Humans…

We have are often kind and good and wonderful.

We are often unfeeling, stupid and mean.

And those are often the same person.

I follow a young couple on Twitter. The man has a life threatening blood cancer and is in the middle of having all of his immune system killed by chemo so he can get a stem cell transplant. Its a dangerous and terrible process. But happily it works quite often.

Today, the young woman was so upset she went outside and started to cry. A woman she didn’t know came up and hugged her. A man she didn’t know shouted at her as he walked by on his cell phone “Cheer up, it might never happen.” and then kept talking on the cell phone.

The man’s response was callous and tone deaf to a say to a woman standing in front of a Cancer Clinic. The woman’s response was exactly what our heroine so desperately needed the silent reach of universal support.

The man’s response was not intentionally unkind. He saw a woman crying and responded. He didn’t need to. No doubt dozens of people walked by and averted their eyes. The problem is that most of us really don’t know what to do in these situations. I certainly don’t. I am not a hugger. The thought of hugging a stranger is NOT pleasant. And what our heroine found comforting would have been uncomfortable to me. But I also would have been deeply angry at that comment made by the man.

No one knows how someone else will respond to their well intentioned support. And many of us just shrink from having to provide any because it may be more destructive than not.

Lab Grown Meat

Scientists are growing meat in labs. They are taking stem cells from a cow and then growing the muscle cells. It’s still in very early stages. But it seems like a likely solution for some of our basic problems of providing food for our future without killing our planet and ourselves.

It also seems vaguely horrific so far. Certainly if you watch this brief video it doesn’t seem appetizing. But that is to be expected. It’s early in the development, the only thing they have is tiny strings of white “meat”. It’s white because there is no blood feeding it. It probably tasteless because there is no fat cell accompanying it. It’s early. But it is a demonstration of possibility.

The implications of this are far reaching. Literally. Imagine taking such a kit to Mars to feed the inhabitants there. The fact is that if you can clone meat, you can also clone the wheat and vegetables. And voila – we have solved food in outer space.

Cloning meat will eliminate a huge amount of greenhouse gases produced by raising animals for food. This is good. It will eliminate the horrific way we treat animals in giant factory farms and slaughter houses. Fewer and fewer family farms exist anymore and with their loss came the terrible cruel treatment of animals in the name of efficiency.

But Lab Meat is also very sad to me. The food we eat is more than the cell. It’s the particular combination of cells that make it taste good. A strawberry grown in hydroponics tastes different than a strawberry grown in the ground in your garden. It’s because the plant, and therefore the fruit, is absorbing a different set of nutrients. There is also a different set of stresses on the plant, which I would guess would make the plant change slightly. Even after they perfect their meat cells and combine it with the appropriate other cells of fat and blood, the lab grown food will almost certainly lack that earthy good flavor of food grown normally. We will be missing something important to the enjoyment of our lives.

Also, because humans are humans, people with money will be able to buy “real” food and people without enough money will be stuck with Lab Meat. It is always the the way.

I don’t suppose that is anywhere near the immediate future though. I expect to be dead before Lab Meat is perfected and so broadly available. And for once I’m grateful that I won’t be around to see the future.

We all change

But it’s worrying.

What if future me is someone present me wouldn’t like? What if I stop caring about what other people need or think and just care about me?

How do I stop that from happening? Should I write down what I am, what I believe right now and make sure I adhere to it like a religious fundamentalist adheres to their holy book?

Should I really stop change and thought from happening? Because it isn’t like present me is the President of All of the Mes who will ever be. I don’t know anything about future me, but maybe there are things I don’t know that make future me the right me. Although I cannot imagine a future where not caring about other humans is ever a good plan…

Any strict adherence to one ideal stops me from thinking, doesn’t it? I don’t have to think through an issue because I have it referenced in black and white. There’s the answer of how I think.

Ultimately, I think I will risk my possible evolution away from things that are important to current me in order to maintain my ability to think through and consider myself in relation to the world at ever stage of my life.

In the muddy middle

I’ve been struggling this weekend with my depression, all the while contemplating hopefully a possible path to having ECT to treat it.

