1. Contents
2. Evanescent
3. Graceland
4. The Deer Hunter
5. The last Anser Erythropus
6. Have a Cookie
7. Canada Geese
8. Vanished
9. Pote Voudas pote Koudas
10. Betrayal Trauma
11. Stumpy
12. Regrets
13. At ALDI
14. Leaving Las Vegas
15. Inside four walls
16. Father Karras
17. Transformative Suffering
18. The value of money
19. Escape from reality
20. Haves and have nots
21. My IQ
22. One-trick Pony
23. Twisting the fabric of reality
24. Words and Years Lost
25. Crying all the time
26. Runaway
27. Universal Human Traits
28. Richard Brautigan
29. Occam's razor
30. Amazon
31. Elder Paisios
32. This will never happen to me
33. Artificial Intelligence
34. I'll figure it out
35. On lying
36. Two monkeys

EVANESCENT

For context, in the year 2026
I am a sixty-seven year-old
retired professor
living in the rural Mid-Atlantic part
of the United States.

I call my old or new self Phaedrus
and sometimes I also call others
Phaedrus or Phaedra
as a manifestation of affection
or term of endearment.

I was born and raised in Greece
and came to the United States
to pursue graduate studies in Engineering.
Then I stayed.

I speak English with a moderate
Greek accent, though I communicate and write well.
Some people think I have a German accent.

The wisdom of my decisions has been
the subject of a never-ending internal debate.
I have met a lot of kind people,
I have also met a lot of unkind people.

When I was young,
I had no idea that pride, prejudice,
and greed existed.
I was incredulous to see it later in my life
as I transitioned from an innocent child
to a grown-up adult.
It still puzzles me that we spend so much money
to make extravagant movies and cars
while there is so much poverty and hunger on the globe.

Now I am neither young,
nor able, nor prepared
to embark on new adventures.
I am in failing and worsening health
and suffer from severe chronic pain
and other ailments.
However, I do not like to complain.

I have lost my youthful and middle-age looks
and own precisely one pair of Walmart shoes.

A wise professor of mine in Greece once told our class
that experience is the lack of ideals.
Each and every experience chips away an ideal.
When someone refers to another person as experienced,
they really mean they lack ideals.

I keep my new experiences
to a minimum so that I do not lose whatever
ideals have survived inside of me.

I believe in God and fear his retribution.
I am a Greek Orthodox Christian
but do not attend church.
I pray in private when I am in a state of
unbearable grief and despair.

I am overweight for reasons I don't understand
(I eat less than 1K Kcal a day
and some days I don't eat at all).
I have managed to hold on to
a fair amount of hair
that is rapidly turning white.

Despite my physical weaknesses,
I am still able to replace the drive shaft
on a John Deere four-wheel-drive tractor
with Phaedra's help.
Jobs and tasks that require two people
I can usually complete alone
in spite of my severe chronic pain.
Then I have to rest for hours or days.

I am thankful for the many good years
I have had.
The bad years could have been much worse.
Some years were better than others.

I am spending the last years of my life
thinking and trying to make sense of
what I have encountered,
what I have done wrong,
and what I have missed.
I have made a lot of mistakes
and I am ashamed for a lot of things
I have done or said.

However, I have never mistreated anyone,
I have always wished everyone well,
and I have given everyone
the benefit of the doubt.

I have loved several people
deeply and unconditionally,
no matter how much they might
have hurt me in the end.
Like Chester sings: It doesn't matter
in the end.

My favorite mental exercise is attempting
to get into people's mindset and explain
why they act the way they do.
This is not an easy task,
especially for people who have been misled,
have been misguided,
lack empathy and compassion,
or suffer from other mental disorders.

Some people are endowed naturally with
the supreme quality of compassion.
I belong to this group of people.
Phaedra does too.
My dear friends Amity and Katerina do too.
Others have to work on acquiring it
and learning how to share.
Yet others are hardwired not to feel empathy.

I have been helped
by Internet strangers I never met.

I have received minimal to no help
from humans in real life, which I don't mind.
No one owes me anything in real life.

A few neighbors have offered to help
when they saw me struggling.
Recently, neighbor Erin
helped  me move a huge log
to the side of the road.

I get easily scared
and I wake up from terrifying nightmares
each and every night.

I beleive there is absolute morality and truth.
I often repeat to myself Robert M. Pirsig's words:

"And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

Morality has its roots in the
upper strata of conscience.
Violating your own moral code
damages your own conscience,
sometimes irreversibly and forever.

It is best to be kind and considerate,
love yourself and respect others,
and stay away from people
and institutions
that are likely to negatively affect your pshyche.
However, do not be a martyr without a cause:
do not set yourself on fire
to keep others warm. 

Jordan Peterson said that
to feel things deeply
is both a blessing and a curse.

Feeling things deeply hurts after 
institutional or human betrayal.
If you don't feel things deeply,
you will live an empty life
that you will attempt to fill
with meaningless activity (do not recommend).

You never know what kind of trauma
people carry inside them
and what triggers the trauma to reappear.

Please believe me when I say that
all the money in the world
will not help you
when you get old.
Perhaps you will be placed in a better quality
nursing home that offers gourmet food
that you will be unable to taste.

As you get old and your senses diminish,
the taste of sweet remains the longest
and is the last one to go.

Better sweet than bitter.

Phaedrus



  Three poulakia (little birds) were born in a nest
  at the top of a propane tank.
  next to the regulator.
  One day I see three eggs,
  the second day I see one poulaki,
  the third day I see a second poulaki,
  and the fourth day I see a third poulaki.
  The poulakia shown in the picture
  are two-weeks old.
  After two days, the poulakia were gone.
  It is well known that poulakia
  strongly favor propane regulators.


contents

GRACELAND

Listen to the lyrics of the song
Graceland by Paul Simon;
then listen to them again;
and again, and again.
Every time you listen, you get a new insight
into the soul of a heartbroken man
who cannot escape his sorrow.

His thoughts drift into grief,
then he pulls back because he is going to Graceland,
grief emerges again,
then Graceland surfaces again,
then images of his wife brushing her hair
from her forehead flash through his mind.

Graceland is the place
where you dispose off your grief.
Paul Simon says that
we will all be received in Graceland.
With all due respect to the
great artist, I have doubts.

Some things hurt immensely, and you have to sit
with the hurt, the grief, and the sadness
for the longest time and possibly forever;
forever sad.

Good people become better as they age.
As most of you, I have become
a better person and more compassionate
over the years.

In the words of Bob Dylan
in the song "My back pages":

"Ah, I was so much older then,
I am younger than that now."

Every time I leave the farm
and interact with people,
I make a point to do something good
for someone.
When I visit a gas station, I prepay in cash
a few dollars more than I need,
and let the cashier know they can
keep the remainder as a tip.

My favorite cashiers are Cheyenne and Sarika.
Without hesitation and in all honesty,
I would sacrifice my life for that of a random
younger kind stranger,
including Sarika and Cheyenne.

When I seem to lose my spirits,
I recite my favorite Pirsig mantra:

"And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

Then things make sense again for a while,
until they don't and I have to start
the cycle all over again. 

The wheel in the sky keeps on turning.



contents

THE DEER HUNTER

My heart dropped
when I saw a vulture landing
in the middle
of field number two
Then I noticed a small bump
This cannot be hapenning

I rode the tractor
yelling and screaming
for the vulture to leave

It was the decapitated head of
a precious fawn

She died when she was a few months old

My beloved pair of geese
got spooked
gathered up their two chicks
and got out of sight

I saw them again
wearily floating in the pond
near the house

I did not see the mother deer
for a few days

When I finally saw her,
she was thin and distressed
grazing by the pond
and looking famished

Here is a sweet rizitika folk song
entitled "Agrimia k'agrimakia mou"
dedicated to the precious fawn:

  My precious wildling
  
  My wild creatures
  My wildling
  My sweet deer
  Where are your lands
  Where are your winter dwellings

  The cliffs are our lands
  The huts are our winter dwellings
  The small hill caves
  are our home


contents

THE LAST ANSER ERYTHROPUS

We read in Wikipedia that:

"The lesser white-fronted goose
(Anser Erythropus) is a goose
closely related to the larger greater
white-fronted goose (A. albifrons).
It breeds in the northernmost Palearctic,
but it is a scarce breeder in Europe,
with a reintroduction attempt in Fennoscandia."

In Greece, this goose is known
as "nanohina" (tiny goose).
Nanohina is a precious bird
and an endangered species.
There is a heart wrenching movie
by Pantelis Voulgaris entitled
I teleftaia nanohina
(the last nanohina.)




  Picture of the late
  Greek actor, director, and producer Thanasis Veggos.
  You can discern a mixture of kindness and sadness
  in his eyes.
  In fact, this picture accurately portrays the
  thousand-yard stare.
  Veggos was as brilliant and sweet in real life
  as he was on stage and on screen.

The main actor in the last nanohina
is Thanasis Veggos in the role
of a retired but not resigned gamekeeper (thyrofylakas)
in the Evros river, Greece.
The unthinkable happens when an unscrupulous hunter
shoots the last nanohina
and the retired gamekeeper hears the shot
and reciprocates with another
on behalf of the last nanochina.

In case you wonder about my appearance,
I look like Veggos' character in the movie,
unshaven for weeks at a time
with severe erosion on my face,
makeshift haircuts,
and a thousand-yard expression in my eyes.

The good news is that the horses across the street
and other neighbors
do not seem to mind.
However, sometimes I feel that I have developed
a reputation that I am an odd man,
but not as odd as the corner guy.

Most people I meet these days
have a sad expression in their eyes.

Humans have the unique ability
to mistreat and hurt each other.
With business transactions, everything is clear 
and spelled out in advance.
You pay, and you get a service or product.
You want inexpensive items, you visit Walmart,
you choose, you pay, and you are done.

With animals, their wants, needs,
and fears are also clear.
Animals have the added benefit that they can
bless you with unconditional love.

With humans, it is hardly clear if someone is nice
to you and to others
because of an intrinsic tenderness
or because something
is expected or demanded in return.

There is a self-serving process running
at the back of most people's minds
like a software daemon.
The daemon optimizes the person's present
and future benefits in real time.

It would have been straightforward if human relations,
including those between parents, children, siblings,
and spouses
operated on an advanced business model.
Arranged marriages operate
on a business model,
but the model is fundamentally flawed.

With one or two exceptions,
when someone did something nice for me,
they expected something in return.
In extreme cases, the person brought up
an imaginary rule of reciprocity
that I was supposed to honor
without my consent.

In one instance, I was asked to write
a fraudulent letter of recommendation,
which I refused to do, and this put another
nail on the coffin of my academic career,
such as it was.

