180 / Water

Read this in the original at www.gapatton.net

Click on the picture if you'd like information on how the City of Santa Cruz and the Soquel Creek Water District are planning jointly to build and operate a desalination plant, using water from the Monterey Bay to provide drought protection, reduce groundwater overdraft, and to support the water needs of new growth.

The way these public agencies see it, we are not going to be pouring water into the ocean, as a normal viewing of the picture suggests. Quite the contrary! The ocean is going to be filling our water jugs!

I wish it were all so magically effortless, as the image would imply, once you start seeing the water as jumping from the ocean into the bottle.

There are quite a few problems with the proposed "desalination solution" to our local water crisis (or crises, more accurately). One way to think about it is that this proposed solution to our water problems will once again have us increasing the supply of something we need by stressing the natural environment. It is typical for us to support the growth of our human created world at the "expense" of nature, as opposed to living within the limits that the world of nature sets.

179 / No End To Life

Read this in the original at www.gapatton.net

Speaking about "belief," I've come to appreciate the following construction: "there is no end to life."

I like it as a "faith statement," considering both meanings of the word "end."

Somehow, this phrase appeals to me as I try to puzzle out whether or not I truly "believe in" my two world hypothesis.

178 / To What End?

Read this in the original at www.gapatton.net

"Teleology" is the branch of philosophy that considers the meaning or purpose of life.The concept might best be summed up in a single phrase: "To What End?"

I particularly like that construction since it employs the word "end," which has a double meaning: "end" as conclusion, and "end" as purpose or objective.

Having been baptized and confirmed as an Episcopalian, I recited each Sunday the following prayer:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

No "conclusion," I read that as saying. Certainly one of the comforts of Christianity.

More recently (well, certainly after I read Sartre, in college), I see that this could mean no "purpose," as well.

177 / The Nicene Creed

Read this in the original at www.gapatton.net

It may be important to know what we believe in. I am continuing to have trouble figuring it out, as I mentioned back in April.

The Nicene Creed constitutes a brief summary of the Christian faith. I suppose you could think of it as a kind of "Cliff Notes" version that hits the main points. It definitely gives those who profess it something to refer to, when questions about belief start coming to mind. I grew up in the Episcopalian Church, so I said the Nicene Creed regularly:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.

For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of Life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

176 / Nelson Mandela: Terrorist

Nelson Mandela is one of the most revered of world leaders.

For good reason.

As observed in a column printed yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle, the African National Congress (ANC), an organization to which Mandela belonged, was classified as a "terrorist" organization. Upon his release from prison, Mandela decided to pursue a course of nonviolence, and led the successful and largely nonviolent campaign that ended apartheid.

Lawyers and human rights advocates from outside of Africa helped educate Mandela and the ANC. It is exactly this kind of work that was declared criminal by the United States Supreme Court in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project. You can get a copy of the full decision by clicking here.

175 / Worried Are The Peacemakers

I often find that my thoughts synch up nicely with the morning columns of Jon Carroll. That was certainly true on Thursday morning. Having just issued my entry #174, focusing on "peacemaking" in a world dominated by fears of terrorism, I was happy to read Carroll's "Worried Are The Peacemakers" column in the Thursday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle.

If you are not a Jon Carroll fan, and faithful reader, I do commend his columns. Click on the title link for a sample. I read the paper version, but Carroll's columns are definitely available online.

As to the merits of what Jon Carroll says about the perils of peacemaking in the shadow of the United States Supreme Court, please let me note my agreement. For those so inclined, you can get a copy of the full opinion of the Court in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project by clicking here.

174 / More On Consequentialism

A.J. Muste, who lived a long and eventful life as a known "peace agitator," is pictured here with young men burning their draft cards. Muste had his own way of talking about "ends and means."

There is no way to peace, said Muste. Peace is the way.

Muste's insight can be seen as a true example of the philosophy of "consequentialism." Muste rejects the "ends justify the means" approach not by saying that unconscionable actions are wrong in themselves, but by observing that they simply don't "work."

If means are supposed to be "justified" by the ends sought, then our nation's most unconscionable activities (like torture and murder) should be producing some demonstrably positive results. Then, just maybe, the "ends" would, in fact, "justify" the "means."

