Geiger Counter

Naked gardening     This morning, I received a list of the best and worst cities for naked gardening. Miami, Florida is the best place to pull weeds in the nude. Lincoln, Nebraska is the worst. It took 176 years, but someone finally came up with a list on which a place in Florida came in first. (Not including that old list of towns where people who can’t read are most likely to be devoured by alligators while voting for an adult film star in a gubernatorial race, obviously.)  The naked gardening list - which was unsolicited, by the way – clearly took an enormous amount of time and effort to compile. It used a complex methodology, had a lengthy explanation, and even included some addendums in the form of a Q and A with a psychologist and a law professor. It shows just how obsessed with lists the Internet is, and how thin on list-worthy material the universe has become. It was yet another reminder that we, as a species, might be using our doctors and lawyers in ways that are not, well, optimal. I don’t garden naked. Not out of any moral conviction. I don’t do it for the same reason I don’t put political bumper stickers on my vehicle or political yard signs on my lawn; I simply have too much respect for the intelligence and decency of other people to make them look at something gross. Plus, once you are in your 40s, taking off your clothes is like uncovering a list of chores that you have been neglecting for a couple decades. You realize you have really been meaning to use your muscles, but things just got really hectic for 20 years. Then you start examining freckles and wondering if perhaps, someone who knows how to read a freckle, how to tell if it’s angry or not, should take a look at them, too. Then, thankfully, you hear the dog throwing up a Barbie’s leg on the carpet, and while you are cleaning that up you remember that it’s early release day and your kid is probably the only one left in front of the school by now. The only wise course of action is to put on 17 layers of clothes (this is Wisconsin, after all) and worry about getting in shape once another two or three presidential administrations have come and gone. Still, the list was interesting. I learned that if you are convicted of gardening naked in Alabama, you might have to register as a sex offender. I don’t know quite what to make of that sentence. I also learned that both Madison and Milwaukee are not ideal places for naked gardening, because they are cold and windy and also because they are generally less safe than most of the other cities on the list. Your community did not even make the list, so who knows what you should be wearing while you plant tomatoes. In this realm I cannot be your guide.   The Red Zebra Story   According to one story, it’s best not to wear anything too flashy, whatever you are doing. A group of scientists are studying zebras. (The zebras are naked, so hopefully they are not in Alabama.) In any case, the scientists are having a hard time telling one zebra from another due to the way the animals’ stripes make it impossible to distinguish them from one another. The humans decide to mark some individual zebras so they will be able to recognize them and observe their individual behaviors. They drive by and splash a bit of harmless red paint on a couple animals and retreat to a polite distance to see what happens. What happens is that the zebras with red paint on them are swiftly slaughtered and devoured by lions, because they no longer blend in with the herd. Their individuality dooms them. I think about this every time I consider buying ostentatious pants, then I place them gently back on the shelf. I do not know how true this story is. I heard it attributed to biologist and neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky. But regardless of whether or not a pair of zebras with red paint on them were actually killed by lions thanks to some well-meaning scientists, the story makes a valid point. I doubt The Three Little Pigs is a completely factual account of either the homebuilding trade or fraternal porcine relationships, but it teaches us a valuable lesson. The same goes for the these zebras. Making yourself stand out is tempting, but it comes with certain risks. Being merely part of the crowd, being average, has its perks. If you agree with this, I have great news for you: MOST people are average.   Surrounded By Idiots   The most common desire in the world is to be famous. The most common fear is public speaking. (On a related note, I once worked for a Florida newspaper that congratulated itself in a headline for “100 Years Of Public Service” but forgot the L in “Public.”) Funny headlines aside, it is strange that we desire to be looked at and to blend in at the same time. We cannot have both. We live in a world of hot takes. A place where each morning, people rise and proclaim to anyone who will listen what they think is wrong with the world, and how they would fix it if only they had the legislative or military power to force their values on all those around them. The implication is always that they are more clever than the people in charge. Then they go on about their days, walking down the street and proudly thinking: “I solved racism by yelling at someone on Facebook this morning!” or “The way I shamed those people in my tweet last night probably cured COVID!” It’s not just large, serious issues. It’s also the most banal (a Florida newspaper would have to be careful with this one) and the most mundane. People run to social media to complain about the customer service they received at a car rental desk, or that someone passed them on a country road or played music too loudly in their neighborhood. They run to Facebook to complain that their elderly neighbors