John Deere tractors come as
gasers or Diesels; I have one of each.

As I was driving to get gas for the gaser,
I saw the police arresting a young man
outside a delapidated residence,
while his young son was hugging him
tightly and would not let go.
I doubt that the police officers enjoyed their job.

We all live in bubbles that we have made for ourselves
oblivious to the suffering of others.
We all do things we don't understand.

"I teleftaia nanohina"
is the third part of a threefold movie entitled
"Ola einai dromos" (it's a long road.)
The entire movie
is available on Utube.

The first part of the movie
portrays the grief of a father
whose son took his own life
while performing his duty as a sentry
in the Greek army.

When my older brother was in the army,
he developed a condition that required
surgery at the VA hospital.
My parents and I visited him after surgery.

In the bed next to my brother
there was a "palikaraki" (good looking young man)
whose head was wrapped in bandages. 
He was not visited by anybody
and I frivolously tried to make small talk
and ask about his condition.
My wise brother immediately signaled
me to be quiet (STFU).

My dear palikaraki,
I hope your daemons are gone.


contents

HAVE A COOKIE

In Theo Angelopoulos' movie "Ulysses Gaze",
Thanasis Veggos is a taxi driver
who takes a longing Greek-rooted foreigner 
acted by Harvey Keitel
to the northern border.

There is a heart wrenching scene
that you must know the Greek language natively
to appreciate.
At the end of this scene,
Veggos addresses nature in a snowstorm
on a ledge:

"Mwri physi, moni sou eisai esi,
monos mou eimai kai gw,
pare ena biskoto."

A fair translation where the word "Mwri"
is approximated crudely is:

"My beloved nature, you are all alone by yourself,
I am all alone by myself too,
Have a cookie."

Then he tosses a cookie into the cliff from the ledge
as a treat to a friend.

You can hear the despair in Veggos' voice.

In many ways,
this is one of the most profound existential lines
I have ever heard.
It encapsulates man's intented union with Nature, 
the Creator,
and the Universe
down to its core.

It expresses man's fundamental loneliness
that can only be compared to that of the Universe.
We are born alone and we die alone.
The Universe was born and will disappear alone.

I can see truck drivers, everyday commuters,
school bus drivers, and others rolling down
their windows and shouting
these lines in heat waves, tornadoes, and snowstorms.

I can see random people shouting these lines
at times of personal despair.





   A magnificent long driveway
   bodered by two feet of snow
   leads to the top of a hill.
   A wide variety of birds and
   other creatures live in the
   forest and enjoy the open space.

I have shouted these lines
and offered appeasement to Nature
while clearing my long driveway
with a broken back in excruciating pain
in severe snowstorms.
Nature heard me and went easy on me;
I survived while I shouldn't.

A former academic colleague of mine
was visiting Athens for a conference
and was woken up in the middle
of the night by a strong earthquake.
After the initial scare, he thought
to himself: 
"Why am I worried about my life?
I am an insignificant person
at a place where intellectual giants 
have lived and died."

Nature and the Universe have few humans to
provide them with assistance and comfort.
They struggle on their own without a narrative
and must fend for themselves
under makeshift rules and laws
determined by particle physics.
How these laws have been implemented is not known.

With rare exceptions, mankind is not Nature's friend.
Even though the height of earth's atmosphere
is shockingly small, and thus fragile,
mankind do all they can to tip the natural balance
for profit, with unknown short- and long-term consequences.

In fact, the consequences have been well-known
for some time, but they have been ignored.
There is no doubt in my mind that the human
race will eventually self-destruct taking out
the planet with them.
All it takes is a crazy person to push
the wrong button.

There is currently a rush to build power plants
to serve the electricity needs of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Environmental and moral issues are no longer considered.
Developing AI apps involves
storing known answers in a table, and then searching
the table when queried.
The Intelligence part is small.

Space is now regarded as a tourist destination
for those who can afford it.

Some places are not meant to be visited,
exploited, explored, or disturbed. 
Some places and institutions should be sacred.
Why would someone enter the pyramids?
Why would someone want to interfere with a monolith?

How does anyone know that there is not a secret switch
on the dark side of the moon
and flipping the switch makes the Universe
or our perception of it disappear?
What if our collective lives are only
a holographic dream and everything
disappears by flipping the switch?

We know that the speed of light is a critical
threshold for our perception of time.
Who would have guessed that speed affects time?
Actually, the answer is clear if you are a scientist
or engineer on the basis of dimensional analysis.
Speed is length divided by time;
if you change the speed, either length, or time, or both
must change.
We must respect and be aware of the divine and the unknown.

For English subtitles, see this clip.

In the comments of this clip, Giwrgos Arvanitis
writes the following:

"We were filming Thodwros Angelopoulos'
movie "O thiasos (The Travelling Players)".
We had left Grevanna and were heading toward Aigio.
Make-up artist Giwrgos Starakakis was riding in my car.
While driving through Katara which was all white
from the snow,
Giwrgos retrieved
and started eating a package of cookies.
All of a sudden, he opens the window
on the passenger side,
leans out from the window,
lets out a heartbreaking howl,
and screams:
Mwri physi, moni sou eisai,
monos mou eimai kai gw,
pare ena biskoto!...
I was shaken to my core.
When we made it to Aigio,
I said to Angelopoulos:
Thodwre, this is what happened.
Thodwros Angelopoulos then turned this
incidence into a movie scene,
this heartbreaking scene with Veggos and Keitel
in Ulysses Gaze.

This spontaneous act by Giwrgos Starakakis
was a sublime instance of an existential outburst.
I cried for several hours after
I read this incidence.

God bless you Giwrgo Starakaki,
I would have liked to have met you
and give you a hug.


contents

CANADA GEESE

A pair of Canada geese
settled in the big pond on the farm
near a busy state road.
I gave them a lot of space
so that they feel I am not a threat.
It took a while for them to start trusting me
at proximity of no less than twenty feet (seven meters.)

  The geese and the goslings are resting
  on the berm of the pond.
  The pear trees were planted by Phaedra.
  You can discern a magnificent red horse barn
  owned and managed by a remarkable young woman
  across the road.


I named the parents Phaedrus and Phaedra.
Unbeknown to them,
I engaged in frequent discussions with them
on practical, scientific, and philosophical matters:

"And what is good, Phaedra,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

Pheadra signals her neck in the negative
and smiles affectionately.

At some point, two tiny goslings appeared.
Phaedrus and Phaedra
will not leave 
the little ones out of their sight.
When out of boredom the family walks across
the state road, traffic is halted
in the absence of a traffic-flag person.

On a couple of occasions, I signaled the drivers
to be aware of the geese.
I have seen eighteen-wheelers,
school buses, large SUVs, full-size trucks,
sanitation trucks, bicycles and motorcycles
wait in line for the geese to cross.

The family has developed some affection for me.
They run to greet me when they see me
across the road.
I take care of them by mowing their grounds
so that they can sit and eat
and have entry points to the pond.

The other day I was not feeling well
and I stayed in bed all day.
At about noon, I hear some noise
on the porch.
The geese and the goslings had come to check on me
and make sure I am okay.

The little ones have grown significantly
in a few weeks time and are reaching the point
where they will be able to fly soon.
I now find geese feathers all over the place.
Geese molt their flight feathers in the summer
so that they can have a full brand-new set for migration.
While they are molting, geese are grounded and cannot fly.

To teach them how to fly,
the parents lead their children up the 
steep long paved driveway,
about a thousand feet (three hundred meters).
Then they turn around
and start a sequence of exploratory
take offs down the driveway.

It does not take long for the whole
family to be able to fly over the pond
and they can land safely on the water.
Believe me when I say that to watch them land
with immense grace is an eye-watering experience.
I have seen children, adults, and dogs
sticking their heads out of car windows
to watch the landing in amazement.

It will be a bitter-sweet day
when the little ones learn how to fly,
for the entire family will fly away soon.

[UPDATE: The little ones can now fly on Aug 09.
They are about two months old.]

I wish I were able to fly so that I can join them.
I do not blame them that they will not allow
an old, overweight, and uninteresting person to be with them.
However, the geese will remember that the farm
is their family home
and will visit again in a year's time
and every year after that.
When they return, I hope they bring back from Canada
some tariff-exempted gifts.
I doubt I will be around to see them again.

A few days ago I got a bad premonition
while trying to sleep at 8:30 pm.
I got up and drove the gaser John Deere
in the middle of a thunderstorm
in search of the geese.
I found them happily floating in the pond.
It was a false alarm.

You may think that I am going mad, 
but you would be wrong.
Last year, I found the remains of father goose
on the side of the road early in the morning.
The burial process using the front-end loader (FEL)
of the Massey Ferguson tractor
was heart wrenching.

This year I had to bury a young deer
struck by a driver on the side
of the state road.

The horses across the road don't mind the geese.
Horses are funny animals.
They have been scoping the hill
from across the road
for a long time,
wondering what lies upstream.
When they found an opening,
they made a run for it early in the morning.
Once their curiosity was satisfied
(nothing to see here)
they returned to their upscale quarters
across the road.

Recently, another group of three geese
landed on the pond.
I assessed that one is the mother and two are children.
The father is missing.

The group of three seem skittish.
The mother walks with a noticeable limp like me,
but seems to be able to fly and swim without a problem.
I am afraid that this family got involved
in a fight where the father lost his life
and the mother was hurt.
I hope she recovers soon.

This second family also developed some
affection for me and run to greet me
as soon as they hear the John Deere.

At the beginning of August,
a large group of geese arrived
and have been staying for a week.
The original two groups stay separate,
but I have the feeling that they will join them
when they fly away.

[UPDATE: They did. All the geese left
on the same day.]

Such sweet creatures they are these geese.


contents

VANISHED
   
Recently in the Giant grocery store I run across
a beautiful African-American woman
in a wheelchair.
What struck me about her was that she
had an aura and radiated a diffuse glow.
She seemed like one of the
kindest people I have ever met.
If I believed in angels
I would say she was one of them.

I asked if I can help her reach something,
she smiled and told me that
she is seventy-two years old
and is looking for some lipstick
to make her feel younger.

I told her truthfully that she does not look
a day over fifty.
She smiled again mysteriously,
and replied that I will also
live to be seventy-two.

When I turned to look at her again,
she had vanished.
Seriously, she had vanished.
Perhaps she was hiding behind
some stocked items,
but I don't think so.

The whole event seemed out of this world,
dissociative and sureal.
The wheelchair made sense
in light of my impaired mobility.
I have not been able to figure out
the meaning of the lipstick.

I do expect to expire before the age of seventy-two
in a few years.

Every time I return to the store
I look in vain for this remarkable woman.

