Category Archives: Sailing Through Life

Read all about it!

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In the news. Newsy broadcasting had an article about marijuana and the current attempt by Congress to make it nationally legal so it can be taxed. Turns out the marijuana older folk played with had 3 percent THC; today the hybridized weed contains as much as 30 percent. Further, medical cards issued by doctors are relatively easy to acquire (fake). With a medical card a person can buy a tar-like concentrate that often causes serious emotional problems and physical damage to the brain. Newsy interviewed a mother whose son died from abuse.

In the News. Britney Spears wins release from conservatorship. Britney’s father demonstrated an evil, abusive, perhaps even psychotic abuse of his daughter for 14 years. Not that Britney was an angel by any means but those wild times have been behind her for years; it has been made clear that her ongoing career was financially curtailed by her father. Truly, money often is at the root of evil. Conservatorship is supposed to be an aid to those who can’t make rational decisions about money and other decisions that affect one’s wellbeing.

In the news. “The Liberty Way”: How Liberty University Discourages and Dismisses Students’ Reports of Sexual Assaults. Jerry Falwell’s university joins the company of athletic managers allowing sexual abuse of the women’s Olympic gymnastics team. An article published by ProPublica reports that the University ignored reports of rape and threatened to punish accusers for breaking its moral code, say former students. An official who says he was fired for raising concerns calls it a “conspiracy of silence.” Read the full account at

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-liberty-way-how-liberty-university-discourages-and-dismisses-students-reports-of-sexual-assaults?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter&utm_content=feature

In the news. The former chief executive of a tech company in suburban Chicago who lost his job after he threw a chair inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot was sentenced Friday to 30 days imprisonment. Rukstales was forced out as CEO of Cogensia and sold interests in the firm after his participation in the riot became known and the boards of directors for the firm’s clients were ready to cancel contracts. Is it a threatening thought to realize that not everyone at the riot was a gun-toting, white supremacist labor class person? Remember the pillow guy?

This post is a crude attempt to emulate yellow journalism. Similar to TV news, so much sensationalism is thrown at the reader it is hard to determine whether some subtle implication may have importance.

For example, marijuana has had a level, generic aura about it all along except for its early twentieth century association with opiates. Who knew it had morphed into a potent psychedelic? How that was unnoticed is the more important story.

In Britney’s case it is the regulations for invoking conservatorship. There must be hundreds of abused conservatorships that aren’t reported because the individual doesn’t have a famous profile. The same applies to other decisions like moving someone into a hospice. Living will regulations have been developed as a response to some issues but regulations may be lacking when deciding about someone else’s wellbeing. Morally speaking, no human should be reduced to a simple commodity.

As for the membership of the rioters, the real story is how potent the danger to democracy is given the amount of money involved in weakening elections and the broad but unreported cultural membership of the rioters.

Ancient Mariner

A pause to ponder

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Mariner’s wife has traveled west to visit our children and grandchildren. Mariner is left in a quiet home. Cold weather has shut down outside activity. Still, there are chores to be done, Amaryllis to be forced and some apples to process. Later there will be repair to outside furniture and garden trellises.

But Thanksgiving approaches, spirits will be lifted as we celebrate the humanness within us via our families and friends. Then there’s Christmas and New Year. It truly is a time to huddle and martial our awareness to important spiritual strengths and to restore common civility – feelings that have been bruised by our society.

There are certain physical tasks that we must perform to assure wellness in a time when wellness is hard to come by. Each of us must physically in person perform a charitable act, not just one but as many as we can muster. There is a vast number of poor and destitute who are forgotten by government, by the income-secure among us and by those of us claiming a successful life. Many thousands of US citizens don’t know where the next meal will occur and many of those have dependent children. Do some research to help target your affirmation as a civil human being. Meet their need. Be the Good Samaritan.

In these days of turmoil across all facets of our society, it is important to strengthen our sense of self. We must organize our positive civil abilities to be centered and strong as we struggle with an unstable society. Nothing speaks to personal confidence and security more than sharing.

Ancient Mariner

 

Call 2021 a year done with.

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Does anyone still watch TV news? First, the broadcasts are full of nothing but disaster; nothing is accomplished anywhere unless it is an increase in aggressive populism, crime rates, failure in the ecosystem, threatened democracy or the gathering of war clouds. Second, the news is targeted and skewed to attract and sustain certain types of viewers; consequently news is soaked in criticism, drama and biased speculation. ‘News’ must be redefined to mean, as Joe Friday said, “All we want is the facts, Ma’am.”

