Here’s to the little raccoon at the edge of the freeway this evening. Here’s to the cormorant whose last moments I saw on Boxing Day from the edge of the roadway on the bay bridge where I could do nothing to save them. Heres to I that doesn’t require A. Here’s to our amazing planet and to our healing and repair.
Just a thought -- if we can slow down enough to read (not for entertainment alone, but the writers who have something worthwhile to say). Thoreau, Berry, Fukuoka -- the list is long, going back as it does to Virgil, Plato, Lao Tzu -- minds that could still honestly contemplate stillness and silence and darkness, and maybe see remnants of Arcadia. It is rare to find someone who has read those authors worth reading -- rarer still to have the time and opportunity to have a conversation about them.
The quote from Hobbes -- yes he said that; he also was living through a devastating war predicated on earlier wars and religious schisms; and righteously fearful of absolute anarchy, "a war of all against all" -- that "nasty, brutish, short" is a sophomoric cliche.
"Nature has created men so equal as that though one be manifestly stronger then another he may yet be overcome by confederacy or by machination. As to the mental faculty, I see even less difference than in the physical." (Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13)
What a mess we've made. What litany or errors. Yet ...change any of that back then and I wouldn't be here now enjoying life while carrying around a broken heart. I can't wish for anything to have been different up until today as that would be to wish away my own existence, and that of my children, my dog might not have such a happy home and my wife would have a different life too. Better? Worse? What happens in front of me/us is still to be decided seemingly (although I lean towards determinism and the belief that we have much less free will than we think we have) and too complex to foretell. But in amongst the intertwined, tangled mess of stories there is I believe a small amount of agency and with a decent compass there is a definite possibility that we can ameliorate. Slowing down seems all but inevitable, if we plan it we make it much less bumpy, we won't...'so it goes' as Vonnegut would have said. Thanks Jeff.
Without penicillin I never would have seen my 6th birthday. I understand what the benefits are. Benefits like I received are why we have over 8 billion people.
We have to come to peace with the natural systems of Earth, in spite of the fact that some of us benefited from the system we use instead.
It will go on. Of this we can be sure. Only the form will change, the level of organization.
Right now, our collective actions determine just how far the form will devolve.
Eventually, the cumulative harms shall be subsumed by the vey crust of the Earth, and life will once again resume its procession towards its highest form. Or perhaps, twice or thrice again. We don't really know.
Amen brother Jeff. Thank you again.
Here’s to the little raccoon at the edge of the freeway this evening. Here’s to the cormorant whose last moments I saw on Boxing Day from the edge of the roadway on the bay bridge where I could do nothing to save them. Heres to I that doesn’t require A. Here’s to our amazing planet and to our healing and repair.
Just a thought -- if we can slow down enough to read (not for entertainment alone, but the writers who have something worthwhile to say). Thoreau, Berry, Fukuoka -- the list is long, going back as it does to Virgil, Plato, Lao Tzu -- minds that could still honestly contemplate stillness and silence and darkness, and maybe see remnants of Arcadia. It is rare to find someone who has read those authors worth reading -- rarer still to have the time and opportunity to have a conversation about them.
The quote from Hobbes -- yes he said that; he also was living through a devastating war predicated on earlier wars and religious schisms; and righteously fearful of absolute anarchy, "a war of all against all" -- that "nasty, brutish, short" is a sophomoric cliche.
"Nature has created men so equal as that though one be manifestly stronger then another he may yet be overcome by confederacy or by machination. As to the mental faculty, I see even less difference than in the physical." (Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 13)
We cannot perpetuate modernity and expect to survive its downfall.
What a mess we've made. What litany or errors. Yet ...change any of that back then and I wouldn't be here now enjoying life while carrying around a broken heart. I can't wish for anything to have been different up until today as that would be to wish away my own existence, and that of my children, my dog might not have such a happy home and my wife would have a different life too. Better? Worse? What happens in front of me/us is still to be decided seemingly (although I lean towards determinism and the belief that we have much less free will than we think we have) and too complex to foretell. But in amongst the intertwined, tangled mess of stories there is I believe a small amount of agency and with a decent compass there is a definite possibility that we can ameliorate. Slowing down seems all but inevitable, if we plan it we make it much less bumpy, we won't...'so it goes' as Vonnegut would have said. Thanks Jeff.
Without penicillin I never would have seen my 6th birthday. I understand what the benefits are. Benefits like I received are why we have over 8 billion people.
We have to come to peace with the natural systems of Earth, in spite of the fact that some of us benefited from the system we use instead.
Rhapsodic, contemporaneous, complete. Gratitude.
It took me decades to learn this.
"Take your foot off the gas."
It will go on. Of this we can be sure. Only the form will change, the level of organization.
Right now, our collective actions determine just how far the form will devolve.
Eventually, the cumulative harms shall be subsumed by the vey crust of the Earth, and life will once again resume its procession towards its highest form. Or perhaps, twice or thrice again. We don't really know.
With or without homo industrialis.
So true.
Thank you, Jeff.