Category Archives: Sailing Through Life

A new pet word

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Seasoned readers know that mariner has a world class linguist as a friend. One of our pastimes is collecting words that catch our fancy. Most of them are American slurs like ‘jeetjet?’, or the word may be a ridiculously long and convoluted word like ‘hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia which happens to mean fear of long words. Mariner has a new one: peer. As an adverb, it is someone going to the bathroom; as a verb, it is someone looking with timidity; as a noun, it is someone who is equal to others; as a proper noun, it is the name of Gynt’s fancy hotel room. In British usage, being a peer suggests one belongs to an upper class rank like Duke or Lord; in the United States, it means that a person is accepted and equal in a group of others with similar circumstances – as in the democratic phrase ‘All men are created equal’ which, of course, has never been true.

Mariner came upon ‘peer’ nestled in psychological essays. The essays suggested that the desire to be a peer is a strong need to sustain the ego and is a core survival skill. One quickly can identify with this urge especially in school rooms; if classmates are not openly friendly, an individual may have doubts about their own worth in this peer group. A nuanced suggestion is that ‘peer pressure’ is at the foundation of human behavior in that it is a desire to have others accept the individual as a social member and to be part of the tribe’s protection against harm. So while the ego is sensitive to group acceptance, it also is the motivation for achievement AKA defender of the tribe.

Throw the word ‘peer’ into the political mixing bowl and one can see what drives social conflict. It has become common knowledge that MAGA emerged from a labor class that for half a century has been underpaid, lost guaranteed benefits and ultimately was not considered as successful as college graduates. Talk about peer pressure – from the white collar world!

To survive, the ego must be satisfied. it finds others who share the person’s disgruntlement and together launch counter attacks against those who deny their equality.

It turns out not all humans are peers and, will a computer ever be a peer to a human?

Armageddon proceeds.

Ancient Mariner

Retired and alone

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There comes a painful time to many in life when the spouse passes on, the children are grown and away, and many friends are in retirement institutions or passing on as well. Perhaps ‘painful’ is the wrong word; perhaps depressed, melancholy, lonely and mentally unfocused may apply. There may be a strong sense that one is in a different time zone than the rest of the world may be. This is not an accident. It is in our genes: primates prefer to be among their clan, their family and have a desire to be recognized as a peer. Being among their kind perhaps is the strongest defense mechanism, a means by which to stay alive.

Disease and physical maladies take their toll as well. Caring for others is a motivation found not only in primates but in most mammals, many birds and fish as well. Even community-based insects show signs of willing maintenance for the community’s wellbeing. Even so, many humans are left to go on their own – perhaps a cultural phenomenon among blended clans (e.g., large cities).

There are a few behaviors that may sustain the human spirit for those left in isolation. Most of them make sense but the challenge from within is the gumption to do them. What follows is a limited list of things to do to ward off those feelings of depression, melancholy, loneliness and mentally unfocused times:

⊕ When one arises in the morning and has dealt with bathroom issues, make the bed – neatly and every day. It is amazing how much this sets self-discipline for the rest of the day.

⊕ Have a specific morning routine, typically involving opening the house for the day and preparing a breakfast meal. The morning routine may include feeding pets, watering plants, etc. If you are fortunate, you have a daily newspaper to read. The trick is to perform the same tasks every morning; short term memory may benefit.

⊕ Check social media, including email, to see what friends and family are talking about; it would be highly beneficial if you could join in! Let’s face it, one of the great improvements in society is the internet. Every retired person should own an inexpensive computer tablet or (shudder) smartphone for no other reason than safety. If you have a tablet, a cell phone will suffice.

⊕ While it is still morning, walk outside for 20 minutes; do not stroll but take a healthy stride that will stir the circulation system. Inclement weather, except storms, is not an option. Taking on the weather will add to your gumption. Resist deciding to skip walking for any reason.

