02023-11-23 | Philosophy, Santa Fe, World
I posted this on Thanksgiving in 2019. I think it bears re-posting. Have a good day with your friends.
(the following are a few thoughts that went through my mind this Thanksgiving as I was snowed in. Since I was by myself I had time to write them down)
On this Thanksgiving day I want to acknowledge the gentle people. I think of the many native peoples who were erased from this earth [1], or enslaved. I think of visionaries and geniuses who were killed or imprisoned because they thought differently. I also think of women, who did not have access to education and, in too many places on this planet, still don’t. It also brings to my mind the many recluses and hermits who walked into the woods and mountains, to get away from humanity.
For millennia a brutish man could be very successful. This kind of man would offer a sense of security to a mate and could therefore pass on his genes. Because there was always a war, there was always an opportunity for a man of strength to become a hero. Those heroes might have been much more brave than they were intelligent, they were brutal, even psychopathic, but they were considered heroes nonetheless. The bully has been a pretty successful model of a human, at least in terms of Natural Selection. The gentle people paid the price, all over the world. Our genetic programming does not favor the gentle people and in many cases their DNA was lost to humanity. I fear that if human DNA was programmed by Gods, it was a junior God’s first project and he or she didn’t have a lot of experience and very little foresight.
Humans are this planet’s most powerful and utterly dominant predator. Now our survival will depend on turning bullies into gentle people. Can the competitor become a collaborator? We believe that we are better now, more civilized and less violent, but in truth we have only exchanged the physicality of swords and fists for the power of computers, the internet, and social media. The bullying is now done with a keyboard. Instead of practicing sword fighting or aiming a gun at a target, we aim zeros and ones at each other. The effect is worse. Nobody sees the wounds, there is no smell of blood. The victims live to suffer another day. The old bully wore a uniform and carried weapons, the new bully weaponizes words and monetizes data. The old-fashioned bully took his chance in a fight that he might, albeit rarely, loose. There was always that slim possibility that his victim might get the upper hand. Bullying by keyboard involves no such risk of bodily harm. Anyone can do it.
We CAN revolt against natural selection. The planet will heat up, millions of species will be erased. We need to change OURSELVES. We need to grow, despite our programming and against our programming! The great human hack of the 21st century… to become a new species, homo sapiens 2.0.
[1] Estimates, of course, vary greatly, but up to 100 million people lived in the Americas before the Europeans arrived… 90% of them were killed. While most died from the viruses the Europeans brought with them, many of them died in the most carelessly cruel way. And that’s just the Americas…
02019-12-13 | Philosophy
(the following are a few thoughts that went through my mind this Thanksgiving as I was snowed in. Since I was by myself I had time to write them down)
On this Thanksgiving day I want to acknowledge the gentle people. I think of the many native peoples who were erased from this earth [1], or enslaved. I think of visionaries and geniuses who were killed or imprisoned because they thought differently. I also think of women, who did not have access to education and, in too many places on this planet, still don’t. It also brings to my mind the many recluses and hermits who walked into the woods and mountains, to get away from humanity.
For millennia a brutish man could be very successful. This kind of man would offer a sense of security to a mate and could therefore pass on his genes. Because there was always a war, there was always an opportunity for a man of strength to become a hero. Those heroes might have been much more brave than they were intelligent, they were brutal, even psychopathic, but they were considered heroes nonetheless. The bully has been a pretty successful model of a human, at least in terms of Natural Selection. The gentle people paid the price, all over the world. Our genetic programming does not favor the gentle people and in many cases their DNA was lost to humanity. I fear that if human DNA was programmed by Gods, it was a junior God’s first project and he or she didn’t have a lot of experience and very little foresight.
Humans are this planet’s most powerful and utterly dominant predator. Now our survival will depend on turning bullies into gentle people. Can the competitor become a collaborator? We believe that we are better now, more civilized and less violent, but in truth we have only exchanged the physicality of swords and fists for the power of computers, the internet, and social media. The bullying is now done with a keyboard. Instead of practicing sword fighting or aiming a gun at a target, we aim zeros and ones at each other. The effect is worse. Nobody sees the wounds, there is no smell of blood. The victims live to suffer another day. The old bully wore a uniform and carried weapons, the new bully weaponizes words and monetizes data. The old-fashioned bully took his chance in a fight that he might, albeit rarely, loose. There was always that slim possibility that his victim might get the upper hand. Bullying by keyboard involves no such risk of bodily harm. Anyone can do it.
We CAN revolt against natural selection. The planet will heat up, millions of species will be erased. We need to change OURSELVES. We need to grow, despite our programming and against our programming! The great human hack of the 21st century… to become a new species, homo sapiens 2.0.
[1] Estimates, of course, vary greatly, but up to 100 million people lived in the Americas before the Europeans arrived… 90% of them were killed. While most died from the viruses the Europeans brought with them, many of them died in the most carelessly cruel way. And that’s just the Americas…
02019-11-29 | Uncategorized
I was invited to dinner and made bread to take with me. As the day went on it became clear that my little car might not be able to negotiate the snow that was piling up. So I stayed home. Fresh bread and Haitian rum can be a satisfying meal. :-)
02005-11-24 | Uncategorized
Very nice lunch at Terroni on Victoria Street today, not far from the Winter Garden Theater and our hotel. HERE is the menu and HERE is a map. I enjoyed the Segrato Rosso wine by Planeta very much also. Unfortunately the coffee was not illy although there was an illy poster on the wall. Nice restaurant and good food!
02023-11-22 | Uncategorized
This is a repost from a year or two ago. I set it up months ago and forgot all about it. Is it really already Thanksgiving? I arrived in Kyoto this morning, after traveling from Ise by train.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I have mixed feelings about the holiday. I like what it became, a chance to break bread with family and friends, but don’t like the origin story of this holiday – see this post about Thanksgiving from 2019.
What I find very interesting is the name of the bird that is associated with Thanksgiving, the turkey.
As Americans prepare to sit down for a national day of feasting Thursday, what some of us may be wondering is, why is our Thanksgiving bird named after a Middle Eastern nation?
Blame it on the Portuguese.
Fowl Play? The Twisted Linguistics of Turkey
I started with that article from National Geographic and then set out to create a list from a bunch of different sources:
Turkey in the US and UK
Peru in Portugal
Pute, Truthahn or Hornochse (horned steer) in Germany
Schnuddelhong (snot-hen) in Luxembourg
Dik habash (Ethiopian bird) in Levantine Arabic
Ayam belanda (Dutch chicken) in Malaya
Moan barang (French chicken) in Cambodia
Gjel deti (sea rooster) in Albania
In many languages the bird is from India:
Dinde (from poule d’Inde or chicken of India) in France
Indyk (from India) in Poland
Indioliar in the Basque language
Indjushka (Indian bird) in Russia
Hindi (from India) in Turkey
Hndikahav (Indian chicken) in Armenia
In several Northern European languages the bird’s name is derived from the Indian port of Calicut:
Kalkoen (from Calicut hen) in the Netherlands
Kalkon in Sweden
Kalkkuna in Finland
Kalakutas in Lithuania
Kalkun in Norway, Danmark and Estonia
To sum it up this very American bird, from the genus Meleagris, is called by many different names and yet not a single one of those shows where the bird actually came from.
Schnuddelhong and Hornochse are my two favorite names.
