Today, I offered my two cents on a question posted on Reddit in the /askphilosophy subreddit:

“Could constantly learning new things be a way to give meaning to life, or is it merely an illusion that we are trying to create?”

I cannot offer insight into studies or schools of thought regarding the question, but I can answer with regard to the insights gained by my wife and me, who are approaching our 60s. Both of us constantly delve into often difficult/complex areas of learning as we’ve noticed that for us, this is a form of play but, more importantly, a way of discovery. At various points along our journey together, we were asked what the “secret” to our happiness is, and what I came up with was that the intensity of exploration experienced at the beginning of our relationship never relented.

This led me to look at those around us who were falling into pre-relationship behaviors because the deep discovery and exploration of the partner that arrives with the early days of falling in love, were waning. Moving into routines, many seem to grow bored or unsatisfied with things.

On the other hand, we read a lot; as a matter of fact, when we travel by car, my wife, who doesn’t like to drive, reads to me. We do not listen to audiobooks; we’ve tried, but I insisted we turn away from them as I’d already grown familiar with my wife’s voice, and so it became the preferred choice of what I wanted to hear as we’d drive the 600 miles between locations. We also have hobbies that are able to evolve and require new skills. Add to this mix that we don’t watch television, play video games, or invest decades in the same activities we were doing 30 years ago, and the world seems to stay new.

We are not rich, we share a car, rent a small apartment, do not have university educations and yet we vacation between 3 and 10 times a year (some of those travels might only be a weekend out of state). We have time and the means to explore various cuisines such as Korean, Burmese, Thai, Indian, Chinese, various European, and of course American. I’m sharing the info about food as it, too, lends itself to the objective of constant learning.

I cannot tell you that this constant learning for the two of us has definitively given us greater meaning or happiness, but I am certain that without this “play” (when I was a child, we referred to discovery, exploring, and learning by the word “play”) we would be fearful of the situation that might curtail our ability to be in this constant state and maybe that would lead to lack of meaning and diminished happiness.

Happiness may not give meaning to life, but it makes many of its uncertainties bearable, and when learning becomes a constant instead of the inanities of modernity, I find that we have the drive to learn even more in order to discover meaning in that exploration of the unknowns still unfolding in front of us.

Photo of us volunteering during a recent charity food packing event held nearby.

The discarded sign of the homeless person who needed nothing else and so they left behind the only symbol that they were here and had existed for a moment. Of course, it could also be a situation where the fentanyl was disabling their motor skills, and in the process of lightening their load, the sign simply fell to the wayside. Or maybe their Uber driver arrived to whisk him/her/they/them to a new life not defined by begging, which also included the help to deliver them from the nothingness that afflicted them?

When we fall in love with celebrities, we are projecting ourselves into their role, be it sports professionals, musicians, actors, porn stars, or influencers. This obvious attraction due to our own desire to be seen, known, wealthy, and influential is an easy equation to relate to, but what is not so apparent is why we often have such visceral disdain for the homeless.

We can blame the trash and feces they leave behind, or the crime we perceive will arrive with them, or maybe we believe that they are capable of work but are too lazy to find the wherewithal to apply themselves. Not taking into account the specifics of what has led any one person or group of people to homelessness, I want to address where we, the not-homeless, are in this equation.

Witnessing success, we celebrate our hope that we might arrive there, too. The celebrity is the surrogate of our own ascent of the ladder to fame. The homeless person is the nagging ugly reminder that we, too, could end up in their tattered shoes. We need to hide these creatures away from our own neighborhoods as they represent a decay that plagues others but should not influence us or our children.

But this is the all too obvious and most apparent cosmetic delineation between us and them. I’d posit that there’s very little difference between the majority and this rarified margin of extreme success and failure. How many people are as empty as those they praise or despise? In this age of mass deterritorialization where ubiquitous media has insidiously stripped away the unique territory of the individual, many people are bereft of personality traits developed by their own explorations as opposed to those images and ideas of personhood pumped into them from the same hose that was feeding the rest of the herd.

The manifestations of the homeless are only the most obvious refuse of a society that no longer allows for a population of individuals sharing a common space but requires those of homogenous form and character to congregate in mass pilgrimages to consumption. When you fail to fit that mold, you have but a few options in American life: fame, destitution, entrepreneurial struggle, isolation on the margin, or expatriation.

Nobody is part of a community anymore unless you believe that belonging to nothingness is somehow a valid place and identity. Under most circumstances, the vacuous shell of political idolatry worn on a hat, the brand emblazoned on your computer, phone, watch, or your shared loyalty to some sports franchise are but junk food fed to you by the machine. The decades-long programmatic building of a population, according to a select group of California thinkers, has gutted individuality while they have been refining their tools to strip all semblance of meaningful character through social media and entertainment until we are left with the banalest citizenry of nothingness, reducing us to something less than the most useless of insects.

