You're Much Much Much Much Luckier Than You Think!

The Cosmic Lottery

Yes, you’ve won!  Against truly unbelievable odds!

Ever take a look at a line to buy lottery tickets at a convenience store?  You generally won’t find professionals on it—they know well that the odds of winning—often a million or more to one—are minimal.  (Many of them are long-term investors in the stock market and --eventually-- just about always profit handsomely.)  The good people on the line appear from their dress and demeanor to be members of the lower middle class—in other words, they really need the money.  And they’re not going to get it.

The chances of an acorn to grow into a towering oak is about one in 3.8 million.  The chance that a figurative acorn,  that is, a lottery ticket, will grow into a money tree is about the same as the likelihood of a freak storm burying New Delhi under three feet of snow. There are so many ways to fall short, sometimes way short, of one's heart's desires!  Maybe those who spend money on lotteries think they’re somehow special.  Maybe they believe in luck. Nobody’s special, of course, and Lady Luck is no match for disembodied statistics.

Yet they’ve won the cosmic lottery, along with every human being on the planet, against truly astronomical odds. Every one of us is extremely lucky to be alive!

Let’s look scientifically at how you became you.  The average male produces about 500 billion sperm cells in a lifetime.  During sex, the male injects over a million sperm into the vagina.  A woman, in contrast, is born with about 600,000 ova.  What do you think the chances are that one and only one of those ova, and one and only one of those sperm cells, came together to make you uniquely you?  How many countless pairs of eyes could have been reading this article instead of the two through which you encounter the world?

Your luck doesn’t stop with your mother and father.  What about your parents' parents, what about your lineage that goes back millions of years—and much longer than that if you include non-human multi-celled ancestors dating back at least 500 million years?  The number of people who could have been born, yet failed to receive a winning ticket to life in the cosmic lottery probably exceeds the number of leaves on every tree on Earth!  Especially when one considers the fact that you are alive now, and are not someone who lived in the past or might live in the future.

Your luck doesn’t stop with your genealogy.  If we change “dreams” to ‘stars” in Shakespeare’s famous quote from The Tempest, namely, “We are such stuff as stars are made on...,” the statement becomes not only figuratively true, but literally true as well.  

I will venture a brief explanation of stellar nucleosynthesis.  The predominant elements in the universe are hydrogen and helium.  When a huge cloud of primordial elements condenses via gravity into a massive star, the outer pressure of radiation from nucleosyntheses is balanced by the inward pull of gravity.  When a massive star runs out of hydrogen, the death process, very slow in human terms, begins.  Higher elements on the periodic table, such as carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are formed.  This provides an adequate energy source for the star, until iron is reached.  Iron has an extremely high binding capacity—gravity is not able to compress it and thus use it in nuclear reactions.  The star is no longer in balance: the inner force of gravity is no longer equalized by the outer force of radiation.  BOOM!--a supernova occurs. The fierce amount of energy released causes the nucleosynthesis of even higher atoms, such as gold.  The force of the explosion ejects these elements into interstellar space.  (Becoming a supernova is not the fate of all stars; only those whose mass is a little over eight times greater than that of our sun die in this manner. The exception is formed by two white dwarf stars in orbit around each other.  When one star gobbles enough matter from the other, a supernova results as well.)

Our sun and solar system are about four billion years old.  The supernova explosion or explosions that enriched the clouds with heavier elements which became our solar system, probably happened billions of years before; huge interstellar distances mean that it likely took a very long time for those heavier elements to reach the cloud that was condensing and becoming the planet which we inhabit.

My point is this: the chance that an interstellar cloud condensed into a solar system in which life is possible is unknown, but probably quite minimal.  The elements that became the sun or Jupiter were not able, due to harsh conditions, to evolve  life forms.  Think of all the countless lifeforms there would be if, say, Mars and Venus were equally hospitable to biological evolution! In addition, what if one of your ancestors branched off onto a lineage that did not lead to humans?  You guessed it, you wouldn’t exist as a human being now. You lucky non-dog!

