12 Comments

When Kennedy was president, it was common for men to drop dead of sudden heart attacks in their late 60s, and that’s why Social Security/Medicare starts at 65. The thought was that the government would only be paying for a few years. Perhaps Kennedy envisioned what we have: heart disease is usually controllable, many cancers are treatable or chronic rather than fatal, and living into one’s 90s is not all that remarkable.

Expand full comment

I bet he didn't predict how unhealthy we would choose to live, though!

Great point about hearts. Last night, I asked my partner's folks what was the most consequential thing they had lived through. Mama B surprised me: she said the first heart transplant, which she very clearly remembers opening her young mind to what was possible.

That's more of a tangent to what you're pointing out, but I thought you'd appreciate that!

Expand full comment

Nuclear fusion sounds like it has the potential to be a solution to both the growing need for more energy and climate change. Bill Gates certainly seems to think so, as does Sam Altman of OpenAI. What if a smart-enough AI can help crack some of the current stumbling blocks in making nuclear fusion a safe and sustainable way to mass-produce energy?

Then again, what if that same AI decides that unfettered access to thousands of human scalps is the key to triggering a successful fusion reaction? Guess we're about to find out!

Expand full comment

I find this to be accurate.

Expand full comment

The faster knowledge and technology changes, the faster the human mind needs to evolve. Possibly the increased anxiety and mental challenges we are experiencing comes from the slower evolution of properly, or successfully, adapting to these challenges?

Expand full comment

I think that's the right take, Dale. We will have no choice but to augment our minds if we want to keep up, or else bury our heads in the sand and hide from those who choose to evolve.

Expand full comment

The real Process of evolution has nothing to do with the mind. It is latent in the subtle glandular structures of the human body-mind-complex. And in fact the ruling left-brained power-and-controlling paradigm actually prevents that latent evolutionary Process from occurring.

We are operating way down in the scale of our evolutionary potential.

What kind of evolutionary development does Donald Trump display, and his MAGA supporters too?

Expand full comment

Certainly the health challenges of affluence and sedentary work, as people have mentioned. Kennedy was also behind the President's Physical Fitness test (at least that's what they told us in school). One of the other dangers of a massively connected global economy is contagion, as we've seen in the last couple of years. We still don't seem to have cracked the code on responding as a society to natural or manmade pathogens and I imagine we'll be seeing them again. It might be a good idea to get as healthy as we can, before the next pandemic.

Expand full comment

Dan, I would love to help folks get healthy! I would love to see this happen, too.

If our bodies are healthy, our minds stand a fighting chance.

Expand full comment

Meanwhile American culture, or what remains of it is falling apart. This is quite literally so with its infrastructure - roads, bridges (etc), water purification and distribution systems which altogether require billions of dollars to rectify.

It has huge waste disposal problems too, some/many of which are polluting the all-important (drinking) groundwater. It has hundreds of poorly maintained toxic chemical waste disposal sites. An ever growing number of abandoned oil wells, and fracking wells/sites..

It has a ever growing (homeless) housing crisis.

Epidemic levels of diabetes and obesity.

Epidemic levels of drug addiction and suicide.

And by far the world's largest use of both over the counter and legal prescription drugs especially those related to mental and psychological health.

Expand full comment

I think those are some of the hard "other things" Kennedy meant, too. I wanted to talk more about the social ills, especially civil rights. We have some pretty tough challenges ahead - not just for the US, but for the world.

Expand full comment

"...not because they are easy, but because they are hard..."

Most people in the arts would agree with JFK on this point.

Expand full comment