As I settle back down, calm in the knowledge that my mother in-law is no more, I can clear my thoughts and look at the future again.

My network of hackers, business associates, colleagues, and the generally curious are ready for the supercomputer’s next predictions and the Book of the Future’s look back at this time period from a thousand years later.

One colleague wants my assessment of today’s gender/race relations in view of the far[fetched] future.

In some cases, it’s best to look at life from the perspective of smaller units – states of energy – rather than from artificial constructs upon which we perpetuate myths that feed and feed on themselves.

You know, labels.

I am repeating myself again, aren’t I?

Time to let social metaphors flow off me like oily Gulf of Mexico water off a drowning duck’s back.

Sinking, sinking, sinking…meditating…shedding current myths and [sub]urban legends.

Past the readily-available jokes, puns and punchlines that pop up like weeds all over my thought trails.

Does the myth that we descended from hunter-gatherers still hold up?

What is the difference between a person who has to have a unified theory of everything and a person who can live with conflicting theories?

With Berlusconi gone and Assad not too far behind, where will we get the money we need to build off-world way stations on our way into and out of the solar system?

What if someone like Spencer Bacchus had enough voters like him to keep him in office, despite national group efforts to oust him?  When is politics truly local or not?  Does a member of Congress have the right to exercise the freedom to trade on the open stock market, despite negative connotations/appearances?

What is freedom of the individual person and how does it compare to character assassination in the news?

Which is worse to you, the business group trying to badmouth government leaders or government leaders trying to badmouth the business group?

Can we lump the whole mess – business groups and government leaders – into a giant, stinking pile and agree that if it looks like a giant, stinking pile and smells like a giant, stinking pile, then it must be a giant, stinking pile?

Some days, if I could eliminate all seven billion of us and let Earth pick up the pieces, I would.

Instead, I’m determined to find a way for all of us, regardless of perceived social rank/hierarchy, to matter in the course of Earth’s historic move to push life into the cosmos.

In the near term, our species is Earth’s best hope to accomplish that task, despite our many shortcomings.

But first, the small matter of a so-called supercommittee that’s about as useful in cleaning up government waste as letting hungry foxes guard the proverbial henhouse.

Proverbial?  Perhaps?

Let the future begin.