Author Archives: Guillermo Calvo Mahé

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About Guillermo Calvo Mahé

I’ve done many things over the years and I’ve lived in many places. Until 2016 I chaired the Political Science, Government and International Relations Program at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales in the Republic of Colombia where I taught political science (human rights law, international and supranational law, constitutional theory, government and comparative political systems, history of political ideas, and, North American Studies), served as an English resource to faculty members, translated academic papers, and participated in development of international faculty and student exchange programs for the university. I periodically serve as a political commentator on local media and continue to be active as a writer and artist as well as a translator and interpreter. My university degrees are in political science, law, international legal studies and translation studies. I am active political matters both locally and internationally and have a passion for world affairs and history. I’ve sought spiritual enlightenment all my life but have yet to find definitive answers; I have, however, found an ever increasing and worthwhile, series of questions to speculate on. I am very drawn to the beauty, simplicity and justice of the Wiccan Reede. I love music, dancing, writing, reading, drawing, equestrian sports, tennis and softball. I maintain a warm and supportive ongoing relationship with my three sons in the USA. I was married twice with one serious relationship between the two marriages and also had several wonderful recent relationships. I dislike jealousy and respect the importance of private space and continuing individual growth; however, I also value loyalty and honesty very much and treasure affection.

A Reflection and Introspection on the Day my Mother would have been a Century Young

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My mother would have been a century old today, or perhaps a century young. 

She was born on the 9th of July in 1923 to a complex couple, a sort of Cinderella and her Prince, only the prince was a French physician, albeit of noble stock, and the setting was in the Republic of Colombia, in the Department of Cundinamarca, in a small municipality near Bogota, and Cinderella was a beautiful very young woman, a bright young woman with little formal education (only her step siblings received that) but fascinated by the esoteric and by alternative spiritual philosophies, and those drew her close as the man who was to become her husband was, it was said, clairvoyant.  Unfortunately not clairvoyant enough to foretell his early death, leaving behind a beautiful young widow with two small children, one of them my mother: a little girl with a very long name: María del Rosario de Nuestra Señora de Chiquinquirá Mahé Val Buena (or perhaps Rubiano).  “Mahé” was her paternal last name.  People called her either “Rosario” or, if they were close to her, “Chalito”, but after she emigrated to the United States, most Americans called her “Rose”.  Late in life, for reasons of her own, she legally shortened her name to “Rosal”, Spanish for a rose bush, but that was something I never quite accepted.  Then again, … to me her name was always “Mom”. 

My mother was a very complex person and lived a very complex life, for some reason, usually electing to hide her myriad talents as an artist, a poet, a philosopher, a philanthropist, etc.  While she started her life as a beautiful and vibrant young woman who aspired to the stage, those dreams faded all too soon, and she lived most of her life very humbly, and all too often, very alone.  Still, she was a miracle worker who raised me as though, like my grandfather, I was a young noble and required appropriate training in history, politics, philosophy, chivalry, the arts, equestrian sports, etc.  I still can’t fathom how she accomplished it but I know that everything positive I ever became or I ever accomplished I owe to her.  The bad traits and failures are all my own.

She remained a child at heart all her life and loved watching and re-watching young Shirley temple movies and the Wizard of Oz, and was horrified when, as a teen, I went through an “objectivist”, Ayn Rand phase.  She wanted me to be a man of the people, a champion of the oppressed and certainly not an oppressor.  Fortunately, I outgrew that phase (as I outgrew many others) and slowly but steadily strove to be what she’d hoped.

She and my father were separated when I was very young.  Evidently they had a serious argument over his relationship with his secretary, a relationship he always claimed was innocent, but who knows.  And being naïve, she went for solace to my grandmother who immediately swept us up, sent my mother to the United States and apparently hid my younger sister and me among friends and relatives.  My father claimed to have searched for us, but he claimed a lot of things when I got to know him many years later, things that didn’t appear to be quite true, at least according to the trail of children he left behind, siblings I hardly knew but came to dearly love, after we eventually met.  Nevertheless, my mother loved him for the rest of her life and never said a negative thing about him to me.  Rather, she led me to believe that he’d been a paragon, a mixture of a De Vinci and a Rolando Furioso, albeit in a short, thin package.  Obviously, although saintly in most respects, veracity was not always her strong point.  It was only as I matured and aged that I came to realize that the paragon had always been her.

