Posted on by Fred

A Dish Best Served Cold

In Star Trek II, Khan tells us that “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”  The line is certainly not original to him.  A Google search and Wikipedia suggest it goes back at least as far as a French diplomat named  Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754–1838) .  It’s hardly surprising to learn that the desire for revenge is deeply embedded in human beings.  If someone hurts us, we want to hurt them back.  Every civilization of which I’m aware has some form of punitive laws that decide what pain we will cause someone else who has inflicted pain on us.  When you feel the desire to exact vengeance, you’re hardly unique.  It makes you believe you feel better.  Perhaps it even really does.  I question the value of that feeling.  I would prefer you feel better showing love than hurting someone you believe deserves it. 

There are two examples of the need for revenge with which most of the world is at least somewhat familiar.  The first is Hamlet, one of the most famous fictional characters in all of literature.  The second is Indigo Montoya, who is beloved by the millions who are passionate about “The Princess Bride.”  Both are excellent examples of the fact that revenge doesn’t work out well. 

Khan tells us it’s a dish best served cold.  What does he mean by that?  Since it’s a part of a piece of Art, your opinion is certainly as valid as mine.  To me, it means that it’s been sitting around a while.  The heat has dissipated.  With the exception of sushi (which, for me, is a punishment all its own anyway) and ice cream (which is a sweet treat that seems hardly appropriate), nearly everything humans eat is preferable when it’s fresh out of the oven or off of the stove… or, if you’re me, from the microwave.  Waiting for it to get cold is to spoil it.  It has lost most of its flavor.  This is, according to Khan and the many who came before him, the best way to get revenge.  You don’t do it immediately.  You wait until the time is right because it will maximize the pain of its intended victim, even if it takes a long time to see it happen.  And the longer you wait, the longer the hate, if left unchecked, grows in your soul. Hamlet certainly took his time to get revenge.  Although it’s never clear in the text exactly how long, certainly several months have passed between the time of the death of Hamlet’s father, and Hamlet’s killing of the homicidal King.  And, while he certainly got his revenge, he was ready to end his own life before he got there because life had gotten so horrible. 

These are arguably the most famous words in all of literature: “To be or not to be…”  This is because Hamlet is confronting a question that so many of us have to answer at some point in our lives.  Do we want to continue living?

I was a teacher for 29 years.  There are those who resent that I have chosen to stop being one now.  I will step in front of a classroom one last time to discuss Hamlet’s soliloquy.  I’ll recite it for you first.  I promise to explain afterward.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d!

To be is simply to exist.  The first line asks whether he should or not. 

“Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”

He’s asking if it’s better, more courageous, more moral to tolerate all of the injuries (the slings and arrows) that life, in its ridiculous and unpredictable ways, sends at you, or to fight back, and make life stop hurting you.  There is a long tradition, particularly in males, to find great honor in fighting.  Perhaps I’m not much of a male because I find nothing of value in violence.  I was recently referred to as a “little pussy boy.”  I’m perfectly content with that.  I don’t believe in hurting people.  But, we’ll come back to that later.  For the moment, Hamlet has to decide what is the more honorable and courageous thing to do. 

In this case, Hamlet seems to believe that the way to fight back against life is to end it.

To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.

There’s nothing to be feared from death.  It’s simply going to sleep, something most of us do for at least a few hours out of each 24.  And if we’re dead, we don’t have to deal with all of the pain into which we are eternally embedded.  To live, for Hamlet, is to suffer, and to stop suffering is something he wants desperately. 

He should be ready to die by now, but he thinks just a little further. 

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:

His religion teaches of an afterlife, and the certainty that suicide is a one-way ticket to the worst possible part of it.  When we sleep, while we’re alive, we dream.  Sometimes the dreams are wonderful.  Some of the dreams I’ve had concerning Valerie Bertinelli have been fantastic.  Sometimes the dreams are horrible.  I’ve seen my father murdered by thugs in my dreams, too.  I feel certain you’ve had similar experiences.  We wake up from our dreams, though.  We return to life, which, again, for Hamlet, is mostly pain.  There is little doubt that life is, at least from time to time, painful for all of us.  And we are leashed to it by the coil of mortality.  We can’t escape it while we’re alive.  Shuffling off that pain is a tempting offer.  What is there to stop us?

… there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?

Now he names some of the torments of existence.  Time ages us with whips that toughen our skin and scorns that crack our hearts.  People hold us back, they insult us, love goes awry, justice takes far too long to come if it comes at all.  Those in power are indifferent to the needs of those over whom they hold sway.  Who wants to live in such conditions?  They aren’t much different today than they were 400 years ago.  And all he needs is a bodkin (that’s a dagger) to end it all.  Everything is quiet after we expire. 

who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

Why should we carry the weight of the bundles, both emotional and physical, that life asks us to bear until long after we’re exhausted?  The reason we put up with it is because we’re afraid of what death might be.  It’s a place about which we know nothing, except by faith.  No one ever returns from it.  (Okay… we’ve all heard about those who saw the white light and came back, and I’ve heard of that dude, Jesus, who evidently made it three whole days before he came back, but that’s not Hamlet, and it’s not most of us.)  So we put up with what we hate to avoid having to tolerate something even worse in the afterlife. 

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Conscience.  In this case, I don’t think that word means what you think it means.  It’s not a moral guide, but the idea of the fear that your conscience uses to stop you from doing what you know is wrong.  So, the vibrant colors of all of our plans fade to grey as we think about them more deeply.  Our resolve fails us, and our wishes never become our actions. 

The end of the soliloquy appears to be irrelevant to the rest.  It’s simply a greeting to his girlfriend, Ophelia.  But what does he say, exactly?

Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia!  Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d!

He’s asking her to pray for the redemption of his many sins.  He’s still worried about the afterlife.  And in the next scene he is going to hurt her as badly as he can, at least at that moment, by telling her she should go join a whorehouse.    Later, he will even kill her father, and her brother will die in his effort to get revenge against Hamlet.  He will drive Ophelia to suicide.

Why does Hamlet seem to hate the world so much?  It may have something to do with the fact that Hamlet’s Uncle murdered Hamlet’s Father and married Hamlet’s Mother, thereby robbing Hamlet of the crown that should have been his.  (If you were a 6th grader, I would probably mention that “The Lion King” is Disney’s version of Hamlet.)  He has a strong motive to want revenge.  He’s probably having a worse week than you are.  But, what are the consequences of the all consuming hatred that makes him want to kill Claudius? 

Bertrand Russell had some thoughts on this when he was asked what he would say to historians from a thousand years in our future.

I should say love is wise, hatred is foolish.  In this world, which is getting more and more interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way.  And if we are to live together and not die together, we should learn the kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.

Bertrand Russell: Love is Wise, Hatred is Foolish

Once we let hatred infect us, it grows deeper, stronger, and more irresistible every day.  I saw a sign once at a rehab center: “Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and hoping the other guy will die.”  This is what happened to Indigo Montoya.

Like Hamlet, Indigo was infected by hatred because a man murdered his father.  He spent a lifetime becoming the best swordsman in the land so that when he met the murderer Indigo could be sure to kill him.  “Hello.  My name is Indigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.”  He fought Count Rugen, and he killed him.  “I want my father back, you son of a bitch.”

Unlike Hamlet, though, Indigo’s hatred was his motivation to better himself.  Hamlet’s hatred made him suicidal.  They both got revenge.  Neither of them was better off.  Hamlet lost his life almost immediately afterward.  Indigo lost his motivation.  He had no idea what to do with his life. 

We all have cause to feel hatred from time to time.  What can we do? 

I’ll tell you what I did.  You can decide what you will do. 

A good friend felt hurt by me.  I certainly didn’t intend to hurt him, but he declined to believe that, and he took revenge.  He hurt me quite nearly as badly as he could.  He may continue to find more ways to hurt me.  I don’t know.  As a member of the human race, I felt the same impulse most of us do.  I considered ways to hurt him back.  I have the means to do that.  I have the motive.  I have the opportunity.  Those are the elements they always try to find in cop shows when they’re searching for the criminal.  And then I asked what good it would do. 

I don’t want to feel better by making someone else feel worse.  In my experience, I have never felt better because I hurt someone.  I have regretted it each time I have done it.  I’ve done it far more times than I wish I had.  It’s rarely been what I wanted, but it happened nevertheless, and I have to own that.  I’ve had 59 years, though, to understand myself.  I’ve had time to learn.  It was, I believe, Maya Angelou who said, “When we know better, we do better.”  I know myself better.  I know there’s nothing to be gained by drinking poison and hoping the other guy will die.  And hatred is among the most deadly poisons.  So, what did I do with those feelings?

The Great Sara Niemietz did several Christmas shows this week.  I saw as many as I could.  They made me smile, and I forgot my pain for a little while.  I filled up on holiday cheer.  And I listened to one of her original songs again, and I remembered:

Cracks and broken pieces
Inside us
Where the light comes in
Brightest
Breathe, bleed, see again

The pain opened a new space for Joy.

I talked to some friends who love me so I could let the feelings out.  And then, I got a dog.  He has far too much energy, but I got him something called “Calming Treats” that evidently are laced with hemp, and right now he’s sleeping quietly on the couch.  He needs me.  I’m the person who feeds him, gets him his water, his shots, and all the Love I can find.  And though we’ve been together only 22 hours, he’s already giving me more love than I’ve had in more than 2 years.  Yes, he can be a massive pain the ass.  So can my best friend, who drove me to the Shelter and PetSmart.  I can no more expect perfection from those I love than they can expect it from me.  The love I get far outweighs the times they annoy me.  Since I can’t tolerate the presence of other human beings, I will never live with anyone other than Speedy Shine again.  (Unless my landlord decides to move in… but I suspect he’ll mostly leave me alone, and I’m positive we won’t be cuddling at night, you know?)  As The Police tell us, “When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around.” 

Instead of giving in to the hatred, I found a way to turn up the volume of the love in my life.  I posted several pictures of Speedy Shine and me on Facebook.  You know what happened?  Hundreds of friends celebrated our union.  One friend is sending me toys for little Speedy Shine.  Another friend sent me a hundred dollars.  My Secret Favorite Person called Speedy Shine adorable, and that, alone, made me glow. 

I can’t control what others do, but I can, and I must, control myself and my reactions.  Instead of focusing on the hate, I redirected my focus to the extraordinary amounts of love I have received in my life.  I posted this:

I am learning that I lead an incredibly blessed life.  People who owe me absolutely nothing in any possible way keep helping me and making my life better day after day.  This has been happening, on and off, for a few years now. Is it karma?  Is it just that I’m nice to people when I can be?  Is it that the world is filled with beautiful people who do all they can to fill the Earth with Love?