Even more destructive is that society now gets its ‘facts’ from social media.

So, in November it is a good time to return to hibernation in the home. The colder weather turns one’s mind to inside hobbies and events – something like the string of fall and winter holidays or making some hearty soups and casseroles. With the weather changing, it is time to bake rather than grill.

It may be a good time to put down the smart phone and pursue old fashioned hobbies like knitting or repairing that wobbly chair. One task that is always needed is to clean out the filing cabinets, closets and the garage. A chore mariner faces is to paint and refurbish lawn furniture. How many years has it been since the lawn mower blades have been sharpened? It’s a good time to paint that back hall. Visit family you haven’t seen for a while.

The point is this: Everyone, rich or poor, young or old, smart or dumb or any race – needs to refocus on the self; society is unstable and not much comfort to the self. The trick is to occupy one’s time doing things on a firsthand basis, doing something where you determine a successful outcome all by yourself! Mariner likes the analogy of a bear preparing for the winter: eat well, make a comfortable place for yourself and stay in for the winter.

Perhaps your sanity and scruples will be better prepared for next spring . . .

Ancient Mariner

The Singularity Is Here

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The paragraphs below is a literal quote from an article in the November Atlantic Magazine.

Artificially intelligent advertising technology is poisoning our societies.

By Ayad Akhtar

Something unnatural is afoot. Our affinities are increasingly no longer our own, but rather are selected for us for the purpose of automated economic gain. The automation of our cognition and the predictive power of technology to monetize our behavior, indeed our very thinking, is transforming not only our societies and discourse with one another, but also our very neurochemistry. It is a late chapter of a larger story, about the deepening incursion of mercantile thinking into the groundwater of our philosophical ideals. This technology is no longer just shaping the world around us, but actively remaking us from within.

That we are subject to the dominion of endless digital surveillance is not news. And yet, the sheer scale of the domination continues to defy our imaginative embrace. Virtually everything we do, everything we are, is transmuted now into digital information. Our movements in space, our breathing at night, our expenditures and viewing habits, our internet searches, our conversations in the kitchen and in the bedroom—all of it observed by no one in particular, all of it reduced to data parsed for the patterns that will predict our purchases.

But the model isn’t simply predictive. It influences us. Daniel Kahneman’s seminal work in behavioral psychology has demonstrated the effectiveness of unconscious priming. Whether or not you are aware that you’ve seen a word, that word affects your decision making. This is the reason the technology works so well. The regime of screens that now comprises much of the surface area of our daily cognition operates as a delivery system for unconscious priming.

Mariner the Zealot

Decisions

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Some will say, “I’ve made a decision – right or wrong. The important thing is that I made a decision.”

Some will say, “Someone else should make the decision. I don’t want the responsibility.”

Some will say, “There must be more to know before I have to make a decision.”

Some will say, “Occam was right – keep it simple.”

Some will say, “I make a decision based on how I feel. If it wasn’t the right decision, I’ll make it again.”

Some will say, “A decision is all about the vision – even if we have to move to Cuba.”

Some will say, “What is the decision I need to consider?”

Some will say, “What’s in it for me?”

Some will say, “I avoid making decisions.”

Some will say, “Just tell me what to do.”

– – – –

All of us are in this list somewhere. Decision making is like shifting gears; it changes our focus, our energy, even our scruples, even our sanity. Add the perspective of those who are obsessive and those who are attention deficient and the world becomes a conflicted decision-making environment. Further, add those who are bright and those who are dull and it is amazing that useful decisions are made at all.

Then add in those with ulterior motives: any middleman, any corporation, and God forbid any politician. Given their contribution to decision making, we may not know what decision was made!

There are different classes of decision making. Should I marry this person? Should I quit my job? Do we want children? Do I want to have a dog? There are procedural decisions: Should I go to the bathroom before I go? Do I need gas? Where are my keys? What color should we paint the living room?

Do I really want to argue with this ass? What is on TV? Life cannot move through one day without decision making skills. The downside is if we don’t know our own decision making style. So many arguments have been provoked by style rather than substance. To some extent we are constrained by our personality and often by dire circumstances. But resolution may require more than one style to be resolved. This is the main reason group discussions often are the only way to arrive at a rational decision. In business, team management is important. Virtually every organization has a group-based decision making group.