A century she never sought is what I’m sort of celebrating today, a day on which I’m reflecting on who she was and on everything she did, and not just for me.  My Colombian cousins practically worship her as, regardless of how little she had, on each of their birthdays and on every Christmas, she showered them with gifts, especially after her brother, their father had passed away.  She didn’t love life, but she loved me, and she loved her version of the divine.  She loved him with all her heart, and she longed to reunite with him, perhaps perceiving in the divine a father figure who she associated with her own father, he who had passed away much too soon, but had left her with a very lasting impression. 

She passed away very young as well.  Although not nearly as young as did he.  She was about to turn sixty-seven.  It was the fourth of June, 1990.  My youngest son, Edward, was born six months later.  My second son Alex doesn’t remember her, he was a wee bit more than two years old when she left.  But she bonded with Billy, my firstborn, and he remembers her well, and he remembers her stories about dinosaurs which he loved when little.  And he remembers our trips to visit her weekly towards the end; a four hour ride from Hendersonville, North Carolina, where we lived then, to Jacksonville, North Carolina, where my sister Marina was caring for her.  It was strange having four year old Billy watch her expiring but I wanted him to remember her always, and he does.  Those rides were memorable for both of us, silly rides with silly songs making silly noises in very sad times.

She’s been gone a long time now.  Thirty-three years, a month and five days.  And I think of her often.  I keep the plastic box which for a brief time held her ashes on a shelf in front of my desk, a box I’ve filled with little things I thought she might find meaningful: my sons’ baby teeth, an old bathing suit each wore in turn, my eldest son’s high school identification card, a cell phone my college roommate, now deceased, once gave me.  And taped to the box is a photocopy of a brief article in our local paper here in Manizales, I paper for which I write from time to time, an article with a photo of her, wishing her well as she moved to a new country.  An article almost three quarters of a century old.

I glance at that picture often, and I keep it close to me so that the pain of her passing lives on but morphed into something beautiful and positive, something that gives me courage and hope when I most need it, and an example to follow when I’m tempted to stray from the paths she sowed so carefully for me.

Happy birthday Mom, and thank you for being you, and thank you for everything you miraculously did to make me who you hoped I’d be.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Physics or Metaphysics or Just Deity’s First Day

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Deity did not remember waking, ever, or having come into existence, but it had.  Its initial memory was reflecting on curiosity, difficult as, other than itself, there was nothing about which to be curious, but there was a tension between that infinite boredom that was its essence and curiosity concerning what it was and from whence it came, a curiosity insatiable because of the dearth of answers, a dearth which could seemingly never be satisfied thus imposing boundaries that bound it, the only boundaries there were, the only boundaries there had ever been. 

Fortunately, time did not exist, nor did space, so the boredom was not as overpowering as it might have been.  Reflection on introspection, somewhat vacuous at best, was all there was to entertain Deity.  And perhaps reflections on boredom, on the nature of boredom, accompanied perhaps, by speculation on whether or not boredom might not have complex components.  What if boredom was a composite of other factors, but then, Deity knew nothing of either composites or factors, or anything really.  It knew everything there was to know, which was virtually nothing, but virtually nothing was not the same as nothing, so, in that sense, it was concurrently omniscient.

Then, after forever as then defined, although there being no one to define it, it was undefinably ineffable, of a sudden, everything, which prior to that instant had been nothing, exploded.  A tiny explosion at first, but growing geometrically, growing omnidirectionally, matter and energy and radiation seemingly forming from what some might someday describe as inchoate ether, and Deity experienced surprise.  Not its first surprise; that had occurred the instant outside of time when it had attained sentience, albeit with nothing about which to be sentient.  But this was its first sort of external surprise, although external was not the appropriate concept as it had been Deity that had exploded, perhaps as a result of uncontainable curiosity meeting immovable boredom, and thus it was Deity itself that was expanding geometrically and omnidirectionally, morphing from Deity to Divinity, and wondering whether it could exercise any control over what appeared to be a deterministic phenomenon, one based solely on reaction and counter reaction, infinitely amplified; well, almost infinitely.  And the concept of volition entered Divinity’s lexicon, a very brief lexicon just then, but with a great deal of potential for future growth now that future was a concept, and past, and present.

