A Better Synthesis

There is nothing wrong with, and much to be gained by, using our mind analytically, but to use it almost exclusively in this way is unbalanced and has a not insignificant responsibility for the perilous state of affairs on our planet.  Though the odds against it happening seem to be mounting, perhaps a more intuitive way of thinking about he world might help us to recognize and reduce in time our overdevelopment of and overdependence on the ever-growing machinery that is supposed to make our lives easier and better.  We are swept along by technological development so that in our urban environment, many of us interact increasingly with electronic devices and less with other human beings.  In addition, our culture is gradually losing our knowledge of and our direct connection with the natural or unprocessed things of the earth.  With a more intuitive way of thinking about our lives could come the realization that our very survival may depend on the other forms of life our present political and economic systems are destroying.  At the least, a better synthesis than we have now between the analytical and the intuitive, in which the intuitive gets equal attention, seems necessary to our longer-term welfare.
—   Herman Kauz
From his book: “Push-Hands: The Handbook For Non-Competitive Tai Chi Practice With A Partner“
.
On This Day In:
2019	It’s Only Funny If You’re Old Enough To Know What “Film” Was
2018	Bourne Wicked Blonde
	First Things First
2017	This Explains A Lot
2016	Me Too
2015	A Proper Price
2014	Well Hard
2013	Because I Can
	Eloquence, n.
2012	Why Bother?
2011	Peculiar Notions

Read Full Post »

Still More Hope Than Fact

Our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure and the most important task it faces, preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens and the future habitability of the planet.  But if we’re willing to live with the growing likelihood of nuclear war shouldn’t we also been willing to explore vigorously every possible means to prevent nuclear war.  Shouldn’t we consider in every nation major changes in the traditional ways of doing things, a fundamental restructuring of economic political social and religious institutions.  We’ve reached a point where there can be no more special interests or special cases, nuclear arms threaten every person on the Earth.  Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labelled impractical or contrary to human nature, as if nuclear war were practical or as if there’s only one human nature.  But fundamental changes can clearly be made, we’re surrounded by them.  In the last two centuries abject slavery which was with us for thousands of years has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring worldwide revolution.  Women, systematically mistreated for millennia are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied them and some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations.  The old appeals to racial, sexual, and religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.  A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.  We are one planet.  One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time.
—  Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2019	The Ones Worth Remembering, Anyway
	Boot Edge Edge (My New T)
2018	To Reach The Next Threshold
2017	Streaking Tales
2016	Singular Reality
2015	He Says It’s Hard To Get There From Here
2014	Question From A Founding Father
2013	Make Heroes
2012	See And Hold
2011	Am Not, Are So

Read Full Post »

We Have A Window

In order to slow down climate change, we must solve four seemingly unsolvable problems.  We must eliminate poverty.  We must change the unsustainable lifestyles of so many of us.  We must abolish corruption.  And we must think about our growing human population.  There are 7.7 billion of us today, and by 2050, the UN predicts there will be 9.7 billion.  It is no wonder people have despaired.  But I believe we have a window of time to have an impact.
—  Jane Goodall
From her opinion / article: “The devastation of climate change is real.  But there are reasons to be hopeful“
The article appears in: “Time Magazine“,  dtd:  September 23, 2019
The article is online at:  https://time.com/5669043/jane-goodall-climate-change/
.
On This Day In:
2019	No Escape
2018	Except When It Is From The Oval Office
2017	Bad Karma
2016	Poor Management Choices
2015	Is It Still Dark Out?
2014	Rule One
2013	Spelling God’s Name
2012	Love Your Life And Sing
	Feeling Under the Weather?
2011	Cheers, Friend!

Read Full Post »

The Butterflies Are In Trouble

We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save.
We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.
We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.
—  Carl Sagan
.
On This Day In:
2019	The Deep Center
2018	Oh, Heaven (Too)
2017	Now Pausing Makes Sense
2016	Just Spicy
	Only One Part
2015	Positive Acts Of Creation
2014	One Thing Is Clear
2013	Corrections
	See Greatness
2012	Gemutlichkeit
2011	Back On The Asphalt

Read Full Post »

Change Is Here…

The following image is from the United Nations Development Program, who’s task it is to gather and provide information related to helping people build a better life for themselves.
2016 Climate Related Population Disruption / Displacement
Relative to the complete human species (roughly 7 billion people), a figure of 15 million people being displaced due to climate related issues in a single year (2016) may not seem like a large number.  What needs to be understood is this is just the canary – coughing and wheezing –  in the coal mine, or (probably) a better image might be the first trickle of water from the smallest of cracks in a gigantic dam.  And this is just the wet weather data…  It does not show displacement due to drought and water shortage (increased fires) or winter storms and tornado damage.
New Orleans (LA), Seaside (NJ), Houston (TX) and Puerto Rico are just the beginning…   And, yet, we (the United States) are withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accords…  We need to wake up and smell the coffee.  Climate change is already here, not coming in the future.  The question is:  What are we going to do to mitigate its effect on our country and our civilization?  This is a national security issue, not some pie in the sky hoax started by environmentalists.  The longer we wait, the more difficult (and expensive) our response will be.  …And the more catastrophic the period between now and whatever becomes “the new normal”.
.
On This Day In:
2018	Be My Hero – Vote Tomorrow!
	He Was All Of Us…
2017	Black And White
	Advice For #DumbDonald
2016	Mirror, Mirror
2015	Speaking With Forked Tongue
2014	The Code
2013	Eventually Formed
2012	Remember To Vote Tomorrow
2011	It Sounds Like Chaos Theory To Me

Read Full Post »

Seeking Needs

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
—  John Muir
.
On This Day In:
2018	Not Sure Anyway…
	All Clear Nuclear And Burn
2017	Forms Of Conservation
2016	Oh, So Lacking
2015	e pluribus unum
2014	Nothing So Far Removed
2013	Positions
2012	Two Errors
2011	Long Live The King!