A Reddit user writes:

"I've seen some people in my life
that seemed to radiate light --
 a white light sort of an aura,
interesting thing,
I was with my friends and my father
when I met these people and they
all saw the same thing as well!!!!!
They were quite regular people: a substitute teacher,
a waiter in a cafe, etc ...
but that light was real! What does it mean?
Are these people spiritually gifted?
What is it? Before I could even mention the
fact this person radiate a light
my friend said the same exact
thing which confirms it's real."

Comparing accomplishments to eulogy virtues,
David Brooks wrote an insightful essay:

"About once a month I run across a person who
radiates an inner light.
These people can be in any walk of life.
They seem deeply good.''



contents

POTE VOUDAS POTE KOUDAS

Most people have been betrayed at least once
in their lifetime.

I was betrayed when I was seven years old
by a childhood friend,
and then again at regular time intervals
by others.

Someone said:

"(With betrayal) it is not the knife
in your back that hurts.
What hurts is how you feel
when you turn around and see
who is holding the knife."

Jordan Peterson said:

"When you love someone,
you give them a huge piece of yourself;
when they betray you, they take it with them.
That's why you feel hollow and incomplete."

Michael Corleone from the Godfather said:

"The saddest thing about betrayal is that it
never comes from your enemy"

Most people intentionally or inadvertently
have betrayed someone
in their life.
Should we forgive those who betrayed us?
The truth is that, when someone lodges
a knife into your back,
only a superhuman turns around and
tells them it's okay.
Most betrayed people walk around with
a broken heart
and avoid those who hurt them.

In a song entitled
"Pote Voudas (Buddha)
pote Koudas (a famous Greek soccer player)"
("Sometimes Buddha, Sometimes Koudas"),
poet Manolis Rasoulis (emphasis on the o and the u)
said that

"Sometimes we are Jesus,
Sometimes we are Judas".

When Judas betrayed Jesus, he did not realize
that Jesus could receive the capital punishment.
He thought that Jesus would escape,
as he always did with the help of his followers,
or else the alleged crimes would
be dismissed at best or prosecuted as a misdemeanor at worst.
Who would think that Jesus would be arrested,
convicted, and executed
for delivering a message based on love?

When Jesus was executed on the cross, Judas could not
live with himself, returned his reward to the authorities,
and unalived himself.
To balance their books, the authorities used
the money to buy a blood field.
Today they would have used the money
to build a parking lot
to serve a shopping center, an industrial park,
a warehouse or condominiums.

Jesus had sensed the betrayal well ahead of time
but allowed it to occur anyway.
The reason is that fulfillment of time
(pleroma tou hronou) had come.
His mission on earth was accomplished.

I believe that animals and wholesome humans sense
when something fundamental
is about to occur
in their lives,
or else that Time (pleroma tou hronou) has come,
and start preparing themselves
for what is forthcoming.

The most intelligent people observe,
listen, and deduce, but stay quiet.
They often pretend they have not seen,
they have not heard,
and they don't know what is about to occur.

The best educators may notice that a student
is cheating during an exam, but say nothing.
At the end of the course, they have
a non-accusatory discussion with the student
regarding the paramount significance of personal integrity
and the life-long trauma inflicted by a moral lapse.
Punishment is neither appropriate nor necessary.

Emotional trauma is tricky.
It appears to dissipate after an event,
only to bubble up decades afterward triggered by
betrayal or other unrelated traumatic or hurtful events.

I have been a quiet person, though curious and inquisitive, all my life.
In the summers, I worked temporary jobs
of various kinds with diverse groups of people of different ages.
I worked as a laborer, an attorney's assistant,
a bus ticket collector, and an event attendant.

One summer I worked with an extremely
intelligent group of young people
who were wise beyond the norm and had a lot to say.
They were makeshift intellectuals.
I stayed quiet and listened,
essentially because I did not think I had
anything of added value to contribute.
My supervisor noticed and told me
that he appreciated my quietness
and wished he was like me: only speak when you have
something important to say, and say it in a few words.
This is probably the highest compliment I have ever received.

There is an interesting radio program
out of Los Angeles, California,
entitled "Handel on the Law".
The host provides legal advice
in a way that is humiliating and deprecating
at times in the interest of levity.

In one episode, an older person called and stated:
"I have developed stage 4 cancer and I have three months
to live. I am thankful that I had a good life
and now I would like to put my affairs in order to
make it easy on my heirs."
A question then followed.

The host who normally responds with a clever
remark was at a loss for words and humor this time
and instinctively changed his tone from hilarious to somber.
Staring down your own mortality without
any cowardice seems to be one of the strongest
forms of bravery on display.

Betrayal of one's self can be even worse.

Several years ago I paid for a service in cash,
it was not that much money.
The receptionist put the money in their pocket
and I did not ask for a receipt.
I returned to the store upset when I received a bill
and made an unwarranted fuss about it,
embarrassing the receptionist.
Thankfully, she was not fired.
I am not sure I could live with myself if she did.

My behavior was a huge instance of self-betrayal.
At the time, I was unable to understand that
people occasionally slip and make mistakes,
especially under dire circumstances.
I am ashamed and have frequent
nightmares about my behavior.
If the receptionist was fired,
I would have paid her a monthly allowance
for life.

In an attempt to redeem myself, I gave
a one-hundred dollar tip
to the staff of a store
when I learned that they
collect tips and use them
to buy themselves lunch as a group
once in a while.
My attempt was feeble, insufficient, and anemic.
I have so much shame regarding this and other
instances of self-betrayal.

Sometimes things happen so quickly
that you do not have time to react
in a thoughtful way that obeys
a fundamental set of ethics.

Looking back, I may have committed
other more serious acts of betrayal
and self-betrayal.
I was young, scared, confused, and unaware
of the intensity of harm that words,
actions, and inactions can inflict on others.

I was alone in a new aggressive world
that I could hardly understand, let alone navigate.
I was bombarded by advice and messages
on how to become rich
and famous quick,
and I was close to taking this destructive advice.

It took me years to figure out whether
goodness and values are shared by my old
and new self:

"And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

Why did I act the way I did with the receptionist?
The answer was given by Fyodor Dostoevsky
in Crime and Punishment.

There are pivotal moments in our lives that demarkate
the before and after self.
We have a good idea of what the before self is,
but we can only speculate what the after self will be.
We can justify and rationalize,
but in reality we have no idea of our after self
immediately and especially some time
after the pivotal moment.

Judas had no idea that his state of mind would
collapse after he betrayed Jesus.
I had no idea that my self-betrayal
regarding the receptionist
would have such an impact on my psyche.

We must be careful to ensure that our state of mind
after a pivotal moment will allow us to live
with ourselves in the absence of harm done to others.

I advise everyone to avoid frivolous pivotal points
if they can.


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BETRAYAL TRAUMA

Maya Angelou said:

"People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but will never forget how you made them feel."

Just in case you happen to look down
upon sex workers,
you should know that, at some point,
Maya Angelou was one of them in early life.

The insidious consequence of intentional betrayal
is that the trauma inflicted by it never heals,
even with therapy or the passage of time.
In fact, betrayal trauma
will be part of the end-of-life flashback,
carried through to the afterlife.

Some symptoms of betrayal trauma are:
confusion, guilt, self blame, shame, worthlessness,
alexithymia, dissociation
(feeling that you are a spectator
in your own life),
loss of sense of time,
chronostasis,
feeling of abandonment by a higher power,
doubt that a higher power exists.

Like survivor's guilt and 
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
manifestations of betrayal trauma
can be triggered by objects, situations,
and other stimuli.

One clear diagnostic of PTSD
is the thousand-yard stare. 
The Artificial Intelligence
engine states that

"The thousand-yard stare
refers to a blank,
unfocused gaze often seen
in individuals who have experienced
significant trauma or stress,
particularly in military contexts.
It symbolizes a psychological detachment
or dissociation from reality,
commonly associated with conditions like PTSD."

You can find heart-breaking photos
of soldiers and others with
the thousand-yard stare
on the web.

It is astonishing that even 
seemingly intelligent
people do not accept the psychological
suffering due to PTSD
and other mental conditions
and will tell sufferers to get over it.

Do you know someone who suffers from PTSD?
I do; his name is Phaedrus.

Just to be clear:

Unlike grief due to loss,
betrayal trauma never heals.
Do not betray yourself or others.


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REGRETS

An old man (older than me at the time)
approached the pharmacy counter
supported by his walker.

Here are your eye drops,
that will be 157.44 dollars.
He looked incredulous, muttered "no thanks",
and walked away.
I have so much regret that
I did not offer to pay for the eye drops.

A brilliant student of mine
became wheelchair bound
after unsuccessful spinal surgery.
I should have taken the time
and made the effort to help him financially
and provide support in this devastating time.
The fact that I did not to the extent I should,
will forever haunt me.

On the positive side,
I was told by more than one person
that I literally saved their life at low points
when they regarded me as a moral
point of reference.
Sometimes you are unaware of the
impact you have on others.

I arrived in America as a student
of engineering with the pure and sole
objective to learn.
Nothing else mattered.
When I became a professor,
I did not pay myself summer salary
in order to support my graduate students.
My colleagues thought I was nuts.

Things changed
when ambition and some degree
of self-importance, arrogance, and greed
entered my psyche by osmosis.
As soon as I realized a metamorphosis
by way of meta-cognition
at a relatively early stage,
I made a strong effort to revert to my pure self.
Though I did pay a professional price, I am so glad I did.

Living in a world where money, appearance,
self-promotion, self-interest and recognition matter
more than anything else is not easy.
There is no corner on earth where you can escape
the relentless bombardment.

Even your own family and closest relatives 
demand that you act
in a way that serves their interests
and perceived social norms.
If you do not conform, you pay a dear price.
Your ability to think outside the box does not matter,
your set of principles do not matter,
your level of intelligence and skill does not matter,
fame, wealth, and ego are the great equalizers.

The truth is that the price that you pay
for staying true to your principles
does not matter, any price is worth it.

In barricades of heaven, Jackson Browne sings:

"You'd better bring your own redemption
when you come to the barricades of heaven."

In the same song, Jackson Browne sings:

"Childhood comes for me at night
Voices of my friends
Your face bathing me in light
Hope that never ends."

Paraphrasing Jordan Peterson:

"Conscientious
people try to understand why things
go wrong in their lives.
However, analyzing so many events,
words, and experiences
over years or decades
creates the deep trauma of experiencing
eight million snakes
attacking you at the same time."

It is interesting that clinical psychologist
Jordan Peterson makes a distinction
beteen conscientious people and others,
thebe avoiding the use of blunt psychological terms.

