TECHNOLOGY WILL EVENTUALLY KILL US

. . . and it might not take as long as you might think.  Nope, the wheels of time are spinning more rapidly than ever now, and with each turn of the wheel, we get less relevant, less useful, less of a factor.  No way, you say?  We still hold the reins because we're the inventors, the makers of al this wonderful technology.  Think of it this way, if it makes more sense to you.  We invented the car, the gun, the airplane, the bomb, and all kinds of things that were supposed to be solutions.  If we could travel about, we could get more done.  And we do get more done with cars and airplanes, but we pay a big price for it.  Cars have killed more people than all the wars we've fought, and for the sake of convenience.  Inventions of destruction like bombs and tanks and such?  Well, that's easy to figure out.  These things in one way or another have made life better for most of us, but they've also put an end to lots of us too.

And then there's the computer and other electronic gizmos that now dominate our lifestyles.  What are they doing to us?  Schools are giving up, no longer try to teach kids to write.  The average product of our school system now can write very little because he has no need for it.  All they need to know is how to peck out words on some keyboard.  They don't read well, especially if they're required to read from a written page.  It's all digitalized now, and even though that invention has made us better in lots of ways, it has also killed off something no computer can ever replace - a human being who capable of critical thinking.  Watching television or staring at a computer screen doesn't take much brain power, especially when the gizmo you're using does all the work for you.  The time is coming when actual hand held magazines, newspapers, and books will be a thing of the past.  Fifty years from now, perhaps sooner, nobody will be reading books in book form.  And whether or not you want to see it as a death sentence, it is.  Oh, we'll continue living as blobs of living matter that can research almost anything in the blink of an eye, or the flick of a finger, but we'll be cripples . . . thought deprived cripples.  Alive, yes, but brain dead for all practical purposes.

This has been happening at a rather slow pace for some time, but modern technology has even made time less relevant.  It takes much less time these days to do most things than it did just ten years ago.  Compare that to a century ago, and the differences are staggering.  The amount of information known to man increases at a fast rate now.  When I was born, it took something like 30 years for the amount of information known to us to double.  Now it doubles much faster, so fast, in fact, that it's impossible for a human being to keep up with it.  We're not smart enough to absorb all the information that bombards us constantly, but there's no need to worry about it.  The machines know, and if we need to know, then we can ask them.  Just punch a button or two, and they'll tell us.  So, do you think you're still as relevant as were your parents or grandparents?  Not hardly.

LIFE IS A CRAP SHOOT

I'm not a believer in predestination, don't think my life has any particular purpose, don't believe I was intended to be anything in particular, and I don't adhere to the belief that there's a big master plan of some kind.  Life is, whether or not we like it, a crap shoot.  The world we are born into is one of chance and constant change, and the best we can do is react to what it gives us.  That doesn't mean we should do nothing to improve our chances at success and happiness and contentment.  What purpose there is in life is made by (you guessed it) us.  We are for the most part the architects of our own purpose, and if that's destiny, I can accept that.  The key word here is probability.  In a word of chance and change, our best bet for success in life is to play the probabilities of what will and won't happen.  The most frightening thing we all face is uncertainty, and none of us can predict what will happen in the future with any reasonable expectations of getting it right most of the time.

If you study history, take a close look at what has happened in the past, you can make some predictions as to what will help make your plans work out.  If you are a careful observer about what goes on around you, your chances of successful planning are enhanced even more.  At my age, after a long life that has involved lots of experiences and a lot of study and learning, I can predict what probably will happen better than most people.  I've studied probabilities for a long time, and that has paid off for me in lots of ways.  Still, chance and changes I don't foresee often prove me wrong in my predictions.  I don't really expect a high average when it comes to correct predictions.  I'd settle for a 50/50 success rate.  I just try to make sure my rather regular failures with probabilities aren't big enough to bring me down.

My daughter is wanting to move to the small town where I live and has been shopping for a house to buy.  They've (her and hubby) have never owned a house, and they're in their early forties.  I've owned a few homes over the years, and there's lessons to be learned from ownership.  Buying a first home brings one back to reality once the shopping starts, makes you stop to consider things like . . . ah, can I really afford that much house?  So, she found a house she loved, and she loved it because it fit her style, etc.  I looked at the house, think it's badly overpriced.  It's not a house that will be easy to sell, even at a lowered price.  It's not a house you'd be able to make any money from resale, or perhaps even get back most of what you put into it.  In short, it's a bad buy.  The probabilities are all against you.  If you yield to a little reason, reality sets in, and you look elsewhere.

