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| A book grounded in the classics but seasoned by plenty of contemporary insights, too. |
Rather than joust with contemporary specialists in environmental affairs, I therefore decided from the outset to rely on the time-tested classical authors who have eloquently and cogently grappled with the core issues of politics. I found Plato, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the rest more illuminating and pertinent than other writers to achieving my aim—namely, encouraging readers to question our most basic social, economic, political, and even moral assumptions as the first step toward imagining a truly ecological future.
"The greats" do provide unparalleled insights.
He [LBJ] would say to friends, talking about his dilemma, “If we get into this war [Vietnam] I know what’s going to happen. Those damn conservatives are going to sit in Congress and they’re going to use this war as a way of opposing my Great Society legislation. People like Stennis and Gross. They hate this stuff, they don’t want to help the poor and the Negroes but they’re afraid to be against it at a time like this when there’s been all this prosperity. But the war, oh, they’ll like the war. They’ll take the war as their weapon. They’ll be against my programs because of the war. I know what they’ll say, they’ll say they’re not against it, not against the poor, but we have this job to do, beating the Communists. We beat the Communists first, then we can look around and maybe give something to the poor.”
There is a sense of the tragic in LBJ's story.
Evolution has gifted humans (and vertebrates in general) two immune systems: the innate immune system and the adaptive one. The innate immune system is the front line of defense and has a standard set of responses—fevers, inflammation, mucus generation, attack cells—to biological threats that are quick and easy to deploy. The innate immune system is a blunt instrument that has a pretty dramatic effect on how you feel. It alters your internal environment to make it hostile to invaders. The adaptive immune system is more selective (this is the Special Forces rather than the regular Army); it identifies the specific threat to the body, learns its weaknesses, then deploys a very targeted response.
We should all have learned this now in the time of COVID, but it bears repeating.
The “soul” or Circuit VII is constant, because it is, as the Chinese say, void or no-form. It plays all the roles you play — oral dependent, emotional tyrant, cool rationalist, romantic seducer, neurosomatic healer, neurogenetic Evolutionary Visionary — but it is none of them. It is plastic. It is no-form, because it is all forms. It is the “creative Void” of the Taoists.
Read Robert Anton Wilson & this book in particular for a wild (but nonetheless) convincing ride.
Humans tend to overestimate small probabilities, so the fear generated by an act of terrorism is greatly disproportionate to the actual risk.
And we could add vaccine risks.
The problem was that this smaller, vertically positioned nose [that homo sapiens developed] was less efficient at filtering air, and it exposed us to more airborne pathogens and bacteria. The smaller sinuses and mouth also reduced space in our throats. The more we cooked, the more soft, calorie-rich food we consumed, the larger our brains grew and the tighter our airways became.
Moral: everything involves a trade-off.
Depth beats breadth any day of the week, because it opens a channel for the intangible, unconscious , creative components of our hidden potential.
Waitzkin is talking chess here; but in life as a whole, I posit that a wide breadth of knowledge & skill is most desirable. Don't be a one-trick pony.