⊕ If you are fortunate, your walk may take you by one of the following: Visit a fellow loner – stop in a restaurant to meet a coffee group – pick up trash – on the way back home, stop by your next-door neighbor or good friend’s house. (This may feel awkward at first but quickly becomes a favorite part of your routine – it could include a short side trip with them to the store or some other diversion. Don’t forget to finish by walking home.)

⊕ Prepare lunch. Afterward, a nap may call your name; keep it under an hour and a half.

⊕ Pick an organization to attend regularly. Many will choose a religious institution; consider a wide variety of groups like reading club, garden club, VA meetings, exercise sessions offered by libraries, YMCA, etc., golf and bowling leagues, etc. It is important to attend faithfully.

⊕ Tidy one room so it looks clean and neat. On another day, tidy another room.

⊕ Prepare supper. If you can afford it, an occasional dinner in a restaurant is a nice break – especially if you can get a friend to go with you!

⊕ Develop a past time that makes you think, solve puzzles, or how to go about doing a complex task. Most common are crosswords, jigsaw puzzles, small shop projects or reorganizing a room. Mariner has a friend that had a career in an office then retired to be a contractor. A few folks may actually take an educational class just for the new knowledge and social activity. Another friend learned about investment and did fairly well. But here is a handy task: make your own sourdough bread or some other intriguing recipes.

⊕ This may be hard to establish: go to bed before midnight, maybe as early as ten.

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So there you have it – a full day’s example of how to avoid the doldrums. Mix and match any way you like to accommodate your circumstances. Note the theme throughout: talk to people as often as it is convenient; get daily exercise; do some chores; stay physically active; care for others.

Yes, it is damned hard to get started.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

The new world ain’t so bad

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As many, many voters have done, mariner has shut down news in its entirety. Not only that, he has removed television in general from his options. He and his wife spend one evening each week on a ‘date’ to watch British mysteries together. Other than that, the television sits dark in its corner.

After a few days of dysfunction, one begins to fill in the space with other options – everything from talking more often with family members, to reading books, to crosswords, to reading magazines, even to stopping to talk to neighbors more frequently. Did the reader know they could still go to the movies?

Slowly, the brain turns to other things not thought of in a long time; there’s that attic door lock that has needed fixing for years; building a clear report of family assets, budget patterns and tax detail; tossing out one million four hundred pieces of 8½x11 paper that has been cordoned off for most of one’s life; gifted non-viewers may recall knitting, crocheting, painting and writing. Two friends of mariner make jewelry.

There is time to restart your attendance to community organizations and social events. If he wanted, mariner could go to a square-dancing club; even if he wanted to go, his knees and vertigo would make a mess of things.

How long has it been since the reader washed their dog? Does that trip to a lifelong friend nine states away seem more likely? The point one realizes is that an awful lot of life has been missed while opting for television to fill one’s day.

Brain scientists say an inactive brain goes south faster than an active brain – that is, if the brain has to learn new facts or skills on a daily basis, the brain may likely go southwest – a longer trip.

Speaking from his own experience, gearing up a daily to-do list and be willing to execute it is as difficult as gearing up a heavy 18-wheeler.

But the good side is a feeling of being an independent person, not attracted and seduced by television and, if one is committed to becoming a busy individual, one may lose track of the smartphone once in a while.

Remember: psychologists say that happiness comes automatically if one is active in the community, loves one’s family and graciously works at supporting the least of us.

Ancient Mariner

Bats, Beavers and Bears

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Regular readers know that in his younger years mariner spent some time as a preacher. One sermon he wanted to preach but never did because it would be confusing to the congregation, was a sermon about the common relationship between bats, beavers, bears and humans. Without needing to sustain a congregation’s comprehension, he may try to deliver it in essay format.

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This topic rests upon the definition of survival, behavior and faith. They all are identical, come from the same set of brain cells and are managed in the subconscious mind except when rituals are performed. This phenomenon is identical in bats, beavers, bears and humans – and virtually all creatures in the animal world. If one is a zoologist, the common term is survival; if one is a psychiatrist/sociologist, the common term is behavior; if one is a theologian, the common term is faith.

