Opinion/Editorial

 

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES

 

by James Strauss

The present is a passing condition connecting the past with the future. In fact, according to physicists, the present passes so blindingly fast that our human perceptions aren’t even aware of it. What we are aware of is our continuance through the present state and not being inside that state at all. So we humans are all constructs of our own memories and likely projections about the future we are so rapidly headed into. Is it the best of times or the worst of times? Most of humanity has some degree of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Life is that hard at most of its nodal ‘present’ points along the way. As with every single thing on this planet, in this solar system, and even this galaxy and universe as we perceive it, everything is opinion.

  • What is an atom, really? The answer is an opinion about which most physicists can’t agree.
  • What is the worth of a dollar? It’s a differential opinion held by economists around the world.
  • What is God? His existence is an opinion that is so varied that there are over three hundred organized religions around the globe constantly arguing about it, each claiming that He’s something different from what the others are saying He is.

Antonia Scalia died. Is that the best thing to have happened to decision-making, with respect to the United States Supreme Court, or the worst? Donald Trump is continuing to reign supreme over other seemingly more rational, attentive, caring and intelligent competitors for the presidential primary standard bearer of the Republican Party. Is that the best or the worst of events taking place politically today? The Pope chimed in on the elections. To what effect? Perspective is a position, not a state of mind, although, along with thought and contemplation, will certainly lead to a state of mind, which is a phrase that means the same thing as the word ‘opinion.’ To have an opinion about everything a human being is exposed to in life is to meet almost every definition of what it is to be human.

There is no right, wrong, best or worst opinion, except in the minds of other people. There are certainly poorly interpreted messages that become opinions, however. Understanding that should lead anyone to conclude that an opinion about anything must be a fluid, ever-changing gauge, free from any perspective influencing one’s state of mind. The problems humanity faces in real life simply are such that a single conclusion isn’t valid. People hold opinions about things they know are wrong, violate scientific proof, or don’t live up to facts that even they know, or are the result of knowingly taking or viewing a perspective from a place where no valid conclusions can be made to form the opinion. It is useless, for example, to attempt to convince most Chicago Cubs baseball fans that the team is lousy, no matter what the team’s win/loss record, or how long its gone on. It has proven equally useless to convince many ‘white people’ that the only difference between them and ‘black people’ is the color of their skin. If anything, the person committed to viewing such things from provably false perspectives and coming to totally erroneous conclusions, will become enraged and plunge even deeper into hanging onto an obviously damaged opinion.

Obvious to whom? Human beings find it intensely uncomfortable to change opinions once they are formed, especially over time. Most humans presume, for example, that every other member of the species would like to be more intelligent or appreciate higher intelligence when it is revealed. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In reality, truly intelligent humans serve their own success strategy best by being discreet about allowing others to know about it. If a person holds a seemingly irrational opinion about someone like a presidential candidate (and Donald Trump does come instantly to mind) then, for best survival and success results, an intelligent human recognizing a presentation about that, would remain silent. The life experiences of individuals like Da Vinci (driven from almost everywhere he ever lived), Nikolai Tesla (forced from social life to die in a moldy hotel room), Alan Turing (basically forced out of life itself) are the norm, not the exception for intelligent humans encountering general society. Humans like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Zuckerman, able to take the work of other human genius and build empires out of it, do much better than the intellects that came up with the stuff. As a life success strategy, deception and dominance work much more effectively than revelations of naked intellect. The next time you play your friend at a game of chess, cards or even trivial pursuit, you should lose the game in order to win a greater measure of social success. And leave some blanks on that New York Crossword Puzzle. If you don’t believe this, then field test that conclusion and try it out with your friends.

It is always the best of times and the worst of times. Dickens had it down pat when he opened his novel ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ with that line. He also threw his brilliant work right into the face of literary critics of the time who’d decided that starting a book with the word “it” was the kiss of literary death. How is perspective to be taken? Amazingly, the conclusions formed when evaluating the results of perspective observation are one of the few things in life that a human being can significantly change. The Chicago Cubs can be willfully loved, in spite of results, and even the results can be interpreted to be positive. This willful ability to maximize what is the best of times, and minimize the worst of times, is the single most overlooked and misunderstood part of the applied human experience.

Humans can decide what is best, and what is worst, regardless the circumstance. As humanity has come ever closer together in living life, however, it has become increasingly true that this decision (about how to view life’s circumstance), from one perspective interpretation to another, is more and more being made by others than by individual humans themselves. Most humans on the planet will never travel to Iraq, Iran, Libya or even Argentina (not to mention 190 other countries, at last count). And they most certainly won’t personally meet with any sitting president, or even any candidate for that office, yet most will form definitive perspective conclusions about almost all of those places and people. The perspectives they assume will be those assembled by other humans.

The more these systems of ‘replacement’ communications (i.e. television, cell phones and computers) are applied, and they are increasing in inexorably accelerated rates, the more remote will become any possibility of an original opinion. Dicken’s statement about the best and worst of times comes back to haunt. Is that part of it, the opinion of it, the best or the worst of conditions to have result? The word result then merely takes humanity back to why belief in God is so universal among members of the species. Humanity has no idea where it is going, little idea of where it’s really been (3.47 million of the its last 3.5 million years of history on the planet are totally unknown), and only unanswerable questions about what it’s doing in this ephemeral present it’s going through. God is the all powerful force humanity created, out of necessity, in order to explain why these overwhelmingly pesky questions remain unanswered today, and for the foreseeable future. Decisions about how the species remains here on planet earth, and how it feels about being here while it is, are humanity’s alone.
It is the best of times, the worst of times, or both together if you choose it to be.
~ James Strauss 

 

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