When my brother took me to Mount Athos
for a visit, we met at a monastery
a palikaraki who had just completed
his military duty in the Greek army.
Every piece of conversation with him
revolved around his life in the army.
The other travelers started making fun
of him in ways that he did not realize.

I picked up on the palikaraki's loneliness
and asked the fellow travelers to please
go easy on him, which they immediately did.
The point is that the fellow travelers
did not even realize what they were
doing was wrong.
When they did realize, they got visibly embarrassed
and treated the palikaraki with respect.

In the same trip,
we met two young men who were
devout Christians of a certain denomination.
Every conversation with them involved
demeaning and condemning other denominations.
I mentioned to them after a while that
Christianity was founded on love and tolerance.
The point is that the young men
did not even realize what they were doing
was against their core belief.
When they did realize, they got remorseful
to the extent of praying for forgiveness
from the Lord.

Have you prayed for forgiveness lately?


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STUMPY

A Reddit user writes:

"There is a Simpsons episode 
involving Stumpy the elephant.
At the end of the episode they
give Stumpy to an elephant sanctuary
and he starts head-butting the other elephants.
Bart asks why is he doing that?
And the keeper says something about
normal animal behavior and then says:
like people, some elephants are just jerks.''

There is a difference between
(a) acceptance, optimism, silver lining,
and (b) toxic positivity.
Things not always happen for a reason
and there is not always a lesson to be learned.
In fact, most things happen for no reason at all.
Some elephants are just jerks.

Accepting facts, occurrences, and situations,
and not searching for causes and reasons
is the essence of radical acceptance.
Some things happen, and no matter
how hard you try to explain,
you just can't and you shouldn't.
The reason or trigger can be one of a trillion things
internal or external to a person.

Why is a person cruel?
They don't even know.

Why is a person selfish?
They don't even know.

Why is a person toxic?
They don't even know.

Why is a person aggressive?
They don't even know.

Ali Ingersol is an extremely intelligent
stunning young woman
leading a remarkable life 
as a C6 (sixth cervical spine level)
quadriplegic.
Ali does not seem to suffer from toxic positivity.

She writes:

''We push forward, but it (grief) lingers
in the background -- waiting to sneak up
and hit like a baseball bat.''

This observation explains
why the path to emotional recovery
is nonlinear.
You may think that you have accepted
your friend's death,
only to look at a sweater that he knit for you
and feel devastated.

Human emotions and associated responses
can be instantaneous or delayed.
Instantaneous emotions, such as affection, limerence,
frustration and anger are obvious.
Emotions are bundled in onion layers.
Anger is a surface level emotion;
behind it, there are always
far more complex emotions such as shame and fear. 

It is hard to tell what kind
of delayed and unseen emotions
a person carries inside of them.


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AT ALDI

ALDI is a wonderful unpretentious
bag-your-own-items food store.
Most items are inexpensive.
The employees are outstanding.

Recently, I stopped by ALDI to pick up a few items
including a cheap loaf of sliced bread,
some hot dogs, and pulped orange juice.

While waiting at the checkout line holding these items,
I noticed a young Latino man
holding in his hands precisely the same items.
I felt like giving him a hug
or at least shaking his hand.
His unsuspected comradery
made me feel so much less alone.

I like to look at old loving couples
as an elusive dream.
Recently at ALDI I saw an older woman
and her husband, both using walking canes.
She was beautiful and he was handsome.

I could not help myself and told her
"You look lovely together".
As a general rule,
I avoid conversations with strangers
just in case they think I am a creep.

Phaedra gave me a big smile and said
"You should see us at home."
Then she said she is eighty-one
and has a metal rod implanted
along her femur.
   
Phaedrus also gave me a big smile and told
me he is eighty-four 
and suffers from knee pain.
   
I saw them again at the parking lot as they were
loading their car and waived goodbye.
It was clear that they were very much in love.
I hope to run into you again lovely older couple.

On another occasion, I was standing outside
the ALDI doors with a sweet African-American woman,
both of us waiting for the store
to open at the designated time.
We exchanged a few words,
and then an old white man approached us
to participate in the conversation.
Immediately I noticed that he was only addressing
me while looking in my direction, totally ignoring
the sweet woman.

This was clearly a blatant manifestation
of racism and intolerance,
which is unfortunately rampant in the area
where I live.
To punish him, I ignored him and continued
the conversation with the nice woman
until the store doors opened.

What motivates these old geesers
to be so mean?
I overheard equally disgusting comments
from old female geesers at McDonalds
regarding people with fluid gender identification.

Other people think that because I am
not a native speaker, my understanding
of spoken and written english is poor,
even though I have written a number of books
published by top-tier publishers.
I suspect that other non-native speakers
are the subject of this prejudice.

Other occasions where
I made conversation with strangers
involve middle-aged and older couples.
I feel that the strangers involved sensed
that I am not a creep and reached out.

A few days ago I was going through
the checkout line at ALDI
and the cashier asked the obligatory "how are you?"
I always say "fine, thank you, how are you?"
and this time the young lady replied
with a trace of sorrow
"I am trying to stay busy".
All I could muster was "We all try to do that"
so that she does not feel alone.
By then, her thoughts had drifted to something remote.

I was filling my cart at ALDI
with bread and orange juice,
until I noticed that a youngish woman
with a lot of tattoos
was also putting items in my cart.
I was not sure how to respond
without appearing rude,
and stood by until she had
the chance to look at me.
At that point, she laughed
and said "I am sorry, I thought you were my boyfriend."
The boyfriend then appeared
from an aisle and I said jokingly
"we kind of look alike."

Afterward, I thought that what
I said might have been the ultimate insult,
but it was too late to apologize.


contents

LEAVING LAS VEGAS

Recently, I was standing at a Home Depot checkout line
in front of a middle-aged couple.
They gave me a visual cue that they would not
mind exchanging a few words.

I had picked a few mailbox numbers
and asked them how much they think they cost.
The wife said two dollars,
and I told her it was seven dollars each.
The husband said with a nice smile that when
he needs numbers, he collects them by visiting
mailboxes up and down his street.
The three of us seemed to very much enjoy the interaction.

Home Depot employs older part-time cashiers
who are looking to supplement their income
and find a distraction from loneliness and despair.
I had noticed one such cashier, she must have been
in her eighties, for her sharp mind (quick math)
and kind facial expressions (nice smile).

Last time I interacted with her, I told her
at the end of the transaction:
"I like that you are always happy."
She looked at me and said:
"This is not true, I get sad, I get angry,
I get devastated, I get worried.
I have been struggling
since my husband passed away ten years ago".
I said "He must have been a good man".

Her eyes teared up and she replied:
"I get emotional when I see his belongings
that I kept.
In the end, he was grumpy because
of his chronic pain, but he would
not see a doctor. I carried with
me in my purse a doctor's referal
notice but he would not hear it.
I still carry the referal in my purse".

At that point, we both started crying
while completing the purchase transaction
for a 3/4'' copper elbow fitting
and a pipe wrench.

I had to move on, but I managed to say
"God bless." She replied the same.
I looked up her name on the receipt: Beverly.
I am like Beverly's husband,
suffering from severe ailments,
but will not see a doctor.

There is a haunting
song by  Manos Loizos
with lyrics by Manolis Rasoulis:

Ola se thimizoun (everything reminds me of you)

Everything reminds me of you
Simple and beloved
everyday things of yours
As though they are waiting
for you to come,
even if the sun rises for the last time

Our wholesome love fills the room
just like the song we used to sing
Faces, words, and a creaking dream,
what will be true at dawn?

Everything reminds me of you
Our closest friends,
some at the taverna, some at the movies,
I am on my own here, reading the letter you sent me
before kissing me for the very first time

In the movie "Leaving Las Vegas",
Ben specifially drives to Las Vegas from Los Angeles
after his wife and child left him
to unalive himself through alcohol intoxication.
Sera falls in love with Ben and
asks him to see a doctor.
Ben replies: "Sera, I am not gonna see doctor" (sic).

In an interview, Elizabeth Shue (Sera)
stated that she had known regular people like Ben
in real life on the verge of self-destruction.
I believe her. I have too.

Roger Ebert writes in his review:

"Oh, this movie is so sad!
It is sad not because of the tragic
lives of its characters,
but because of their goodness and their charity."

I noticed an older person at home depot
working as a parking lot attendant,
collecting and pushing carts while limping heavily
due to two shattered knees,
compliments of a drunk driver
at the age of nineteen.
I only found out because I asked.


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INSIDE FOUR WALLS

I don't mind that I spend
my days and nights
inside four walls

All is quiet and simple
inside my walls

I leave my door open
so that creatures can visit
and say hello
especially when it's cold

I got visited by a squirel,
a mouse,
bees,
spiders,
mosquitos,
flies,
and other creatures inside the four walls

There is so much 
confusion, noise, and hurt
outside my four walls


contents

FATHER KARRAS

There is a heart breaking Greek song entitled 
"tipota den paei hameno" (nothing is in vain)
by Manos Loizos (emphasis on the a and i)
and Manolis Rasoulis (emphasis on the o and u).
Here is another brilliant performance.

The first two autobiographical verses read:

"After fifty hears of hardship and persecution
a dark illness lands on me,
an undeserving pay-back."

Manos Loizos died at the age of forty-four
in a Soviet hospital.
His sweet love song paramythaki mou
(my little fairy tale)
can be heard on the radio
in the movie "The Exorcist"
as Father Karras
is leaving his mother's house.
Like Christ, Father Karras
sacrificed himself to eradicate
an evil spirit.

Manolis Rasoulis died 
at the age of sixty-five
alone in his apartment
in the neighborhood "Toumba"
of Thessaloniki, Greece.

When I was a child, my mom used to take us
to visit Toumba to spend time with
my favorite aunt Toula
and her delightful husband Kwstas.
Like most good people I have known,
Kwstas died young from the dark illness.

The song "Nothing is in vain"
continues on a positive note
to explain that even an undue pay-back
serves a purpose and will not be in vain.
I am not sure I agree.

Undoubtedly, it takes a special kind of person
to accept a vague servitude in the face of suffering.

You may notice everyone's somber mood
at 3:10 of the nothing is in vain video
as the three performers sing the refrain:

"Nothing is in vain in the life lost of me,
I carry your dreams and desires inside of me."

I, my mom, patients of hospitals,
abandoned elderly people,
and many others could
talk about dark illnesses
and undue pay-backs.

Those with chronic pain,
mental issues,
incurrable disease,
and those who have been betrayed
by humans and institutions
can assure us that suffering
can be intolerable and overwhelming.

Fly high in heaven beautiful Christina.


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TRANSFORMATIVE SUFFERING

A Reddit user asks:
"What personal experiences do you have with Buddhism?
What confirms it to be true for you?"

