Your COPS activity is important in two ways. One is what it is, a giving to the community. A giving back to the community.

It’s also important for what it demonstrates. You volunteered, you got trained, you show up and you do it. As you have more time and settle in to retirement you will find more to do. You’ll be driven to do it by very gentle and persistent nudges. Once one crosses the line there is a tug to stay.

An anthropologist friend of mine, a bit older, Harvard and Stanford, remarked to me one time, “What is with you, is there a ‘helper gene’ or something?” There may be.

The articles you write are another way to take the lessons you have learned and make them available to others. The fact that you may enjoy writing them and get paid makes no difference. It is a service, a way to give back. Motive makes no difference.

Thanks again, and try to tell me in 20 years that I was wrong.

In fact, you shame me. I’ve always prided myself on not taking anything from anyone else, and other than some modest security and comfort, I have no emotional or psychological need for wealth, fame or power.

But I have never felt an urge to give back, other than to cheerfully accept the same obligations that are required of everyone. You’ve got me there.

In younger years it’s to advance a career, acquire stuff, start families, get new cars, that sort of thing. For introspective types that stops working as we approach middle age.

In later years we realize a house is to live in, not a measure of our value, a car is to get one from here to there and back. Bank accounts are what give us the freedom to be of use. Period. What is important is what we have done to assist our fellow man, relationships.

That’s why parents of murdered children form support groups for other parents, why some people protest social injustice, other people oppose wars. That’s why I’m involved with recovering addicts and alcoholics, and volunteer at the hospice.

Just to give my live some small measure of meaning, hoping someones life may be a bit easier because of the lessons I have learned, however imperfectly.

Some of us spend the last half of our lives making up for the first half. Each day is a privilege.

Music is to emotions as language is to thought, and mathematics is to physical reality. In that sense, they are similar, but in no other.

But I think there are great truths locked up there, that only the elect can see. They are definitely on to something.

You not going to influence anyone here or anyone that might [remote possibility] happen to read the Zone.

One thing you could do is to write your elected officials. Doubtful it will make a difference unless there is a landslide of communication.

Or you could join and contribute to an organization that promotes your cause. My NRA comes to mind. Your Sierra club is also an example.

Bowser makes a good point about “extreme positions”, more accurately extreme activism. Gay issues come to mind. If they were not as vocal (and provocative) as they have been, little would have been accomplished.

[I'd like to point that although I support gay rights, I'm not gay myself. Anyone that comes to the understanding that homosexuality is a matter of biology can't oppose the rights that they deserve. Even if it were a matter of choice it's not up to those with religious convictions to judge unless they consider themselves above their God.]

Maybe I’m a coward, but I no longer feel any need to save the world. Anyway, fighting fascism on the Habitable Zone requires little courage, or cleverness. What little it demands I can afford to squander. As Billy Joel’s “Angry Young Man” reminds us…

“I believe I’ve passed the age
Of consciousness and righteous rage
I found that just surviving was a noble fight.

I once believed in causes too,
I had my pointless point of view,
And life went on no matter who was wrong or right.”

The Civil Rights people have done it, too. That’s been done by brute force or the threat of it, by committed people. I can’t think of another.

The anti-war protests of the Vietnam era caused some concern, didn’t influence the outcome. At least I don’t think so.

The Tea Party has managed to use leverage to block any meaningful changes which don’t benefit the ultra-rich, and probably is the best current example. And they’ve blocked things by taking an extreme position and refusing to change.

The Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, minority rights in general have done it by taking extreme positions, getting as noisy as possible, and then compromising. Which is what you do if you really want change.

The “street fighting man” is on the right track if he can find enough comrades. But by himself he doesn’t count for much, nor should he.