Special Agent
     Laundry day in Hawthorne Nevada. I didn't get much wrong apart from loading my wash plus soap into the dryer instead of the washer before inserting my quarters and turning on the machine, then waiting thirty minutes for it to thoroughly dry my already dry, but still unwashed clothes. I was just pulling them out when another customer walked in to whome I exclaimed, " Wow, this washer actually dries your clothes too." He noticed my mistake about half a moment before it finally dawned on me. He gave me a look that said, how stupid can you get? Before he could press that point home the camp manager ( this was at the Good Sam campground where I'd stopped to buy a shower and inspired by my new found cleanliness was following that up with some laundry) stopped in to say hello to the man who had just arrived. He asked him if he had caucused, they knew each other, and the Nevada caucuses of the 2016 presidential race had just occurred. Yes , he answered, and he'd "voted for the idiot". There was no question who he was referring to. He meant Trump. He also seemed very proud to have promoted the candidate that he considered an idiot. Trump had won the Nevada caucus. He was winning most of them. The other candidates were helpless to stop him, and unable to explain or understand his broad appeal inside, much less outside the Republican party.
    Apart from the strangers odd way of characterizing his choice for president, and a genius for discriminating between washers and dryers far exceedingly my own, there was nothing about him that struck you as impressive. He looked just like any other old coot living out in the desert. Turns out ,as we talked, and he told me about his life he was much more impressive in life story than appearance. But what do we expect of people who have lived life much larger than the rest of us? Should they resemble the people who play them in Hollywood? My experience is, they seldom do. They tend to look like the rest of us schlubs.
      We got as far back as 1958 in his story. He told me that that was when he was in the military, in Indochina, and he was recruited by the CIA, a career that lasted almost twenty years. He'd killed for his country, and been shot at, he said. It would have been a suspicious story coming from anyone else but I was warming up to him, and still find it all believable. Then came marriage to a beautiful casino floor manager in Las Vegas. After her untimely death he took to drinking and misspent the money she had left him. Much of it went to buying brothels in central Nevada. He had owned three, including the famous Bunny Ranch. It was there he'd had the misfortune of having partners who were skimming off the profits for themselves. This lead to a fight. That led to two bullet holes in his belly which he was happy to show me. The other guy didn't walk away. You don't get into a gun battle with ex-CIA may be the moral of that story.
      Was any of this true? Was all of it or none of it? Who knows? Might make a great book really. Someone could buy the movie rights. Someone could play a younger, slightly more chiseled version of our hero. I'm thinking ,Matt Damon.
     I eventually got those confusing machines worked out, which one was dry and which one was wet, and in what order to use them. I rode out of Hawthorne cleaner, happier, and wondering about all the schlubs out there. They've all got some kind of story to tell. An hour alone with them in the laundromat of a one horse town might be enough to throw off all your first impressions, or maybe just confirm your harshest suspicions. Maybe you just need to pick the right laundry, or the wrong machine.

