Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Thoughts on Turning 66

I wrote this during the hour before I turned 66.  My thoughts:

I'm filled with gratitude for my health, the opportunity to be productive, and for my good wife. We've been contentedly together for almost 43 years now. Oh, I  must also mention my preternaturally loving doggie Einstein.

Aware that most men my age are on the downswing, I'm working longer hours than ever. That's in the spirit of Isaac Asimov, who had written 450 books and was asked, "What would you do if you had six months to live?" His answer: "Type faster."  Most people can't relate to this but, for me, the life well-led is about using as many heartbeats as possible being productive.

For a very long time, I've been afraid of dying and tried everything to cure myself. What works best for me is simply to distract myself the first moment the fear enters consciousness. 

I'm very disciplined but not about eating. Ironic, I care so much about staying healthy and yet can't stop myself from overeating. I guess few of us are fully explainable by the rational.

Also ironic in that I used to be a committed liberal, I'm sad about the leftist bias of society's mindmolders: the schools, colleges, the media, and GoogleSearch. The relentless message is that Left is always right, that redistribution is justice. While I am liberal on many issues, I deeply believe that wisdom can be found across the ideological spectrum. Yet dare an idea veer right of center, it's censored or censured from society's major mind-molders. For example, Fox News, which, perhaps surprisingly, was found by Pew Research Center  to provide the most balanced coverage, is dwarfed in impact by the leftist-biased New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, CNN, PBS, NPR, Time, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, etc., etc., etc. Ironic that the Left continues to harp on Joe McCarthy's censorship from the Right of 70 years ago while today it exerts censorship that's far more pervasive.  I don't want to go into details here lest I be viewed as self-pitying but suffice to say that I have often been a victim of that.

Even if I were a leftist, I'd worry about how much control the aforementioned societal mind-molders have over policy. Whatever control the "military-industrial complex" had is dwarfed by society's mind-molders' power. That concentration of power cannot ultimately be good for humankind. 

In closing, thank you for having read my writings. That adds much meaning to my life.

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