are gardening without any clothes on again. They will complain about anything. Don’t get me wrong here: I’m thoroughly convinced I’m surrounded by idiots, too, but because I too am an idiot, it’s probably best if I at least entertain the thought that perhaps I am simply one moron perfectly camouflaged among many others. Perhaps this is the only thing keeping me safe from lions and other monsters. According to Dr. Sapolsky, zebras don’t get ulcers. The reason is likely twofold. The first is that they do not waste the little time they have on Earth worrying about taxes and politics and ulcers (which ironically would give them ulcers). “There is nothing so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness it is in your expecting evil before it arrives!” wrote the philosopher Seneca. The other, more demonstrable reason zebras don’t get ulcers, is that they don’t live long enough to. The ones without red paint on them certainly live longer than their unlucky counterparts, but they are all eaten within a few short years. We modern humans, even the most downtrodden among us, have the luxury of living so incredibly long that we usually die of diseases of deterioration that are virtually unknown in the animal kingdom. I am in my 40s, and I experience aches and pains that 99 percent of the people who ever existed never had the pleasure of feeling. Just a few generations ago, if you were born, there was about a 50 percent chance you would live to the age of 7, which is the age my daughter is now. Today, your chances of making it are about 96 percent. According to the World Health Organization, the global infant mortality rate has decreased from an estimated rate of 65 deaths per 1000 live births in 1990 to 29 deaths per 1000 live births in 2018. Annual infant deaths have declined from 8.7 million in 1990 to 4 million in 2018. If you think about those numbers, it starts to seem like we are doing incredibly well for a species of morons.   Science Exists   Along with unsolicited top ten lists, I also receive a barrage of unsolicited opinions on a variety of things, these days. It’s not just on social media, which I rarely see anymore. It’s also in real life, where it matters more. People walk up to you while you are eating dinner and tell you exactly how the world should be, and how they would make it that way if only they wielded absolute power. They tell you there is no god, or which god is the correct one, or what that god is like. It’s not only god, either. They tell you they “believe in” science, which is just a word salad with no actual meaning at all. We all believe that science exists: science is a process that gave us the atomic bomb, the polio vaccine, the Chernobyl disaster, the moon landing, the technological advances that led to colonialism and imperialism, lobotomy, highly effective treatments for HIV, the current opiate crisis, the ability to fly, and also every plane crash in history, as well as the ability to watch The Tiger King on your cell phone. Saying “Science is Real” is like saying “Spoons Exist” or “Churches Have Floors.” We all know science is real. The hard part is knowing how to ethically use the great gifts science gives us. When people tell me their absolute opinions about politics or religion or science or society or the human race, I am amazed by their confidence. People suspect I am a little slow, I suspect, and they are likely correct. But one of the few things I do know is that there are people far more intelligent than me on both sides of every major issue. There are atheists who know more than I do, and Christians who know more. There are Republicans who know more, and Democrats. There are socialists and capitalists and every other kind of person, and many of them understand the world far better than I do. How delirious would I have to be to think I had outsmarted all of them? If I proclaim, “There is no God,” I do so under the assumption that I know more about the fabric of the universe than Toni Morrison, Leo Tolstoy and Flannery O’Connor. If I say “God exists” I am suggesting that I am wiser than Albert Camus, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. With this in mind, the only reasonable position to take is to admit that I do not know. The same goes for everything else.   Naked Living   In truth, all of people’s certainty is an imaginary cloak, like the one in another old story. In it, an emperor is given pretend clothes and assured they are the most beautiful robes in all the world. He walks about his kingdom, completely nude, like a gardener in Miami. The people around him are too fearful to inform him that, in actuality, he is completely naked. He is absolutely sure he is wearing exquisite robes. (In fact, the more sure of their political or social or religious convictions people are, the more I suspect that they are not so sure. I used to know a monk who said anyone with faith would not really mind if it was challenged or shaken. “Those who are afraid their faith will be shattered never really had it to begin with,” he would muse. He is one of billions of people much smarter than I am. Perhaps he had a point.) My guess, and it is only a guess, is that everyone’s absolutist, authoritarian take on every issue is merely a cloak, invisible and profoundly unreal. At least it is not red paint. Because in truth, we are not so special, and we are not so unique. But average people can still fall deeply in love, and they can still live meaningful lives. They can still laugh, question, garden and think about the world. In fact, they might be able to live better lives because of it. In truth we are all naked, irritated by the rest of the herd, but completely dependent upon it if we wish to avoid the lion’s jaws for a few more days.