"The recognition of the identity of our own nature with that of others is the beginning and foundation of all true morality." - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (from the translater's preface)
COURAGE
"There is always a parenthesis of fear in courage." Grapevine, April 1977
Monday, July 6, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
GOD
Man invents God in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it. - Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition
In all my readings on this subject, I have yet to read someone who points out that we are the sum of all living creation on Earth perhap's because it's too obvious). I early read, and was taken by, the sentence that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Which, of course, basically means that the development of the individual from its beginning as a fertilized egg to its birth as an individual capable of living outside the womb or egg, repeats the development of that species as a whole. I'd like to suggest that we carry within us, in the structure of our genes especially, the whole development of the human race. Religion, I believe, is an attempt to retain that early awe of the universe and the need to make sense of it that, I think, is endemic to the human condition.
Of course, it is obvious that Man created God out of need, primarily to answer the question of meaning and morals; and, of course, out of fear of death. The truth, however, is that there are no meaning or morals in the universe (or God, if you will); they are needs of man, which we invented as we invented God, to get out of what is essentially an existential dilemna, namely what I have asserted. Meaning and morals have been of great evolutionary assistance to us, and have, indeed, not only helped us to survive, but to dominate, at least on the Earth. Which, of course, we are now also rapidly destroying.
To put it another way, the left-brain activity of science and its emphasis developed so strongly from its initiation (if we overlook the ancient Greeks and some of he medievalists like Roger Bacon) by Galeleo and Kepler (that is, the measuring of hypotheses against reality) that we have indeed conquered the world with our thinking; until, today (and beginning, actually, 100 and some years ago) there is an uneasiness with that exclusive dominion. As a result, there began the efforts to rely more on right-brain activity.
A book could be written on all the activies, such as Zen Buddhism (but not exclusive to religion; consider Woodstock, for example, and the proliferations of people on TV and video who are quite prepared to tell us how to live more fulfilling lives and achieve happiness and success), and attempts to get "in touch with" the irrational or creative side of life (i.e., the right brain). Of course, they're right. It's pretty obvious that to believe in complete rationality is in itself pretty irrational. I try to keep in mind what Hamlet said to Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in all your philosophies."
And in those days, keep in mind, natural philosophy meant science. I'm a very rational person myself, or so I consider myself, but I've had at least a half dozen experiences that one could call "supernatural." That is to say, strange, or unexplained. Though even there the left brain sets to work in an attempt to explain them. I have theories of my own. But Hamlet is stll right.
In all my readings on this subject, I have yet to read someone who points out that we are the sum of all living creation on Earth perhap's because it's too obvious). I early read, and was taken by, the sentence that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Which, of course, basically means that the development of the individual from its beginning as a fertilized egg to its birth as an individual capable of living outside the womb or egg, repeats the development of that species as a whole. I'd like to suggest that we carry within us, in the structure of our genes especially, the whole development of the human race. Religion, I believe, is an attempt to retain that early awe of the universe and the need to make sense of it that, I think, is endemic to the human condition.
Of course, it is obvious that Man created God out of need, primarily to answer the question of meaning and morals; and, of course, out of fear of death. The truth, however, is that there are no meaning or morals in the universe (or God, if you will); they are needs of man, which we invented as we invented God, to get out of what is essentially an existential dilemna, namely what I have asserted. Meaning and morals have been of great evolutionary assistance to us, and have, indeed, not only helped us to survive, but to dominate, at least on the Earth. Which, of course, we are now also rapidly destroying.
To put it another way, the left-brain activity of science and its emphasis developed so strongly from its initiation (if we overlook the ancient Greeks and some of he medievalists like Roger Bacon) by Galeleo and Kepler (that is, the measuring of hypotheses against reality) that we have indeed conquered the world with our thinking; until, today (and beginning, actually, 100 and some years ago) there is an uneasiness with that exclusive dominion. As a result, there began the efforts to rely more on right-brain activity.
A book could be written on all the activies, such as Zen Buddhism (but not exclusive to religion; consider Woodstock, for example, and the proliferations of people on TV and video who are quite prepared to tell us how to live more fulfilling lives and achieve happiness and success), and attempts to get "in touch with" the irrational or creative side of life (i.e., the right brain). Of course, they're right. It's pretty obvious that to believe in complete rationality is in itself pretty irrational. I try to keep in mind what Hamlet said to Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in all your philosophies."
