Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Erasers and Resolutions

  • Is it comforting to know that blackboards (first recorded use, math class, West Point, 1801) and erasers (1863, inventor, John Hammett, Rhode Island) are still very much in use?
  • Remember going outside to clean erasers, the banging together of those chalk saturated, felt things?
  • Many of us, I suppose, so isn’t impulse ingrained, reptilian brain-like, this New Year’s Eve to be rid of 2023 and welcome 2024 by erasing the old and greeting the new with resolutions?
  • Does John Locke’s “tabula rasa” (blank slate) appeal, when, in fact, the board stays cleansed for but a few moments and diminished chalk dust does not disappear especially from skirts and trousers?
  • Still, do we try to erase prior year circumstance and resolution results by launching the boat anew on 1 Jan with every good intention of reaching the far shore?
  • Would it be preferable to erase personal obligation and substitute resolutions for others while realizing that “no man is an island unto himself’ and “the bell tolls” for all us interdependent souls?
  • But, since it’s easier to fight for principles than live up to them and easier to say than do, why not dictate some zingers aimed at 23 skidoo and creating a great 24 and beyond?
  • For example—smokers: “Quit smoking cold turkey” and learn to inhale and exhale feathers?
  • For drinkers: “Drink more water” but don’t stop 1/3 or 2/3s of the way there?
  • For the fit: Weigh daily, note progress to losing ten pounds, celebrate when only 20 to go?
  • For climate change crusaders: “Report and analyze global good (or normal) weather with the same enthusiasm as accentuating the bad? How are the crops doing?”
  • Is it fair warning for biological men seeking success in girl and women’s sports and locker rooms, “Beware testicular injury?“
  • For the abortion tormented men and women: Is solution, in accord with personal freedoms, “don’t have any?”
  • Make politicians worth electing pledge: “Voluntary term limits, Support for state and federal legislative districts that are four sided, and Publish quarterly, online, sources and specific amounts of all contributions, gifts and income?”
  • For young people: “Until age 25, don’t vote in local, state or federal elections or remonstrate or demonstrate for any cause (except sports and partying)?”
  • For the faithful: “Trust in the one true God?”
  • For donors: “Take care not to waste your time or money?”
  • For voters and voting officials: Since facility in English is required for citizenship, all ballots and election materials will be in English only and the electoral process, transparent, verified and hard, if not impossible to cheat?”

Other than the tongue in cheek, would those few resolutions erase some wrongs, and, by adoption, help cleanse the American slate for present and future generations?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living. The actions and answers are yours. Happy New Year.