Dear Nikola,

a) Thank you for your reply to my letter.

b) My reply to your reply is symptomatic of my compulsive need to have the last word. Please forgive me.

c) "Understand" (Verstehen) is a word with many applications. My specialty is "understanding" my failure to understand,  e.g. my failure to understand c1) Schrödinger's equation, c2) how the death of Schrödinger's cat could occur in a "present" that was in fact a hypersurface without extent in time, c3) to which of the four forces - strong, weak, electromagnetic or gravitational - inertia is to be assigned, c4) the differences, if any, between the cognitive significance of names of diseases which the physician does not understand but for the reality of which he must vouch to get paid by Medicare, and the cognitive significance of the names of elementary particles which the physicist does not understand but for the reality of which he must vouch to get the proceeds of his professors' salary or his Nobel prize.

d) Like yourself, I hear the dissonant counterpoint of contemporary trends in sexual morality. I also hear a dissonant counterpoint in most, if not all public affairs, specifically in the administration of "justice", in the organization of government, in our relationships to one another and to nature (the environment). I interpret such dissonances as discrepancies between (Platonic) ideals without which we cannot live and the implementation of which is beyond our power. Our ideals are as varied as our natures. The issue to which I see no solution, and which is perhaps insoluble, is whose ideals, if any, the government should try to enforce, or whether our lives should be left to the vagaries of the market, a.k.a the jungle.

Be content and stay well.

EJM