Depression doesn’t usually conjure images of hope but somewhere in the mire of stillness is this small ray of hope.

See, that’s the thing about depression and life in general. Nothing is ever entirely one thing. We are never really living in extreme in our head, but we feel compelled to describe our thoughts and feelings and opinions that way.

We see any sort of contradiction in thought or emotion as being hypocrisy or making a statement false. We have fallen into this binary world where everything must one thing or another, when in fact, very little is actually just one way.

Life is not clean. Its not divided simply into halves for us to choose. Its a big field of possibilities and many of them can co-exist inside our heads, inside the world.

In morality, most of us would condemn murder. But we have all recognized at least once some situation where a murder seemed justified. The father who beat his child’s sexual molester to death, the idea of sending a time traveling assassin to kill Hitler…. Somewhere, at sometime you have considered a murder as not contemptible.

In politics, most have some kind of bias as liberal or conservative, but when you talk to individuals, they will often identify in some fashion with platform position of the other guy. Many liberals feel the government should be more monetarily conservative. Many conservatives have positive feelings about gay marriage.

Take something that is objective. The colors black and white. Except. No. The human brain decides a color based on context. So that colors stop being exactly one color. They change based on context. Remember the dress?

There is no right or wrong. There is no liberal or conservative. There is not even black and white.

We need to stop pretending that life is a T/F test. It’s not. Extremism is fueled by this thought that every question has a clean simple answer.

As humans, we would be far better off if we recognized that life isn’t clean. Its a big muddy mess. And inside your head are lots of ideas that don’t necessarily seem to belong together – but they exist there anyway. And that is OK. Because that is the way life is. Complicated.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. ~Walt Whitman

How much do you suppose Trump paid to avoid being exposed by that data dump?

It’s just odd that there are no Americans on the list. And odder still that a sewer dweller like Trump isn’t somehow exposed by it.

But I suppose it’s possible that he just didn’t use that company to set up his shell companies.

Still, it’s too bad. It would have been fun to see his name on the list. Instead the President of Iceland. The one place where I thought the good guys were winning. Nope. Corrupt.

Probably Bernie Sanders is holding some sort of shit under the rug. It seems impossible to survive that long in politics without being dirty.

If you are confused. Go here.

Happiness and Compassion

3 years ago I was homeless and obviously deeply unhappy. And that was when I found out something about myself and maybe about all humans. I was less generous and less compassionate when I was homeless.

I was more willing to contemplate harming someone to gain an advantage of safety or money. I was more willing ignore the needs of other people to my own advantage.

I was aware of this and I didn’t like it in myself. Because I was deeply non functionally depressed, which by its very nature made me unable to really change much, it was hard to grapple with this sudden change in what I considered my essential personality.

I have always considered myself compassionate and empathetic. I consider inclusion and participation and caring to be the very foundations that have positively changed the world. But when I was unhappy and afraid and my existence felt threatened – I was NOT compassionate. I was selfish and self centered.

As my life improved, I was able to refocus myself on what I still consider to be my true self and that horrible willingness to hurt people to gain an advantage disappeared.

We would do well to consider that when we look around the world and see so many acts of violence and senseless emotional pain inflicted by one human on another. All humans are complicated messes of emotions driven by both outside factors and internal damage. It is very easy to condemn those who steal or hurt people. They are wrong.

But they are also suffering, those people who cause so much pain.

Perhaps, instead of condemning them and ostracizing them and creating nightmarish prisons, we should consider how we can help them. Because the rock bottom of the world is not the place where you create productive and compassionate people. It’s the place where you create monsters.

P.S. I’m late on this – I just couldn’t help but say this when I read the prompt on 1000speak for compassion.

Experiencing Art

I mean that as more than just going to a show and staring at Paintings. That is experiencing it, and that used to be how I thought it was to be experienced.

And then in early 90’s I discovered a different type of experience. Something that was more immersive. Something that touches you more deeply and that sears itself into your memory as a result.