Some explanation of brain function may be helpful. As a machine, the brain performs the same functions for BBB&H and other warmblooded creatures as well. The mastermind that induced brain function is evolution, a very slow operator that takes many, many lifetimes to change genome reasoning gene by gene to keep pace as environmental reality shifts. If one could watch long enough, they would see the subtle similarity as bats behave as bats, beavers behave as beavers, etc.

In the human brain, evolution took a strange turn and added a frontal lobe to the pre-wired, automatic decision maker housed in the subconscious. The frontal lobe has a brand new function: humans can imagine stuff that doesn’t exist. This puts a strain on the subconscious engine that actually makes human decisions. Humans can easily imagine that a fantasy actually is real and live by it even though it has nothing to do with survival. The bats, beavers and bears are fortunate in this regard.

The term ‘ritual’ is simply a visible, three-dimensional act executed by the subconscious decision maker. It is an act to sustain survival. A bat decides to look for a cave, a beaver decides to build a dam, a bear looks for a den. Humans, with their artificially enhanced reality will look for shelter as well, but with distorted judgment. It is only the destitute and very poor who know that their decision is based solely on survival.

The second perspective, social behavior, is a montage of experiences among family, community and core personality. The core personality is found in the genome and provides the primary actions for survival but how a human behaves in public, under stress, confrontation, and accountability is a montage of ingrained behaviors externally induced to survive.

So the human frontal lobe, along with the fantasy that each human owns the planet and its natural processes, that community bonding isn’t as important as driving the interstates to new fantasies, that money measures surviveability, has led to a third category needed to describe the ethics of surviveability: faith.

Bats, beavers and bears don’t need nor can induce faith beyond a simple behavioral principal that allows them to take advantage of unusual situations. For example, a bear may depend on a human. Humans, however,  can  interpret reality many different ways. Humans often have the imagination to leverage reality beyond the rules of existence provided by evolution.

The subconscious decision maker, for all it’s sophistication, is swayed by the constant barrage of confrontations caused by wishes for glory, adventure and self-serving behavior. Reality has become a circus of convoluted survival values. Which value is a genuine risk to survival?

Enter faith. In addition to subconscious survival decisions, humans have a tool called ideology to help separate the wheat from the chaff. Ideology has many concentrations. For example, there is theological, political, communal, economic and whimsy. The advantage of faith is that it lays an organized value system over reality by which to measure decisions that are genuinely about survival. Unfortunately, the subconscious decision maker doesn’t accept these decisions; ideology is strictly a preoccupation of the frontal lobes. Unless a human convinces themselves that their ideology is the actual reality, humans tend to drift in and out of ideological allegiance depending on its convenience. Hence the need for divine forgiveness for habitual sinners.

Given all these machinations, the subconscious decision maker doesn’t wander far from it’s genome instructions. Survival, care for loved ones and concern for it’s tribe are the core reality. The extent to which the circus realities of the frontal lobe cause nuisance and disruption to our subconscious survival skill places great pressure on the true interpretation of reality. Just ask the bats, beavers and bears how much.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

It doesn’t take groups, even

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A few of mariner’s recent posts have focused on that point in time when an individual must reinvent their identity, perhaps look for another income, and not lose their collaboration with their fellow humans. Those solutions ascribed to the social psychology of organizations and self sufficiency.

But it is easier than that. Mariner doesn’t get out very often, that is, to roam about in the rambunctious diversity of the public domain, but every once in a while he must visit the medical industry in a nearby small city.

Many folks are preoccupied with personal issues and aren’t prone to notice other public folks. Nevertheless, most citizens moving about in the public domain are willing to engage in ‘of the moment’ encounters.