Read Full Post »

Where Does This Leave Us?

Where does this leave all of us and the planet we inhabit?  Even thinking optimistically, enacting climate-change legislation that matches the scale of the challenge is hard to imagine: the science is damning and the clock is ticking.  And while the conversation may be shifting, there’s still a climate-change-denying President in the White House and nothing like a broad consensus on a path forward among Democrats.
In the face of all that, it would be easy to dismiss the new breed of climate activists as noisy but dreamy, idealists distant from the powers who run the show.  But that’s the thing about social movements, from civil rights to gay rights.  At first the activists may look naive, and maybe they are.  But in the rearview mirror, they come to look like instigators of massive and, in hindsight, obvious change.
—  Justin Worland
In Mr. Worland’s article: “A New Climate For Climate“
Appearing in Time Magazine, dtd: 3 April 2019
.
On This Day In:
2018	Or A Small Blue Planet
2017	To Infinity And Beyond
2016	And Some Unawake, Too
	Winds And Reign
2015	Natural Shapes
2014	Seeing The Light
2013	Requirements
2012	Tricked Again
2011	Liberty And Justice For Earth
2010	Home Again, Home Again, Jig-A-De, Jig…

Read Full Post »

Quiet, Please!

A loss of silence is as serious as a loss of memory and just as disorienting.  Silence is, after all, the natural context from which we listen.  Silence is also the natural context from which we speak.
—  Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
.
On This Day In:
2018	Heavy On The Starch
2017	But The Beginning Of What?
2016	Today’s Rule
2015	Remembering Oklahoma City
2014	Who Was That Masked Man?
2013	Enemy Mine
2012	Strengthen Me
2011	Service, Please
2010	The Church In Crisis…

Read Full Post »

We Are Approaching Default

The world is not given to you by your parents.  It is loaned to you by your children.
—  Kenyan proverb
.
On This Day In:
2017	Today Is Not Lost
	Day 8
2016	Paying Attention
2015	An Awful Ordeal
2014	What Are You Doing?
2013	Lives > 1
2012	Strange To All The World
2011	Unnecessary Stagefright

Read Full Post »

Or A Small Blue Planet

The most amazing thing about trees is it doesn’t actually matter how rich you are.  You can never buy a really old, beautiful tree.
—  Steve Jobs
.
On This Day In:
2017	To Infinity And Beyond
2016	And Some Unawake, Too
	Winds And Reign
2015	Natural Shapes
2014	Seeing The Light
2013	Requirements
2012	Tricked Again
2011	Liberty And Justice For Earth
2010	Home Again, Home Again, Jig-A-De, Jig…

Read Full Post »

So We Agree, #45 Is Dumb – Too

I was in business for 30 years, and my experience is that the best way to operate is to work fairly and closely with partners over a long period of time.  The most expensive way to do business is to do it deal by deal, each of which is highly contentious.  If deal by deal is the model, where instead of partners or allies we have counterparts and competitors, that is very expensive, difficult, and dangerous.  OK, so look at the Paris agreement: It’s going to force the developed world to change its energy sources.  That means the US could be the leader in developing renewable technology for more than a billion people — a huge incoming market — who don’t have electricity at all.
The Paris agreement was a great achievement of American leadership.  So the idea that we’re going to walk away and give up leadership of 194 countries, and walk away from our position as a leader in the world for the past 100 years, will be an incredibly expensive and dumb thing to do.
—  Tom Steyer
From the article: “The Billionaire on a Mission to Save the Planet From Trump“
Article written by: Nick Stockton
Article appearing in: Wired Magazine, dtd: April 2017
Link to article: http://www.wired.com/2017/03/tom-steyer-interview/
.
On This Day In:
2017	The Morality Of Spying
2016	He Doesn’t Remind Me Of Me
	The First Rule
2015	Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow
	The Man Without Fear
2014	I Blame Robocop
2013	Future Trustees
2012	Praise Not The Day…
2011	Educated Living

Read Full Post »

Who Will Thank (If Not Remember) Me

He who plants trees benefits another generation.
—  Caecilius Statius as quoted by Marcus Tullius Cicero
.
On This Day In:
2017	Reinforced Learning
2016	I Choose To Believe
2015	What They Don’t Teach You At School
2014	Still Trying To Die (5)
2013	Honest Doubt
2012	Choice
2011	Ownership Of Thought

Read Full Post »

Mr. President, About Global Warming

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
―  Aldous Huxley
From:  Complete Essays 2, 1926-29
.
On This Day In:
2016	Starting To Stumble
2015	Begin Combat
	I Am A Runner
2014	Just Dig ‘N It, Why?
2013	Additions
	The Object Of Instruction
2012	Telling Her
2011	On Torture

Read Full Post »

Have You Hugged A Tree Lately?

Trees
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
—  written by:  Joyce Kilmer
.
On This Day In:
2016	Unconquerable Imagination
2015	Just Plain Wrong
2014	Finding Beliefs
2013	Pretty Confident
2012	Effective Ranges
2011	Three Wisdoms
2010	I’m Just Askin’…
	Space & Time

Read Full Post »

Forms Of Conservation

We all give our hearts far more readily than our money.
—  Anton Chekov
The cheapest and most environmentally sound new source of water is conservation of the existing water supply.
—  Antonio Rossmann
(Quoted in the) New York Times
[Apologies.  No more specific citation was recorded in my journal.  —  KMAB]
.
On This Day In:
2016	Oh, So Lacking
2015	e pluribus unum
2014	Nothing So Far Removed
2013	Positions
2012	Two Errors
2011	Long Live The King!

Read Full Post »