Sometimes I Wonder...

Sometimes I wonder about a lot of different things. It’s not that I give these things a great deal of thought – well, not most of the time at least. But from time to time something pops into my head, the wheels get turning, I look off into the distance, and a few benign puffs of noncarcinogenic smoke waft out of my ears. And the wondering begins.

I don’t actually come to any concrete determinations or solve any pressing world problems – well, not most of the time at least. Still I do spend a lot of time wondering. Here are a few examples (some of these will have to become the subjects of future blog posts).

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Sometimes I wonder why the girl who was supposed to be “the one” wasn’t.

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Sometimes I wonder whether the atoms in my body might be like millions of tiny solar systems. Maybe I am their universe, and my cells are galaxies filled with these atomic solar systems. And maybe some of those systems have teeny tiny people looking out and wondering the same thing. Maybe our solar system is nothing more than an atomic particle in some much larger organism. Maybe the Milky Way is just one cell in an enormous person, or a giant fish, or a really big worm.

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Sometimes I wonder why the Russian government insists on being such dicks.

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Sometimes I wonder what happened to the Colorado I fell in love with years ago.

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Sometimes I wonder what she’s doing tonight. (from an old song)

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Sometimes I wonder just how much we can really trust science. As a kid, I was enthralled with science, and for most of my life I have marveled at the new achievements, technology, and life improvements that science has brought us. But I have also come to see how closely intermingled science is with politics, and it makes me skeptical.

Climate science, for example, with all its warnings about impending doom from human-induced climate change, would be a lot easier to accept if the political influence – even manipulation – of the scientific establishment wasn’t so obvious. Scientists are products of academic environments where only one political view – the socialist/liberal view – is allowed. So the majority of scientists will sway with the winds of that political view without even thinking about it. It’s the same for journalists and many other influencers in society.

For all its modern wonders, science has its limits; it always has. And within these limits, politicians cynically use science to support their agendas. Centuries ago, science supported the dominant political view (mainly from the Church) that the world was flat and the sun revolved around the Earth. As recently as the 19^th century, science supported the dominant political view (mainly from economic concerns) that the white race was superior and African people were less evolved. This made the enslavement of Africans acceptable.

So I wonder about climate science and its shameless use by certain political factions (Al Gore, for example). But that’s not all. I am becoming more and more skeptical of genetic science, especially when it is used to determine human origins.

I find myself unable to blindly accept the “out of Africa” theory of human origins and believe that the “multiregional theory” has been given seriously short shrift. There are just too many holes in the theory that all people alive today come from a small group that migrated out of Africa relatively recently.

This theory fits nicely with the liberal political view that we are all the same and that we should all be singing “kumbaya” together. And I suspect that this is why it has been pushed so strongly by the scientific community. But there seems to be a lot they can’t explain.

And just as we know that a number of climate scientists have falsified their data to fit the political result they wanted to achieve, I have a suspicion that genetic researchers could well be doing the same. Sometimes I wonder about that.

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Sometimes I wonder why it so often happens that seriously mentally ill people ascend to the ultimate leadership positions of nations and empires. Why do we have a Putin in Russia or a Kim Fat Boy in North Korea? Why did history give us Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro, Che Guevara and so many others? What is it in the social psychology of certain societies that permits, or even facilitates, the rise of murderous dictators?

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Sometimes I wonder what the people around me really see when they look at me.

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Sometimes I wonder why I have so many little gnats flying around in my kitchen and where they so suddenly come from.

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Sometimes I wonder why I was so incredibly naïve and stupid, and made so many bad decisions, in my early 20s. And why did that set the stage for some other doosies later?

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Sometimes I wonder if coming to Ukraine 10 years ago was a continuation of that “bad decision” thing from my earlier days.

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Sometimes I wonder why I always end up spending long holiday weekends alone.

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Sometimes I wonder why otherwise reasonable people become so unreasonable – even hateful – where politics are concerned. Why are people so unwilling to listen to each other, consider other points of view, or even accept a plain truth?

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Sometimes I wonder, I really wonder, why people smoke cigarettes. To me, cigarette stench is one of the top three to five worst odors imaginable. I don’t understand why some people actually choose to ingest something that they know is slowly killing them and that coats them and their clothes in such a putrid odor.

And in their weak dependency on their nicotine fixes, smokers are ridiculously inconsiderate to the people around them who only want to be able to breathe clean air. It’s awful to walk past a smoker on the sidewalk or get into an elevator that had been used by smokers just before. I really don’t get it.

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Sometimes I wonder why the heart decides to latch on to someone or something that it absolutely should not, that is wrong for any number of reasons, and then won’t let go until it is exhausted and broken.

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Sometimes I wonder why we have such romantic notions about the Lakota nation of Native Americans having “their land” taken from them by white Americans when only a few generations earlier, the Lakota had moved west into the northern Great Plains and taken the land from the Cheyenne (who had earlier taken it from another tribe), from the Pawnee and from other tribes in the region. It was never “their land” in the first place.

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Sometimes I wonder if I should have gotten a kitten (or two) five or six years ago.

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Sometimes I wonder about the Internet. Why has something with so much potential for good has become little more than a tool for marketing, propaganda, fake news, political and religious hate, porn, and just wasting time?

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Sometimes I wonder how many people have crossed my path who were supposed to be important in my life or who had a message for me, but I never noticed them.

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Sometimes I wonder why I stopped camping and spending days at a time out in wild nature. Maybe living in my mountain home made camping irrelevant, and I got out of the habit. But it was a darn good habit.

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Sometimes I wonder why what seemed like a great idea a year and a half ago turned out to be anything but.

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Sometimes I wonder about the dreams I have at night. I have such rich dreams with such wild combinations of places, people and situations. I wonder what messages might be in the dreams for me. But I can never figure it out, so I just try to enjoy the nightly “movies.”

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Sometimes I wonder why, after so many years, I never remarried.

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And that’s enough for this edition.