Post Nov.13, 2020
We Homo Demi Sapiens are fortunate, because our minds seem to lighten bad memories over time. I grew up on a small orange grove near to Rialto California, then a town of 1,000, now a town of over 100,000. I remain in contact with my brother, who still lives there. I visit him once in a while and usually drive there and entertain wonderful memories of the smell of orange trees in bloom, helping my parents and grand-parents work the grove, playing around the citrus packing house, and spending time in the nearby mountains. But as I near Rialto, complete with Southern California traffic, I begin to recall other memories —bullies at school, extreme racial bias toward people of Mexican descent, including several of my good friends, few people my age to play with until I entered school, and few people who seemed to be intellectually motivated. Although there were no homeless people in town, there was not much money, and many people living in minimal housing.
And I would then begin to recall the “car clubs” when I was in high school, who specialized in fights after football games, and worse yet, the Hells Angels, who flourished in Fontana, another adjacent town. I hid my enjoyment of classes and skill at playing classical music on the piano to keep my social standing intact. There were movies, and the first MacDonalds stand, which opened right next to my high school, and I did acquire a car, but why are my memories of growing up in Southern California when I was in my teens, so different than those when I visit the scene when in my 80’s? Aging? The brain seems to smooth out the bumps in the road as one ages. This may be one reason why people seem to have fond memories of the past. And why they try to maintain/rebuild it. Listen carefully to the many extreme conservatives in the world. They did well, by their own values, and want their children to do the same. We all want changes of some sort, just not the same ones. And we all want a mixture of the new and the old, but not the same mixture .
A good example of this is my love of rescuing old machinery, even though I have dedicated much of my life to encouraging creativity and innovation, which are essential to change. I have written books on the topics. taught classes on them, consulting for companies on them, and enjoyed working as an engineer on problems requiring them. I have many interests, and continue to add more, and often wonder why I am trying to do more than I have time to do. But now I have enough experience to realize I need both. An example is my need to work with my hands and rescue old un-loved machinery as well as write books and keep up with what’s happening in Silicon Valley, and hang around Stanford University, even though I have been “retired” for 20 years. I have found I need a mix of the old and the new, and working with my mind and my hands, even though I could get more of one done if I cut down on the other.
Right now, while working on an overload of new writing, I have finished the major work on the Peterbilt Truck, a friend of mine and I are hung up on a non-co-operative carburetor for my huge 1930’s road roller. The carburetor is a very large casting, and looks quite simple, and we have successfully freed all of the frozen parts, gotten the necessary compression and spark, and figured out the timing, but as yet, no response —a fuel problem. I occasionally give my wife a hard time because she is fond of complicated picture puzzles, but at least they offer a photograph on the cover of the box. We can’t find any information on the carburetor on the roller. My friend has spent many hours looking for other specimens of the roller, but has only found two in the U.S., and they have cheated by using alternate starting techniques.
Another example of the numerous machines waiting for my attention is a Fordson tractor, also from the 1930’s. It was given to me years ago in non-running condition, and I happily accepted it because a Fordson belonging to my grandfather was the first tractor I ever drove. My memory of it was that it was an awful machine, loving to over-heat and waiting for opportunities to kill the driver. And yet I am eager to get it running. Nostalgia? Insanity? Rather a challenge, and yes—a memory of the past. And I now know that when I attack it, I will run into great frustration and wonder why I am doing so but very pleased as I solve the problems.
When we look at very large groups of people, we see an amazing example of them wanting the known, but also the potential of the unknown. This is understandable because people forget the bad parts of the past, and remember the now-simple solutions to problems. And we are wired that way.
The secret to overcoming this inertia is to experiment, but large groups of people tend to try to stop it. I was astounded during the last election that rather than become close to violence on which medical care we should all have, none of the candidates seemed to encourage trying several and picking the ones that worked the best. Large and successful companies attempt new products, even though some will fail. If accused of having a monopoly, they seem to enter different fields. I am particularly impressed with Elon Musk, who when accused of having too large a piece of a market, simply starts another enterprise focused on related products..
Looking at other areas, I know several devout Catholics who believe that the church is very much out of date, in particular in its treatment of women. One of them happens to be the father of two of my favorite daughters in law. I agree with him whole heartedly, even though I am somewhat of an atheist and probably should not be having opinions on such things. One of his complaints is that women who have dedicated their lives to the church do a disproportionate amount of the work, but receive a minor amount of the recognition. True? I If so, it would be wise of them to not only allow but encourage a few women who are married and have children to be priests. How about a woman pope? And what’s this anti-abortion stance? I am old enough to clearly remember the days when abortion became illegal in California. But did it continue to exist? You bet it did, dressed up as everything from D.& C.‘s, to short visits to other countries, to worrisome procedures by non-M.D.s.
And change for the better is always possible, although it is sometimes slow. Another example of slow change is in militaries. I used to teach a class entitled War and Technology, amply backed by a number of military people working on advanced degrees at Stanford. I would also make use of people on the faculty who had served in the Defense department. One of my favorites was Bill Perry, a statistician who served as Secretary of Defense under Bill Cllnton. He would make arguments that nuclear weapons were bargaining chips, rather than weapons, because anyone dropping one would have a short future. But yet we keep putting resources into larger bombs, even though few of us know what a megaton of T.N.T really means (Russia exploded one of approximately 50 megatons on 1961 and apparently quit making bigger ones because they could think of no practical purpose for them— I witnessed the explosion of an atomic bomb in the 1950’s when over 100 tests were run north of Las Vegas, and it was enough for me, even though people were then only speaking in terms of kilotons .
I was in the U.S. Airforce in the 1950’s, and had a job that also put me in contact with many people in the army and navy. I quietly (I was a lowly lieutenant) noticed a strong bias among many hjghly ranked officers toward World War II (or even World War I) weapons they had served on during World War 2 (Battleships rather than submarines in the Navy, machine guns in fighters flown by humans rather than missiles, etc.) There have been tremendous changes in the military since then, much of it due to coming up against militaries of different countries and other groups, with their different weapons and different beliefs. Women can in fact fly fighters and be astronauts. But we don’t seem to be “winning “wars. Many changes in large groups require a change in attitudes, often requiring changes in generations. Think of issues now looming large in the world. More of this later.
A photo of my Austin road roller is below. Beautiful, isn’t it, even though it doesn’t move under its own power yet. But it is good exercise just turning over its engine by hand (its flywheels measure five and a half feet in diameter ). Maybe next week.
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