I am not seeing any great "success" attributed to the drone killings that CIA Director Panetta claims are so "effective." There is a website dedicated to documenting the number of deaths associated with the current war in Afghanistan. How do those deaths, and that war, correlate to positive progress towards a world without terror? That war in Afghanistan is called, should you need to be reminded, "Operation Enduring Freedom."

Maybe it is time for the government to do more than assert that the horrible "means" that we are using are "necessary" because they are achieving such important "ends" (like "enduring freedom," for instance).

Maybe, we whose government it is, and in whose name the killing is being done, should begin to demand some actual proof that the "ends" that are supposed to justify such admittedly murderous "means," are in fact actually being achieved.

If we approached the moral issues from that perspective (truly an approach consistent with an honest "consequentialism"), we might all conclude, with Muste, that if peace is our objective, then there is no "way" to peace. "Peace is the way."

173 / Ends And Means

According to the way I see it, what we choose to do actually creates the human reality that we most immediately inhabit.

Theoretically, then, speaking in terms of moral philosophy, the rightness or wrongness of our actions might appropriately be judged by the results they produce. There is a branch of moral philosophy, in fact, that is focused on exactly that proposition, and that goes by the name of "consequentialism." We make use of this understanding of morality when we say that the "ends justify the means."

What "ends," exactly, do we think justify the use of torture in our name?

What "ends" justify the premeditated murder of persons that the United States government has decided, without the benefit of any trial, are a danger to our society?

There is no doubt, as CBS News reports, that this "ends justify the means" approach to foreign policy is now the official modus operandi of the government that represents us:

These killings, in which the United States targets drone strikes at specific individuals, are deeply controversial: innocent civilians have allegedly died and the legality of the killings is unclear. Just as Abu Ghraib became the face of U.S. interrogation policy in Iraq, so the specter of hundreds of dead civilians threatens U.S. counter-terrorism efforts in Pakistan.

Yet there has been no real domestic public debate or meaningful congressional oversight over targeted killings, even though their strategic and policy consequences are hotly contested. CIA Director Leon Panetta, for example, gave a speech in May 2009 in which he said that "[Drone] operations have been very effective because they have been very precise in terms of the targeting and it involved a minimum of collateral damage."

172 / Court

Attorneys go to court. At least, many attorneys do. Not all of them. I have been an attorney since 1971, which is getting to be a long time. For most of my life, I've worked as an elected official, or have worked for one or another nonprofit environmental group. Next Tuesday will be the first time I will have been to court to argue in a contested litigation matter in over thirty-five years. I have always thought that a law court isn't that much different from a tennis court. There are a number of somewhat complicated rules, and a clear field of play. The parties are the players. The Judge just calls the shots!

 

Image Credit:

https://www.perfect-tennis.com/tennis-court-dimensions/

 

171 / Virtual Reality

Q: "All this tedious, philosophical discussion about the nature of reality: does it actually have a point?"

R: "Well, yes. My thought is that if a person understands the nature of 'reality,' they will be able to deal with reality better. Conjure with it, if you will. Even create it!"

Q: "Maybe I just don't get it. It seems to me that the whole concept of 'reality' is that it already exists. Now you're talking about creating it!"

R: "I am. Who does the cooking at your house?"

Q: "That's a crazy question. You know who does the cooking. Not me!"

R: Well, if you knew how to cook, you wouldn't need to eat leftovers. You could make a whole new meal for yourself."

Q: "New meal; new deal! Sounds like Roosevelt."

R: "He wasn't so bad, was he?"

Q: "No; of course not. He's one of my great political heroes."

R: "OK, so don't you think he helped create a whole new American reality? I actually think of Roosevelt and Churchill as competing with Hitler, in the world at large, to see whose version of 'reality' was going to prevail. And the good guys, won, too!"

Q: "So you're talking about historical reality; not real reality?"

R: "I gather you think there's a difference?"

Q: "Duh!"

R: "Ever think that the same principles might apply, and that we can make real realities come into existence, just the way we create new historical realities?

Q: "So that's what you're getting at?"

R: "Yeah. Something like that! 'Duh,' to use your word!"

Q: "I'm still not sure I get it."