Confusion reigned with chaos as its consort, or perhaps, visa versa, as determinism played with volition in Divinity’s imagination and boredom radiated into apparent nothingness, but apparent nothingness is not the same as nothingness, even if solely comprised of echoes and shadows playing at becoming rainbows and fireflies, well, perhaps someday. 

Reflection and introspection gave way to a struggle to contain and control the emerging expansion, but then immediately, or almost immediately, which was obviously different than immediately, reflection returned to speculate over what had happened, and whether why was relevant, or existed at all, which of course resulted in the birth of why, and curiosity broke its tensional tie with boredom.  Not that boredom disappeared, but it was somewhat subsumed, at least for a while, as eternity and infinity blossomed and grew, and Divinity entered its infancy, bereft of either a maternal or paternal influence, … at least as far as it knew.

And thus ended the first instant of unrecorded time, with many, many more instants to come, instants in diverse colors and flavors, instants with quite a few consequences, some of which, perhaps, were eventually collected into what would someday be referred to as a zeptosecond, and zeptoseconds into almost eternal nanoseconds, and then, well seconds and minutes, until finally, the temporal and spatial cumulous conformed what some would refer to as the first day, although, of course, Divinity was not among them.

But that’s a different story.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Paradise Lost or Perhaps Just Never Attained

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Sequentially serial monogamy.  Or polygamy, or polyandry, or polyamory, or what have you.

Are those among the paths nature expected us to tread?  Paths that would separate and segment child bearing, child rearing, sexual intimacy, economic collaboration and companionship into different functions, each potentially involving differing relationships over time, but relationships tied together through decency and harmonious post relationship continuity?  Something I think Robert Heinlein seemed to espouse and which makes a great deal of sense, but with which, emotionally, most of us are not prepared to cope, that inability being primarily attributable to hypocritical Abrahamic strictures which insist that jealousy and possession ought to be our prime motivators.  Motivators that rule our personal lives as well as our lives as members of collectives, collectives from dysfunctional nuclear families to contending nations bent on mutual annihilation.

The concepts work well in Heinlein’s novels but not that well in real life, although perhaps they should. 

Perhaps, some day, somewhere, they may.

Paradise lost or perhaps just never attained, …

_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Rantings on Volition

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At some point, perhaps, somewhere, some-when before time, the primal singularity acted out, perhaps speculating on an eventual battle between determinism (the concept that everything will be determined in the first instant of existence and all that follows will involve mere predictable reaction), and volition (the concept that choice will prove a reality that will impact consequences).  Perhaps that primal singularity wondered if choice would be an option.  Perhaps, the primal singularity speculated on the relevance of right versus wrong.

Perhaps it engaged in the following soliloquy:

“It may be that volition will be an attribute isolated only to biological entities broadly defined, starting with the tiniest and most primordial microorganisms.  Perhaps it will involve an experiment challenging otherwise predictable determinism, a sort of experimental determinist deviation which may set determinism somewhat askew, creating a tension between that phenomenon and its former perfection, where determinism will seek to erase the consequences of volition in the long term, while volition will mess with determinism in the short”.

In that sense, all our human idiocies would eventually come to naught, right versus wrong an irrelevancy, a mere artificial construct, and life will prove but a transitory anomaly, a sort of practical joke on the multiverse.  Unless, of course, life unexpectedly survives and in some volitional form or other, prevails, at least until entropy has the final word.

Or, perhaps not.

Perhaps the foregoing are only the rantings of an anarchic empirical philosopher.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

With a Paradoxical Whimper of Sorts

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Looking at cosmogony logically, at least from my perspective, it seems that the end of our universe, … as we know it, is fathomable.  The how at least, if not the when, and it would involve everything everywhere being swallowed into an ultimate universal black hole which had swallowed all other black holes, which had swallowed everything before them, regardless of expansion, so, in a sense, the oscillating universe theorists of yore would unexpectedly be proven right, in their instincts if not in their conclusions.

Of course, that is not a complete end, not the entropic end once envisioned, but a variant thereof, one where black holes form, eat each other in involuntary mergers, or perhaps, happy marriages, and like our own merger mad neoliberal moguls who want to own and control everything, regardless of the cost or danger of nuclear annihilation involved, eventually leave no remnants, except, perhaps, the residue of their own infinitely bloated singularity.