While roaming about the halls and offices of the hospital, numerous interchanges occurred between mariner and others in the halls. When he first arrived, he met with a coordinator who checked credentials and scheduled his visit. She mentioned during the interview that she could smell the cookies baking in the souvenir shop; she lamented that she could not leave her post to buy some.

After that, while a guide led him to the right waiting room, she said that she recognized his face. That led to a short exchange of sharing geographical histories.

Visiting with the technician, mariner inquired about the kind of decisions that were promulgated because of his examination. The conversation led to a discussion about the complexity of decision making among many medical individuals.

While mariner was walking back to the front exit, two nurses at different moments asked if he needed a wheelchair or was lost. Finally, mariner met with his wife at the souvenir store where he bought cookies for the coordinator. When he delivered them, all the coordinators had a cheer that someone gave them a gift.

So collaboration is such an intrinsic human behavior that it almost ignites itself. Still, each individual must strike a match to engage. That’s all there is to it. Mariner realizes that certain personality types will find it hard to engage with random strangers and many suffer from depression and life stress. Nevertheless, engagement is always there – even if political differences may prohibit extended collaboration.

Mariner was well aware that he had roamed a public domain rich with fellow collaboration. Who needs an organization?

Ancient Mariner

 

Keep it going – addendum

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When mariner reviewed his post to correct grammar and spelling, he noticed that he had zeroed in on ways to continue productivity as part of continued collaboration. Actually, productivity is a minor issue. It is collaboration that really counts.

For example, mariner used to visit a poker club every Saturday. The players were of a common stripe, each dressed in scrubby clothes, needing a shave or wearing beards and having the typical old man belly (mariner must note that by this time he was slim  though his wife wished he would shave more often). These men came to play poker but that wasn’t the real reason – the poker was atrocious because of many ‘special’ rules that made typical odds irrelevant. They came to associate with fellow humans; they needed to collaborate. Every attendee brought a simple snack of some kind, a subconscious desire to provide sustenance for the occasion.

These collaborative gatherings are quite informal and frequently available in established communities – for example, small towns or traditional neighborhood settings. They can be found at restaurants, golf courses, bowling alleys, community events and even within more structured environments like churches, Lion’s Club and VA clubs. Mariner’s town has a special women’s gathering called “The Red Hatters”, aptly descriptive. The sustenance piece is that everyone must wear a red hat.

So remember that the central goal is collaboration. If the reader also can profit, more power to them!

Ancient Mariner

Keep it going

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Mariner is older than most folks. Old enough, in fact, to look back on that time when a person suddenly becomes old – retired from career, lifelong friends and family are disappearing, maybe even die, institutions that were the core of society back in the day are not mainstream anymore, children and grandchildren are off living that life an old person remembers with melancholy.

Humans, by their nature, are born and raised to be collaborative. Each person contributes to the sustenance needed by themselves and their family and even, in these modern times, needed by God and Country. It is natural for a person to take on a role that contributes to others as well as to themselves.

But what to do when that role disappears, when that role is no longer meaningful to the day-to-day world, when the role a person played in life has become passé? The answer is to keep it going. Remember the old days when a person had to look for a job or go hungry? Remember when parents had to move to a new region and it meant having to find new friends at school? Remember when the company laid off people and they had to start over?

It’s that time again.

No one does this job for the new oldster. The oldster must make a concerted effort, often taking a year or two, to find a new way to collaborate with fellow humans. Most adjustments relate to known skills and social behavior but don’t overlook something completely new.

One of mariner’s old friends had a career working 40 years in the offices of a large corporation. When he retired, he became a carpenter specializing in refurbishing home attics. Word-of-mouth recommendations kept him busy full time.

Mariner’s wife, a career librarian and author, has established a busy day by working whenever needed at the town library, belonging to writers and readers clubs, is active in her church, maintains a visiting network with friends who go back to her childhood in the town, remaining on a daily contact basis with lifetime friends and her children, participating in art and exercise programs – and still takes care of mariner!