R: "Well, have you ever heard of virtual reality?"

Q: "Yes."

R: "And do you know what the word 'virtually' means? It means 'almost.' As in, 'I am virtually required to do everything myself, since my partner went on that trip.'"

Q: "So?"

R: "So there is a serious philosophical argument that human-created 'virtual realities' can have the same ontological status as 'actual reality.' Philip Zhai is the guy who says that."

Q: "There you go again! 'Ontology?'"

R: "Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence, or reality. Philip Zhai is a Chinese philosopher who has been arguing that 'virtual' reality may have the same status as what you were calling 'real' reality. One way of thinking about it might be to suggest that since we can create 'virtual' realities that are almost 'real' realities, that there might be a way to push those 'virtual' realities over the edge, and make them fully real."

Q: "I just don't see that all this philosophical stuff gets us anywhere."

R: "Well, I'm hoping it does, since if we can't figure out how to create a new and more acceptable reality to inhabit, we're virtually certain to be shit out of luck. To use one of those philosophical phrases."

170 / "Singularity"

Today's San Francisco Chronicle carried an article posing "Three Questions For Ray Kurzweil."

Kurzweil is sometimes called a "futurist," and has advanced a theory that human beings will soon reach a point he calls "the singularity." The "singularity" he is predicting will be a "tipping point," when the machines we build will be smarter than we are, and will more or less take over from us. Or, maybe they will. At any rate, when the "singularity" is reached, the future will become a "bit unpredictable."

Kurzweil has a book entitled, The Age of Spiritual Machines, if you want to read up on the theory. You might also check out, The Singularity Is Near, which is more recent, and which focuses specifically on how machines will be united with our biological human bodies.

Naturally, I read Kurzweil from the perspective of the way I like to look at the world (my "two-world hypothesis"). And Kurzweil definitely declares his allegiance to the world we create. As he says in the Chronicle article this morning (speaking about the exponential acceleration towards change that he believes will bring us to a whole new existence): "I would point out that this continues a long-standing trend. If we stayed with what was "natural," our life expectancy would be in the 20s."

The Natural world, in other words, according to Kurzweil, is likely to become superfluous, once "the singularity" is reached. He doesn't acknowledge that the world we create (or the world that will be created by his "spiritual machines," after the "singularity" point is reached) is ultimately dependent on the world of Nature.

So, I guess I have a fourth question for Ray Kurzweil: are you crazy?

169 / War

I read three newspapers every morning. One of them is the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Thursday, June 17th edition of the Chronicle was just full of "war." No surprise, of course. Our world is supersaturated with wars of all kinds.

We have the traditional wars in foreign lands: in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Kyrgyzstan.

We have the "war on drugs," the "war on poverty," and now, as efforts are mounted to stop the BP oil well blowout (please don't call it an oil "spill"), the "National Incident Commander" in charge of the response to the blowout, who dresses in a military uniform, says it's really a "war" out there:

"This is a war, it's an insidious war, because it's attacking, you know, four states one at a time, and it comes from different directions depending on the weather."

I would like to suggest that we reject the "war" metaphor as our chosen description of how human societies can deal with difficult problems.

When you really think about it, war just doesn't "work."

168 / Berkeley

Speaking of epistemology, one of my favorite philosophers is George Berkeley (pronounced Bark-ley). Click on the title link to read the Wikipedia description of his philosophical conclusions, which are sometimes called "subjective idealism." Berkeley said that human beings can know about "reality" only through "sensations," and their "perceptions," and that we can never directly connect with things themselves.

That observation has always seemed pretty much irrefutable to me, though it doesn't mean that the "things themselves," which we only know from our perceptions, and our ideas about them, don't actually "exist." In other words, the fact that we know about things only through the sensations that we experience, doesn't mean that the things we confront through our perceptions are illusions; they may, in fact, completely conform (in "reality") to the perceptions we have. The Wikipedia article describes a refutation of Berkeley's theory, by Samuel Johnson, as follows: "Dr. Samuel Johnson kicked a heavy stone and exclaimed, 'I refute it thus!'"