Then again, we don’t know what ultimately happens to black holes, or whether their opposite compliments, theoretically possible at least according to mathematics, “white holes”, would merely start everything over again, or what the consequence of Stephen Hawking’s concepts of information and radiation leakage from black holes might entail.  Which brings us to possible postulates by other physicists such as Planck and DeBroglie and Schwarzschild, i.e., that as black holes “radiate” information, their mass decreases, and, as their mass decreases, they emit greater and greater quantities of informational radiation, causing more and more and faster and faster evaporation, eventually causing them to shrinks to around the Planck mass (the smallest mass possible) where their DeBroglie wavelengths become equal to the Schwarzschild radius.  An infinitely great yet tiny amount of radiation free of information and at that point, perhaps gravity free as well.

Well, in our universe, at any rate.  The rest of the multiverse probably poses other quandaries and promises.

I wonder how AI (artificial intelligence) will fare in the foregoing information-free scenario.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Ledatic Eht

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A vale behind the veil, another side of somewhere
a place
where all who’ve come before us eventually venture.

Where the Boo, another face of God, sits in genteel judgment,
an unlit cigar
clenched firmly in his jaw,

… welcoming home his lambs.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Musings on a Midsummer’s Eve

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Did the Magdalene and the Nazarene, either together or alone, ever touch the waters that bathe Northern Africa, Southern Europe and Southwestern Asia, the sea purportedly in the middle of the world, at least as perceived by them?  Perhaps on a soft and balmy midsummer’s eve?

Probably not, but given the millennia that separate us from them, who can tell. 

Immersion in that central sea would have been both pleasant and mystically sacred.  Especially on such a day.  At least it would seem so to me, notwithstanding that so many millions have been so privileged. 

A wandering thought on a midsummer’s morning.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

The Evening of the Day Before

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Midsummer’s eve was probably yesterday, but it could have been “the evening of the day before”, a good title for a book perhaps.  Perhaps a book by Umberto Eco or a play by Will-o’-the-wisp Shakespeare.

I wonder if Titania and Oberon and Puck were out cavorting.  I certainly hope so, but, if so, “wherefore were they and why”?

Wandering thoughts on an early summer’s day in a sort of late Juniper’s June.
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

The True Meaning of Life and all that Rot (Literally; or is it “figuratively”?)

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Philosophy is an interesting human concept, our very own innovation designed to concurrently enlighten and befuddle us.  It both opens our minds and channels them into narrow calcified tunnels with light so distant as to become virtually invisible, and hence, rendering real knowledge ungraspable.  At least that’s frequently the case.  But not always.  Take the “meaning of life as an example.  Is it really as complicated and unfathomable as we´ve made it?  Or, is it rather simple and basic?  Based on the following hypothesis, you be the judge.

Sooo, about the “meaning of life” about which we[1] humans spend so much time wondering and, with regards to which, we spend so much time bemoaning the absence of answers.  At least some of us.  At least during certain stages of our lives (for example, during the onset of puberty at adolescence, then as we approach midlife crises, then as we approach what we refer to as our third or golden years, and finally, as we face transition beyond the veil). 

I think I may have found it (it being “the” answer), at least as far as “we” humans are concerned, but, notwithstanding the conclusions of Douglas Adams (wherever he is now that he’s passed beyond the veil), it has nothing to do with the number forty-two.

I would warn readers that the answer’s a bit humbling and hardly grandiose.  Rather, it’s quite utilitarian, although still rather important.  And it applies narrowly and specifically to only one of life’s realms, thus other forms of life have other primal purposes since, when we ask what the purpose of life is, we are referring to the purpose of life and its meaning among we humans.  Accordingly, the answer lies there. 

But what are our premises?  After all, every well thought out answer starts with premises.

Well, interestingly enough, there seem to be just three.  First[2] we have to acknowledge that we humans are part of the animal kingdom, or at least evolved therefrom[3]; second, that the animal and plant kingdoms are both an innovation of our joint forefathers eukaryotes; and third, that those animals possessed of alimentary canals which process ingested nourishment into waste, are our direct ancestors.  There!  We’re set.  Sort of.

