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As we celebrate 250 years since Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, let us remember that he also wrote, “The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”

My “take” from 87 trips around the sun: We live in a system of interacting variables, individual, social, and ecological. If we want to maximize our happiness, we must focus on peace of mind, physical health, and feelings of loving kindness as indicators, followed by the ability and the will to promote and share fresh air, clean water, living topsoil, modern contraception, and the knowledge of why these are most important.

My take from 87 trips around the sun: There is capitalism that enhances humanity and there is capitalism that diminishes humanity. This is also true of technology, the “highest fruit” of capitalism. We need to be attending more to the natural and social sciences to tell the difference.

My take from 87 trips around the sun: Social scientists will say 99% of the present rests upon the past. To better understand the present, we must study more than the recent past. This is the importance of historians and journalists, their posts, their articles, their books in libraries. We stupefy ourselves with sanitizing and censorship. It short-sights progress in becoming more civil as in civilization.

My take from 87 trips around the sun: Our institutions of higher learning, aside from being stupidly expensive, seem more focused on the physical engineering sciences to provide bigger and faster things in the world and less on the social sciences and humanities for providing more health, peace and meaning in the world. I think that’s backwards.  

My view from 87 trips around the sun: AI is a thing. Things should serve people and not the other way around. The physical sciences should be governed by the social sciences. Generally speaking, people are more important than things no matter how extraordinary.

My take after 87 trips around the sun: There are two rules that human society needs to follow to get off the path to extinction. One is to educate every body in the arts and sciences. The other is to not procreate more every-bodies than they can educate in the arts and sciences. It’s the sciences that make life sustainable. It’s the arts that make life worth living.

My view from 87 trips around the sun: The chief cause of war is competition that gets out of hand. The chief cause of competition that gets out of hand is too many people in a natural habitat. There is a difference between the competition of ideas for the benefit of people and the competition of people for the benefit of ideas.

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment," said Ralph Waldo Emerson. "But do change habits if science indicates best for health and peace", says I.