The advice here is to know thyself and accommodate other’s styles and conclusions – something the nation has in short supply these days.

Ancient Mariner

Mariner’s calisthenics for older millennials+

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Mariner is growing older – well, a lot of growing older already has occurred but still, he is growing yet even older than that. Like many elders, he has aches and pains that lead him to a rehab center where he is led through a series of namby-pamby stretching exercises. Mariner agrees that the stretching drills do relax the skeleton’s pressure points and ease pain a bit  but when one is out in the garden and has one foot under an azalea bush and the other foot is in midair and must execute a one-legged bunny hop to land outside the garden, the little stretching drills do not help.

The reality is that, because humans have invented things like chairs, tables, chainsaws and elevators, we don’t use the muscles as they were intended. You know the trope: use it or lose it. As we age, stretching is important but it doesn’t help keep a body that is serviceable for daily life. If one is to be spiritually alert, strong and have a good feeling about one’s self, one must have muscle that works in the real world. So mariner proposes a muscle-based exercise rather than a joint-stretching one. The legal caveat: these exercises may not be helpful when recovering from injuries or operations.

If the reader has ever found themselves on the floor and literally can’t get up, e.g., mounting a lawnmower deck under the tractor or reaching the baby’s pacifier under the sofa or are prone to losing balance whenever the legs are off center, the following exercises performed every other morning may help:

  1. Squat thrust – Keeping your body over your knees, squat as close to the ground as possible. Place your hands on the floor and using them for balance, kick your legs back until they are straight behind you and your toes land on the floor. Once landed, quickly return to the original squat position and without hesitating kick the legs back again two more times. Then stand up, take a breath and repeat. Do this repetition five times as a beginner and work up to ten easily performed. In all exercises do not stop breathing and exhale at the point of maximum exertion. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4511oTkNls
  2. Weight-assisted squat – Find an object that you can hold easily and weighs five to ten pounds. Stand with legs ready to squat and hold the object at arm’s length in front of you. Squat as deeply as you can and immediately return to an upright position. Do ten squats at a slow pace. For a sample squat without the weight see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aclHkVaku9U
  3. Pushups – Compulsive jocks may do a full pushup hands to toes but mariner recommends using the milder version, hands to knees because many individuals have injuries and arthritis that may be aggravated. Lying flat on the floor, use your arms to lift the body off the floor so that only the hands and knees remain in contact with the floor. Lift until the arms are straight and keep the body straight throughout the lift. Work your way up to ten; do more to show off in front of friends. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyCG_5l3XLk

For upper back and posture issues, e.g., peeling potatoes without pain and remaining a fully erect hominid, here are a few exercises to help:

  1. Middle back. Have at hand a pair of small hand weights weighing two to five pounds each. Lay flat on your stomach with body straight to the feet. Stretch your arms out so you look like an airplane. Slowly lift the weights as high as possible without bending at the elbows, hold for two seconds then slowly drop back to the floor. Start with five repetitions but quickly build up to ten repetitions.
  2. Back and Shoulders. Find something that is easy to hold onto that can hang from your hands and down your back; a hand weight weighing ten to fifteen pounds would be perfect. Grasp the weight overhead and let it pull your arms down from over your head, letting the weight hang down your back. Very slowly lift the weight until your arms are straight above you. Very slowly allow the weight to fall down the back. Slow is better in this exercise. Do ten times; do more if you don’t feel satisfactory stretching of the upper back and arms.
  3. Shoe tie. This is all about balance. Put on a pair of string tie shoes; tennis shoes would be perfect. To tie the shoe, stand on the opposite leg fully straightened. Raise the target shoe to knee level but do not rest it on the other leg. Keeping the foot at knee level, tie the shoe. Repeat for the other shoe.

General posture is important and requires similar muscle-building exercises. These exercises are more difficult only because it requires constant attention to accomplish them:

  1. Easiest of these exercises is to walk at a comfortable pace for thirty minutes without stopping. Walk outside, not inside or on a treadmill. Walk every day; this exercise has meditative aspects to it. Distance is not the issue; mariner’s wife walks twice as fast as mariner. Walking together for exercise possibly may not be a shared experience.
  2. This is the most difficult exercise because you must do it constantly while awake for the entire day. Pretend there is an attached string at the center of the top of your head. Pretend that it kept in tension to hold your head as high as you can while keeping the chin in. Maybe God is pulling it or four eagles or an F-15.
  3. The strut. At the same time, push your chest out in front of your shoulders – all day whether sitting, standing, walking, etc.