Another user replied:

A transformation came at the worst time of my life.
I was dumped by my long time girlfriend
and experienced the worst heartbreak of my life.
It was in the deepest depths of despair.
But in the depths of darkness I still heard the voices
of the Buddha and my Master.

They told me that this is the Suffering.
They told me to not run away from it
but to turn and look at it,
to sit and listen to it,
to embrace and befriend it.
So I wiped my tears, sat up, and sat with my pain.
I let my pain soak into every fiber of my being.
I looked at it and sought to understand it.
I conversed with it.

Then in one moment, I understood my suffering.
I understood why and how and what my suffering was.
This insight brought about a powerful
and endless wave of compassion for myself.
Like fresh water over a burning fire,
it doused the fire of my pain
and I felt a relief I've never felt before or since.

The compassion was so much that
I felt compassion for her too,
and that changed the way I viewed her.
I felt a new type of love for her
that I never felt before.

Why do I say they are transformations?
Because as much as I seek to find,
I could not find the pain and suffering I felt before.
I was as surprised as anyone.
As I spoke with her I tried to find the pain but I couldn't.
It totally surprised her and brought her to tears as well.
It's a transformation because
I am a completely different person than who I was before. 



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THE VALUE OF MONEY

Out of curiosity, you may google:
"How much does it cost to book 
John Doe or Jane Doe",
replacing John Doe or Jane Doe
with your favorite politically, socially,
or environmental active celebrity.
The amounts that google will return
are astonishing.

Just to be clear,
there is nothing wrong with
talented celebrities
making a lot of money
for the superb art, entertainment,
and escape from reality
they provide.
It is better to make a lot
of money this way than
investing in the stock market.

An example of music artistry in its raw form
can be seen in a performance by

Alkinoos, Haroula, and Sokratis.
See also the group behind the scenes.

See also Crazy and unhinged
(treli kai adespoti)
by Nikos Papazoglou.
This song was sung at midnight.
Have you seen a more handsome person
than the tambourine man?
The male dancer clearly had a few retsinas.
The nice female dancer is teaching him
onstage how to dance (he is probably a tourist.)
The violinist gives us a nice smile at 4:00.

The Greek word "lygmos"
(emphasis on the "o")
describes the sudden contraction
of the chest or larynx
during intense and long-lasting crying.
Ugly crying consists of a sequence of lygmos.
Nikos' unique singing style employs
intentionally or naturally
lygmos as an emotionally undertone
(see 00:10 of the aforementioned video).

Nikos and I grew up in the same
lower/middle class yet intellectually
vibrant neighborhood
that was home to a disproportionate
number of poets, writers,
and musicians.
Like me, he was the son of refugees.
Nikos died at the age of sixty-three
from the dark illness.

The surname Papazoglou is composed
of "Papas" (priest)  and
"oglou" ("son of" in Turkish).
For convenience, the 's' became a 'z'.
A similar name belongs to my dear
childhood friend
Vasilis Bontozoglou.

My mom's family were refugees
from Asia Minor (part of today's Turkey.)
They were extremely poor
but extremely kind and civilized.
They arrived in Thessaloniki by boat
when the Turks took over Asia Minor.
The silver lining is that the refugees
brought with them a refined behavioral
and intellectual culture.

I have a soft spot in my heart for migrant workers
and refugees.


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ESCAPE FROM REALITY

To witness escape from reality,
you can watch a video of
Chester Bedington
of Linkin Park jumping off a concert stage
to sing next to a
wheelchair bound beautiful young woman
from New Jersey named Megan McTigue,
while holding her hand.
At the end of the song,
Chester kisses her hand.
Megan sadly has since passed away
at the age of forty-one.
Chester also took his life
at the age of forty-one.

In an interview,
Chester said that the space between his ears
is a dangerous place to be.

Mike Shinoda said that Chester's
worst quality is (was) that
he just cares (cared) too much.
Like Robin Williams and others,
Chester knew the meaning of suffering
and did not want others to experience it.
Fly high in heaven Robin and Chester.

Most people know the meaning of 
personal or existential suffering,
even though they carefully guard it.

Here is a sign I ordered from Amazon
and posted on the fence by the State road:

I see it every day,
the sweet mail woman sees it every day,
children on the school bus see it twice a day,
the sanitation workers see it every week,
and others see it once in a while.
I hope the sign has made
one of them feel better on a sad day.


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HAVES AND HAVE NOTS

There is a paradox regarding the
haves and the have nots.
I heard two unrelated foreign artists
making the following comment with astonishment:

"I have never been in New York,
but I was told that you can walk
out of your hotel
and see homeless people on the sidewalk".

To be fair, I have been to New York
a few times when I was a palikaraki,
but do not remember wittnessing
such steep social gradient.

The paradox is that we have been
conditioned to accept,
as a fact of life,
that there is nothing wrong that
haves and have nots 
can coexist alongside
in the absence of even a minimal effort
for equilization.
I can see how I myself can become homeless
at some point.

Don't get me wrong,
it would be wonderful if the rich
and the poor lived alongside
without pride and prejudice.
However, there is something wrong
regarding the rich literaly
walking past or over the destitute on a sidewalk.

Intelligent homeless people
live on sidewalks, under bridges,
or in their cars unassisted by a safety net.
It falls on the shoulders of good Samaritans
and sensitive cops
to provide assistance.

I would happily pay twice or thrice
the amount of taxes I pay
to provide structured assistance.
What is wrong with paying substantial tax
according to your income?
How much is enough?
Philantropists who give away millions
or billions, including MacKenzie Scott,
understand this point.

I can hardly see the point of driving an expensive car
and stashing tremendous wealth,
while your family or neighbors
live from paycheck to paycheck
and drive cars that are on the verge of being repossessed.

The truth is the happiest people I have met
are either poor or don't worry about becoming rich.
Never mind the socioeconomic surveys.


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MY IQ

To test my cognitive state at my old age,
I took an online IQ test
and scored 136.
It was late at night, I was tired,
and I skipped a few questions
out of boredom.
Had I answered those questions,
I would have entered the category of highly gifted.

To confirm that this was not a fluke,
I took another IQ test, answered all questions,
and was given a score of 150.
This classifies me as exceptionally gifted.

What does that mean?

I know that:

My deductive ability is excellent.
My ability to see the forest for the trees is excellent.
I can usually see people for who they are at the time,
though I rarely tell them and only make mental notes.

However:

My decision making ability is influenced by emotion.
I cannot foresee how situations and people
will evolve, which they do, invariably for the worst.
I take everything and everyone at face value.
I cannot see when I am being manipulated
in the short or long term.
I am naive and expect everyone to be honest
and straightforward
(this was pointed out to me by an attorney.)

Because I am quiet and unassuming,
many think that I can be easily manipulated.
I am too hard on myself
and assume by default that everything is my fault.
Why is this?

President Barak Obama has a very high IQ;
is anyone surprised?
I bet you the last three slices of bread left in my pantry
that First Lady Michelle Obama also has a very high IQ.

It is exasperating that highly intelligent people
have to deal with less intelligent people
who refuse to admit their limitations
and think they are intellectually equal
or even superior.

A lot of people confuse intelligence with street smart.
My dear friend Jeffrey Davis made the example
that, by standing next to a body builder,
less intelligent people are under the impression
that they have developed muscle.
Familiarity brings contempt.
Fly high in heaven brilliant Jeff.

When push comes to shove,
low-IQ people change the subject of a conversation
to whatever makes them comfortable.
Moreover, they like to make statements and arguments
in the absence of evidence.
Christopher Hitchens said that this gives us
permission to dismiss their statements and arguments
in the absence of counter-evidence.
When I sense that a person is intelligent
or has valuable life experiences,
I STFU and listen to what they have to say.

A person who belongs to group B
may say: I want a person from my group
to become the president.
Assuming that group B is not the majority,
I wholeheartedly agree.
Then you may ask this person if they
would agree that a person from group C,
which is also not the majority,
should become the president.

It is a subtle indication of prejudice
that the person will find reasons not to agree,
especially when racial, gender fluidity,
and able-bodied issues are involved.

Some intelligent people
chose to mask their intellectual capacity
in order to humor or appease family, acquaintances, colleagues,
and friends.
I have done this throughout my life as a matter of course.
I cannot imagine what the topics of conversation
between Albert Einstein and his neighbors were.

It is well known that being smart
does not make you happy.

Ernest Hemingway wrote that

"Happiness in intelligent people
is the rarest thing I know."


contents




ONE-TRICK PONY

She was one of the most intelligent, beautiful,
and charming young women in graduate school
in Urbana--Champaign
She rode motorcycles
but did not make a big deal of it

She gave me a big smile when she saw that
I carry peanuts and other snacks in my pocket
to get me through the day

A childhood habit

She gave me a Valentine's card
to distract me from my loneliness
in Rochester, New York

Then she got embarrassed
and quickly left my office

Such a sweet girl

Fly high in heaven my beautiful friend.


contents

TWISTING THE FABRIC OF REALITY

The notion of (bad) karma lies in the belief
that everyone is held accountable for their wrongdoing:
instantly, imminently, after a sufficient amount of time,
or in an afterlife (instant vs delayed karma.)

In his book "Lead the Field",
Earl Nightingale writes:

"Every time a person does something dishonest,
he is in effect tossing a boomerang.
How far out it will travel, no one knows.
How great or how small a circle it will traverse,
only time will tell.
But it will, eventually it must,
finally come swift and unseen around behind
that person and deliver its never-failing
and painful blow to the back of his neck."

If karma were instant, nobody would commit
karma-worthy acts; we learn as children
not to touch a hot stove.

Karma is not meant to be punitive according to a set of laws.
Instead, it is supposed to
operate in lieu of a natural law,
like Newton's law of motion,
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle,
and, most important,
the laws of probability and Bayesian statistics.

The uncertainty principle stipulates
that we are not able to measure
accurately both the position
and the momentum of a sub-atomic particle,
and proposes a lower bound for the
product of the respective variances.
The uncertainty is due to the disturbance
introduced by the observation.
We learn that observation alters
our ability to make acurate deductions.

In psychology, the uncertainty
principle can be interpreted
in a variety of ways.
For example, with regard to the variance
of a human response.

Bayesian statistics tells us
that if you mistreat or lie to a person,
you are much more likely to mistreat 
or lie again to the same or another person.
If you steal a car, you will
steal a second car.
It is a slippery slope.

Conversely,
if you are kind to a person,
you are much more likely to be kind again
to this or another person.
It is an upward movement reaching for the sky.