I really don’t know.  But I know it happens.

I was having a bad week, for reasons that don’t need to be discussed in public.  My best friend, Stephanie, and her ex-boyfriend, Tim, helped me to bring a new dog into my life.  It took me more than 2 years to be ready for one after the death of my previous dog, Melanie.  Stephanie got her for me, too, so it was important to me that we would make this memory together.

Getting Speedy Shine everything he needed today took most of the rest of my money.  Then, a good friend, for no reason at all, sent me a message just now to check my Venmo.  I have the resources to make it a little longer.  It’s like the Universe has decided that, no matter what is going on, I’m going to be all right.

I continue to believe that Love is the most powerful force in the Universe.  I keep seeing its power over and over.

Thank you for being a part of my life.  I am beyond lucky to be the recipient of so much Love.

None of this repairs the damage that my friend did to me, but I will find ways to do that, myself.  What it did was serve as a treatment for the hatred that tried to seep in.  Hamlet taught us 400 years ago that nothing good can come from hatred. 

It wouldn’t have helped me to hurt someone who hurt me.  It would simply have hurt him, and I decline to derive pleasure from someone else’s pain.  For me, living a happy life, without hurting the one who hurt you, is the best revenge.  The longer I live, the colder the dish gets.

I don’t know what you do to turn up the Love and Joy in your life.  It might be spending more time with your kids.  It might be finding the courage to spread your own Love as far as you can before the Hate can pull it away.  Do you want to fight a battle?  Fight to rescue the Love in your heart.  Remember the words of The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.  Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

When the skies are darkest, we can Shine most brightly.  Let’s all try to spark the Light of Love to Shine through the Darkness of Hate.

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Klingons and Conservatives

“Have we become so… fearful, have we become so cowardly, that we must extinguish a man because he carries the blood of a current enemy?”

— Captain Picard, in “The Drumhead,” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, written by Jeri Taylor

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : You want to destroy the ship and run away, you coward.

Lt. Commander Worf : If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand.

— Star Trek: First Contact, written by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore

The source of anger, I am convinced, is fear.  I addressed this in “The Problem of Anger.”

Anger is a reaction to our fear.  I felt anger at watching the murder of George Floyd because I was afraid he would die.  He did.  I was angry at watching planes fly into The World Trade Center because I was afraid people would die.  They did.  I feel anger because I’m afraid I could die in the same pointless way.  I’m afraid someone I love might die that way.  The fear becomes anger.  The anger can be a motivation to try to change things, but it can’t be the method of making that change.  … I’m not going to change your mind by forcing you into a defensive posture.  The moment I vent my anger at you, you feel the need to protect yourself from me.  Now, instead of considering my ideas, you are preparing to tell me why I’m wrong, or you are looking for a means of escape. 

Fred Eder, “The Problem of Anger,” episode 123 of Fred’s Front Porch Podcast

Both Klingons and Conservatives, who, under the right circumstances, would kill you where you stand, are angry quite frequently.  To be fair, liberals get pretty angry, too, but not quite so often.  When we do, we have different reasons for it.  Liberals tend to get angry when we believe someone else is being mistreated.  Conservatives tend to get angry when they think someone might mistreat them.

President Biden is trying to get some relief for those who have been victimized by predatory student loans.  Conservatives are having a fit that the money is coming out of their pockets, regardless of the fact that it isn’t.  The government already has their money.  It also has mine, and, assuming you’re an American, it has yours, too.  No one is getting sent a bill for the $2,000 it’s supposed to cost every American.  But the government is spending money to help someone who isn’t them, and this is never okay. 

Breaking News: The government spends money in ways we don’t like all the time.  I would prefer we didn’t spend money blowing up people who have the misfortune to live somewhere else.  I would prefer we didn’t spend money on giving massive corporations, all of whom are doing perfectly fine making rent and putting food on the table, tax breaks and bailouts.  That’s the price of representative democracy.  It might be nice if I got to vote on every single dime the government spends, and if I could say exactly where I want my tax money to go, but it doesn’t work that way.  If there’s a way to change the government so we can do this, I’m certainly open to that idea.  Until then, we have to live with things we don’t like from time to time.

This time, we spent some money trying to ease the burden of people who are trying to learn a little more.  I’m fine with that.  I’m not going to see a dime of it.  That’s fine, too.  Why?  Because I like to help the people who need some help.  If it means one person gets to pay rent for one more month, I am thrilled we spent the money that way.  If it means a kid gets an ice cream cone Mom couldn’t afford to buy otherwise, give the kid an extra scoop.  I’m proud to have my money go there. 

Both Klingons and Conservatives are deeply concerned about who deserves what.  They are both obsessed with what they call Honor.  They both share a fascination with making judgments about people. 

I don’t deny the value of judgment.  It’s essential to survival.  It allows us to make better choices about our lives.  Our lives.  My problem occurs when people think they get to make judgments about other people’s lives.  Both Klingons and Conservatives like to do that rather frequently.  Neither of them can tolerate weakness in any form.  Only the strong should survive. 

When Worf, the most famous Klingon of them all, is injured and is unlikely to be able to walk again, he leaps to the conclusion that ritual suicide is necessary.  He’s not strong anymore, so he’s not worthy of existence.  Fortunately, he has some human friends who help him find another way.  A case can be made that they should have respected his wishes.  I won’t be the person making that case. 

When Conservatives see someone suffering, they are quick to point out how it’s their own fault.  They should have done this, or they shouldn’t have done that.  They deserve to suffer.  Conservatives don’t want to ease that suffering because it’s a sign of weakness.  “If they didn’t want to pay back the loan, they shouldn’t have borrowed the money.  If the degree didn’t get them a job that pays enough to pay back the loan, they should have skipped college and gotten a better job.  If they have a lousy job that doesn’t pay enough, they should go get a degree.  It’s their own fault.”

Both Conservatives and Klingons are fond of distractions that can help to bury the Truth.  In the Next Generation episode, “Sins of The Father,” Worf’s father is blamed for The Khitomer Massacre in which 4,000 Klingons were killed by Romulans who had inside help from a Klingon.  The Klingon who supplied the Romulans with the codes they needed to render the Klingons helpless was the father of the Klingon bringing the charge against Mogh.  Mogh is Worf’s father.  The Star Trek fandom page explains it:

Worf angrily demands an explanation for the Council judging Mogh guilty, despite the fact they knew he was innocent.  K’mpec privately explains the truth: When Klingons captured the Romulan ship with the records, they learned of the treachery behind the Khitomer Massacre; this soon became common knowledge, and someone had to answer for that treachery.  Fortunately, only the Council knew who transmitted his code: not Mogh, but Ja’rod, Duras’s father.

Beside himself, Worf violently points out that Duras should have been made to pay for the sins of Ja’rod, but K’mpec reveals that the Duras family is too powerful and to expose him would likely split the Empire and plunge it into a civil war. In order to avoid that, they decided to use Mogh as a scapegoat, believing that Worf, since he was in Starfleet, would not challenge the judgment. None of them realized that Kurn was Mogh’s second child.  But now things have progressed too far, and both sons of Mogh must die.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sins_of_the_Father_(episode)

At the moment, in our reality, former President Trump is likely to be indicted, not for inciting a riot and trying to stage a coup that would have made him a dictator, but for removing secured documents from The White House.  At the same time, the Trump-appointed Supreme Court has handed down rulings that have angered many voters, including stripping roughly half the population of their right to bodily autonomy.  This is likely to make the elections difficult for Republicans.  They need a distraction.  They need to find a reason for people to be angry at Democrats, and the Student Loan scandal was perfect for them. 

When Star Trek began in 1966, Klingons were the enemy.  They were simply evil, and they needed to be fought every time they appeared.  Had the ultrapowerful Organians not interfered, the Federation and the Klingons would have killed each other.  The Klingons took what they wanted by conquest.  The Federation tried to create unity with other species.  These opposing ideologies were destined for war. 

Neither Klingons nor Conservatives are all the same, however.  In the episode “Redemption, Part 2,” Worf is able to reclaim his honor and his family name by exposing the lies of the Duras family.  Duras’s illegitimate son, Toral, who intended to take over the Klingon Empire, is now held accountable for the family’s treachery.  Gowron, the leader of The Klingon High Council, gives Toral’s life to Worf.  Kurn is Worf’s brother.

TORAL: The Duras family will one day rule the Empire!
GOWRON: Perhaps.  But not today.  Worf.  This child’s family wrongly took your name and your honour from you.  In return, I give his life to you.
(Worf takes Gowron’s dagger and goes over to Toral, who braces himself for the thrust.  Worf drops the dagger on the floor)
KURN: What’s wrong?  Kill him!
WORF: No.
KURN: But it’s our way.  It is the Klingon way.
WORF: I know.  But it is not my way.  This boy has done me no harm and I will not kill him for the crimes of his family.
GOWRON: Then it falls to Kurn.
WORF: No.  No, you gave me his life, and I have spared it.

Klingons are capable of mercy.  They are not carbon copies of one another.

The same is true of Conservatives.  Just as Worf rooted out the treachery that threatened the Klingon Empire, so, too, one of the staunchest Conservatives in the United States, Liz Cheney, rooted out the treachery that threatened our freedom. 

In our hearing tonight, you saw an American president faced with a stark, unmistakable choice between right and wrong.  There was no ambiguity, no nuance.  Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our Constitutional order.  There is no way to excuse that behavior.  It was indefensible.  And every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?

— Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the United States Capitol.  Remarks as delivered on Thursday, July 21, 2022

There is no group in which all its members are all good or all bad. 

In the 1968 episode, “Day of the Dove,” the crew of the Enterprise is trapped on their own ship with an equal number of Klingons as they hurtle out of the galaxy at high speed.  An alien entity is feeding off their hatred for one another and causing them to fight.  The Klingon Science officer, Mara, and Captain Kirk discuss the situation.

MARA: We have always fought.  We must.  We are hunters, Captain, tracking and taking what we need.  There are poor planets in the Klingon systems, we must push outward if we are to survive.

KIRK: There’s another way to survive.  Mutual trust and help.

By 1987, the Federation and the Klingons had become allies.  Worf was serving aboard a Federation ship.  Peace is both preferable and superior to war.  It requires understanding. 

The Federation learned to respect the proud Klingon tradition of honor, and the courage that accompanies it.  Worf was among the bravest men ever to show up on the Star Trek screen. 