So another house with even more space came available, and it's a fixer-upper.  It's livable as is, but barely.  But the house is 1/3 the cost of the other, in a better location, and it shows the prospects of becoming a very nice home.  Lots of work to do, some expense, but it's got promise.  And they would like to have an older house they can work on.  Again, probabilities come into play.  Is the older house that shows promise going to cost a lot to remodel?  Probably.  Is it going to be an experience with frustration, set- backs, and unexpected things to fix?  Probably.  Is it going to be fun to work on, and rewarding at the end of the adventure?  Probably.  Can I get my money back out of it once I remodel? Probably.  Will I actually make money?  Probably.

There are buys out there where the probabilities are even better.  Find a home that's reasonably priced, already updated and move-in ready, in a good location, and a property that's going to increase in value over the years.  All the probabilities in your favor line up with a house like this.  Will I save money over the long haul paying more money for a house already fixed up?  Probably.  And you can always improve almost any house.  My home isn't old, and I'm never caught up on things that need to be done around here.  Never.  And I like it that way.  I hope to die in this house, unless of course, I come into a big sum of money and can afford to move to a million dollar home in Santa Fe.  Will that happen?  Uh, not likely.  Probabilities?  Nearly nil.

Back to the fixer-upper, good buy house.  Dealing with probabilities means taking into consideration certain accommodations and even compromises.  Like, the house will likely cost more to restore than I would like, and I must keep in check my want list and desire to buy the best.  If I spend too much on the remodel, the house probably won't turn out to be financial rewarding.  You can tear down probabilities in your favor by making poor decisions.  Don't forget your original intent, and make sure your probabilities stay high.  I've been there, done that, came out on top most of the time.  And I'm playing the probabilities that the same trend continues.

SHARING WISDOM: A HARD SELL

As a retired college professor, I should know how difficult it is to share knowledge.  Teaching isn't easy, regardless of what you're trying to teach, and it's even more difficult when you're trying to teach something people don't really want to learn.  After spending some 35 years in the college classroom, I'm convinced that most college students aren't there to learn.  They're there to punch their ticket, get a diploma and a jump on job market opportunities.  They care little about what a decent education can do to enrich their lives.  Life is difficult enough for the educated person, much less for someone who's burdened with ignorance.  You'd think, therefore, that education would be an easy sell, but it isn't.  Sharing wisdom you've acquired through education and various life experiences is even a more difficult sell.  Nobody, it seems, wants to pay anything for wisdom, and perhaps that's why we live around so many people who don't have it.

I hear a lot of talk about common sense, the ignorant person's fallback education.  Book learning can't replace good old fashioned common sense, so goes the belief is such nonsense.  And yes, it's true that a lot of people with little or no education have somehow found ways to survive using this practical knowledge.  They have this practical knowledge, this common sense, because they've had no choice but to work at acquiring it.  How smart to you have to be to drive a nail into a board, dig a ditch or post hole, fix a lawnmower, paint a barn, or do anything that requires little more than effort?  No very, that's for sure, but figuring out how to build an entire house takes something common sense can't provide - an advanced knowledge about carpentry.  The carpenter perhaps didn't learn the trade through normal educational channels, but someone had to teach him.  Few mechanics get good at it without instruction of some kind, and that's not common sense.  Wisdom, whether or not it comes from formal education or learning practical sense way, is something we should all treasure.  But we don't, at least not until we reach a level of maturity where wisdom becomes important to us.

I'm old, well educated, and wise.  Most of my wisdom comes through reading, study, and formal education.  But I haven't always learned that way, and much of what I call wisdom has been acquired from living a long time.  If you live long enough, and if you've put yourself in the path of various influences, you learn a lot just from experience.  That's real common sense, not a fools fallback excuse for not knowing much of anything else.  And as it turns out, much of what I've learned that has helped make me a wise man has come through the multitude of mistakes I've made along the way.  I've tried a lot of things, and there's no way you get good at anything without practice.  Want to be a good guitar player?  Practice, and not just a few minutes a day.  If you've got a day free to practice, do so until your fingers get sore.  That will make a guitar player out of you . . . well, almost.  You've still got to study music, develop style, hang with the good players, and go at it with determination.  Want to be a good college professor?  The same rules apply.

