Thoughts and the Mind

Tom Kando 

I want to write something about the mind, about OUR mind, as humans. 

Our mind affects our body and it is affected by our body and by what happens to us and around us. It generates thoughts in reaction to what happens to us, for example a traffic accident, and also in reaction to things which we just notice even if they do not affect us, such as a distant hurricane or a war we see on TV. 

Most of the things that happen and which we notice are independent from us. Most of the news belongs in this category. The war in Ukraine or a victory by the Sacramento Kings does not change my life in any significant way. However, both can trigger thoughts in my mind and emotions in me, such as sadness or euphoria. 

When things happen and they affect us, they are no longer separate from us. For example, you drive to the airport and you get a flat tire. This causes you to miss your flight to Hawaii. This event becomes part of your experience. 

Now your mind has no choice but to kick in. It thinks about the event, its consequences, how to respond, and a myriad of other thoughts related to and about the event. 

Your mind also affects your body. It creates emotions, which are mental-physical states that may be unpleasant or pleasant. The experience triggers several different categories of thoughts and emotions: evaluating the situation, planning a solution to the problem, memories of the solutions available to you (find the jack in your trunk or the AAA phone number on your phone), and probably a degree of frustration, distress, maybe even anger about the mishap. 

You are now dealing with a multiple situation: The flat tire and the missed flight to Hawaii are now in the past, irretrievably. Your mind would like to change, erase, think those events out of existence. The impossibility of achieving this causes you pain. Your mind causes you to suffer in addition to having to deal with the flat tire and the missed flight. This pain is unnecessary. It does not solve the problem more readily.

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Losing Things

By Madeleine Kando

I lost my phone yesterday. I went out for a drink and wanted to call my husband, but there was no phone in my bag. Must have left it in the car, I thought, with a hint of anxiety. I hardly ever leave it in the car, except when I go swimming, for obvious reasons.

When I got home, I called myself on my husband’s phone, but the familiar ‘quack’  (that’s my ringtone) was nowhere to be heard.

After a sleepless night, I rushed back to the place where I used it last. The building was empty but open. I looked under every chair, on every table, and rummaged through a box with personal belongings. My heart sank. Bye-bye thousand-dollar phone.

With my tail between my legs, I passed a small table where people leave brochures. The corner of a familiar-looking object peeked out from under a typed sheet. My phone! It had secretly and wisely hidden itself under some brochures.

I was overjoyed. I walked out of the building unseen and unheard. Like the CIA after a successful covert operation, except I hadn’t killed anyone.

This seems to be a recurring theme in my life. A while ago, I lost my favorite pair of sunglasses, the ones I bought in Paris for a hundred euros during a bout of temporary insanity.

It happened while I was walking my diminutive dog in the forest. I was awake most of the night and kept hearing this little voice calling out to me: ‘I am here! I am here! Please find me’, like one of the shrunken kids in the movie ‘Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’.

I went back to the forest and suddenly remembered bending over to pick up my tiny dog before he disappeared in the underbrush. ‘That’s when it happened!’ I thought. I retraced my steps and saw a speck of shiny brown amongst the green. ‘Some idiot must have dropped their sunglasses…Wait.. those are mine!' The odds that I would find them were so small that I thought I was dreaming.

So here I was, happy as a pig in mud. I wore my sunglasses the rest of the day even though it was raining. We were bonding.

Some things I lost but never found again, like my mother. Still, I find her again regularly in my dreams. It is not an exact replica, but beggars cannot be choosers.

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Reincarnation

By Madeleine Kando

My grandson Marshall asked me if I believed in reincarnation. Maybe he worries that I will die soon and wouldn’t it be nice if I came back somehow to keep adding to the vast amount of presents he is getting for Christmas?

Reincarnation derives from a Latin term that literally means 'entering the flesh again'. Some people believe that reincarnation is a process with rules, like the rules of traffic. Leading an exemplary life will place you on a higher echelon of the reincarnation ladder than if you were a bank robber. That is why believing in the afterlife keeps you on the straight and narrow.

I told him that I did not believe in reincarnation. Having to come back to start the whole exhausting process of being born, growing up, and dying again does not appeal to me.

But if there is an afterlife, I think there are no rules of conduct. Just like in life itself, most of it would depend on random luck. This means you can lead as bad a life as you want, although ultimately it is the people whom you leave behind that will pay the price for your badness.

