{ the sounds of wind in the trees }

Recently I said bitter truth to the other of so long ago; it wasn't even small recompense for injuries done her decades old, but was terrible ashes in my mouth (talk about your Garden of Forking Paths). Perhaps I'll hear back one day; for now, I seek wisdom in silence.

So I'm always going, but now I'm taking a new direction. It's a Three-of-Wands sail-setting journey that we all need occasionally. Change is life, stagnation ain't. That this wind in my rigging comes from shame, from guilt, from regret over my twin mistakes so long ago, is yet good.

If that sounds strange, life change driven by such terrible negativity, reread the paragraph containing "I know where the stress fractures lie" in my last blog. My bitter pill is like Earthpower. Power comes from below, from being grounded.

• A grounded opponent is harder to throw.
• In Forbidden Planet the Monster came from the Id.

Three hundred better men than himself

Paedaretus, not being admitted into the list of the three hundred, returned home with a joyful face, well pleased to find that there were in Sparta three hundred better men than himself.

I was walking around town, listening to Plutarch describing Lycurgus on MP3, and heard this wonderful quote, not merely in its own right but also in the pathways it stirred my mind down. It's what I hope for the youth of today, that they'll be better than I. And that led me to thought of the future, of a better world, of better worlds.

That's what we all want for our children, for the future, right? That's not just a gadget-rich environment, and not just one where people are no longer hungry, right? So what would be a better world? Hopefully not the dead dystopia inside Joss Whedon's wonderful "Serenity", that was cinema, entertainment. But what qualities would be desirable?

I suspect that there are as many answers as humans. Just as we're different, and have different desires, we would see different futures. How boring would life be if everyone though as I do. :) Here are my three suggestions, my three wishes:

• Education not merely universal but also much, much more profound. I find that I'm only now learning how to live, learning what it's all about. Wisdom was hardfought, I'll never stop learning, but soon I'll stop. "Smarts" was a long time a'comin'; suppose I'd better understood life and myself twenty years ago? Or forty?

What I mean by "profound" is something akin to what Greg Bear leaves hazily defined in his Queen of Angels when he refers to the therapied. I understand such to have undergone a process that breaks down some of the barriers between the conscious ego and the vastly more powerful wellspring of the subconscious. Such people will have the same desires, the same weaknesses and strengths as the rest of us, but they will not act out of control, they will know what they want, and will act with a sense of purpose.

I know myself better now than I ever had. I'm not absent from flaws, from weaknesses; I know where the stress fractures lie. But these days I'm more likely to bend those weaknesses to my own purposes than to be used by them. But I'm only an amateur at self-learning. There are undoubtedly three hundred better than myself, and that's a good thing.

• I'd also like to see the definition of humanity considerably enlarged. What troubles have we had for thousands of years over the pitiful differences between ourselves? I speak of such evils as discrimination over race, religion, & sex (both biological and that of partner preference).

Will we have those kinds of difficulties with the other when we meet someone really different? I tend to borrow Gene Roddenberry's IDIC philosophy, and think that we will be enriched when we meet others. Some will be dangerous, no doubt, but some will be our friends. And all will be different. And where might these come from? I suggest:

1. We meet them "out there".
2. We discover them right here.
3. We invent them.
4. We become them.

The first is the traditional "aliens", from hundreds of movies and tens of thousands of books. But of course, all of these are (so far) fictional, they merely reflect the thoughts of the writers. The reality will doubtless be quite different.

And are there any others out there? That seems one of the most ludicrous questions I know. Looking upward at night shows these points of light; stories can be played out in their patterns, but there's little hint of the real grandeur. Get a small telescope, and suddenly there's no end to the lights in the sky, they're beyond description, beyond complexity, strange and hopefully wonderful, but you need some of the knowledge that others have spent lifetimes on, in order to know what you then see.

Luckily, we have access to really big telescopes these days, and can see much more of what's up there. Can anyone really look at the approximately ten thousand galaxies of the Hubble UDF and say that we're the only intelligent life in the universe? We strut and fret our hour upon a stage of size incomprehensible. It's inconceivable that we're the only players.

The second, well think, how do you know that we're the only intelligent species here? Whales have brains bigger than we do, sing symphonies we cannot understand. Crows and octopi both use tools. Gray parrots and great apes can, I believe, run computers. Perhaps we'll engage in an Uplift one day, as David Brin imagines over several books, and we'll raise one of our fellow species up to obvious equality.

The third, is perhaps the most problematic, on several levels. The thinking machine has been a staple of sci-fi for generations, but is it possible? I tend to hope so. But controversy abounds. Perhaps anything that can be constrained by logic, by rules that humans can comprehend, perhaps the constraint itself denies intelligence, denies ego, denies self. And let us hypothesize that we do succeed in inventing the other one day. There will be ethical questions. Is it murder to reboot it? Is keeping it "captive" a slavery? At what point will it be an equal citizen?