And in those days, keep in mind, natural philosophy meant science. I'm a very rational person myself, or so I consider myself, but I've had at least a half dozen experiences that one could call "supernatural." That is to say, strange, or unexplained. Though even there the left brain sets to work in an attempt to explain them. I have theories of my own. But Hamlet is stll right.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
OPINION
ANOTHER FINE MESS
As regards the crisis in this country, not only the mess the financial institutions have gotten us into, due to their greed and growing largeness and interdependence, and the constant pressure on the mass of people (us) to over-consume, and in light of the growing spread between the rich and the rest of us, who like to think we’re the middle class but are actually included in the bulk of the people who are poorer than they have ever been and working harder than ever to keep it that way, these words from Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station: The Revolutionary Tradition in Europe and the Rise of Socialism explicating some of Karl Marx’s statements on an unregulated capitalist system, seem to me quite revealing. He may have been wrong about a lot of things, but not economics. Marx believed that the capitalist system involved fundamental contradictions which ensured its eventual destruction. His theory of these contradictions – which he thought of in terms of Hegelian opposites*[– may be stated with much simplification as follows:The capitalist system was based on private property and so was inevitably competitive. The aim of every manufacturer was always to undersell the rest, so that there would be a continual stimulus to more efficient methods of production. But the more efficient an industry became – the faster the machines were able to do the work and the fewer people were needed to tend them – the more people would be thrown out of jobs and the more would wages be reduced. That is, the more the commodities produced, the fewer the people who would be able to buy them. In order to get rid of his goods under these continually tightening conditions, the manufacturer would have to undercut his competitors, and that would mean further reduction of wages and still more efficient machinery, and, consequently, again in the long run, fewer people would be able to buy what he was making. This situation has already produced a jam and a depression about every ten years; and the only way for the manufacturer to get a reprieve from the vicious cycle was to find new foreign markets for his products – an escape which would not in the long run save him.
The more efficiently goods were manufactured, the more money would be needed for the plant; and it would seem to pay the manufacturer to build the plant bigger and bigger. Thus the industries would keep growing and the companies keep merging till each industry would be well on its way becoming one great unified organization, and the money which kept them going would have been concentrated in a very few hands. But actually the bigger big business grew, the larger the sums of money it dealt in, the smaller its rate of profit became. At last the contradictions involved in this process would jam the whole system so badly – there being no more fresh markets available – that it would become intolerable, impossible, for society to function at all unless the money and the great centralized plants were taken away from the people who claimed to own them and who were incapable of conceiving them as a means to any more beneficent end than that of making themselves rich out of the profits, and were run for the public good. The working [read “middle”] class would be able to accomplish this, because it would have increased to enormous proportions and have grown conscious of its interests as a class as incompatible with the interests of its employers; and it would now find itself so hard-pressed by privation that no alternative would be possible for it. All its scruples would be overcome by the realization that this privation coincided with an era when the production of what they needed had become possible with an ease and on a scale which had never been imagined in history.
Now we may reject the Hegelian-Marxist Dialectic as a genuine law of nature, but we cannot deny that Marx has here made effective use of it to demonstrate the necessity for socialism. Nothing else had so brought home the paradoxes of destitution imposed by abundance, of great public utilities rendered useless by the property rights of those who controlled them. Nor was it necessary to accept the metaphysics of the Labor Theory of Value and to argue from it a priori, as Mr. Strachey does, in order to be convinced by Marx that this process must land capitalism in an impasse. The great thing was that Marx had been able, as the bourgeois economists had not, to see the capitalist economy in the perspective of the centuries as something which, like other economies, had had a beginning and must have an end. Mathematician, historian and prophet, he had grasped the laws of its precipitate progress and foreseen the disasters of its slumps as nobody else had done. * This is not important to this quote; it involves what is called thesis, antithesis, then synthesis. In other words, to simplify it pretty badly, pressure in society to grow and change, counter-pressure to keep things as they are, and a compromise that resolves the contrary pressures so that growth can take place.
