I don't believe in having a philosophy. The world is changing. Fast. Even our vocabulary changes almost daily. Remember when Coke was a drink, pot was something you cooked in and grass was mowed?   Safe sex used to be locking the car doors and a hard drive was a baseball term. I've learned in order to ease your stay on this planet, one needs to be flexible.  So I say... embrace change!  Don't fight it.  Perhaps the best philosophy, is no philosophy.
 
 

or lesbians, or blacks, or Hispanics, or whites, or Protestants, or Jews or Muslims.  Imagine if all the labels were gone.  And what you did in your bedroom or who you prayed to was your business and nobody else's?  Wouldn't the next generation begin to see all people as...well...people?  Is it so necessary to classify?  By now we should have learned than anyone can be a leader, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, a movie star or sports hero. I really don't want to know where your mouth goes at night or if your god hates me. Nor do my children.  I urge a global revolution against labels. Today they are unnecessary and evil. We adults do not need to play the game, I'm Better Than You Are. We all contribute in some way to the betterment of humanity. So dump the labels. The only people who may need a label are nudists. But then you'd know one if you saw one anyway.
 
 

It would be great to leave our children with a living planet. If we destroy the rain forests, the atmosphere, the oceans and the other life forms that are all dependent on each other for survival, we leave a dead or dying environment to future generations. Buckminster Fuller, in his book, "Energy Earth and Everyone" claims we receive enough energy from the Sun each day to give everyone on the planet a higher standard of living than we have today in the United States. That book was written in 1978. Just as we have the  knowledge and technology to cure blindness in half of all blind people, the reason they remain blind is because there are not enough eye surgeons. In short, we don't have an energy or food shortage. There is no reason for wars anymore. There is no  shortage of resources or land. What we have here is an intellectual shortage. We must teach the children of the world to learn to live with what has been put here, or the damage will spread and grow. And if we pass down our ignorance, hates, fears and misunderstandings to the next generation, they carry them with them.  Then pass them down to the next...and the next.

The world not will end, however.  The Earth will continue to go around the Sun. If we just concentrate on educating the next generation, perhaps they may continue to go around with it.

I believe in an afterlife.  But not with harps and halos.

The afterlife I speak of is pure physics. And the secret is in our sleep. Ever notice when you fall asleep and then wake up, it seems like only a moment has past? The three-degree background radiation (the echo from the big bang that formed our universe) discovered recently in space, confirms we are living in a finite universe. There was a big bang, the planets were formed, life evolved.

Our Sun converts hydrogen into helium. When it exhausts all the hydrogen, it will then convert the helium into the next heaviest element, oxygen. This process alone may take millions upon millions of years. So where did all the heavy elements come from... like gold, uranium and lead? Obviously, there have been suns around long before ours, and many other big bangs that converted energy and matter into these elements that now comprise the universe.

Bear with me on this. It doesn't matter how many big bangs we go through. Eventually, the same factors that created you and I will fall into place again. It may take a few trillion years, but it will happen. And to us, the departed, it will seem like a moment in time. Like a good night's sleep.
 
 

Suicide, depression, violence against the innocent...the world will forever be the victim of its parents. And, we are living in a high tech, atomic-electromechanical age under a farmer's calendar that was handed down to us from ancient Rome.
 

Let me back up. In 45 B.C. Julius Caesar established a seven-day week calendar with a year lasting 365 days and one quarter days. The quarter days added up to a full day every four years--resulting in a leap year, a system we still use.  But this Julian calendar was off from the true solar year by 11 minutes and 14 seconds. That's hardly enough to make a difference while folks were still wearing togas, but by the 16th century it built up enough to throw the religious holidays out of their proper season. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII instituted a calendar dropping 10 days to square things up. Every century that could be evenly divided by 400 would also be a leap year. Most Western societies and parts of Asia eventually adopted the Gregorian calendar. In 1923, Greece adopted it for civil business while retaining the Julian calendar for religious observances.
Just 100 years ago, farming was still the leading occupation. Children worked and played along side their parents learning how to be an adult. Imagine taking tiger or bear cub away from its parents and then expecting them to learn how to survive by growing up in a pen with other cubs.

The love and attentiveness that only a parent (or grandparent) can give a child has been curtailed from our society. Both parents are busy working five days out of seven. Grandparents are put in nursing homes or shuffled off to another state. On weekends, other activities separate us from our children: sports, shopping, canned entertainment, and chores. During the summer, we find other activities to keep our children away from us: summer camps, scouting, beach clubs and vocational schooling.

I ran an eight-day week calendar through a series of tests. The result: 21 extra days a year to spend with our children.  Consumer spending increases (more time to shop) and more energy is diverted to charitable and environmental causes. Church attendance rises, suicide and violent crime levels drop, stress is reduced along with the illnesses it causes, the extra day of sunshine and exercise means people live longer and healthier, and children become smarter, kinder, and less peer dependent.

However, some people may fear changing the calendar. They do not grasp the concept that I am merely suggesting changing what we call those days of the month and not altering the number of days per month. There would still be 30 days in September, April, June and November. Every fourth year would still be a leap year.  The only change would be to divide the month into eight-day weeks instead of seven-day weeks.

Richard Nixon changed the calendar by moving several national holidays to Mondays. But no one has ever attempted to update the basic calendar by adding, for example, a new day after Sunday. What would we call it?
 
 

In order to understand where we are going, it helps to understand where we've been.

Forty years ago, Alister Hardy, a distinguished,  biological oceanographer, went public with an idea that he had sat on for almost three decades, fearing it would jeopardize his career. "My thesis," he wrote, "is that a branch of the primitive ape-stock was forced by competition from life in the trees to feed on the seashores.  Hardy argued that if our ancestors were semi-aquatic, it might explain major physical differences between humans and other primates.

"The move to a watery environment would account for our exceptional swimming abilities and the fact that newborn babies can swim and float." said Hardy.
 
 

Perhaps the reason why the missing link cannot be found is because it is not buried on land, but under the sea, perhaps off the East coast of Africa. Less than a million years ago, the ice caps melted. Seas spilled inland and land based food became scarce. A species of primate, not capable of competing with the carnivores on the diminished land, took to the sea. Like otters, they ate crustaceans and fish. Perhaps those aquatic primates were our ancestors. The need to swim to survive evolved streamlined bodies. Allowing us to walk upright. And freeing our hands to make tools. Our noses point down to prevent water from flowing in as we swim. Even today, we take daily baptisms in water. If we recognize the possibility that we once lived in the sea, what more could we learn about the things that made us what we are...and the things that can make us healthy and happy?

If you believe what I'm about to tell you, nothing will ever annoy you again. In every task or project or job, there is always a surprise bummer factor. You don't see it at first, but it's there... ready to pounce. Once you anticipate it, you will smile when it shows its ugly face. You know what I'm talking about. You make all the necessary preparations for a barbecue and the propane runs out. You attempt to fix a broken pipe, but your neighbor borrowed the wrench. You go to add a pinch of salt and the top comes off the shaker. You drive to the mall but left your wallet at home. You go to a wedding and you remembered to bring the camera but forgot to bring spare batteries.

Remember, you are only as big as the things that annoy you. As long as you expect the surprise bummer factor, you will be able to deal with it, laugh at it, and rise above it.