They say young men dream dreams and old men dream the dreams of youth. That might well be what reminiscence is all about. In the process of aging, not unlike both good and bad wine, dreams become memories subject to both aggrandizement and minimization. How dangerous is either? It may depend upon the presence or absence of an intermediate step and a well-founded appraisal of that intermediate step. The intermediate step in question is some degree of the earlier actualization of those dreams. Reminiscence (1)retells our close calls with greatness, disaster, and the in-between degrees of the same, (2)recalls who we once thought we were and who we would become, and (3)simultaneously provides entertainment for others and a reassurance for ourselves that we may continue to have access to a future with memories not yet made and reminiscences not yet given voice.
I suspect there is a degree and varying degrees of danger in reminiscence. Sometimes it feels like driving in reverse with only the view through a clouded rear window to guide one. At other times it feels like driving forward while looking back with only the backside of the rear-view mirror for guidance. The latter only works well when the vehicle is sitting in one's driveway with the motor running, the transmission in park, and the parking brake engaged. Tapping the gas pedal creates the sounds and shimmy of the perception of actual movement. This is about as safe as it gets. At least until someone takes the keys away.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Thursday, April 6, 2017
I wrapped up another read this week. The book has been returned to the local library and my notes were filed, as in "dropped in the bin." They were on top of the stack as one would expect so I was able to easily retrieve them to help write this post.
The title is The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel. It is the story of Christopher Knight who spent some 27 years sequestered in the woods of Maine in a primitive camp which he kept stocked by raiding cabins and a youth camp in the area. It is estimated that he committed in excess of 1,000 break-ins over the years, and there were only two face-to-face encounters with other persons during these years. The treatment of the story is very much in the style of Jon Krakauer and his Into the Wild, but Krakauer is much more thorough in his works, in my judgment. Finkel covers multiple facets of the story and makes use of a variety of outside resources in his attempt to get beyond the facts. The facts are relatively easily knowable. Considerable time and effort coupled with persistence and an inquisitive nature means that job gets done. The hard part is trying to ascertain the individual's motivation behind the behaviors, which can be described as peculiar at a minimum. Finkel had direct and sustained communication with his subject after his arrest. Krakauer did not. But even with that difference, Finkel was no more able to get at the internal machinations of his main character than Krakauer. The books ends with more unanswered questions than questions answered.
How is that? I suggest that this is the very nature of this "business" of human activity--physical and intellectual. One's internal workings, the motivations behind choices made and not made, and the intended consequences of one's thoughts and actions are unknowable to the very actor and thinker him or herself. To know something, we need to be able to put it into words and to be able to express it via the vehicle of language. Our thoughts are essentially internalized speech. The language, which we use to communicate within ourselves and among ourselves, is a common language. The vocabulary and grammar have been constructed over centuries. Throughout this same period of time, these have been evolving and continue to evolve. This evolution at time can render meaningless in a contemporary setting something that seemed so crystal clear at some previous day and context. What if the very place, which gives rise to the causal factors underlying one's individual view of and expression of this same place, the environment in which one finds him or herself, and the human activity which results, is so unique to the individual that the available common language is unable to communicate meaning and understanding? Language as the vehicle of social exchange and of thought and contemplation falls short of the task at hand. One is left dumbfounded, or makes believe that one knows that of which they speak, or knowingly creates figures of speech, such as metaphors, to do the best job possible in communicating whatever it is to oneself as well as to others.
Still another option might be to find/create a vehicle of communication that is so individualized and that sits outside of some commonly accepted standard, that it becomes labelled as insane. Some special persons may be able to bridge this divide between the knowable and the unknowable, which may be more accurately described as the speakable and the unspeakable. This may well be the creative genius of the great thinkers and artists, who are able keep one foot in both spheres. These individuals are able to incorporate enough of the sane with the insane, that the rest of us marvel at their genius and creativity and reward them handsomely. Even then the unknowingness communicated frightens some and excites others. Our individual response to the art of the other reflects our individual life experiences, our personalities, and our prior choices rather than any objective criteria. At this level, there are no objective criteria; we are at the level of individual mystery which is accessible only by direct experience and which is not able to be put into words as we might think about it (discuss it with oneself) or speak about it (discuss it with others).