My comments: This is remarkable in as much as Marx pondered and wrote these ideas back in the 1860s or 70s. Wilson’s book, which is one of the best histories of an ideology that I know of (i.e. an intellectual history), was published in 1940. Unbridled capitalism has lasted as long as it has only because two brave U.S. Presidents did something about it: Theodore Roosevelt when he trust-busted (took action) against the powerful financiers of his day; and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who steered this country toward socialistic solutions to the great Depression of his day. Otherwise politicians, both Democrat and Republican, but especially Republican, have been financed by the powerful rich with their lobbies and bribes, and have not tried very hard to regulate or control the enormous greed of those who seek power and money as their only goals in life. Reagan began the deregulation, at the same time running up a trillion dollar debt whose only good was to bankrupt the Soviet Union and bring an end to the Cold War. The death blow has been given by George W. Bush, who started his first administration by giving a trillion dollars to the wealthy few, and starting a foolish war that has already been the longest this country has ever fought and is still costing us ten billion dollars a month (one billion of which, naturally, goes to Dick Cheney’s company, and which means, of course, that they will see he gets his cut once he is out of office for a while). Always, those in power scare us with words like “socialism” and “nationalized,” words left over from the Red-scare to keep us from looking at the truth about our society. The chief function of a government is, to me, to secure our liberties and keep us free from attack, both without and within. But capitalism must be regulated to keep us from attack within; otherwise you are turning society over to the predators and thieves. And certain things are essential to socialize: education and health, for starters. These are just two of the things that should not be run by the profit motive, indeed, cannot be so run. There are other requirements of living the good life that do not lend themselves, or should not be, to satisfaction by profit-seeking people. There is a Biblical saying that the poor will always be with us; so, too, will the rich. But they have to be regulated. We cannot expect people whose only aim is their own wealth and power to do what is right, or even best, for the people as a whole.
Now, for the financial crisis: The government will probably bail out the wealthy people who got us into this mess because of their greed. A basic tenet of behavioral science is, reward the behavior you want, don’t reward behavior you don’t want. I don’t think we ought to reward the behavior of the financial institutions, and their executives, who got us into the mess. I know not doing so will have enormous consequences to society as a whole (or so they tell us, and they’re probably right). My personal view is that we should spend the 700 billion by pumping it into the economy where it will do some good, and help the people who will be, and are, most hurt by this huge failure of our leaders. For starters, we could double the FDIC account protection to $200,000; help the hapless home owner caught up in this terrible housing mess; strengthen Social Security so the benefits will be there for all poor baby boomers who have been deluded into thinking 401ks are truly a safe way to provide for your old age; put more money into schools and spend money on public projects to provide work for the unemployed; and lengthen the term for unemployment benefits. And, for God’s sake, really regulate the foxes that are in charge of our chicken coops.
It’s a bad, bad sign that the gap between the rich and poor has continued to widen in this country, as if we’re a banana republic. It is not true that what’s good for General Motors is good for the country, not when the worker making the cars cannot afford to by one (and, by the way, look at the mess General Motors is in; another case of greed running a corporation. Remember when they made cars built to obsolesce in three years. Thank God for the Japanese, who taught them, though they really haven’t learned the lesson, to make cars that are economical and that last more than a half dozen years). And while I’m on it, we’ve got to stop being so totally a society of consumers; there are other things in life than just material goods.
The trouble with consumerism is that enough is never enough; let’s start appreciating some of the more important things in life, our families, culture, personal growth, and, yes, even a more spiritual life.
As regards the crisis in this country, not only the mess the financial institutions have gotten us into, due to their greed and growing largeness and interdependence, and the constant pressure on the mass of people (us) to over-consume, and in light of the growing spread between the rich and the rest of us, who like to think we’re the middle class but are actually included in the bulk of the people who are poorer than they have ever been and working harder than ever to keep it that way, these words from Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station: The Revolutionary Tradition in Europe and the Rise of Socialism explicating some of Karl Marx’s statements on an unregulated capitalist system, seem to me quite revealing. He may have been wrong about a lot of things, but not economics. Marx believed that the capitalist system involved fundamental contradictions which ensured its eventual destruction. His theory of these contradictions – which he thought of in terms of Hegelian opposites*[– may be stated with much simplification as follows:The capitalist system was based on private property and so was inevitably competitive. The aim of every manufacturer was always to undersell the rest, so that there would be a continual stimulus to more efficient methods of production. But the more efficient an industry became – the faster the machines were able to do the work and the fewer people were needed to tend them – the more people would be thrown out of jobs and the more would wages be reduced. That is, the more the commodities produced, the fewer the people who would be able to buy them. In order to get rid of his goods under these continually tightening conditions, the manufacturer would have to undercut his competitors, and that would mean further reduction of wages and still more efficient machinery, and, consequently, again in the long run, fewer people would be able to buy what he was making. This situation has already produced a jam and a depression about every ten years; and the only way for the manufacturer to get a reprieve from the vicious cycle was to find new foreign markets for his products – an escape which would not in the long run save him.
