Director’s cut

We all suffer “data deficit” i.e. not having enough data to make informed and wise decisions…stocks market, “meat” market (spousal choice) or “hot” career choice.

To add insult to injury, we carry inside these un-altereable genes….besides happenstance in our forever unfolding lives. So we seek counsel and advice, only to see the hyper-actives and hyper-ventilators exacerbate our crisis.

We did not realize NOT knowing too far ahead is a gift. A “just-in-time” version of ourselves, with each day as a page to be flipped over, not racing and cutting through the chase toward the Director’s cut ending.

Many years ago, all I wanted was to get over the Embassy Wall ( 4 years later, for 444 days, it’s the opposite for the Iranian crisis hostages).

Later, I was told to write down 3 life-goals as a Management class exercise. Currently, 2 out of 3 were crossed out.

My current goal is to travel safely when we’re back to “normal”, our new post-pandemic, post-Trump norm.

Even as simple as that, I doubt it will happen (per BioNtech CEO, mid 2022).

We need one another, to survive, to share “data” and doubt.

Was Malthus wrong about feeding of the over-population (in Mali, a lady has just broken the World’s record, by delivering her 9 babies all at one time).

Or is it Moore who is right about the doubling of the chip’s speed (every 18 months)

These scholars suffered their own data deficit and bias.

And they died, at a younger age as compared to our current longevity (average 77-78 in Western World).

Because Artificial Intelligence will rule, leaving us- human- to do the “hand-holding” and empathic work (not dirty and grit work), we need to train ourselves – if unable to move forward in time, then sideways to other people and race: the Irish and the Amish, the American and the Armenian.

We are people with a responsive chord (to use Tony Schwartz’ term). Just need to know where to push: Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye – where the young sister followed her brother despite repeatedly told to go home…..A count (Monte Christo) who hid his face behind the dark curtain, afraid to “lose” it upon seeing his love….Fitzgerald’s Gatsby who heard party noise traveled across Upstate pond….

Tears are good, said the Centennial Man, who could do everything except dying.

In the final hour, he asks to be un-plugged…the human gift of death…comes after the gift of not knowing everything (omni-scient)

Young men went to war, were asked to press the button. to play God, to kill. …then later, back to civilian life, with PTSD instead of omnipotence.

We’re encoded (notice the passive voice) to be re-assembled at the other end, like a data packet traveling through various nodes on the Internet.

What ending version suits us, as our lives unfold toward it? Director’s cut (Horror, horror as in Apocalypse Now)

or Coca Cola version (“I’d like to teach the world to sing…in perfect harmony)?

I am afraid it’s not up to us ( how and when we’re re-assembled and re-fashioned after the image of our Creator).

I know Andy Warhol is wrong when he pronounced (pre-internet era) that in the future, everyone would get their 15-minutes of fame. Today’s thanks to Samsung, Intel, TSMC, MediaTek etc…more storage can be packed onto a tiny chip set.

We will have our chance, each of our life story like a book, whose pages are to be turned, at leisure – in a lonely celestial library. And the ending, oh well, I afraid am not one to say, since I myself experience my own data deficit, not knowing what the future might hold in the arc of life..as they say, life can only be understood by looking backward from the future.

See you at that “assembling” point. My hope is that in my end… my beginning.