I've been retired from teaching now for 14 years, and I'm loving retirement.  My time is my own now, all the time I need to write novels, play guitar, build stringed instruments, do work around the house . . . just anything that strikes my fancy.  And I enjoy this time because over the years I learned how to do a lot of things.  Learning those things (and failing to learn other things) has made me a much wiser man that I would've been had I relied on common sense.  Yeah, I'd be one of those good old boys who watches Fox News, goes to coffee in the morning with other old unwise guys who talk about things they know nothing of.  I hear it all the time.  Common sense guys . . . dumbasses almost to the letter.  And now that I'm old and fairly secure and wise enough to share some important things with younger people, I have no inclination to do so.  That's one thing I've often failed at.  Learning something new just isn't something most people want, and getting wiser sure isn't on their agenda either.  I know this from experience.  I still remember the words of a wise and well-educated mentor from many years ago:  "You can't hang flowered curtains in a mule barn and expect the mule to appreciate them."

I gave up on education a long time ago, but I didn't lose faith in it.  Now that I no longer feel compelled to share what I know, I'm content with just having it.  In fact, I still feel like I don't know enough, and so the inquiry through study continues.  And when I lose interest in that, I'll be cooling down and turning stiff.

A SMART BIRD BUILDS A SAFE NEST

A smart bird builds a safe nest, but apparently all birds aren't smart.  You'd think a tall tree would be a safe bet, but cats climb trees and so do snakes and other predators.  Want your eggs kept safe?  Put 'em where the predators can't find them, and that's not easy to do.  If safe nests were in the order of things, the world would be overrun with birds . . . but it isn't.  Most of them aren't endangered, but some birds have already vanished.  Too many predators they couldn't stay clear of.  Makes you wonder if they weren't just dumb birds, but that's probably not the case.  Maybe they were highly sought after by predators because they tasted better than most birds, laid bigger eggs, or were for some reason considered a prize.   Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this analogy, but in many ways people are in the same boat with them.

Like birds, people seem to have a nesting instinct.  We want security, and most of our energies are spent trying to create safe homes.  We can't do that without money, and we can't get that without finding some way of making it.  Jobs, professions, a craft . . . that's what I'm talking about.  Earning money is all about being able to build our nests and settle in, and that's not easy to do.  Too many predators out there, too many people trying to find ways to get in our pockets.  That threatens our security, makes it hard for us to build strong nests.  Some of us overcome the obstacles and manage to prosper, but many of us don't.  Some people, like birds, just aren't as smart as others.  Some people, like birds, are more of a prize than others.

Nobody really prepares us for what will happen when we grow up and start building our own nests.  Our parents warn us about predators, and schools and other social institutions point out some of the pitfalls in life.  The problem here is that the predators are often considered the good guys in our society.  They don't look or act like predators, but they often are.  Take government for instance (you had to know I was going to get around to this).  We look to government to help us build strong nests by securing our basic freedoms.  And they do a pretty good job of this, better than most countries.  But to do that government is placed in the same position as a person.  To be secure and build a strong nest of its own, they need money.  You are the source of that money, and government doesn't miss chances at taking it away from you.  If you end up being a decent wage earner, say something like $75,000 a year, you'll end up giving somewhere around a fourth of that to government.  Depending on where you live, that might be more.  Some states and communities are tax friendly while others are tax predatory.  What this all means is that where you build  your nest can be important.

When it comes to finding good nesting ground it takes some research, and an inclination to build there should you find the right place.  Most people pay far too much to keep from having to move.  "I have roots here," I'm often told.  "I was born here, my family and friends are here, and I feel secure here."  I can buy into that, but there's no need in being stupid about it.  if your home gets unfriendly (in ways you might not notice right off), it's time for a change.  If the state and community where you live saps your income to the breaking point (high housing, utilities, taxes, etc.), you'd be wise to start looking for another nest.  Wisdom, though, sometimes comes after you've reached the breaking point.  I don't understand the tolerance of those who continue to be victimized by bad situations, and just because they're reluctant to leave a particular place.  There are lots of ifs here - if you can find a good job somewhere else, if you can accept moving as an adventure, if you're bold enough, and so on.

On the other hand (and this is important), there are lots of ifs to consider when a chance to move comes along.  Get a better job offer somewhere else?  Opportunities seem better somewhere else?  My advice is:  DO THE RESEARCH.  Check out every conceivable factor in the move.  You need to know housing costs (what kind of home can you afford there), schools, crime rate, taxes, utilities, insurance costs, etc.).  Don't jump into a move too quickly, especially if you're content where you are now.  It's good to be bold, just don't let it overrule your better judgment.  And if the move looks good, don't let home attachments hold you back.  Nest building is hard to do, and to do it right, it takes some practice.  Sometimes, it takes a little luck.

