Musings of a Middle Aged Man

I was raised in the emotional dark ages under the mantra, "Big boys don't cry!" It is a phrase designed to enforce a narrow idea of masculinity based on the misguided belief that boys should be tough and unemotional, particularly in times of distress when less manly men are prone to emotional outbursts. The phrase was a form of shaming to stop crying or showing vulnerability rather t...

he impact of animals on the human psyche has undergone a myriad of changes, some more impactful than others. In our ancient, pre-syphilization days, animals were viewed with reverent awe coupled with cold practicality. It was common for the ancient humanoids to request forgiveness from the animal's spirit when killing them for food, while simultaneously imbuing them with mystical powers and as...

Reality is defined as the state of things as they actually exist, encompassing all observable facts, events, and entities. It represents the totality of what exists independent of human perception, imagination, or theoretical speculation. Ultimately, reality exists objectively, independent of conscious observation or belief. Humans perceive objective reality via subjective filters. Since our sense...

One of the indicators that a person will shed the shackles imprisoning them to religion is their level of education. College graduates are more likely than the less educated to identify as atheists or agnostics. It is why the strongly religiously inclined disparage universities that liberate the human mind and, lately, decry them with the latest propagandized and misapplied word, "woke."...

Not being a hunter, I do not generally enter the wilds seeking to find a specific animal. I tend to be content with any wildlife that graces my presence. Living in cities, I don't have to scrutinize my surroundings for large predators capable of felling me in one swipe of a massive paw or a piercing bite from two-inch canine teeth in crunching jaws. There is the remote possibility of death by...

I was struck by a poignant thought last night while crossing the no man's land between wakefulness and sleeping. I was hovering on that silken line beyond awake, before sleep, where all existence is concentrated in the immediate now, when this thought hit me. All we ever live in is the timeless now moment. How can there exist a past if we perpetually dwell in a timeless state? The very definit...

wonder what the impetus was that shifted the human mind to alter vision solely to detect danger toward an appreciation for beauty. It was a massive change with a potentially detrimental downside. Becoming distracted by the beautiful could leave one exposed, thus vulnerable to menacing actors. The change had to be gradual. If ancient hominids had the same draw to beauty as we do today, they would l...

As a lifelong learner, I want to know everything about everything. Well, that's my North Star goal that guides my mind. I know it is impossible, given that we can't know anything that isn't yet discovered about life, the universe, and everything. Learning is a process, a never-ending process that can't be expedited by Matrix-style programming, where knowledge gained is limited only...

When I was a young lad, the only ginger in my neighborhood and schools, making me a target, altercations arose between mismatched combatants that generally used words as weapons, with occasional flare-ups into fisticuffs. We attempted to ward off those words with the trite saying: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me. " I think the saying may have been a shi...

he USA's most enduring mythology, one the citizenry loves to chest-thump, is that we are the land of the free and home of the brave. That we are the last bastion of liberation in the increasingly repressed world. That we are a beacon of hope in a raging sea, guiding the masses suffering from psychological incarceration and servitude toward salvation, toward autonomy, toward emancipation, and t...

I adhere to a strict policy of truth. Much of my adult life has been invested in seeking truth in both my professional and personal lives. This is heavily influenced by my belief that truth will not only set society free of tyranny, but it also begets a clarity that positively reinforces an individual's confidence in themselves and allows others in society to have confidence in the truth telle...

ove is quite possibly the most intense emotion humans experience, equalled in intensity by its opposite, hate, a form of negative love. Alternatively, Love is a form of strong positive care, while Hate is a strong negative care. Hate is not a negation of love but an emotional hole that consumes love as a black hole insatiably consumes light to the point that the light is essentially destroyed. The...

f I had to hazard a guess, I would say one of the oldest conundrums pinging humanity's consciousness is the simple question, "Why am I here?" Not as in a physical location, though that is also a mystery. No. Why, as in "Why do I exist?" "What is my purpose for being?" The pursuit of a nacreious answer has led to all sorts of bricolage answers without ever really a...

