A speculative mind

  As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I spent a couple of years working for the US Forest Service doing Spotted owl surveys. I forgot that I kept a journal of some of those days. What follows is one of them:   This bird had been driving us crazy.   Four times we had heard this owl at night and four times we had come back the next day to try and find it, only to come up empty.   On each of the day visits we spent four hours looking.   We hooted and hooted and hooted.   On three of the visits we got a response, one answering hoot.   We would take an azimuth and hurry over to where the response had come from, only to hear silence for the rest of our visit.   So, this was our last chance, the last day of the calling season.   This time we brought an army.   The entire layout crew came with us, five extra people, seven in all.   Monica planned the strategy, like a general designing a plan of attack.   She designated a location wh...

  I have a confession to make. I have racism inside me. Also, sexism, greed, selfishness, lust. All the seven deadly sins and then some. Here is another secret: you have all of that too. It is human nature to look out for number one, to be selfish. It is human nature to be prejudice for your own tribe and against all other tribes. “Tribe” can be race, religion, social class, political party, country, school, etc. What makes a person moral is not the absence of these feelings, since we all have them. What makes a person moral is your ability to set them aside, to choose compassion over prejudice and greed. It is the same with courage. What makes a person brave is not the absence of fear, but doing the right thing in spite of being afraid. In the words of Captain Kirk in the Star Trek episode “A taste of Armageddon” when confronted with someone telling him that they are all killers, he replies, “All right. It’s instinctive, but the instinct can be fought. We’re human beings with th...