Based on the foregoing, the reality with respect to the meaning of life, or perhaps, more accurately, our lives, is that the primary and perhaps sole purpose and function of the denizens of the branch of the animal kingdom of which we’re a part was supposed to be, according to nature (our progenitor), the proliferation of vegetable species, most importantly fruit, beyond their normal range.  That was to be accomplished through the combination of our innovative freedom of movement, compared to the plants we were digesting, and our excretionary functions.  Consequently, we were not “forbidden” to eat the fruit of life, but, as Eve would in no uncertain terms conform, impelled to do so, and to digest it, and having digested it into a compost that included seeds and the fertilizing agents necessary for propagation, excrete the residue to spread vegetable life far and wide.

The plant and animal kingdoms (all multicellular animals), of course, constitute only two of the five currently recognized living realms, the others being fungi (moulds, mushrooms and yeast), protists (amoeba, chlorella and plasmodium) and prokaryotes (bacteria and blue-green algae) but in the context of our foundational inquiry, we are only concerned with the first two, and with respect to those, original purposes soon became complicated and convoluted, perhaps resulting in our current confusion and despair.

While our original purpose for existing as part of the living realms was clear, the animal kingdom duchy (sort to speak, or perhaps principality) of which we are part soon deviated as carnivores insisted on intruding onto the alimentary premises which the vegetable kingdom found imperative, and rather than consuming plants and fruit, especially fruit, they insisted on a form of primordial cannibalism and expanding on that, we humans evolved into omnivores, consuming anything and everything that did not consume us first.  But that was not enough for us, we then degraded the importance of our excretions.  Indeed, we disdained and contained them through nonproductive (at least from the vegetable kingdom’s perspective) purportedly salutary practices, such deviation from our primary purpose having been erroneously premised on cultural misinterpretation of our role, our “prime directive” as Gene Roddenberry might have put it, and then, of course, misdirection.  Since then, we’ve invented myriads of fields of reflection and introspection trying to rediscover the purpose we ourselves rendered, if not obsolete, at least anachronistic.

Following the hypothesis that no good deed goes unpunished, at least for long, the animal kingdom, duchy of which we are a part, through the intervention and innovations of we humans, has and continues to conquer and devastate our creators in the vegetable kingdom, indeed, in all five of life’s realms, which may be the source of the rumor spread by Friedrich Nietzsche to the effect that “God”, whoever or whatever that was (hint, it’s obviously nature) is dead, although Nietzsche was merely projecting nature’s future.

Interestingly, the foregoing also implies another epiphany, one that involves the identity of the “adversary, to whom some humans unfairly refer in their purportedly sacred writings as Lucifer, or Satan, or Shaitan, but which more accurately, was a certain Hêl él[4].  In fact, if the foregoing is accurate, the adversary was in fat not some deviant archangel but rather, a certain Robert Thom, the Scott[5] who initiated sewage treatment in the city of Paisley[6]; the clearest and most expansive example of the law of unintended consequences. 

If only plants could speak what stories they could tell. 

Sooo, … about artificial intelligence …!
_______

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] I know, I know, it should be “us”, but I don’t really like the way “us” sounds in this context, and, … I am the author, with all rights to “poetic license”, sooo, “we” it is.

[2] I know, I know, … again.  “Premises, premises”, but what can we do without them.

[3] The “derived therefrom” phrase preemptively addresses arguments insisting that we are qualitatively different than animals.

[4] Look him up, it’s worth it.

[5] I hate to admit that the English may have been correct when some postulated that the devil was most certainly a Scott.  But evidently, at least in this one instance, it appears they were on to something.  I guess the axiom that no one is always wrong may, in fact, be somewhat correct.

[6] Although the Minoan civilization of Crete and the Roman Empire used underground clay pipes for “sanitation” purposes.  So perhaps the identity of the “adversary” is all too securely hidden.

Serendipity:

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The Saga of a Gal Sort of Named Sue, and … well, … Company

This is a story about consonance, not assonance, but certainly contains more than a trace of dissonance.  It’s a sort of fractured and sad love story.  The characters are, well characters, and no effort has been made, with respect to the nature of their names, to protect the innocent, so we are neither admitting nor denying that they involve real people or real situations, at least deliberately.  But nature being what it is, …who knows?

Well, … maybe the Shadow, … but who else?

Anyway ….