Seen from the perspective of the two-worlds hypothesis, the world of Nature, to which Johnson's stone belongs, is perhaps a different kind of reality from the reality of the world we create ourselves. In our world, the heavy stones we kick are not immovable or immutable, though our "perceptions" may suggest they are.

167 / Epistemology

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that focuses on the question, "how do we know what we know?"

Well, that's a good question!

I guess we have to think about it. We know what we know because of the ideas we have.

Score one for the idealists.

166 / Advertising

Historically, "commercial speech," which we commonly know as "advertising," did not get the same kind of Constitutional protection that was provided to non-commercial, or "political" speech.

Things have changed. According to Jay Huber (and I agree with him) "in the U.S. courts, freedom of speech increasingly means freedom to advertise."

The book cover shown indicates the contemporary overlap between what might be thought of as "political" speech (which the Constitution was intended to protect) and "commercial" speech, which has achieved Constitutional protections more recently. Both are concerned with "campaigns."

Protecting commercial speech goes along with the idea that "citizens" are really "consumers," and so their right to receive information about the objects of their consumption, or potential consumption, should never be abridged. Oliver Wendell Holmes talked about the "marketplace of ideas," and intended to refer to a competition between various "political" ideas and opinions. Nowadays, the "idea" part seems less of a focus than the "marketplace," and "politics" is less important to most of us than the "products" we consume.

The fact that the courts have created ever more substantial Constitutional protections for advertising goes right along with the courts' increasing deference to corporate power. It's also fair to say that our virtual total immersion in various kinds of "commercial" speech, appealing to us to "consume," is distorting our personal and community priorities. This is definitely to the advantage of the corporate providers of the goods and services we are being stimulated to demand; arguably, it is to the disadvantage of our personal and political health. There is a good argument that we simply have too much "stuff." Unlimited and unfettered advertising is one big reason we do.

Because we can change the laws that govern us, we could reimpose regulations over "commercial speech." Unless we'd like to eviscerate the First Amendment, however, we can't really abridge the right of "political speech," and given the Supreme Court's mixing of the "political" and "commercial" realms, it would be particularly difficult to untangle the two types of speech now.

And there is another major problem, even if we could reestablish different regulatory approaches for "commercial" and "political" speech. The sophisticated and psychologically-based techniques of modern advertising are increasingly being applied to politics, and this kind of "political" speech merchandises politicians and political ideas the way corporations merchandise soap, or auto insurance. "Politics," in other words, has largely become "advertising."

If we continue to want our politics to be based on a "free speech" debate, in the political context, as I think we must, then "regulating" political speech, or "commercial" speech, is not really a solution. And if it is true that "political" speech, today, is increasingly based on modern advertising techniques, refined for use in the political context, then we can expect that our political choices will increasingly be based on the "advertising" that presents them to us, which means that those who have the "best" advertising, and the money to place that advertising everywhere, will tend to win political contests. That this degradation of politics is already much advanced in this country should come as no surprise to anyone.

It seems to me that the only solution for a healthy politics is to establish a political (and popular) cultural preference for "non-advertising" information. In other words, we must train ourselves to disdain "advertising" per se. If "regulation" is really not available to curtail the power of advertising to mislead us, its power can be diminished by our personal refusal to give any "advertising" statement, whether that statement is "commercial" or "political," any credence at all.

The solution to the corruption of our political and community life by advertising is to decide that personal testimony, from people we know, and personal experience, is the only reliable guide to good decisions, in both the political and the commercial arenas.

165 / Corporations Are Not Persons

I don't care what the Supreme Court says, corporations are not persons, like you and me.

In the recent Citizens United case, the Supreme Court has reinforced its long time commitment to corporate dominance of our economy and politics. Now, thanks to Citizens United, the free speech "rights" of corporate persons cannot be limited.

Since corporations are created according to the laws we devise, we need to devise a new set of laws, beginning with a Constitutional principle:

All corporations are created pursuant to the laws and regulations enacted by the people, and the people may therefore regulate and limit the conduct of corporations as such laws and regulations provide. The Constitutional protections provided to natural persons shall not be provided to corporations.

Why not something like that?

164 / We're All To Blame?

Thomas L. Friedman, columnist for The New York Times, says we're "all to blame" for the disastrous blowout at the British Petroleum "Deepwater Horizon" well. You can read the column by clicking on the "We're All To Blame?" title.