That life arose on Earth—who knows how—and that some of her original elements, along with a hefty dose of oxygen from photosynthesis, eventually became you, dear reader, was by no means inevitable.  If I were an observer from another world, and, at the time our solar system was forming, was asked what the  chances were that highly complex life forms. such as us,  would eventually arise, well,  I wouldn’t want to bet my alien life on it.

Your luck doesn’t stop with this universe either.  The four forces of the universe are incredibly fine-tuned.  Is this another example of Wilberforce’s argument that finding a watch on the ground implies a creator?  No.  Many physicists posit that there are just about an infinite amount of other universes where the values of the four forces would be different, the vast majority of which would preclude life as we know it.

Lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky you!  You'v’ won the cosmic lottery with the chance of winning were so astronomically low that you might as well say that you’ve beaten these odds: infinity to one!

If that’a a fact, and it is, why is there so much dissatisfaction and unhappiness among the members of the highest life forms known?

2. Problems

I’m not going to discuss the problems in detail, you are undoubtedly quite familiar with most of them.

It is interesting to note that persons who win human lotteries, such as those on a convenience-store line, are very often not made happy by their so-called good fortune.  One study found that five years after winning a lottery people are no happier than one who became a paraplegic five years earlier!

My experience confirms this.  One day my former barber announced that this would be the last time he would cut my hair—he had just won a lottery!  A simple man, an emigrant from Italy who only spoke broken English, now had big plans of moving up the social ladder.  While he was cutting my hair, the phone rang constantly—So many people had ideas of what to do with his money!  You could see that he didn’t know how to handle his new situation—he seemed nervous now when he previously had seemed quite content.  I would hate to think of what became of him five years later!

The problem is that these cosmically exceedingly rare human beings all live on a tiny speck called Earth—over seven billion of us!

The problems arose when we evolved into selves that imagine that we are separate from the environment. In order to survive, we had to defend and take care of ourselves.  We are aware of death. We began to compare ourselves to others.  Many of us wanted to become numero uno.  Imagination and will, our glories, are also our ills.  Greed, hate, delusion etc. arose! Problems, problems, problems!

I am going to spend even less time on the solutions, since this is an article about cosmic luck,  You know what they are: do something you love to do; keep busy; meditate; accept yourself and others for what you and they are; love your neighbor as yourself, socialize, exercise mind and body, etc.

Not easy I admit.  But you’ve come an infinitely long way already—Becoming happy, very happy, is, after all, a whole lot easier, and will take a whole lot less time than evolving from nothing at all.  Take my word for it, it can be done.  Good luck!

Quotes That Help Us Understand Our Troubled Times, Part ll

The reader is advised to read part l of this essay, "Quotes to Help Us Understand These Troubling Times, Part l," before proceeding to this essay, the final part of a two-part series.  The first part is available on the internet or by googling my blog, thomasdorsett.blogspot.com.

On separate occasions, four quotes came to my mind, pertinent to the current political difficulties of the United Sates.  I discuss each of them in the context of current events.   They are, however, quotes that have universal applications; one is invited to apply them to personal as well as to societal histories, both past and present.

The first one, discussed in Part l, is a ray of light that scatters darkness: “What hands build, hands can tear down.”  This quote, from Schiller’s William Tell gives us hope, especially when interpreted figuratively: bad constructs can be deconstructed; bad situations can be reversed when good people join hands and change things for the better. The second quote is not optimistic, but it is a fact that must be faced, lest we become ineffective and naive.

Quote 2:  “Was ist das, was in uns lügt, hurt, stiehlt und mordet?” “What is that within us which lies, whores, steals and murders?”

This quote comes from the German playwright Georg Büchner, who died at the age of 23 from meningitis, barely older than Keats was when he died.  Büchner remains famous principally for two powerful plays, Danton’s Death (1835) and Woyzek (1837), the later the basis of a great twentieth century opera by Alban Berg.  Büchner was especially sensitive to the abuses of the poor and powerless by the rich and powerful. 