I went to visit the Dale Chihuly exhibit at Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center. Its nearly impossible to describe it. Chihuly put together an experience for his viewers and then he forced them to feel it. You walked into a long tunnel where the very low ceiling and the walls were completely filled with individual shaped sculptures. Each one part of a collective whole that was the piece of art. Each individual piece was lovely. But that wasn’t the art. That wasn’t the experience. The experience was wandering quietly through a multicolored hall without an apparent end, with colors almost floating in front of you. That was a moment when I stopped thinking about anything but the moment. I was there and nowhere else. All of my brain was focused on experiencing that moment. dale-chihuly-artist038

Many years later I went to see the Bellagio’s ceiling piece, because when I describe that exhibit to people they always mention it, but it’s just a faint thing – too high, and not immersive.

I also went to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg. Not too long after it opened. There was a room there, filled with enormous silver pillows that floated. You walked into the room and you could play with the pillows – hit them about and just be part of the art. It wasn’t crowded that day and there was only one other person in the room. Everything stopped in that room. It was a simple silly thing, but I stopped worrying about being late, I stopped wondering about lunch, I stopped thinking and I was just pleasantly in this place – with silver balloons. 1479035742_ba1677d6fc_o

That is the gift of experiencing art in an immersive way. It removes you from the observer and makes you part of the magic. A magic you will remember for a lifetime.

The person who magnetized the screwdriver

THAT person deserves a Nobel Prize.

Possibly the Peace Prize.

The total level of aggravation that was reduced in the world by this one small innovation was immense. Awkwardly placed screw hole destined to make humans scream in frustration. Fixed by magnet. Dropped screws rolling into deep black holes previously unknown in the home. No longer an issue.

When was the last time your life was that impacted by the Nobel Prize winner?

Never.

But the person who magnetized the screwdriver. That person. A HERO. A Damn Hero.

Demeaning People with Mental Illness

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported on yet another Veterans Administration scandal. The local facility was manipulating the appointment wait times by taking every appointment and then cancelling appointments last minute because they couldn’t accommodate the appointments they took in order to prove they had no wait time.

The article highlights that one veteran attempted suicide after his mental health appointment was cancelled for 4th time. The following is an excerpt from the VA’s report:

“the veteran stated he used the cancellation of his appointments as an excuse to act out and attempted to harm himself. He said he regrets his actions and that he received help and now has follow-up appointments.”

What the ever living fuck? EXCUSE???? NO. Just NO. A person who is attempting suicide should not have their actions shamed with the term EXCUSE. Nor to have the term “Act Out” used in relationship to those actions. Act Out. A term often associated with misbehaving children.

Do they say that pain caused by mental illness is a childish behavior? Apparently Yes.

Do they say that resultant condition of suicide attempt is an aberration of bad behavior and therefore must have an EXCUSE? Apparently Yes.

People need to recognize that mental health is not just bad behavior or character traits. It’s a serious disorder of the brain. And its deadly. And treating it like it’s just a character flaw that should be apologized for is just make it worse. It is demeaning and part of the culture of shame that makes people hide their illness rather than seek help.

The problem of the VA’s appointment manipulation is bad. But the hidden and far more insidious problem is that they are treating potentially fatal illnesses like they are bad behaviors in children.

I don’t even have enough calm of mind to describe how wrong this is.

Lost: Sense of Humor

I don’t get April Fools. It’s a variation on practical jokes that I also don’t get. But stupider – because of course we all get that its April 1st. so….

I don’t think I have ever laughed at the implausible, the elaborate, the stupid, the mean or the subtle lies that get told in the name of “good humor”.

I’m not sure what its point is. Indeed, no one is even sure how we started doing this particular tradition. Scholars speculate, but no one seems quite sure.

I suppose it’s good in that it’s participatory and it reinforces those group bonds we have when we all agree that this is a thing we do at a particular time. But I find it particularly pointless.

Its only agreeable trait is that it doesn’t appear to be commercialized the way so many of our holidays are. It truly is a non-money making celebration. If celebration is what you would call a world wide day of tricking people.

Anyway. Enjoy the day. I guess.