This author's futile effort is insightful, not only as we attempt to understand others, but as we attempt to understand ourselves.
The title is The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel. It is the story of Christopher Knight who spent some 27 years sequestered in the woods of Maine in a primitive camp which he kept stocked by raiding cabins and a youth camp in the area. It is estimated that he committed in excess of 1,000 break-ins over the years, and there were only two face-to-face encounters with other persons during these years. The treatment of the story is very much in the style of Jon Krakauer and his Into the Wild, but Krakauer is much more thorough in his works, in my judgment. Finkel covers multiple facets of the story and makes use of a variety of outside resources in his attempt to get beyond the facts. The facts are relatively easily knowable. Considerable time and effort coupled with persistence and an inquisitive nature means that job gets done. The hard part is trying to ascertain the individual's motivation behind the behaviors, which can be described as peculiar at a minimum. Finkel had direct and sustained communication with his subject after his arrest. Krakauer did not. But even with that difference, Finkel was no more able to get at the internal machinations of his main character than Krakauer. The books ends with more unanswered questions than questions answered.
How is that? I suggest that this is the very nature of this "business" of human activity--physical and intellectual. One's internal workings, the motivations behind choices made and not made, and the intended consequences of one's thoughts and actions are unknowable to the very actor and thinker him or herself. To know something, we need to be able to put it into words and to be able to express it via the vehicle of language. Our thoughts are essentially internalized speech. The language, which we use to communicate within ourselves and among ourselves, is a common language. The vocabulary and grammar have been constructed over centuries. Throughout this same period of time, these have been evolving and continue to evolve. This evolution at time can render meaningless in a contemporary setting something that seemed so crystal clear at some previous day and context. What if the very place, which gives rise to the causal factors underlying one's individual view of and expression of this same place, the environment in which one finds him or herself, and the human activity which results, is so unique to the individual that the available common language is unable to communicate meaning and understanding? Language as the vehicle of social exchange and of thought and contemplation falls short of the task at hand. One is left dumbfounded, or makes believe that one knows that of which they speak, or knowingly creates figures of speech, such as metaphors, to do the best job possible in communicating whatever it is to oneself as well as to others.
Still another option might be to find/create a vehicle of communication that is so individualized and that sits outside of some commonly accepted standard, that it becomes labelled as insane. Some special persons may be able to bridge this divide between the knowable and the unknowable, which may be more accurately described as the speakable and the unspeakable. This may well be the creative genius of the great thinkers and artists, who are able keep one foot in both spheres. These individuals are able to incorporate enough of the sane with the insane, that the rest of us marvel at their genius and creativity and reward them handsomely. Even then the unknowingness communicated frightens some and excites others. Our individual response to the art of the other reflects our individual life experiences, our personalities, and our prior choices rather than any objective criteria. At this level, there are no objective criteria; we are at the level of individual mystery which is accessible only by direct experience and which is not able to be put into words as we might think about it (discuss it with oneself) or speak about it (discuss it with others).
This author's futile effort is insightful, not only as we attempt to understand others, but as we attempt to understand ourselves.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
It is good to come upon a book or article every so often that either confirms or challenges one's thinking. These experiences remind one of the value of a broad-based liberal education and lifelong learning. This is such an article:
http://religiondispatches.org/what-a-forgotten-19th-century-suffragist-can-teach-us-about-womens-rights-vs-the-religious-right/
One often hears the complaint that is phrased something like this: "The only problem with this country is that it is no longer a Christian nation." The assumption is made that the Founding Fathers were devout Christians and the documents they drafted embody Christian thought, morals, and theories of social organization.
The Founding Fathers (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine, as a representative selection) were either committed Deists or very sympathetic to that philosophy. During the Age of Enlightenment or Modern Rationalism (17th and 18th centuries), Deists did not identify themselves as Christians nor were they so identified by the various Christian sects of the day. Deism was seen as the antithesis of Christian theology and thought. These are the folks who then drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and much of the federal legislation of this era. Their roles in their respective colonies and later states found them drafting parallel documents and legislation on that level as well.