Populist times, populist choices

     "Populism is an impulse ,not an ideology". Historian Michael Kazin

       This may go down as the most entertaining election for president of our lifetime. You can substitute the word "entertaining" with disturbing, or saddest ,or disastrous if you like. I'm not saying that this election makes me hopeful ,or bolsters my faith in democracy, I'm just pointing out that even when life appears hopelessly out of kilter there is still some amusement to be had.
        Nothing could be more preposterous than the campaign of Donald Trump; preposterous, and apparently unstoppable. He is managing to do what no leading Republican presidential candidate has done and which all have strived for over the last thirty years. He is attracting new blood into the grand old party. His appeal crosses all lines of color, education, ideology, and religious commitment. There seems to be no common denominator to the Trumpians except a generally right of center point of view and a mistrust of Republican party leaders. That ought to define Cruz's support. His Senate career has been all about sticking it in the eye of party leaders, while holding down the right of the party of the right. He has a track record. He has the rhetorical style of a street preacher, but he lacks Trumps gift of banter and over the top bluster. This has brought to Trump the votes that Cruz has failed to win. The message that he presents more skilfully and authentically is muffled by the noise of the Trump circus.
         If you're looking for consistency in the Trump campaign, or evidence of core beliefs you're looking in the wrong direction. What you get from the Trump campaign is Donald Trump, and whatever he happens to believe, or says he believes at that moment. Over the the last sixteen years as Trump has been considering a run, or running for president ,he has changed his views on almost everything. Recently we saw an astounding triple reversal in a three day period. 
        You may have guessed I'm not a Trump fan. That's not to say I'm feeling the Bern either. Bernie represents an opposing populism to Trumps right of center approach. Populism crops up from time to time in American politics, especially during traumatic times. The great depression saw the rise of left wing populist movements ;Father Coughlin and Hughy Long. At the end of the tumultuous 1960s former Democrat governor George Wallace ran as an independent candidate for President to the right of Republicans and Democrats and did a better job of threatening the two party monopoly than anyone apart from Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. The message of populism is this : The people are the rightful rulers and their influence is being usurped by powerful and unscrupulous elites. It's time to take back our party. It's time we take back our nation and throw the bums out! I suppose there's something to be said for that. Does that make me a populist? Populists rarely self identify. I guess that's the second reason for suspecting me of populist tendencies. I deny that that I am one.
       Sanders populism identifies Wall Street bankers as the culprits of choice. Billionaires ,and the rest of the top one percent are not far behind. Somehow in the Sanders imagination if we can get a hold of the piece of their wealth that is truly excess and spread that out to the more deserving we will become another Sweden. Want will be banished, neighbor will look after neighbor, education will be free, and we'll all be driving solar powered Volvos. Oh, happy day!
         Somewhere between Trumps chameleon flexibility, and Sanders democratic socialism, and Cruz's thundering sermons, there must be some less offensive choice in this election. This quieter, more sensible choice would be a doer rather than a blusterer. They would have a track record for getting things done, bringing people of disparate viewpoints together and hammering out consensus, or standing in the way of popular folly when that is called for, and bending popular will to their greater courage or insight like Churchill or Lincoln. They would not be facing indictment for recklessly exposing vital secrets to enemy agents and hackers then lying about it. They would not have a past record of unseemly financial arrangements, or a history of facilitating the threatening of victims of their husbands unwanted sexual advances, or the reputation assassination of those who came forward. I'm asking too much. It's a bit like asking for normal times when the cosmic calender has you scheduled for interesting times instead. In times like these all you may be able to do is sit back and enjoy the show, or at least find a little time for laughter between the tears.

A trappers improbable tale

  Hugh Glass was born near the end of the 18th century. For someone who would make his name in the untamed American west this was either the perfect time to come into the world or the worst. The territory that would later form the western States was raw, primordial, without cities or towns west of St. Louis, hostile to outsiders, and dangerous to anyone that lived there. America had bought this territory from Napoleon when he needed the money to wage war against the British Empire while Glass was still a boy, The United States lacked the resources, or even the population to fully claim it. Into the breach stepped adventures, traders, and entrepreneurs. Glass was among them.
   One version of his story has him becoming the captive of Gulf Coast pirate Jean Lafitte and pressed into service to man his fleet. After his escape from life as as a pirate he went westward to join  the Pawnees, or perhaps, taken captive by them before winning freedom. He took a Pawnee wife and later joined a delegation of chiefs to represent the tribes interests in Saint Louis.., When Saint Louis trader, General William Henry Ashton  assembled a hundred trappers to establish his financial empire in the Rocky Mountains, Glass was chosen as a guide. Ashton business model was innovative, and characteristically American.  His beaver trappers would be largely self financed free trappers. Up until then the fur trade in North America had relied on native Americans to do the trapping, and hired men ( engages) to do the trading. What Ashley introduced was a little like Uber going up against entrenched taxi interests.  It was wildly successful, and it would change the history of the west beyond anything that had happened since the Louisiana Purchase.
    Glass became famous not as a successful trapper or even an explorer, but for the awful mauling he received from a Grizzly sow and his overcoming those injuries after being left for dead by his companions. His story became entwined with the story of the western fur trade. It's also the basis of the Oscar winning film the Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio. His struggle to survive was almost super human, and if anything, even more dramatic and improbable than the drama captured on film. 
    I loved the movie, but was disappointed to find it had played so fast and loose with the story as it has been recorded. I don't fault it for moving the action  from its Great Plains setting to the Rockies. The cinematography is stunning, and the setting more in keeping with the old west as we imagine it. Anyhow, where can you film in the Dakotas that looks anything like that territory before large scale farming, powerlines and roads, the damming of its rivers, or fracking?
     Ashton's hundred would become the vanguard of the movement that would discover the ranges and valleys of the western United States long before other European Americans would arrive on their way to the oilfields of California or the forests of Oregon. After the beaver of the American west were nearly wiped out from trapping those trappers who against all odds were still alive, would guide explorers and  surveyors, and emigrants. Manifest destiny was their destiny, made manifest. Their trails became the west's highways, as their camps would become our cities and towns.
       In the almost two centuries since Glass's ordeal so much has changed. It's astonishing that much of the scenery has not.
       As an itinerant bicyclist in the west, looking for a little adventure I move daily through scenes that excite the history buff in me. This last week I cycled from the Northeastern corner of California to Pyramid Lake in Nevada, then South to the Eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range, Mono Lake and the Owens Valley. Wagon trails passed through here during the California gold rush. Kit Carson, himself a former trapper, guided the explorer John C. Fremont across this same route so little changed by the passage of time. To see what they saw, to drink from the same springs and bath in the same hot springs, to watch the moon's rise over the mountains as they did, is a privilege and a thrill. The trail is a little smoother for the grading and the paving, the ride a little faster on two wheels, but the continuity is astonishing. Best of all there's so little danger anymore of being mauled by angry bears, or pierced with arrows .
    