And that last point comes from the wondrous space-opera Orphans trilogy of Sean Williams and Shane Dix, and is at the heart of my "definition of humanity". "Engrams", personality copies of originals long since died, go to the stars in tiny spacecraft as processes running on computers; there's no inside to the craft but for devices, no biology there. To the crew members inside, it's a totally real and very malleable experience. You want the bridge of NCC-1701D? Piece of cake, it merely becomes part of the shared illusion that the virtual crew experience.

But sci-fi aside, the point of "Echoes" for me is that, contrary to what you've heard, humans don't come in all sizes and shapes. None of us are suitable to go to the stars in a few cubic meters of technology, and none of us can be yet cast into unfamiliar biological packages in order to better live immersively on other planets close to home. We don't even come in green & blue (I'd like to be teal, myself :).

• And I want us out there, out among the stars, so that we're not subject to a "single-point failure". We already and only live on the best of all possible worlds. But Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said it first, "Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever."

This is a nice planet, but we don't want to be resident only here, we need to spread out among the stars. Suppose a really big rock falls on us, or some other natural phenomenon sterilizes the surface of the earth (there's suspicion that the mass extinction of 439_Myr ago was caused by a very, very high-energy pulse that cooked off the ozone layer, then let the sun's UV sterilize everything on land and in the upper layers of the ocean). Or suppose we just foul our own planetary nest.

I like humanity (some important names for me: Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Claude-Achille Debussy, Dan Simmons, Gautam Siddhartha, Gene Roddenberry, Greg Bear, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Jesus, John Varley, Joseph Michael Straczynski, Linda Nagata, Ludwig van Beethoven, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Patrick O'Hearn, Philip Glass, Roger Zelazny, Tony Hillerman, William Shakespeare, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). We're a good species in many ways. I believe we can accomplish great things in the trillions of years left in the Stellar Era. But we need to survive, to not go extinct. We need to be out there, and when we go, we won't all look like we do now. When will we dump stupid prejudices based upon mere appearance? When will we learn to rejoice in the other?

The Train of Thought has Definitely Left the Station

The idle mind can fugue wonderfully, chain together disparate memories, create skeins to marvel at. I'll inaccurately and incompletely reconstruct over my cup ("tea, Earl Grey, hot") what I've been thinking over the past few days.

A few days back was the first anniversary of the death of New Mexico friend Bruce Watson. I had thought death by misadventure (probably despondent, playing with firearms), but Memory Alpha now says suicide.

That got me further investigating the deaths of favorite characters, where I cross-connected to Babylon 5 characters I've enjoyed. I'm pleased that the excellent Walter Koenig, the frequently miscast (IMHO) Gary Cole, the stunning Clayton Rohner (from just the one episode, Too Short a Season), and the very talented and sexy Patricia Tallman are still with us. But I was saddened to discover that Ward Costello and Andreas Katsulas (and others I might re-find) are gone.

Costello died last year of stroke-related complications, at age 89. That's completely understandable; evolution has no further use for us once we're beyond prime child-bearing years (men get a "break", extended time to procreate, but paradoxically it would seem that women actually have better construction, last somewhat longer). I hope he lived a full life, left satisfied.

Andreas Katsulas is however another story  Katsulas, a heavy smoker, was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in early 2005. He lost his battle with the disease on February 13, 2006, at the age of 59. No more G'Kar, no more Commander Tomalak, only a life cut short....

That reminded me that my foster brother the doctor. After my parents had passed, I reached out to him, tried to establish bonds. But he was never close to me, he wasn't even warm toward his own children. I used to say that he had received the wire mother, but only a few minutes of web research convinces me that the cloth ones weren't in the end actually any better.

Whatever, he was like Katsulas a heavy smoker. He knew better, but perhaps was unable to break the habit. Googling for nicotine and heroin addiction suggests what I was taught long, long ago, that it's harder to break a nicotine addiction than a heroin one [for one thing, you can't buy a pack of heroin at the grocery store, for another, individual (USA) states don't have a pecuniary warping of morality over the collection of huge taxes from the sale of heroin]. He died three years ago at age 79, at a hospice and in great pain from lung cancer.

And then there's a lover of decades ago, one of my Big Mistakes. I wish her well in Minneapolis, hope she's happy, and desperately wish that she might give up smoking. The last time I saw her was years ago in California, and the premature aging, the lines showed in her face. I've seen that kind of face before, in my Aunt Thelma who was also a heavy smoker; she passed quietly, but not before having years of wracking pain caused by constriction of peripheral blood vessels, and subsequent amputation of (I believe all of) her toes.

All this, above, intersected in my mind with the poor showing that BP is making in the Gulf, the slow-motion tragedy that will affect us all for decades. Tony Hayward does not bear ultimate and solo responsibility for that; such a dubious honor belongs to the Board of Directors of British Petroleum.

These two trains of thought collided (no survivors), and I began thinking about tobacco as poison, a legal poison produced by great (I mean "large" and not "laudable") corporations run by boards of directors. Perhaps fifty years ago such powerful men and women could have precariously thought themselves to have clean hands. But there can be absolutely no doubt any more; tobacco causes cancer, and brings about early death.

I don't understand how such things can have a good night's sleep, knowing that they are directly responsible for the killing of millions of their fellow humans.