Consider that all modern industrial conveniences, including their environment and intellectual harm, arose from an age where everyone had different backgrounds with a multitude of environmental and intellectual influences from across all geographies and disciplines. From that dis-order, the age of machines brought humanity a bevy of tools and devices that would compliment the comforts of many people on earth, but as convenience pandered to our laziest inclinations, it simultaneously removed the need for us humans to venture out to seek what our minds were hungry for – new stuff. Novelty was brought directly into our homes, and now we can gather new information no matter where we are. Smartphones and the internet allowed the pipeline of intellectual junk food to find the vein into our very souls.

Stripped of individuality and embued with the ever-present need for societal/group acceptance, we work hard to stay current with the newest gossip regarding celebrities, boss fights in video games, conspiracy theories, dramas between reality TV personalities, or some other narratives designed by the powers that be in order to find the excited enthusiasm of others who are lost in this non-sensical trivia that does nothing to help define a person. In another age, it was the sharing of anticipated weather conditions or who was getting married in the community that held the glue of being present in one’s surroundings. Today, we must be atop the news of Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian dating, the verdict regarding a kid killing demonstrators with an AR-15-style weapon, the release date of the next installment of Grand Theft Auto, or the sexual orientation of a Marvel Universe character.

So, should we all be intellectuals? Not in the least, but one cannot be an authentic individual if they are merely a clone, fractionally different from those around them. Just as there are not a billion people on earth having conversations regarding deconstructionist ideas from Jacques Derrida, there shouldn’t be a billion people discussing the merits of a Korean TV show that snuffs out the life of those trying to escape crushing debt as is found in Squid Game.

According to Google, there are more than 135,00,000 million books written that they know of. Obviously, not all of them are in English, but even if only 1% of those were in English, it would relate to a boatload of books read by Americans with a million different stories to share. But, according to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), only about half of American adults can read a book at an 8th-grade level. Well, that means there are only about 130 million Americans who can reasonably be expected to be able to even read a book. Compare those who could read a book with how Squid Game reached 142 million households and that the average household measures in at about 2.5 members each, which could imply that 355 million people have watched this program. Possibly the best-selling science book of all time, A Brief History of Time, written by Stephen Hawking, sold over 10 million copies, but it took 33 years to reach that number, and you can easily see that we want our content to be easy to consume and about as mindless as can be.

Why does any of this matter? We are facing a crisis of civility, pandemic, and environmental chaos, but the societal cohesion and collective intelligence required to wrestle with what amounts to purely intellectual problems is sorely missing and likely cannot be remedied with any quick fixes as there’s no amount of money that can repair stupid. From the vapid heights of celebrity to the person shitting on our streets, we are living in the midst of a mediocrity brought about by our own idiotic doing, in large part due to our desire to be entertained to death. The strata of dumb we must climb out of to begin understanding our dilemma is likely insurmountable, so just throw away your signs, enjoy the rest of your nothingness, and realize you were never really at home within yourself. You, me, all of us, are already homeless, but at least we’ll be celebrated as the most uncaring, superficial species ever to wreck the good fortune we once had.

Grammarly is triggering me to write something, anything, as long as I put some words down here on my blog, by reminding me that I have 126 consecutive weeks of writing under my belt. But I’m working on a bigger fish that obviously is not a fish, nor is it a thing I’m ready to bring into reality. Mentioning what it is could make it real, but uncertainty about commitment has me waffling if I’m prepared for that. Of course, this is really nothing more than a “bait and fail” to deliver because I’m not ready to share, and I’m only writing this to find words flowing onto the page so my digital overlord known as Grammarly succeeds in conditioning me to earn my rewards. Because who doesn’t want that email next week telling them that they’ve earned the praise from an automated processed form e-mail goading the user into desiring 127 consecutive weeks of writing productivity?

Aside from that nonsense, I really should throw something into the stream of blogging before it becomes too easy to ignore this thing. Obviously, it’s easier to perform this exercise while traveling as visual impressions lend easy content to my expression while my investigations of research trying to organize an imagination becomes dedicated to the side project I’m not wanting to discuss at this time. Oops, back to the start.

Okay, I’ll try to break out of this look and bring this entry elsewhere.

It’s been a shade better than a week since I wrote the above because then I got sidetracked by the arrival of a highly-anticipated book titled The Third Unconscious by Franco “Bifo” Berardi. A page-turning, riveting work of observational philosophical/psychological shift going on in regard to our post-pandemic environment. I finished it yesterday, and I’m now able to return to my empty-headed malaise (see photo above), so I might contemplate my next moves.

One place I won’t be heading to is Oregon for our nearly annual Oregon Coast Thanksgiving Retreat due to scheduling conflicts, so I’m looking at quite possibly sitting here in Phoenix for the last eight weeks of the year. With this sense of imposing reality, I might also have to consider that events here in Blogland could remain on relative hiatus as I try to find focus on the task I was alluding to at the top of this entry. To be honest with myself, I suppose the determination is already in the bag to take the matter of writing into the corner of seriousness that implies something larger emerging from that effort, but if somehow I refrain from using the word “book” or “novel” it won’t enter the realm of commitment. Who in their right mind would embark on such a task, especially when they know the extraordinary effort required just to write a short 500-word blog post about something inconsequential? And if we are talking fiction to this would-be author who struggles to find enjoyment in the genre, that person must certainly be flailing at the margins of nonsense.