Desert Traveler

     My flight from Philadelphia to Las Vegas on Wednesday night was delayed three hours while we waited for a storm to pass through Las Vegas. We arrived at McCarran a little after midnight. I tried sleeping in the airport. Wasn't very successful. Dawn through the large airport Windows revealed fresh snow on surrounding mountains almost as low as the valley.    
      Only three goals for Thursday;  get bike out of storage unit, obtain food for the following week, and get bike, myself, and food past the edge of town, into the desert for a place to sleep in seclusion. I was asleep by six and didn't rise from bed till dawn, which came at six.
    Seven weeks out of the saddle is long enough for a body to grow fat and soft. When I returned to Las Vegas last week to be reunited with my bicycle and return to this winter's tour I was in less than ideal shape. No matter , the best way to get back in touring shape is to go out and tour, the rest will take care of itself. Fortunately, Las Vegas provides the westbound toured with the perfect opportunity to get back into shape in a hurry. First you have to climb over Mountain Spring Pass with its elevation gain of 3500 feet. If that seems too easy then add a weeks worth of food to your bike trailer. It's a long way from Vegas to the next super market.
       On the climb I met a cyclist heading the other way, going from California to Colorado and another at the summit going my way to the coast but much faster and without all the camping. Over many years of desert travel I've run into only a handful of winter desert touring enthusiasts. Here were two on the same day, an auspicious start.
        Camped that night in the dunes near stump spring , a stop on the old Spanish trail in the early nineteenth century. From this vantage point I could see the lights of Pahrump to the north as well as the sweep of headlights coming down mountain springs pass about fifteen or twenty miles to the east. Sunset was spectacular that evening due to the dramatic clouds being torn from the Springs range and mt. Charleston by the wind.
          The old Spanish Trail connected the former Spanish colony of New Mexico with the towns, missions and ranches of California between 1826 and the Mexican war of 1848. In its earliest years it was an honest, if grueling trade route. In later years it devolved into an outlaw trail for moving Piute slaves and stolen California horses to New Mexico. Kitt Carson famously used it to transfer some of the first samples of ft. Sutter gold to Washington D.C. sparking the California gold rush. It passes through Vegas as well as Moab Utah and San Bernardino California, though most communities along its path are little aware of its significance, it's history, or even of its existence. On many of my desert rides I've enjoyed following its several paths. It's fabulous story adds dimension and depth to otherwise aimless wandering.
        The next day I leave the Spanish Trail at Tecopa hot spring to head north to Shoshone and the the trickle of the Amorgossa river. At Shoshone there are a large number of cars parked, something I've never seen there. As I get closer I see the reason why. An enormous line of people have lined up to enter its only store to by lottery tickets. The line appears to stretch for a quarter mile. These are Las Vegans who have come to this outpost of California to try their luck at the power ball lottery which has entered historic proportions. All will fail to win. Several days later it will roll over to amount to over a billion and a half dollars. Unless the traveled further to buy their lottery tickets at Chino Hills, or Tennessee or Florida the will have purchased them in vain again, at least for that grand jackpot to be split three ways.
           I camped north of Shoshone along the Amorgossa a little south of Death Valley junction. I found a coconut stuck in the mud there and broke it open . It fed me for days. Why a coconut would fall so far from any tree I didn't ask. You take what you can get when it's offered to you. Why question?
          From Death Valley junction where there is an improbably situated hotel with an improbable story of a ballerina willing a once decrepit motel back to life through her art the trail sets west again to Death Valley itself. The pass is easy to reach, with minimal grade, rewarded with eighteen miles of steady, exhilarating descent to Furnace Creek ,the headquarters of the national monument. From there, armed with new maps, I head to Stovepipe Wells and a night in the dunes. The National Monument is a difficult place for free camping. It's part of the National Park service, which frowns on such behavior, and it's mostly open desert land, which doesn't allow itself to easy concealment. You've got to know the territory pretty well, or be extraordinarily lucky to make it happen. It's part of my religion to never pay for a campsite and avoid campgrounds altogether. This is not a religion recognized by the Federal government or any of its branches.
         The next day finds me on the very long ascent to Towne Pass, then veering southward for the still longer ascent of Emigrant Pass. It takes me all day. I begin the descent near sundown, passing a herd of wild burros along the way, as I drop into Wildrose Canyon, which is blessedly wet, fed by a small spring, at its head. A little picnic ground, two or three miles further down, provides a place to sleep conveniently out of the rising wind. Not much chance of being discovered here, the park has closed the road due to washouts.  I have the Panamint mountains all to myself, and the delicious sound of wind of Palm fronds being shaken by the wind to lure me into sleep.
          Wednesday it was south through Panamint valley to Trona. Trina is an odd town of tar paper shacks and unpaved streets like something out of the third world. The major industry is the extraction and processing of minerals from Searles Lake, an enormous dry lake about fifteen miles east of Ridgecrest. As I passed through town I went by the only other cyclist in town at that moment, a black man, who looked up and declared " a desert traveler". I guess I look it. Ill own it.

