321.365: I knew a place once that, though an educational program, openly contributed to the death of facts. It was a small, liberal arts college nestled in the Rocky Mountains ~ its Philosophy Department. Though many parts of the institution disagreed, this department cultivated sentimentalism and arbitrariness among its students, discounted objectivity, and eschewed argument in favor of the personal voice. It did not matter if a position was well-argued so long as it felt authentic. Authenticity replaced veracity, but since authenticity depends on veracity, the program cultivated flights of groundless opinion sanctioned -or so it felt- by feeling. Meeting this department was my first introduction to how intellectuals can hate themselves and undermine the conditions of reason and, so, of responsibility. Who would think the well-coiffed, well-spoken elite in this program nestled its hands within a public that thinks there is no reality, no better or worse evidence for or against climate change's anthropogenesis? But it felt easier that way, didn't it, to not have an intellectual duty to the surrounding world? To be objective, I have heard that things have changed in this department as new faculty arrived. It is chilling to think, though, that an entire generation of philosophers openly propagated subjectivism or become so self-absorbed that, practically speaking, objectivity died.
322.365: On March 25th, 2009, Congressman Schimkus (R-IL) testified before the House sub-committee on Energy and the Environment. In this brief testimony, he appears to have taken Biblical quotes out of context to justify his view that cataclysmic climate change can't happen -God being providential. I believe this to be the most tragic video clip I have seen all year, in large part due to the utter banality of the badness shown. Measured next to what it says about democratic politics, hundreds of millions of future humans, and countless species of animals -the effect is jarring. No screams can be heard from these chambers, and yet we witness the kind of mind -currently lobbying to be head of the sub-committee after the success of last week's election- which will work to ensure that the U.S. does nothing substantial to slow climate change's worst reaches. The death of facts is consequential. And it apparently applies to the blogosphere as well, where I first found the C-SPAN clip of the congressman. Environmentalist critics lampooned the congressman using editorial techniques overlaying the video. They, too, kill facts --for the lack of objective data -or the overwhelming presence of data taken out of context or filtered through strong editorial judgment- itself contributes to undermining critical reasoning and the scientific method. All of this is utterly banal, utterly bad for humanity and other species. And to think - he quoted from Noah's legend.
323.365: Here is a fact -- I have obligations to Isaiah (5 yrs. 8 mo. old). You who have children in your life -- you have obligations, too. And this care-taker-relative-fact is a despair-stopper. For the following reason -- my obligation demands I do my best to protect future generations from my generation's collective stupidity, prejudice and inertia. It doesn't matter how I feel about this, and if my feelings get in the way of my duty, then they are -in this case- obstacles.
324.365: What should I see in this, in this photo? I suppose the meaning disturbs: industrialism pollutes the waters. Still, here is our world now. The clearest thing is to see it. There, there are many complex reasons for why we've ended up as we have -- some good ones, some bad. Unworking what we've wrought takes *clearness*, to be fair all around both to ourselves and to our ancestors.
(Near Tacoma by Judy Twedt, 2009)325.365: "The summer day says we should become a festival." And so does the winter day, or should I say, "late fall"? How do *days* do that --not nights, not customs, but the bare ecology? Well, but the sun, crisp in its unseasonly season, surprising the last remnants, and the passage --- the rolling circumference of time.
326.365: There are two elements to taking time -(1) the Push-Back, where you resist the rush and the voices; (2) the Settle In, where you let yourself be in the world, let things rise, riSe, rISe up. I'm going to take my time with facts, and focus on the ones we need to hear so that we keep ourselves focused on our home, planet Earth.