The more efficiently goods were manufactured, the more money would be needed for the plant; and it would seem to pay the manufacturer to build the plant bigger and bigger. Thus the industries would keep growing and the companies keep merging till each industry would be well on its way becoming one great unified organization, and the money which kept them going would have been concentrated in a very few hands. But actually the bigger big business grew, the larger the sums of money it dealt in, the smaller its rate of profit became. At last the contradictions involved in this process would jam the whole system so badly – there being no more fresh markets available – that it would become intolerable, impossible, for society to function at all unless the money and the great centralized plants were taken away from the people who claimed to own them and who were incapable of conceiving them as a means to any more beneficent end than that of making themselves rich out of the profits, and were run for the public good. The working [read “middle”] class would be able to accomplish this, because it would have increased to enormous proportions and have grown conscious of its interests as a class as incompatible with the interests of its employers; and it would now find itself so hard-pressed by privation that no alternative would be possible for it. All its scruples would be overcome by the realization that this privation coincided with an era when the production of what they needed had become possible with an ease and on a scale which had never been imagined in history.
Now we may reject the Hegelian-Marxist Dialectic as a genuine law of nature, but we cannot deny that Marx has here made effective use of it to demonstrate the necessity for socialism. Nothing else had so brought home the paradoxes of destitution imposed by abundance, of great public utilities rendered useless by the property rights of those who controlled them. Nor was it necessary to accept the metaphysics of the Labor Theory of Value and to argue from it a priori, as Mr. Strachey does, in order to be convinced by Marx that this process must land capitalism in an impasse. The great thing was that Marx had been able, as the bourgeois economists had not, to see the capitalist economy in the perspective of the centuries as something which, like other economies, had had a beginning and must have an end. Mathematician, historian and prophet, he had grasped the laws of its precipitate progress and foreseen the disasters of its slumps as nobody else had done. * This is not important to this quote; it involves what is called thesis, antithesis, then synthesis. In other words, to simplify it pretty badly, pressure in society to grow and change, counter-pressure to keep things as they are, and a compromise that resolves the contrary pressures so that growth can take place.
My comments: This is remarkable in as much as Marx pondered and wrote these ideas back in the 1860s or 70s. Wilson’s book, which is one of the best histories of an ideology that I know of (i.e. an intellectual history), was published in 1940. Unbridled capitalism has lasted as long as it has only because two brave U.S. Presidents did something about it: Theodore Roosevelt when he trust-busted (took action) against the powerful financiers of his day; and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who steered this country toward socialistic solutions to the great Depression of his day. Otherwise politicians, both Democrat and Republican, but especially Republican, have been financed by the powerful rich with their lobbies and bribes, and have not tried very hard to regulate or control the enormous greed of those who seek power and money as their only goals in life. Reagan began the deregulation, at the same time running up a trillion dollar debt whose only good was to bankrupt the Soviet Union and bring an end to the Cold War. The death blow has been given by George W. Bush, who started his first administration by giving a trillion dollars to the wealthy few, and starting a foolish war that has already been the longest this country has ever fought and is still costing us ten billion dollars a month (one billion of which, naturally, goes to Dick Cheney’s company, and which means, of course, that they will see he gets his cut once he is out of office for a while). Always, those in power scare us with words like “socialism” and “nationalized,” words left over from the Red-scare to keep us from looking at the truth about our society. The chief function of a government is, to me, to secure our liberties and keep us free from attack, both without and within. But capitalism must be regulated to keep us from attack within; otherwise you are turning society over to the predators and thieves. And certain things are essential to socialize: education and health, for starters. These are just two of the things that should not be run by the profit motive, indeed, cannot be so run. There are other requirements of living the good life that do not lend themselves, or should not be, to satisfaction by profit-seeking people. There is a Biblical saying that the poor will always be with us; so, too, will the rich. But they have to be regulated. We cannot expect people whose only aim is their own wealth and power to do what is right, or even best, for the people as a whole.
