A discussion of the climate crisis—the historical transformation of nature and its implications for our history—written from the safety of an Upper West Side apartment could seem remote. The Anthropocene remained an abstract intellectual proposition. The coronavirus crisis has stripped even the most sheltered of us of that illusion.
The Anthropocene as "polycrisis" (as Tooze describes it elsewhere in his book). Whether as an addendum to the climate crisis or as a manifestation of that crisis, the pandemic revealed how we can't hide from the consequences of our choices (action or inaction).
Even though economists widely agree on the basic principles behind carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies, for example— and argue forcefully in favor of such policies— and even after decades of academic discussion, countless learned policy briefs, and some half-hearted government moves in Europe, Canada, and China, we’re still not paying anything close to an appropriate price for throwing our carbon junk into our air.
These words were published in 2020. Since then, Europe has moved significantly in this direction (carbon pricing) and Canada & China have made moves. The U.S. has this issue on deck, with perhaps as many as 49 senators and the Biden Admin are getting on board. Time to make this happen!
There are many who share responsibility without any visible proof of guilt. There are many more who have become guilty without being in the least responsible. Among the responsible in a broader sense must be included all those who continued to be sympathetic to Hitler as long as it was possible, who aided his rise to power, and who applauded him in Germany and in other European countries.
Arendt here refers to Hitler, Germany, and Europe, to whom else m and where else might her observation apply?
Arendt began by noting that although the two ideas of “liberation” and “freedom” were often confused and conflated, they were not the same. Liberation consisted of a rebellious breaking of shackles, the dream of political upheavals from the dawn of recorded history, and had always been the focus of historians and other intellectuals because all the drama was contained in the fight against tyranny, or what Arendt called all the good stories.
And so what is "freedom." (Stay tuned!)
As [Jean] Gebser knew, images and symbols operate at the level of the magical structure, bypassing the critical, reflective mind. The perpetual “now” of the ever-present Internet does not allow for the deep, meditative time in which the mind can focus on values and understand why it thinks as it does. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but without the words to tell you, you may not even know what you are looking at—something all good advertisers know.
As Collingwood argued, without language we have no thoughts. "Thought" is created by and comprised of language. Images and symbols alone appeal to the soul, not the mind.
The full and precise articulation of the doctrine of infinitely interpenetrated totality (dharmadha-tu) is one of the notable achievements of Mahayana Buddhist thought. It is also a characteristic theme of Greek thought. In fact, the Greeks seem to have been the first thinkers to formulate the concept of infinity except as an indefinite mass, the first to give it mathematical and logical formulations. The concept of interpenetrated infinities, that is, an infinity of separate entities in which each one contains all the others, was first articulated by Anaxagoras, in his conception of matter. Of infinite entities, each is conceived to have in it tiny parts of every other. Each separate thing contains, in a microcosmic form, everything else. Each apparent unit is in fact infinity squared—which is to say infinity to the infinite power.
The ability of the ancient Greeks and Indians (and some others) to develop such deep insights without the benefit of technological science is astounding.
Since its origins, capitalism has been synonymous with Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction.” The gale has now morphed into a hurricane that is genuinely creative but also extremely destructive.
Creativity is a Good (see Whitehead & Charles Hartshorne for details), but so are Conservation & Balance. Contemporary capitalism & its resulting consumerism and their thirst for novelty have become like the mischief of the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
Hayek’s brand of antiauthoritarianism was ambivalent about democracy. “Democracy is a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom,” he wrote. “There has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies.” What mattered to Hayek was liberty, and by liberty he meant the rights of an aristocracy against the central government, whatever form that government took.
The Haves always fear democracy and the Have-Nots. And not without some basis in history, but often to excess and therefore working to kill real democracy.
To believe that Trump showed us who we really are is no different from believing that Obama showed us who we really are. Narcissism is expressed in extremes of self-contempt as well as self-adoration. Both are paralyzing. They tell us more about the mind of the person in front of the mirror than the objective facts of the image in the glass.
As individuals, we are complex & often self-contradictory in our beliefs & actions. How much more so as a nation of individual, self-contradictory selves all given to some measure of narcissism.
In this book I argue that all progress, both theoretical and practical, has resulted from a single human activity: the quest for what I call good explanations.
An intriguing thought.
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