Friedman is the guy who helped promote the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq, only to have second thoughts sometime later. Perhaps because I hold a grudge for his profoundly irresponsible cheerleading in that case, I almost always find him to be a truly irritating presence in our national dialogue on important topics. He does weigh in on important topics, though. I will grant him that.

The "good news," according to Friedman, is that since "we're all to blame," we are also "the solution - if we're serious."

Here are my points of agreement and disagreement with Friedman:

1. We are not all to blame for the disaster in the Gulf. Whatever may be our collective responsibility for a civilization built on the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels, blame for this specific blowout goes to the corporate malefactors who, knowingly, chose profit over safety. Blame might also be attributed to the corporate-influenced legislators who set up a system that allows the oil companies to favor profits over safety, and the corporate-influenced governmental regulators who didn't even use the powers they actually have to demand a different priority.
2. There really isn't going to be a "solution" for the damage caused by the Gulf blowout. Whatever may be possible by being "serious," going forward, the damages to the Gulf are irreparable, within the lifetime of any person now living. Friedman claims in his column that "we managed to survive Sept. 11 without letting it destroy our open society or rule of law. We managed to survive the Wall Street crash without letting it destroy our economy. Hopefully, we will survive the BP oil spill without it destroying our coastal ecosystems." Bullshit! To use a technical term.
3. This wasn't (and isn't) an "oil spill."
   
4. Furthermore, the above quote, in my opinion, represents a reprehensible and pretentious cheerleading for a "Morning in America" version of the political realities we currently confront. Our "open society" and the "rule of law" have been massively injured by our response to the September 11th bombings. The egregious financial manipulations by the princes of Wall Street that led to the most recent crash have profoundly damaged our economy, and our grandchildren are going to be paying the bill long after we are all dead. In terms of the coastal ecosystems in and around the Gulf, it bears repeating that they will not recover during our lifetimes.
5. Friedman apparently thinks that if human actions don't "destroy" something, everything is going to be alright. Not so, I think.
6. In terms of "agreement" with Friedman, I agree that we should all get "serious" - about cutting off our dependence on the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels. The stark fact of global warming indicates that our civilizations are at risk if we don't get "serious" and get serious fast.
7. Finally, I actually buy in to the "collective responsibility" idea. I think we are, collectively, the creators of the world we inhabit. But if we truly can accept that idea, we will demand changes of ourselves that are revolutionary in their impact, and that will transform our lives much more radically than the solutions that Friedman advances. Giving up your SUV just isn't going to cut it!
   

163 / Ecosystem Services

Legal Planet is a blog associated with the law schools at U.C. Berkeley and at UCLA. A recent edition reviewed a new book by Rob Verchick, entitled Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World.

The review says that Verchick "views wetlands, lakes, forests, and rivers as a kind of infrastructure, providing ecosystem services that are just as important as the services provided by other infrastructure such as roads and dams."

I question that "just as important" phrase, since I believe that the world of Nature, that provides those "ecosystem services," is the would upon which we ultimately depend. The world of Nature is primary, in other words, not secondary. If "ecosystem services" are important to us, they aren't "just as" important as the infrastructure we build ourselves. They are more important.

In fact, I don't much like the idea of "ecosystem services," which is a hot topic in current environmental thinking. From my point of view, it's just another way to package the kind of "instrumentalism" that sees Nature as something that we are supposed to be exploiting for our own, human ends.

Where that leads us, the BP blowout shows.

162 / Daily Ray Of Hope

The Sierra Club sends out a "Daily Ray Of Hope" message each weekday, with a picture and a quote. The picture here is from yesterday's mailing.

You can sign up by clicking on the link, and you can contribute your own photos, too. One of my photos of the Tejon Ranch, taken with my iPhone, was published a year or so ago.

I think hope is good. Consider signing up with the Sierra Club for a daily dose!

161 / Utopia

I have always believed in "utopian" thinking; that is, I have believed in it since my undergraduate days, when I studied "Utopia" for two years, as a participant in an Honors Program in Social Thought and Institutions.

