Awareness

Do we change as we get older or do we stay the same? There are many possible answers to this question and maybe there's a unique answer for every person who makes it into retirement.

This year, on my birthday, I joined the ranks of old geezerdom. I don't feel any different than I did before, and I didn't even realize I had attained that distinction until a friend a year or two my senior welcomed me to the ranks.

Out of the blue came the hoot of an owl.

Sometimes this happens in my back yard. Sometimes in my neighborhood. Sometimes I think it follows me.

It was a very pleasant surprise - three long, slow, low hoots. A pause, then it repeated. A pause again, then it repeated again.

It calls up in me the feeling of the deep woods. Where there are wise animals, knowing old, huge oaks, and the feel of soft, moist dirt underfoot.

The woods are alive with mystery and quiet surprise. At any moment there could appear a deer, a chipmunk, or a giant, black crow.

During my working career, most of the time I worked with people similar to myself: left-brain dominant, detail-oriented technicians, aka "nerds". Most of us took pride in being nerdy.

Every now and again, I came across someone different: a "big picture" guy. You probably know the type - they usually are in management, arrogant as hell in many cases, claiming to be focused on the important stuff, with no time for insignificant matters such as the details that nerds wallow in. Numbers people they are NOT.

Diversity is an asset that benefits organizations just as surely as money in the bank. To many people, that's intuitively obvious, but you don't have to take it on faith. Scientific research has clearly demonstrated that diversity has measurable value.

Why is diversity controversial? Because our basic instincts are at war with our intelligence.

The advent of historically-themed movies and TV shows has given interest in history a tremendous boost. There are no significant historical events that have not been the subject of at least one movie. The drawback is that not every movie is historically accurate - Hollywood portrays versions of the facts that bring in the most profits, not necessarily those that are true to life.

One of my personal gripes nowadays is e-mail. Not, I hasten to add, my own use of it, but other peoples'. Use, or perhaps I should say, misuse.

E-mail today seems to be something that is uniquely capable of laying bare all the personal foibles and failings of the American public. Carelessness, inattention, confusion, disorganization, and inability to follow simple directions; not to mention ignorance of English grammar and spelling.

Travel for the masses is one of the benefits of living in the 21st century. While it has a few drawbacks, travel brings so many benefits that they easily outweigh the negatives.

For some, travel means just having a good time but there are so many other things to be gained beyond rest and recreation. And of course, it's not an either/or situation: one can easily combine all of the advantages of travel into one trip.

Facts are facts and theories are theories. It's important to understand the difference because many promoters of theories want you to believe that they are fact.

Facts are reality; they are what is, and what happened. They are absolute and the same for everybody. There cannot be more than one correct version of the facts. There are no "alternative facts".

In the age of COVID-19, scientists have been much in the news. Let's think for a minute or two about how they do what they do.

I believe in the scientific method. It is the nearest thing I have to a religious belief. But the scientific method is not really a faith because there are countless examples of its success. Faith requires the capacity to believe in something for which there is no evidence.

It is popular among many people of my generation (that is, people in their 60's and 70's) to speak of their "spirituality". People like to claim that they are spiritual. I have even been described as spiritual myself, by a handful of my acquaintances, even though I espouse a strictly rational, science-based world view. I can accept this attribution only on the basis of a definition that I read somewhere recently: "religious people do as they are told to do, no matter what is right; spiritual people do what is right, no matter what they are told".