George Burns is credited with the line, “Age, it’s just a number.” but someone else said it first. The “. . . just a number.” thing is Word-play; it makes us feel clever but the calendar doesn’t lie and it is more than just a number no matter what they say. What Burns did say was, “You can’t help getting older but you don’t have to get old.” Burns word-play was about the way one sees themself and how being relevant supersedes age. I am 85.586301 years old today. Tomorrow I’ll be 85.590141 years and those are just numbers. I used to have a schedule and you don’t want to be late for an appointment or a duty but as I’ve grown older I have more time to think about things than I have things to do. If it had been just me a career as a full time student would have been awesome but it wouldn’t pay the bills. But now I can study history, language, human behavior and how the brain works. It’s easy with the internet. I can take notes and then study my notes, review and connect the dots. I can study the scholars who write the books and judge for myself if they are pretenders who distort a kernel of truth to promote what they want me to believe or the real deal scholars who follow the crumbs wherever they go and my heroes are real deals. When I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t sleep I can review my notes, study again. Kids are supposed to experience the joy of discovery between the 4th and 7th grade but I was preoccupied. The joy of discovery, what a profound idea. I didn’t have to be told but then I was a 25 year-old kid in Biology 101, couldn’t help myself and I’m still hooked on learning and a high probability of knowing and I want to know.
I take after René Descartes or at least I like to think I do. I think therefore I am and that is a good start. So I study, read and reread before I take notes then reread my notes. It’s like juggling and I need to keep at least 3 ideas in the air or I forget. In graduate school I wrestled with Statistics 401 but it left me with a healthy respect for standard deviations and numbers with lots of zeroes on either side of the decimal point. If I don’t keep working with them it’s easy to lose the handle. How do I get my head around a trillion raindrops from a single cloud or a membrane 0.001 mm thick?
In the USA there are about 6.5 million people age 85 or older which works out to about 1.75% of the total population. Staying relevant is a lot like pushing a rock up the hill since most of my century-mates don’t expect much from me. Many if not most of these 85+ seniors are tucked away, warehoused in facilities for those who are aging out. I have not been warehoused yet and I don’t really like the idea but maybe it’s the price we pay for living a long life.
How can I know anything for sure; maybe it’s too much to ask but given the variables we can calculate probability down to a simple ratio, either yes or no and I can burn as many zeroes as it takes. I have a wonderful education over roughly 31,237 days of both formal schooling and life-experience so in the spirit of René Descartes, when the probability of something happening turns out to be either 0.99:1 or 0.009:1 then I can know with some confidence whether or not to hold my breath.
But if I’ve learned anything it is that people respond to (passion) strong feelings long before they resort to reason and logic. I fall into that same trap and I suffer the consequence. But I know better. It may not keep me from taking the bait but if I keep repeating thee same life-lesson, eventually I default to reason. It means I have to change the way I feel about the way I feel.
If I want to boil this life down to a few absolutes I would begin with the Golden Rule. Every known religion on the planet has a premiss that equates to the Golden Rule which tells me that religion is not going to save us. Religion simply lumps us into groups who discriminate between who we reward and who we punish and it uses that leverage to manipulate its own followers. Government is a mirror reflection of religion that preaches, ‘To the victors go the spoils’ in lieu of the Golden Rule.
I take after René Descartes or at least I like to think I do. I think therefore I am and that is a good start. So I study, read and reread before I take notes then reread my notes. It’s like juggling and I need to keep at least 3 ideas in the air or I forget. In graduate school I wrestled with Statistics 401 but it left me with a healthy respect for standard deviations and numbers with lots of zeroes on either side of the decimal point. If I don’t keep working with them it’s easy to lose the handle. How do I get my head around a trillion raindrops from a single cloud or a membrane 0.001 mm thick?
In the USA there are about 6.5 million people age 85 or older which works out to about 1.75% of the total population. Staying relevant is a lot like pushing a rock up the hill since most of my century-mates don’t expect much from me. Many if not most of these 85+ seniors are tucked away, warehoused in facilities for those who are aging out. I have not been warehoused yet and I don’t really like the idea but maybe it’s the price we pay for living a long life.
How can I know anything for sure; maybe it’s too much to ask but given the variables we can calculate probability down to a simple ratio, either yes or no and I can burn as many zeroes as it takes. I have a wonderful education over roughly 31,237 days of both formal schooling and life-experience so in the spirit of René Descartes, when the probability of something happening turns out to be either 0.99:1 or 0.009:1 then I can know with some confidence whether or not to hold my breath.
But if I’ve learned anything it is that people respond to (passion) strong feelings long before they resort to reason and logic. I fall into that same trap and I suffer the consequence. But I know better. It may not keep me from taking the bait but if I keep repeating thee same life-lesson, eventually I default to reason. It means I have to change the way I feel about the way I feel.
If I want to boil this life down to a few absolutes I would begin with the Golden Rule. Every known religion on the planet has a premiss that equates to the Golden Rule which tells me that religion is not going to save us. Religion simply lumps us into groups who discriminate between who we reward and who we punish and it uses that leverage to manipulate its own followers. Government is a mirror reflection of religion that preaches, ‘To the victors go the spoils’ in lieu of the Golden Rule.
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