You will find these posture exercises to be the most difficult because you must train your brain to pay attention constantly. It is important, however, because posture is what keeps the skeletal frame in place and enables muscle-centric health.

Mariner finds that the quads are the most diminished and need exercise if one is to be active or keep balance. The rewards are subtle but guarantee an enjoyable life in distant years. If the reader can sustain the effort, the posture exercises alone can improve one’s general well being.

Ancient Mariner

Gumption

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Among many words that describe the lifestyle of older folks, mariner feels the word ‘gumption’ is a major descriptor. Researching the usage of gumption suggests that the general meaning of the word is to have ambition, motivation or, colloquially, ‘get-up-and-go’. But being old can’t be captured by one behavior; it takes a lot to be old – or conversely it takes losing a lot to be old.

Gumption has a lot to do with energy. As folks grow older, their power supply becomes worn and becomes harder to generate. Using an old automobile as an analogy, the engine’s piston rings aren’t as tight as they used to be; it takes more gas, oil and electric current to create the same horsepower; the carburetor, sparkplugs, distributor and air filter aren’t as finely tuned. Translate the analogy to a human being and the parts become internal organs, angina, aneurysm, lost muscle and less resiliency.

Gumption is more complex than just having energy. Older folks don’t have much to motivate them. Society leaves them behind; their careers are over, family members have passed on, all leaving little social purpose and little need to ‘get up and go’. There is no need other than a compulsive disorder to jump out of bed at 6 AM before the alarm clock has finished its chime. As the trite phrase says, “use it or lose it”. Motivation can wane just as muscles do.

The brain has a large influence on gumption. Using the automobile analogy again, brains are like tires: the tread wears out. Without tires the automobile may have a brand new engine and still not be able to function. The brain isn’t called the brain for nothing – it controls every aspect of a person’s physiology from the shape of toenails to the ability to think. Unfortunately, such a complex organ is easily affected by wear and tear.

Most notable about brain dysfunction are concentration and short term memory. It is hard to have gumption if a person is easily distracted. It is hard to perform tasks if they can’t be remembered long enough to be completed.

The advice to oldsters is to have gumption to experience life in whatever intellectual or physical way that sustains a relationship with life in general.

The advice to youngsters is to have respect for folks who can live day after day without fancy mental tools, any power tools or any reason to have tools but they continue performing as a human being. That requires its own definition of gumption.

Ancient Mariner

Let it Be

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Here’s a humbling statement from mariner’s desk calendar:

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”

– Helen Keller

“Fidelity to a worthy purpose.” Everyone understands the virtue of fidelity. It represents commitment to something which requires personal value and personal discipline. Anyone, without regard for faith, politics or personal circumstances has some obligation to an idea or behavior that shapes their life and sets the standard for daily behavior.

No one would make it through a day without some set of values that keeps them anchored to who they are, what they need and how they interact with reality. While it is true that many of us need to improve our skills when dealing with daily life, the real issue is fidelity to what?

One can’t fault the fidelity of Trump followers; the question is whether that set of values is worthy of fidelity. One can’t fault the fidelity of socialist liberals; the question is whether that set of values is worthy of fidelity. This criticism can be made about any opinion. The question that must be answered is, “are these values worthy of fidelity?”

Frankly, the world, its nations and its societies are in great transition – some may say dysfunctional. What will future society look like? Taking into consideration the fact that many social institutions are on decline, e.g., churches, colleges, social service organizations, governments at all levels, reduced income opportunities and the intense interruption of global warming, what institutional structure will rise to overcome all the trauma?

Mariner suspects it will be small communities; perhaps urban neighborhoods as well; populations of about 1,500 – 10,000 or so. What has slowly disappeared is community bonding. The large agricultural family has all but disappeared; the ease of travel and a broad range of employment opportunities leave much of the population without the friendly surroundings of large families, local clubs, or common career familiarity. In mariner’s small town, the glue provided by large, multi-generational families is gone. The many clubs and organizations that afforded social gathering have dwindled to a precious few and no longer set the pace for the town; the common employment base of agriculture is a memory.