A couple mariner knows are retired from running a grocery store. The wife makes artistic refrigerator magnets and sells them at town fairs across the midwest, saying that the fair sales and a tax write off pay for their vacation.

For most new oldsters, collaborative participation comes from continuing the skills and behaviors of their lifetime. For example, carpenters can continue their trade by taking on smaller projects that full time contractors find unprofitable. Hobbyists who knit, make jewelry or create artwork of any kind can use their hobby by connecting with small stores, charitable organizations and selling at fairs and yard sales.

New oldsters with a background in humanities may have to be a bit more creative to find a way to use their skills. Search politics, religion, social work or presentations in retirement homes, charity organizations, community and local government organizations. History has many famous examples of old folks becoming authors – social media is waiting.

If the new oldster is sitting in a recliner watching television and scrolling games on the smartphone, get off your ass and find a new collaboration. Otherwise, depression, loneliness and boredom will be the new lifestyle.

Ancient Mariner

 

‘Tis the season, for sure

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The visiting season approaches. Be sure to have bags packed for visits and pantries full for visitors. The holiday season is upon us. Shop early, especially if the reader plans to use the US Postal Service. Mariner has lost some plants due to a three-week delivery time. The US Postal Service would appreciate it if readers would mail greeting cards instead of using internet resources – mail early! On a related matter, if the reader is using a mail-in ballot, don’t wait until the last moment.

An interesting side note: The largest group of people moving to Florida today are foreigners. Perhaps evidence that global warming isn’t just an American issue. On the other hand, with 20 wars raging around the globe, decent neighborhoods may be hard to find.

To those suffering the news broadcasts, the coverage is so iterative that almost any reader can write copy for the next broadcast. There are a very few news agencies that don’t chase the common, gossipy news. Mariner recommends ProPublica.com; other issues are growing in the nation’s large societal map.

However, one news story to which readers should be paying close attention is the disruptive activity no matter who wins the Presidential election. More and more sitting judges, both liberal and conservative, are giving fair warning. From the AP:

“Judges at Washington’s federal courthouse have punished hundreds of Capitol rioters since 2021. Before recently sentencing another to prison, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said he prays Americans accept the outcome of next month’s election, but expressed concern that Donald Trump and his allies are spreading the same sort of conspiracy theories that fueled the 2021 attack.”

Mariner has read other reports that suggest organized resistance groups have been in training since the last election.

One more seasonal flavor to add: Book early and do research and training before engaging in airports, airplanes, trains and traffic jams.

Have a wonderful holiday season! Really!

Ancient Mariner

Chicken Little moved to hospice

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Afraid so. It is true that evolution is the dynamic element in all the universe – including galaxies, solar systems, life of every kind and certainly every conceivable element of existence – including the planet Earth itself – is subject to change over time. So, too, fantasy and whimsy move on as reality paves a new future.

What was important about Chicken Little’s presence was his belief that it was possible for things to behave as expected – it was just a matter of adjusting a bit to keep reality chugging along. Like the Chicken Little of children’s storybook fame, he often overreacted to what others felt was not so important as to warrant hysterical behavior.

The belief in adjusting has faded as all the world’s activity is in disarray. Human history has become a demolition derby where every conceivable idea is an effort to dismantle rational, logical behavior. Mariner, like Chicken Little, is acutely aware of the abrasion of industrial development against the evolutionary limitations not only of Homo sapiens but all of the planet’s life forms. Homo’s dangerous ability to imagine things that do not exist has been the fire that has set off an Armageddon. For casual readers who may not be familiar, mariner’s examples are any industrial development requiring chemical, environmental or any other destruction of the biosphere. For example, internal combustion engines, killing millions of species for greedy reasons, leveling quantum amounts of forest for commercial purposes, forcing every biological behavior of every species to compensate or die, etc. The result today is, of course, a destabilized, biospheric condition humans call ‘global warming’ which is most commonly observed as changes in the climate.