From one coffee shop to the next, I’m floating between locations with stops for lunch or chores and occasionally dipping into the news that descends from those clouds. The news is a mixed bag that can only reach my senses by reading it as the intonation of those reporting it is so laden with pathos as to destroy any ethos that might have been there in the past. Yet, I’m drawn to current events as I sense I’m witnessing the wheels coming off the body politic and the capitalist head driving the human organism to insanity. Selfishly, I feel my role is to remain frugal until escape velocity is reached and not share the secret of our salvation that won’t be found in faith, so don’t go there.

There, I’ve written something and nothing, as these words fail to satisfy my joy of sharing words. Maybe I’m trying to keep all the words to myself as if they are allowed to back up; they might splash forward in a cascade that could amount to the deluge I hope to expose in something called a book.

Either we humans are stupid from top to bottom, or I’m gaslighting myself by believing what I interpret from the things I read, hear, and see. Just this morning, I’m reading from (potential future billionaire) Prince William that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson should focus their wealth not on inhabiting space but set to work trying to fix our planetary problems. To be fair, it’s not only U.K. royalty that I’ve read this from, but by now, I’m starting to feel abused by this line of thinking. Since when is wealth supposed to take a leadership position in situations that must be directed by political means?

This followed in the footsteps of a server where I took breakfast telling me that Biden in the White House correlates with the current rise in prices and, therefore, must be a causation factor. While maybe I made it clear enough to them that this was a global issue, not an isolated one, where supply chains and manufacturing that were put on hold due to the pandemic are all coming back to life just as pent-up demand is surging while the fear of pandemic resurgence is tempering confidence. But this line of thinking requires thought and solid backing information that delves into complexity while missing a political narrative that serves particular constituencies; so, would the person consider my points or gravitate towards the simple explanation?

The anti-vaxxer crowd would have everyone believe that they’ve found the unicorn of truth living right here in the United States. Laypeople masquerading as experts in the medical sciences claim special knowledge of a vast conspiracy to trick professionals in 194 other countries to go along with some nefarious plot to take control of the planet, using COVID  to reach their goals because controlling production, distribution, currency, resources, global travel is not enough for the powerful cabal of overlords who must also control what vaccines we’re forced to take.

I only now realized that there’s been a two-week lull in postings here at www.johnwise.com. It’s not that I’ve been lollygagging on the sidelines, enjoying our slightly cooler Arizona weather that’s seen torrents of rain. Yes, we’ve had a nice monsoon season, but that’s not what’s occupied my time.

Aside from the time I needed to catch up writing about all of those days out in the center of the United States with my daughter, I’ve been plugging away on some backfill duties that Caroline requested of me. Specifically, she asked that I examine the blog entries of January 10 – 18, 2009 when we made our first winter visit to Yellowstone National Park. Caroline was looking for something or other regarding a Yellowstone trip, and by the time she realized which one it was, she was aghast to find that our monumental visit in the snow only featured one image per day.

Well, that is now rectified, as after looking at the bulk of photos I shot over those eight days, I found some incredible images that just had to be put up here for posterity. The ironic thing is that they are buried maybe a thousand posts in the past and will likely never be seen by anyone other than us. No matter, we know that they are now part of a narrative that, at some time or other, when we are reminiscing about that journey, we’ll have access to some quick rediscovery. Should you be so inclined to share some of those moments with us, just click here to see the first post.

This effort followed the filling in of another road trip – again, because of an image Caroline had been looking for. I think it was the photo of us sitting in the cockpit of the Spruce Goose. Back while I was in Germany, she asked that when I got home, maybe I could consider adding something as there was zilch about that five-day September 2011 trip into Oregon (not even that iconic cockpit portrait).

Writing about the Oregon trip was a bummer because we had no notes and not even the briefest of descriptions of those days already online. Luckily, I still had the itinerary that listed the events of the days, and with Caroline and I rekindling our memories by looking at the sequence of images from each day along with the itinerary items, we were able to flesh out a fairly good narrative. That series of posts was finished before my daughter arrived. Again, should you have any interest in seeing what we did over those five days in the Pacific Northwest, click here.

Now we can catch up with the present. We recently had a major change of plans due to the rising COVID numbers thanks to the Delta variant, and we thought things were set. Well, if indecision is the key to flexibility, then what is waffling to the future? This will be explained early next week, as right now, my coffee break at the homeless shelter is over.

For clarification regarding my last statement, my morning coffee shop is not my late afternoon coffee shop, and I’m not sure how much longer my afternoon coffee can be taken at the specific location I’m visiting. I’m referring to the third Starbucks I’ll have to abandon as they become magnets to the homeless looking for free ice water, an air-conditioned space, WiFi, and a plug to charge their smartphones. Even after putting locks on the bathroom doors to control who can use them, the staff still allows the homeless in for sink baths and, on occasion, a safe place to catch up on their addictions.

If I’m completely honest, I suppose I am just about to be forced out of Starbucks anyway as we move into the fall and Christmas season when John Legend enters heavy rotation on their playlist.