Musings of a Middle Aged Man

One of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV involved a neo-Nazi, white supremacist seeking to create an all white enclave in North Dakota. To be clear, I do not condone in any way, shape, or form white supremacist ideology or any other reason one can conjure to prejudge another human being. He was ranting about nonwhites being inferior and raging against what he termed the ethnic impurity...

The intrepid crew members of the Star Trek Enterprise bravely signed up for a five-year mission to explore life, seek out new planets, and survive. Unbeknownst to them, it was unlikely the red shirts would explore beyond one episode, a fact that may have altered their choice to join the crew, were they informed when they enlisted. I wonder if that would have altered their choice? In the Foundation...

I have dabbled with being disciplined frequently over the course of my 60-plus years and counting. By discipline, I do not refer to hiring a prostitute to dress up as a nun who paddles my pasty ass to get aroused before having my body ravaged by wild intercourse. Nope. I mean self-discipline, training myself to do something in a controlled and habitual way to achieve a goal, such as when I attende...

The concept of permanence with respect to humans can be interpreted in at least two different ways. One permanence implies the person in soul form, a soul which God has foreknowledge prior to existence, enters the physical realm at birth in the form of a body, exists at death to persist in an afterlife divided into a pleasant place and a not so pleasant place. The final destination is dependent up...

Independence is the ability to function autonomously and make decisions for oneself, while interdependence is the state of relying on and being relied on by others, often in mutually beneficial relationships. Symbiosis is an extreme form of interdependence wherein one species cannot exist independently of another, such as with the Pronuba moth and the Yucca plant. The female Pronuba moth pollinate...

The beauty of the human mind, a characteristic arrogant fools claim is exclusive to humanity, is the conjuring of imaginary realms to mentally explore while the physical being, relaxing in a comfy chair, remains in a state of stasis. I don't believe imagination is a human only capability. I am not alone in this supposition. Science has shown behaviors in dolphins, chimps, rats, gray parrots, a...

For a significant part of my life, perhaps from birth, I was a contrarian, typically taking an antagonistic stance against the prevailing winds of the day. I don't know if I am genetically predisposed, though I strongly suspect I am, to go against the flow or something in my environment trained me to embrace the struggle upstream rather than float downstream with the flotsams and jetsams. I su...

Truth is generally defined as something in agreement with fact or reality. Correspondence theory states that truth occurs when a statement or belief corresponds to the reality it describes. A critical nuance missing, though, is one of perspective, of context. Perspective can render one man's number six, another woman's number nine and vice versa. These two distinct realities mean there are...

I imagine a question of this sort first arose when one would be ancient philosopher peered out of the window of the brick home from one of the first human settlements, looked past the central temple complex dedicated to Enki, the god of wisdom and water, past the settlement's boundaries, where a hunting party was returning carrying gazelles lashed to long sticks with their mouths open and tong...

A fundamental flaw in the question, despite being uttered by the renowned astrophysicist Carl Sagan, is the presupposition that there is only one universe. Modern astrophysicists theorize that the number of universes is in the realm of 10 raised to the 10th power raised to the 16th power. A number so big, it is essentially infinity. I have difficulty wrapping my head around one observing infinity...

I have been enthralled with the visual arts for as long as I can remember, paintings and photography primarily. I am also intrigued by ceramics and sculpting, but not enough to try my hand at either. I would like to try turning spalted wood into a stunning bowl or vase. I lack the space for even a halfway decent lathe and the myriad tools necessary to perform turning magic. Primarily, though, my j...

One of the life challenges humans must navigate throughout our lives is the effective management of our egos. The ego drives multiple life decisions, particularly when it is in some way challenged or offended by a second party not privy to our inner machinations. Without conscious thought, the ego, triggered unconsciously, reacts irrespective of the odds of coming out the better in a confrontation...

If I had to venture a guess, I would say the meaning of life question has been around since the dawn of consciousness. Following fast on the heels of the statement, "I am!" came the question, "Why am I?" and has been an overarching concern ever since it spilled off a hominid's tongue. There is evidence the Neanderthals buried their dead ritualistically, so it may have occur...