Sue was a lucky girl.  At least for a while.  Good things fell in her pretty lap without her ever having to do anything to earn them, anything at all.  Some said “serendipitous” was her middle name.  It wasn’t.  “Serendipity” was her first name but, for some reason, she preferred to use Sue, which was, in point of fact, her middle name.  Interesting.

Everything about Sue was pretty too.  Not beautiful, not cute, just pretty.  But so much prettiness tended to dazzle, and it wasn’t as threatening as beautiful, although perhaps not as perky as cute.  Being perfectly pretty helped, well, let’s call her “Sue” (since she prefers that name), it helped Sue with everything: with her grades, with her roles in all kinds of organizations, with her teachers (none of whom ever even considered hitting on her), with her family and relatives, with whatever job she decided she wanted, although, to be fair, she never sought anything beyond her capabilities, and she gave every job she ever had her all.  That was Sue.

At least until she inadvertently met “Melancholy Mike” during her senior year in college.  Sometimes destiny sucks.  Or is that fate.  Or perhaps, karma.

Mike wasn’t really melancholy at all, he just had terrible luck at everything he tried despite seemingly having all the physical and mental assets for which any male could hope.  Although he was fast and had great hand and eye coordination, he somehow always had “bad luck” accidents, and, truth be told, he was easily distracted, which is probably why it seemed so hard for him to keep his “eye on the ball”, in every sense.  So, … rather than being a first string varsity sports star, he tended to be a junior varsity backup, but not with awesome promise, without awesome potential .  Same was true with academics, and work, and, as we’ll see, with personal relationships.

Initially, everyone Melancholy Mike met wanted to be his friend and, if it involved a female, and well, some males too, a bit more than just a friend.  To say that Melancholy Mike was not empathic was a massive understatement, so he didn’t pick up on how others felt about him and, all too soon, those who’d initially been drawn to him became, at best, cross with him.  Too many stupid little things just seemed to go wrong around him.  He tended to trip quite a lot, and to spill things, and to blurt things out he’d have been better off keeping to himself.  And all too soon, those who’d initially found him fascinating but had then become being cross saw their feelings devolve towards disdain, and quickly thereafter, to avoidance, and then to generation of nasty, untruthful rumors (which is how he acquired the moniker “melancholy”).  That was especially true among those who’d originally found him irresistible but, with respect to whom, he’d “failed to catch the pass”, if you get the drift.  They’d be embarrassed at first, feeling foolish, then his lack of any reaction towards their obviously miffed feelings, made them feel belittled and ignored, even though he was just being oblivious and, had he caught on, might frequently have reacted in a very positive manner.  Thus, over time, by his senior year in college, Melancholy Mike had become singularly unpopular.

While Melancholy Mike was “usually” oblivious, that was not the case when he met Sue.  They bumped into each other, literally, in a park by a pretty flowing river, where flowers of diverse species bloomed and shade trees abounded.  Sue had gone there to study and Melancholy Mike, well, frankly, he’d not been paying attention where he was going and had gotten lost.  They’d really bumped into each other, as I indicated, literally, but figuratively and physically as well.  Melancholy Mike had tripped over Sue and hit his nose on a large rock and was bleeding profusely.  Sue, who was always nice, sought to stem the bleeding and, of course, succeeded in doing so.  But in the midst of that endeavor, she glanced into his eyes, and became lost there, and when Melancholy Mike, who was in a bit of a daze, looked at her face, he figured perhaps he’d been hurt worse than he’d thought, worse than usual, and …. 

Well, as somewhat polar opposites, the attraction had been as intense as it was immediate, but then, all too soon, perhaps a few weeks later, it seemed as if a thick glob of sticky and sickly sweet molasses had engulfed them, sort of like amber sometimes engulfs insects.  The figurative ambient mess kept making them keep figuratively colliding, first to one side and then to the other, but still clinging.  Yuck, what an awful metaphor, or was that a simile, but anyway, it was unfortunately all too accurate.

Having never learned to cope with failure, Sue refused to admit its possibility,  She stuck by Melancholy Mike, literally, figuratively, physically and every which way, and he rubbed off on her (given that her attention was focused on him).  It had to be, to avoid constant disasters, and people started to avoid her as well but, she was so entranced with Melancholy Mike that she didn’t notice, at least not until it was too late to do anything about it, and thus, she was not only stuck to Melancholy Mike, but also stuck with him.

