Tag Archives: city life

Our Present Culture

More Thoughts On The Pandemic

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Pandemic1Little else to say other than more thoughts on the pandemic. As with most social issues of this nature, it is difficult to garner good information.

Here is some of which I have gathered.

Scientists Probe How Coronavirus Might Travel Through The Air (20200403)

A good article on the spread of coronavirus, via droplet or aerosol — unfortunately the science is not clear. WHO is still recommending 6 feet, until the science is more clear. For my part, if I go into a large grocery store with 50-70 other people, I still wonder if I am safe — of course, I wondered that before this article.

Recommendation Regarding the Use of Cloth Face Coverings, Especially in Areas of Significant Community-Based Transmission (20200403)

A CDC link expressing mounting concern about how coronavirus is spread, especially in hot spots, and includes a short video of how to make a simple face mask from home materials. My guess is that it would stop much droplet transmission from the wearer and diminish output/intake of aerosol to a lesser degree.

Answers to your DIY face mask questions, including what material you should use (20200407)

Another good article on homemade face masks.

Why Did The World Shut Down For COVID-19 But Not Ebola, SARS Or Swine Flu? (20200414)

A good article as to what is different about Covid-19 as to result in a pandemic.

A Comic Strip Tour Of The Wild World Of Pandemic Modeling (20204013)

A visual presentation of the complexity of modelling — quite good although I am not a public health specialist.

Finally, a bit of humour:

Corona

A Mature Culture, Global Warming, Important Concepts

The Shift Is Happening

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This post repeats what for me may be prominent news stories, or at least need to be. If you have not seen them, they need to be seen. The shift is happening, slowly.

Our culture is going to change, one way or another. The hope of many is that the changes can be accommodated, but the process of change will be daunting. This past week, around the world, many millions have been demonstrating in the request for such change.

If the changes cannot be accommodated, they will still happen, only then we will have economic collapse, mass conflict, and mass loss of life.

It does not yet appear what we shall be!

Greta Thunberg was right: There is an alternative to ‘eternal economic growth’: Don Pittis (20190926)

Greta Thunberg has been a tipping point in mobilizing young people — after all, they are the people who will need to live the ensuing culture. The issue is not knowledge — we know what to do, or at least we are gradually finding the models and resources to change the culture. The issue is willingness to do the work.

Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster (20130415)

From the same source, an economic growth model that we could adapt.

Yet we still exist at a knife edge.

Flooded cities, vanishing sea life forecast in new UN-backed report (20190927)

As many know, the IPCC is a scientific think tank based on consensus, thus sensitive to presenting comments to which all essentially agree. Thus, its predictions are generally on the low side. Gradually their assessments are becoming more dire yet need to be read as the minimal risk of what may occur.

Tackling climate change means purging privilege from politics (20190925)

We must find ways to eliminate, or at least markedly reduce, the discrepancies that keep our society equitable.

And we do a very poor job of assessment.

Make debate great again: How bad political argument is undermining democracy (20190926

As I hope is obvious, a major part of my work is that of presenting skills to diminish polarization in conflict. Here, two philosophers comment on the mechanisms whereby our democracy is failing.

A Mature Culture, Global Warming, Important Concepts, Interesting Links, Our Present Culture, Power and Domination

The Sustainability Of Injustice

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Acedia3

In this post I reflect on the sustainability of injustice, especially our inability to resolve the many issues that are destroying our species and our Gaian world. All of the links that follow represent our failure to come to terms with the consequences of global warming.

As I have previously suggested (especially in my book Acedia, The Darkness Within, and the darkness of Climate Change), I believe this is due to the huge cultural issue of acedia (especially our laziness and fearfulness) and the smaller issue of evil (especially the augmentation of our cultural self-righteousness). And I hate harping on the issues, part of my own acedia. Yet I am committed to raising awareness in whatever way I can.

A comment from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations of yesterday (20180412) is especially pertinent for me. His concern in this particular meditation is the issue of racial discrimination, but it applies the whole of our civilization, a civilization based on power dynamics. As usual, Richard formulates it in a Christian framework, yet I suggest the message is independent of culture.

[quoting from Holmes, Joy Unspeakable, 2017] One cannot help but wonder why the same battles for justice must be fought by every generation? Certainly, there were enough sacrifices, martyrs, and legislation during the ’60s to ensure justice for all. Yet . . . “we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities and the rulers of darkness in high places” [Ephesians 6:12]. The powers or systems do everything they can to resist change. In response to the demand for justice, systems morph and adjust while maintaining the status quo.

So public hangings end and the murders of unarmed black folk rise. Slavery ends, but the mass incarceration of minority populations increases. Jim Crow practices are no longer openly discriminatory; they reappear as educational and economic disparities, voter suppression, and aggressive police actions against people of color.

[Richard’s commentary] Power never surrenders without a fight. If your response to today’s meditation is to retort, “All lives matter!” I invite you to take a closer look at your own fears and biases. Of course, all lives matter! Yet until black and brown lives matter, no lives truly matter. Jesus spoke into specific lives, into particular circumstances of oppression, saying, “You, an outcast Samaritan woman, you matter. You, a leper rejected by society, you matter.”

Until we choose to have power over power and live into true justice, it is likely that our time on this planet is severely limited. We will move to extinction — the end-points indicated by Malthus[1] (starvation, plague, and war) are on the horizon.

