Category: History

Why Are We All Angry?

anger

Here in the Western World, we live in the most benevolent civilization in all human history.  The irony is a lot of us seem pissed off about it.  Odd as it may seem, a ton of people spend a ton of time complaining about our world and the collective bounty of 3,000 years of economic and social success.  Why?  There are three reasons.  I like to call them the Killer Bs.

Bewildered — Like our medieval ancestors, we don’t understand anything about the world we live in.  Face it, folks!  We’re stupid.  These days, most people couldn’t tell you the difference between an aardvark and an antelope if you put burning coals between their toes.  And it’s not just zoology that stumps us.  Common knowledge simply isn’t common anymore.  We might be able to read and write, but we’re culturally, historically, economically, scientifically and mathematically illiterate — and proud of it.  For some weird reason, smart is not a currency we use or even value.  However, without these intellectual building blocks, it’s impossible to make sense out of the 1,001 complex systems that govern contemporary life or to understand our place in it.  At least a 12th century peasant could rely on God to justify his existence.  Unfortunately, since Nietzsche shot his mouth off, we don’t even have that option.  So, unable to figure out the simple how and why of what’s going on, many people boil over with frustration and say “Screw it!”

Bored — Intellectually divorced from reality, we have retreated behind our videos screens which filter out all the complexities of real life.  This is a mutant utopia, scripted with gratuitous drama and broad music-hall comedy.  The problem is it’s all relentlessly the same: kittens have achieved maximum cuteness, blockbuster movies bust tired old blocks, and the only shock left in those “shocking finales” is a shrug.  There’s no place to go in the cyber-verse that isn’t somebody else’s sequel, prequel or reboot.  All that’s left is hours and hours and hours of looping YouTube videos, everybody “liking” everything and bum-numbing binges of “must see TV.”  Face it, folks!  We’re bored — bored to the bone — and it’s making us bitchy.

Betrayed — We may ignore it or fail to understand it, but this is still the only reality we have — and sometimes it can be nasty.  Unfortunately, when that nasty comes calling (and it always will) it’s so alien to our everybody-gets-a-rainbow existence that we think something has gone horribly wrong — and we want to know why.  Flushed with excitement at the possibility of a “real” problem, but unable to comprehend any of the nuances of it, we demand an explanation for how our society failed.  We want a  reason, and we want it yesterday.  When we don’t get it — we get angry.  We begin to see evil where it doesn’t exist, impossible plots and conspiracies, tidy theories of nefarious secrets and blame — lots and lots of blame.  Face it, folks!  We truly believe we’re being betrayed by the very institutions we’re supposed to trust.

The Killer Bs aren’t killing the most benevolent civilization in history, but they’re certainly making it unpleasant. If we could get them under control, we’d all be a lot happier.

When Harry Met Meghan (II)

harry

Are you sick the British Royal Family, yet?  Yeah, me too, but I’m such a hopeless monarchist that I can’t help myself.  Here are a couple of things that may have just gotten lost in the ocean of wall-to-wall-to-wall -to-floor-to-ceiling Royal Wedding media coverage we’ve all been enduring.  If you haven’t heard these before, go to bed smarter than when you woke up.  If you have heard them, turn off the TV — you’re ODing on purple pageantry.

1 — Just because you marry a prince, you don’t automatically become a princess.  The Brits are very strict about this kind of thing.  For example, Diana (Harry’s mom) was Diana, Princess of Wales and her granddaughter (William’s daughter) is Princess Charlotte.  Notice the difference?  In the British Royal Family, the only way to be a real princess is to be born that way, so there’s a subtle difference in title if you merely marry into it.  Charlotte’s title comes before her name because she is a princess by birth; whereas, Diana’s title came after her name because it was only an honorific.  Meghan Markle isn’t even going to get that close.  After the wedding, she will become Her Royal Highness, Duchess of Something-or-other (probably Sussex) — not a princess, at all.  In fact, even the girl who will be queen, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge isn’t actually a princess.

2 — Meghan Markle might be marrying into one of the richest families in the world, but she’s never going to see any of that money.  In fact, by royal standards, Harry and Meghan will be living very low on the totem pole, indeed.  This was one of the chief complains that Sarah Ferguson (Fergie) had when she was married to Prince Andrew — champagne obligations on a beer budget.  It’s a popular misconception that all members of the Royal family are living large on the taxpayer’s shilling.  Not even close!  Since 2012, when Parliament abolished the Civil List, the Queen and Prince Philip are the only ones who get any government money.  All the other royals, from Prince Charles to Princess Alexandra (61st in line to the throne) may have some of their “official” expenses paid for, but generally they have to fend for themselves.  This puts Harry in a precarious position.  Since he doesn’t actually have a job, the Duchy of Cornwall (Prince Charles’ estate) picks up the tab for him — everything from paying the servants to the cost of a new tuxedo.  So essentially, if Harry wants any extra pocket money, he’s got to go ask daddy for it.  This has led to wild speculation that, given Ms. Markle’s acting career, she may actually have more walking-around money than her husband.

And finally, something silly:

3 — Everyone knows that the Queen loves corgis and her last one, Willow, died very recently.  However, most people don’t know that the Queen still has two dogs, Vulcan and Candy.  They’re dorgis, a mixed breed that came into the Royal household when one of the Queen’s corgis mated with one of her sister, Princess Margaret’s, dachshunds.

Super-duper Smart People

moon

My whole life has been a lie — and so has yours!  Unless you’re some super-duper scientist, you’ve been living under the delusion that the Earth has only one moon — conveniently called “The Moon.”  You’re wrong.  Our planet actually has two moons, and the second one is called Cruithne.  You didn’t know that, did ya?  Well, don’t feel bad ’cause neither does anyone else outside the super-duper scientist community.  But wait: there’s more!  The reason you and I and everybody else have never heard about Cruithne is another bunch of super-duper scientists thought about it for a while and called “Bullshit!”  They say that this other moon isn’t really a moon; it’s a NEO (Near Earth Object) and, apparently, there are thousands of them flying around out there.  Nerd wars!

The truth is, it doesn’t matter if the Earth has one, two or a thousand moons.  Aside from screwing up some romantic song lyrics and making the horoscope people look like idiots, what difference does it make?  Not much!  The important thing, however, is we have a crew of super-duper smart people sitting around all day, thinking about smart stuff — like whether a space rock the size of a golf course is a moon or not.

Here’s the deal: 500 years ago (1518) if you mentioned the Earth revolved around the Sun, you’d have been burned as a heretic.  (Galileo and his buddy Copernicus barely missed getting the crispy critter treatment for saying exactly that — 25 years later.)  But you don’t have to go back that far.  Less than a hundred years ago, if you told people a moldy cantaloupe could cure everything from pneumonia to blood poisoning, they’d have found a straitjacket and put you in it.  Hell, 30 years ago we only had one moon!  My point is, who knows what absolute facts will be proven wrong 500, 100 or even 30 years from now?

Ordinary people, like me, don’t know anything about microbes or moons or any of the other billions and one things scooting through our universe.  We need super-duper smart people to think about that stuff and figure it out for the rest of us.  People like Da Vinci, Newton, Madame Curie, Einstein and good old what’s-his-name who discovered Cruithne in 1986.  These are the folks who, throughout history, changed the human race from a bunch of thugs with thumbs into the dominant species on this planet.  And if it weren’t for them, we’d still be dancing around the campfire and howling at the moon — whichever one you fancy.

BTW, it’s been generally decided that 3753 Cruithne is not a moon, but for a while there, it looked like we’d all be singing “By the light of the silvery Cruithne.”