Now, for the financial crisis: The government will probably bail out the wealthy people who got us into this mess because of their greed. A basic tenet of behavioral science is, reward the behavior you want, don’t reward behavior you don’t want. I don’t think we ought to reward the behavior of the financial institutions, and their executives, who got us into the mess. I know not doing so will have enormous consequences to society as a whole (or so they tell us, and they’re probably right). My personal view is that we should spend the 700 billion by pumping it into the economy where it will do some good, and help the people who will be, and are, most hurt by this huge failure of our leaders. For starters, we could double the FDIC account protection to $200,000; help the hapless home owner caught up in this terrible housing mess; strengthen Social Security so the benefits will be there for all poor baby boomers who have been deluded into thinking 401ks are truly a safe way to provide for your old age; put more money into schools and spend money on public projects to provide work for the unemployed; and lengthen the term for unemployment benefits. And, for God’s sake, really regulate the foxes that are in charge of our chicken coops.
It’s a bad, bad sign that the gap between the rich and poor has continued to widen in this country, as if we’re a banana republic. It is not true that what’s good for General Motors is good for the country, not when the worker making the cars cannot afford to by one (and, by the way, look at the mess General Motors is in; another case of greed running a corporation. Remember when they made cars built to obsolesce in three years. Thank God for the Japanese, who taught them, though they really haven’t learned the lesson, to make cars that are economical and that last more than a half dozen years). And while I’m on it, we’ve got to stop being so totally a society of consumers; there are other things in life than just material goods.
The trouble with consumerism is that enough is never enough; let’s start appreciating some of the more important things in life, our families, culture, personal growth, and, yes, even a more spiritual life.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
ALCOHOLISM
Probably the most difficult thing to accept about this disease is that it is a disease, and that the person who has it is powerless over his or her alcoholism। Which is not to say that an alcoholic cannot stop drinking, some for the remainder of their lives। But it does not mean that are not an alcoholic and will continue to suffer if they do not do something to recover from the disease. The recovery will never be perfect, but one can obtain happiness and serenity in sobriety, and the capacity for rebuilding the relationships they have destroyed; and, most importantly, grow up. No truer statement has been made than the mind and mood altering drugs inhibit maturation. Which is why, if one has been drinking for any number of years, the emotional development of that person has also been retarded. That's why not drinking alone does not mean recover from the worst effects of the disease itself. And perhaps one of the most terrible things about the disease is that it tells us we don't have a disease. And this includes those who may have an intimate relationship with the alcoholic. For its number one sympton is denial. Both the alcoholic and those intimate with the alcoholic. And, even worse, by the time the person and/or those around him or her have come to realize that something is terribly wrong with them, and the damage they do is almost beyond repair, the alcoholic is virtually powerless to do anything about it on their own. And even with professional help they will not succeed in regaining their sobriety until they feel utterly defeated by the disease and surrender their will to a god of their understanding, however feeble that might be.
Probably the most difficult thing to accept about this disease is that it is a disease, and that the person who has it is powerless over his or her alcoholism। Which is not to say that an alcoholic cannot stop drinking, some for the remainder of their lives। But it does not mean that are not an alcoholic and will continue to suffer if they do not do something to recover from the disease. The recovery will never be perfect, but one can obtain happiness and serenity in sobriety, and the capacity for rebuilding the relationships they have destroyed; and, most importantly, grow up. No truer statement has been made than the mind and mood altering drugs inhibit maturation. Which is why, if one has been drinking for any number of years, the emotional development of that person has also been retarded. That's why not drinking alone does not mean recover from the worst effects of the disease itself. And perhaps one of the most terrible things about the disease is that it tells us we don't have a disease. And this includes those who may have an intimate relationship with the alcoholic. For its number one sympton is denial. Both the alcoholic and those intimate with the alcoholic. And, even worse, by the time the person and/or those around him or her have come to realize that something is terribly wrong with them, and the damage they do is almost beyond repair, the alcoholic is virtually powerless to do anything about it on their own. And even with professional help they will not succeed in regaining their sobriety until they feel utterly defeated by the disease and surrender their will to a god of their understanding, however feeble that might be.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
MORE ON TIME/ENERGY
When you (my daghter)called last night and asked what I did with my extra time, I didn't explain it to you correctly. Other people have asked me the same question and I have fobbed them off with an irrelevent list of activities. Here is the true answer:
I had rapid aging for three months recently, from the middle of June to the middle of September. I didn't know whether it was the end-game (death) or decline into frail old age; it took Pat (my daughter-in-law)saying seemed depressed to make me realize, after thinking it over, that I was.