During a tumultuous courtship, as Sue too became ostracized from her old friends and acquaintances, and even her family, their relationship became stronger instead of weaker.  A phenomenon common when parents disapprove of a child’s choice in romantic partner.  Thus they married on a spontaneous whim, without her family’s approval (his was ecstatic) and started on a life somewhat lacking in the bliss they’d expected.  As might be expected, after turmoil overwhelmed ecstasy, they first separated, to sort of sort things out, give each other a bit of space, and then, at Sue’s insistence and to her family’s profound joy, they got divorced, but then, inexplicably, got back together, got engaged, which they hadn’t done before they were initially married (purportedly the second marriage would involve a long engagement), but then, impulsively, they eloped again (they had no one to invite to their weddings anyway, neither the first, nor the second, nor the ….; but that’s another story).  Well, maybe it’s really part of the same story but the repetitive nature of the telling becomes tedious, soooo ….

After their second wedding, hoping it would help them bond, they quickly had two kids, the first, a cute daughter with an amazing voice whom they named “Melony” (but her nickname, among her friends, friends she never dared bring home, was “Melody”); and then, eighteen months later, a son whom they named Anthony but called Tony.  Tony was, from the very first, even as an infant, pretty much a loner, a kid who preferred comic books, Anime and video games to interaction with other humans.  Tony also refrained from bringing friends home (but that was because he hadn’t any).  In a futile quest to build unity, the family tried acquiring pets, but they tended to run away all too soon, or to die, although Melony suspected that they may have committed suicide. 

Their house was not awful, in fact, if you liked oddities, you might have found it fascinating, in a sort of poor couple’s Adams’ Family, well, not mansion, but a hell of a nice triple wide mobile home, with an aboveground pool outside, and next to it, a third-hand Jacuzzi that worked intermittently, on and off (but off involved squirting tepid water full of rust).  And their home was set on a quarter acre, but next to a junk yard.  Melancholy Mike liked the spot because he loved the junk, and Sue hated the spot because she hated the junk, but she loved Melancholy Mike, at least then, sooo.  Well, perhaps geography explained why they had such a hard time staying together, even for the kids’ sake, although the kids would have been happier, had they stayed apart, especially the times when Melony could live with Sue, and Tony with Melancholy Mike.

As soon as Melony turned eighteen, she left home and joined a travelling troupe of purported actors, and at one of their gigs, in Rye, New York, an inebriated talent scout spotted her singing, and, sobering up quickly, he introduced himself and eventually, talked her into leaving the group.  He fell in love with her and financed music lessons and introduced her to the right people, and got her a contract with a decent recording label, and she climbed the stairway to success, but dropped Joe off on the first rung (Joe, well Joseph H. Riddle II, it should just have been Junior, was the talent scout’s name).

Joe became so despondent when he was so suddenly and completely dumped that he sought out Melony’s parents, and, after interacting with them briefly, for about a week, he realized why Melony was as she was, and decided he was better off without her, and returned to his own family from whom he’d been estranged while he explored his artistic roots.  And his family, a very wealthy and prominent family, took their prodigal son back, but he had to accompany them to religious services at least three times a week.  They were thrice born fundamentalists, who are much more stringent in their puritanical traditions than the merely born-again (whom they disdained even more than they disdained the heathen and the heretic).  But anyway, once again, that’s another story.  Suffice it to say that their family strictures explain why Joe had left in the first place, to pursue a career indirectly involving the arts.  Until, of course, he crashed into the Melony hurricane.

So, to wrap things up.  Melony became hugely successful as a heavy metal singer with Goth overtones set in a hodgepodge of sort of country music styles.  Sue finally divorced Melancholy Mike, permanently, and became a nun in a European religious order where, to the extent possible under the circumstances, she regained a good bit of her serendipitous nature (a lot of good that did in a convent though).  Melancholy Mike kept screwing things up but Tony’s jobs at the local Burger King, where he became a deputy assistant manager and counter boy, but with a night gig as a stock man (boy was too insulting for forty year old man) in a videogame warehouse, his dream job, kept them in stale burgers and hot dogs and pork and beans and cheap beer, which was fine with them. 

And, they all lived, if not happily, well … at least ever after.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.