I have heard a few possible answers to this question. The are two primary positions. Theists claim the mind, euphemism for soul, is primary, with the body little more than a temporary vessel in which the soul is forged by God's holy fire. The discarded body is destined for the pyre or an eternity trapped in a coffin after the soul departs and returns to its true home in Heaven. From a biologic...

As infants and into toddlerhood, our brain embarks on a developmental course with an extraordinary burst of synapse production, a process known as synaptogenesis. Our minds rapidly absorb knowledge and experiences at an age when we are not mature enough to differentiate between the keep because it is helpful, discard because it is detrimental. The subconscious takes in all and stores all for futur...

Humanity is so prone to making mistakes that there exists a quip that goes, "To err is human. To forgive is divine." Even the quip contains errors where it presupposes a divinity exists and that the divine deity cares two rat turds about humanity enough to embrace the concept of forgiveness for we petulant apes. This thinking is foundational to one of the two greatest errors humanity has...

Literature is littered with parable type stories about people who employed underhanded methods to wrest immortality from the gods and make it their own. Because who wouldn't want to live forever? In all such stories I have read or seen on the tube, the outcome undermines the wannabe immortal and a crucial lesson is imparted to the audience. All, that is, except the Highlander Movie series, whe...

I was raised in a faith system that viewed humans as inherently wicked, starting with the purest infant whose soul was steeped in original sin, a blemish passed down through Adam and Eve, afflicting every person ever born, save the Christ, who was purported to always exist without the stain of sin, either original or committed while alive. Other traditions in the same faith line extend the inheren...

I was indoctrinated into the Catholic religion long before I had the maturity to make an informed decision, a conscious, rational decision as to whether or not Catholicism aligned with the unique rendering of my soul. It started when I was a few weeks old, placing me permanently on the double secret catholic rolls never to be expunged. The overt persuasion continued through my vulnerable years wit...

American Pie is an epic song, the classicest of classic rock, an iconic tune from my generation, a defining ditty dominating the 1970s airwaves despite being considered too lengthy for radio. It was populated with enough imagery to fill multiple poems, none of which would be as impactful as the same lyrics set to engaging music. It encapsulates both the spirit and anxiety rippling through the Amer...

I have recently become enthralled by the BBC Human 2025 mini-series. The five episodes, narrated by Ella Al-Shamahi, examine the history of six human species that were in existence over the past 300,000 years. The series progresses chronologically from origins in sub-Saharan Africa through their wandering across the globe into virtually every ecosystem before eventually choosing to abandon the nom...

Man's closest ancestors and parallel human species are the Denisovans and the Neanderthals, both with whom we share a common ancestor. The split occurred some 550,000 years ago. We were genetically close enough to both species to interbreed and produce fertile offspring, as evidenced by the 1-2% Neanderthal DNA found in Homo Sapiens, modern humans, except for the sub-Saharan Africans who conta...

Sometimes, when the weather is too miserable to be outside and my daily meditation writing has been converted to bits and bytes, I scroll through YouTube videos picking up bits and tids of interesting information. Most videos are relatively short, making it extremely easy to fall into a video vortex, losing hours that can never be recovered for future investment. One of the YouTube rabbit holes I...

The Bible is rather cryptic when it comes to identifying the antichrist. End time prophecies predict there will be a single AntiChrist appearing after the rapture, the bodily ascension of believers who were spirited away to spend an eternity with the Christ. The same verse, 1 John 2:18, also claims there are many antichrists amongst the target audience long before the rapture event. I guess there...

Growing up in my era, it was not uncommon to hear the phrase, "Just who do you think you are?" This was not a query begging a metaphysical answer from our psyches. It was an admonishment to stay in our lane, to not get involved in certain things, not because we did not hold crucial information, but rather because our status was beneath the lofty realm in which we inserted ourselves. The...