At the end of a friend's recent e-mail, he asked: "Why does every national problem we face today present us not with clear solutions but with seemingly unsolvable dilemmas?" Interesting question. Allow me to riff on it --

I was diagnosed with ALS nearly 20 years ago. More than 16 years ago, I commenced sitting at my dining table, and I've been there ever since. Fortunately, I had begun psychotherapy 3 years earlier, and thus avoided a major funk. And then, just when I needed something else to shore me up, my "hippie" daughter sent me "Lovingkindness," Sharon Salzberg's introductory text on Buddhism. I slowly began to realize that peace of mind and heart is not a destination, but rather a lifetime's journey -- for us all.

My closest friend here in NM has recently had a spate of ill fortune, including an unpleasant divorce, a blocked coronary artery, and what appears to be an undiagnosed hiatal hernia. For the latter, he finally found an acupuncturist who's helping, and that doc has been teaching him about the Tao, an Eastern way of looking at things. And, just when I needed something more to sustain me -- I can no longer talk, I can hardly read, I type my e-mails with one finger, etc. -- my friend gave me Derek Lin's "The Tao of Joy Every Day." And in it I read the following --

"The knowledge we possess is about the limited and finite material world. The eternal Tao is far vaster and infinitely more interesting.
When we glimpse how much there really is beyond our grasp, it is truly a humbling moment."

Does the concept of a vast unknowable lead you towards an acceptable answer to the question that I quoted above?  If not, the perhaps Zorba's explanation will help. He said: "Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid?!"

I never believed the theory that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid hitting the earth. I hold that, as Darwin would have predicted, the dinosaurs no longer "fit" into the environment which had changed because lizards had grown into dinosaurs that were so large that they had no effective enemies, and so could eat up their entire food supply and then starve to death! So, humans, whose brains are so large that they "hold dominion over the Earth" and, like the dinosaurs, have no effective enemies will, as Malthus predicted, over-populate, and then eat up their entire food supply, etc. But first, I'm afraid, humans will use up all the energy-producing resources, crowd into the remaining temperate zones, fight devastating wars over food, and finally eat up the entire food supply, etc. This will take a while, perhaps millions of years, but it's inevitable. Eventually, we, too, will no longer "fit" into the environment which we, ourselves, LOUSED UP, and we'll become as extinct as dinosaurs.

Shouldn't we all wonder where humans get their ideas? Here's what I mean --

Human brains are so-o-o enormous that they are capable of taking in an enormous number of impressions. However, human brains are incapable of sorting through all those impressions in real time, so some of them are stored to be accessed later, if at all. The storage locker is popularly called "the unconscious," as apart from the "conscious" which actually deals with *selected* impressions. Therefore, the answer to my question is this: Humans get their ideas from the enormous number of impressions stored in their unconscious.

Some stored impressions, however, are mis-impressions, i.e., mistaken impressions. Those mistaken impressions lead nowhere or to mistaken conclusions, including what we call "mental illness." The difference between "mistakes" and "mental illness" is merely a matter of degree, as Freud noted. In the long run, then, we're always on the precipice -- all of us. It's just a matter of degree.

The Albuquerque Journal is blatantly conservative, but it used to have the virtue of being honest about itself. Then, just like the liberal N.Y. Times printing conservative writers, this paper decided it would demonstrate its liberalism by employing a woman as editor-in-chief. OK, so far, but she in turn employed mostly women throughout the editorial and writer staffs. Now I know it's not the right thing to say, but now the paper has gone from rabid conservatism to a supermarket checkout-counter RAG.

To my way of thinking, what would make for a truly fine newspaper would be thoughtfulness. To my way of thinking, thoughtfulness leads to good writing and I like that. I think the UNcertainty in all human intellectual pursuits comports nicely with my enjoyment of good writing. As long as we don't really know anything for certain, we may as well express ourselves well.

The Internet, like the printing press before it, will change the conversation by changing people's access to information. How it will sort itself out is ANYONE'S GUESS, just as introducing the printing press couldn't predict the Protestant Revolution which it enabled. The Internet completely changes the conversation. To miss that point is to miss the RELEVANCE of the "Arab Spring" and likewise "Occupy Wall Street."

Of course, we all die. While that's sad, sadder still is the beauty that dies with us -- the beauty in our loving hearts and the beauty of our special gifts. Isn't that why we revere such lovers as Jesus, Buddha and others, and such gift-givers as Beethoven, Shakespeare and others? I think it is.