To lead an exemplary life, you must know the difference between right and wrong. But who says that, of the millions of species that are imbued with the force of life, you would come back as an entity that has a sense of morality?

If there is an afterlife and we somehow could have an influence on it, it is not so much the rungs of the social ladder that I am concerned about. Read more...

Numbers and Numerical Systems

Tom Kando 

I was recently watching the great old musical Brigadoon. The people of that mythical fantasy land come alive once every century. So I’m thinking: Why every century? Why not some other time unit? Why did most of the world agree to go decimal? 

There are still exceptions, notably this country’s mishmash of measuring systems: Unlike much of the world, Americans measure distance and height in inches, feet, yards and miles, not centimeters, meters and kilometers. Our weights are in ounces and pounds, not grams and kilos. Volume is expressed in gallons, not liters, temperature in Fahrenheits, not centigrades, etc. But even in the US, science and medicine do most things decimally. 

There is no question that decimal is a lot better than the hodgepodge of measurement systems we use. But even decimal is an arbitrary system, hardly reflecting the nature of the world. It is often said that the choice had something to do with our ten fingers. 

A while ago I wrote a post asking whether mathematics is a discovery or an invention. In other words, is it embedded in nature, or do we humans use it to interpret nature? (See my post of Feb. 22 2024): ”Is Math a Discovery or an Invention?” or: Was God a mathematician?” 

Today, I am thinking of something related: Alternative numerical systems. The big one that immediately comes to mind is the binary system, because computers use it and computers have taken over the world. If we went binary, years would be numbered differently. We learn in history that Charlemagne was crowned Emperor in the year 800.

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English is Weird!

By Madeleine Kando

The English language went through a fairly uneventful childhood. It was born a Celtic language, which is still spoken in Wales, Scotland and Ireland. But after the numerous invasions of the island, English could barely keep up with the deluge of foreign influences.

First came the Romans. They left scraps of Latin on the English plate, before they departed for good.

The Celtic language of the clan (clann) who lived in bogs (bogash), ate crumpets galore (ge leor) and smashed (mescaen) chairs (chaiere) to smithereens (smidrini) after they drank tons of whiskey, easily incorporated words like triumph, ovation, consul, dictator and circus.

But soon, the Anglo-Saxons came. Because the land of the Anglo Saxons often got flooded, they started to look for new places to farm and grow crops. Britain seemed like a nice dry place.

They brought their own language and the Celtic language started to cave in under the sheer abundance of new words. Celtic was pushed into the remote corners of this beautiful island and Old English took over. It was very different from modern English though. If you met the (anonymous) author of the poem ‘Beowulf’, you wouldn’t understand what he was reciting.

But that was not the end of it. After the Anglo-Saxons, came the Vikings and left more scraps behind. These Vikings were an angry and awesome band that often went berserk. They were chubby and knew how to crochet. But they were also ugly, ran amuck, drew skulls and knives, liked to die but loved cake! These words represent the character of a fighting, raiding culture.*

To top it all off, came the Norman invasion. They quickly overran England with their armies and their French language. English was force-fed French words, like stuffing a goose. Written English practically disappeared and spoken English was in danger of becoming extinct.

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Are Liberals Funnier than Conservatives?

By Madeleine Kando

'Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs;

he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter."

  - Friedrich Nietzsche

Greek philosopher Democritus, known as the “laughing philosopher” had a tendency to laugh at the stupidity of his fellow citizens. He felt it was better to laugh at the world than become depressed by it.   

But laughter predates the Greeks. One of the best scenes in the movie ‘Quest for Fire’, is man’s discovery of laughter. When a primitive tribesman is hit on the head by a small falling stone, a woman from an advanced tribe starts to laugh. The less advanced tribesmen haven't heard such a noise before, but when one of the tribesmen deliberately drops a small stone on his friend’s head, everybody laughs. The woman taught the tribesmen how to laugh.

So if humor is universal, why doesn’t everybody have an equal sense of humor? Or is humor like beauty? Is it in the eyes of the beholder?

This is what author Dannagal Goldthwaite Young argues in her book ‘Irony and Outrage: The Polarized Landscape of Rage, Fear, and Laughter in the United States’. She explains why progressives watch late night comedy shows like Steven Colbert and John Stewart and why conservatives prefer Fox News’ prime-time political talk shows such as Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.

According to Young, an individual’s affinity for a particular genre of humor is determined by a set of psychological traits. She defines these traits as:

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