Ladies and Gentlemen of A.D. 2088:

Our century hasn't been as free with words of wisdom as some others, I think, because we were the first to get reliable information about the human situation: how many of us there were, how much food we could raise or gather, how fast we were reproducing, what made us sick, what made us die, how much damage we were doing to the air and water and topsoil on which most life forms depended, how violent and heartless nature can be, and on and on. Who could wax wise with so much bad news pouring in?

For me, the most paralyzing news was that Nature was no conservationist. It needed no help from us in taking the planet apart and putting it back together some different way, not necessarily improving it from the viewpoint of living things. It set fire to forests with lightning bolts. It paved vast tracts of arable land with lava, which could no more support life than big-city parking lots. It had in the past sent glaciers down from the North Pole to grind up major portions of Asia, Europe, and North America. Nor was there any reason to think that it wouldn't do that again someday. At this very moment it is turning African farms to deserts, and can be expected to heave up tidal waves or shower down white-hot boulders from outer space at any time. It has not only exterminated exquisitely evolved species in a twinkling, but drained oceans and drowned continents as well. If people think Nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.
...

And here is a crazy idea I would like to try on you: Is it possible that we aimed rockets with hydrogen bomb warheads at each other, all set to go, in order to take our minds off the deeper problem--how cruelly Nature can be expected to treat us, Nature being Nature, in the by-and-by?

Now that we can discuss the mess we are in with some precision, I hope you have stopped choosing abysmally ignorant optimists for positions of leadership. They were useful only so long as nobody had a clue as to what was really going on--during the past seven million years or so. In my time they have been catastrophic as heads of sophisticated institutions with real work to do.

The sort of leaders we need now are not those who promise ultimate victory over Nature through perseverance in living as we do right now, but those with the courage and intelligence to present to the world what appears to be Nature's stern but reasonable surrender terms:

1. Reduce and stabilize your population.
2. Stop poisoning the air, the water and the topsoil.
3. Stop preparing for war and start dealing with your real problems
4. Teach your kids, and yourselves, too, while you're at it, how to inhabit a small planet without helping to kill it.
5. Stop thinking science can fix anything if you give it a trillion dollars.
6. Stop thinking your grandchildren will be OK no matter how wasteful or destructive you may be, since they can go to a nice new planet on a spaceship. That is really mean, and stupid.
7. And so on. Or else.

Am I too pessimistic about life a hundred years from now? Maybe I have spent too much time with scientists and not enough time with speechwriters for politicians.

Kurt Vonnegut Fates Worse Than Death

Dave Chappelle

Dave Chappelle on Inside the Actor's Studio is worth watching. The google video version I linked to is low quality; I watched it on DVD. He discusses the "Season three turbulence" (as wikipedia calls it) which takes him on an extended discussion of fame, money, happiness and so on.

the nursing home

I might have mentioned earlier on this blog that my grandma is suffering from dementia. Recently her condition has been deteriorating quickly and my family has decided to move her into an assisted care facility. My parents have been going the extra mile taking care of her in their home (my mom's a nurse) but she frequently wakes up at night and stays up for hours, tries to wander off. Often they'll take her somewhere and she'll refuse to get out of the car (also for hours). She'll say she wants to go to mass and that she needs to get home to take care of her mother. She seems to change the time period she's living in (mentally) frequently.

Anyhow, when I was a kid, my mom and I lived with an old lady for a while. Her name was Adelaide Bartlett. Once she got a bit older she also had to move into a nursing home. We used to give her rides to church quite a bit during that time. What I mainly remember is her wanting to die and asking why God hadn't taken her. Her conversation was singularly focused on that theme. When she died, I inherited a few of her things, mostly antique trinkets. Among the things was this poem. Adelaide, unlike my grandma, remained lucid until the end. She probably wrote this not long after she first entered the nursing home (since it doesn't overly emphasize the "I want to die" theme).

The Nursing Home

The nursing home is a 
place to retreat
And all our lives
are in defeat

So often we just sit and wait
Wondering what will be our fate

The workers there are 
too few, the best they can
we hope they do.

wake the sleepers?

Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. Now if you cry aloud to waken a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?

Lu Xun

via Alexis Ohanian

ingroup/outgroup

I suppose it's only natural for us to be more lenient towards our ingroup than outgroups but I still find this phenomena frustrating.

For philosophers or rationals (or whatever you want to call crazy people like me) we tend to expect others to be similarly rational. But since so many are ignorant or irrational, those within our ingroup often get a free pass.

So, to be consistent we could be equally hard on those within our ingroup but this move isn't very human because we are the anomaly here and it's a move toward isolation and consequent loneliness.

The alternate move is to lend your sympathies to irrationality in outgroups in the same way you lend them to your ingroup. This is the move I attempt to make as it seems most fit for this more heterogeneous world and it matches my Whitmanesque desires for world travelling.

Note that this meditation doesn't speak at all to lenience toward other rationals. I prefer a bit of contention in that ingroup.

july 4, 2010

Spent a bit of time walking Sophie and writing.


Watched the fireworks with friends on the bayfront.




Ran into a random commie at the end of the night at the bar. He didn't know much about communism. He said he bought the shirt from urban outfitters in 2003 or so.

some say the opposite of love is not hate but indifference

Of the gods I ask only to be ignored.
Without good or bad luck, I'll be free,
     Like the wind that's the life
     Of the air, which is nothing.
Hatred and love both seek us out;
Both oppress us, each in its own way.
     Those to whom the gods
     Grant nothing are free.

Ricardo Reis (Fernando Pessoa)

Ricardo Reis begs to differ.

from a few days ago

"the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious"

Excellent little meditation on awareness, reframing and dealing with our default perspectives from David Foster Wallace (2005).

via reddit

Sophie returns to Oregon

Sophie, Sarah and I just returned from an extended (work related) trip to Utah where I had the chance to hang out with my cousin Chris, Charlie and a number of other friends. I also had a birthday party, decommissioned a server (RIP ip0), and helped my little brother move out of my parents house (he's 18).



On the way back we got to do a mini brewery tour, stopping at Deschutes in Bend, The Brewers Union Local 180 in Oakridge, and Ninkasi in Eugene. Of those I'm most of a fan of the Brewers Union where we drank "Real Ale", met Ted, the brewer (former software engineer who learned his brewing technique in England). Ninkasi also makes awesome beer but I love that English style ale.

--
Recently Noted:

Huenemann's review of Julian Young's Nietzsche biography in ndpr.

JT is blogging about Aris-tote-lay's Nichomachean Ethics.

Carl Johnson has been weaving Confucius in with his recent posts. I especially liked this one on software design and "convention".