Further Ruminations on Positives and Negatives

Here are today's pics. The ruminations will be forthcoming later today. They have to do with positive and negative takes on "Rolling Stones Gather No Moss" and whether Gum Plant is good or bad.
As of Saturday morning, the "battle" is still in my head. Maybe tonight it'll come out.
Now August 5, I am finally letting a few of these thoughts loose. As far as I can tell, the phrase about a rolling stone originated to suggest moss growing on a stone is a sign of stability - things like staying in one place, building a marriage, a family, a home-place, a career, etc., and that moving around a lot prevents this opportunities. In more recent times, some people have an opposite take, that is, the moss growing on a stone implies stodgy, unimaginative, unadventurous. I lean toward the latter view, but I also wonder, as a person very interested in evolutionary theory, which orientation is the more "natural." Our ancestors, long before farming was invented, were nomads and hunter/gatherers. We spent a few hundred thousand to a few million years becoming human. Farming and settling in one place are relatively recent developments in terms of human evolution, and I wonder if we are not biologically adapted to flourish with these practices. Maybe some day it will become obvious that cities and nation-states were big mistakes. Maybe if more people took "road trips" instead of climbing "career ladders" we'd be better off as a species. Food for thought. By the way, those roads trips should probably be taken on foot. We're already suffering the consequences of having discovered fossil fuels.
On a more mundane note, the gumplant (photo above) along with kit-kit-dizze, bindweed, and various plants called tarweed, is one I find very beautiful, but I'm acutely aware that it's on many people's "bad plants list." Early in our evolution, it was obviously important to recognize edible and otherwise useful plants as well as recognizing ones that could harm us. However, in modern times, it seems to me our inclination to admire certain plants and hate others is due more to cultural biases that are passed on blindly from generation to generation and are often quite irrational. No one likes to have a case of poison oak rash, but the plant is quite beautiful when it flowers and when the leaves change color in the fall. Actually, it can seem beautiful at any stage of its life if the viewer is open-minded. Just don't touch it! Is there something unfair about having to pay attention when we're in the woods? It seems to me that paying attention is one of the rewarding activities of being human.