The Klingons learned to respect the honor of the Federation in putting itself at risk to help others.  The Enterprise-C, the ship prior to Picard’s Enterprise, sacrificed itself to defend a Klingon outpost that had been ambushed by Romulans at Narendra III.  Even those who prefer peace are capable of showing courage. 

I prefer the Federation, or liberal, philosophy, which inspired the words I repeat so often on this show: “There is no Them; we are all Us.”  This doesn’t mean, however, that I have no respect for the rugged individualism that is at the heart of much of the Klingon, or Conservative, philosophy.  There are times when such power is necessary.  I would rather have Worf fighting by my side than either Kirk or Picard. 

If the Klingons and the Federation can be allies, defending themselves and each other from alien threats, and combining their knowledge to produce better lives for both groups, why can’t Liberals and Conservatives do the same?  We’re the same species.  We live on the same planet.  We share the same problems.  We all need water to drink and food to eat.  Climate change is just one example.  There are plenty of others. 

I’m sure there will be Liberal friends of mine who will tell me why I’m wrong to want to join with the Conservatives in solving our problems.  The Conservatives are the bad guys who want many of my friends dead.  I’m a sellout and a coward.  “We all know what a Klingon is,” as Dr. McCoy says while under the influence of the hatred-inducing alien entity.

I’m equally certain there will be Conservative friends of mine telling me that they have no interest in working with whiny bleeding-heart lazy Liberals who want everything handed to them for free.  Conservatives worked hard for what they have.  They’re not giving it away to people who don’t want to work.  Liberals “have no honor!”

I’m going to take you back, once more, to 1969.  Fifty-three years ago, the Klingons and the crew of The Enterprise were fighting each other with swords as they hurtled to their doom, just as we are doing as our water dries up, our forests burn, and our crops wither in the fields.

(A contingent of Federation including McCoy and Spock take on the rest of the Klingons in the corridor.  Spock cheats with his neck-pinch.  Finally Kirk gets the point of his sword at Kang’s throat.)
KIRK: Look!  Look, Kang.  For the rest of our lives.  A thousand lifetimes.  Senseless violence, fighting, while an alien has total control over us.
(Kirk throws away his sword.)
KIRK: All right.  All right.  In the heart.  In the head.  I won’t stay dead.  Next time I’ll do the same to you.  I’ll kill you.  And it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn!  Stopping the bad guys.  While somewhere, something sits back and laughs and starts it all over again.
MCCOY: Let’s jump him.
SPOCK: Those who hate and fight must stop themselves, Doctor.  Otherwise, it is not stopped.
MARA: Kang, I am your wife.  I’m a Klingon.  Would I lie for them?  Listen to Kirk.  He is telling the truth.
KIRK: Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier that never questions orders.
(Kang looks at the weird light, then throws down his sword.)
KANG: Klingons kill for their own purposes.
SPOCK: All fighting must end, Captain, to weaken the alien before our dilithium crystals are gone.
KIRK: Lieutenant Uhura.
UHURA [OC]: Yes, Captain?
KIRK: Put me on ship-wide intercom.
UHURA [OC]: Aye, sir.
KIRK: Kang.
UHURA [OC]: Ready, Captain.
KIRK: This is Captain Kirk. A truce is ordered.  The fighting is over.  Lay down your weapons.
KANG: This is Kang.  Cease hostilities.  Disarm.
(The fighting stops.  The weird light turns orange.)
SPOCK: The cessation of violence appears to have weakened it, Captain.  I suggest that good spirits might make an effective weapon.
KIRK: Get off my ship.  You’re a dead duck here.  You’re powerless.  We know about you, and we don’t want to play.  Maybe there are others like you around.  Maybe you’ve caused a lot of suffering, a lot of history, but that’s all over.  We’ll be on guard now, ready for you.  So ship out!  Come on!  Haul it!
MCCOY: Yeah, out already.
KANG: Out!  We need no urging to hate humans.  But for the present, only a fool fights in a burning house.  Out!

I don’t really believe that an alien entity is causing us to fight.  I don’t think Jerome Bixby, who wrote the episode did either, but I could be wrong.  I never met the man to ask him.  Does the cause matter, though?  The rest of what Bixby wrote is true.  We can just keep fighting for thousands of lifetimes.  I know because we’ve already done that.  Kirk and Kang are characters, but they represent ideas.  Ideas can never be killed.  We will accomplish nothing by fighting endlessly. 

The world Star Trek depicts, and the one in which I want to live, couldn’t exist until humanity came together as one.  Roddenberry seemed to think a third World War was necessary first.  The Time Traveler I interviewed a few months ago agreed.  It was only after we lost so much that we recognized destroying one another was folly.  What if we recognized that now?

Is there a way we could be glad when we help those who need it, and withhold our judgments about the way others live their lives?  So long as they’re not hurting anyone, let them make their own choices, even if they aren’t the choices you might have made. 

Many generations of us grew up being taught that the only way you could be successful was to get a degree, and we worked very hard to do that.  Now we’re being told we shouldn’t have taken on the debt if we couldn’t repay it.  Ask the most important question:  Who’s better off for that?  Going to school is what makes it possible for people to become doctors, nurses, and teachers, all of whom are essential to our society.  Shall we now tell people to stop doing that?  This means either that we will have no doctors, nurses, or teachers, or that those who fill those roles will be unqualified to perform the job correctly.  As I mentioned in the previous episode, there are states that are already doing this for teachers.  Shall we do that for surgeons, too?  If so, I’ve seen every episode of M*A*S*H.  Hand me a scalpel. 

If you don’t like the way the government spent our money, stop being angry, and go to the voting booth.  Yelling at me isn’t going to change it.  I’ll be voting for those who prefer to help people as opposed to helping corporations.  You are more than welcome to vote in the opposite direction.   I will do what I can, calmly and rationally, to convince you to join me in recognizing that people matter more than money, but in the end, I won’t be with you in the voting booth.  You’ll be alone there, doing what your conscience tells you is right.  So will I. 

We’re stronger together.  We all do better when we all do better.

Live long and prosper.

Qapla!

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Disability Is Not a Definition

I’m Disabled.  How disabled I am is open for debate.  There are those who claim my disabilities are insignificant.  There are those who think I am nothing but my disabilities.  This is probably the case for every disabled person.  People want us to fit into their neat little boxes.  Unfortunately, we can’t do that for you.  If disabled persons have nothing else in common, one thing we all share is that we are more than our diagnoses. 

There can be no doubt that I have physical disabilities.  I need both hands to stand up.  I become more worried about being able to do that every week or so.  My diabetes has all but destroyed my body.  I have to nap, ideally, every six hours.  When I get lost in my writing or my recording for the podcast, I might go as long as 9 hours.  After that, there’s more than a good chance I’m going to pass out at the computer.  If I don’t watch my blood sugar carefully, any day can be my last. 

I’m emotionally disabled.  I have a diagnosis of depression.  I fight it in all the ways I can.  Perhaps, however, I need to learn to accept it, as a friend of mine on Facebook suggested.  This is our conversation on that topic.

As you know Fred, all things come and go.  Including your depression.  Depression often includes certain thoughts that can be very compelling.  These thoughts, however compelling, are even more transient than the feelings of depression.  We are drawn further and further into the vortex the harder we struggle with these feeling and thoughts.  Stopping the struggle, ceasing doing battle with the demons of depression seems like the exact wrong thing to do, but it is also the best way of caring for yourself.  You may have to stop the struggle a thousand times, or ten thousand, but like anything the more you practice the more skilled you become.  This is the way I learned to dance with my depression.  If I feed it with my life energy by struggling with it, it gets stronger and stronger.  If I stop the war, it eventually burns itself out, just like any feeling or thought.

Take the best of care my friend.

Fred Eder

Name Deleted that’s the most difficult part of depression, I think.  I expect myself to be happy, and when I’m not I treat it as a problem to be solved instead of an experience that is a part of who I am.  I feel guilt about being unhappy.  I feel weak.  I feel cowardly.

I need, it seems, to accept it in the same way I accept diabetes or having blue eyes.  It simply exists.  There may be things to learn from the darkness if I would allow myself to live there without feeling the need to escape.

Name Deleted

Fred Eder It is absolutely normal to want to escape experience that is unpleasant – anything from a finger prick when you are testing your blood sugar to the deepest darkest abyss of depression – to push away that which is unpleasant and grasp at and pull in what is pleasant. We begin to learn this probably even before we leave the womb.  It is the hook that leads us to a lifetime of struggle trying to have more and more pleasant experiences.  Each experience ends to be replaced by new experience in the ceaseless flow of experience that is life.  Whether grasping onto pleasant experiences to extend the feelings of pleasure, or struggling, fighting, battling to push away pain (physical or emotional), the effects are the same.  It is an unending struggle to obtain something that is, by the very nature of existence itself, not possible.  All experience is transient – radically transient.  We have no control over any of it.  Influence – yes.  Control, never.  Your expectations (learned thoughts and ideas) for “happiness”, “guilt”, “feelings of weakness and cowardliness” keep you tied to the very thing you want to kill.  Like Ahab bound to the gigantic object of his hatred that is dragging him down into the abyss – Melville’s metaphor is perfect.  If we are trying to get rid of something unpleasant, we have to grapple with it, fight with it. The question is, can we simply relax the fierce desperate grasp we have on the object of our desire (yes, getting rid of the pain of depression is THE desire), and LET GO of it – NOT get rid of it.  Can we stop hating it?  Stop wanting it to go away?  Can we, just as you say, accept it as it is and not trying to make it go away?  And in your case, not punish yourself for having the experience?  Can you accept that depression IS a part of what you are?  Something that comes and goes like the other vast expanse of moments that make up your life.  What if Ahab was able to release his hatred of the white whale?  How would his life and the lives of so many others (including the whale) have been different?  Maybe the white whale would have continued to come into his life at times, but without his hatred, it would have likely journeyed on.

Perhaps some of the things you might learn from the darkness is self-acceptance – how to live there without feeling the need to escape.  These are HUGE lessons in and of themselves.  The kind that liberate us.

I suspect that I am somewhere on the Autism Spectrum, but no doctor has ever confirmed this.  I have many, but not all, of the symptoms.  I undoubtedly think differently than most people do.  I almost certainly don’t process emotions the way you do.  Something will bother me, and I will say nothing about it because I don’t want to burden anyone else.  It will just sit inside me, getting worse and worse, until finally I am forced to confront the feeling in some way.  There is debate over whether Autism is even a disability.  Google tells me it is considered a disability from both a medical and legal standpoint, if you have a doctor’s diagnosis.  One of our producers, Scott Knight, said this on my Facebook page.