The above article points out the challenges faced by those during the Third Great Awakening (1850 to 1900), who were genuinely troubled by the absence of Christian underpinnings to the great American experiment in governance. They proposed a revision of the original documents to include specific Christian references. As they read the original documents, they clearly understood them to be irreligious to a fault. It is important that 21st century Americans understand this so that in our search for the intent and design of the Founding Fathers, we do not mistake the 1870's for the 1770's as we struggle to identify the original intent/originality of these documents and not read into them meaning that was never intended.
One might argue that the absence of a Christian component was an honest oversight by the authors of these documents. Such an argument is only valid if one ignores the conflict between Deism and the various Christian hierarchies in both the Old and New Worlds at this time. It also ignores the anti-Catholicism and the Christian denominational factionalism apparent within and among the original colonies during the 18th century. The Christian component is not there, and it is not there by design. The intent of the Founding Fathers was to found a state based on reason guided by that which they considered to be the soundest philosophy of their day. They may have been elitists or starry-eyed dreamers, but they were who they were. Whether we like it or not, we are their heirs; the inheritance is what it is. Our first charge is to do our due diligence and to understand that inheritance in terms which are aligned as closely as possible with the original intent of the authors. If we do so, I am confident we will find that the wisdom and foresight present therein are able to provide us with valuable guidance as we navigate the contemporary challenges of racial and ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, and religious sectarianism.
http://religiondispatches.org/what-a-forgotten-19th-century-suffragist-can-teach-us-about-womens-rights-vs-the-religious-right/
One often hears the complaint that is phrased something like this: "The only problem with this country is that it is no longer a Christian nation." The assumption is made that the Founding Fathers were devout Christians and the documents they drafted embody Christian thought, morals, and theories of social organization.
The Founding Fathers (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine, as a representative selection) were either committed Deists or very sympathetic to that philosophy. During the Age of Enlightenment or Modern Rationalism (17th and 18th centuries), Deists did not identify themselves as Christians nor were they so identified by the various Christian sects of the day. Deism was seen as the antithesis of Christian theology and thought. These are the folks who then drafted the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and much of the federal legislation of this era. Their roles in their respective colonies and later states found them drafting parallel documents and legislation on that level as well.
The above article points out the challenges faced by those during the Third Great Awakening (1850 to 1900), who were genuinely troubled by the absence of Christian underpinnings to the great American experiment in governance. They proposed a revision of the original documents to include specific Christian references. As they read the original documents, they clearly understood them to be irreligious to a fault. It is important that 21st century Americans understand this so that in our search for the intent and design of the Founding Fathers, we do not mistake the 1870's for the 1770's as we struggle to identify the original intent/originality of these documents and not read into them meaning that was never intended.
One might argue that the absence of a Christian component was an honest oversight by the authors of these documents. Such an argument is only valid if one ignores the conflict between Deism and the various Christian hierarchies in both the Old and New Worlds at this time. It also ignores the anti-Catholicism and the Christian denominational factionalism apparent within and among the original colonies during the 18th century. The Christian component is not there, and it is not there by design. The intent of the Founding Fathers was to found a state based on reason guided by that which they considered to be the soundest philosophy of their day. They may have been elitists or starry-eyed dreamers, but they were who they were. Whether we like it or not, we are their heirs; the inheritance is what it is. Our first charge is to do our due diligence and to understand that inheritance in terms which are aligned as closely as possible with the original intent of the authors. If we do so, I am confident we will find that the wisdom and foresight present therein are able to provide us with valuable guidance as we navigate the contemporary challenges of racial and ethnic diversity, multiculturalism, and religious sectarianism.
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Its an unclear mystery to me why the term and the concept of "political correctness" evokes such a strident reaction in so many contexts and is seemingly viewed as the embodiment of any and all attacks on the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression, and unbridled individualism.
Words do matter, despite the parental injunction that "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words won't hurt me." This well-meaning bit of advice was never intended as a license to utilize any term, from the most vulgar to the most sublime, in any and all contexts. It was offered as a cognitive strategy whereby one could look to one's better self before reacting to being verbally bullied, harassed, teased, or put-down.
"Political correctness" has become a phrase like "death taxes." The latter was chosen to refer to estate taxes in a pejorative manner and to make a statement about one's position on the topic in such a way that it establishes a defensive barrier between the speaker and the listener. We are no longer talking about one of the traditional tools organized societies employ in order to carry out its mandate to maintain order and promote the common good. We are talking about "robbing the dead" and making the lives of the aggrieved even more painful than it already is, simply out of spite as it were.
