The United States made the right choice after, to paraphrase Churchill, exhausting all other options. It would have been nice if we hadn’t gone down the Trump path but perhaps it was necessary to learn some lessons the hard way. Hopefully he will soon be a distant figure in the rear view window, but before we pull away it would be wise to learn what we can from Trumpism. So here’s my post-election blog. Continue reading “Election Aftermath”
Healing the Hearts and Minds of America
The Vatican has announced Pope Francis’s new encyclical, Fratelli tutti – dedicated to “fraternity” and “social friendship”.
“We live in a time marked by war, poverty, migration, climate change, economic crises, and pandemic. Recognizing a brother or sister in everyone we meet…reminds us that no one can ever emerge from the present hardships alone, one against the other, the global North against the global South, the rich against the poor or any other excluding differentiation.”
These words resonated with me as our nation faces the outcome of one of the most difficult and consequential presidential elections in our history. Continue reading “Healing the Hearts and Minds of America”
On the Eve of an Apocalyptic Election
Having already voted by mail in our tiny, over-whelmingly blue state, we wait, with bated breath and knotted stomachs, for the results.
The results of Tuesday’s elections for the US president will have far-reaching impacts – around the globe and on our individual lives. The results of the Bush v. Gore election, for instance, led to wars which called my daughter’s father, a helicopter mechanic for the Army National Guard, away to long deployments on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and contributed, I think, to his early death. On a larger scale, the results of that millennial election meant that the US did not exercise its potential for global leadership towards lowering greenhouse gas emissions and reducing pollution, as might have happened under Gore. It is my daughter’s generation that will feel the impact of that election acutely. Continue reading “On the Eve of an Apocalyptic Election”
Stories to Tend the Soul of the World
something right up the anima alley for the weekend from Dr. Sharon Blackie and two favorite networks: Daily Good and Moon Magazine
https://www.dailygood.org/story/2609/stories-to-tend-the-soul-of-the-world-moon-magazine/
Climate hell is here. We cannot afford to ignore it.
As I read a recent headline in The Atlantic “The US is on the Path to Destruction” I realized once again that climate change is truly an existential threat.
“Climate change is killing Americans and destroying the country’s physical infrastructure. The federal government spends roughly $700 billion a year on the military. It spends perhaps $15 billion a year trying to understand and stop climate change. I thought about those numbers a lot last week, as I tried to stop my toddler from playing in ash, tried to calm down my dogs as they paced and panted in mid-morning dusk light, tried to figure out whether my air purifier was actually protecting my lungs, tried to understand why the sky was pumpkin-colored, and tried not to think about the carcinogen risk of breathing in wildfire smoke, week after week. The government has committed to defending us and our allies against foreign enemies. Yet when it comes to the single biggest existential threat we collectively face—the one that threatens to make much of the planet uninhabitable, starve millions, and incite violent conflicts around the world—it has chosen to do near-nothing. Worse than that, the federal government continues to subsidize and promote fossil fuels, and with them the destruction of our planetary home. Climate hell is here. We cannot stand it. And we cannot afford it either.” Continue reading “Climate hell is here. We cannot afford to ignore it.”
Inequality, Poverty, and Injustice; a problem of too much and not enough.
The above image: “Depicting a topic as expansive as inequality in a single frame is a challenge, especially since unequal experiences are often lived adjacently, but separately. Photographer Johnny Miller has successfully achieved a method of visualizing inequality—by using a drone to spotlight from above how rich and poor can inhabit spaces that are right next to each other, but so different.” Continue reading “Inequality, Poverty, and Injustice; a problem of too much and not enough.”
Animism Reborn: A Review of Jason Hickel’s Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
I will begin at the end. The last sentence in Jason Hickel’s new book is “We have everything to lose and a world to gain.” We have always had everything to lose, perhaps, but it is only relatively recently that we have, and by “we” I mean we of the so-called First World, drifted so far into a mass delusion that we no longer live in “the world.” We live off the world, enjoying lifestyles that depend on long supply chains which we barely realize exist. We have developed elaborate intellectual structures to deny that the world matters or has any standing except as a extraction site or a dump. To mainstream political and economic thinking, the world is not a factor in any discussion of goals and values. The world as foundational to our being, much less as a full subject with intrinsic value to itself, has no place in mainstream thinking. It is a resource, a dead corpse on which we feed. This is our Achilles’ heel, our fatal blind spot. It has been built into our intellectual tradition for millennia. It is our daunting task to alter that tradition, change the intellectual DNA of our civilization, and re-learn the values and aspirations that animate our daily lives. Jason Hickel’s book is an important contribution to that effort. Continue reading “Animism Reborn: A Review of Jason Hickel’s Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World”
Real Progress
Progress is difficult even in the best of times, and this is far from the best of times. Increasingly I am shocked and dismayed by actions of Republicans in control of our government. No only are some people doing things that are unethical but some verge on criminal, certainly unconstitutional. Continue reading “Real Progress”
Vignette
As I was talking on the phone (about social dynamics!), I observed one of the ranch hands walk across the base-yard and put something into the new chicken run that my brother had made for his motley flock of egg-layer breed roosters the day before. My brother is indulging a long-suppressed passion for chickens. I really do not know what he was thinking buying one hundred and fifty rooster chicks even if they were only a dollar a chick. We sold some but he still has about seventy little roosters left. It turned out that what the ranch-hand threw into the baby rooster mosh-pit was a juvenile gamecock. Which is about like throwing a velociraptor in with some triceratops toddlers. Or a gladiator in with the peasants. Continue reading “Vignette”
Let’s Not and Say We Did
Here’s a terrific article that seems to have generated quite a bit of attention in the Twitter/social media world.: COVID-19 Broke the Economy. What if we Don’t Fix It?
I like the analogy of economic growth compared to an aircraft taking off and flying higher and higher. Now we can see that the aircraft is running out of fuel and we need to find somewhere safe to land.
— David Smith (@Elan51) June 18, 2020
A very Latour-ian analogy. Where do we land? Or more accurately, we are going to land, how do we handle it? What do we name the place where we land? How will we behave towards each other?
While I’m citing articles and in case anyone out there is also a Latour-fascinated nerd, here are a couple of secondary pieces: One is constructively critical and useful to synthesize Latour’s complexities, the other is a a bit of a hatchet job of Latour’s whole deal from a traditional leftist perspective. Also useful, though in my opinion, not entirely fair in its accusations of anti-intellectualism.