One Hundred and Forty Eight

Winter is coming. There was ice on the windshield this morning. Soon snow will fall, and someone will claim that proves global warming is a hoax. It’s how we deal with emergencies.

When an emergency strikes, people usually help its victims restore things to what they consider normal. But when emergencies become the norm, people look after themselves and try not to see anyone else.

They tell themselves the emergency is only temporary, not the norm, just as they tell themselves war is only temporary and peace is the norm.

Emergency is the norm for most people most of the time, but we refuse to see it, and tell ourselves that winter snow proves global warming is a hoax.

One Hundred and Forty Seven

Philosophers have always sought to understand the world.   The point, said Marx, is to change it.  But each time we try to change it, the results aren’t what we expected.  That’s probably one of the reasons why we imagined the world is a being like us, alive as we are, with a mind and a will of its own.  But it’s obviously more powerful than we are, so instead of opposing it we tried to tame it as we tame wild animals and make them serve us, as our masters tame us and make us serve them.  We flatter this being, and pretend we love it, and eventually persuade ourselves not only that it’s true, but it loves us in return.

To change the world, we must know the world; and to know the world is to know it's not a being like us, alive as we are; and we don't know it well enough to know what the results will be if we try to change it, any more than we know ourselves well enough to know what we want it to be.

It’s changing all the time, of course; but in accordance with its own laws, not ours. 

It’s alive, of course, but not as we are. It’s a body of which we are the cells. Tat tvam asi. But what does a body know of its cells, and what do cells know of their body?

We are more than we seem, part of something greater than ourselves; but I can no longer take comfort in knowing that because I know we’re destroying the world, and therefore ourselves.       

One Hundred and Forty Six

Now I have a job again, and money coming in.  Not enough to live comfortably, but enough to hope that I may save some money if no emergency arises.  But it's a false hope, as hope always is.  Emergencies always arise.

Don thought he was doing me a favor when he asked me to come back to work, so it would have been rude of me to refuse.  But I knew it was a mistake.  I was more dead than alive, and rousing myself from the grave has been exhausting.

Don still says I can save the company, but no one can do that.  I realized that eight years ago.  I realized long ago that people want to be saved, but only on their own terms.  Don wouldn’t listen to my business plan eight years ago.  He now admits I was right, but it’s too late.  There’s nothing I can do now. 

Each day I sit at my desk and think about standing up and walking out.  I‘m not the captain of this sinking ship.        

One Hundted an Forty Five

Mike was in a coma for weeks, and wasn’t expected to live; but now he’s regained consciousness. His father asked me to come back and work part time until he recovers.

I've no intention of coming back full time, even though I need money desperately. I can no longer find satisfaction in doing well work that shouldn't be done.

Most of the people I worked with eight years ago have left the company. The ones who remember me tell the new hires I’m a genius who’ll save the company, but I can see why they’re skeptical. They began using Goldmine after I retired, and I was having difficulty understanding it. I was sure this proved I was becoming senile; but after reading the instruction manual online I realized I’m having difficulty understanding it because they don’t understand it themselves, and explained it to me badly.

People have always tried to explain to me what they don’t understand themselves.

One Hundred and Forty Four

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  It’s irrational to have faith in something when all the evidence we have suggests it's not true; but we’re limited beings, so we can never have enough evidence to know with certainty that anything is true.  At some point we must decide we know enough to act, and hope that what we don’t know doesn’t contradict what we do know.

People used to have faith in religion because it was rational. It gave order and meaning to their lives, and all the evidence they had supported it.  When scientists found evidence that seemed to contradict religion, priests redefined irrational faith as a virtue superior to reason.  Some accepted this, but the more rational made science their new religion.  

Their faith in science was just as irrational as their faith in religion because they didn’t understand it any more than they understood religion.  They merely trusted that scientists knew the truth as naïvely as they once trusted priests.  But instead of making our lives better, scientists brought us to the brink of destruction.  So these people lost faith in scientists just as they did in priests; but they still had faith in the truths they claimed to know, so they read the sacred books of science just as they had those of religion, and made their own interpretations.   

This would have been laudable if they had understood that they’re different methods of searching for truth; but they assumed that if one was true, the other must be false.

Everything that can be said is true in some sense, otherwise it couldn't be said; and everything that can be said is false in some sense because we can never know enough to say with certainty what's true.  We can only say what seems true to us at this moment. 

One Hundred and Forty Three

I’m reading Clive Ponting’s A Green History of the World. He’s no prose stylist, but he’s mastered the material and presents it well. 

It’s been accepted for some time that the Neolithic Revolution was the major event in our social history, but most historians no longer automatically describe it as a fortubate event. More and more agree with Jared Diamond that it was our major mistake. Ponting doesn’t say that explicitly, but he does compare the lives of hunter/gatherers with those of agriculturalists, and it’s clear hunter/gatherers were better off. Finally historians are beginning to accept what I knew when I was twelve, from reading Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Ponting also incorporates the work of James Scott, who said in Against the Grain that the major event in our history took place earlier, when hunter/gatherers mastered fire and used it to clear the forests and drive herds of animals.

All animals modify their environment, but not to the extent we do. The changes we make are so great that we can’t undo them even when we want to. We burned down the forests and depleted the soil of nutrients with monocrop agriculture (and still do); we hunted many animals to extinction (and still do). Only now, when it’s too late, do we realize these were mistakes, just as our ancestors realized too late that horticulture is less destructive than agriculture, and made the garden the image of a lost paradise in their myths.

I knew all this before reading Ponting’s book, but it helped me answer the question I always ask about our ancestors: why did they believe, or pretend to believe, in gods?

It seems to me that, though we call ourselves homo sapiens, our species is profoundly ignorant. We don’t know our own limits, therefore we don’t know ourselves. We do everything to a destructive extreme because we imagine everything we do is good, and because our powers are unlimited. When the world doesn’t react as we expect, we imagine it’s because within it there’s a being like us, only more powerful: an angry spirit that will punish us for injuring this world which is its body. All gods were originally angry, but we tamed them as slaves tame their masters, by flattering them; and eventually we learned to love them, as all slaves love their masters.  

Most people now define religion as faith in some god. They lost their faith in gods, and made science their religion, because they imagined science would give them back the unlimited, godlike power they once imagined they had. When science didn’t make them godlike, people put their faith in the nation. We’re all fascists now. I define religion as the awareness that we have limits, are parts of something greater than ourselves - but not an immortal master who rewards obedient slaves by making them immortal.