Significant Links

Lessons from Cape Town’s water crisis (20180315)

Cape Town is the harbinger of what may happen to many modern cities, the issues being “related to climate change, population growth, waste and mismanagement. Depleted supply is only one result” (see also What You Need to Know About the World’s Water Wars)

We’re drowning in seas of plastic (20180329)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to be sixteen times larger than previously assessed.

The Great Lakes Are Filling Up With Giant Green Blobs (20180403)

Harmful algae blooms occur mainly because of nutrient run-off from land usage (fertilizer), resulting in toxic water as well as high methane production (a major greenhouse gas).

Can the Paris Agreement save us from a climate catastrophe? (201804)

An editorial in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet does not say much, but the title in itself is significant of questioning what we are doing as a culture.

Audit exposes Canadian climate failures (20180405)

As someone living in the British Columbia Lower Mainland, I am very aware of the duplicity of the Canadian government, especially in its support of the tar sands and the Kinder-Morgan expansion.

The oceans’ circulation hasn’t been this sluggish in 1,000 years. That’s bad news. (20180411)

A good article on the nature of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and its possible implications.

Reports emphasize urgent need to reverse biodiversity decline (20180412)

Yet more warning of how serious the issues are!

[1] Malthus, T. (1798). An essay on the principle of population. London, England: J. Johnson, in St. Paul’s Churchyard.

Global Warming, Our Present Culture

What Are We Thinking?

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DroughtSeveral articles have recently struck me as indicators of where we currently are with respect to global warming. Some of the articles focus on the impact; two focus on the insanity that drives us. What are we thinking!?

I remain convinced that the major issues underlying global warming are those of:

  • acedia — our laziness, fearfulness and self-righteousness that prevents us from engaging in the most important issue of our species. There are, of course, reasons (good reasons, many of which were addressed in my earlier blogs), but reasons don’t count! Results count.
    • it is our acedia that stops our cooperation, the attitude that: “I’m willing to work hard on these issues if to my advantage, or if you are!” We see this with our international agreements — Russian, Turkey, and the United States (accounting for about 30% of the greenhouse effect) not engaged in the Paris Agreement. And the Paris Agreement is only an agreement to do something about the problem; if Canada’s duplicity is any example, we are a long way from actual results.
  • evil — this is not a topic we as a culture want to address, yet it is undeniable to me that evil exists. It shows up in greed and in the disinformation processes that feed our inactivity.

Many small positive actions occur, many, but we still have not reached our own tipping point as to when we will move rapidly to resolution. Perhaps we will do so in time to prevent catastrophe for our civilization, perhaps for our species. Perhaps not.

I almost need to laugh, perhaps cry!

Cape Town water supply near ‘point of no return’ as reservoirs run dry (20180118)

A number of articles within this link point to the impact of global warming. Cape Town (South Africa) is considering mandatory limitation of water usage. China is refusing to be the dumping ground for plastic waste, especially plastic bottles, thereby forcing other countries to deal with their recycling products.

Who is Guilty of Climate Crimes? (20180216)

The basis answer is that we are all guilty. However, some aspects stand out: the extreme right, the fossil fuel industry, the media, and the major industrial countries (Canada, my country, included).

Arctic temperatures soar 45 degrees above normal, flooded by extremely mild air on all sides (20180222)

The highest weather station in the world, about 400 miles for the North Pole, has warmed to 43°F in the dead of winter! In addition to feedback loops that further increase Arctic warming (and loss of more ice), thus impacting the entire weather system of the northern hemisphere (the jet-stream impact), there is also the massive release of methane from permafrost and seabed melting, the rise of sea level (as the Greenland ice field melts), and the slowdown of the global ocean conveyor belt effect. These are just some of the effects; we simply do not know what tipping points will be reached and when.

Coral reefs will transition to net dissolving before end of century (20180223)

Another factor in loss of both beauty and a basic food chain component — in addition to warming being destructive of coral, the acidification also is weakening the underlying sedimentary structure of the reefs. Our world food supply is thus at risk.

Climate science deniers’ credibility tested (20180301)

This is the greatest crime — the controversy created by the massive disinformation processes we have unleashed in the past 50 years!

A Mature Culture, Important Concepts, Our Present Culture, Power and Domination

An Economy That Works

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Economy1I mentioned last post that I am no longer posting. However, every once and a while I come across a link that I think is so important that I believe it needs to be acknowledged (and disseminated) — this one is: an economy that works.

We are badly in need of a way to understand the nature of modern economy such that we develop a maturing of our culture. I think this is: it explains the impact of neoliberalism and the changing nature of our economy, especially the rise of gross dissatisfaction in how we live our lives. It also strongly advocates, amongst other suggestions, the need for a guaranteed basic income, a concept and process that is gradually being shown to markedly improve living conditions, despite the fears that it will encourage people to become lazy.

Having researched laziness as part of my PhD, I strongly believe that people are not naturally lazy, that they only move in this direction when they become overwhelmed with their lives and give up, conditions that are being augmented in major ways by our current economy. What is suggested here is actually a prescription to reduce laziness while improving human lives in many ways, perhaps ending the insane ways in which we create poverty and dissatisfaction in our lives, even reducing global warming via an effective stance to our culture.

Guy Standing on an Economy that Works for Everyone (20161126)

It is a long article, and well worth reading.