This quote, however, is spoken by a doomed aristocrat, Danton.  In the play, his thirst for justice led him to become an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution. As Robespierre’s Reign of Terror progressed,  he became disillusioned by all the slaughter.  His opposition to Robespierre resulted in his execution.

He utters the quote at a time when he is confronted by horrors that followed the revolution.

Danton’s words are a good counterweight to the words of Tell.  The play was written only a little over three decades after Schiller’s, but the knowledge of the good and evil that exists in all of us gives Büchner’s play a much more modern, and less naive view of the world. 

The question which the quote asks is an existential one.  Notice that the playwright states that evil lies in us, and thus cannot be explained away by a bad upbringing or by political oppression.  In Buddhism, the so-called three hindrances, greed, hate, and delusion are like three arrows which have wounded us. It doesn’t matter if a bad upbringing was the archer who wounded with arrow A; it doesn’t matter whether oppression was the archer who wounded with  arrow B; it doesn’t matter whether a bad education was the archer who wounded with arrow C—the important thing is to remove the arrows and heal.

How do we accomplish that?  By individual and collective acts of love and wisdom, of course—but I’m no Schiller, I know well that this is never easy.

We need to temper Schillerian optimism with Büchnerian realism.  When we realize defects lie in all of us, we realize that we may be part of the problem.  Our consciences must decide, however, which course of action is more informed by love and wisdom rather that by the vices Danton lists.  Sometimes the decision is rather easy…

…as in Trump’s case.  He lies all the time; he whores in the sense that he’ll say or even do anything to receive adulation from his followers; he steals in the sense that he has cheated employees many times--that’s three out of four.  And he just might murder our democracy and undermine everything that does make America great. Why this man, born with a silver spoon in his mouth and, having become the most powerful person in the world, is still controlled by his needy inner toddler remains an existential mystery.  I’m quite sure that both Schiller and Büchner would have agreed: Trump is unfit to be president.

Quote 3: “Edel sei der Mensch/Hilfreich und gut!"  "Every human being should be noble,/helpful and good!”

These are the first two lines of a famous poem, "The Divine," by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), widely acknowledged to be the greatest of all German authors. “Edel,” the first word, “Noble,” is followed by “sei”, the imperative form of the verb “to be”.  But this isn’t simply a command to be good.  “Sei” is also third-person subjunctive, denoting possibility.  Therefore, the line should be translated as “May every human being be noble,” or “Every human being should be noble.”

The conditional sense here is crucial.  If Goethe used the third person present indicative, the line would read, “Every human being is noble," etc.” Goethe was well aware not only of the good in humanity, but of the moral failings and even depravity in human beings as well.  He was not naive; we, with the horrors of the past century fresh in our minds, have even less reason to be naive than he did.

An outstanding example of the unwarranted replacement of “is” with “should be” is President Obama, especially during his first term.  He seemed really to have believed that all he needed to do was to propose good legislation, after which both sides of the aisle would, after debate, come up with something workable, possibly something even better.  

At the beginning of his first term, Democrats had the majority of both houses of Congress.   President Obama could have easily passed a better version of the Affordable Care Act, maybe one characterized by a single payer, a.k.a. “Medicare for all.”  (I assure you that we physicians—my wife and I are both pediatricians—are plagued by all the insurances we have to deal with,  which have to be billed separately—and, most annoying of all, have regulations that differ from one to the other.)

But no—the president wanted a consensus.  He believed that all decent politicians would see the necessity of health insurance, and would work together to assure the passage of a law that both parties could live with.  We know how that turned out.

President Obama should have studied Foucault, who asserted that the thirst for power is at the basis of  a good deal of human activity—in the case of politicians, it is paramount. A synonym for power, is, of course, money.  Republicans correctly saw that a health care law would demand increased taxes on the wealthy, and, as representatives of the wealthy, any health care law would therefore be intolerable.

                     President Obama, 2008 and 2016

Republican lies and propaganda did an excellent job in convincing many ordinary citizens that the A.C.A. was indeed, in Trump’s words, “a disaster.”  They promise to replace it with something better. The wealthy would receive a windfall from fewer taxes with the law’s repeal—Do you think that any plan they would devise would include increasing taxes to pay for it?  Hardly. Their plan, once they have one, would have to be far worse than the present one.