Living a normal life

    Do you remember Heaven's Gate, that sci-fi cult founded in the 1970s by a nut-job named Marshall Applewhite? The group achieved national attention in 1997 when they ingested poison together in their San Diego compound in hopes of being translated to an alien spaceship believed to be following in the wake of the Hale Bopp comet. When their thirty-nine bodies were found a few days later by police they were dressed in matching black track suits, wearing identical purple sneakers and purple hankies over their faces. Conformity was an important aspect of their religion. Dressing alike, thinking alike, speaking alike, and even sharing a taste for the same foods were markers of their superiority. They were plainly too good to remain among us so they  separated themselves entirely from mankind through mass suicide. Conformity alone does not guaranty normality. If it did then ultra-conformists like the Heaven's Gate members would be considered paragons of normalcy. If they were normal, the word is meaningless.
      For most of my life I've stuck to a personal conception of normal living. It may not look like anyone else's idea of how to get by. That doesn't matter. If others judge normal by how their neighbors are doing, then I wish them well. Good luck with that. Hope you don't end up wearing a purple hanky over your face. For me conformity never seemed attractive.  Conformity never even crossed my mind.
     Einstein may not have come up with the idea that every object contains energy, but he determined the extent of that energy with his well known formula E= mc2. Multiply the amount of mass of something by the speed of light squared and you know exactly how much energy it contains. There is not much in that formula for me to put to any practicable use. Those with a better grasp of the physics and the mechanics of the principle are able to unleash the hidden potential of a single atom and destroy half a medium sized city, or blow holes in the Mojave desert. The sun creates energy in the form of heat and light through a similar process, demonstrating that you don't have to be a nuclear scientist to split atoms. Put all the atoms of my body to good use and you may be able to create a blast of energy that could be seen from Andromeda and send planets out of their accustomed orbits. I don't really know. There's the energy of mass and then there's life energy. Unlike nuclear energy, it's easily understood, and readily available. It surrounds you and courses through you. How much of it will be used and how much let slip away?  When all is said and done, I will doubtless look back at enormous potential wasted,  never developed, poorly managed, and seldom sustained. The same can be said for us all. I have to agree with Thoreau who said that he had never met a man who was fully alive, and if he did, he wouldn't be able to look him in the face.
      Naturally, I value most the parts of my life where I invest the most energy, or is it the other way round?  On the higher energy side there is painting scenes. I can live off the money it brings in, but what it brings in wouldn't sustain anyone else I can think of. Being homeless has its benefits. Painting is superb for letting off steam. It's also a means for exploring. Painting is the soul of adventure. There is also adventure of the more traditional sort. When I take to the back roads on a bicycle loaded with camping gear, or to some hidden piece of shoreline in a similarly loaded sea kayak, I feel fully engaged in with life in a way that not even painting can touch.
      That is living for me. That is normal. Most everything else is purposed to get me back on the saddle or in the cockpit. For twenty-two years free wheeling travel ruled, but over the last ten it's enjoyed a little less than equal time. That maybe the new normal, but not in my mind.
        Tomorrow I'll be back on the trail. My bike is packed and ready to be freed from its storage locker in Las Vegas. I'm flying there tonight. Soon it will be back to sleeping inside a tent, and outside the law. Ill be free and breathing again. Ill be surrounded by beauty. Ill be wet when it rains, and cursing when it blows. Ill be satisfied at the end of the day, and the next morning ready to do it all again. Ill be normal.