Autism in the past was less of a disability and more of a weird neighbor who did strange things and didn’t talk much, but what they did do they did perfectly.  Autism with several comorbidities can be disabling no matter what the structure of society is.  Disability is a condition that leaves you physically, intellectually, emotionally, or in any other way disadvantaged to the point where it makes it difficult to impossible to function within the parameters society expects from you.  Some accommodations allow disabled people to still participate in society, but they rarely create the same ease of access that non-disabled people experience.  Some disabled people cannot participate in society no matter how many accommodations are made.

Accommodations for autistic people rarely help me with any of the things I struggle with.  I am disabled by society because I am autistic.

I believe I may also have Rejection Sensitivity Disorder.  I learned about this only in the last few months, but I exhibit all the symptoms I’ve been able to find associated with this condition on Google.  These are the symptoms I have found most frequently.

  • low self-esteem
  • avoidance of social settings
  • fear of failure
  • high expectations for self
  • frequent emotional outbursts after being hurt or rejected
  • feelings of hopelessness
  • approval-seeking behavior
  • anger and aggression in uncomfortable situations
  • anxiety

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/rejection-sensitive-dysphoria#symptoms:~:text=conditions%20which%20include%3A-,depression,anxiety,-Although%20symptoms%20of

I do my best to control the most negative aspects of this by avoiding any situation in which I may come in contact with another person who may feel hurt by my behavior.  I rarely, if ever, leave the home in which I live.  I get nervous when I take the trash out across the parking lot.  I went out to lunch with my best friend last month, and I needed several hours to recover from the fear I spent the whole-time masking.  I love her, and I almost never see her, so I was willing to pay this price.  I probably won’t do it again for quite some time. 

Here’s the thing about being disabled.  Many people believe it’s our own fault.  Part of this has to do with what is called “Just World Phenomenon.” 

In psychology, the just-world phenomenon is the tendency to believe that the world is just and that people get what they deserve. Because people want to believe that the world is fair, they will look for ways to explain or rationalize away injustice, often blaming the person in a situation who is actually the victim.

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-just-world-phenomenon-2795304

Instead of recognizing that poverty isn’t a lack of character, or that failure to comply with a police officer shouldn’t be a death sentence, or that disabled people somehow deserve what has happened to us, many people will convince themselves they are immune to oppression, persecution, or any debilitating condition simply because they do all the right things.  Bad things happen only because someone did something wrong. 

The total tonnage of advice I have received about how to “cure” my depression and my diabetes would be enough to stun a team of oxen in their tracks.  If I would only do what they tell me, my problems would be gone.  They want to make me all better so they don’t have to deal with the fact that it could happen to them, too. 

I would have no objection if someone cured Diabetes tomorrow afternoon, but I’m not sure I want to change the rest of who I am.  I don’t really want to be someone else.  I’m sorry if someone is uncomfortable with who I am.

I will be the first to admit to a list of flaws that go on nearly endlessly.  I just named a few of them.  I’m different from you.  I don’t, however, think that makes me worse than you.  I don’t know that I need to be cured of my Autism, and the efforts made to cure me of my depression have been ineffective.  Prozac has the effect of numbing all my emotions.  I fear becoming sufficiently depressed that I finally end my life, but I’m not afraid of being dead.  I’m afraid of hurting others who, for reasons passing understanding, love me.  They’ve done nothing to deserve the pain that my demise will bring.  The price of love is always pain.  I just don’t want to charge you any earlier than necessary.    

Seth MacFarlane, in The Orville makes this point: “People who try to take their own lives are unable to distinguish the future from the present.  There is no problem so immense that it can’t be solved in time.”  The Orville is obviously an offshoot of Star Trek.  I don’t think anyone makes any effort to hide that fact. 

Although one of my friends said, rather smugly, that she doesn’t worship at the Altar of Roddenberry, I have no trouble saying that I do.  Star Trek is an effort to show us that the kind of world of which I dream could be a reality.  And Star Trek does its best to address disabilities intelligently.  Sometimes it does it very well.  Occasionally it misses. 

In the episode, “Loud As a Whisper,” a person who is deaf and mute is brought to The Enterprise to negotiate a peace treaty between two warring factions.  The legendary diplomat, Riva, uses a chorus of psychics who can hear his thoughts to express himself.  When the members of his chorus are killed, it appears all is lost.  As a deaf mute, he has no means of communicating with the aliens.  It is only when he decides to teach both sides sign language that the peace can be made.   His “disability” allows him to solve the problem. 

In the same episode, Riva asks Geordi LaForge if he resents being blind.  Geordi, of course, was born blind, and he uses a piece of technology called a VISOR that allows him to see, albeit in a different way than most people.  Geordi tells Riva he doesn’t resent it at all.  It’s part of who he is, and he likes himself.  There’s nothing to resent. 

In the episode, “The Masterpiece Society,” it’s Geordi’s blindness that allows him to save a planet that is going to be destroyed by a fragment from a disintegrated neutron star that is going to move too close to their planet.  Captain Picard wants to evacuate the human colony there.  The society, however, has been genetically engineered and selectively bred to ensure optimum efficiency and happiness for everyone.  There are no disabilities on Moab IV.  If they leave their planet, their society will fall apart.  Geordi uses the same technology in his VISOR to devise a way to move the fragment and save the planet.  He finds it ironic that his disability allowed him to save a planet on which someone like him never could have been born in the first place. 

A disability doesn’t define who someone is.  It’s merely a part of us. 

We’ve all been brought up in a society that finds disability distasteful.  Sometimes we look at someone with pity when we see them in a wheelchair.  When we do, we are seeing only that one part of them.  We’re missing the rest.  Stephen Hawking did some remarkable things from a wheelchair using an adaptive device to allow him to communicate.  While I don’t envy him his disabilities, I absolutely admire his extraordinary contributions to the world.  The same can be said of Helen Keller.  

It’s easy to miss the fact that I’m disabled.  For a depressed, Autistic, diabetic who suffers from RSD, I seem exceptionally capable.  I write, record, score, and Horace a podcast every week.  I communicate with people on Facebook, and from time to time, on the phone.  I seem fine.  Thank you for that assessment.  I’m grateful that you can overlook my disabilities. 

I don’t believe they detract from what I do.  I believe they make it possible.  First, from a strictly financial point of view, there would be no way I could do this show if I had to work 40 or more hours a week just to pay rent.  My Disability check is tiny, and it keeps me from getting a job, assuming a job for which I could get paid even existed.  If I tried to work a 40-hour week at anything other than what I do, I would certainly be dead within a month.  You’d be surprised how few employers want a worker who needs to nap every six hours. 

They also make it possible from the Artistic point of view.  My depression is the author of “Horace’s Final Five.”  My experiences have made me into the man to whom you are currently listening.  My social disabilities have helped me to learn empathy.  I know what it’s like to be ridiculed for being different.  My insecurities help me to imagine how others may feel when they’re abused in some way for being different from the norm.  One of the reasons I argue so passionately and so frequently for the rights of marginalized groups is because I am a member of so many of them.  That sounds odd coming from a straight white male, but there is more to me, and to you, than conditions we never chose.

I’m also socially awkward, at the very best.  I’m a member of that group.  We’re easy targets, and we have to tolerate the laughter at our expense. 

I’m also a member of the group that can’t deal with rejection.  It’s easy to say we’re melodramatic, and for this reason we are not to be taken seriously.  But just as a lost Teddy Bear would mean almost nothing to most adults, to a 3-year-old it can be as devastating as the loss of a family pet.  The fact that other people don’t experience the world in the same way we do doesn’t mean their experiences are to be discarded.  The suffering is real.

I’m not, however, a member of the most notable marginalized groups.  I’m White.  That eliminates me from a vast number of marginalized groups.  I’m straight, and I have never felt the need to change my gender.  I’m also male.  My disabilities are nothing compared to those who are oppressed in groups of which I have never been a part.

That’s a fair point.  It’s also irrelevant.  It’s Whataboutism.  It implies that because other things are worse than my disabilities, mine don’t count.  I should stop complaining.  I’m actually not complaining about my life, though.  While there are many elements of it that suck, it’s mine to do with as I see fit in the time I have left to me.  Many people’s lives are better.  Many others are worse. 

I like to think I can feel empathy for those who are oppressed because, even though I’ve never experienced the specific abuses they must endure, I have an understanding of what it feels like to be mistreated for things that aren’t your fault.  I do what I can to stand up for them whenever possible.  I would like all people to live lives that are free from unwarranted judgments, and in which all their basic needs are met.  I would like mine to be the bottom of the scale instead of anyone being worse off than I am.   I work for that in all the ways I can. 

What would I like you to do?  I can’t speak for all disabled people.  My experience with disability is mine.  Other people’s experiences are different.  It seems to me, however, that the best thing we can do is to accept people as they are.  Try not to be repelled by variations.  Embrace them.  Celebrate them.  Recognize the richness of experience that comes from us all being so different from each other.  Don’t ridicule those who aren’t as attractive, or as intelligent, or as athletic, or as quick-witted, or who can’t walk, or see, or hear, or feel the same way you do.  Recognize our unique circumstances grant unique perspectives.  The more ways we see the world, the more paths open up for us to find meaning and Truth in the world. 

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations will create a painting of the world that is more beautiful, more honest, and more complete than anything we can produce while seeing through our single lens.  Before you hate someone, ask yourself what it must be like to be them.  Try your best to feel for those you normally reject.  This is how we will create the world in which everyone is loved, respected, happy, and alive all at the same time.  Isn’t that what we all really want?

And yes, I still love you.

Posted on by Fred

“One Planet, One People… Please?”

Nearly 40 years ago, when I was an adolescent running around in as much of a hormone haze as I now am surrounded by the Fog of Idealism, I was as madly in love as a boy could be with a girl whose intellect and compassion I admired nearly as much as her physical form. When you’re 16, it’s difficult to see much beyond appearance. Or, at least it was for me. Perhaps today’s adolescents are more enlightened than I was.

Among the reasons I fell in love with her was her Idealism was seductively attractive to me. She was a member of a religion of which I had never heard, called Baha’i. I had, even then, no supernatural beliefs, but I loved the idea of unity that was at the core of her religious beliefs. She had on her car a bumper sticker that has the unique status of actually affecting me. It said, “One Planet, One People… Please?” I have never forgotten the words. Now, I believe, she’s off living with her husband on a farm somewhere, and we say hello to each other occasionally on Facebook, but we don’t really have a serious friendship anymore. Her influence over my thinking, however, has only grown in the intervening decades.