"Political correctness" can easily and advisably be restated as civility, courtesy, and respect. These qualities describing citizen interaction are essential to the proper functioning of society. Courteous and respectful behavior on my part warrants that I address you by the name, pronoun, title, race or ethnicity of your choice. I may not understand your choice; I may not make the same choice as you. I respect your individuality in the matter within ever evolving formal and informal social norms. There will be those times when I inadvertently make use of the wrong or less desirable term or simply reflect my failure to properly update my vocabulary. These are times for apologies and education--my own. We either reside in diverse communities or our homogeneous communities regularly and intimately interact within a very diverse patchwork of diverse communities. Taking some liberty with the parental injunction about "inside and outside voices," at a minimum we ought to measure our choice and use of terms for appropriateness to the immediate context in which we are speaking. Far better advice would be to make use of the politically correct term in internal and external speech and in any and all social settings.
Refusing to exercise civility, courtesy, and respect can be construed as an attempt to tilt the playing field to one's advantage and the disadvantage of a fellow traveler in this time and place in which we find ourselves and to evoke a previous time and place when our better corporate self was not always adequately in play. As citizens we are charged with the responsibility to make sure that our corporate self continues to be a work in progress and that our individual efforts fall primarily on the positive side of that equation.
Words do matter, despite the parental injunction that "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words won't hurt me." This well-meaning bit of advice was never intended as a license to utilize any term, from the most vulgar to the most sublime, in any and all contexts. It was offered as a cognitive strategy whereby one could look to one's better self before reacting to being verbally bullied, harassed, teased, or put-down.
"Political correctness" has become a phrase like "death taxes." The latter was chosen to refer to estate taxes in a pejorative manner and to make a statement about one's position on the topic in such a way that it establishes a defensive barrier between the speaker and the listener. We are no longer talking about one of the traditional tools organized societies employ in order to carry out its mandate to maintain order and promote the common good. We are talking about "robbing the dead" and making the lives of the aggrieved even more painful than it already is, simply out of spite as it were.
"Political correctness" can easily and advisably be restated as civility, courtesy, and respect. These qualities describing citizen interaction are essential to the proper functioning of society. Courteous and respectful behavior on my part warrants that I address you by the name, pronoun, title, race or ethnicity of your choice. I may not understand your choice; I may not make the same choice as you. I respect your individuality in the matter within ever evolving formal and informal social norms. There will be those times when I inadvertently make use of the wrong or less desirable term or simply reflect my failure to properly update my vocabulary. These are times for apologies and education--my own. We either reside in diverse communities or our homogeneous communities regularly and intimately interact within a very diverse patchwork of diverse communities. Taking some liberty with the parental injunction about "inside and outside voices," at a minimum we ought to measure our choice and use of terms for appropriateness to the immediate context in which we are speaking. Far better advice would be to make use of the politically correct term in internal and external speech and in any and all social settings.
Refusing to exercise civility, courtesy, and respect can be construed as an attempt to tilt the playing field to one's advantage and the disadvantage of a fellow traveler in this time and place in which we find ourselves and to evoke a previous time and place when our better corporate self was not always adequately in play. As citizens we are charged with the responsibility to make sure that our corporate self continues to be a work in progress and that our individual efforts fall primarily on the positive side of that equation.
Monday, March 6, 2017
I find it highly unusual for a Sunday morning service and Monday Morning Joe to have something in common. I don't recall it ever happening before. But then again these are not usual and customary times.
The Catholic liturgy as part of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council added a list of intercessions called The Prayers of the Faithful at the transition from the Liturgy of the Word to the Eucharistic Liturgy. They usually include pretty staid and standard prayerful requests. Occasionally, a social justice topic will be included. The priest who presided over yesterday's service, typically ad libs one or more intercessions after the lector completes the prepared ones. This particular priests often asks the Good Lord to intercede "to secure our southern and northern borders." When I think of Church sanctioned social justice issues, this particular statement (I hesitate to call it prayerful.) is hardly consistent with the Church's stance on international immigrants and refugees. It has been included enough times, that I am no longer startled by it. Yesterday, I was startled anew. Father asked the congregation to pray that our country be protected from the "shadow government." I admit that I was not paying full attention to his words until I heard the term "shadow government." I then sat up and took notice even though I was standing at the time. Routinely, I have difficulty hearing and understanding this priest despite the presence of a sound system and seemingly adequate volume. I checked with a friend and fellow parishioner after mass to make sure that I heard it correctly. He assured me that I did. He had nothing more to add by way of clarification or explanation.