All nations die, too. Sadder still is their special beauty that dies, too. Think of Greece in the Age of Pericles, Cicero's Rome, even the enlightened 19th century Germany. Or, think of the U.S. of "We hold these Truths to be self-evident" or "We, the People, do ordain". Thomas Jefferson's "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness (*opportunity*)" has reverted back to John Locke's "Life, Liberty and Property (*wealth*)." That's the malady that signals our demise.

I'm a Jew, and, accordingly, I have particular interest in the depiction of Shylock in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." On the one hand, Shakespeare DID intend Shylock to represent the hatefulness of Jewish grasping, a popular sentiment in England at the time. However, almost in spite of himself, Shakespeare reveals the essential humanity of the man, before reducing him to a shell of what he was, and thus satisfying his and his society's rampant anti-semitism.

What may surprise some are the conclusions I've drawn re: the phenomenon of anti-semitism. First of all, the Roman dispersal of the Jews occurred because we Jews were (and are) a notoriously unruly bunch. Then, the ensuing centuries of life in the diaspora engendered in Jews a phenomenon that Freud called "Identification with the Aggressor", whereby downtrodden people take on characteristics of their oppressors. Thus, the despicable behavior of Israelis toward Palestinians. Sad, very sad.

I've long doubted the "SUPPLY side" orthodoxy that "wealth creates jobs." Earlier on, I quoted George Soros's evaluation of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand," saying: "Far from combining all the available knowledge in the market's movements, as economic theory claims, financial markets are ruled by impressions and emotions." So, I asked myself what emotions and impressions characterize *my* attitude toward wealth? After all, through a lot of luck, a smidgen of hard work and fierce aversions to risk and debt, I now have some "wealth" -- or at least so it seems to me. And my main attitude is DEFENSE! In other words, I think wealth first seeks to defend itself against loss, and then seeks to accumulate more wealth. (All of this comports with the observation that "Humans are programmed for scarcity.") Only then, if wealth perceives (or misperceives) opportunity for more wealth through creation of jobs, are such jobs created.

They say: "If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." Well, not necessarily. First, one has to have mice! Then, he has to want to get rid of the mice. Only then, if he doesn't have a cat, will he shop for a mousetrap. Finally, he has to be able to afford the mousetrap, which generally means he has to have a means of earning money. In other words, wealth comes from the bottom up.

Henry Ford got it right, I think. A brilliant engineer, he figured that the road to real wealth was not through the production of another Duesenberg or Rolls Royce, but through a BASIC car that he could produce cheaply and in volume. So he engineered such a car, invented the production line necessitating a large workforce, and then paid those workers enough to *buy* his cars -- and thus became one of the wealthiest men on the planet! In other words, DEMAND creates wealth, not the other way around.

Now, the question is how to create viable demand: i.e., demand that can be satisfied with purchasing power. Here, I think John Maynard Keynes got it right. If, for example, because of misperceptions like "derivatives" based on inflated real estate values, the financial system collapses in such a panic that it's frozen, then government must step in to restructure the system. And then, having done that, government must stimulate DEMAND by (as in FDR's time) investing treasury funds in work projects that can employ people who can then buy things. Then, and only then, can private wealth take over -- as it should -- from big government's heavy-handedness.

However, the Bush team and later the Obama team did EXACTLY the opposite! They first gave the stimulus to the banks(!), then failed to re-structure via the anemic Dodd-Frank bill -- and here we are. Demand is essentially nil because people aren't working, and wealth is essentially protecting itself, as, of course it will.

I'm truly amazed at the stupidity of the whole mess. Aren't you?

Unlike M.L. King, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph and others who we judge by the content of their characters and not by the color of their skin, Barack Obama is thought of as our "first black President." And I don't think that's an accident. I don't think Obama puts forth a character that we can judge on its merits alone. I think he seeks to get a pass based on his being the "first black" whatever. We're told he brought the conservative and liberal factions together at the Harvard Law Review. To what end? If to create an atmosphere for excellent thinking, OK. But, if to avoid conflict, then not OK, because out of conflicting ideas and ideology comes growth.

I finally figured out what's the matter with Obama. He has the same problem Hamlet had: He sees too many sides of the situation before him, and is unable to make a decision. Like Hamlet, he's stuck on the questions (as in "To be or not to be.") However, the questions are of "grave import," so the consequences of his inaction are of "grave import," too. (By my count, the play ends up with 8 dead -- "grave import," indeed!) And so it is with Obama: How many dead have happened on HIS watch? He listens to the generals. Well, generals don't fight (they direct soldiers into battle) and generals want to WIN. He listens to useless politicians who also, more than anything, want to WIN. Meanwhile, all hell is breaking out in our country and wherever "our interests" take us. It's a bloody mess -- Hamlet Redux!