Five Contrary Truths I Learned Too Late in My Life. 
If You Are Younger Than 73, You Can Be Five Steps Ahead of Me!

I’ve spent what probably amounts to an unhealthy amount of my spare time trying to figure out why so much of life is difficult or weird or crazy. I’ve spent an equal amount of time trying to figure out how I could get more of what I need (these days, mostly peace of mind) out of what I’ve got (mostly relationships).

I’ve got dozens, if not hundreds, of these thoughts filed away in the recesses of my aging mind. And I keep thinking that some of them might be helpful to one or several of my readers. So, before they flee completely from my cobwebbed memory banks, I thought I’d put them down here in my blog post – perhaps four or five at a time.

These first five are connected in some ways – but whatever connection they have, I’ve already forgotten. So, please take them as individual observations, and decide for yourself if they make sense to you.

1. Equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law are worthy and achievable goals for a civilized society. But believing that equality is a natural or divine law of some kind is foolish and destructive. Equality – true equality – is a rare and momentary anomaly. And that is because the universe, including all its elements, all its forces, and all its creatures, is designed to move relentlessly towards inequality. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is just one of innumerable observations that scientists and philosophers have made about this fact.

2. Equity – the objective of achieving equal outcomes in terms of education, income, scientific or artistic achievement, etc. – is a goal that will always result in communal degradation and can be achieved only by theft and the threat of violence. And even then, it cannot last, because it is based on equality. (See above.)

3. If the universe has any meaning, it is ironic – that life is a joke laughing at itself. All the best art and music is, happily or sadly, acceptingly or in anguish, a recognition of the fundamental irony of life and living.

4. The quality of our lives is largely determined by what we pay attention to. The more we focus our attention outside ourselves, the greater our sense of accomplishment and well-being. The more we focus our attention on ourselves, the greater our unhappiness, including ennui, neuroticism, and depression.

5. Every truth about life has an equal and opposite truth. Including the four above.

Have You Heard of Swatting? It’s Not Good. And It’s Becoming More Common.

Last week, Judge Tanya Chutkan found out what “swatting” means after an anonymous caller told her local police precinct that there was a shooting at her Washington home. Officers arrived at her home shortly thereafter to find that the call was bogus. No shooting had taken place. Two weeks earlier, federal marshals had rushed to special counsel Jack Smith’s home in Maryland where, they found out, there had been no shooting.

Swatting has emerged in recent years as a method of harassing and intimidating public figures,
and political targets have been bipartisan. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claims to have been swatted several times. And in 2022, Judge Emmet Sullivan, who was presiding over the trial of a Jan. 6. rioter, also seems to have been swatted.

The danger with swatting political figures is not just the unnecessary diversion of emergency resources, but the physical risk any confrontation with law enforcement poses to victims and police.