"They did eat, they
drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day
that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them
all." — Luke 17
"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?" — Thoreau
"The same things, in fact, are wealth or not wealth, according as a man knows or does not know the use to make of them. ... Money itself in the pockets of a man who does not know how to use it is not wealth. ... But now comes a puzzle. What of people who have got the knowledge and the capital required to enhance their fortunes, if only they will put their shoulders to the wheel; and yet, if we are to believe our senses, that is just the one thing they will not do, and so their knowledge and accomplishments are of no profit to them? Surely in their case there is but one conclusion to be drawn, which is, that neither their knowledge nor their possessions are wealth." — Socrates via Xenophon, The Economist
"Using" things ... a question of power or truth?
In a simple but shocking message that impacts the hearer much like Jesus' prophecy about the end of the world [set out above], but with the scientific instead of the religious community called upon to act as the "watchman", Peter Carter warns that we face Tough Cimate Times Ahead:
"The emergency is getting way way worse and very rapidly ... which the [subsidized] fossil fuel industry, the [subsidized] banking corporations and the [subsidizing] big economy governments deny in various ways ... they must be held accountable for all this, but so far they are getting away with mass murder on a scale that we've never seen before. It's not only an unprecedented evil crime, it's completely absurd, it's completely insane that this should be happening.
"Everything that we are seeing is irreversible ... the reason for that is not just that we're not doing anything to stop [it] .... it's also the great momentum of the climate system.
"Peaceful protesters are being dealt [with] harshly by their governments and the courts ... they're incarcerated [without] getting very much public support.
"And the response of the scientific community to the accelerating rapid deteriorating climate emergency [is] not very good ... it has decided not to actually tell the truth of where we're at because it's so terrible ...the global carbon sinks in the ocean and on the land are losing efficiency ... and that's terrifying, believe me, absolutely terrifying ... the world is tracking the worst case scenario ... yes it's time to panic ... it really is time to panic !! But I don't detect any panic out there at all.
"So what is our hope? ... you and me ... that's the real hope for the future ... we just have to work ... the resiliency of nature will not come into effect until we have stopped [doing what we're doing] ... we know everything that has to be done and we've known it for decades."
Sounds like somebody is mis-"using" [ie. abusing] something in a BIG way. Any ideas?
The 3E's of disaster
There are three elements common to every disaster ... and no disaster is "natural".
Economy - customary use - power
By this we mean the Greek oikos-nomos ... household-management ... the customary use of things which is determined by our ideas and actions. And so, as Socrates and Xenophon remind us above, we are all eco-nomists. This is what Carter means by "you and me". We have power as economists to change things for better or for worse. But most of us don't know what to do or refuse to do what we know. We look for somebody to blame ... and we look for somebody to solve our problems ... we think we can escape our assignment as economists. And so, as Jesus predicted and Carter affirms, we face our doom doing what we have always done ... convinced it will somehow suffice ... even when we know better.
Ecology - proper use - truth
By this we mean the Greek oikos-logos ... household-reckoning ... the proper use of things which is determined and enforced by Nature's limits and consequences. This is what Carter means by the resiliency of nature. With the advent of the Reformation and Enlightenment, humanity turned away from its duty to Nature in its broadest sense and turned each one towards his/her/their/its own individual intentionalities [ie. preferences] as the standard for determining the "use" of things. By redefining "use" we thought we were freeing ourselves from Nature. But this exercise in hubristic power did not actually change the truth, it merely put our relationship with truth on a different course ... a collision course, as Carter claims is now clear.
Education - reducing abuse - reconciling power and truth
And yet, in the face of an approaching and potentially fatal collision with Ecology, we cling tenaciously to our Economy. And, as Socrates noted, we do so even when we KNOW it is the wrong thing to do and that we have POWER as economists to do otherwise. This is certainly a failure of Education ... the worst case scenario ... even the unforgivable sin ??
Culture [ie. Economy]is activity [ie. actions] of thought [ie. ideas], and receptiveness [ie. Education]to beauty and humane feeling [ie. Ecology]. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth.
...
We can be content with no less than the old summary of educational ideal which has been current at any time from the dawn of our civilisation. The essence of education is that it be religious.
Pray, what is religious education?
A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue, ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity. — Whitehead
"Why halt ye between two opinions?" Elijah
"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." James