President Obama had good ideas, and nearly always came up with excellent policy proposals. He did in fact accomplish much—it remains to be seen how much of his legacy will be destroyed before the vast majority of Trump supporters realize they’ve been had.  President Obama was, however, terrible regarding “selling” his ideas to the public and explaining the policies he initiated.  He hated back-slapping, deal-making and coercion; the “schmoozing” which is an integral part of politics.  If he couldn’t do it, he should have assured that others did it for him.

This is but one example of President Obama’s placing too much trust in the general decency of human beings.  Relatively speaking, President Obama was and is a noble man: relatively speaking, many of those who opposed him were and are anything but. 

He found out rather late the difference between “is” and “should be” regarding every human being, whose lack of nobility, lack of helpfulness, and lack of goodness is so easily brought about by money and the thirst for power.

Obama was too much like Schiller and too little like Büchner.  If he were more aware of the degree to which greed, hate and delusion drives politics, many more of his “yes we cans” would have been accomplished.  

It is useless to wear ballet shoes when your opponents are wearing combat boots; it is folly to play yes-we-can with marauding hordes of hardliners who continue to attack, wound, and occupy gullible minds with salvo after salvo of noxious memes.

Despite his attempts to remain a gentleman in a snake pit, I still think he was a good president.  A noble man--and yet, as Büchner, and even Schiller would have agreed, nobody’s perfect.

Final Quote: “Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle”  “Everyone for himself, and God against all”

Although it reads like a proverb, this adage was actually written by the German director, Werner Herzog; it was the original title of his 1974 film, “The Enigma of Kasper Hauser.”  It has nothing to do with the belief in an angry God, who punishes humankind for its sins.  A better word for “God” here would be “karma.”

My interpretation of the quote follows.  Hillel’s three questions are pertinent here.  “If I’m not for myself, who will be for me?  If I’m only for myself, what am I?  If not now, when?”  Herzog’s adage indicates what happens to us if we don’t get beyond the first question— a selfish society inevitably deteriorates.  People do indeed get the government they deserve.

Many of us are far too involved with ourselves.  Many of us know more about popular entertainers than we do about the great teachers of mankind, including the founding fathers of the United States. Many of us are too politically unaware.  Many of us are too self-absorbed to fight for what is right.

Every society is responsible for its trumps.  If we ignore the necessity of a non-violent struggle for a more just society, we will all suffer.

I recently wrote a poem about the unspeakable tortures suffered by a great man, Edmund Campion, in the sixteenth century. Campion was falsely accused of treason. The poem ends as follows:

Who would dare repeat such heinous crimes?

Who’d could ever reinstate torture?  Vladimir

Putin?  The President of the United States.

Put down your cellphone.  Nobody’s safe.



Nobody is safe. Democracy and freedom should never be taken for granted!  The four quotes discussed in this essay contain both encouragements and warnings.  They can help us temper excessive optimism by viewing it with the keen eye of realism, and can help us temper excessive realism with indomitable, realistic optimism. If understood, pondered upon, and--most important-- incorporated into our actions, they can indeed help in a time of trouble --that is, now.

Quotes That Help Us Understand Our Troubled Times, Part l

We're in a time of trouble indeed.  We've elected a president who is unfit for office, and, if left unchecked, will most likely cause a lot of damage both here and abroad. As I made clear in previous essays available on my blog, Trump is a pathological narcissist; he is, yes, mentally ill.  This is not a partisan position; nobody wants, or should want, an incompetent, impulsive, troubled, egomaniacal bully in the White House.

I'm pleased, however, that resistance to his racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim positions is on the rise.  I'm writing this at a time of mass protests regarding his recent bizarre, anti-American executive directive that no one from seven Muslim-majority countries be allowed entry into the United States for the next 90 days. (Why is it bizarre?  I'll give one reason: citizens of Saudia Arabia are responsible for more terrorist actions against the United States than the population of all the seven proscribed countries combined.)  He must be stopped by non-violent means.