Let me be clear about this. Rare is the product that doesn't have some side-effect, some danger.  Two quick examples are economical food that will probably involve "easy" (read "cheap") pest management, easy production, and easy distribution; along with the food you may get herbicides, pesticides, and other "added ingredients" that don't necessarily add health to the consumer.

And the international travel that's part of knitting us together into one humanity involves jet airliners; they're rapid and very safe travel, but the environmental cost of the fuel is relatively high (this is a huge topic, it's very difficult to compare plane, train, car, whatever, so this is definitely IMHO), and very occasionally things can go horribly wrong.

However, we can choose to buy prepackaged food, and choose to fly in aircraft.  There are benefits and risks, and most of all, there's choice. Tobacco does not work this way. The only consumer "benefit" is the temporary surcease of addiction cravings, the cost is an ugly and early death, and once you're hooked there's little choice.

But perhaps there's a chance for wisdom here. Corporations can learn, can change, just as individuals can. There's no reason why R J Reynolds, Philip Morris, Lorillard, and a host of others can't begin to turn away from this evil. It will take their recognition of the direct link (perhaps a private recognition, but whatever), then abandoning the seeking of "replacements" (no more advertising, no more "freebies", no more expansion into the Third World), then movement of corporate goals toward other products (easy to imagine, just switch to making products that are good for people), then finally the abandonment of tobacco (presumably because all those addicted have died off).

The only sure way to end nicotine addiction is to have all those who are addicted die, and no more take up the habit.

This could be done, perhaps When Pigs Fly, but perhaps sooner.

The final thread that makes up this skein is an article I ran into over the weekend, wherein Warren Buffett gives My philanthropic pledge. A very, very rich man who thinks of the rest of humanity is a rara avis indeed, someone to admire and emulate. I already try to share of myself, but alas my gifts are considerably smaller, giving of myself to friends, helping the bum on the street, giving blood frequently (that never-met strangers might live), that sort of thing.

So perhaps there's hope after all, that the scourge of tobacco will one day be merely a footnote in history. And Andreas Katsulas et al. will have suitable memorials, that no more will pass as they did.

How Time Flies (stop my mind from wandering, where it will go)

Casting my thoughts into eternity is more difficult than it looks; I wonder who you are, reader. In a way, this must be what authors face. They get no respect, or other feedback, from their readers when they're deep in the dark night of the soul.

I've been seeing a lot of bad news (almost always, that's the only kind of news...) lately.

• BP is facing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Greece is in upheaval over European conditions on debt assistance.
• We continue to "have the best congress money can buy" (satirist Mark Twain said that) that's obsessed with re-election at all costs, "all other considerations secondary" (Science Officer Ash, from the 1979 movie Alien); I see no candidates anywhere for an updated Profiles in Courage.
• A Lacrosse relationship went horribly wrong.
• And then there's that "nut" who tried to non-bomb Times Square.

When I see all that, I tend to turn inward. I cannot solve the world's problems, nor even my elderly neighbor's, but perhaps I can make a difference with my own.

I faced a local rejection, but as it was a polite one I tried to respond in kind. I argued my case, then carefully reiterated the rationale behind the other's rejection, accepted some of it, and decided to go to work on the latter for my own purposes. Anyone who believes they're infallable, probably isn't.

So I'm going to the gym more often than before. Weight loss..., seems elusive so far, but I'm converting something to muscle, and that's a good thing. Long life seems dependent upon many factors, but two of them are a strong immune system, and a strong body in the more traditional ways. As attributed to Groucho Marx, Joseph Heller, and probably many others, I plan to live forever, or die trying.

And I continue to reevaluate the rejection. Perhaps I don't want to belong to that club, if that's how they treat newcomers. The rejector clearly is not of my kind.

I'm a big anti-fan of Digital Rights Management, where content owners have all the power and I have none. So I have only a first-generation e-book (the manufacturer for "Rocket eBook" devices is now defunct) mostly loaded with public domain books. And I've been buying books lately ("When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes" - Erasmus), some paperback, some hardcover to "upgrade" my library. Not only do they actually belong to me, but there's still a brisk trade in used books, indeed I can give away my books to friends & strangers. That's another thing that DRM has taken away from us.

Lately I've been re-reading my favorite story on the Rocket eBook, Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" (you may enjoy this directly on your computer, at dagonbytes). Randolph Carter dreams of the Golden City three nights running, but is not allowed to approach it. He petitions the local gods of Unknown Kadath, and that really shuts the dreams down. So in desperation he resolves to journey to Unknown Kadath, the more direct approach if you will, a quest.

So last night I saw The Jane Austen Book Club and liked it; I may explore Jane Austen next (her books have been out for a while, no DRM here).

And I seem to frequently dwell on people I've known, friends & lovers gone over the Event Horizon. I feel a deep debt to some, but there's no going back, neither alternate fork in the road nor thanks (for a few, anger instead) to give. So I try for the wonderful philosophy from Pay It Forward; I try to do good to others in their honor. What goes around might not ever come around; it's not a circle, you can't go home again. But perhaps it's a never-ending spiral.