster

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Mariner was questioned “Who is Amos?” referring to the mention of that name in the last post. Mariner apologizes for having an empty page under the Heading ‘About the Author’ which has been blank for several months. Somehow, it was deleted.

Just a short precis of its contents: Mariner writes his post with the aid of three alter egos: Chicken Little, named for his namesake who thought the sky was falling and always assumed the worst in any situation; Amos, named for his namesake from the Book of Amos in the Old Testament who with earnestness chastised the religious authority of his time until he was assassinated; Guru, named for his namesake in the comic section of the newspapers who is preoccupied with esoteric, intensely intellectual theories of no relevance. Thus, mariner’s posts are assured of clarity, facts, and a comprehensive view of the world.

On to today’s post.

Having read Donald Worster’s book, The Wealth of Nature, mariner has given some thought to Worster’s hope that global society, perhaps through the absence of potable water, perhaps social conflict that collapses global economies, even perhaps the result of nuclear war, it may be that in order to survive, humans will have to return to a respectful relationship with a sparse environment.

Instead of sending humanity down the bottomless hole of AI, imagine that Mother Nature has an equal force on society. Season the next fifty years with the spice of the Maga movement and similar movements across Africa and the Middle East, the growing stress from free-ranging oligarchy, the demise of Ukraine, a collapse of world security by disrupting the Internet, then stir back in the destructive powers of an uncontrolled weather system, impending solar activity and little if any arable land.

Would this concoction be enough to create a throwback in human history? Could humanity be forced to become a member of the Earth’s ecosystem without fossil fuel? Such reversing phenomena have occurred many times as Planet Earth evolved. Consider the restart of the animal kingdom 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous Period).

By 2100 might it be important to protect arable land for individual survival? Will everyone have to own a couple of ponies?

Ancient Mariner

The worst tragedy

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To start the subject of the post, here is a cartoon from The Week:

Referencing a recent post, the cowboy culture, one of independent success and individual respect, in their battle against benign neglect by the college-elite, has provoked an attack against freedom (and the necessity) of education.

It is a tragedy because education, knowledge, familiar awareness, social judgment, and all the other nuances of education and freedom of information are not relevant to the central issue. The central issue is mistreatment of the labor classes by government and a society that has grown sophisticated and complex. Today’s college-elite don’t ride a single horse; they ride a wave of investment and the wind of the Internet.

Mariner recently had his garage roof replaced. It was finished in one very hot day by five laborers. Their persistence and craftsmanship were remarkable. Sweating and tired, they had accomplished something a significant percentage of college-elites could not possibly have accomplished. Yet, their profession is discounted and society does not grant them social achievement or notable financial benefits. They are treated as a pseudo servant class similar to the workers on Downton Abbey.

There are remedies. But a lot is in the hands of all three branches of federal and state government.

A relatively easy repair would be to reinstate the legislation that required corporations to guarantee full retirement – a deliberate target of Reaganites in the last century. Also in the last century, right to work laws were imposed deliberately to abolish unions.

Fortunately, educators are making a move toward labor-style education beyond high school – not through conscientiousness, mind you, economics is forcing the change.

A bit more sophisticated is to reintroduce labor to community boards and agencies so that labor has a voice at the street level. This was a function of labor unions back in the day.

The last repair is visibly represented in another The Week cartoon:

The seemingly irrational objection by MAGA labor to discretionary spending, which helps the unwealthy, is that the government is not providing a viable economic structure – the rich continue to grow richer and the poor continue to grow poorer.

One simple example is the resistance government has to raising the minimum wage (childcare and many other family economic issues would disappear).

Mariner feels this may be the most difficult obstruction to repair. Philosophically, the United States does not have unlimited access to resources; capitalism works best when everyone can have a share of benefits. Given the disruption of global warming, an emerging redefinition of what a nation is, the excessive over-population of the planet, international corporate control of supply chains, etc., capitalism must make room for socialism – a most difficult task for a nation created as a capitalist dreamland.

Ancient Mariner