While reflecting on the state of the world today, some of my neurons sent messages to other neurons in their Google-like search for recondite memories that apply.  My mind, on separate occasions, received, as if out of nowhere, four quotes while watching the news--news which elicited from my astonished mouth exclamations such as "OMG!" or "WTF??!!" each time. They are perhaps nothing more than one mind's responses to mindlessness from the White House; they also might cause your neurons to send messages to the muscles in your neck, so that you, dear reader, nod your head in agreement.  If the quotes increase your understanding of the present situation even slightly, and, better yet: if they increase your resolve to resist, the purpose of this essay will have been met.

First Quote : Was Hände bauen, können Hände stürzen, What hands build, hands can tear down

This line comes from Act l, Scene 3 in Friedrich Schiller's famous play, Wilhelm Tell.  I had read the play earlier, but this quote stayed in my mind only after I heard an actor speak it on stage. (I don't remember much else; I must have seen the play in Germany at some time between 1965 and 1966). It deeply impressed me, since the quote is still fresh in mind, although I have never read the play again,  or seen it performed since.

In the play, Hapsburg bullies are attempting to annex the Swiss cantons.  Gessler, the tyrant governor,  has constructed an enormous dungeon, striking terror in the minds of the people. What follows is my translation of the moment when the quote which we are discussing occurs:

Master Steinmetz
O Sir, if you could only see the dungeon
among the rubble.  Yes, whoever is imprisoned there
will never hear the cock crow ever again.

Stauffacher
Oh, God!

Master Steinmetz
Observe the sidewalls  and the buttresses;
they stand as if built for eternity!

Tell
What hands build, hands can tear down.
                              (pointing to the mountains)
God has established the house of freedom.

Schiller was an idealist and firmly believed in the power of individuals to transform society for the better.  Written over one hundred years before Word War l's bloody introduction to the horrors of the past century, the play evinces Schiller's belief that
progress is inevitable. There can be no turning back.

Kant defined the Enlightenment as "the withdrawal of human beings from their self-caused immaturity."  Once the light of reason dawns upon the world, gradually dispelling the darkness of ignorance, societal improvement  cannot be halted.  There will be no tyrants left  at high noon, and the day of justice and freedom, one supposes, will last forever. 

We can no longer share that degree of idealism.  Yet, we have reason to be optimistic; faith in life and in ourselves is part of human nature.  The difference between Schiller's time and ours is the conviction of the former that very good times will come in the near future.  Yes, our epoch asserts, we might come to the top of the mountain, but it's Everest, Schiller, it sure ain't a hill. We moderns know only too well that the ignorant armies of greed against greed, power against power, and  prejudice against prejudice will clash by night and fight us all the way.

We might not be able to swallow it whole, but I think a dose of Schillerian optimism is much needed in these difficult times and will do us much good.

As you might have guessed, the quote came to mind as our misguided president proceeds with the building of an inhumane and unnecessary wall between Mexico and the United States.

When I first heard this quote, so long ago, I shrugged it off as another example of Schillerian naivete.  How can the two hands of David tear down the walls built by Goliaths?  How can two hands tear down the brutal edifice of fascism?  But what if we join hands and prevent those edifices from being constructed?  If we don't do it sooner, we just might live to regret the later for the rest of our lives.

Interpret the quote figuratively.  Replace "hands" with "resistance," "wall" with "threats to democracy and justice". Thus, the quote can be applied to our current sad state of affairs as follows: Trump is constructing dangerous and irresponsible walls; we can tear them down.

Better yet: let's act like grownups  and do the right thing now.



Part ll will follow soon.

Quotes That Help Us Understand OurTroubled Times, Part l

We're in a time of trouble indeed.  We've elected a president who is unfit for office, and, if left unchecked, will most likely cause a lot of damage both here and abroad. As I made clear in previous essays available on my blog, Trump is a pathological narcissist; he is, yes, mentally ill.  This is not a partisan position; nobody wants, or should want, an incompetent, impulsive, troubled, egomaniacal bully in the White House.

