Two Great Mysteries of Life: Solved

There are at least two great mysteries of life:  What is its purpose? and Why did great civilizations fail?

I figured out the first a long time ago.  Most people do in their lifetime: to love and be loved.  Individually speaking, caring and being cared about are as basic as we can get and if we attain those, we are usually satisfied and happy with our lives over all.

That's easy to say and holds up pretty well no matter the context.

The answer to the other question is really profoundly related.  Maybe not at first glance.

Archeologists are discovering that civilizations made up of vast populations thrived in various parts of the world for milleniaand then dissappeared.  The physical aspects were obviously drought, pandemics, war, volcanic action, etc.  Cataclysms that broke the infrastructures are blamed.  But our current western civilization has survived wars, pestilence, and climate change, as must have other great eras of humankind.  In fact, catastrophe tends to bring people together and can lead to better technologies to recover and thrive.

But not always.  

Skipping past all the things most commonly blamed, I want to go biblical.  When Jesus was asked what was the greatest sin, he replied, "Sin against the Holy Spirit."  Okay.  What is that?

In my understanding, the Holy Spirit is experienced when we bond in collaboration.  Most simply put, it's when we discover two heads are better than one.  It's when harmony is achieved through joint effort.

Sin against that spirit would be to fail to pay attention to the knowledge and offerings of the others around us.  It's when some stop thinking others are real.  It's where empathy has been lost.

When that happens, when we stop listening to all the voices, when we stop caring about what they know, that's when things begin to fall apart, just as in not loving or being loved,

There.  You don't have to go up the mountain to seek wisdom from the all-wise prophet.  Its right here in black and white.   

Aren't you glad you checked with me today?

If you still don't get it, be patient.  You'll figure it out.

The Prosecution failed to Make Its Case Against OJ.

O J Simpson passed away from prostate cancer on April 15.  The papers and TV were full of rehashing his guilt so I sent the following to the Letters to the Editor of our local paper.  It was printed by them on Wednesday Apr. 17.

In the OJ Simpson case, the prosecution was unable to establish exactly when the murders took place.  Even if either of their guesses were true, OJ still could not possibly have done everything the prosecution said in the time he was said to have done it.  Timelines matter.  The best book on the crime that I would recommend is KILLING TIME by Freed and Briggs.  They help the readers work with the timelines. 

The other thing they do is include the autopsies of the victims.  The autopsies show four different knives were used.  It took four guys, not one, to take down the two athletic victims.

What makes this case so hard is that the media played up everything about the case they got, which was mostly from the prosecution, and the general public saw and heard what they wanted to hear.  The European-American folks heard and saw all the terrible stuff about OJ and the African-American folks heard and saw all the racist gimmicks they had experienced.  

What the general population did not experience was sitting in the courtroom for months on end as the prosecution talked down to the jury of mixed races and the jury having hours to study the photos and other visuals left by the prosecution.  That experience was put into a book MADAM FOREMAN, A RUSH TO JUDGMENT by Amanda Cooley.  It was not Johnny Cochran's theatrics that pursuaded the jury.  It was the lousy DNA work done by the police and pictures of the bloody gloves rolled up in balls.  Read the book to see why.