HOW MUCH CAN YOU GET AWAY WITH?

Freedom is pretty much a constant if you live in a country like the U.S.   It's constantly abused, that's for sure.  I'm getting sick of right wing spouters of Constitutional rights, those liberty lovers who have no idea what the Constitution really means.  The best case scenario here are the gun nuts who think the Constitution protects their right to own any kind of gun they want, or the way they use it for defense or recreational purposes.  I'm talking about 2nd Amendment fanatics, the badly misinformed multitude who wants no control whatever over something that is potentially dangerous.  No, that's not right.  Guns are dangerous just residing in the top drawer of your dresser at home; they're even more dangerous when someone picks it up, regardless of their intent.  What government should do about guns and how they're used is one of our biggest problems in this country, and we've fumbled badly when it comes to dealing with it.

So, I watch news reports and see where some hate group fanatic takes a gun and shoots three people.  He hates Jews, is apparently an admirer of Hitler.  What should we do about people like that?  What can we do to prevent such tragedies from happening again?  I don't have answers to both questions, but I can answer the first.  Forget about the killers rights.  He forfeited them when he shot the innocent people.  Do him in, get rid of him, and be hasty about it.  Make an example of him.  Is he insane?  I don't know and don't care.  If government in this country is unwilling to pass laws that make it more difficult for people like him to own guns, the least they can do is get rid of the users.  Protect the gun's rights if you want to, just make sure you punish the wrongdoers who use them.

I own guns, most of them pistols.  Got some hefty self-defense type pistols, too.  And I've got shotguns, rifles, etc.  Been thinking about getting a few more, but I don't hunt, and I seldom go to the shooting range.  I like pistols, but I sure hope I never have to point one at another human being.  If sufficiently provoked, there's no doubt in my mind that I could and would use it . . . and that's partly why I own guns.  I've handled guns almost all of my life, starting as a 14 year old when my dad bought one for me. And I've been taught how to use them.  But I get disturbed when I see news reports of people strapping on their pistols and heading off somewhere to defend some cause . . . like the recent stand-off in Nevada between BLM government men and a rancher and his supporters over grazing rights on federal lands.

I hate stories like this.  Here's this rancher who hasn't been paying the government for grazing his cattle on federal property, like to the tune of a million bucks in payment, and he's irate because he thinks he's got the right to just use the taxpayers land for nothing.  Most people in this country pay up willingly when the government comes calling for money (something they're good at), but this rancher obviously thinks he's special.  He's spouting Constitutional rights, but there's absolutely nothing in the Constitution that guarantees him a free ride when it comes to grazing.  Nothing.  The federal government owns about 80 percent of Nevada, and that doesn't leave a lot of land for private ranchers.  So the governments rents land to ranchers, and most of them pay up.  But not this guy, and he thinks it's his right not to pay.  He even claims he owns it, just because his family has been there a long time.  The BLM lets this guy get way behind on payments, then decides to round up his cattle . . . to confiscate them.  And then all these right wing, rights spouting, gun toting supporters show up spoiling for a fight.  A stand-off takes place, and the BLM withdraws to keep down violence (they say).  So, what should the government do now?  Just let this rancher and his misguided supporters get away with it?

Well, I think you know where I'm going with those questions.  The government won't go away.  They might back off, but they'll be back.  I'd hope that some good negotiators would come in and settle the dispute peacefully, convince the gun toting supporters to go home, to back off.  But if they won't do that, and if the rancher doesn't pay up and get in line, the government has no real choice other than to use the force necessary to enforce the law, the real law, not some imaginary law conceived in the minds of people who don't think well to start with.  Maybe they don't realize this, but when you show up toting a gun, and in defiance of legitimate governance, you're rights go on the back burner.  You may not have forfeited them, but you sure put them in jeopardy 'cause the government is plenty capable of disarming you . . . if you push it too far.

And the moral is:  be reasonable about rights.  Yeah, you've got them, plenty of them, but if you abuse the right you love so much, you just moved into suspect territory.  Your right doesn't give you the right to abuse the rights of others.  I'm a taxpayer, a law abiding citizen, and I don't want the government I live under to back off when someone threatens my rights.  When it comes to the Nevada bunch, Big Brother has already been more patient than I would've been.