She was the water and sunlight that made the seed planted a decade earlier grow and flourish. What planted the seed? It was Star Trek, of course.

I’ve been a lifelong Star Trek fan, and I often think of how The United Federation of Planets evaluates a new civilization. They consider not only its technological situation, but how that civilization treats its people. And, because they’re looking at alien planets, the societies they encounter can have any number of traditions, values, and ideas. They try to be respectful of all of them.

This is the Preamble to their Constitution:

We, the intelligent lifeforms of the United Federation of Planets, determined

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of intergalactic war which has brought untold horror and suffering to our planetary social systems, and

to reaffirm faith in the fundamental intelligent lifeform rights, in the dignity and worth of the intelligent lifeform person, to the equal rights of male and female and of planetary social systems large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and mutual respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of interplanetary law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

And to these ends

to practice benevolent tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

to unite our strength to maintain intergalactic peace and security, and

to ensure by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods that armed force shall not be used except in the common defense, and

to employ intergalactic machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all intelligent lifeforms,

Have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims.

Written by Franz Joseph (Published in the Star Fleet Technical Manual)

I believe the general ideas expressed above are a good starting place for our world. They are asking for us to respect fundamental human rights (although, since they’re dealing with many other sentient species, they refer to them as lifeform rights), to make social progress, and to keep peaceful and friendly relations among the different species.

In order to be admitted to the Federation a planet must have a one-world government. And this idea frightens the hell out of people today. I don’t understand why this should be the case.

One need not forfeit individuality to recognize one’s membership in the human race. Yes, different cultures have different values and traditions. They have different religions. They have different economic structures. Their skin colors and languages are different. Some have different ideas about sex. But, they all have blood, hearts, lungs, and all the other organs all human beings share. We all need to eat, to have a place to sleep, to have medical care, and to be able to spend our minutes in the ways that we choose without harming others.

We have decided, by some sort of universal consent, that time and money are traded one for the other. We have further decided that if one cannot or does not trade time for money, or find other ways of collecting enough of it, a person has little value. Your human value is determined by your market value. And that is simply wrong.

First, let’s recognize the we are at the summit of humanity.

200,000 years ago survival was our only concern. It was all the earliest humans could do to avoid being eaten, or to find a way to eat, themselves. Shelter was whatever they could find, and medical care was, for any serious purposes, non existent. But we did survive, and we did it because we worked together. No single human could have flourished then, and it’s doubtful one could now. If one of us is doing well it’s because of the contributions made by others for the last 200 millennia.

We have always made life better by working together, but we began to segregate ourselves into different tribes of one form or another. They can be based on specialization, on shared beliefs, on gender, race, or ideology, or national origin or citizenship in a particular country. But the tribes are there. The separation is there.

I submit the separation is counter to continuing to improve our world. Instead of trying to defeat each other, we need to try to cooperate with each other to find the solutions to our shared problems, and to find ways of making life more pleasant for all of us.

Another element common to all of us is that we have limited time on Earth. We can discuss afterlife at a different time, but our time here is extraordinarily brief. Few of us will be here for an entire century. None of us will be here for two. And, to our knowledge, that’s all the time we get. Ever. Once a minute is spent, it can never be recovered.

You and I will each get, perhaps, 50 million minutes. Why should we need, in the 21st Century, to trade so many of them for dollars? Most of us won’t even get a dollar per minute. If you earn $52,000,000 in your lifetime, you’re among the very few. This world works very well for the few. It works very poorly for the many. “The needs of the many,” as Spock would remind us, “outweigh the needs of the few.”

This doesn’t mean the few should be forced to give their dollars to the many. I’m not advocating that. Instead, I would like to see the dollars of the many used to benefit the many instead of the few. We have enough to ensure that all of us have the basics of survival. We can eliminate the need for slave wages by ensuring no one ever needs to take a job that pays less than a person’s minutes are worth just so one can keep living for a few more minutes. Instead of being about survival, money becomes about flourishing financially.

What would this world look like?

Everyone has enough money for food, rent, utilities, and clothing appropriate to the environment in which they live. Any decent civilization would provide that to all of its citizens. Those that don’t are never viewed well by the Federation.

Everyone has medical care sufficient to keep one not just alive, but healthy. Dr. McCoy never asked anyone for an insurance card. Had the Captain asked him to, he probably would have said, “Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a bureaucrat!”

Everyone spends their minutes in ways that are meaningful to them, and that contribute in unique ways to making the society a better and stronger one.

Everyone is appreciated as the individuals they are. No one is expected to conform to the expectations of others, so long as they aren’t hurting anyone else. Each of us chooses our own path through life.

Isn’t this world impossible?

No. It’s not. Flying was once “impossible.” Going to the moon was even more “impossible.” Communicating in the way you and I are this very moment was also once “impossible.” Things are impossible only when we decide they are impossible, or they are expressly forbidden by the laws of physics.

What do we need to do to bring about such a world?

First, we have to agree that we want to. Then, we need to try.

What are the logistics?

I don’t have a clue. I’m not an economist. I’m not a politician. I’m a drop of water in the Colorado River. There are experts in such areas. I suggest they work out the details, they do the research, they gather the data, and they work it out. And, to no one’s surprise, people have been doing this for quite some time. Buckminster Fuller spent most of his 87 years (not even the full 50,000,000 minutes we hope to receive ourselves) trying to figure out how to implement plans that would benefit 100% of humanity. The ideas are there.

What are some of the ideas?

Today, we are beginning the discussions about changing our economy in a way that benefits more people. Universal Basic Income is now a fairly well known term. It wasn’t unheard of previously, but no one really had any interest in it after it failed during the Nixon administration. Today, the idea gets airtime, although not much. Is UBI enough? No, of course, it’s not, but it’s a step in the right direction. Medicare for All isn’t enough, either, but we’re moving closer to the public health care we really ought to have.

frededer.home.blog/2019/10/01/which-are-the-people-who-should-die-for-a-lack-of-little-green-pieces-of-paper/

Living wages aren’t the whole answer, either, but they are at least one more piece of the puzzle.

frededer.home.blog/2019/06/11/hard-work/

What Should We Do, Then?

The most important thing to do is to agree on our shared vision. If you see some reason to oppose the Idealistic vision I’ve discussed, I hope you’ll communicate to us what the basis or your opposition is. Why, in essence, should humans suffer unnecessarily?

Having done that, perhaps we can get a few more people to share it, and, in this way, we can begin, as little drops of water, to carve out the Grand Canyon. We can talk about the best ways of improving humanity, and we can share diverse opinions. We can find common ground, and we can move forward to become a world worthy of membership in The United Federation of Planets. I want very much to be qualified to join the Federation. Don’t you?

Wouldn’t it be lovely if Vulcan ships had been monitoring our progress for the last century, and they saw that we have moved toward slowing the spread of racism, at least insofar as we have made it socially unacceptable, illegal in hiring, and making it possible for someone who was not white to become President of the United States? They would see that we have begun to accept that people can have sexualities that differ from the norm, and those differences are no one’s business but their own. We have even accepted their right to marry just as it is given to everyone else. The Vulcans could observe that women have won the right to vote, to be in power, and to live their own lives independent of men. They would see we have begun.

Yes, we have light years to go, but we have begun the journey toward not only the stars, but to the deeper unexplored realms of what humanity can actually accomplish. Let’s keep moving down that road, together.

Posted on by Fred

Horace’s Final Five

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering. These are noble pursuits, necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman. ‘O me, O life, of the questions of these recurring. Of the endless trains of the faithless. Of cities filled with the foolish. What good, amid these, O me, O Life?’ Answer: That you are here. That life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?

John Keating, The Dead Poets Society

Fifty is a milestone in nearly anything. If you google it, you’ll see people seem to become obsessed with turning 50. Things that happened 50 years ago are more significant than things that happened 47 or 56 years ago.

This is my 50th Blog Post. It’s an effort to tie all the loose ends together, and to answer Professor Keating’s question.

While I’m alive, I hope that I can live a life such that I can have my one strange, supernatural fantasy come out my way. In the last five minutes of my life, Marc Antony shows up at my bedside. I always have him kind of glowing. And he’s clearly Marlon Brando. And he knows everything I have done, and all that has happened to me, from the time I was a sperm racing toward the egg, up until that very moment. And, in my fantasy, Marc Antony can honestly and objectively reach the conclusion that: His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that the nature might stand up and say to all the world, “This was a man.” That’s all I hope to be able to achieve. I feel like it would be enough. After that, Death is a Welcome Companion.
—Horace Singleman’s Blog, April 26, 2019

Extended Stay Inn
Phoenix, Arizona
September 2, 2019
3:14 AM

Horace experienced Nothing. Sleep includes, from time to time, at least, some sort of dreams. “What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil…” Horace lacked awareness of his very existence. Dreams imply a form of consciousness. Consciousness hid in the Nothingness.

A voice flickered into existence. “Horace?”

Horace’s eyes might have opened. They might not have. They existed, though.

Marc Antony floated over the bed on which Horace lay, dying. The entity appeared in every outward way to be Marlon Brando playing Marc Antony in the 1953 film version. But Horace knew it was Marc Antony anyway.

His voice came from everywhere at once. It was both booming and soothing. It echoed without pretense. He spoke the lines Horace had spent his life preparing to hear.

“This was the noblest Roman of them all.
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world…”

He stopped. There was a pause that seemed to stretch into Eternity. Finally, he sighed in a distinctly disappointed fashion, and said, “I got nothing.”

Horace regained (or didn’t… he couldn’t be sure) consciousness. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t make the cut, Horace. I’m sorry. The Elements aren’t mixed properly. I can’t call you a Man.”

“Oh.” Horace blinked, or he did if his eyes were still functioning, which was, by no means, a settled issue. “Well, that sucks. I thought I was doing pretty well. I was mostly proud of what I did.”

Antony shrugged. “What can I tell ya?”

“So… to be clear… you know everything I’ve ever done every moment of my life, right?”

“From the moment your Dad’s condom broke.”

“Wait. What?”

“That was more than I was supposed to tell you, probably. Forget it.”

“So, I don’t need to explain anything to you. You know, for example, about Somewhere in Time, Emily Webb and her return from the graveyard, and The Next Generation episode, ‘Tapestry,’ right?”

“And Billy Bigelow in Carousel and George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. They’re all about a second chance. Going back. You’re looking for a do-over?” Antony lit a cigarette with a match. Horace wondered if togas had pockets.

“Are there any options like that? I’ve never dealt with dying before.”