The depression lifted when I hit this new level, frail old age. One of the interesting things about younger people is that they don't seem to understand time. I deal with this on the Bulletin Board (see somewhere below), but shall try to explain it in a little more here.
First of all, what is time? We don't really know. Its closest equivalent is energy. We perceive energy as motion; and we use motion to measure time, which is quite relative. This is, basically, what Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is all about.
Each observer sees an event in time relative to their position in space relative to the event and their distance from the event (which automatically means it is seen at a different time by the different observer.
We measure time by movement (as I said), but it is quite an arbitrary assignment of motion. In our particular world we measure time by the spinning of our earth and its orbit around our sun.
From some other observation point, the measure of time might be quite different. For example, we have estimated, by our time standard, that the cosmos is something like 14.5 billion years old.
I, personally, believe we are in the midst of a gigantic explosion which, by cosmic standards (the largest measure of time; unless of course, you can make the case for a god that comprehends all) might have been going on for only 14.5 seconds.
Okay, let's get down to the more mundane. There is also psychological time, or time as we perceive it. To babies, for example, time passes extremely slowly (because all of their energy is going into growth,
which is why they change so much, in the first six months especially. Whic is why they have so very little energy left over to impact on their concept of
time.
Now, taking it a step forward, think of children. Remember your own childhood, when the time between getting out of school and going into the house for dinner stretched endlessly? All that energy, all that motion, a child has slows the perception of time (actually, increases it, because our perception of time is all we have in our "nows").
Over our lifetimes, time gradually slows as our energy decreases, and therefore our motion. You will begin to find this very noticeable about the age and on. From here on time (your perception of it, and therefore your actual time) will gradually speed up, until by the time you get into your 70s and 80s you can't help but notice the speedup, which is no longer gradually increasing, but rapidly increasing.
When you get into frail old age, energy, and therefore motion, dips drastically. This is what I use to call the "rocking chair" stage of life. We don't have the energy to do anything, and time just zips by.
I'm aghast at how frequently I have to fill my weekly pill box. I sit at the table doing nothing, or not knowing what I am doing, and the new digital clock I bought beeps the hour, and two minutes later beeps the hour again. I don't know where the hour went.
People ask me what I did over the weekend, say, and I can't tell them. Because the answer is "nothing," and I
can't explain it to them. No one but the elderly know what time is like when you have no energy. My, my, how fast it goes by. I turned 85 yesterday, and I will be dead before I can turn around.
One main result of this loss of energy, and therefore of time, is that it takes a might effort of the will to do anything. And I mean anything. Write,
run an errand, file two sheets of paper, clean a dish, etc., etc. Personally, tThe only thing that doesn't seem to have slowed down on me is my mouth; I
can still talk and still write in an undisciplined manner, as this entry indicates.
So, the next time someone asks me what I'm doing with all the extra time (I lost my part-time job a couple months ago), I will tell them the truth: Nothing. They won't understand it, but I'll say it anyhow. Only if you've ever had a touch of sloth will you have a chance of grasping what time/energy and old age is all about.
When you (my daghter)called last night and asked what I did with my extra time, I didn't explain it to you correctly. Other people have asked me the same question and I have fobbed them off with an irrelevent list of activities. Here is the true answer:
I had rapid aging for three months recently, from the middle of June to the middle of September. I didn't know whether it was the end-game (death) or decline into frail old age; it took Pat (my daughter-in-law)saying seemed depressed to make me realize, after thinking it over, that I was.