The Artificial Intelligence engine informs us that:

"A seared conscience refers to a state
where a person's moral sensitivity
has diminished due to repeated wrongdoing
or else ignoring moral truths,
making it difficult for the person to feel guilt or remorse.
This condition is often described in the Bible,
particularly in 1 Timothy 4:2,
where it indicates a loss of the ability
to discern right from wrong."

Robert M. Pirsig said it differently
by way of an intelocutor:

"And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

Fyodor Dostoevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov:

"Above all, do not lie to yourself.
A man who lies to himself and listens
to his own lie comes to a point
where he does not discern any truth
either in himself or anywhere around him,
and thus falls into disrespect
towards himself and others.
Not respecting anyone,
he ceases to love, and having no love,
he gives himself up to passions
and coarse pleasures in order
to occupy and amuse himself,
and in his vices reaches complete beastiality,
and it all comes form lying continually
to others and himself.
A man who lies to himself
is often the first to take offense.
it sometimes feels very good to take offense,
doesn't it? And surely he knows that
no one has offended him,
and that he himself has invented the offense
and told lies just for the beauty of it,
that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect,
that he has picked up on a word
and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows
all of that, and still he
is the first to take offense,
he likes feeling offended,
it gives him great pleasure,
and thus he reaches the point of real hostility"

You are wasting your time if you wish
karma on someone.
Wishful thinking cannot interfere
with universal, physical,
mathematical, and statistical laws.
You cannot wish electromagnetic induction away.

People who perform karma-worthy acts
are typically selfish, short-sighted, and reckless.
Like psychopaths, narcisists, and cluster-b sufferers,
they act with no regard to the harm they cause
to others.

Consider the elderly Nazzi and other criminals
who have committed crimes against humanity.
They thought they will never get caught.
One by one, they have been tracked down,
cought, and held accountable for they crimes
even in their nineties.
Was this the result of karma?

Most important, karma-prone people are oblivious
to the long-term consequences 
of their actions upon themselves.
As evidence, I present myself in my instances
of self-betrayal described in another section
of this document.

You see daily in the news how selfish and reckless behavior
eventually catches up with those who indulge in it.
In my estimation, it takes approximately two years
for the consequences of karma to start appearing,
and the full effect appears in five to seven years.
This is because it generally takes two years
for people to start getting
used and accepting a catastrophic event.

In today's Western world,
the notion of karma is of grave concern
to those who subscribe to the
YOLO (You Only Live Once) lifestyle,
to those who seek happiness and gratification
actively in their lives,
and to those who use and discard others.

It is wrong to be loyal to your desires and feelings alone.
To be happy should be a consequence, not a goal.

Perhaps the best interpretation of Karma
is given by a Reddit user who writes:

"Jordan Peterson's maxim,
"No one gets away with anything ever"
was the first thing he said that
grabbed my attention.
It both appealed to me and frightened
the hell out of me.

At first, I took it as a metaphysical claim,
which I understood as: If reality has an
objective moral structure, and you manipulate
it to your own advantage, there will necessarily
be a correction later.

Another way of framing it would be:
You can't cheat your contract
with the Good and come out a winner.
This echoes the warnings of the great
religious traditions; e.g., you reap what you sow,
what-goes-around-comes-around, etc.

But it was never clear to me how
a clinical psychologist could instruct
his university students accordingly
if such ideas were merely rooted in religion.

But NOW I understand it much more
clearly in psychological terms.
There is a frightening scientific dimension to it.
Basically, the more you override your conscience,
manipulate people and circumstances
to serve your needs, and double-down on this behavior,
the more you will PATHOLOGIZE YOUR PERSONALITY
(in other words, the sicker you become psychologically).

At a minimum, speaking and behaving
in ways that are morally pathological
(i.e., speaking and acting out lies and contradictions)
results in high levels of negative emotion (neuroticism).
This is the "karma" that Jordan Peterson warns about.

If you pathologize your personality,
you will pay the price through
severe neuroticism (see: Crime and Punishment).
And if you go through life with a self-serving,
pathological, exploitative personality,
it is only a matter of time before there
are material/temporal consequences, too.

In either case, this is what lands
people in the therapist's office,
whether or not they have any insight
into the origins of their neuroticism and collapse.

Even low-empathy individuals who are
able to carefully construct "narrative excuses"
in order to rationalize their wicked behavior
run a huge risk. Such people are often unable
to rationalize such pathological behavior
in a way that is commensurate
with the rest of their personality.

This is why Jordan Peterson concedes
that while psychopaths may theoretically
stand a chance of "getting away with it",
they do not have good outcomes,
being "quite prone" to emotional collapse and suicide."

There are several non-mutually exclusive
ways by which karma could be mediated:


KEEPING RECORDS

A deity or surveillance device keeps score of wrongdoing,
deducts points for good deeds and sincere redemption,
and administers appropriate punishment
according to cosmic laws.
The notion of heaven and hell is consistent
with this interpretation.
Jesus said that, once you repent,
your karma clears.

In Romans 12:19,
apostle Paul writes:

"Do not take revenge, my dear friends,
but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written:
"It is mine to avenge; I will repay".
the body of those who wronged you will float past."

Paraphrasing Sun Tzu:

"If you wait by the river long enough,
the body of those who wronged you will float past."

This interpretation may seem far-fetched to some.
However, your actions and words have been
recorded for decades by Internet surveillance.
They can be readily given a numerical value
by an Artificial Intelligence algorithm,
and then be assigned a karma index
that quantifies your goodness.
The karma index can be part of your medical record
and used to make a decision whether someone
should fund a life-line trip to a hospital.
Is this far-fetched?

BIOLOGICAL INCONSISTENCY

Some types of undamped brain waves
are transmitted by someone who is made to suffer,
these waves are recorded in the wrongdoer's brain,
and biological processing or other consequences
occur at opportune times.
The process is completely involuntary
and permanent on both ends.

You can tell if someone lies by proper diagnostics
implemented in lie detectors,
changes in skin color, and involuntary reflexes.
The brain knows what is right and what is wrong:

"And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

If one does something wrong, an internal conflict arises
that may actually accelerate the aging process.
Liars look old.
Self-serving people look old.
Wicked politicians look old.
Those who have accrued karma look old. 

It has been my experience that
good people devoid of karma are at peace
have a natural radiant glow.

KEEP DOING WRONG

The wrongdoer exhibits a pattern of reckless behavior
that may or may not catch up with them
within a certain time frame.
If the time frame is long,
the wrongdoing will catch up with them
in some way
with absolute mathematical certainty.
For example, a person who is abusive and inconsiderate
will have a hard time finding help at a time of need.




contents

THE WORDS AND THE YEARS LOST

Ta logia kai ta hronia ta hamena

Poetry by Manos Eleftheriou
Music by Yiannis Markopoulos
Performed by Haralambos Garganourakis

The words and the years lost
and the sorrows veiled by mist and smoke
forged a brotherhood in a foreign land

And the sudden joy that came upon me
felt like lightning in dark woods
like the thoughts I am having of you

I speak to you in patios and backyards
and in the secret gardens of God
and it always seems that nightingales
are about to come

In the words and the years lost
you were once everywhere
but now you are in the cold and in the snow

Fate and time have determined
that I throw my fishing line in this world
where each night takes a thousand years to end

At the end of the festivities
he who has not known his generation will sing
and step into sorrow's gate

It wasn't a stopped clock
in an abandoned and wrecked home
the roads that took me and I long

Hearing words I don't understand
I think of those who have seen the worst
embroidered in their soul

He who sows tears and terror
reaps an ocean by dawn
Dark birds show him the way

He bears a scar near a shoulder
a secret and eternal sign
that he escaped Hades and the world


In the above video clip,
Giwrgos Koutrouvalis
makes the following
comment in Greek:

"Some day at noon I played this song
in my store in Omonia at full volume;
I am singing along loud as though I am in a stadium.
But this is not the main point.

The point is that a man in his seventies comes in
and starts singing with me the entire song.
It turns out the man was Irish and he knew
nearly all Manos Eleftheriou poems.
It is hard for me to describe the exhilaration
I felt at the time."

Greek poems are notoriously hard to translate
due to their richness and emotional charge.
Words like pathos (not the same as passion)
and parapono (not the same as complaint)
cannot be properly explained.
Think of the word "paranormal",
and then know that "ponos" means "pain" in Greek.

More involving Markopoulos.

This is one of the rare instances where
you will see Haralambos Garganourakis smile.
Notice the natural beauty of singer Lizeta Nicolaou at 1:10.
Notice how handsome Markopoulos
is wearing a black shirt.


contents

CRYING ALL THE TIME

I am a big wuss: I cry all the time,
and have done so all my adult life.
When that happens,
you can also detect some level of despair in my voice.

I cry when I look at old dilapidated barns
I cry when I listen to songs
I cry when I see someone being sad
I cry when I think of my childhood friends
I cry when I look at snow geese flying high in delta formation
I cry when I look at migrant workers
I cry when I remember my aunt singing Turkish songs
I cry when I look at fawns
I cry when I remember my mom making sure I am ready for school
I cry when I get yelled or betrayed
I cry when I am overwhelmed by sadness and grief
I cry when I am overwhelmed by parapono at frequent times

I always thought there was something wrong with me,
until I got evidence that this happens to other people,
especially people who I love and admire.

In the Introduction to his television show
Stin ygeia mas re paidia
(Here is to our health you guys),
host Spyros Papadopoulos narrates:

"Guys, what is going on with me,
I look at old balconies
and my eyes get moist."

Other lonely people have confessed that they cry
when they witness sacrifice and love;
the reason is that they feel they will never receive
attention, affection, and love.

When I first met my good friend Phaedrus
in graduate school,
he looked at me after a few days, shook his head, and said:

"You are too sensitive for you own good,
you need to desensitize and become selfish
like the others."

How did he know? Because he was like me.

Phaedrus was never unkind to anyone I know.
He gave and gave and gave, and got little in return. 
Like all sensitive people,
Phaedrus had a hard life.

Some nominally tough people have
learned to hide their sensitivity
by wearing an armor that only
allows select few to penetrate
through small openings.

A Reddit user from San Diego writes:

"One time I was hiking in the local preserves.
(in Escondido, California)
I come across this guy that looks like Rob Machado,
a pro surfer, dressed in a long wool plaid shirt
with jeans in the middle of the summer.
It must have been 85 degrees out 
which is hot for coastal San Diego.
He kind of reminded me of Jesus.
I just said, "How's it going?",
which was odd because this was when
I was mostly just looking at the ground
and not saying anything to anyone.
He just replies back, "God bless you."
God and I have always had a complicated relationship,
but for some reason, those words gave me
some sort of comfort and hope.
It wasn't much longer after that when
I started to feel that the world was no longer against me."