This morning I was startled again as I caught a bit of Morning Joe before stepping out into the light rain for my morning walk. One of the guests asked Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, if President Trump's tweets about wiretapping speak to the suggested presence of a "deep government" within the U.S. political and governmental landscape. Michael Hayden did not deny or discount such a supposition. He chose to respond by stating that the term "deep government" is more appropriately applied to such countries as Turkey. That was more or less the entirety of his response. What does that mean? What does that suggest? Do we now have a respected former government official giving credence by way of a wink and a nod to some conspiracy theory? Does this constitute adequate grounds to move this very notion beyond theory to something with greater veracity?
The Catholic liturgy as part of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council added a list of intercessions called The Prayers of the Faithful at the transition from the Liturgy of the Word to the Eucharistic Liturgy. They usually include pretty staid and standard prayerful requests. Occasionally, a social justice topic will be included. The priest who presided over yesterday's service, typically ad libs one or more intercessions after the lector completes the prepared ones. This particular priests often asks the Good Lord to intercede "to secure our southern and northern borders." When I think of Church sanctioned social justice issues, this particular statement (I hesitate to call it prayerful.) is hardly consistent with the Church's stance on international immigrants and refugees. It has been included enough times, that I am no longer startled by it. Yesterday, I was startled anew. Father asked the congregation to pray that our country be protected from the "shadow government." I admit that I was not paying full attention to his words until I heard the term "shadow government." I then sat up and took notice even though I was standing at the time. Routinely, I have difficulty hearing and understanding this priest despite the presence of a sound system and seemingly adequate volume. I checked with a friend and fellow parishioner after mass to make sure that I heard it correctly. He assured me that I did. He had nothing more to add by way of clarification or explanation.
This morning I was startled again as I caught a bit of Morning Joe before stepping out into the light rain for my morning walk. One of the guests asked Michael Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency, if President Trump's tweets about wiretapping speak to the suggested presence of a "deep government" within the U.S. political and governmental landscape. Michael Hayden did not deny or discount such a supposition. He chose to respond by stating that the term "deep government" is more appropriately applied to such countries as Turkey. That was more or less the entirety of his response. What does that mean? What does that suggest? Do we now have a respected former government official giving credence by way of a wink and a nod to some conspiracy theory? Does this constitute adequate grounds to move this very notion beyond theory to something with greater veracity?
Sunday, February 12, 2017
It appears that the subject of these posts is often related to a book I am reading or have recently finished reading. This entry will be no exception, except that it references two recent reads: Theory and History in International Relations by Donald Puchala and On Being Human, Why Mind Matters by Jerome Kagan. Both authors are writing late in their professional careers and possibly upon retirement from those careers. They are age 78 and 88 respectively. What strikes me in these two works is the common thread that questions much of the "science" which underpins their respective chosen professions--international relations and clinical psychology. The "science" in these disciplines is not the empirical science characteristic of chemistry, physics, and fields of that ilk. The social sciences co-opted the language of the so-called hard sciences some fifty years ago in an attempt to acquire a more equal footing and legitimacy with the traditional sciences. By way of examples, social studies became social science; governmental studies became political science.
These two authors bridge that period of before and after. Puchala certainly questions the value of this change in appellation as a fool's errand. In the search for parity, his chosen profession set for itself an unattainable goal. Rather than develop its own and more fitting tools to express and evaluate the validity of knowledge in the field of international relations, it borrowed the tools of hypothesis, theory, law, experimentation, and replication from the more traditional sciences. The social sciences simply do not lend themselves to such empirical dissection. Causality with respect to the human subject, either as an individual or a group, can not be distilled to the point where a single causality can be isolated from all other causal and coincidental factors. Puchala repeatedly asked the core questions of epistemology: how do we know what we know and what is it that we know? When he distills the possible array of responses to those questions, he is left with a choice of basic assumptions upon which the varied responses are based and depend for their individual claims to validity. Kagan does not ask the epistemological questions, but he sums up his review of the state of knowledge in the field of psychology with the comment (I will paraphrase): I know a lot more than I did 40 years ago, and I know a lot more with less certainty than I did 40 years ago.