Antony dragged on the cigarette, shook out the match, and looked up at Horace. The smoke smelled tempting to Horace. Antony smiled at him, in the way only Brando could, and handed Horace a cigarette. He lit it for him. Horace inhaled gratefully.

“Well, it’s your last five minutes… or actually… three minutes and 49 seconds… of life. Spend them as you see fit.”

“What about a trip to The Guardian of Forever?”

Antony nodded slowly, contemplatively. “We could do that.” He blew out the smoke from his cigarette, and it became deeper and deeper. It expanded until all that existed was smoke. From within the smoke, Horace heard familiar voices.

“Incredible power. It can’t be a machine as we understand mechanics.”


“Then what is it?”

Now the smoke began to dissipate, and Horace could see his childhood heroes, Kirk and Spock, standing before a 15 foot high slab of rock with a hole carved in its center.


“A question. Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question.” The voice came from everywhere, and reverberated through the scene.


“What are you?” This was Kirk.

“I am the Guardian of Forever,” said the booming voice of the rock.


“Are you machine or being?”


“I am both and neither. I am my own beginning, my own ending.”

“Cool,” whispered Horace.

“This won’t be long. After they leave, it’s all yours.”

“Can they see or hear us?”

“Were we in the episode?” Antony turned to watch an insane Doctor McCoy jump through the portal. In that moment, everything felt different. There was a sense of loneliness that Horace had never experienced.

He looked over to the crew of the Enterprise.

“Where is he?” Horace’s hero asked The Guardian.


“He has passed into what was.”

Horace told Antony, “That’s sort of what I have in mind.”

Antony nodded. “I get ya. We’ll see what we can do. Soon as they’re gone. We can’t interfere.”

“They could be here for a really long time, and I have, what… like three minutes?”

Antony shook his head. “Closer to two. But you’ve forgotten how this episode comes out.”

Horace looked back to his heroes.

“Earth’s not there. At least, not the Earth we know. We’re totally alone.” Kirk and the crew looked into the empty dark sky.

“I don’t really want to change all of galactic history or anything, you know,” Horace explained to Antony.

“You’re not nearly that important. And The Guardian will only let you go back into your life. You don’t get to go stop the Lincoln assassination or something.”

“So… any moment of my life?”

“Nope. It doesn’t play at that speed. There are certain moments… like docks on the river of time… you can pick one of those, go back, and do whatever you think needs to be done.”

“Yeah, but I can’t do much in the time I have left.”

“Time doesn’t count in The Guardian, remember?”


Captain Kirk turned to Spock, who was busy with his tricorder. “Make sure we arrive before McCoy got there. It’s vital we stop him before he does whatever it was that changed all history. Guardian, if we are successful – “


The Guardian’s voice filled the area: “Then you will be returned. It will be as though none of you had gone.”

Antony turned to his companion. “Do you have a clue what you’re going to do in The Guardian?”

“I’m going to try to fix my life so that the elements are so mixed in me that Nature might stand up and say to all the world –”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. But, what, exactly, are you going to fix? What do you think you can do to remix the Elements?”

Horace ran his thumb over his mustache. “I really don’t know.”


Spock spoke quietly. “There is no alternative.”


Captain Kirk turned to his engineer. “Scotty, when you think you’ve waited long enough… Each of you will have to try it. Even if you fail, at least you’ll be alive in some past world somewhere.”


Mr. Scott’s face showed concern. “Aye.”


Mr. Spock looked carefully at his tricorder, and then up at The Guardian. “Seconds now, sir. Stand by.”

Horace asked Antony, “Those are my seconds he’s spending… how many do I have left?”

Antony didn’t need to look at a clock. “One hundred fifty three.”

“Well, then, I’m pretty much screwed!”


Spock said, “…And now.” He and Kirk jumped through The Guardian.

“By the time they get back,” Horace began. He was interrupted by Mr. Scott. Kirk and Spock jumped back through the portal.

“What happened, sir? You only left a moment ago.”


Dr. McCoy jumped through as well.


Spock spoke in his logical, emotionless way. It was clear, however, to the assembled crew he was holding something back. “We were successful.”


The Guardian spoke again. “Time has resumed its shape. All is as it was before. Many such journeys are possible. Let me be your gateway.”


Lieutenant Uhura glanced up from her communicator. “Captain, the Enterprise is up there. They’re asking if we want to beam up.”


Kirk was defeated and deflated. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

In another moment, all of the shapes shimmered, and then they were gone. Horace and Antony were alone with the Guardian of Forever.

“So… what’s it going to be?” Antony moved toward The Guardian.

Horace moved quickly to the portal. “Guardian? Can you take me back in time?”

“Your transportation is limited to the 56.841 years you have existed. You may choose from any of three… Time Docks… is the simplest way to explain them to your species. They are moments in time that you may enter and change. The rest of the River of Time flows too quickly for you. You would certainly drown.”

Horace glared at Antony. “What the hell is this? Kirk and Spock got all of History. All I get is -”

“You’re not Kirk and Spock. This Guardian is limited to what I know. What I know is your life.”

“What about Ancient Rome?”

“Is this really how you want to spend your last 97 seconds?”

Horace turned back to The Guardian. “What are my options?”

The Guardian displayed a moment in Horace’s life.

“That was the day Grandpa Leal died. I remember that.”

***

Henderson, Nebraska
Sunday, September 28, 1969
2:23 PM

“All right,” said Jim Lange’s voice coming from the TV, “that’s the signal Farrah, and now you must make up your mind… will it be Bachelor Number One, Bachelor Number Two, or Bachelor Number Three?”

“It doesn’t matter who she picks,” Horace whispered to Teddy. “She always finds out later it was the wrong one.”

“Which one gets the date?” asked the TV.

“Number Two,” Farrah’s voice replied.

“Number Two, all right! Can I ask what it was that made you choose him?”

“It was the flower.”

And then a fight broke out between the three bachelors.

“That’s only ‘possed to be on Batman,” said Teddy, while Horace’s lips moved.

“Cool!”

Owen groaned, “I’m up, I’m up, I’m up,” as he woke from his doze, got out of the chair, and walked to the TV. He turned it off, while Horace groaned in disappointment. Grandpa lumbered to the couch, laid down on it, and pulled the blanket off the back of it and covered himself.

Teddy looked up at Horace. “Your Grandpa’s wise, huh?”

Horace nodded. “He’s God’s best friend.” He looked down at his bear. “But we have to be quiet. Grandpa’s going to sleep now.”

Horace watched Owen a while, and then he took Teddy, climbed on top of Grandpa, and fell asleep.

***

The Guardian of Forever
September 2, 2019
3:18:07 AM

“What do I do with that?”

“You blocked it out. No one knew. You couldn’t tell them. You didn’t understand. You were afraid,” said Antony.

“That… my Grandfather died?”

“That you might have prevented it. You were lying on top of him when it happened. You felt his heart attack. You froze. You could have gone to get Mrs. Fertlebom. You could have called 911. You would have become a more courageous man.”

“Why didn’t I? I don’t remember.”

“You didn’t know what to do. When Grandpa fell asleep, don’t you remember what you did that night?”

“I went and turned the TV back on… I figured I could get away with it now…”

“That’s right.”

“And… I watched… was that… that was the first time I saw ‘City on The Edge of Forever.’ That’s when I learned about The Guardian. It’s where I learned about Let Me Help.”

“That’s why it became such a motivating factor… almost an obsession in your life. If you had helped…”

“I don’t see changing that. It’s a core part of me.”

“What about your grandfather?”

“We have only… what… 45 seconds left?”

“49.”

“What’s next?”

A new image appeared within The Guardian.

“That’s Rhiannon’s attic. I remember that.”

“She really did put a spell on you that night.”

“That’s ridiculous!” shouted Horace. “I have no belief in the Supernatural.”

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio…”

***

Wells, Maine
Tuesday, March 13, 1979
10:23 PM

This attic was the only place Horace could find to hide. There were so many people out there, but here, in this empty room, he was alone with the full moon whose light was slipping feebly through the tiny window.

He couldn’t imagine what he had been thinking when he’d accepted Bob’s invitation. It had been so entirely unexpected, though, there was nothing else he could do. The star quarterback of the high school football team had invited him to a party… at the home of the single most beautiful cheerleader who had ever graced the halls of Poe High School. And Horace was the head of the Poe Nothings. Horace knew himself well enough to know that Rhiannon would never actually talk to him, but there was that Glimmer of Hope. Just a little Hope can make the heart beat a bit faster. Horace enjoyed the feeling, so he accepted the invitation. And now he was in the attic, hoping he could find a way out of here.

All of these people were light years beyond his social class. None of them had ever seen an episode of Star Trek. He knew absolutely nothing about the sports that they discussed with the precision of scientists debating quantum mechanics. They were all well built, outgoing, attractive people. Horace was thin, gangly, socially inept, and unattractive in any conventional sense. He was the only virgin in the entire house. What had Bob been thinking?

He didn’t belong. He wanted to leave, but it was awfully cold in March, and it was a 17 mile walk from Wells back to Biddeford. Hiding represented his only chance to survive, and he couldn’t get away with the bathroom for more than about 5 minutes at a time. There were way too many people, drinking way too much, and they all required a restroom.

But this room looked like it was hiding, too. It wasn’t even a full-sized room. It was accessible only by a narrow, winding staircase at the last corner of a very dark hallway. As his eyes adjusted, he was able to perceive that against the wall to his right, there was an old, worm-eaten wooden table filled with what Horace decided must be an artist’s supplies. There were notched candles. There were cloves. There were strangely shaped bottles filled with various colors of oils. When he walked to it he observed seeds, matches, and a shot glass.

He turned around when he heard the door open behind him, and he moved as quietly as he could out of the light. Rhiannon backed into the room, a round candlestick in her hand. She turned and glided silently across the room, and when she crossed the moonlight, the room seemed to glow with her.

She went to the table, and lit the notched candle using the tall thin one attached to the holder. She mumbled something, but Horace couldn’t make out what it was. He could see her silhouette moving her hands up the bizarrely shaped candle, bottom to top, 9 times. He counted. She sighed confidently.

Antony whispered, “Now’s your chance. Just leave.”

Horace shook his head and watched with a nostalgic smile.

When she turned around to leave the room she saw him, and they were both startled. Horace, already in the corner, tried to back away, but just smashed his body awkwardly into the wall. She dropped her candle, and it rolled, lit, across the wooden floor toward him. He knelt, nearly falling over, and picked it up. He stood up, and found her standing directly in front of him. He handed it back to her. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered.

Rhiannon smiled compassionately at him. “Me too.” She looked briefly over her shoulder at the strange candle, and disappointment tinted her blue eyes.

