A Carousel, No Calliope...

The world is still in orbit around our little star, the trees made leaves again this year and there are flowers most everywhere. The insects are hatched and foraging as are the birds with that precedent and, yeah, life goes on.

In April I completed my 81st year on the planet. I have been looking back into my memory of thought… what I thought the world would be like when I reached this age. As I was educated in science and schooled to look for reason, logic and an ethical approach to discovery, as time has passed I have to say I’m pretty disappointed in what the passage has revealed. I’m beginning to think the species is doomed because of a couple of flaws. One is religion. I don’t mean I think the ideas put forth by the leaders from the past we revere are wrong, necessarily, just that we don’t follow their teaching while pretending to do so. We claim to be the followers of one or another to the point that we would kill someone who disagrees with our saint, prophet, god… whatever. Stupid, hypocritical, infantile, lazy.

Another strange thing to me is how we choose drama over reason at every opportunity. It seems everyone is clamoring to be the first to reveal an event or a crisis looming or a scandal… In lieu of compassion, courtesy and truth we’ll opt for humor even if it totally distorts the truth or the approach to it. We have a need to feel successful by making others laugh regardless of at who’s expense or the facts. The advent of television in all it's forms hasn’t helped, we’re coached everyday as to what is funny and what’s allowed to be funny. The internet is merely the continued evolution of the electronic piper.

Some eschew science while our whole modern existence is based on what science has done for convenience, health and wealth. When evolution is mentioned in some quarters one can get an automatic “pariah” staus conferred on their little heads. It’s becoming clear that there are things about the universe we do not understand and maybe never will, while the revelation of god’s hand in it all is funneled to us through our very accessible knowledge of evolutionary change. Just so much bigger and more complicated than we thought… Magic works in place of fact, right?

Couple from a walk with Chip downtown.