Is this what old men do? We re-evaluate our life's work and in so doing find ourselves questioning the very authenticity of the very discipline to which we committed ourselves and our efforts. I won't propose to speculate with respect to women. If I read Kagan correctly, I suspect he might say that women are less likely to commit themselves to such certainty of knowledge up front. Kagan does posit gender differences and credits those differences to biology although his differentiation is not binary. So here I sit, stand, or otherwise position myself in the 8th decade of my life and find that when I read authors like Puchala and Kagan there is a resonance between their writings and my look-back on my life and chosen profession. It is good to have company. And I also realize that one doesn't have to be alone to be lost.
Both of these authors would support the statement that absolute truth has not yet been discovered by humanity and most likely never will be. It would require a degree of perfection that is not viable in humanity. Knowledge--our access to The Truth--is a developmental process. It may well be another fool's errand to commit oneself to the search for absolute truth that can be characterized as contextually free, culturally universal, and permanently valid. It is not a fool's errand to examine one's "knowledge" (working philosophy, ethical guides, and worldview) in a never ending pursuit of a more reasoned, internally consistent, and corporate knowledge base which guides our individual human activity. When one has substantial experience to look back upon from the perspective of 8 or 9 decades, one has a mountain of real world data with which to not only assess one's past, but to plot one's future--a future which faithfully integrates that past. In the end, I am responsible only for and to my self (spacing intentional).
These two authors bridge that period of before and after. Puchala certainly questions the value of this change in appellation as a fool's errand. In the search for parity, his chosen profession set for itself an unattainable goal. Rather than develop its own and more fitting tools to express and evaluate the validity of knowledge in the field of international relations, it borrowed the tools of hypothesis, theory, law, experimentation, and replication from the more traditional sciences. The social sciences simply do not lend themselves to such empirical dissection. Causality with respect to the human subject, either as an individual or a group, can not be distilled to the point where a single causality can be isolated from all other causal and coincidental factors. Puchala repeatedly asked the core questions of epistemology: how do we know what we know and what is it that we know? When he distills the possible array of responses to those questions, he is left with a choice of basic assumptions upon which the varied responses are based and depend for their individual claims to validity. Kagan does not ask the epistemological questions, but he sums up his review of the state of knowledge in the field of psychology with the comment (I will paraphrase): I know a lot more than I did 40 years ago, and I know a lot more with less certainty than I did 40 years ago.
Is this what old men do? We re-evaluate our life's work and in so doing find ourselves questioning the very authenticity of the very discipline to which we committed ourselves and our efforts. I won't propose to speculate with respect to women. If I read Kagan correctly, I suspect he might say that women are less likely to commit themselves to such certainty of knowledge up front. Kagan does posit gender differences and credits those differences to biology although his differentiation is not binary. So here I sit, stand, or otherwise position myself in the 8th decade of my life and find that when I read authors like Puchala and Kagan there is a resonance between their writings and my look-back on my life and chosen profession. It is good to have company. And I also realize that one doesn't have to be alone to be lost.
Both of these authors would support the statement that absolute truth has not yet been discovered by humanity and most likely never will be. It would require a degree of perfection that is not viable in humanity. Knowledge--our access to The Truth--is a developmental process. It may well be another fool's errand to commit oneself to the search for absolute truth that can be characterized as contextually free, culturally universal, and permanently valid. It is not a fool's errand to examine one's "knowledge" (working philosophy, ethical guides, and worldview) in a never ending pursuit of a more reasoned, internally consistent, and corporate knowledge base which guides our individual human activity. When one has substantial experience to look back upon from the perspective of 8 or 9 decades, one has a mountain of real world data with which to not only assess one's past, but to plot one's future--a future which faithfully integrates that past. In the end, I am responsible only for and to my self (spacing intentional).
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