Horace couldn’t look at her. He noticed his shoelaces didn’t match.

“I really am trying my best.” She looked back at Horace. “To be a decent person I mean. I know a lot of people think I’m stuck up, or whatever, but, really, I’m not.”

Horace said nothing.

“Okay?” She whispered.

He looked up. “Okay.” His stare, while entirely unintentional, was almost rude in its intensity.

There have been, throughout human history, quite a few women renowned for their beautiful hair. None of them, however, had anything on Rhiannon. Lady Godiva and Rapunzel, for example, were each known for the lengths of theirs. Rhiannon’s didn’t come close to such a ghastly stretch. It fell, seemingly effortlessly, down her neck and covered her shoulders as a quiet brown river lightly licking its banks, or a blanket under which the slender shoulders snuggled greedily.

Helen of Troy and Lucretia Borgia were sufficiently beautiful that they seemed almost to be able to cast a spell on men simply by looking at them. They were Anti-Medusas. Horace was as inspired as any Trojan.

When she saw Horace staring through his hormone haze, she smiled shyly and brushed her hair slowly back from her forehead. Then she nervously moved her fingers through it like a tide stealing sand from a moonlit beach as it slides up and down.

“I mean, do you ever ask yourself if it’s even possible to make everyone happy without hurting someone?”

“No… not until just now.”

“If you ever figure it out…” her eyes shimmered in the candlelight. They both smiled. Rhiannon, he decided, was a girl who knew how to run her fingers through her hair. They were having a moment.

The banging on the door made them both jump, but Rhiannon held firmly to her candle, and Horace slithered back into his dark corner silently.

“Rhiannon? You in there?” Horace recognized Bob’s tenor voice.

She took her hand away from her hair. “I’ll be right out.” The moment was over.

“There’s a party downstairs, and you’re being a lousy hostess.”

She smiled, almost tenderly at him, and left the room, the notched candle burning. Horace was alone in the dark.

The Guardian of Forever
September 2, 2019
3:18:19 AM

Horace shook his head. “No. It does no one any good. She was never real for me. But she represented an Ideal. She was my Dream of Perfection, and I would miss that feeling too much.”

“I don’t know how that timeline would go. You might end up marrying her.”

“That’s selfish. She has a life she loves. I would be giving her something less. I would never have had the money to give her what she has.”

“Perhaps something more valuable?”

Horace rolled his eyes. “What’s next?”

Antony shrugged, as though the answer were obvious. “Your Greatest Sin.”

A new image appeared within The Guardian.

“That’s the room we built for Mom in The Shithole. My roommates, Albert and Jeanine, painted it, and we put all of her favorite things in it. It had a special bed the dog could jump on so Mom could still sleep with her.”

“And you took your old Mother’s money.”

“It wasn’t that simple.”

“Yes,” Antony lit a new cigarette. “It was. You just try to rationalize what you don’t like about yourself. You always have.”

“Look,” Horace tried to explain, “just before Dad died, I promised…”

Phoenix, Arizona
January 15, 2017
12:37 PM

“… that you would take care of your mother. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Yes, Mom,” Horace said into the phone, doing his best not to show frustration. “And I really did do my best. I had you living with me for four and a half years.”

“So why can’t I live where I want? Everyone always decides what’s right for me. What about my feelings? What about what I want?”

Horace sighed. “What do you want, Mom?”

“I want to live with my family. I want to be where I’m loved.” There were tears in her voice. “Are you telling me my own family doesn’t love me anymore?”

“Of course not, Mom.”

“You can have all my money. My doctors will come to the house. We can be together. I won’t have to sit here like a piece of meat waiting to rot.”

“It’s not about the money. I don’t know if I can take care of you well enough.”

“You retired. You have time. And I don’t need much. I just need… I just need…” And now Marie Singleman was crying. “I wish I could just go to sleep and not wake up anymore.”

Horace’s heart melted. His mother deserved better. He could do better. He would do better…

…

And he got his roommates to clean out the extra room, paint it, furnish it, make it ready for her. He got all of the paperwork for her removal from the Group Home done.

And then his family heard about the move, swept in against him, promised legal action that would force his mother to take the stand and finish what was left of her deeply confused brain, and Marie slept in her room only three times before the move was shut down.

He had held her while she cried on his shoulder. He kept reassuring her that they would still talk every night. He promised she would never be alone.

Sunday, February 12, 2017
4:25 PM
Phoenix, Arizona.

Horace sat staring at his computer. There was the bank account. There was enough money to avoid eviction. He could click it, transfer money from Marie’s account to his, pay his landlord, and avoid the Sheriff’s office in the morning. All he had to do was click the damn button.

Antony and his Horace stood invisibly next to the desk. Antony handed Horace another cigarette and lit it for him.

“So,” mumbled Antony, “what’s it going to be?”

Horace exhaled. “You want me to stop him…”

“Is that what you want to do?”

“It would mix the Elements properly?”

Antony nodded.

“And… I get evicted. And Marion and I are on the streets tomorrow afternoon. We’re living in my car. And God only knows what happens to Albert and Jeanine. I’m sure they’ll figure something out. They always do. What happens in this timeline?”

Antony shook his head. He took a long drag off his cigarette.

Horace watched himself fighting an inner battle. He knew all the signs. There was the quivering finger over the mouse. There was the moving his hand away, and then putting it back. There was the glow in his eyes as his mind turned faster and faster. He was about to reach a decision. The moment would be gone.

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice,” said Antony, although it came out as Geddy Lee’s voice singing “Free Will.”

Horace nodded. He unplugged his counterpart’s computer. The seated Horace looked at the active Horace. He didn’t see him. Seated Horace nodded, inhaled and exhaled deeply, got up from the desk and left the office.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017
3:14:49 PM
Phoenix, Arizona
Bethany Home Road
Horace’s Car

“Ya still got 11 seconds,” said Antony from the passenger seat of the Nissan.

Horace took a moment to absorb his surroundings. The car reeked of puke. His dog, Marion, was licking him frantically. “I thought I died in 2019. What the hell?”

“Changed the time line. 9 seconds.”

“Yeah, but won’t this hurt Mom worse than my taking the money would have?”

“You made that decision a couple years later when you took 50 units of insulin without eating. You knew what you were doing.”

“I was homeless. When the remainder of life is to be nothing but pain –”

“6 seconds. This one isn’t on you. It’s not intentional. It’s untreated DKA. You’re in the clear. The Elements came out fine.”

“So, you can say…”

Antony smiled as only Brando could.

“This was the noblest Roman of them all.
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar.
He only in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world…”

He put his hand on Horace’s shoulder.

“This was a man.”

A tear of joy started to form in Horace’s eye, but it didn’t have time to become properly liquid. There was no more than a twinkling little star before they lost their light.

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

The Meaning of My Life



There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”

Hamlet
Act 1, Scene 5

Yesterday, not for anything close to the first time, I should have died. I woke up to find a strange woman standing over me while I was lying in bed. She was a paramedic. She had just brought me back to consciousness when my blood sugar had dropped so low that it was undetectable by medical equipment. I’m alive because my roommate checked on me, found me irretrievably unconscious, and called 911. She has done this more than once.

I should have died, in what I think would have been a beautifully appropriate way, a couple of years ago when my blood sugar went so high that it was off the scale. I was alone then. There was no one there to save me. One of my friends, though, became concerned when she couldn’t get me on the phone, and, though she was out of town, she sent the Mesa Police to do a wellness check, and they took me to the hospital. I had gone into Diabetic Ketoacidosis. I would, undoubtedly, have died alone in a cheap motel room had she not interfered. Frankly, that would have been, at the time, my preferred way to shuffle off this mortal coil. It didn’t happen, though. Someone kept me alive.

This has happened at least half a dozen times in the last four or five years. I was at a place where I was unable to help myself, and someone came to my rescue.

When I posted about yesterday’s incident on Facebook, more than one of my friends suggested that there is a reason that I keep cheating Death. Their reasons are, whether they say it directly or not, supernatural. God, or some other force like Him, is not letting me die.

I love my friends, but I reject that answer. Why, Fred? The evidence is there. Some force keeps intervening to keep you alive. It must be God, in some form or other.

Why must it be God? I believe you’re making what is commonly called The God of The Gaps Argument.

What’s that?

The God of The Gaps is defined, as follows, by Wikipedia.

The term God-of-the-gaps fallacy can refer to a position that assumes an act of God as the explanation for an unknown phenomenon, which is a variant of an argument from ignorance fallacy. Such an argument is sometimes reduced to the following form: There is a gap in understanding of some aspect of the natural world… (God is required to fill that gap.)

Wikipedia

I’ve been guilty of committing this fallacy, myself, on more than one occasion. How else can one explain the Genius of Mozart or Shakespeare? They are light years beyond what any human being should be capable of doing. Yet, they do. This can only be some sort of supernatural result. They have connected with Something Beyond.

But, that is simply intellectual laziness on my part. Their work exists. It was produced by humans. Therefore, we know, by definition, humans are capable of such feats. They even managed to build the pyramids. We’re one hell of a powerful group, we humans.

Does this mean I entirely reject the idea of there being Something Beyond? No. I don’t. Hamlet tells Horatio, “There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” I’m sure he’s right. I have absolutely no doubt that there are forces in the universe that I don’t – or can’t – understand. And when Science shows them to me, I’ll accept their existence.

I have, from time to time, felt myself, for as much as a week once, connecting with Something Beyond. I simply had everything working. I was in my stride. My writing was at its best. My social skills were on the mark. Women liked me. I knew how to earn more than enough money to survive. I was feeling music acutely. I was moved to tears by Mr. Banks singing “A Man Has Dreams” in Mary Poppins. I could feel the Jedi Force flowing through me.

However, that doesn’t require a supernatural explanation. It’s a part of human experience. How do I know? Because I’m human, and I experienced it.

I had no special powers. I could levitate precisely nothing. I was unable to fly without the assistance of an airplane. I was entirely unable to read anyone’s mind. I simply was making everything work, all at the same time. And it was beautiful.

I think Mozart and Shakespeare were able to make their Art work all the time. I can’t imagine how wonderful that must have felt. Mozart rarely even did second drafts, that rotten bastard! You will never read a word of mine that hasn’t been through at least 3 or 4 drafts. And even if I did 3 or 4 thousand, it could never approach the level of Shakespeare. That’s not false modesty. That’s an understanding of what Shakespeare is.

So, if I’m not willing to accept a supernatural explanation, what explanation do I accept? I’m not sure I’ve found one yet. But, there is one I’m considering. It has to do with Love.