God bless you Reddit user from San Diego.
I wish you the best in your struggles.

contents

RUNAWAY

When I was in the boy scouts,
I had a friend who run away
from his home, got on a small fishing boat,
headed to the Turkish coast,
and then was found and returned home.

This boy was extremely
bright and talented, so he did not do things on a whim.
It is also relevant that he came from a broken home.
This boy taught himself to play several musical
instruments, and did so better than a professional.

I play the guitar, the piano, and the flute,
but my mastery of these instruments
ranges from fair to poor.
This kid was a master.

I suspect that most children in adolescence
have thoughts of running away
once they realize what is in store for them
in adulthood.
I myself thought about running
into the unknown, but lacked a specific reason
and could not overcome
the thought
of hurting my parents.
Eventually, I ran away to America.



In Theo Angelopoulos' movie
Landscape in the mist,   
a young girl (Voula) and her little brother (Alexandros)
run away to find their father 
who lives in Germany
according to their mother.

Their journey involves a sequence
of surreal and heart wrenching events
that eventually
lead them across the northern border of Greece
to be received by a beautiful tree in the mist
which they embrace.

Bless your heart
Bruce Springsteen
for a beautiful song.
I look like the old man with the walking stick
at 1:35 without the nice coat and hat.
The lifted hand at 2:50 without an index finger
was filmed in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Needless to say,
the movie is an allegory
of a common person's life journey.
For an ordinary person,
the journal involves a sequence
of surreal and heart wrenching events
such as deceit, abuse, exploitation,
interrupted by small intervals of joy.

The journey typically ends in a way
that does not meet the initial goals,
but this does not matter.
Nobody's goals are met in their entirety,
and in many cases it turns out that the
initial goals were not worth pursuing in hindsight.

Zorba dismisses and celebrates his failures
as a coping mechanism.

In "These days",
a teen-aged Jackson Browne sings:

"Please don't confront me with my failures,
I haven't forgotten them."

Miley Cyrus
has recorded a beautiful rendition of this song.

Welcome to Holland
by Emily Perl Kingsley.


contents
 
UNIVERSAL HUMAN TRAITS

Unless you live in the dark ages,
you must have accepted by now that humans
are animals with some advanced biological hardware
and a buggy embedded software in the brain.
The brain itself contains a receptor hosting
a Universal soul.

Other receptors of a certain Universal soul are possible,
which explains the concept of parallel universes
and parallel lives.

I have done a fair amount of reading and saw
that scholars and non-scholars like to prepare
lists universal human traits.
Examples include family, curiosity, love, memory, and others.

I have gone over multiple such lists and was surprised
that I could easily dismiss almost all enumerated items
in each list.
For example, it is trivial to prove that
not all humans have capacity for love and affection.
A lot of people are hardwired to exhibit compassion,
but a lot of other people are incapable of exhibiting compassion.
Instead, naturally or by self-training,
they like to optimize their benefits in real time
with no regard to consequences on others.

In fact, only those who have studied zoology are 
in a position to provide a list of universal human traits
by comparison to those of animals.

I believe that the single universal human trait is 
related to trauma response to anger and fear,
which can be fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (4F).
Every person on earth, without exception,
responds to anger and fear by one of the 4F.
I know I do.

A while ago, a brilliant friend of mine mentioned
that primitive humans were cruel and only became "nice"
when they realized they can get more benefits
by appearing to be benign.
I believe that my friend was absolutely correct.


contents

RICHARD BRAUTIGAN

Richard Brautigan
is one of the most interesting
American writers and
a genuine American treasure.

He grew up in abject poverty
in a broken home 
and lived a tormented life
riddled with mental illness,
not unlike that suffered by
Robert M. Pirsig,
the author of my all-time favorite book

"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

In the end, Brautigan surrendered to his daemons.

I studied Pirsig's Zen book multiple times
at different stages of my life.
Each time, I uncovered new insights
and confirmed preconceived ideas.
Everyone knows what is right 
and what is wrong:

"And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

It is natural to attempt to classify Pirsig's book
in a genre. The brilliance of Pirsig's writing
is that it cannot be classified in a genre.
One spends much more time thinking about
what was said in a paragraph than reading the lines.

I used to religiously visit my local bookstore
wherever I happened to live.
One time, I randomly picked up Brautigan's book

"Trout Fishing in America "

at a stage where mastery of the English language
was not my forte (I have improved).

However, I was able to sense that the book
was an important literary piece that
I was neither able nor ready to appreciate at the time.
I spent many years bringing myself to a state
where I could appreciate this book
and some others.

My favorite Brautigan poem is entitled:

"At the California Institute of Technology"

I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are: I'm bored.
It's been raining like hell all day long
and there's nothing to do.

Richard Brautigan wrote this poem
when he was a CalTech resident poet.

I think my dear friend's Jeffrey Davis
brilliant graduate adviser
Sandra Troian would agree with the essence of the poem.
Fly high in heaven brilliant Jeff.
Thank you for your rare integrity Sandra.

I fondly remember Sandra visiting my office
in San Diego and complimenting my very first book,
which meant a great deal to me as a young professor.
Nearly thirty years later, the book is still in print
and in moderate demand by readers.

In the interest of full disclosure,
I interviewed for a faculty position
at Caltech fresh out of graduate school
and was unceremoniously rejected.

Being naive, I handled the interview poorly.
When I was asked why I studied the problem
described in my thesis, I replied
that I found it hard and intellectually stimulating.
The right answer involves something about
getting research grants.
I am writing this with no trace of bitterness.

You have to choose where you want to go
and understand the rules of the path
you want to take.
If you are not prepared to follow the rules,
you'd better back out.


contents


OCCAM'S RAZOR

Recently, I had to start 
our Massey Ferguson tractor
to put away some fell trees.
When I turned the ignition key,
I heard a loud persistent beep,
though the engine would start
and the tractor would operate
without any sign of trouble.
However, the "overheat" light was illuminated
on the dashboard.

The most logical conclusion would be that
the temperature sensor went bad.
When I opened the hood,
I saw that the sensor was fine
but a naughty mouse chewed up
and cut the two electrical
wires connected to the sensor.
The wire insulation is made
of a tasty material.

The wires are bundled in an electrical harness
which costs well over $1,000 to purchase
when it is not out of stock
and a huge amount of money to install.
I suspect that, in order  to install the harness,
one needs to disassemble the engine
and possibly split the tractor.
Non-compact tractors can literaly be split
in two pieces.

The mouse cut the electrical wires a quarter
of an inch from the sensor
which made splicing impossible.
In an act of desperation, I carefully stripped
the two ends 
of each cut wire by a short length 
using a razor blade which I affectionately called the
Massey--Ferguson--Occam razor.

I then bent the two exposed wires,
looped them over a tiny length,
and connected them by a bridge wire.
All of this was done under duress
and under severe back and sciatica pain.




  The temperature sensor is located
  above the alternator
  and screws into the engine block.
  You can see the alternator belt
  and the water pump belt.
  A push-pull electrical connector 
  fits at the top of the sensor.
  The green wire is the bridge wire
  I installed.
  A leprechaun is sleeping on the other
  side of the engine.


This crude repair method worked!
The tractor started without a beeping noise
and has been operating normally ever since.
It even went through three emission regeneration
cycles without a hitch.

In this adventure, I was fortunate enough
to correct the problem by one fix
(repair the wires.)
Had I performed two fixes,
I would be in doubt which was the critical fix.
If I wanted to investigate whether a mouse
was the culprit indeed,
I would have to scrutinize the liability
of squirels and leprechauns.
I see the latter running around the farm
all the time
but pretend not to notice.

To make sure I did not miss something obvious,
like leprechauns taking naps on the engine block,
I called Dealer Eckroth,
spoke to an extremely helpful technician,
and was told that what I did was perfectly fine.
Bless your heart helpful technician.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that the way
I approached this problem is exactly what
was advocated
by Pirsig as best practice
for motorcycle maintenance
in contrast to a couple of his friends
who immediately resort to a mechanic
at the first sign of motorcycle malfunctioning.

Instead, Pirsig diagnoses the problem
by logical exclusion and then fixes
the problem by whatever means is available
at the time.
In my case, the means were Occam's razor
and a spare piece of bridge wire.
Astronauts performing equipment repair
in space have to be Pirsig disciples.

Because running to a Dealer costs 
a lot of money and downtime measured in months,
farmers do their own Zen-like equipment repairs
as a way of life.

Neil Young wrote a wonderful song entitled "Old Man"
for an old ranch keeper

"Old man, take a look at my life,
I'm a lot like you
I need someone to love me the whole day through
Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that's true"

In the song video,
Victor de Castro Monteiro
makes a comment:

"I'm going through very difficult days.
I feel lost and alone.
I've been crying a lot these days.
This song is helping me get through this."

Comments like this break my heart
and reduce me to tears.

I would have liked to be able to ask Jesus
why there is so much suffering in this world?
I am not interested in answers
returned by religious leaders
and makeshift Christians.

Farmers and other mechanics are the ultimate Buddhists:

"The only Zen that you can find at the tops of mountains
is the Zen that you bring there."

The only Zen that you can find in a Massey Ferguson tractor
is the Zen that you make with a razor blade and a small bridge wire.

Zen followers have it right:
Bad things will happen to you,
find a way to deal with them,
you can only control your response.
There is no universal way to deal with suffering.


contents

AMAZON

When I arrived in America as a graduate student,
I spent a lot of time at the University bookstore
and the library.
Having access to both was one of the greatest gifts
that anybody could give me.
When I became a professor, in the pre-Internet era,
I reserved my Friday afternoons for visits
to the San Diego Geisel library.

It is puzzling that not once did I see one of my colleagues
visiting the library.
It has always been a mystery to me
how they were able to keep up
with the literature in the pre-Internet era.
My colleagues were first-rate scientists,
no slackers by any means.

There must have been something I had missed.

I enjoyed collecting and reading books.
As the Internet was being developed,
I had this idea:
I will write descriptions and comments
for each one of the books I own,
and post them on my web site
for others to read.
This is indeed what I did,
having no clue that Amazon
would beat me to it soon afterwards.

This was not the only time I missed the boat.
Another time was when I wrote one math paper
proposing a certain computational method.
I decided to write no other follow up papers
so that I do not waste my precious time on earth.

Another colleague developed essentially the same method
and then published a few hundred papers 
on applications of the method.
After a while, I got tired of being asked
to peer-review my colleague's papers pre-publication
and started returning standard declines.
It was exasperating that each manuscript
had the same set of errors (probably typographical)
in key equations: pitfalls of cut and paste.

A friend I admire is a retired Professor of History.
She once told me that she regrets
spending her life studying frivolous subjects
that will make no impact to the world.
As it turns out, I have ended up feeling the same
way about parts of my own scientific work.