Not only do we not need a new religion or Bible, we no longer need, never actually needed, the old religion or Bible. In fact, we would be much better off had they, and other holy tomes, never cursed the human condition by driving people to believe their contents are true despite contradicting evidence and internal conflicts. The new experience needed is a transformation in how we perceive our ind...

The Bible can and has been 'interpreted' to justify everything from chattel slavery to genocide to sanctioned rape of virgins to dashing babies on rocks...along with a smattering of niceties such as love thy neighbor, the meek shall inherit the earth, and forgiving transgressors 70 times 7 times. This is partly due to imperfect translations between ancient and modern languages, translators...

Twas a season in my life when I was energized and invigorated by loud music and parties attended by many, with a heavy flow of alcohol lubricating social interactions and, maybe, a late-night tête-à-tête with a member of the opposite sex. Some of the best times took place at my parents' summer estate, a two-bedroom cabin in Central Wisconsin Lake Country, attended by family and friends, where...

It is a travesty that the richest country in the world ranks a paltry 20th in quality of education on the global scale. That our traditional adversaries in China and Russia are ranked higher does not augur well for an impressive future. There are a couple of factors leading to the embarrassing rank...hoarding of money by politicians for pork barrel projects and an undue influence from religious-ba...

I find it intriguing that death as a beginning is a belief held vigorously by both religious sects and the zombies amongst us. Two querlous groups, both looking beyond the immediate toward a future that may or may not have any basis in cold reality. I wonder how the zealots rationalize their bodies becoming animated post death, a time they mythologize that the soul separates from the physical befo...

Since the advent of time, it is conservatively estimated that 18,000 different gods, goddesses, and related deities have been invented for veneration and worship. The cults arising around the deities range from single-deity monotheistic religions to thousands of deities in polytheistic and pantheistic religions to 330 million in the Hindu pantheon. In practice, the Hindu number is symbolic, reflec...

believe most, possibly all, humans have a deep-seated desire to be accepted for who they authentically are, including the rough spots others might see as warts or defects. That given a safe space, they would discard the accoutrements designed to help them blend in with the masses and stand emotionally naked, exposing those attributes, making themselves uniquely themselves. That they would sing the...

do my damndest to placate my soul with the goal of minimizing any hate harbored in my heart. Mostly, I am successful. It is a challenge to maintain a modicum of temperance, considering the country in which I am a citizen in good standing is going down the shitter because a narcissist with craploads of money has wrapped tiny hands around power and is using the power to take from the poor so the ins...

The movie Shane, along with High Noon, released the prior year, and Unforgiven, coming 39 years later, are three Westerns that forever changed the genre. The first two shifted the narrative from simple good guy versus bad guy, both cowboys decidedly entrenched in the black and white decision-making, with nary a shade of ambiguity to add tension, to psychologically complex stories of conflicted ind...

In general, humans look upon the cycle of life with an eye toward the born version being the ultimate end goal. Human arrogance takes this thousands of steps further with the proclamation that all existence was designed so that humans could thrive... even though the Earth occupies far a less than miserly 3.08x10-58% of the universe's volume. That myopic notion arises because we humans are esse...

highly doubt our arboreal ancestors spent their precious time contemplating the existence of a soul, busy as they were gathering and hunting while keeping watch for the multitude of predators hoping to turn their tender flesh into a satisfying meal. Contemplation of abstract concepts is superfluous when struggling to ensure the tribe can survive, let alone thrive. Possibly, the only human foible m...

If you were to ask my mother, she would say I was born with an appetence for rebellion. Where raising some children is challenging because they are strong-willed, I was doubly difficult because I was born with an equally strong won't. Thankfully, she was blessed with a fortitude of a saint, helping her steer me away from a life that could, under different circumstances, have propelled me into...