Christmas is for the imperfect

     There is nothing overtly religious in Dicken's little book, A Christmas Carol. It is a tale with a theme of redemption. It's a story that recommends human values like brotherhood, love, and charity over crass materialism. These values are universal. They are found in many faiths ,and practiced by many people who practice no particular faith at all. I don't think Dickens slighted the holiday at all when writing his story about the true spirit of Christmas without anything but passing reference to the birth of the figure at the center of the Christian religion. Delving into theology wasn't his intention. For old Scroodge redemption was not about securing a place in heaven, but  realigning his attitude to those around him, making their lives better where he could, opening his heart to their needs, and finding happiness in affection, understanding, and a generous spirit.
    In so many ways the story of Scroodge is even better than the story of the first Christmas as recited by Linus when Charlie Brown asks if anyone knows the true reason for Christmas. Linus quotes movingly from the second chapter of the gospel of Luke. That's a great story, but it leaves out the point Dickens makes; how does one miracle inspire a still greater miracle, the refining of a human heart.
     The story of the birth of Christ as told by Luke is unique and charming. The Christian God is born in a stable, homeless at birth, to a humble family far from the centers of power .He would grow to manhood, but according to Christian theology, he was just as much God then as later in life. That's a remarkable proposal. Only the Christian God of all the gods, of all the pantheons ever imagined appears in this lowliest of forms, appears ,and is worshipped wherever there are Christians, as a helpless baby, the child of impoverished parents, in a dusty Roman backwater.
      Christianity wasn't the first faith to enshrine humility as a virtue. Over the centuries it wasn't always noted for practicing it either. That we in the Western world value humility comes down to the simple story of a baby born in a manger. Our understanding of humility also owes a lot to the religion  Jesus practiced while he lived on Earth, the Jewish religion of his parents. One of the best insights regarding the nature of humility comes from Brazilian Rabbi, Rabino Nilton Bonder, " Many people believe that humility is the opposite of pride, when, in fact it is a point of equilibrium. The opposite of pride is actually a lack of self esteem. A humble person is totally different from a person who cannot recognize and appreciate himself as a part of the world's marvels.".
     I've never admired the level of debasement that some Christians seem to think is required of them and is taught in many of their churches. I get it that you acknowledge your distance from the deity. I understand that all of us are imperfect, and frequently fall short of the mark. I have trouble with people getting stuck on this realization and fetishizing it rather than moving on from there in a more positive direction. The tendency reminds me of the roving bands of penitents of the Middle Ages, wearing sack cloth and whipping their own backs till bleeding. Demonstrations of outlandish humility can only seem impressive to an audience that miss the point of humility in the first place.
     I offer my own definition of humility. I recognize that it lacks both nuance and profundity, but it makes up for all that by being succinct. Humility is the ability to say, I screwed up. This approach  affirms reality. We all screw up. We screw up all the time, and we're wrong about almost everything. Humans are the animal that assumes. We go so far as assuming that assumptions are knowledge itself. That's the worst assumption of all.
        Merry Christmas Telluride. Hope it's not a humble one. There's no reason that a talent for reassessment should stop you from eating a tray of Christmas cookies, a mound of mash potatoes covered in gravy, or spending too much on presents while receiving more than you need. Glut and gluttony are part of the holiday. Some traditions are just too important to be ignored. Excess is America's contribution to the Christmas holiday. Refraining from that is un-American. Anyhow, we already have a holiday for shinning a bright light on our flaws and resolving to get all that taken care of, and it's only a week away. If you're not perfect yet, what can one more week of imperfection hurt? Tomorrow is always the best day for reformation. That's in the bible, or maybe it's in Dickens. You can Google that. My resolution for 2016, is to save you the trouble and do my own fact checking for a change.