The depression lifted when I hit this new level, frail old age. One of the interesting things about younger people is that they don't seem to understand time. I deal with this on the Bulletin Board (see somewhere below), but shall try to explain it in a little more here.
First of all, what is time? We don't really know. Its closest equivalent is energy. We perceive energy as motion; and we use motion to measure time, which is quite relative. This is, basically, what Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is all about.
Each observer sees an event in time relative to their position in space relative to the event and their distance from the event (which automatically means it is seen at a different time by the different observer.
We measure time by movement (as I said), but it is quite an arbitrary assignment of motion. In our particular world we measure time by the spinning of our earth and its orbit around our sun.
From some other observation point, the measure of time might be quite different. For example, we have estimated, by our time standard, that the cosmos is something like 14.5 billion years old.
I, personally, believe we are in the midst of a gigantic explosion which, by cosmic standards (the largest measure of time; unless of course, you can make the case for a god that comprehends all) might have been going on for only 14.5 seconds.
Okay, let's get down to the more mundane. There is also psychological time, or time as we perceive it. To babies, for example, time passes extremely slowly (because all of their energy is going into growth,
which is why they change so much, in the first six months especially. Whic is why they have so very little energy left over to impact on their concept of
time.
Now, taking it a step forward, think of children. Remember your own childhood, when the time between getting out of school and going into the house for dinner stretched endlessly? All that energy, all that motion, a child has slows the perception of time (actually, increases it, because our perception of time is all we have in our "nows").
Over our lifetimes, time gradually slows as our energy decreases, and therefore our motion. You will begin to find this very noticeable about the age and on. From here on time (your perception of it, and therefore your actual time) will gradually speed up, until by the time you get into your 70s and 80s you can't help but notice the speedup, which is no longer gradually increasing, but rapidly increasing.
When you get into frail old age, energy, and therefore motion, dips drastically. This is what I use to call the "rocking chair" stage of life. We don't have the energy to do anything, and time just zips by.
I'm aghast at how frequently I have to fill my weekly pill box. I sit at the table doing nothing, or not knowing what I am doing, and the new digital clock I bought beeps the hour, and two minutes later beeps the hour again. I don't know where the hour went.
People ask me what I did over the weekend, say, and I can't tell them. Because the answer is "nothing," and I
can't explain it to them. No one but the elderly know what time is like when you have no energy. My, my, how fast it goes by. I turned 85 yesterday, and I will be dead before I can turn around.
One main result of this loss of energy, and therefore of time, is that it takes a might effort of the will to do anything. And I mean anything. Write,
run an errand, file two sheets of paper, clean a dish, etc., etc. Personally, tThe only thing that doesn't seem to have slowed down on me is my mouth; I
can still talk and still write in an undisciplined manner, as this entry indicates.
So, the next time someone asks me what I'm doing with all the extra time (I lost my part-time job a couple months ago), I will tell them the truth: Nothing. They won't understand it, but I'll say it anyhow. Only if you've ever had a touch of sloth will you have a chance of grasping what time/energy and old age is all about.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
MORE ON OLD AGE
Dying is a lonely business. Or, to put it another way, We die alone. And the reason is that,when you get old enough, you find the whole world you knew is gone, all the friends, all the celebraties, all the events. No one, for example, remembers World War II. Dec. 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, passed without a reference. Things change. How wonderfu. But it helps to keep your spirit young to listen to the music of your youth, keep up with the literature that is for all time, everything that lives on, even though the world changes. Even reading books is a thing of the past. The only things that survive, if you're lucky, is love. And my great love died two years ago. Ah, well. Carry on, Jeeves.
Dying is a lonely business. Or, to put it another way, We die alone. And the reason is that,when you get old enough, you find the whole world you knew is gone, all the friends, all the celebraties, all the events. No one, for example, remembers World War II. Dec. 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, passed without a reference. Things change. How wonderfu. But it helps to keep your spirit young to listen to the music of your youth, keep up with the literature that is for all time, everything that lives on, even though the world changes. Even reading books is a thing of the past. The only things that survive, if you're lucky, is love. And my great love died two years ago. Ah, well. Carry on, Jeeves.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)