If you’ve spent any time with my Blog, you’ll see I’ve had more than a little to say on the subject of what Love is. It’s best, and most succinctly, defined as the feeling that someone else’s happiness is at least as important as your own. Well being falls into the same category.

In an upcoming story about my secret alter ego, Horace, his Grandpa tells him this about love:

I guess you might begin to suspect there’s something going on when you can’t stop thinking about some girl. Although, more often than not, that’s just a case of overactive hormones. But, it is a part of it. If you think a girl is really pretty, and you think about her all the time, and if you wonder if she has enough to eat, and if she’s safe, and when nothing makes you happier than making her happy, and all of that sort of thing… well, maybe, just possibly you’re in love. But, I wouldn’t count on it.”

Fred Eder

Love is also a Force. It compels one to do things as certainly as gravity does. When you love someone sufficiently, you can’t tolerate their suffering, and you will take what ever action is necessary to stop it. It really isn’t a matter of choice. It’s just what you do. You can’t keep from doing it any more than you can keep your heart from beating.

The one common thread I can find in all of the incidents of my Salvation is that someone I love was involved. I have reason to believe those who saved me also loved me.

After quite nearly plummeting to his death, Captain Kirk tells his best friends, “I knew I wouldn’t die because the two of you were with me. I’ve always known I’ll die alone.”

Love, in its most powerful form, continues to keep me alive.

But, why should I keep living? Yesterday one of my friends said, “Fred, there’s a reason you are still alive, clearly. Something you need to investigate, learn about, before it’s too late. Any idea what it is? I have an inkling…”

And that is a pertinent question. What is it I need to do with my life while I still have it? This was my reply:

I think I need to learn to write in a way that can help the world see its commonality. Someone I love very much guided my thinking on that idea 40 years ago when she said, “One planet, one people… please?” (It was her.)

I’m trying to figure out how to make that dream a reality. I have no delusions of grandeur. I don’t believe it’s any more possible than it was for Atticus to get a Not Guilty verdict for Tom Robinson, or for Santiago to get his marlin back to shore, but I admire those men for making the effort.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what,” (as Atticus told Jem.)

I believe in that.”

Fred Eder

What does My Life mean? What is the purpose of my continuing to suck up everyone else’s oxygen?

I think Captain Kirk began to teach me in April, 1967.

Edith Keeler tells Kirk, “Let me help.”

Kirk replies, “A hundred years or so from now, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words, even over ‘I love you.‘”

I’ve often hoped that I might get to be that famous novelist. Since he was talking to Edith Keeler in 1930, I have 11 more years to get there. If I can live that long. Of course, I would have to be living on “a planet circling the far left star in Orion’s belt.” But, hey, one step at a time.

The idea of Let Me Help has guided most of my life. I was an Elementary School Teacher for just shy of 30 years. For me, my classroom was the Enterprise. And, arrogance be damned, I was an extraordinary Starship Captain.

I retired in 2016. I thought, like Kirk once did, that I was done making a difference. As it turns out, I wasn’t. I have found that my words can still make a difference. I can still be of help with them. I can sometimes move people. I can sometimes make them think. I can sometimes reinforce their beliefs. I have even, from time to time, been able to inspire someone.

If I can find a way for my words to help bring the world together, to make the Dream of “One Planet, One People… Please” a reality, I will have made a difference. I don’t know how to do that, yet, but I promise you I’m working on it.

What yesterday most revealed to me was that I still have a desire to live. This is new for me. I’ve been ready to die for several years now. In fact, the last time the paramedics showed up, I was a little disappointed they brought me back. Hamlet tells me, “The readiness is all,” and I felt ready.

I lost a little of that readiness yesterday. It occurs to me there are still things I would like to do before I’m gone. There is Love still to be experienced. There are words I still need to write. There is Music I still want to hear. I find delight in small things people do. I need to talk to my Mom every night at exactly 7:37 so she knows I’m okay. I hope to have another pastrami sandwich someday. I want to have a little ice cream before bed. These are all reasons to want to live.

And my friends have given me those reasons. And those reasons are a product of Love. So… what keeps saving me? I believe it’s Love.

You may believe it’s something else, and I respect your belief, even if we don’t agree. But, for me, Love is the most powerful Force in the Universe, and I believe it’s why I’m still alive.

I’m working on finding the Meaning of My Life. I hope my thoughts might have helped you to find the Meaning of Yours.

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Can We Have a Star Trek Economy?


The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century… The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard, First Contact

I loved Star Trek, as a child, because of its cool technology. Who wouldn’t want to have a gun that doesn’t have to kill? Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to beam from one place to another? And, who wouldn’t want to carry around an instrument that allowed you to talk to people thousands of miles from you? And, as I grew up, I saw some of those wonderful devices invented. You’re probably reading this on one of them.

There are parts of Star Trek that probably simply can’t exist. In fact, its most basic concept is almost impossible. We’re never going to travel beyond the speed of light. Einstein showed that to me when I was 15, and no one has ever been able to show me he was wrong. If we produce a warp engine, I will be ecstatic to admit my error. And, I will be equally excited to acknowledge my mistake in my near certainty that we will never be able to beam down to a planet as soon as we do it.

We do have weapons that are approaching the phaser. One need not fire lead bullets anymore. Tasers exist. And nearly 2/3 of the population of the planet now has a cell phone which is at least as good as Captain Kirk’s communicator. There are even cell phones that can act almost as Tricorders in their ability to measure certain functions of the body.

While some of Roddenberry’s fantasy can never be reality, much of it already is. And we’re better off for it. But what of the rest of his vision?

I love Star Trek, as an adult, because of its extraordinary society. Their greatest concerns in life truly are bettering themselves and the rest of humanity. Their physiological needs are all met. For the most part, their safety needs are met. They aren’t struggling to pay rent or put food on the table. Much, but not all, crime has been eliminated because people have no need to commit crimes to fulfill their physiological needs. I’m much more likely to go rob a store in order to feed my wife and children than I am to do it for the fun of it. If my physiological needs are met, most of my motives for committing crimes evaporate. I expect the same is true for you, and for the guy next to you, too.

The higher level needs of Maslow’s famous hierarchy are all needs to be met by each individual. How one finds love and a sense of belonging is an expression of identity; it’s not the work of the world, but of each unique person in each one’s unique way. This is also true of Esteem and “Self Actualization,” or the ability to be creative and to work for the benefit of the rest of the world. The world’s interference in those endeavors would be a Borg-like threat to our individuality.

But I believe that we live in a world in which we are now able to meet the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy for all human beings. We have the resources and the technology necessary.

It seems to me that The Economics of Star Trek that I admire and envy so much are based on three realities.

  1. A Post Scarcity Society. There are thousands of hours to be done on this subject, and the debate about the use of the Replicator, alone, is sufficient to be worthy of a Doctoral Dissertation, but I’m using this in the limited sense that the world is capable of providing all the basic human needs: food, water, shelter, medical care, clothing, and the means to participate in society (transportation, communication, and education). Our civilization is already capable of meeting the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy for every human being.
  2. A Resource Based Society. There’s a group called The Venus Project that is actually working toward achieving this goal. What is it? It begins with the radical idea that the planet is the heritage of all people. We need to work out how to use the resources the planet can produce to provide what people need as efficiently as possible. This is their basic goal, from their website:

The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems inherent in today’s world.

The Venus Project

You can learn more about them here:
https://www.thevenusproject.com/

3. An Empathetic Civilization. The idea is that we extend our empathy not just to our blood ties, or our tribal ties, or our religious ties, or our national ties, but to the entire species, and finally even to our shared biosphere. We know we have the technology necessary for this because we can all feel empathy at the same time in response to disasters. This is true when we hear of horrifying tsunamis, devastating earthquakes, or miners trapped beneath the Earth. We have global communication, and we know almost instantly what is happening to each other. Just as when one infant in a Day Care begins crying, all the others will join them within a few minutes (this is due to something we’ve discovered recently called Mirror Neurons. We are soft-wired for Empathy. There’s a neuroscientist named Marco Iacoboni who’s done interesting research on this ), so will human beings share the distress of others in trouble. Empathy is, in my view, the most important human emotion, even if “The Empath” was something less than Star Trek’s most successful episode. The ability to feel for others is what makes us human. If we have the resources and the technology to meet the first two of Maslow’s needs on the hierarchy, people can spend their lives meeting the last three. In other words, once people no longer need to be concerned with physiological or safety needs, they can spend their lives working on the others.

What would be the result of such a world?

My crystal ball ran out of batteries, so I can only guess. I believe we would see a reduction in crime (but not its elimination), we would see better and greater technologies emerging because people have the time to devote to learning instead of trying to feed their families, and we would see, most importantly, a happier world where people really, honestly can work for the betterment of themselves and the rest of humanity.

I’m told this is fantasy, and worse, it’s Socialism. I reject that idea. It can be accomplished, but it’s a question of changing our mind set. I have written quite a bit about the need to increase our empathy, and that embracing Art is an effective means of doing that. You can find that here.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/27/empathy-and-art/

I believe it is wrong to judge a person based on how much money that person earns. The Value of a Person is much more than their ability to monetize their skills, passions, and abilities. Our Value to each other is in what we can do for one another. Empathy is also a part of one’s actual value. I have also written about that, and it’s available here if you need me to make the case more strongly.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/25/the-value-of-a-person/

So, will we ever live long and prosper? I don’t know. I do know, however, it’s worth it to try.

For Roddenberry to accomplish his society, he needed a Eugenics War and then World War III. The society became a barter system when we had to start over because we had destroyed a quarter of the Earth’s population and many of our resources. One of my friends, a lifelong member of Slytherin House, believes we could manage this right now by simply removing the populations of India and China and replacing them with trees and arable land. While Kodos might admire her thinking and endorse her methods, I can’t.

Can we realize Roddenberry’s vision without the need for violence and destruction? I certainly hope so. I also know that Edith Keeler believed as I do. And, when she managed to talk FDR into delaying our entrance into World War II the results were disastrous. We lost the War and with it the concept of Freedom. However…

“She was right. Peace was the way.”
“She was right. But at the wrong time.”


– Kirk and Spock, “City on the Edge of Forever”

Keeler asked Kirk, “Are you afraid of something? Whatever it is, let me help.”

Kirk answered, “Let me help… A hundred years or so from now I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words even over I love you.”

That happened on Earth in 1930. We’re just about a hundred years from that time, now. Is it time for us to begin down Edith Keeler’s path? I don’t know.

But if you’re afraid of something…

Let Me Help.