Nevertheless, in the name of sanity people must belong to something meaningful in their daily life. Without community, society cannot heal, grow or reorganize. Without community fidelity, more sophisticated institutions cannot be stable.

The best thing you can do to weather this era is to be friendly and helpful with your neighbors.

Remember the words from the Beatles song ‘Let it Be’?

“And when the broken-hearted people living in the world agree

There will be an answer, let it be

For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see

There will be an answer, let it be”

When government fails, when society is disheveled, when calamity and uncertainty are in the air, people will gather into small groups to minimize fear, provide social stability, and establish common fidelity.

Evolution has declared that Homo sapiens is a tribal creature.

Let it be.

Ancient Mariner

 

Interplanetary Travel

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Mariner is an old codger – almost as old as many legislators. The truth is, the world today is quite alien to him. It is not his planet. Back on his planet, there is a President named John F. Kennedy; in fifteen minutes Charles Kuralt tells the news of the world with no gossip, no allegiance to viewer share, no conspiracy threats. Social media does not exist, only thick daily newspapers with pages of funnies and sports; mariner delivered them every day for a few years.

Computers are around but they don’t poke into everyone’s business. The U.S. is at war, as usual, but it is a strange no-bullet war with Russia. There are no mass shootings of children every month or so. In fact, when mariner was 12 years old, he would take the streetcar downtown without even knowing about the social dangers that lurk the streets on this planet. On mariner’s planet policemen walk their neighborhood beats and stop to pass the time of day.

Mariner could go on and on about how different his planet is from this planet. On this planet, he feels out of place and irrelevant because he does not understand this world. He is not rooted in the life of a child who is given a computer tablet in kindergarten. It likely is appropriate training for children on this planet but mariner finds himself confused about social values. Humanist philosophy is at a nadir.

Even television on this planet seems irrelevant. Mariner switched to a modern ‘smart’ television to no avail; little is of interest. The few programs he watches are broadcast on his planet. Listening to news today speaks only of Armageddon. Mariner’s planet, while it has issues, has no reason to fear the future demise of humanity.

But mariner can visit his planet. There is a dimension called ‘music’ that has a direct link to his planet. He steps into this dimension by listening to what people on this planet call golden oldies. Golden, indeed, and eternal.

Stack up the old 45 with names like Penguins, Everly Brothers, Presley, Ronstadt, Platters, Domino, Brightman, Little Richard, Carpenters, Ray Charles, Joni James and Cline. Or capture the next decade with Diamond, Denver, Peter, Paul and Mary, and ABBA. Mariner settles down in the music space ship chair and travels back to his planet.

Ancient Mariner

GIG Work

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Mariner is acutely aware that the Internet and its future iterations definitely will change the world of work. One of the new work models emerging is the GIG world of employment. GIG means that jobs are in response to corporate need rather than in response to career development and all the trappings of lifetime security that the +60 crowd understands.

Gig workers, generally, enjoy the freedom of earning an income providing the link between corporate automation and the corporate need to have personalized service. A simple but common example is food delivery services. With the Internet as a tool, GIG workers have unparalleled  opportunities to live where they want, with their lifestyle from living in cars with an Internet link to living in Thailand to enjoy better benefits than are available in the U.S.

Statistical studies have shown that the freedom to travel, to live eccentric lifestyles, to earn just enough to sustain their lifestyles, is all that’s needed. While it is a world of independence, it suffers from the lack of unions, standardized employment models that provide insurance, retirement and minimum wage. In the United States, a more traditional labor relations society, these shortcomings have become a court issue.

In some respects the GIG movement and the homesteader movement have a lot in common: Society has become an intense competition for assets – not lifestyle. It is not possible for everyone to be successful in the world of dollar security; especially not in the world of self-identity and personal gratification in life.

Mariner discovered a pleasant review of GIG work (that is, not politically abused) on PBS Passport/ROKU. It may be available as a local PBS documentary – mariner doesn’t know since he switched to a smart TV. The program is titled “The World Of Work – The Next Generation: Why I choose to live and work in my car”. It provides an insight into the conflict of pressurized economics versus the desire to live an unencumbered life.

Check it out.

Ancient Mariner.