This coming weekend is Orthodox Easter! I think that this denomination follows the Julian calendar, the one preceding the Gregorian one in the Roman Empire at the time.

Yesterday I visited Sharen in her care home. I brought her a little treat, in part because I had not seen her for two weeks. ‘Where have you been?’ she admonished me in good spirit. This was closely followed by a ‘Good to see you!’. We always have a good visit and like each other’s company. Her humour was not far away in her reply to a staff member, Doreen, inquiring about her bruised nose. “I don’t know what the other guy looks like!” Sharen said. What a come back for a centenarian and we both just delighted in that reply.

Sharen is short of breath and was on the bottle, therefore I suspect that she had been either poking or scratching her nose, which I have never seen her do before. Her nose also appeared to have shrunk, which may indicate that the end is coming near as Anne-Marie told me two years ago. This was passed down wisdom from an experienced priest she knew.

Lunch with Elisabeth today at her invitation! But, no visit to John until the weekend and no web work yesterday except for posting my daily entry. I did some reading instead and watched the ice hockey game between the Bruins [bruin is brown in Dutch and the name of a bear in ‘Reynard the fox’ folk tale 15c.] and the Leafs, who lost 4 to 1.

A far cry from the old days when I lived in Toronto and the Leafs were the top team of the old six team league. After the following expansions there were too many USofA teams and I lost interest. Born Canadians have stronger bonds of interest with the US, but I came to Canada for Canada and not to watch games played some where else. Oh, and by the way, I am not opinionated! I just speak the truth!

In my readings of book reviews yesterday, which I get from Herman, I read one I want to expand on a bit. It is titled ‘Nothing fixed’ by Enfield in TLS of 2012-10-05, p.8., a review of ‘Beyond Human Nature’ by J.J. Prinz. I would have called that book ‘Adapting Human Nature’, because the book is subtitled ‘How culture and experience make us who we are’.

You cannot really say that culture and experience make us, because the latter are merely human construct within culture itself. Therefore it is more accurate to use the notion that we humans learned from our experience as we lived and formed our culture as we went. This way of looking at our own human process makes inevitable the out come of the book itself as presented by Enfield in the review’s last paragraph as he says that Prinz shows us: “ … we need to focus on the extraordinary diversity, flexibility and adaptability that mark our species.”

… we need to focus on the extraordinary diversity, flexibility and adaptability that mark our species. [Prinz]

This is a no-brainer, when we consider that it is the flexibility of the brain that constitutes our ultimate adaptation in the process of development, which some call evolution, which is too teleological for me.

The brain and mind combination are an immensely flexible end product of a long development, which appears to maximise the entropy of opportunity. The latter refers to “Entropy law linked to intelligence, …", BBC News, 2013-04-23; web.

Enfield concludes his review with "The flexibility of morality does not condemn us to an anything-goes moral nihilism. It frees us from intolerance and moral stagnation and allows us to improve on what we have", as he appears to be quoting the author Prinz.

This conclusion stops short of what I see as the real consequence of relative nature of our ethical and moral rules. It is, that we are the responsible agent who is in charge of these rules. This responsibility cannot be assigned to or projected on some external cause or source. It is our post modern reality that we are the ones that make the rules - informed by our traditions - and that we must act on that newly discovered principle.

It is our post modern reality that we are the ones that make the rules - informed by our traditions - and that we must act on that newly discovered principle.[A.D. Vander Vliet]

This implies that we cannot just talk about an ‘allowing to improve’, but rather that it is incumbent on us to do our utmost to make improvement as aware humans . The need for such effort is evident in our integrating world today. There is not going to be any additional saviour other than the ones we have.

We are consciously aware human beings who know our heritage, our capabilities and our predicaments. We must act on our own discoveries such as this one about the nature of our morality and guard this acquired treasure with prudence and vigilance, because it is under threat continuously due to its adaptive flexibility.
<9:19am and 9:48am edited~