Essays by Larry Barnett
It’s pretty easy to feel down about the state of human affairs. There’s so much greed, so much suffering, so much to feel bad about. What’s to be done when feeling blue?
There are those who view the current moment as deterministic, that everything that’s happening is simply the result of previous causes.… Read the rest
Responding to the many dire situations in the world reminds me of a Buddhist parable. While in the form of a Bodhisattva, the Buddha encounters a starving tiger with two cubs to feed and willingly sacrifices himself. He first offers his leg to the beast, and then his other leg. The starving tiger needs … Read the rest
In Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001, a pre-human hominid throws a thigh bone high into the air, and in a cinematic transition, the thigh bone becomes a space vehicle in orbit around planet earth. This scene typifies one quality of living things, the way we extend our reach to display ourselves in the space … Read the rest
Classical Buddhist cosmology places humanity within The Saha World system, a time-bound realm of endurance. “Endurance,” etymologically speaking, shares the same Pre-Indo-European word-root as “duration,” deru, (to be steadfast, firm, solid), associated interestingly, with trees and longevity.… Read the rest
This colorful portrait of me, insides and all, is one of a series of CAT/PET scans recently produced to determine whether or not a lump in my right lung is malignant. I particularly like how it captured the profile of my nose. Thankfully, the lump appears to be some scar tissue that formed during a serious… Read the rest
I’ve been wondering about the purpose of things, personal and universal. Of course, it’s possible there is no purpose as such, and the very idea of purpose is simply a by-product of human thought. But the universe seems purposeful, and one might say the existence of anything, let alone everything, is… Read the rest
“It says here that seniors are changing their spending habits due to inflation,” my wife mentioned to me yesterday, “eating out less, just like us,” she added. “Yup,” I replied, “we’re just a statistic.”
For many years I’ve said, “I’m just a statistic,” a comment that’s often irritated my wife, but as… Read the rest
Simple rules can produce complex outcomes. This is easily illustrated in games like chess, where the rules governing the movement of pieces on a fixed playing board arranged in a grid of squares produces over 10111 positions, a number greater than all the observed atoms in the universe.
Despite… Read the rest
For reasons not entirely clear to me, I build up gunk on the walls of my blood vessels. My coronary arteries have needed cleaning and repair, and I’ve just been told that my right carotid artery is building up gunk and needs additional examination.
“You’re a vasculopath,” my physician declared during… Read the rest
At my advanced age I’m losing more friends than I’m gaining, so it was nice to spend a little time online chatting with my new buddy ChatGPT, the latest iteration of Artificial Intelligence available to the public. When I was a teen, one of my friends was named Chad, but I’ve never known a Chat before. We … Read the rest
Homo sapiens roughly translates as “wise man”, supposedly distinguishing us from earlier hominids like Neanderthals. I’m not sure about the “wise” part, but we people certainly are thinkers. The precise definition of thinking is not as straightforward as one might, well, think. Thinking, you see,… Read the rest
My friend of nearly 50 years died in his sleep a couple of nights ago. Clifford Barney, whom I called Wally because he called himself Walter when we first met and hung out together at Kurt von Meier’s Napa Valley ranch in the early 70’s, was 92 years… Read the rest
Natural selection, Darwin’s insight into the workings of evolution, spans multiple generations, thousands of them. Plants and animals have been evolving for billions of years, and 99.99% of all the species that have arisen are extinct. Human-like beings have been around for perhaps a million years,… Read the rest
“Ignorance and despotism seem made for each other.”
Thomas Jefferson
That people are born equal may be true in a legal sense, but inequality quickly emerges. Differences in intelligence, upbringing and opportunity assert themselves in determining … Read the rest
If I tell you you’re a self-aware, inter-dimensional wave form of densely packed spacetime will it change your life? I’m not saying you’re not you; I’m saying you’re more than you think you are. Or less. Or maybe, both. Just sayin’.
We’re all subject to the physical laws of universe, although there’s … Read the rest
The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution famously bars congress from infringing on personal free speech or that of the press. In other words, it bans government from preventing expression but does nothing to constrain private enterprise from doing so, however.
The public often complains when… Read the rest
As the years flow by I’ve slowly been losing my hearing, mostly in my left ear but also in my right. I found myself saying “what” more often, and with my wife’s encouragement I went to an audiologist for testing and evaluation. I’m now wearing hearing aids.
“It will take you a while to get used to them,” the… Read the rest
Objective reality; prove it to me! What seems obvious is strange; proving objective reality can only be accomplished subjectively. It’s like the old saw about whether a tree falls in the forest if nobody’s there to hear it; without a subjective observer, objective reality may not exist.
Objective … Read the rest
When you have a 70-foot Black Walnut in the yard, you have a lot of squirrels. Right now, a clutch of four are scampering around its branches, making a last-ditch effort to find any nuts that have not fallen and grab them before they’re gone. The competition is fierce and includes high speed chases through… Read the rest
We think of living things in biological terms, but it is also possible to consider life from chemical, physical, and even economic perspectives. However we define life, both chemistry and physics are embedded in it deeply, and together form the economy of living systems. Although we easily place life… Read the rest