Blame

Flowers I saw and arranged as a flag on my iPhone.

Is reality subjective? What is fact?

I was reading about science in 2007 this morning. Elephants were thought to be self-aware because they inspected their reflections in mirrors. Genetically modified goats were expected to produce milk including antidotes to lethal nerve agents like sarin and VX. Opiorphin in men's saliva was thought to be six times more powerful than morphine. Winning the Nobel Prize was postulated to add two years to your life expectancy (and I guess the prize money would cover the healthcare). Staying with Norway, researchers reported that elder children have higher IQs. I'm not sure how these panned out though I know we don't have any goat milk in the fridge.

I spent some time discussing age-related change with people now planning for such change. One feature of today’s discussion was that planning has become reactive. There had been time for planning but the act of planning was perceived as premature, defeatist, greedy, divisive, manipulative, demeaning or a mix of those and other excuses I can’t recall. So the planning was left to “others”. And the recommendations of those "others" were ignored because gerontology professionals advised that self-determination prevails. This version of historical and present reality is both true and sad. And because of it, the future of the individuals concerned is less predictable than it should have been. There will be revisions in the retelling of this story, much like corrections to blog posts, and there will be others to blame. Always others. Thanks be for the blames of “others”.

A walk around the local hill, some 6 km averaging about 100 steps a minute, including approx 200 m ascent equivalent to 60 flights of stairs. My knee is fine. And there's lots to think about.