Narcissist apocalypse

   Lately I've been intrigued with the topic of narcissism. Maybe it's the current election cycle with its clash of giant egos, the sparring of would be megalomaniacs.? Maybe it's the book I'm reading, Narcissistic Supply, the Drug of Narcissists by Sam Vaknin?  Turns out its author is no psychologist, but his leading credential is that he is himself a narcissist, twice diagnosed by experts. Nevertheless, this book seems rich with insight into the condition, containing plenty of food for thought.
    Narcissism is not a single phenomenon. There is the clinical form, recognized generally as a personality disorder referred to as NPD.  Even that takes many forms. I wish I had the space here to describe them. They are all fascinating. Instead let me offer a simple definition. NPD is extreme self centeredness. It's characterized by an inflated sense of self importance and a deep and overwhelming need for admiration. Lack of empathy is also present. The confident exterior of the narcissist is a false mask. Underlying it is a very fragile sense of self worth that is vulnerable to the slightest criticism. There is also a more general ,less extreme form of narcissism; some call it societal narcissism.
      Narcissists can be found in many settings, but they often gravitate to professions and interests with high attention grabbing potential and access to power. Politics is rife with them, and so are the arts, including show business. Donald Trump fits the profile pretty well. The crucial question to determine if he meets the clinical definition for NPD would be this; does he lack empathy for others? Is he racist, and a misogynist? Does he mock the handicapped for their deformities? All that is helpful but not determinative. It's more important to ask how does he regard those closest to him ? If he uses them as tools, primarily existing to meet his needs, both physical and psychological, then it's a pretty sure bet he is a classic narcissist. I don't know the answer to that question. Others in politics may be equal in scale to his supposed degree of narcissism but are better at hiding it. Trump only differs from this group in his almost complete lack of self awareness and filter, though in fact many will out-perform him in arrogance and lack of empathy.
      A really skilled narcissist may take an entirely different tack and impress others by practicing extreme humility and apparent compassion and altruism, demonstrating willingness to suffer for some higher cause. This is where diagnosing NPD from afar gets really tricky, and also fun. Was St. Francis of Assisi one of the holiest men to ever walk the planet or a charlatan looking for approval and secretly coveting veneration? Was Vincent Van Gogh motivated by his love for beauty ,or a martyr to his own peculiar love for himself and disappointment over rejection? In the end it really doesn't matter. Their achievements were great and long lasting. What should we care if they managed to poison all their closest relationships out of self loathing and the twisted egotism that it spawned.
      Determining societal narcissism is much easier. When a society turns narcissistic it devalues then replaces long held standards for newer ones. Free spending replaces thrift. Modesty is overthrown for conspicuous consumption. Accomplishments are meaningless and empty if they lack the pizzazz to spark envy in others. Building character is replaced by building an impressive reputation. Wisdom takes a back seat to academic credentials. Good looks count for more than a good heart. Aging is associated with decay, and youth is everything. Hedonism is celebrated. Personal responsibility is evaded, and once purely personal prerogatives transferred to an all consuming state. You get the picture.
       When a society turns narcissistic it's often the last to know. Just like a narcissistic individual, part of their condition is that they are incapable of self diagnoses, and will resist the diagnoses when confronted. The narcissist is a master at building defenses around that fragile ego. The narcissistic society is likewise ruthless in suppressing reminders of its own inadequacies. Standard bearers of the old order must not be tolerated. They are not just wrong, they must be evil. They are not just ignorant, they are stupid. They are deniers. They are hateful reactionaries.
        The problem with narcissistic societies is that they are not self sustaining. They are a sure sign of a society or a civilisation on its way downward. The societal values that they place the greatest store in ,when antithetical to established values, undermine them. The values essential to building and sustaining a working society are extinguished and forgotten. The question is, when do we reach that tipping point?