However, each on of my published books
are noteworthy and useful pieces of work,
well worth their price.
I don't regret the many years I have spent writing them.

I now wonder if other scholars and scientists
have felt the same way about their work
behind closed doors or when they stare
at their bedroom ceiling.
Grigori probably did.
Some successful tenured professors quit their jobs
for no clear reason.

In an interview, Neil Young (or was it James Taylor)
was asked
to respond to the criticism that
all of his songs sound alike (they do not.)
Neil Young replied that the criticism
is probably correct (it is not.)
An arbitrary person would get on the defensive
and start arguing with the interviewer.
Neil Young and James Taylor are not arbitrary men.

James Taylor sings:

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus?
You gotta help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day
My body's aching and my time is at hand
And I won't make it any other way"

I heard an interview with Dolly Parton
on the National Public Radio a while ago,
where the interviewer was trying to get
the young artist to say that her music was
driven by intellectual pursuits.

Dolly Parton repeatedly contradicted the interviewer and 
stated that her motivation was attention, glamor and fame.
This did not sit well with the disgruntled interviewer.
Bless your heart Dolly Parton,
you have been as talented, charming and authentic
as they come.


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ELDER PAISIOS

A story of St. Paisios, translated by John Sanidopoulos:

Once on Mount Athos there was a monk
who lived in Karyes.
He drank and got drunk every day
and was the cause of scandal to the pilgrims.
Eventually he died and this relieved
some of the faithful who went on to tell
Elder Paisios that they were delighted
that this huge problem was finally solved.

Father Paisios answered them that
he knew about the death of the monk,
after seeing the entire battalion
of angels who came to collect his soul.
The pilgrims were amazed
and some protested and tried to explain
to the Elder of whom they were talking about,
thinking that the Elder did not understand.

Elder Paisios explained to them:

"This particular monk was born in Asia Minor,
shortly before the destruction
by the Turks when they gathered all the boys.
So as not to take him from their parents,
they would take him with them to the reaping,
and so he wouldn't cry,
they just put raki (alcoholic beverage) into
his milk in order for him to sleep.
Therefore he grew up as an alcoholic.

There he found an elder and said
to him that he was an alcoholic.
The elder told him to do prostration
and prayers every night and beg Panagia
to help him reduce one by one the glasses he drank.

Without knowing what each one of us
is trying to do what one needs to achieve,
what right do we have to judge their effort?"



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THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN TO ME

Think again.

Live your life and conduct yourself as though
anything can happen to you or someone else
at any time.

From getting seriously sick, to getting betrayed,
to causing or suffering from emotional or physical pain,
to getting arrested, to getting unalived.

When you are healthy, able-bodied,
have a lot of cash in the bank
and equities in the stock market,
have a supporting family,
do not belong to a minority group,
have not suffered prejudice,
you may think that life is great.

You may laugh at the idea of helping
the poor and the homeless,
and express the opinion that DEI
(Diversity, Equity, Inclusion)
is a frivolous proposition.
Incidentally, those who do not support DEI
should state it explicitly in conversations,
brochures, and web sites.

President Obama awarded cell phones
to the underprivileged to help them function,
but this was too much for a lot of privileged.

You may want to see beautiful people
advertising cars, even though those
who drive them are average looking.
You may want to drive cars with high emissiion
rates that you don't need.
The fabrication of every car component
contributes to the destruction of the earth.

Those who oppose DEI cannot fathom
that they themselves can be excluded
on the basis of their present or forthcoming
physical or mental challenges.
The reason is that they have formulated
an image of themselves
as attractive, intelligent, able-bodied
and in good health.
They are under the false impression
that these attributes will stay with
them forever.

What they don't realize is that their good life
can change over a split second.
All their prejudices
will then seem pointless, irrelevant, and childish.
The difference between an able bodied
and a disabled person is a bike ride.


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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Wikipedia informs us that:

"Artificial intelligence (AI)
is the capability of computational systems
to perform tasks typically
associated with human intelligence,
such as learning, reasoning,
problem-solving, perception, and decision-making.
It is a field of research in computer science
that develops and studies methods and software
that enable machines to perceive their environment
and use learning and intelligence to take actions
that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals."

A fundamental question arises:
"Can Artificial Intelligence survive
without Human or Natural Intelligence?"

Recently, I was asked for permission
for Artificial Intelligence Engines
to go through my books and retrieve
information needed.
This seems like a good idea,
assuming that the information
is used for honorable and
non-destructive purposes.

Why not?
I don't need royalties.

It is important to remember
that the intelligence
of humans who wrote books
and generated information
lies at the very core of
Artificial Intelligence algorithms.
Others have pointed this out.

It seems that, unlike Natural and Human intelligence,
Artificial Intelligence cannot distinguish between right
and wrong with reference to any moral code.

"And what is good, Phaedrus,
And what is not good --
Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"

Applications of AI that I have seen first-hand include:

Onscreen targeted advertising of products;
Identifying shoplifters in stores;
Objectifying persons in the context of
Object oriented programming;
Creating bizzare-looking pictures and images.

Other applications listed in Wikipedia
sound like a Wall Street investor proposal.

I doubt that a current AI machine
can learn how to write:

"It was the best of times
 it was the worst of times".

The algorithm will discard this statement
as self-contradictory.

I would be lying if I was saying
that I do not appreciate
artificial intelligence.
Eventually, we will find a way
through its current limitations
and allow the machine
to respond with
"It was the best of times
it was the worst of times"
to a query about current affairs.


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I'LL FIGURE IT OUT

Sometime ago,
Phaedra and I decided
to find the surveyor's pipe stakes
at the eleven corners of our property.
This was easier said than done.

Some of these stakes were not hard
to find, but others wer stubbornly
out of sight.
Most of these stakes were hidden
or buried inside thick brush overgrowth
and stone walls.

We spent quite some time looking in vain
for one particular stake
guided by a USB GPS dongle
hooked up to a Linux laptop
that Phaedra carried
in a shoulder bag.
At the end of this expedition,
we returned to the base
with no results.

As we were putting our gear away,
a flashback occured in my mind.
I remembered that as a graduate
student I spent several months
tackling a problem that turned
out to be ill-posed.

My graduate adviser saw how
disappointed I was and told me:
"yeah, but we learned a lot."
He said this as a matter of fact,
not to console me.
My advisor was a brilliant
and pragmatic man.

I realized at that moment that
the proper way to
look at failures is to regard
them as incremental attempts
for success.
If ultimate success does not come,
so be it.

Back at the ranch, I said
to Phaedra: "We may not have
found the stake, but we made
a lot of progress".

Phaedra is a very intelligent person.
She looked at me and her face lit up.
Nothing else had to be said.
Phaedra mentioned since
that the expression

"We made a lot of progress"

provided a lot of comfort
when dealing with unwieldy
circumstances and issues.

A couple of hours later,
I returned to the place
where the stake was supposed
to be, and I found it!

Why am I recalling this story?

Recently, I watched a Reddit video
where a remarkable intelligent
young and beautiful woman
discusses her heart wrenching
medical issues that resulted
in her being partially paralyzed
and deaf after multiple brain surgeries.
On top of that, her dad took his own life.

She encourages anyone
who is struggling with an issue
to replace

"I can't do this; I am done"

with

"I'll figure it out."

As you lie in bed staring at the ceiling,
thinking about what seems to be
an insurmountable problem
and feeling that the walls are closing in on you
and you have no escape,
say to yourself out loud:

I can do this and I'll figure it out.


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ON LYING

I have been riding bicycles on busy, narrow
and congested streets since I was a teenager
and never had an accident.

A few of decades ago I was riding my bicycle
on the side of a secondary street in San Diego,
until I got hit from behind by the
oversized mirror of a large SUV.
I blacked out, suffered serious medical injuries,
and spent time at the hospital.
Phaedra took good care of me and I got better.

When I was transported to the ER
by the paramedics,
I heard in between black outs
a medical worker say:
"Hey, this is my professor".

The driver claimed that I veered into him,
which makes no sense and is not
consistent with the damage done on his car.
I don't have any grudges for him,
accidents happen and he was probably
scared and panicked.

The point is that his insurance company
required that their attorney (a nice young
woman) interview me for a deposition.

At some point, the attorney asked me
if I had any damages from missing social
functions due to the accident.
From experience, she was expecting
me to recite a litany of real or
imaginary events.

The thing about me is that
I never ever mislead or lie.
I cannot remember a single instance
in my entire life where I lied
in private or in public.

I replied immediately in all honesty
that I did not and shook my head
in the negative emphatically.

The attorney was incredulous
and did a double take.
She looked at me for a moment
and concluded the deposition
admitting full
liability for the driver.

The first lie is hard,
the second lie is easier,
it is a slippery slope
toward a seared conscience
thereafter.

Being honest and truthful
usually works against you,
but there are instances
where it works for you.

At one point, I was interviewed
by a Dean for the position of
a Department Head.
He asked me if I considered
administrative service
a fair substitute for academic activity.
I answered immediately with one word: No
The Dean extended me an offer on the spot.


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TWO MONKEYS

In a previous life a few decades ago,
I was appointed to a University committee
to review applications
for internal research funding.
The committee budget was small.

One application from cognitive sciences
submitted by a notably underfunded researcher
with a poor publication record
requested a couple of thousand dollars
to buy food for two non-human primates.
The monkeys would be subject
to electrode implanting and would
eventually die from uncontrolled infections
of the brain.

I tried very hard to save the monkeys.
All I needed was another member
of the committee to cast a second
negative vote. There was another
member who always
talked big but, much to my astonishment,
went coward this time.
I pleaded with him to spare the animals,
but he dismissed me in a crude way.

I looked at him and asked
(I remember my exact words):
"Is there anything I can say to
convince you that this is wrong?"
He looked back and said:
"There is nothing YOU can say
to convince me that this is wrong".
I sensed an element of prejudice
in his response due to my Greek
roots and young age.

This person was appointed to an important
administrative position in the next
academic year.

I am not a hypocrite.

If I had to choose between my own life
and the life of an arbitrary monkey
sacrificed for medical testing
that would save my life,
I would choose the life of the monkey.

The whole episode left me with 
emotional scars and some form of PTSD
manifested by the thousand-yard stare
and triggered by watching wildlife.
This is an instance where experiences
work against ideals.

To make sure I was not over-reacting,
I confided in a trusted mathematician colleague
(the brightest person I have met in
my entire academic life)
and he was even more upset than I.

Wikipedia informs us that,
in 1997, the United Kingdom
announced a policy of no longer
granting licenses for research
involving great apes,
the first ever measure
to ban primate use in research.
Since then, other countries have followed
their lead.