The Honors Program was headed by Charles Drekmeier, and it was a life-changing experience for me. The lesson I took away was that the world we inhabit is not, truly, a "given," and that our individual and collective actions can transform reality.

160 / Narrative

Politics Magazine (also called Campaigns & Elections) tells political types what sort of techniques will likely lead to electoral success. It's a professional journal for campaign consultants.

In the latest edition, the magazine focuses on "The Narrative." That's a popular word in our current cultural climate (including being the name of a band that appears to be classified, at least by some, as "punk;" just click the image).

The point here is that Politics Magazine has taken note of what I consider to be a profound philosophical truth: the stories we tell ourselves, individually and collectively (our narratives), in fact create the realities of the world for which we are responsible, and in which we most immediately live. We live, most directly and immediately, in a "political" world, and that's a world of "narrative truth."

I continue to be impressed by the idea that we have the ability to create the world in which we most immediately live - and that we do it by telling ourselves stories.

159 / Morning In America

A true and transformative politics cannot claim that "everything is just grand," but it sure does sell!

158 / Who Is John Galt?

The most recent edition of The Nation Magazine reviews a couple of new books about Ayn Rand. Presuming that you are already familiar with Ayn Rand, I recommend the review, "Garbage and Gravitas," by Corey Robin. I was particularly interested in these concluding words:

Rather than [urging that we] remake the world in the image of paradise, she looked for paradise in an image of the world. Political transformation wasn't necessary. Transubstantiation was enough. Say a few words, wave your hands and the ideal is real, the metaphor material. An idealist of the most primitive sort, Rand took a century of socialist dichotomies and flattened them. Far from needing explanation, Rand's success explains itself. Rand worked in that quintessential American proving ground—alongside the likes of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Glenn Beck—where garbage achieves gravitas and bullshit gets blessed. There she learned that dreams don't come true. They are true.

My concept of politics is, precisely, the idea that we can create, through political action, the world we most immediately inhabit, and that we can make our dreams come true. A kind of "utopianism" is built right in to my understanding of politics, and the kind of politics I advocate requires a lifetime of personal involvement.

According to Robin (and I think this is right, though I hadn't had this thought till I read the review), Ayn Rand offers a kind of "cheap grace" alternative to genuine politics. For her, politics is not our joint work to create a new world; it is all about an individual's decision to advance himself, or herself, and to declare that "what is," in our already-existing world, is in fact the goal. This is why Rand is such a darling of the conservative right. She is profoundly anti-revolutionary, and justifies the world as it already exists, already under the sway of the powers that be.

157 / Spillonomics

Here is something worth thinking about:

In a little-noticed provision in a 1990 law passed after the Exxon Valdez spill, Congress capped a spiller's liability over and above cleanup costs at $75 million for a rig spill. Even if the economic damages - to tourism, fishing and the like - stretch into the billions, the responsible party is on the hook for only $75 million. Michael Greenstone, an M.I.T. economist who runs the Hamilton Project in Washington, says the law fundamentally distorts a company's decision making. Without the cap, executives would have to weigh the possible revenue from a well against the cost of drilling there and the risk of damage. With the cap, they can largely ignore the potential damage beyond cleanup costs. So they end up drilling wells even in places where the damage can be horrific, like close to a shoreline. To put it another way, human frailty helped BP's executives underestimate the chance of a low-probability, high-cost event. Federal law helped them underestimate the costs.

The way I read this, our "legislative" actions (in the world we define and create) clearly had a causative impact in the "real" world of nature. To the detriment of nature, in this instance. It could have gone the other way.

156 / First Rate Intelligence

I am reading through everything I can get, in English, by Irène Némirovsky, and most recently read the introduction to the Everyman's Library edition of a set of her short novels, including the first of her works to gain real public notice, David Golder.

The introduction, by Claire Messud, quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald (pictured), as follows:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

It appears that this quote is from an article titled, "The Test of a First Rate Intelligence," published in Esquire Magazine in 1936. Or, it might be from The Crack-Up (or both).

At any rate, it probably does take a first-rate intelligence to be able to function simultaneously in the two worlds I've identified, which define two different and rather opposed realities. Maybe that's why we're all having such a hard time doing it.