I'm pleased, however, that resistance to his racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim positions is on the rise.  I'm writing this at a time of mass protests regarding his recent bizarre, anti-American executive directive that no one from seven Muslim-majority countries be allowed entry into the United States for the next 90 days. (Why is it bizarre?  I'll give one reason: citizens of Saudia Arabia are responsible for more terrorist actions against the United States than the population of all the seven proscribed countries combined.)  He must be stopped by non-violent means.

While reflecting on the state of the world today, some of my neurons sent messages to other neurons in their Google-like search for recondite memories that apply.  My mind, on separate occasions, received, as if out of nowhere, four quotes while watching the news--news which elicited from my astonished mouth exclamations such as "OMG!" or "WTF??!!" each time. They are perhaps nothing more than one mind's responses to mindlessness from the White House; they also might cause your neurons to send messages to the muscles in your neck, so that you, dear reader, nod your head in agreement.  If the quotes increase your understanding of the present situation even slightly, and, better yet: if they increase your resolve to resist, the purpose of this essay will have been met.

First Quote : Was Hände bauen, können Hände stürzen, What hands build, hands can tear down

This line comes from Act l, Scene 3 in Friedrich Schiller's famous play, Wilhelm Tell.  I had read the play earlier, but this quote stayed in my mind only after I heard an actor speak it on stage. (I don't remember much else; I must have seen the play in Germany at some time between 1965 and 1966). It deeply impressed me, since the quote is still fresh in mind, although I have never read the play again,  or seen it performed since.

In the play, Hapsburg bullies are attempting to annex the Swiss cantons.  Gessler, the tyrant governor,  has constructed an enormous dungeon, striking terror in the minds of the people. What follows is my translation of the moment when the quote which we are discussing occurs:

Master Steinmetz
O Sir, if you could only see the dungeon
among the rubble.  Yes, whoever is imprisoned there
will never hear the cock crow ever again.

Stauffacher
Oh, God!

Master Steinmetz
Observe the sidewalls  and the buttresses;
they stand as if built for eternity!

Tell
What hands build, hands can tear down.
                              (pointing to the mountains)
God has established the house of freedom.

Schiller was an idealist and firmly believed in the power of individuals to transform society for the better.  Written over one hundred years before Word War l's bloody introduction to the horrors of the past century, the play evinces Schiller's belief that
progress is inevitable. There can be no turning back.

Kant defined the Enlightenment as "the withdrawal of human beings from their self-caused immaturity."  Once the light of reason dawns upon the world, gradually dispelling the darkness of ignorance, societal improvement  cannot be halted.  There will be no tyrants left  at high noon, and the day of justice and freedom, one supposes, will last forever. 

We can no longer share that degree of idealism.  Yet, we have reason to be optimistic; faith in life and in ourselves is part of human nature.  The difference between Schiller's time and ours is the conviction of the former that very good times will come in the near future.  Yes, our epoch asserts, we might come to the top of the mountain, but it's Everest, Schiller, it sure ain't a hill. We moderns know only too well that the ignorant armies of greed against greed, power against power, and  prejudice against prejudice will clash by night and fight us all the way.

We might not be able to swallow it whole, but I think a dose of Schillerian optimism is much needed in these difficult times and will do us much good.

As you might have guessed, the quote came to mind as our misguided president proceeds with the building of an inhumane and unnecessary wall between Mexico and the United States.

When I first heard this quote, so long ago, I shrugged it off as another example of Schillerian naivete.  How can the two hands of David tear down the walls built by Goliaths?  How can two hands tear down the brutal edifice of fascism?  But what if we join hands and prevent those edifices from being constructed?  If we don't do it sooner, we just might live to regret the later for the rest of our lives.

Interpret the quote figuratively.  Replace "hands" with "resistance," "wall" with "threats to democracy and justice". Thus, the quote can be applied to our current sad state of affairs as follows: Trump is constructing dangerous and irresponsible walls; we can tear them down.

Better yet: let's act like grownups  and do the right thing now.



Part ll will follow soon.