So mariner is interviewing several applicants to replace Chicken Little. An applicant that has caught mariner’s eye is the squirrel – especially urban squirrels. Squirrels already know that Homo sappians is a destructive creature, said and done. What concerns mariner is that the squirrel already has a bit of skepticism about it’s obsessive neighbors; Amos, another alter ego, already has more than enough skepticism.

Perhaps this is all a sign that mariner is growing old. He’s old enough to be receiving social security but young enough to see it disappear. His brain has been throwing out to trash memories that aren’t relevant anymore. Sadly, he cannot forget Lawrence Welk or Hyacinth Bucket on the British series, Keeping Up Appearances.

Suggestions for a new icon to replace Chicken Little are welcome – an icon that has come to accept Homo sappians as the failure it is but with an innocence that there is a looming Armageddon.

Ancient Mariner

The education experience

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In the last post, mariner wrote about habits stored in the brain which were hard to dislodge. It occurred to him that the manner in which education is applied to students also is suffering from old habits that are hard to dislodge.

It is true that the scope of intended subjects has changed over the centuries. It is ‘how’ a student is instructed that is under the microscope today. We can assume the early Homo folks simply did a show-and-tell, demonstrating the actual procedures to be learned. As conceptualization crept into the culture, it had to be captured in documents and eventually into special books called textbooks. Even with books, an instructor was required to translate information and give the information a human perspective. And so it has been for eons.

Today, it has suddenly occurred, “why keep human instructors in the classroom if a computer can provide a simulated teacher any time day or night?” Mariner admits that he often takes advantage of the wide, free-roaming learning opportunities available on the Internet; he has a master’s degree in gardening from Junk University (YouTube). The mistake in the question above is that for all its intelligence, computer tablets don’t have physiological souls, that is, computers don’t have to change behavioral habits hidden in their subconscious. A human instructor still is needed; it’s the instructor’s focus in the classroom that needs an upgrade.

Sadly, the idea of displacing employees as a beneficial act affects other professions as well from truck drivers to office workers to nurses. Even delivery workers may be displaced by little automated delivery boxes and drones – it occurs to mariner these boxes offer a good opportunity to practice hunting; will geese and deer be irritated if they are replaced by automated drones and robots?

Back to education.

Education, as everyone has learned during the Covid pandemic, is not just about books and visual presentations. He has heard from friends who are teachers that students, especially the younger ones, are unruly, unmannerly and disrespectful of the teacher’s role in the classroom. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that 32% of K-12 students are behind grade level. Why are schools still dealing with the long-term effects of remote schooling and other pandemic-era learning disruptions?  Something other than book learning and concepts disappeared during the pandemic.

Given a moment, one realizes that a great deal of socialization occurs in the classroom from pre-school to college. The most important learning may be tuning the student’s subconscious to be a collaborator with society. AI is trying hard to emulate this interactive experience as well but despite the canned responses of social robots, children need children – and someone who can adjust response and guidance to fit many subconscious minds in an integrated fashion. That takes another subconscious mind – a human instructor.

Along this line of thought, mariner has written posts that question the use of individual grading. He suggests that society today, with all its automated advantages, is more interested in individuals who can fit in and be fellow collaborators. To that end, grading should be applied to small teams in the classroom rather than to individuals since the Internet is so handy with factual information. What becomes important is human behavior in a learning atmosphere, not what a student knows about page 130 in a textbook. Having teams of students compete with other teams forces collaborative behavior. The computer tablet is the new textbook.

All these conditions affect the standard approach of instruction and require adjustment to long ingrained teaching habits. The growth of community colleges and new student demands that colleges guarantee employment at graduation are two of many indicators which suggest revamping the grading, textbook and syllabus methodology that has been around long before the United States existed.

An afterthought, smartphones are the new version of talking in class. Any psychologist or therapist or teacher would want to control thought processes. Think how successful a hypnotist would be if the person being hypnotized was busy using a smartphone.

Ancient Mariner