155 / Thinking Realistically

Philosophers sometimes advise us to "think realistically," as a kind of caution not to set our sights too high. "Thinking realistically" means that we should accept the "real" limits that are supposed to constrain our actions and expectations.

But if we really want to "think realistically," then we need to be thinking only about the natural world. The natural world is the only world that has a "reality" that exists independently of our own actions, and our own meanings. The "reality" of the natural world serves as a limit on our own creativity. You can't break the law of gravity, after all. That's just a "reality" in the world that ultimately sustains our life.

But in the human world, which is a world we create, "thinking realistically" is nothing but a false prophecy; it's a major mistake. "Reality," in our world, is what we make it.

154 / Art Of The Possible

I am always bemused by those who call politics the "art of the possible," as though that is a statement about its limitations.

In the world of politics, anything is "possible." The very best and the worst that we can dream, we can make "real" in the political world.

And as for "art," isn't that all about creation itself?

Politics: the art of the possible. It's a realm in which we can make any dream (and any nightmare) real.

153 / Dennett

Here is one more good quote from Freedom Evolves, a book written by the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett and published in 2003. Dennett is explaining the work of Allan Gibbard, a philosopher specializing in ethical theory:

"Engineers, like politicians, are concerned with the art of the possible, and this requires us, above all, to think realistically about what people actually are, and how they got that way. Exercises in ethical theorizing that refuse to bow to the empirical facts about the human predicament are bound to generate fantasies that may have some aesthetic interest but ought not to be taken seriously as practical recommendations. Like everything else evolution has created, we're a somewhat opportunistically contrived bag of tricks, and our morality should be based on that realization. Philosophers have often attempted to establish a hyper-pure, ultra-rational morality untainted by "sympathy" (Kant) or "instinct," by animal dispositions or passions or emotions at all. Gibbard looks pragmatically at what we have to work with and proposes to do, as an engineer, what Mother Nature has always done: work with what you have."

I particularly liked the comparison of engineers to politicians, since (as someone who self-identifies as a "politician," I'd never have made that correlation myself).

Maybe I wouldn't have considered "engineers" to be similar to "politicians" because while I definitely agree that you have to "work with what you have" in politics, the nature of a genuine politics is not "limited" by the possible, but in fact is the art of expanding our appreciation of what we can do, and what realities we can create. In the realm of "politics," that "political world" we most immediately inhabit, what is "possible" is not defined by what we assume to be the case, but by what we can create ourselves.

152 / Winners

 

I just got through reading Daniel Dennett's book, Freedom Evolves, which is a "Darwinian" exploration of the question whether or not human beings have "free will." Dennett concludes that we do. Here's the quote I liked best (maybe it's off the point about free will, but it's right on point with respect to Darwinism):

"Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners, going back billions of generations ..."

151 / Instrumentalism And Nature

I contribute to The Nature Conservancy, and I get its magazine at home. The most recent edition (Summer 2010) contained a message from the President of The Nature Conservancy, Mark R. Tercek, which he titled, "Nature for People." This pull quote sums up the thought:

"Conserving nature is often seen as a selfless act, but I would argue that the time has come to insert a bit more self-interest into our mission."

I don't agree with Mr. Tercek. Our "problem" with nature is that we seem always to regard "nature" as something that is there to be exploited for human purposes, for our "self-interest." For the President of one of the planet's most notable "conservation" organizations to say that there should be more "self-interest" involved gets me very confused about what the "mission" of The Nature Conservancy really is. Injecting "self-interest" into the work of conservation doesn't give me a friendly feeling.

In philosophy, the doctrine of "instrumentalism" holds that the value of an idea lies in its "usefulness." Usefulness to us, of course: to human beings. The idea that philosophy might aim at "truth" disappears, since what matters is what an idea will do for us, not (perhaps) what the idea demands of us.

Mr. Tercek, relatively new in his post at The Nature Conservancy, seems to want to steer the work of "conservation" in a new direction, making its value depend on what nature can do for us - how it satisfies our "self-interest."

My thought is just the opposite. We might appropriately promote self-interest in the world that we create, but in the natural world, that sustains all life, our "mission" should be to defend it from human self-interest, not to promote self-interest at its expense.